While every online video site wrestles with trying to make social video pay, a small UK-based startup has stuck to its belief that not everyone wants to share the videos of their family and kids with the whole world. Thus, Mydeo has been rewarded today with an undisclosed minority equity investment by retailer Best Buy, which will use Mydeo’s platform for its bespoke video sharing service, reports TechCrunchUK. Best Buy Video Sharing is a subscription-based service for users to upload their personal videos for storage, but also allows them to share select videos on web sites and blogs, while controlling who views the video.
Word on the street is that Best Buy – which already had photo-sharing through Kodak – didn’t want a combined photo/video service and, incredibly enough, couldn’t find a US-based company that could do what they wanted. However, I have a hunch that since Mydeo is built on Microsoft’s Movie Maker software there may have been some useful introductions made at Microsoft level. Best Buy, the largest electronics retailer in the US, sells around a third of all video cameras sold each year. Significantly, a large percentage of those are sold to Mydeo’s target audiences of families and small businesses, who tend to use Movie Maker. Hey, it may not be cool, but it’s a fact.
Whatever the details of the deal, it’s a good one for Mydeo’s co-founders Cary Marsh and Iain Millar, who started out in 2005 from a small South West London office with local municipal grants.
