Mixmonsta grabs the spotlight in Demand Media Challenge

Talk about a close race.

The Demand Media/Vator.tv Challenge - which drew 72 contestants who submitted their video pitches, is over, and the results are in. Mixmonsta, Nowlive, Zipidee, Clupedia, and WooMee grabbed the top five spots as measured by votes, ratings, and comments.

The judges at Demand Media got to choose which of those five was their favorite, and they chose Mixmonsta, a creator of real-time, interactive, flash-based-widget media players that let people mash up and remix content on their mobile phones.

"I view Mixmonsta as the commercialization of what Beck did with Guero-cut it up and release different versions of the album with influence from his fans," said Caith Chapman, VP of M&A at Demand."This seems similar in terms of concept."

Chapman also said that Mixmonsta demonstrated traction as it has 30,000 registered users, 380,000 people using the product, five million video views, and labels that have taken some of the mixes and posted them to the Artists' websites directly. Josh Beil, one of the judges and a director of content at Level 3 Communications, had this to say, "Mixmonsta has very cool mashup applications, very easy to use and fun."

Mixmonsta received 93 votes from the Vator community, a rating of 4.5 stars averaged over 31 submissions, and 10 positive comments. As the winner, Mixmonsta CEO Voit Damevski wins the opportunity to fly down and meet with the Demand Media mergers and acquisitions team, including  Caith Chapman and Shawn Colo, as well as Demand's CEO Richard Rosenblatt.

Damevski also wins six months free content delivery on VerSign Intelligent CDN including both streaming and VOD services, an x1400 server from Sun Microsystems, a social –media analysis, using Visible Technoogies' TruCast application, valued at $25,000.

Mixmonsta will have an opportunity to be featured on Vator's show on innovation, and have a featured profile on VentureBeat, Beet.tv, and Mashable.

In second place was NowLive, which had 119 votes. NowLive operates a technology platform for live interactive shows, making live broadcasts highly interactive social events for the audience and hosts. Zipidee, which drew 125 votes, landed the No. 3 spot. The San Francisco-based company offers sellers a patent-pending DRM solution that protects digital goods from copyright infringement.

Clupedia, an encyclopedia of clues from crowds, finished in fourth place, followed by Woomee, an online speed-dating site leverages in-browser video technology to enable users to meet new people in a fast, fun and free fashion. 

Congratulations to the winners, and all the participants. And, thanks to the judges, Demand Media's Caith, Shawn and Richard, and VentureBeat's Matt Marshall, Mashable's Pete Cashmore, Visible Technologies' Blake Cahill, Mark Taylor from Level 3, and Bambi Francisco.