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News Archive

Director's Cut: Now on Bebo

Thursday, 08 May 2008
We are now showcasing Director’s Cut videos on Bebo, one of the largest social networks with over 24 million monthly unique visitors (comScore March 2008). We’ve created for different channels, one for each category of the Director's Cut: Comedy, Animation, Action, and Documentaries. If you have an account on Bebo, make sure to become a “fan” of your favorite channel. If you don’t have an account, now would be a good time to create one!

New Metacafe Home Page!

Thursday, 24 April 2008
Metacafe is sporting a new look this spring. Our home page now features a simpler, cleaner design for easy access to the freshest, most entertaining videos on Metacafe. We’ve added a Popular Now section that's updated every hour with currently hot videos, a Producer Rewards box at the bottom right highlighting producers, and we gave the My Subscriptions box a new home on the right side of the page. Tell us what you think of the new design on the forums!

April Fools!

Tuesday, 01 April 2008
Yes, it's that time of year again. A time when school toilets overflow with cherry bombs and teachers fear for their very existence. That's right, it's April Fool's Day. And in honor of this oh-so-magical occasion, Metacafe is showing off the best pranks on the web in our April Fools channel. Hop on over and plan your trick today!

Changes to the Producer Rewards Program

Wednesday, 20 February 2008
On February 11, we made some important changes to Producer Rewards designed to take the program to the next level and ensure that it stands for content that is entertaining to all. While the basic program structure remains the same, we have added several requirements that are outlined in our new and improved Producer Rewards Help Center page. For more information on the reasons behind these changes, see our official blog post.

The Metacafe Facebook Application is Here!

Tuesday, 29 January 2008

For all you Facebook users out there – and recently it seems like everyone has joined – here’s another addictive, time-burning application to get you caught up on the best entertainment on the web…the Metacafe Facebook application! Now you can easily share your favorite Metacafe videos with your Facebook friends or see what’s popular in your different networks. In addition to the Facebook app, we have our “share this video on Facebook” button on all video pages, allowing you to post cool clips to your profile or send them to your friends.Our future Facebook plans include integration into popular applications like FunWall and Super Wall, so check back here going forward and make sure to download the app now!

New Metacafe Tagline and Other Features

Monday, 31 December 2007
We recently made a number of changes to Metacafe that you may have noticed. For one, Metacafe has a new tagline: “Video entertainment, powered by you.” This site is all about its community of users, starting with the submissions, on up through watching and rating. For more about why we chose this tagline, check out this video Dane from Gagfilms created. In addtion, we've added a Channel Moderation feature to allow you to report others who put up offensive material on their channels, and we improved our monitoring system for comment spam. Finally, the Submit Video URL feature just got a whole lot better -- now when you submit a URL, the video's metadata is automatically transferred from its source page to Metacafe.

New Studio Homepage

Monday, 03 December 2007
If you’ve clicked on the Studio tab recently, you may have noticed that the homepage is different. That’s because we decided to change the Studio’s homepage to the Spotlight section. The old homepage, Producer Rewards, is still there, we just shifted it over one spot. Of course we didn’t want to leave all of our producers hanging, so we put in a solution which should be visible to everyone shortly – a rotating module of Producer Rewards videos on the Metacafe homepage. Overall, Producer Rewards views are still high because most of them didn’t come from the Studio anyway. If you have any comments about the Studio homepage shift, please let us know in the Metacafe Forums.

Introducing the Metacafe Message Center

Monday, 26 November 2007

There’s never been a better time to register on Metacafe now that we have our newly released Message Center. Now you can contact your friends on Metacafe just like you do with your personal email, with the added bonus of being able to insert your submitted videos to see what people think. Another plus is that you can block members from sending you messages or commenting on your channel or videos, ensuring your security. We’ve also made a few changes to the homepage which you’ll be seeing in stages over the next couple of weeks, including a scrolling "showcase" of Producer Rewards videos.

For more info, check out the Metacafe Forums.

Tudou Dominates China's Internet Video Market

Sunday, 11 November 2007

Last week NewTeeVee posted a fascinating interview with the founder and CEO of China’s top video sharing site, Tudou.com. Gary Wang, who founded the site two years ago, says Tudou currently serves up 60 million video streams a day to nearly 45 million users a month. While much of the content on Tudou is uploaded illegally – piracy is a huge problem in China – Wang says that non-professional users have uploaded their own original content to Tudou’s director program. Wang says there are no plans for Tudou to expand beyond China at the moment.

See more at NewTeeVee.com.

WGA Goes on Strike

Monday, 05 November 2007
The Writers Guild of America (WGA) opted to go on strike Monday following a last ditch effort to come to an agreement with studio on Sunday. The strike, which stems largely from a dispute over increased Internet and DVD residuals for writers, will immediately affect a number of hit TV shows. The LA Times has a nice breakdown of which shows will go on hiatus. According to their report, most late night programs will go into reruns right away, soaps will likely have episodes through the New Year, and other scripted shows will at least be partially affected this season.