With US internet users viewing 12.7 billion videos in the month of November 2008 alone, up 34% from a year ago, according to a recent comScore release, it’s no wonder venture capitalists continue to make bets in online video technology.
Motionbox, which is based out of New York, closed $6 million in Series C funding. The investment was led by Constellation Ventures. Other investors include Canaan Partners and SAS Investors.
Motionbox is a video-sharing site similar to all the others, such as YouTube, Vimeo, and MetaCafe, except they keep your videos private, meaning the user picks and chooses who they want to share their videos with. Motionbox also allows for HD video sharing through its premium package which costs $19.99/month. Vimeo, a similar video sharing site (without the privacy features) offers one free HD video upload/week or at $59.95/year you can have unlimited HD video uploads with confusing restrictions.
On December 18, 2008, AOL Video took down their upload site and replaced it with Motionbox’s services, thus requiring anybody who wanted to upload new video on their AOL Video pages to sign up for a Motionbox account. According to its press release, Motionbox’s user base has recently grown 400%.
