Published: May 19, 2008
Dailymotion Plans to Step Out of YouTube's Shadow
By Garrett Edward Godwin
A French online video-sharing company called Dailymotion, which is eating at the heels of Google's YouTube, is predicted to be profitable and good for cash early next year.
"We are confident that we could be profitable in a few months" states Mark Zaleski, the chief executive told Reuters Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in Paris on Monday. Dailymotion said that the difference between them and YouTube is partly that the former promotes producers and artists, makes editorial judgments on the videos being shown and on its front page and offers high defintion videos.
"We are an alternative to YouTube" according to Zaleski. "People would not give us the time of day a year ago. Now we are getting all the attention."
Debuted in Paris three years ago during the same time YouTube hit the online world, Dailymotion has become one of France's 10 most popular websites, overcoming its competition from California in France this January. In March, the company has 36.2 million unique visitors per month, comparing to the 287 million on YouTube and 74 million on Facebook, according to Comscore.
Dailymotion's trio of founders have 21-22 percent ownership of the company while the balance is being held by individual investors and private equity firms. The major shareholder is Partech International; next is Atlas Ventures, then Advent Venture Partners and AGF Private equity, a member of the Allianz group.
Since the beginning, 32 million Euros has been fused in the company, where in the United States, that's almost $50 million dollars. It received 7 million Euros from Partech and Atlas, and another 25 from the same private equity firms, Advent, and AGF. Like YouTube, Dailymotion is split into several parts: music, sports, travel, and animals. It is now available in 15 languages that includes Turkish, Greek, Russian, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese.
Source: Astrid Wendlandt from Reuters
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