SAN FRANCISCO – Web video production and the financing of it has shifted dramatically in the last five years. Now, the industry has entered a second wave of content creation that brings Web publishers closer to the funding process, says Erick Hachenburg, CEO of Metacafe.
Beet.TV spoke with him recently at his San Francisco office and he shared his thoughts on the key trends he's seeing in online video.
Some sites paid producers in the early days, but the recession made that tough. However, with new models emerging and YouTube's partner program, creators are seeing more ways for content to be funded, he explains in this video interview.
Another change since Metcafe launched in the first wave of big video sites, along with YouTube and DailyMotion, is that many video sites are targeting verticals now. "It maps with what you see in TV with cable networks," he explains.
Finally, social discovery through Facebook and its new timeline is playing a major role in video usage. Hachenburg expects to see more integrations from Facebook later this year around video and the social graph. Metacafe recently launched a video app for the Facebook timeline.
Daisy Whitney
