Vator Box: Conde.net's Kourosh Karimkhany helps us rate new-media pitches

Welcome to the second episode of our new show, the Vator Box, in which we subject original pitches on our site to the opinions of the Vator.tv staff, plus a weekly special guest.

With us for this episode is Kourosh Karimkhany, the head of corporate development for Conde.net.

Karimkhany, a former journalism colleague of Vator.tv managing editor John Shinal, lent his expertise  in rating several new media startups targeting different aspects of that emerging business: original content, production and distribution. 

First up is NowLive.com, the live social Webcasting site that's no stranger to the Vator.tv community. Kevin Bromber's first pitch on Vator.tv produced a ton of comments after he alerted his sizable audience to it. Some of our users commented that they were put off by the plug, but we saw it as a sign of the intense loyalty of NowLive.com users, who produce more than 10,000 original shows per month, and a savvy use of our platform.

While the site built user loyalty and refined its technology by giving anyone a chance to do a live Webcast with both call-in and real-time texting features, Bromber told us in this interview that the business model now rests on selling the site as a platform to large media companies.

Radio stations in particular are frequent users of the platform. 

Their first-move advantage and feature-rich platform will help with that, and the management team has created successful exits before. The biggest danger, however, as Karimkhany points out, is that a larger player like Microsoft or RealMedia could develop a rival technology and stomp all over them.

Or maybe buy them out?

Next up is Synchronis TV, a company founded by a veteran television writing and acting team that is creating original production Web episodes.

Frankly, the series that we looked at moved a little slow, and we found our attention wandering, not a good sign in the multi-tasking milieu in which most consumers watch Web video.

But the company, like the model itself, is still young, and as we told you last week in this interview with mega-successful venture capitalist Tim Draper, new investing models may emerge that provide enough funding to these companies until they can create more compelling content. 

Lastly we look at For Your Imagination, another New York-based new-media distributor of content. The company has a sizable list of original shows for which it provides a comprehensive set of production, marketing, distribution and advertising services.

Those services got a nice plug from another member of the Vator.tv community, DadLabs.com founder and show host Clay Nichols, who said that For Your Imagination has provided everything needed on the business side, allowing DadLabs.com to concentrate on the scripting and creative effort.