iClips Secures $4.6 Million

iClips (http://www.iclips.com) announced the completion of their first venture funding round totaling $4.6 million, led by Opticality Ventures and joined by Schoffstall Ventures. This brings the total amount raised since the company's October 1999 inception to $5.4 million.

iClips allows Web users to create, send and share streaming video messages as an alternative to text-only messages. iClips provides users with 20MB of free space to store streaming video messages, unlimited bandwidth and a suite of streaming video creation, storage and serving tools. Users can create their own video messages using a PC Camera or a camcorder.

iClips is currently generating revenue from streaming advertising within the video message, online sales of video-related hardware and software, and the sale of premium service subscriptions. They are partnered with several web sites for distribution purposes and promote the co-branding of their suite of streaming video applications with these sites.

The company is confident that the number of people using their multimedia messaging services will continue to grow steadily. A February 2000 Forrester Research report states that by 2002, 30 percent of US online households will actively use rich media to communicate, and personal rich media will spread virally.