Housed by famed venture firm Sequoia Capital in an old YouTube office, the company also announced today that it had accepted a $4 million funding round from Sequoia, alongside investors including Amidzad and execs from Netscape and Paypal — a slightly larger amount than YouTube’s first funding. Alumni from YouTube, as well as Cisco and Google, are advising the fledgling video startup.
The obvious implication is that TokBox will be heir to YouTube’s good fortune. The simple fact that video is involved doesn’t mean that the two companies are similar, though.
The popularity of online video followed from a market created by movies. The internet’s progress from text, to sound and finally to video mirrors similar institutions from previous years: Newspapers, radio and television.
However, video communication has yet to catch on, outside of business. DimDim (free - see my previous post on my main site) and pay services like WebEx already cater to the videoconferencing market.
Then there is video chat offered by Skype or AIM. You can argue that TokBox, by making itself available in a web browser, is a far more attractive offering than those two services, the requirement for a webcam still makes it more complex.
Despite the inclusion of video cameras into most Apple computers, most people still don’t have their own webcam, yours truly included. As long as this remains the case, recording and sending videos will remain a much smaller market than watching them, me thinks.
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