Metacafe was an Israeli video-sharing website, launched in July 2003. During the mid-2000s it was one of the largest video-sharing websites, though it eventually began to be superseded by

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

, Vimeo and

Dailymotion Dailymotion is a French online video platform, online video sharing platform owned by Canal+ S.A., Canal+. Prior to 2024, the company was owned by Vivendi. North American launch partners included Vice Media, Bloomberg L.P., Bloomberg, and Hears ...

. On 28 August 2021, the platform's website became inactive, along with its social media pages having become abandoned.

History

Metacafe Inc. was founded in July 2003 in

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( or , ; ), sometimes rendered as Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and usually referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a popula ...

by Israeli entrepreneurs Eyal Hertzog ( Chief Technical Officer) and Arik Czerniak (CEO) and raised $3 million from Benchmark Capital. In June 2006, the company closed a Series B financing round of $12 million. Investors included Accel Partners and Benchmark Capital. That September, the company moved its headquarters to

Palo Alto Palo Alto ( ; Spanish language, Spanish for ) is a charter city in northwestern Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. Th ...

, California and in October, Metacafe was ranked the third largest video site in the world according to comScore.''We Try Harder,'' article fro
IPcommunications.tmcnet.com
It used to attract more than 13 million unique monthly U.S. viewers and streamed more than 53 million videos in the U.S. each month, according to comScore Video Metrix (March 2011). The site's global audience was more than 40 million unique monthly viewers. In its early years, Metacafe was similar to other video viewing websites such as YouTube or

, but later turned into a short-form video entertainment. The company's partners had included marquee content providers such as major movie studios, video game publishers, broadcast and cable TV networks, music labels and sports leagues. The site was supported through ads, and worked closely with brands in the entertainment, consumer electronics, telecommunications, consumer packaged goods, food & beverage, and automotive sectors. In 2007, Erick Hachenburg, previously an executive with

Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by former Apple Inc., Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry ...

, took over as CEO of the company. In June 2012 it was reported that Metacafe had been acquired by digital talent agency The Collective. Headquarters were moved to San Francisco, California, with another office in Los Angeles.

Producer Rewards

In October 2006, Metacafe announced its Producer Rewards program in which video producers were paid for their original content. Through this program, any video that was viewed a minimum of 20,000 times, achieved a VideoRank rating of 3.00 or higher, and did not violate any

copyrights A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, ...

or other Metacafe community standards was awarded $5 for every 1,000 U.S. views. The program had several success stories, some of which have been featured on national TV, such as The Can Tossing Video, the Beer Launching Fridge on David Letterman, and the Ron Paul Girl series by Liv Films, as featured on

Fox News The Fox News Channel (FNC), commonly known as Fox News, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Conservatism in the United States, conservative List of news television channels, news and political commentary Television stati ...

and CNN.Livfilms.com

Closure

On 28 August 2021, with neither warning announcement, Metacafe's website became inactive. Until October 2022 the URL redirected to VideosHub.

Footnotes

References

* Bogatin, Donna. Interview with Metacafe CEO Arik Czerniak o
ZDnet Blogs
* Gerson, Jen. ''Off the wall flips.'' From th
Toronto Star
An article about a producer who has earned over $23,000 in Producer Rewards. * Holahan, Catherine. ''Don't I know you from the Internet?'' Fro

* Marshall, Matt. ''Metacafe unveils producer awards, to underscore advantage over YouTube'' fro
Venture Beat
* Richmond, Will. "Metacafe Drives Community-Based Programming Model.
videonuze.com
Commentary from online video news blog VideoNuze published on December 6, 2007.

External links