Kyte.tv is essentially part of the MeTV trend started by the likes of YouTube, i.e. the ability to broadcast user generated content to a wider community. The Kyte.tv service is actually operated by decentral.tv, a San Francisco-based company, and Kyte.tv shows are instantly broadcast to any web site, blog, social network, and mobile phone.
On Tuesday decentral.tv received an undisclosed amount of fresh capital from two European investors, namely the Swiss telecom incumbent Swisscom AG, as well as Holtzbrinck Ventures. Swisscom Mobile already offers kyte.tv to its mobile customer base.
There was also an additional investment from European angel investors Klaus Hommels, Oliver Jung, and Peter Schupbach.
Previously, Kyte.tv had raised $2.25m from Atomico (co-founded by Niklas Zennstrom – the co founder of Skype and Joost), Draper Fisher Jurveston, Draper Richards, and Ron Conway.
Our View
The VC community continues to pour money into social networking and multimedia-related sectors. Indeed, last week Joost, the online television service set up by Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, raised $45m in VC funding.
That funding round was one of just a number of VC investments in the multimedia sector so far in May.
Intel Capital sunk an impressive $20m into low-cost phone-to-phone VoIP service provider Jajah last week. And on May 2, online video content delivery software provider Itiva Networks raised $7m.
On May 1 there were two other deals when $40m was invested in Pure Digital Technologies, a supplier of digital video products and one-time-use digital cameras, and $5m was invested in digital royalty tracking software provider, RoyaltyShare.
Clearly, investors are hedging their bets as they look to invest into the next potential YouTube or Skype.
