Magnify.net Archive

Here are some updates from two NYC startups: Magnify.net and AdaptiveBlue that were released today.

Magnify.net

NY-based Magnify.net has announced a new set of packages aimed at small-to-medium sized businesses. Called the "Pro Packages" and priced starting at $249/month, the packages will include Magnify’s Quickstart, Business Builder Pro and Business Builder Premium offerings.

The new Pro Packages include training from Magnify and their hope is to help small businesses integrate a custom-branded video experience into their websites and ecommerce offerings.

Check out our extensive Magnify coverage.

AdaptiveBlue

NY-based AdaptiveBlue has announced the next version of their Glue toolbar today. I spoke with founder and CEO Alex Iskold who tells me that they have 35,000 active users and over 110,000 downloads of the Glue toolbar to-date.

The new functionality includes "connected conversations" which Alex’s calls an intelligent livestream and "popular lists" which should help the top content for the day to rise to the top.

Adam Ostrow has a good overview of the new features. AdaptiveBlue has also hooked in social sites Twitter and Facebook into this latest Glue release. The basic idea with the update is that all of your friends are on a big bus as you travel around the Web – each time you make a stop, your friends yell out from the back of the bus if this is a worthwhile stop or not.

Check out our extensive AdaptiveBlue coverage.

Here’s the latest news from a variety of NY-based startups. If you are a NY-based startup and have news about your company, send it in.

KickApps

KickApps announced today that they have hired David Lapter as Chief Financial Officer and Tom Gaffney to head up the company’s expanding Customer Success division. Apparently the Customer Success division works on strategy and creative services.I’ve never heard of a Customer Success division but I like the idea! Check out all of our KickApps coverage.

Outbrain

Outbrain launched an update to their widget this week called the "Link Zapper". We run the Outbrain recommendations widget on CN (you can see it at the end of this post). The widget recommends other posts both from CN and from our whitelist of partner sites. The Link Zapper allows us to easily remove a link that might not be a good fit for the source story. It’s a very manual process and while I am hoping for some automated tools in the future, it’s a good start. Check out all of our Outbrain coverage.

ZocDoc

We’ve covered ZocDoc extensively on CN and I believe it could be the breakout star of 2009. ZocDoc provides online management for doctor, dentist and other healthcare practitioners. Forbes magazine named ZocDoc the winner of their small business contest. The announcement came this week and ZocDoc won $100,000 to further develop and expand their service.

Magnify.net

Earlier this week Magnify.net announced the launch of Thwoop.com, an online community for featured entertainment content and user-contributed videos. The concept for Thwoop.com came from children’s toy e-tailer Brand Performance and the site will be powered by Magnify.net. Check out all of our Magnify.net coverage.

NY-based Magnify.net has announced a new round of funding today. The amount of the funding was not disclosed – CEO Steve Rosenbaum told me the amount is in the "high six figures". Previous investors RoseTech Ventures, NextStage Capital, Ogden Capital returned and Innovation Ventures has joined the round of funding. David J. Freschman, Managing Principal of Innovation Ventures will join the Magnify.net Board of Directors.

Magnify.net offers three tiers of service on their video platform: free, professional and enterprise-level service. Magnify self-reports 46,000 web publishers using their video platform.

Magnify.net previously raised $2.2 million in funding. Back in September, Magnify launched their MVP video player.

NY-based Magnify.net has announced three new search partners for their video search product. The partners include NY-based 5min, ViewDo and Expert Village. 5min provides how-to videos and they will now be included in the video search available to Magnify.net publishers. Magnify.net self reports 35,000 publishers in their network.

It will be interesting to see if Magnify follows a Blinkx strategy with regards to partnerships. In fact, maybe there’s value in both companies working together as Blinkx appears to have a strong video search network. 

Check out our look at the NYC online video market which includes 5min and Magnify.net.

NY-based Magnify.net has announced the launch of their new MVP video player today. The MVP player (multi-view player) allows site publishers to bring together content created by their community with other Internet shared videos into one player. The player (example displayed below) can be set to a variety of sizes and themes.

Magnify’s MVP player includes a 50/50 split on ads displayed. One interesting note regarding the ads — site publishers can select to serve pre- or post-roll ads in the videos that originate on their network. The video ads are served by DoubleClick’s DART service.

The new Magnify player seems a bit similar to Kyte’s player in terms of customization and options. Kyte offers chat within the video player along with more media options (e.g. images, live video, etc.) while the injected ad on Magnify’s player allows Web publishers to generate additional revenue from ads that are served below the video channel.

Magnify self-reports over 5 million videos added to the social networks they serve each month. Check out all of our Magnify.net coverage.

Update: I met with Magnify.net CEO Steve Rosenbaum last night at an event in NYC and he mentioned a few things about the new player that I thought were worth sharing. He noted regarding the idea of the new Magnify.net player going for the big player market:

"We don’t believe that all video players are created equal.   If you’ve got a huge video collection,  than a player that serves your videos is what you need.  There are already a number of good products that do that, Brightcove, Maven, Blip.tv."

I also asked him about how he describes what’s new in the player:

"As a video aggregation player  – we’re the first in the market. We think that being able to find, curate, and present video from multiple sources is a powerful new way  to increase page views and therefore revenue."

Earlier this week, NY-based KickApps announced their partnership with Userplane for chat and IM. Today, Userplane and another NY-based startup have announced a similar partnership. Magnify.net has integrated the Userplane Webchat2 and Userplane Webmessenger2 services.

Magnify.net is a white-label social networking provider that the company describes as, "online video discovery and broadcast platform for websites". The tool allows site owners to add custom video channels to enhance the overall user experience and keep users on the site longer, thereby allowing for more chances to monetize the user.

Both the Userplane Webchat and Userplane Webmessenger tools will carry advertising and publishers can also use a buyout option to remove or control the ads within the widgets.

Check out all of our Magnify.net coverage and the nextNYers interview with CEO Steve Rosenbaum below.

On Monday at the NY Video 2.0 meeting, after the demos concluded, three popular NY venture capital partners took the stage to critique the demos they just watched from a venture capitalist perspective. While they were certainly a bit nice in front of the crowd, I thought you might be interested in their feedback.

The demos came from Adotube, Magnify.net, Vusion, ekkoTV and BestTV.

The VC stars were: Chris Fralic from First Round Capital, Daniel Schultz from DFJ Gotham and Charlie Federman from Crossbar Capital.