With all eyes on the YouTube-Google marriage, many overlooked the slow demise of another video-related start-up, EvokeTV. EvokeTV connected television viewers with similar interests connect with each other, and create dynamic communities around the television watching experience. Rafe Needleman called them the “buddy list of the boob tube.”
The Bechtelsville,PA.-based company made the rounds of the conferences such as DEMO and O’Reilly ETech and got some positive buzz, but failed to raise funds to continue their business. On their blog, the EvokeTV team writes:
I’m sorry to say that we must take down EvokeTV. There are various reasons. The main reason being we’ve been unable to raise enough funding. EvokeTV had so much potential and there are so many things I wanted to do with it.
With over 250 video related startups, unfortunately this is going to be a common occurrence as the industry shakeout happens. The reasons might be different, but the tragedy will be the same. Any thoughts?
Mini-bubbles starting to pop
the “buddy list” of tv watching by building a community around the experience?!?!
a feature, not a business, and a lousy feature at that…
Amen to both of your comments. I think it is strange that many are ignoring the “plenty of everything” signs. oh well, maybe I am the one who is too pessimistic. It must be the damn Yankees!
Remember this guys, airwaves are free, netwaves are not. It costs millions of dollars to broadcast over the web. Only the few and the strong will survive.
Watch for revver to go next. They have already shuttered plans for a development operation in the bay area.
How can anyone be surprised…TV is for people whi like to vegitate and watch, not engage and discuss. Having people engage each other and discuss common interests in TV programs is something like an oxymoron. It probably would work better for soap operas in latin american countries, but they already have this for each novella
@Christian: I don’t think Revver would close doors. They are probably high on the list to acquire, whether at a good price now (while the Net2.0 video bubble is hot) or low (if this frenzy passes). They get a decent amount of PR and have an interesting approach with rev-share, although that means they have to hand away $$$’s that YouTube does not have to. This can only hurt burn rate if the business scales in the short term. That said, I think their recent “release” is quitely poorly designed and engineered. They will have to do better from a product stand point in the future.
There were plenty of companies in 1999-2002 that was doing online video and most all folded, so I’d expect the same to occur again now.