Kaltura's video-editing tools enable wiki users to participate in illustrating entries. Below is a entry on Venice's St. Mark's Square.
(Credit: Venicewiki.org)Kaltura, the video company that's considered a blend of YouTube and Wikipedia, has closed a second round of funding.
The New York-based company, which has become something of a media darling, declined to disclose the amount but did say the round, led by .406 Ventures, was "significantly larger" than the $2.1 million the start-up secured from Avalon Ventures and angel investors.
Kaltura appears on its way to becoming a high-flying service. Flip through the upcoming issue of Esquire and you'll see Ron Yekutiel, the company's co-founder and CEO, modeling a suit as part of a glossy photo gallery on New York's tech-scene studs.
Ron Yekutiel, Kaltura's CEO, fresh from his Esquire shoot.
(Credit: Kaltura)The breakout moment for the 20-employee company came last September, when it won the people's choice award at the TechCrunch40. Three months later, Kaltura walked away with another people's choice award in video sharing at the Mashable Open Web Awards.
It's easy to understand why the company is attracting attention. Kaltura is attempting to raise the capabilities of online video.
With the company's software tools, videographers can collaborate from anywhere in the world. The best example of how the company's wares can be used is in its deal with Wikipedia.
With Kaltura, Wikipedia contributors by the end of the year will be able to use their own clips or other media available from the Creative Commons to make mashups. Any other media wiki sites can download Kaltura's video-wiki extension for free and offer the video collaboration tools to their users.
What separates Kaltura from others offering video editing or management tools is that the software is open source. The features will grow as the community of developers grows, Yekutiel said last week at the OnHollywood conference. Thousands of developers have already accessed the company's code.
"In every major technology sector among the leaders you will find an open-source company," said Yekutiel, a former officer in the Israel Defense Forces.
But Kaltura is up against some big competitors. Brightcove and ThePlatform have been in the business of offering video tools for a while now. Brightcove has a client list packed with big media companies, such as The Wall Street Journal CBS, 20th Century Fox, and Time magazine.
Besides Wikipedia, Kaltura has a deal with Major League Baseball's Internet site, MLB.com.
"We can offer all the tools cheaper than they can," Yekutiel said. "And we're just getting started."
There used to be a time when proprietary "Internet TV platform" providers Brightcove and Maven slept soundly at night...
That was life before Kaltura.
Kaltura is an open-source "video application server" and has been getting tremendous press. After spending a half-hour on the phone with co-founder Shay David today, I can see why. This is such a cool open-source opportunity. According to the company's Web site:
Kaltura's open-source platform enables any site to seamlessly and cost-effectively integrate advanced interactive rich-media functionalities, including video searching, uploading, importing, editing, annotating, remixing, and sharing. Kaltura' goal is to bring interactive video to every site and to create the world's largest distributed video network.
As the Web gets richer video content, Web publishers are going to want to have more control over the process by which video content is managed and delivered through their sites. This is why Wikipedia chose Kaltura to bring video to every one of its entries. Wikia, Remix America, and others (e.g., New York Public Library) are also using it.
The reason is clear: If a content provider wants to innovate, it needs an open-source platform with which to do so. Building on a proprietary platform is a dead-end.
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