Ebyline - Welcome to the Virtual Newsroom. Ebyline. Ebyline Launches As A Market For Freelance Journalists And News Syndication. Can a ragtag group of former newspapermen from the L.A. Times help newspapers fight off the content farms of the Web The founders and backers of Ebyline, which has been in private beta for a few months and launches today more broadly, think they can streamline the way news organizations manage freelancers and syndicate their own articles. Some publishers testing out the system include Variety, ProPublica, and The Texas Observer. Ebyline is a marketplace for freelance journalists and syndicated news. Freelancers must be invited by an editor at a participating publication, or be vetted through an application.
They can pitch story ideas into the open marketplace, or take assignments directly from editors they work with. Similarly, publishers can syndicate their own articles to other newspapers and sites. The founders, Allen Narcisse and Bill Momary, both used to work at the L.A. The idea of news exchanges seem to be gaining in popularity. Ebyline Raises $5 Million From E.W. Scripps To Help News Organizations Fight Off Content Farms.
Last September, a group of former L.A. Times veterans launched Ebyline as a better way for news organizations to manage their freelance talent and syndicate their own content. The goal was to give the Web’s shady content farms a run for their monies by creating an open marketplace for freelance journalists to pitch story ideas, take assignments from editors they work with, and get paid. Publishers, on the other hand, can use Ebyline to bring their content to other newspapers and publications. Variety, for example, uses the platform to syndicate its movie reviews to other websites. In November, Ebyline raised $1.5 million from E.W.
As a snapshot of the company’s growth as it stands today: In just one year, the startup has secured a total of $6.5 million from E.W. For more, take a virtual tour of Ebyline here. Vidyard - Business Video Hosting & Analytics. 5 startups to watch from Y-Combinator’s Summer 2011 class. The scene outside of Y-Combinator's summer 2011 demo day Silicon Valley startup incubator Y-Combinator held the first of two demo days for its Summer 2011 class on Tuesday, unveiling 63 new companies to investors and journalists at its Mountain View, Calif. headquarters. About half of the startup presentations were off the record, meaning just 31 of the presenting companies categorized themselves as welcoming press coverage. In all, it’s the biggest Y-Combinator class yet. The investors I chatted with at the event all agreed on one thing: They were impressed by the poise and professionalism each Y-Combinator startup showed during their demonstrations. There was not an awkward “wantrepreneur” in sight — every single company showed potential in one way or another, and many of them have already garnered impressive user growth and even solid revenue.
It goes to show that just because Y-Combinator has admitted a record number of entrepreneurs, the quality standards are as high as ever. Vidyard: How a YC startup is using YouTube to sell its own video hosting solution. How do you go from designing toilets to building a company that hosts video? Well, the story is twisty, but that’s exactly what makes Michael Litt, the 3 other founders and their product called Vidyard a tale you should read. To start, we have to go back in time and take a trip up to Canada. Litt was, indeed, designing toilets. His eventual co-founder, Devon Galloway worked at BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) and the two of them found that their corporate jobs left them quite a bit of time on their hands.
With that time, and a bit of cash, they started doing some day trading. Litt stumbled into a trade for a company that sold a foot cream which was not yet approved by the FDA. Litt supported himself by selling biodiesel. The Genesis It was at Cypress that he started to find his niche. Edward Wu was working at Nortel in 2009. They started a company called Redwoods Media, creating instructional videos for businesses.
Using YouTube The other name that springs to mind is Vimeo. YC-Backed Vidyard Is A YouTube For Businesses. Many businesses embed YouTube videos on their sites, but one of the pain points of using YouTube as a platform is that visitors can click through the video to YouTube and off the brand’s site — and those videos also include YouTube’s ads and branding. Ooyala and Brightcove both offer professional, enterprise-hosted video platforms but these can be expensive. Enter Y Combinator-backed Vidyard, which is launching today as an affordable way for businesses to host videos that can be viewed either on a landing page or via an embeddable player.
Basically, Vidyard is offering a service that’s very similar to YouTube, but without that link to a third-party portal. The startup also offers instant, detailed and real-time analytics with regards to the embedded video performance. Co-founder Michael Litt says that currently 3.5 million businesses host YouTube videos on their site and there’s a huge opportunity to offer a better, simpler, easy to use video hosting product to companies.