Some companies go out with a whisper, others with a bang. In the case of online animation community MyToons, we’d call it the latter.
Not only do we know the startup has laid off its entire staff except for the founders (which equals 20 to 27 people depending on who you ask) because the lead investor refused to pony up more cash, but we’re also hearing stories from multiple sources who claim that the company’s management has all but thrown VC money out the windows, leading to the current unfortunate situation.
Among the allegations put forward by former employees who wish to remain anonymous: grave mismanagement, a complete disinterest from the company’s co-founders to turn MyToons into a revenue-generating business along with more serious accusations that the executives have been misrepresenting the company’s financial and operational status to their investors and moreover wasting VC money on personal purchases like trips to Hawaii, fancy dinners with relatives, home electronics for personal use and so on. We realize this could be simply a case of disgruntled ex-employees looking to discredit their former employers, but we currently consider the tips to be as reliable as they are detailed.
It is our luck to have two excellent user generated animated video sites now live – Israel-based Aniboom and, starting today, MyToons, which just came out of private beta.
MyToons certainly has the edge over Aniboom on design and overall usability, although I found site navigation to be slow this morning. With both sites, users upload short animated films that they’ve created, or have copyright permission to use. Videos are organized by tag, user, most watched, most highly rated, etc.
I love this stuff, and I spent quite a bit of time browsing videos before choosing the one embedded above (although I’m not too sure that particular video complies with MyToon’s copyright policy).
MyToons is also trying to be family friendly, and says they’ll censor out content that would constitute a NC-17 rating in the U.S. If we’re talking about pornographic content, it will be a clear enough line. But if they start to censor out swearing and other fuzzily inappropriate content, the site will suffer.
Israeli Startup Aniboom has raise $4.5 million in an initial round of financing. At least that’s what TechCrunch France writer Ouriel Ohayon tells me this page says. The round was led by Israeli venture firm Evergreen.
The site has very good user generated animated videos presented in a Flash player and embeddable in other websites. My favorite Aniboom video is embedded at the end of the post (I also used this example in our previous coverage of Aniboom).
Aniboom is neck and neck with newcoming MyToons in the race to become the “YouTube of Cartoons.” Both sites are excellent, although MyToons is still in private beta.
Update: Liz Gannes comments below to let us know that this news is weeks old. Our bad.
Some companies go out with a whisper, others with a bang. In the case of online animation community MyToons, we’d call it the latter. 
