ClipShare-Powered GodTube Gets $30 Million Funding
GodTube, one of the fast growing Christian online video sharing and social networking sites, has received a big $30 million funding round from hedge fund GLG Partners, paidContent.org has learned. The valuation for this round was around $150 million. It has previously raised about $2.5 million from private investors, including Norm Miller of Interstate Batteries.
GodTube was launched in summer last year in Dallas, and has since been among the fastest growing websites online…it now says it has about 2 million users a month. Chris Wyatt, the CEO and co-founder of GodTube, was previously an executive producer at CBS. The company has since hired other senior media executives. As for its business model, its Godcaster program is being used few hundred churches, thus generating subscription revenues, and allows them to stream live video of their services online. In the coming months, the company will also launch a white-label social networking service to churches as well. Also, the site sells both religious and secular advertising.
While the $30 million is an ungodly big amount, it compares to the other video sharing sites such as Metacafe, Veoh and others in the post-YouTube era. In all of these cases, bandwidth ends up being a huge cost center.
GLG has also invested relatively big amounts in two other digital media companies recently: Glam Media and Spinvox.
GLG refused to comment, and GodTube’s PR had this non-committal statement: “We have enjoyed substantial growth over the last several months and we are excited about taking out business to the next level, but we do not have any formal announcements to make at this time.” For some more background on the site, read this LAT story: ”Linking into the market for ministry”.
Popularity: 98% [?]
May 24th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
I am hoping my site will also get some popularity.
GodTube is a great site.
May 24th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
Hi,
Video sharing is all the rage those days. We all want to share our videos, to share our passions and the things we like. There are so many sites around to publish our videos on the web that it is sometimes hard to make a choice. We know some of them like YouTube, Revver or Dailymotion, but there are so many others competing to be the number one, or targeting a specific audience, whether geographically (China, Japan, Turkey…), by language (German, Arabic, French…) or for the kind of content they enable to publish (cooking, planes, extreme sports…).
I have compiled a growing list of more than 600 video sharing sites and video search engines that you can check at http://www.ilikesharingvideos.com/video-sharing-sites/en/
For each of them, you will get useful information such as their history, the country from which most of their visitors come, their niche, their rank, their latest news…
This site offers some other interesting features, like a list of video search engines, a forum about online videos, how to make money with your videos, how to create your own YouTube site.
So if you are interested in video search engines, publishing your own videos, or even online video marketing, give an eye to this site, it worths it.
Cheers
June 2nd, 2008 at 3:38 pm
I would agree. I think the $4 gas per gallon will change a lot of this..