Online video service Kyte has taken $15 million Series B in a round that included Telefonica, Nokia, DoCoMo, Swisscom, Holtzbrinck and DFJ. The new round brings total funding for Kyte to $17.25 million.
According to Kyte’s unofficial evangelist Robert Scoble, the announcement was streamed live on Kyte itself, which while demonstrating the product works perhaps compensates for the fact that no where on their site (at the time of writing) is there a written statement about the funding.
Kyte launched in April this year with a product that falls somewhere between Ustream and Twitter. Unlike many of its live streaming competitors Kyte offers a much richer two way experience, including support for text chat from within each video embed and the ability for users to drag drag photos, video and text into Kyte channels while interacting with others.
The investment will expose Kyte to a much broader audience with the raft of telco investors having hundreds of millions of users between them; Kyte could soon be coming to a mobile phone near you.
wow, I guess we have to use it and talk about it. Robert Scoble said so???
http://www.alexa.com/data/deta.....ize=Medium
His stats are nose diving by the way. Even Forbes’s pop web list can’t save that.
Thanks for the write-up Duncan! One point of clarification - and this may sound trivial (but it’s not!) - is that we support video and audio chat (on mobile and the web) as well as text chat. I only mention it because it’s one of our coolest features
Thanks again for the mention.
Gannon
I’ve never been a big Kyte fan as for their web interface.
I like their mobile capabilities, but they basically stink on the web side.
Gannon, are you going to be hiring new people with this money?
I just sent a resume to @decentral.tv and I was wondering.
Thanks.
@Nick - I hear you on the website comment. Just to clarify, the purpose of http://www.kyte.tv is to showcase our communications platform. Kyte isn’t a web destination, it’s an enabling platform that is experienced by users from within the websites, social networks and mobile networks they already use. For instance people view and interact with Scoble’s channel on scobleizer.com and the 5000+ other pages where it is embedded. The significance of our strategic funding announcement is the massive distribution potential of partnering with world leaders in communications and mobility.
@Chris - We’re hiring in marketing and biz dev. Send your resume to jobs@decentral.tv if that’s you
is it like msn?
$15 million? sheesh!
fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
Nick (#4)
I find it hard to pick a favorite in this space, but every time I interact with a Kyte embed I’m impressed by the tech side. They might not be the most polished provider but I’d reckon they’d be close to if not the most innovative in this space.
> … nowhere on their site is there a written statement …
Who needs written statements? Video is were the action is.
Now, Duncan, go get us some great videos in the place you live.
What’s that country called again…
ChrisR: anyone who uses Alexa as a proof of stats is an idiot. They are highly unreliable. Here’s what Wordpress.com says about my stats — keep in mind that three months ago I had a new son, so slowed down my posting quite a bit. Filter that out and we’re ending up the year about where we started out, so not too shabby.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/s.....123796945/
A written statement will be up on their blog tomorrow.
Gannon-
Kyte is building a great product as well as forcing competitors to do the same. By offering a tremendous platform you will enable people to take the next step in producing significantly better content.
You said you were focusing on distribution. You should look at http://www.NowHound.com. Its a great way to let people know what’s on Kyte at any given time and drive viewers to your channels.
check it out..it will be coming out soon.
we would love to hear from you
@Scoble….why do you respond to things like that?
@Gannon..Glad you got $15 million…how much of that was spent on 50 cent?