More Funding For TIOTI
TIOTI, the social media aggregator and one-stop source for TV content, has successfully concluded first-round funding with Europe’s largest early-stage technology venture capital fund, Pond Venture Partners.
After TIOTI’s public launch on October 1 (see Next Generation Of Online TV To Launch), www.tioti.com is now indexing over 75,000 television shows and more than 500,000 individual episodes for download.
TIOTI says that it has doubled its registered users, increased overall visitors by 300%, and served over half a million pages since the beginning of October, 2007.
TIOTI says that the funding, a seven-figure amount, will enable it to invest in technical infrastructure to support user growth, improve its current online offering and extend the service to a broader range of consumers across a number of platforms.
Dr Mike Gera, general partner at Pond Ventures, said: “In TIOTI, we’re backing a team with the drive and vision to have a big impact in the rapidly evolving world of TV on the Internet. This investment is the culmination of a carefully implemented Pond strategy to bring Internet TV, social networking and Web start-ups into the Pond portfolio.
“TIOTI is offering something unique, which nicely complements the recent launches of IPTV and TV download services from various household names, so we are excited to be part of the development of this service, supporting it with our expertise.”
Paul Cleghorn, TIOTI’s UK founding partner and creator, said: “It is fantastic to have the support of an experienced investment partner like Pond as we build TIOTI into the best place on the internet to go for TV.”
Marc Colando, TIOTI’s US founding partner, added: “We are thrilled to have Pond onboard with TIOTI at the start of this exciting global transition period for television. This investment will help bring the internet TV proposition of TIOTI to the mass market.”
Cleghorn was a panellist at the recent MediaTel Group seminar on the ‘Future Of TV’, where he discussed, among other things, the future of searching for content (see NewsLine).
TIOTI: www.tioti.com