Tango raises $42M, will fight Skype on the desktop

How hot is the mobile video chat market? So hot that one of the leading technology companies in the space, Palo Alto, Calif.-based Tango, has raised $42 million aimed at rapidly growing its workforce to compete with startups like ooVoo and industry heavyweights like Skype. The round also gives it a little extra cash to extend its video chat app beyond just mobile devices, to reach some 1.5 billion potential desktop users.

The Series B funding round was led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson and includes existing investors. It includes $8.7 million raised in a convertible note that was revealed through an SEC filing earlier this year. With the latest round, Tango has raised a total of $47 million since being founded just 18 months ago. The funding news was first reported by Bloomberg last month, but was just confirmed by the company today.

No doubt some of the investment comes as a direct result of Skype being acquired in a deal worth $8.5 billion, which is a huge amount for a company in what is still a very nascent video chat market. But while Skype began on the desktop and has been slowly (but gradually) adding support for the iPhone and Android mobile devices, Tango is taking the opposite route.

Tango launched with a mobile focus but is gearing up to start working on PCs, with the upcoming launch later this summer of a desktop app that will let users sign in and be contacted on their phone or on their computer. By doing so, Tango also hopes to attract more users to its service. It currently has about 18 million users on mobile devices, which is a far cry from the 600 million that Skype has attracted to date. But it sees desktop availability as a huge potential boost.

Eric Setton, CTO and co-founder of Tango, said in a phone interview that there are about 1.5 billion PC users worldwide, which is a huge addressable market. Not just that, but PC availability has been the #1 requested feature from its users.

The new app will mirror its existing mobile apps both in form and function, allowing users to be simultaneously logged into their accounts through multiple devices, and ensuring that their contact lists are synced across each. When an outside user tries to initiate a video chat, both the PC and phone will ring, enabling users to choose whichever device they want to talk on.

In addition to PC app development, the funding will be used by the company to ramp up hiring in general. According to Setton, Tango has added about 25 people in the last three months alone, bringing total headcount to 60 employees company-wide. He said it wouldn’t be surprising to see the company with more than 100 employees by year-end.

Many of those employees will work on increasing support for more platforms and mobile devices, as Tango struggles to deal with an incredibly fragmented device market. Some will also work on getting its software supported on the chip level, which will ease integration with devices once they finally come to market.

While Skype is the big heavy hitter in the video chat market, it’s not the only competition Tango has to contend with, particularly in mobile video chat. Over the last year, we’ve seen a rash of new entrants emerge, spurred on in part by the launch of Apple’s FaceTime application on iOS devices.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

window.fbAsyncInit = function() {FB.init({appId: 180650338636285, status: true, cookie: true, xfbml: true});FB.api({method: 'links.getStats',urls: 'http://gigaom.com/video/tango-42m-funding/'},function(response) {jQuery('#react-fb-count-button').html(response[0].commentsbox_count);});FB.Event.subscribe('comment.create', function(response) {var ajaxurl = 'http://gigaom.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=new_fb_comment&post_id=';jQuery.get(ajaxurl + 379246);});};var e = document.createElement('script');e.type = 'text/javascript';e.src = document.location.protocol + '//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js';e.async = true;document.getElementById('fb-root').appendChild(e);

var _comscore = _comscore || []; _comscore.push({ c1: "2", c2: "6036014" }); (function() { var s = document.createElement("script"), el = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0]; s.async = true; s.src = (document.location.protocol == "https:" ? "https://sb" : "http://b") + ".scorecardresearch.com/beacon.js"; el.parentNode.insertBefore(s, el); })();

Click to log in with: Not you? Remember me Submitting comment...
;(function($){$.fn.trackClick = function(){// track the clicktry {_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', this.parents('[id!=""]:first').get(0).id, 'clicked', (this.text() || this.children('img:first').attr('alt'))]);}catch (err) {}// wait a moment for the tracking to process, then follow the linksetTimeout('document.location = "' + $(this).attr('href') + '"', 200);};$('#brand-explorer a, #navigation a, .widget-wrap a').click(function () {$(this).trackClick();return false;}); })(jQuery);

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

ISPs join the copyright fight, put broadband on the line

A new voluntary effort by the major U.S. Internet service providers to help enforce copyright restrictions and protect content owners from pirates, parodists and cheap teens who are sharing files could result in some folks losing access to their broadband. The effort — which is dubbed the “Copyright Alert System” — includes Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner Cable and Verizon.

