Magnify offers publishers tools to curate videos using editorial controls (tagging, ordering, profiling) and to aggregate and host content pulled from sources like YouTube. The product emphasizes human editorial control combined with algorithmic automation and can integrate with existing video platforms such as Brightcove. The company shifted from enterprise-only customers to serve any content publisher and counts customers including New York Magazine, Vibe.com, USAFootball.com, the Lincoln Center, and TEDx. Magnify averaged about 7 million video views per month across its customers and expects to be profitable by the second quarter. The startup will use the new funding to invest in its technical team and sales efforts. Rosenbaum founded the company in 2006 and the business has pivoted twice since its founding. Magnify.net is a video sharing site that lets users collect and share videos from across the web as well as upload their own. The platform aggregates videos and aims to help publishers monetize niche video content through its Ad Share ad network. The company is just over a year old and is based in New York. It claims over three million visitors a month and more than 30,000 content publishers. Magnify.net raised $1 million to fund continued growth, specifically to expand customer acquisition efforts and increase staffing for Ad Share. During the writer’s strike the company reported a 70 percent increase in weekly site videos, which it cited as a sign of growing online viewing demand. Magnify.net builds embeddable, publisher-controlled video channels that aggregate videos from sites like YouTube, Revver, and Yahoo Videos. Publishers can add channels to their sites and allow readers to submit videos directly, via search, or by pasting video URLs. Submitted videos require either admin approval or at least three reviewers and a minimum 5/10 average rating before joining the collection; approved videos can be rated, commented on, tagged, and shared. The platform provides RSS feeds, playlists, widgets and other integration features to keep readers updated and increase engagement. The site is in beta and the article notes usability and performance issues, including slow performance. Magnify.net has raised $1.2 million in seed financing from New York Angels and NextStage Capital and reports 3,500 channels created to date; founders include Steve Rosenbaum, Simon Cavalletto, and Scott Milener.

Total raised

$3M

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Jan 2013