When investors start stepping over each other to put their money into a company you know it’s on the way up. And with big names such as BBC Worldwide, Greylock Partners, and Andreessen Horowitz giving millions to ViKi, this is a site to keep an eye on.
Viki
is an interesting proposition. It acquires the rights to video content, places it on the site, and then the magical pixies (otherwise known as crowd-sourced volunteers) set to work adding subtitles in 150 different languages using the company’s software.
This means that within 24 hours of a TV show or movie being uploaded people around the world can watch local content and actually understand what it going on. More than 5,000 hours of content is available on the site, from dozens of countries including the U.K., India, Japan, and Russia.
500,000 volunteers are now active on the site translating the new content and asking nothing in return. Yet.
ViKi Funding
A year ago ViKi raised $4.3 million in funding, and that was obviously seen as a good investment. ViKi has now raised an additional $20 million from SK Planet, BBC Worldwide, Greylock Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Charles River Ventures, Neoteny Labs, and others.
What is the money going to be used for? More content and distribution, according to CEO Razmig Hovaghimian. But I have to wonder, as Peter Kafka already has, how long these volunteers will continue to work for free. That’s all well and good when a company is starting out and there for the common good, but when someone is making big money from it those lower down the food chain start to wonder when their reward is coming.
Conclusions
For those of us more than happy to watch subtitled content from other countries ViKi represents a great alternative to the mainstream online video destinations.
Its traffic is up massively on last year, and content and funding is clearly not a problem. As long as the volunteers don’t revolt then ViKi has a strong future ahead of it.
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