{{Infobox Dotcom company
| company_name = Metacafe, Inc. company_logo = company_type = Private foundation
| = July 2003 location_city = Palo Alto, CA location_country = United States
| locations = 3 (Palo Alto, New York, Tel Aviv) key_people = Erick Hachenburg,
| CEO
Eyal Hertzog, Founder and CCO
Michael Strambi, CFO
Jack
| Rotherham, SVP of Strategic sales and Partnerships
David Rice, VP of
| Product
Yaron Finkel, VP of R&D
Scott Bushman, VP of Business
| Development industry = Online video entertainment num_employees = 88
| company_slogan = Video Entertainment, Powered by You url =
| [http://www.metacafe.com/ Metacafe.com] language = English registration =
| Optional
(required to upload, comment on, rate, and review videos)
| current_status = Active
}}

'Metacafe' is a community based video sharing web site, that specializes in short-
form original entertainment, where users upload, view and share video clips.

The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with offices in Tel Aviv
and New York. Metacafe is privately held and its investors include Accel
Partners, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures and Highland Capital Partners.

Metacafe is similar to other video viewing websites such as YouTube or
Dailymotion, but with several differences. Core differentiators include
duplication elimination, a different type of Adult content filtering, a
community member reviewer panel, VideoRank, and Producer Rewards. Its VideoRank
system gauges viewer reactions to videos in order to feature those that prove
most popular to its viewers. Additionally, Metacafe pays video creators for
original work that has exceeded a certain threshold of both total views and
VideoRank score through its Producer Rewards Program.

The site features short-form videos in a variety of categories, including
Animation, Comedy, Entertainment, How To, News and Events, People and Stories,
Sports, Video Games and others. Original content is uploaded to the site by
independent video creators, small to mid-sized production groups, and major
media companies.

History Metacafe Inc. was founded in July 2003 in Tel Aviv by Israeli
entrepreneurs Eyal Hertzog (CTO) 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.
The website's traffic increased rapidly, and by June 2006 it was ranked 128th by
Alexa Traffic Ratings[http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main?q=www.metacaf-
e.com&url=www.metacafe.com/ Alexa]. That September, the company moved its
headquarters to Palo Alto, California and in October, Metacafe was ranked the
third largest video site in the world according to comScore name="try_harder">We Try Harder, article from
[http://ipcommunications.tmcnet.com/news/2006/11/29/234159.htm?p=video].

On February 5, 2007, Erick Hachenburg, previously of Electronic Arts and Pogo,
took over as CEO of the company. The company closed a Series C financing round
of $30 million in August, 2007 with Accel Partners, Benchmark Capital, DAG
Ventures and Highland Capital Partners. Metacafe struck a deal with internet
phone service Skype to provide videos to Skype users to help spiff up their
"mood messages", integrating with Skype's new beta version 3.5 for Windows. The
site also integrated its video content with European mobile social platform
Nareos and U.S. & Spanish mobile entertainment aggregator Zed, allowing
supported users to stream or download selected videos to their handsets.

Producer rewards In
October 2006, Metacafe announced its Producer
Rewards[http://www.Metacafe.com/producer_rewards/ Metacafe - Producer Rewards] program in which video producers are paid for
their original content. Through this program, any video that is viewed a minimum
of 20,000 times, has achieved a VideoRank rating of 3.00 or higher, and does not
violate any copyrights or other Metacafe community standards is awarded $5 for
every 1,000 views.

As of December 2007, the top 10 producers on Metacafe have earned over $20,000
each[http://www.metacafe.com/channels/earnings/ever Best Films & Video
Channels at Metacafe], with the top producer,
KipKay, having earned over $117,000[http://www.metacafe.com/channels/kipkay
Kipkay's Channel ]. In total, more than 550
independent video creators have earned more than $1 million through the Producer
Rewards program.

The program had several success stories, some of which have been featured on
national TV, such as [http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1402448/can_toss/ The Can
Tossing Video], the Beer Launching fridge on David Letterman, and the
[http://www.livfilms.com/?cat=6 Ron Paul Girl series] by Liv
Films[http://www.metacafe.com/channels/Liv+Films Liv Films' Channel], that has been featured on Fox News and
CNN[http://www.livfilms.com Liv Films].

Metacafe has also teamed up with notable TV producers like Steven Bochco (Hill
Street Blues, L.A. Law) with a series called Cafe Confidential, a 44 webisode
series consisting of teens and twenty-somethings sharing semi-autobiographical
stories. The short-form videos, shot close-up, were taken from interviews of
more than 100 people talking about memorable moments.

Wikicafe In July 2008, Metacafe launched a beta version of its "Wikicafe" -- a
mass collaboration platform that enables viewers to edit video metadata. By
ensuring that video titles, tags and descriptions are accurate, the community is
helping to improve video search results.

In August 2008, Wikicafe was opened up to anonymous edits, and this marked the
point where Wikicafe comes out of beta, and becomes open to all. Together with
opening Wikicafe to public edits, Metacafe has released 2 new features, Tag
Focusing and Web Review, based on Wikicafe.

Company Stats

30 Million Unique Monthly Visitors- Globally (comScore July 2008)

7.3 Million Unique Monthly Visitors- United States (comScore July 2008)

68,000 Million Page Views- United States (comScore July 2008)

80,000 Community Reviewers On Metacafe.com

Metacafe was ranked second behind MySpace in number of user comments per video
posted in 2007. The "Metadata Metrics" report from AccuStream iMedia Research
equated user comments with engagement.

References
* Richmond, Will. "Metacafe Drives Community-Based Programming Model."
[http://www.videonuze.com/blogs/details.php?id=289] Commentary from online
video news blog VideoNuze published on December 6, 2007.
* Hansell, Saul. "Viral Videos Still Rule on Metacafe." [http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/viral-videos-still-rule-at-
metacafe/] Commentary from New York Times blog "Bits" published on October 10,
2007.
* Bogatin, Donna. Interview with Metacafe CEO Arik Czerniak on [http://blogs.zdnet.com/micro-
markets/index.php?p=624 ZDnet Blogs]
* Gerson, Jen. Off the wall flips. From the [http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/C-
ontentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=116220612959-
3&call_pageid=968332188492 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? From
[http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2006/tc20061029_067558.htm
Business Week]
* Marshall, Matt. Metacafe unveils producer awards, to underscore advantage over
YouTube from [http://venturebeat.com/2006/10/29/metacafe-unveils-producer-awards-to-
underscore-advantage-over-youtube/ Venture Beat]

See also *Comparison of video services *Google Video *YouTube *Dailymotion.com
*Veoh *blip.tv *vMix

External links *[http://www.metacafe.com/ Metacafe] Official website