Kaltura Gets Funding, Expands its Open Source Video Efforts

by Sam Dean - Jun. 18, 2008Comments (2)

Kaltura, which is nicely described by CNet as "the video company that's considered a blend of YouTube and Wikipedia," has closed a second round of funding.The company has an open source video platform for video creation and collaboration, and is releasing an enhanced version of its video-wiki extension for MediaWiki software. The amount of funding, led by .406 Ventures, isn't disclosed, but is described in the CNet post above as "significantly larger" than the $2.1 million Kaltura previously secured from Avalon Ventures and angel investors. Here's why this company's focus on allowing videographers around the world to collaborate is promising.

Having dabbled extensively in online video myself, I know that it is a medium, as is often true of music, that benefits from collaborators working together. We've covered recent evidence of this phenomenon in the form of Big Buck Bunny (at left) and Elephant's Dream. If you haven't seen these eye-popping, free, 3D animated movies--created entirely by collaborators using open source tools--check them out.

Kaltura has smartly pursued a relationship with the Wikimedia Foundation--the entity behind Wikipedia--to add video mashups to Wikipedia by the end of this year. I liked Craig Rubens' description of this deal: "the wisdom of the masses just got a webcam."

Kaltura sent over some points regarding its focus (quoting here ):

┬╖ Kaltura offers a full open-source video platform that supports basic and advanced online video capabilities including: video creation & management, advertising & monetizing, interaction & collaboration, as well as membership to the Kaltura Network of sharable content.
┬╖ Our platform is open source, and therefore widely supported and inexpensive. Thousands of developers have already downloaded our code since we released it.
┬╖ Our technology is geared towards high degrees of participation, collaboration and interaction allowing sites to significantly increase user engagement.
┬╖ Our platform is easy to install - adding interactive video to a site can take minutes (not days or weeks) using our extensions and plug-ins to popular web platforms and reference implementations in PHP and Ruby.
┬╖ We have released a new and improved version of KalturaтАЩs open-source video-wiki extension.

The video-wiki extension allows users of MediaWiki-based sites to collaboratively upload and remix videos, images, slideshows, audio tracks and animation. The idea is to add rich content and video to wiki posts. Developers can also join Kaltura in enhancing its open source video platform.

I'm surprised that although the web is overflowing with online video at this point, especially over at YouTube, very few people are focused on collaborative online video efforts. According to ComScore, Google's sites, with YouTube waaaay in the lead, serve up almost 40 percent of the video consumed on the web.

Meanwhile, a tiny handful of companies such as Limelight and BrightCove dominate serving and syndicating grassroots video offerings. I don't know if the leader of the charge will be Kaltura, but there should be much more--and much more creative-- collaborative online video going on. I'm talking about feature-length films created by people in countries all over the world working together without significant budgets, more software tools for enabling this work (such as Blender), more media platforms such as Boxee's, and free and open avenues to syndicate video and reach audiences. Open source seems such a natural fit here.