Last May we got our first taste of Mag.ma, Rocketboom founder Andrew Baron’s new online video startup that looks to help surface interesting new videos in real-time. The site is still in private beta as it continues to introduce new features (it was pretty bare bones last time I tried it out, but has improved significantly since), and today it’s opening up 300 invites to TechCrunch readers in honor of our RealTime CrunchUp. To get one, just go to Mag.ma and use the code CRUNCHUP09.
Most people will use Mag.ma primarily for its ‘wall’ of videos, which presents a list of the most recent and hottest clips on the web. As I wrote back when I first covered the site, Mag.ma is a great place to go if you’re looking to kill some time, as it features a constantly changing flow of interesting and/or funny videos that are updated in real-time. These videos are broken into channels by source (Mag.ma pulls from sites including YouTube, CollegeHumor, and Digg), but you can also choose to ‘follow’ the streams created by other users.
Mag.ma also features a heavy emphasis on stat tracking, allowing you to watch as a video receives more comments and video hits, increasing the video’s overall “buzz”. Because this data comes from multiple sources, you can get a better feel for a how a video is doing than if you watched its hit count on a single site, like YouTube.
Here’s the video of the demo from the Real-Time Stream CrunchUp: