GoFish was a San Francisco-based online video sharing website founded in 2003 by Michael Downing. It was founded as a search engine for digital music, audio books, ringtones and other media online, and operated as GoFish until 2009 then the service became the advertising network BetaWave in 2009 after a failed attempt at changing their niche into children's media. In 2010, BetaWave had also shutdown after "running out of money". GoFish was an important step in content distribution, as it was one of the first mainstream video sharing websites. In 2005,

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second most ...

and

Google Video Google Video was a free video hosting service launched by the multinational technology company Google on January 25, 2005. Similar to YouTube, this platform allowed video clips to be hosted on Google servers and embedded on to other web ...

launched, which may have taken some of GoFish's audience. Towards the end of its service, the site had close to 20 million users. GoFish used

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

with the

Apache Tomcat Apache Tomcat (called "Tomcat" for short) is a free and open-source implementation of the Jakarta Servlet, Jakarta Expression Language, and WebSocket technologies. It provides a "pure Java" HTTP web server environment in which Java code can also ...

web server to drive their website, and used either

PostgreSQL PostgreSQL (, ), also known as Postgres, is a free and open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) emphasizing extensibility and SQL compliance. It was originally named POSTGRES, referring to its origins as a successor to the In ...

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as their backend database.

History

In 2003, GoFish was founded, and went public on the

OTC Bulletin Board The OTC (Over-The-Counter) Bulletin Board or OTCBB was a United States quotation medium operated by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) for its subscribing members. FINRA closed the OTCBB on November 8, 2021. The board was used for ...

In February 2007, GoFish Corporation attempted a merger with Bolt.com, but later dropped the deal as their stock plummeted. At one point in mid 2007, GoFish was the home to

web television Streaming television is the digital distribution of television content, such as TV shows, as streaming media delivered over the Internet. Streaming television stands in contrast to dedicated terrestrial television delivered by over-the-air aer ...

such as MMA Today (), which offered highlights from various

Mixed Martial Arts Mixed martial arts (MMA), sometimes referred to as cage fighting, no holds barred (NHB), and ultimate fighting, and originally referred to as Vale Tudo is a full-contact combat sport based on strike (attack), striking, grappling and ground f ...

events s well as Hidden Celebrity Cams. The shows were known as "Made For Internet". In January 2008, the service received funding (US$22.5 million) to begin transitioning towards family/children's media, with its site now showing "Delivering Kids, Teens, and Moms" on the front page of their website. The site had begun a publishing partnership with the children's game website

Miniclip Miniclip SA is a mobile game publisher and former browser game website that launched in 2001. It was started by Robert Small and Tihan Presbie with a budget of £40,000. In 2008, the company was valued at over £275 million. In 2009, Minicli ...

, and

WeeWorld WeeWorld was an online game and messaging website, originally created in 2002 with a company that was based in Glasgow, Scotland, with a few offices in London and Boston, as well as other cities in the USA. The company had created WeeWorld.com, ...

. The service had also expanded its offices into

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, and

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

. GoFish had begun to phase out its video service, re-fashioning into an

advertising network An online advertising network or ad network is a company that connects advertisers to websites that want to host advertisements. The key function of an ad network is an aggregation of ad supply from publishers and matching it with advertiser's d ...

targeting children. In early 2009, GoFish.com began redirecting to a page on GoFishCorp stating that it had become Betawave Since the end of 2014, it displays a big fish like symbol: "<><".

References

{{reflist Video hosting American entertainment websites Internet properties established in 2003 Defunct American websites