Rumblings: Viddy is looking for $300M+ valuation

Being dubbed the Instagram of video, Viddy seeks Series B near $30M just 13 months after launching

Ever wondered what would happen if someone built an Instagram for video? Well essentially someone did, and a lot of investors and celebrities are seeing this as at least another billion dollar startup. The fast growing Viddy, which lets users record videos, apply filters and share content friends, is raising a Series B round of $30 million at the moment. The app video service has already amassed 10 million users since launching in April that big name celebrities like Shakira,  Jay-Z,  and Will Smith have all thrown money toward. 

Reports are now coming out that all of this Instagram buzz (a $1 billion acquisiton sure excited a lot of similar companies) and usership growth are prompting this second funding round and a sought valuation of between $300-370 million. The company had previously raised $7.5 million for the 13 month-old company.

Viddy has attributed much of its recent sizable growth on the integration with the new Facebook Timeline and user-generated content and sign-ups have shot up dramatically since the Instagram announcement -- but that doesn't mean this company will be the next Instagram. Many look at YouTube and notice that the real money in that service is the advertisements and the new-focus on professional content being created for channels on the site and then they wonder how profitable a user-generated video site can be.

Just a few days ago, VIddy reported that it was experiencing 5.5 million downloads in an 11 day period -- bringing its total to more than 10 million users -- and thats just on the iPhone since it has taken a very Instagram path of a single app focus. 

 The company also says it is averaging over 100 million plus video views per month, doubling every month. 

So while it seems like Viddy is on a rocket-ship ride at the moment many are still wondering what will happen once Instagram launches its video product to its rapidly growing 40 million users.

Earlier this week we reported that, from February 12 to March 12, Instagram was the ninth fastest-growing property by percent change in U.S. unique visitors.

From February to March, Instagram went from 6.9 million to 8.2 million total unique visitors, an increase of 19%.

The only properties to do better were SB Nation, Dailymotion.com, MLB, The Street Sites, College Humor Media, Babylon.com, Sun Microsystems Inc, and PerformerSoft.com, which had a growth of 152% in that month. 

Overall, Instagram is ranked number 204 in unique visitors for the month.

Given that Instagram’s website merely directs users to but their app in the iTunes store or on Google Play, and the comScore report is based only on hits to their website, and did not trackany mobile data for this study, the numbers are almost impossible to believe. 

As impressive as the Instagram's growth is, it becomes even better when you remember that the numbers are from before Instagram even had an app on the Android system. With growth like that on only one operating system, there is massive potential for even better growth in the coming months.

After launching its Android app earlier this month, the photo sharing app saw its user numbers jump by 10 million in 10 days, pushing it over the 40 million user mark.

It has been exciting to watch both companies boom though, and these latest rumbling do push Viddy higher on the list of possible acquisitions by Google or Twitter. We will just have to wait and see if the reported funding and valuation hold strong.