Thursday, November 06, 2008

The Flow Of Capital

Away from keyboard. 

But this seems far too important to let pass. Machinima.com announces that it has secured $3.85 million in investment from MK Capital and other investors. No matter what you think of the situation, this is far too important to ignore.

While some people worry about infringement of intellectual property and lack of control, an aggregation site has shoved itself to the forefront of the entire situation and managed to capitalize on this movement not simply by leveraging themselves into the 800 pound gorilla position, but with the seeming nod of approval from multiple game companies, if not explicitly, then at least implicitly. Check out the advertisers and the board members.

Money talks. 


6 comments:

Overman said...

It's a significant event / situation. Machinima.com now very probably commands the largest machinima audience in the world, and has crafted a remarkably powerful presence on YouTube. That audience has, I think, been key to the buy in. Will be interesting to see if / how this capital makes itself seen in the way of new features / advances.

Anonymous said...

It's just a baffling situation. the site is building a business model out of numbers, but the numbers aren't legal. with the overwhelming majority of that 30 million views coming from shows that are either in violation of EULA's, or plain and simple, Proffessional game trailers. Their current proliferation comes from them having a shit-ton of subscribers on youtube, but the content they provide is in no part owned by them (despite their constant re-branding of other people's videos). This whole situation is the equivalent of someone racking up a million friends on myspace, and then selling the account as though they were actual content producers.

bllius said...

YouTube did the same thing.

Anonymous said...

Ah but youtube created a service, and it's content creators at least in SOME instances had rights to their content. However, machinima owns basically zero percent of their content, nor do they own the service on which their content is shown.

bllius said...

And yet someone is willing to give them money. Funny that. Welcome to financing 2.0.

Linn Søvig said...

I agree! So important that they received this and I honestly feel good inside for it happening amidst a financial crisis.
I have my problems with machinima.com - same as anyone - but it is such a great service they provide. They're a great channel to refer to and their collection is exceptional.
I say 'hurray' to the money! They really desserve it - and I can't wait for them to make it even better!