Social video startup YouNow wants to bring live video actors online and provide a social environment where they can show off their skills to anyone else adapting in. But to do so, you need users, so YouNow has acquired long-running, live-streaming platform BlogTV.
YouNow enables its users to live broadcast to others on the stage in various competitions showing off their abilities. It’s kind of like a virtual Gong Show, with consumers able to accumulate points and share with others along the way. There are also chat and societal sharing characteristics, allowing its users to share their broadcasts on other networks. (There’s a video below to give you a better idea.)
The acquisition of BlogTV is all about users over anything else. BlogTV was founded in 2006 and, over the decades, has amassed several 4 million registered users at that moment. So the people at YouNow probably believe that accessing those users on its platform will help to raise the socialness of its social media.
To this end, it has created an ultra-easy on-boarding procedure for BlogTV users to turn into YouNow users rapidly. Existing BlogTV users will have the ability to merge their accounts using their Facebook logins — which YouNow uses for authentication — and their BlogTV credentials. Once that is done, all of their username, broadcasts, social connections, and other data will be ported over into their new YouNow account. And, of course, they’ll have all sorts of new features which weren’t on the old platform.
Terms weren’t disclosed, but YouNow CEO Adi Sideman stated it was a money deal. Included in this deal, four BlogTV workers will be linking YouNow, bringing its full employees to 14. BlogTV creator Oren Levy will remain as an adviser to the joint company.
