Metacafe outranks Yahoo! Video, MySpace Video and every independent video site based on global traffic and page views

Palo Alto, CA – November 29, 2006 – Metacafe, the world’s largest independent video site, today announced they are the third largest video broadcasting site in the world, behind YouTube and Google Video. According to global data released by comScore Networks, Metacafe had more than 16 million visitors and served nearly 450 million page views in October 2006. Overall, traffic to Metacafe has grown more than 400% since January 2006 according to comScore data.

“Metacafe is an online entertainment destination, not a video sharing site,” said Arik Czerniak, CEO of Metacafe. “We use a review community and proprietary technology to surface and serve great content that viewers want to watch. Every clip on our front page is there because it is genuinely popular and engaging. Viewers and creators come to Metacafe because we offer the shortest path to entertaining short video.”

(more…)

From : 

Metacafe initiated its user compensation model six weeks ago. The company’s website states the rules: Users can upload their copyrighted clips, and will get $5 for every 1,000 viewers, after 20,000 hits.

In addition to paying users, Metacafe today announced that it will collaborate with US television series producer Steven Bochco (“NYPD Blue”, “LA Law”, and others). Metacafe and Bochco did not disclose the nature of their collaboration.
For the rest of this article, click here.

From : 

Steven Bochco, the creator of blockbuster TV shows such as L.A. Law and NYPD Blue, will help produce content for video sharing site Metacafe.

Bochco has also agreed to become a strategic advisor for the company, Metacafe said in a statement Wednesday.

“I have spent my career figuring out how to tell stories that are appropriate to a given audience,” Bochco said in a statement. “Online video is a fresh and exciting platform on which to experiment with new and contemporary ways of telling stories.”

For the rest of this story, please click here.

From : 

Metacafe CEO Arik Czerniak believes short form video is not an “extension of TV,” it is a new medium with its own unlimited creative and financial potential; Czerniak told me that he is committed to taking Metacafe as far as it can go to realize that potential.

Czerniak also shared with me his vision for forging Hollywood development partnerships to spur creation of original, professionally produced short form video. 

Czerniak is realizing his vision: Steven Bochco has joined forces with Metacafe to create and produce original content for a new Metacafe channel.

For the rest of the article, please click here.

Hollywood Powerhouse to Create and Produce Original Content for New Metacafe Channel
 
Palo Alto, CA – November 15, 2006 – Metacafe, the world’s largest independent video site, has entered into a strategic alliance with Steven Bochco, whose numerous television successes include Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue and LA Law. The first joint project, currently in production, is a new channel on the Metacafe site that aims to marry original content to the popular short video format. Bochco will serve as creator and executive producer of the new channel, which is slated to launch early next year.
 
“I have spent my career figuring out how to tell stories that are appropriate to a given audience and medium,” said Steven Bochco, who has also joined Metacafe as a strategic advisor. “Online video is a fresh and exciting platform on which to experiment with new and contemporary ways of telling stories. Metacafe, with its huge global audience, passionate community and instantaneous feedback, is a wonderful place to discover the best of these new narratives.”

(more…)

From : 

Steven Bochco is getting into the viral video business.

Bochco, whose credits range from “L.A. Law” and “NYPD Blue” to last season’s “Commander in Chief,” becomes one of the first “old-guard” scripted TV producers to enter into a production alliance with a video-sharing service.

For the rest of this article about Metacafe’s exciting new venture, click here.

From : 

Metacafe makes money by selling advertising on its site. But unlike its rival, it makes an effort to choose and promote “good” videos on its home page.

First, it rejects duplicates (about half of submissions). Then it uses 100,000 volunteers as film critics – just as Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, uses volunteers to write and vet articles.

As a third filter, Metacafe then analyses the clips with its VideoRank algorithm, which crunches all sorts of metrics (whether viewers watch a clip to the end, for instance) in order to rank them – rather as Google’s famous PageRank algorithm ranks web-search results.

Read the rest of this article here.

From : 

Everybody poops, but Wombat the cat gets paid for it. His owner, Corey Wisniewski, couldn’t be happier. “I just bought my car insurance with the money,” the Point Place resident said.

So far, more than 140,000 people have watched Wombat tinkle on Metacafe. That’s more than $700 worth.

Read the rest of the story about one of Metacafe’s producers here.

From : 

Metacafe CEO Arik Czerniak did a Metacafe vs. YouTube top video views analysis on October 16, 2006, comparing the number of views received by Metacafe’s top 200 videos and the number of views received by YouTube’s top 200 videos. 

The top 200 videos at YouTube received a total of about 560,000,000 views while the top 200 videos at Metacafe received about 630,000,000, 12% more than YouTube.  Czerniak happily concludes that Metacafe is an “entertainment destination” for watching the “best videos.”

For the rest of this exclusive interview, click here.

From : 

Imagine that one popular four-minute video that cost you nearly nothing to make earns equivalent to the per-capita income of Louisiana. For a MetaCafe.com user, a video of an acrobatic martial artist attracted over 4.6 million users and put nearly $24,000 in his bank account.

After a beta period, MetaCafe launched its Producer Rewards program on Monday that pays video-sharers for views on a CPM basis — $5 for every 1000 views and a user-rating of 3.00 (out of 5) or higher. A spray-painting video earned $3,600; an acrobatic break dancing video earned $6,500 due to an Acura commercial running before or after the video.

For the rest of the article click here.