Totlol offers a collection of community-vetted, kid-safe YouTube videos.
(Credit: Totlol)Totlol developer Ron Ilan had enough.
It had been just over a year since he launched his site of community-vetted YouTube videos--where kids can watch Elmo, cutesy animal videos, or "Big Comfy Couch" without the accidental off-color search mishap. And, despite its popularity, he couldn't find a way to make it sustainable or survivable without adverse impacts.
So, earlier this month, at two in the morning, he wrote a long explanatory note to Totlol's users that ended with, "I'm closing Totlol down. Life goes on." Then he went to sleep.
"I woke up to hundreds of messages," he says. While Ilan was asleep, TechCrunch wrote a short post about the closing of Totlol and "they stirred things up," says Ilan.
Parents and fans wrote Ilan imploring him to find some solution to keep Totlol from closing. He's found one for now but says he doesn't know how long it will last.
Ilan conceived of Totlol while digging through YouTube looking for videos that were appropriate for his young son. As he built up a list of bookmarks with suitable clips, he thought other parents were probably doing the same.
When he began building Totlol in 2008, YouTube had just released an upgrade that allowed independent developers to use YouTube as a platform. So, Ilan developed Totlol as an application in which users can create profiles, manage their favorites, and do specific searches.
A YouTube video plays via Totlol.
(Credit: Totlol)Once launched, Totlol steadily grew; it went from Ilan's few bookmarks to more than 15,000 clips submitted by hundreds of parents. Since then, Totlol has received tons of press, was an official honoree in the 2009 Webby Awards, was named in the Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites in 2008 by PC Magazine, and even has an iPhone application.
"The site has its niche," he says, "and has its love." While the audience is modest, it's attached. The problem is, like so many other Internet start-ups, Ilan cannot find a way to monetize Totlol.
When using YouTube as a platform, there are various restrictions that state it cannot be combined with any sort of marketing or advertising. Obviously, this makes it difficult to create revenue to hire staff. "The Web site doesn't run itself," Ilan says, "it needs some minimum care." After the outcry at his decision to shut Totlol down, he began to look for other ways to make the site work.
The solution he's temporarily come up with is to separate content from advertising. Now, when going to Totlol's home page, users see an advertiser-supported catalog of videos but cannot view any content until they register. Once logged in, though, the ads disappear.
However, this isn't an ideal situation for Ilan. "This setup is not something I'm proud of," he wrote on Totlol, "and certainly not what I intended Totlol to be."
Ilan will try this model for a few months to see if it works. If not, he may ask members to either donate or pay a fee and hope other ideas will pop up so he can avoid closing Totlol down. As Ilan said in the note he wrote at two in the morning, "I just can't support and develop it all by myself anymore."
Y Combinator on Monday announced that it has raised a $2 million venture fund with the aid of Sequoia Capital and angel investors.
In making the announcement, Y Combinator noted that it plans to increase the number of start-ups it funds to 60 a year, up from 40.
For Web services and software start-ups, that may bode well. Y Combinator focuses its investments on those two sectors and funds companies that are in their early stages.
As it notes, one unusual twist to this venture firm is its reliance on the strength of entrepreneurs' ideas, rather than on their business plans to support the ideas.
Y Combinator said it is ramping up its investments at a time when others are scaling back:
It's a big step for us to raise outside money. Till now, we'd only used our own. But we didn't want to let the bad economy make us conservative. Instead of hunkering down to wait out the recession, we want to expand to take advantage of it.
Y Combinator also noted that the quality of surviving start-ups is of a higher caliber during these economically trying times.
With the added funding in hand, Y Combinator extended its deadline for start-ups to apply for funding to March 25.
Editor's note: For CNET News' latest coverage of DemoFall 2009, please click here.
roundup The high-tech confab prides itself on putting cutting-edge companies in front of A-list venture capitalists and journalists. Here's this year's crop. (See live video feed at bottom of page.)
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VCs to Demo: Funding tough but not impossible
Vacation home rental site HomeAway announced Tuesday it received a substantial $250 million fourth round of funding.
HomeAway, which has raised $405 million to date in private equity, received its latest round from lead investor Technology Crossover Ventures, along with existing investors Institutional Venture Partners and Redpoint Ventures.
HomeAway's $250 million third round represents the largest U.S. venture stake for an Internet company over the past eight years, according to Venture Source.
Companies that tend to raise sizable venture rounds in excess of $100 million tend to be in capital intensive industries, such as networking company and telecommunications company , compared with Internet companies that require less capital to operate--and hence have comparatively smaller funding rounds.
HomeAway plans to use the proceeds from its latest round to make additional strategic investments, as well as eliminate all its debt and bolster its marketing efforts.
Over its brief three-year history, the company has grown through acquisitions of other vacation rental sites such as CyberRentals.com in the U.S., Holiday-Rentals.co.uk in the United Kingdom, and Germany's FeWo-direkt.de.
"We are very pleased to secure this major round of funding, particularly during the current financial crisis that is increasingly restricting access to capital for many companies,"" Brian Sharples, HomeAway's CEO, said in a statement.
Earlier this week, Gwyneth Paltrow's new start-up Goop.com went live. The site promises to have tips for food, shopping, and life in general from the actress.
There's no telling whether it's going to be more of a blog or an actual business venture with branded products, an editorial staff, and a synergistic TV program. What we do know is that Paltrow is simply the latest in a long string of celebrities who have come off the big screen (or out of the recording studio) and onto the Web with products and services backed with their money and persona.
Below are 14 recent ones, including updates on whether they're still around.
Celebrity: 50Cent
Site: ThisIs50.com
ThisIs50.com is a cross between an online resume and a place for fans to gather. What makes it an interesting business venture is that it's been created using the build-your-own social network service Ning. 50Cent, whose real name is Curtis Jackson has leveraged all sorts of brand integration like a Kyte.tv video player and links to various places to buy and stream his music, including imeem.
Status: Alive and kicking, although it's a visual mess. There's also a 50cent.com, which is far cleaner and powered by MTV-owned Flux.
Celebrity: Ashton Kutcher
Site: Blahgirls.com
Kutcher, who is also the founder of VoIP start-up Ooma, launched Blahgirls earlier this month at the TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco. While mainly playing an animated video series, it's also a celebrity gossip blog that plans to make money through advertising and branding that shows up inside the videos.
Status: It's too early to tell but celebrity blogs can rise to prominence and then fall down with startling volatility. Much of Blahgirls' longevity will come down to the content, which in the case of the SouthPark-esqe animated show makes it fairly watchable, even to newcomers.
Celebrity: Andrew Shue
Site: Cafemom.com
Shue, better known as "Billy Campbell" from the 1990s TV series Melrose Place is also the co-founder of Cafemom.com, a social networking site for moms. The site launched in 2006 and offers a place for mothers to share tips and stories and to come together with other nearby moms.
Status: Cafemom is doing very well. It picked up a $5 million round of funding less than a year after launching. According to the site, it's getting more than 6 million unique visitors a month.
Celebrities: Baron Davis and Cash Warren
Site: IBeatYou.com
Davis, the pro basketball player, and Warren, a Hollywood producer, are co-founders of IBeatYou, which is a competition site. Users can create challenges and have others compete in order to earn points. Much like Worth1000, it's become a repository for quirky user creations like photo contests and one-upmanship.
Status: Alive, although it's too early to tell where it will end up. The site launched in late March and has since picked up just under $1 million in seed funding.
The Baron Davis-backed IBeatYou is a fun way to approach casual competition for all sorts of things. In this case it's a photo contest.
(Credit: IBeatYou)... Read More
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