Keek.com gains $5.5 million in funding

Microvideo-sharing site receives millions from AlphaNorth and PlazaCorp

A young Toronto-based video blogging startup, Keek.com, announced Wednesday that it's secured $5.5 million in funding from a group of investors led by AlphaNorth Asset Management and Plazacorp Ventures.

The microvideo sharing website launched less than two weeks ago and is currently an advertising free service with the capability of sharing uploaded video content directly on Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook.

The funding will go toward "strengthening the team, rapidly roll out new features and accelerate global expansion," said Keek executives, in a press release.

"We are thrilled to have closed this round of financing; it's a great vote of confidence in our product and our team," said Isaac Raichyk, founder and chief executive officer of Keek Inc., in a statement. "Keek starts at the intersection of microvideo, social networking and mobile apps, then steps it up a notch."

A recent Pew study showed that video sharing is a growth subset of the online environment and 71% of online adults use video-sharing sites.

Another finding that popped out of the Pew study was that the higher the income bracket, the more likely a person would have visited a video-sharing site (81% of users with household incomes greater than $75,000 have used these sites.)

Raichyk also stated in a previous release, that three-quarters of Keek's users are under 24 years old, a demographic that Pew showed was the highest group of users of any video-sharing site.

Last week, a similar service called Twitvid nabbed $6.5 million in a Series B round of funding for its Twitter-centric microvideo blogging platform.

Twitvid, with two more years behind it, has gained a catalog of celebrities as users of the service such as Justin Bieber, Dwight Howard, Dane Cook and 50cent. 

Other competition for Keek.com include Vimeo, YouTube and Tout.

Keek.com, however, seems to be putting a stress on the micro in microblogging since the longest any video loaded to the site can be is 36 second (where many other sites average 45 seconds to 2.5 minutes.)

Keek.com states on its site that this lower limit is because "we decided that 36 seconds is the magic number. It’s just long enough to tell an interesting story, but not long enough to be overwhelming or boring."

In order to use the Keek.com service, a profile must be created (which is the same for Vimeo and Tout but not Twitvid) and new content can be added from a computer web cam, an iPhone or an Android device.

Keek.com was not immediately available for comment. 

 Image Source - Mobile.android.com