Kara Visits Dailymotion in Paris
After my visit to Netvibes, I also went over to another cool Web company here that I have been following for a while: Dailymotion.
Based in Paris and funded with $32 million from Atlas Venture and Partech International, the video-sharing site positions itself these days as kind of an anti-YouTube–better at programming, easier to use with new tools for both user-generated and more professional content and more vigilant about copyright protection.
In fact, big media companies–like YouTube-suing Viacom–have singled out Dailymotion as an online video site they can do business with, even as they are also launching premium sites of their own.
But, obviously, offering premium fare from media giants is not Dailymotion’s main aim. Unusual videos are and, indeed, the fare on the site is a step up from typical cats-on-skateboards videos. Today, for example, there’s a cool video on skydiving in the Maldives.
Still, while popular in France, where it really counts at this point–the United States–Dailymotion obviously lags way behind YouTube in traffic. Nonetheless, it is not doing badly compared to other similar sites.
According to a report this summer from comScore:
Dailymotion.com has taken hold in the U.S., drawing more than 4.7 million video streamers in April. The average video streamer at Dailymotion.com viewed more than 10 videos and nearly one hour of video content in the month. Metacafe.com also generated substantial activity, as 3.7 million streamers viewed 33 million video streams, while Break.com saw 3.1 million streamers view 32 million video streams. Veoh.com, which attracted the smallest video-viewing audience of the group, had the highest level of user engagement with more than 104 minutes per streamer, benefiting from the many full-length videos hosted on the site.”
In any case, as these sites sort out their business plans–which YouTube is also still doing–to figure out a way to make money from advertising, here’s a chat I had with Dailymotion co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Benjamin Bejbaum:
(I am still having problems with the Brightcove player, so I uploaded this to Dailymotion, which is a nifty player anyway.)
Please see this disclosure related to me and YouTube (owned by Google).
