Ajax Girl

Here’s something we dug up while talking to people about the FilmLoop DeadPool post. The the size of the round of financing that Slide announced in November, funded by Mayfield Fund, Khosla Ventures, BlueRun Ventures and Founders Fund was not disclosed by the company. But we’re hearing it was in the $20 million range, with a post money valuation between $60 and $80 million.

That’s a…wonderful…valuation for a company that is pre-revenue, although the company will argue that the adoption of Slide by MySpacers eager to show off their photos to their friends is YouTube-like. Still, that’s a lot of money for a company in deep competition with Photobucket, RockYou, FilmLoop and others.

Slide took a big risk early in 2006 by giving users the ability to auto-insert slide shows into their MySpace pages and blasting bulletins out to all their friends. They did this by asking users to hand over their MySpace credentials, and doing all the hard work for them. This is a clear violation of MySpace’s terms of service, though, and most people, including Slide, expected to receive a cease and desist letter and/or get access turned off. But tat never happened, and Slide’s big bet has paid off. So far.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/71685832/

Palo Alto-based FilmLoop has reportedly layed off most of its staff of 30 employees after attempts to sell the company failed. This comes just eight months after they raised $7 million in venture capital from ComVentures. Co-founder Prescott Lee and a handful of core technical staff remain.

FilmLoop’s service allows users to create photo slide shows and view them via a desktop application or on websites. Competition is crushing - Slide, RockYou and Photobucket, among others, all offer competing services, and FilmLoop is dead last in user adoption.

Insiders are saying that FilmLoop made crucial early mistakes v. its competitors. While Slide and RockYou focused first on giving users the ability to easily embed slide shows into MySpace and other social networks, FilmLoop only added this functionality recently. They missed the social networking opportunity, and by the time they had products to compete with the others, it was too late.

The company is said to have “a couple of million dollars” still left in the bank and is going to continue to keep the service live. It’s unclear though that this market niche can support this many players, particularly since heavyweight Photobucket has started to focus on this as well. A final nail in the coffin - there is next to zero revenue being generated by these products, which are offered to customers for free.

Based on this news we have tentatively added FilmLoop to the TechCrunch DeadPool. Our previous coverage of FilmLoop is here.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/71529522/

Grouper, which won the acquisition lottery earlier this year and is now part of Sony, is beginning to take down user videos with copyrighted content.

The Grouper blog post discussing the policy says music from Universal is being taken down starting immediately (see our coverage of the Universal lawsuit against Grouper). Grouper is using Audible Magic’s sniffing software to find the offending videos, and warned users of the change last month.

It looks like the take downs aren’t limited to Universal, either. A reader forwarded a take down email today involving a certain Kenny G song, who’s working with Arista (a subsidiary of Sony). This comes just after recent news that Sony was softening their stance on this kind of thing.

He writes “The video they mention here was set up as Private view only for family and friends, so it is not even on mainstream. Second, my wife and I put the family video together and used one of the Kenny G CD’s that I had bought for her to pull music for the video. So, not only did I use purchased music - it was for private viewing.”

Here’s the email from Grouper:

TOS Violation Notice

Dear Grouper User,

This is to notify you that we have not allowed the following video clip to be posted on Grouper.com because the audio portion of the content appears to be unauthorized by the copyright holder:

Title: The Kids Enjoying Summer in July 2006
Description: Liam, Jacob, and Madison enjoying summer moments of Liam’s birthday, swimming lessons, and Madison’s Christening.
Video ID: 1436087
Artist: Kenny G
Song Title: Midnight Motion
Record Label: Arista Contemporary

Please Note: Repeat incidents of uploading material alleged to infringe a copyright will result, at our discretion, in the deactivation of your account and all videos uploaded to that account. In order to avoid this, please delete any video to which you do not own the right, and refrain from uploading additional videos that infringe on the copyrights of others. For more information about Grouper copyright policy, please read section (3) of our Terms of Service agreement (TOS). http://grouper.com/tos/

If you believe this video was removed or disabled in error and the video does not violate anyone else’s rights (including rights in the audio portion of the video), please provide a written communication showing that you are the copyright owner or are otherwise authorized by the copyright owner to make this restoration request, including:

Your physical or electronic signature

Identification of the material that has been removed or to which access has been disabled and the location at which the material appeared before it was removed or access to it was disabled.

A statement under penalty of perjury that (1) you have a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of error and your posting of the material does not violate anyone else’s rights and (2) you are the copyright owner or are authorized by the copyright owner to upload this material.

This written communication should be sent to:

Copyright Violations
Grouper Networks
475 Gate 5 Road, Ste. 255
Sausalito, CA 94965

Or email: copyright@grouper.com

By submitting this written communication, you acknowledge and agree that we may forward the written communication and other communications with you to third parties for verification.

We will investigate your claim as quickly as possible.

Thanks,
The Grouper Team

Personally, I wouldn’t mind other video and music sites taking a similar stand again the inclusion of Kenny G music in user generated content.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/71505617/