The agreement codifies much of what ISPs do now when faced with complaints from content owners. But instead of a mere notification system for broadband subscribers, it also gives ISPs a chance to slow, block or cut off a misbehaving subscriber’s broadband access. This document describes the alert system and details of the plan.

If a content owner complains, the ISP will provide notifications to the subscriber that they may be hosting infringing content. The ISPs won’t share the subscriber’s name with the content owner, which is good. However, the ISPs have agreed to punish repeat offenders at their discretion using a six-strike system. The escalation looks like this:

The kicker for all of this is that a customer who finds themselves at the latter stages of this process would have to go before an independent reviewer to halt or contest the mitigation, and that review comes at a cost of $35. The bottom line is that if a copyright owner takes it into his or her head to go after a subscriber, they can — and now your ISP has promised to help (although there is some foot-dragging here on the part of ISPs who don’t want to become enforcers). And if you want to contest the issue it’s go to court or pay a $35 fee so your case can be reviewed.

As it stands, this could be less anti-consumer than other three-strikes laws, but it does bring up a somewhat existential question about broadband access — namely, does your provider have the right to cut it off? Costa Rica and other countries have named broadband as a fundamental human right. One might argue in the U.S. it’s an important element of having true freedom of speech. And since this is a voluntary consortium of private companies that would be taking action here, placing broadband access under some kind of legal protection throws the legitimacy of any effort to cut it off into doubt.

Many content companies are known to be overly vigorous in protecting their rights to music, movies and whatnot, while consumers can be confused by fair-use, personal use and other exceptions to the copyright rules. It’s not hard to imagine something like this person’s video of her baby dancing to a Prince song resulting in a draconian response. In that case she fought, but when faced with a series of emails, acknowledgments and eventual mitigation measures — that also come with a $35 fee just to contest the issue — how many people are going to fight to keep their video online?

Meanwhile, the FCC had its usual non-committal response to the effort. Hopefully the courts won’t prove so tepid if cases are brought before them. The FCC response:

“Today’s announcement of a voluntary, cooperative effort to combat online copyright infringement is a positive development. As the Commission has recognized, copyright infringement has serious adverse consequences for the economy, and efforts to address this issue can and must co-exist with robust protections for Internet freedom and openness. We look forward to the recommendations of the organization that will be created as part of this effort.”

Image courtesy of Flickr user peasap.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d):

window.fbAsyncInit = function() {FB.init({appId: 180650338636285, status: true, cookie: true, xfbml: true});FB.api({method: 'links.getStats',urls: 'http://gigaom.com/broadband/isps-join-the-copyright-fight-put-broadband-on-the-line/'},function(response) {jQuery('#react-fb-count-button').html(response[0].commentsbox_count);});FB.Event.subscribe('comment.create', function(response) {var ajaxurl = 'http://gigaom.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=new_fb_comment&post_id=';jQuery.get(ajaxurl + 372873);});};var e = document.createElement('script');e.type = 'text/javascript';e.src = document.location.protocol + '//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js';e.async = true;document.getElementById('fb-root').appendChild(e);

var _comscore = _comscore || []; _comscore.push({ c1: "2", c2: "6036014" }); (function() { var s = document.createElement("script"), el = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0]; s.async = true; s.src = (document.location.protocol == "https:" ? "https://sb" : "http://b") + ".scorecardresearch.com/beacon.js"; el.parentNode.insertBefore(s, el); })();

;(function($){$.fn.trackClick = function(){// track the clicktry {_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', this.parents('[id!=""]:first').get(0).id, 'clicked', (this.text() || this.children('img:first').attr('alt'))]);}catch (err) {}// wait a moment for the tracking to process, then follow the linksetTimeout('document.location = "' + $(this).attr('href') + '"', 200);};$('#brand-explorer a, #navigation a, .widget-wrap a').click(function () {$(this).trackClick();return false;}); })(jQuery);

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.