metacafe.com
The internet is designed to be a source of entertainment, and there are plenty of hilarious, cute, and inspiring videos to be found on here. We wouldn't be able to handle our daily lives without the internet, and its ability to provide us with tonnes of silly content. So don't worry â we will find the best memes for you and share them with your friends!
Today, YouTube is a titan in the online video industry and provides countless opportunities for users to share their silly videos. It all began with YouTube back in 2007.
Yes, you can make a good living today by monetizing your YouTube channel. Whether itâs doing unboxings, reaction videos, reviews, etc., itâs pretty amazing to see how far YouTube has come over the years. Who knew, for instance, when YouTube first started that it would become its own form of cable television?
That being said, there are downsides to YouTube's meteoric rise as a cultural phenomenon. For example, many people who once swore by the video streaming and sharing platform are reluctant to even use it if it can be avoided. We all know how obnoxious YouTube has become with advertising. How they gradually started adding more and more ads before videos to the point where it is today: you can hardly watch anything on YouTube anymore - what you get is like 50% ads and 50% actual video content.
Now that YouTube has joined the ranks of social media and video sharing websites, people are looking for viable alternatives. Some have even begun suggesting that we start uploading normal, family-friendly videos to Porn Hub!
Before resigning to an extreme alternative, I ask you to consider one of the many other video sharing websites that exist, that don't require our fun viral videos to appear alongside millions of NSFW clips. Sites like Daily Motion or the site we will be looking at today, Meta Café might just be the next best thing now that YouTube has become one giant streaming commercial feed.
If you haven't heard of Meta Café, now's the time to get acquainted with the free website. It has countless potential viral videos, allows users to upload content of their own, and even offers image galleries - all of which are easily shared to social media, so you can ensure that you and your friends never miss a laugh or a gasp.
History
Meta Café may not be as popular as it once was. But the website is still an important part of online video streaming. In 2011, Meta Café had 13 million unique monthly users in the United States alone. And, beyond that, the site's global reach was that of 40 million unique monthly users. These numbers are very impressive in the world of online video streaming sites.
Meta Café was founded by entrepreneurs from Israel, Eyal Hertzog and Arik Czerniak. They started out with a sizeable investment from Benchmark Capital of $3 million. In June of 2006, Meta Café closed its first very impressive round of fundraising at a grand total of $12 million. In September of that year, Meta Café relocated its headquarters to Palo Alto, California. This put them in the position to grow to become the third-largest video streaming site in the world.
In 2006, Meta Café announced that they would begin paying content producers. They did this by creating a program called Producer Rewards. The way this worked is that any video that was viewed at least 20,000 times and did not infringe on copyright laws or Meta Café community standards were awarded $50 for every 1,000 views generated in the US.
This program was severely curtailed towards the end of 2008 and was ended altogether due to a lack of profitability for the company. A leadership change likely occurred around the same time.
Erick Hachenburg, who once served as Electronic Arts' executive vice president, briefly took over as Meta Café's CEO in 2007. However, by 2011, he had left his post after being acquired by a digital talent agency called The Collective. The details surrounding the acquisition were never released, but rumor has it that the total amount paid was far less than the amount that had been invested into Meta Café up to that point.
Design
Meta Café, unsurprisingly (to me), does not look entirely like YouTube in terms of design. Sure, the site's theme is different (oppositional, in fact) with blue pops of color against a white background instead of YouTube's iconic red and white theme. But in terms of the way the site itself is laid out the influence is clear.
At the top of the page, you will find the search bar. This allows users to type in whatever keywords they can think up. And to the left of that, you will find a clickable dropdown hamburger style menu. This allows users to browse everything the site has to offer - either by Home, Trending, Popular, or Latest; or by category (such as art, animation, cooking, music, entertainment, news, sports, video games, pets, etc.). In the middle of that menu is a bunch of featured videos to browse through.
Once you click into a video, the cluttered design and difficulty navigating the site become evident. The margins are filled with ads, related videos, videos you might like, and recommended channels, which makes it difficult to focus on the video you're watching.
Content
Meta Café makes it easy for users to share interesting videos with other people. They have a huge library of viral-worthy videos, as well as galleries of sharable images that make great memes. The videos are usually very short, and because they are user-uploaded, they tend to be of low quality.
This is where Meta Café falls short in my opinion. The videos, in my opinion, are often little more than short sensationalized videos that are not meme or viral friendly. If I had to describe the nature of the content, I would say that they are closer to low-quality clickbait than anything else.
Desktop and Mobile Experience
Although there is no Meta Café app, I must say that the site is well optimized for mobile browsers. Unfortunately, however, many sites these days are not well optimized for mobile devices- especially given the fact that most of us spend a lot of our internet browsing time on our phones. The site functions just as well on your laptop as it does on your smartphone or tablet. So, there is nothing to worry about on that front. Of course, an app would be better, but, hey, I'll take what I can get.
Pricing and Plans
Meta Café is a free website that allows users to upload videos. However, the downside of this is that there are many ads on the website. These ads can be before videos, as well as embedded ads throughout the website. It can be quite annoying, but at least it's free.
Suggestions that I have for Meta Café
Could you please stop the ads on YouTube? They are really becoming too much. I know that YouTube is better than this, and I'm saying this as someone who really values it. As for Meta Café releasing an app- well, that would be great! Maybe a premium version of their site could counteract the reliance on advertising so they don't have to use it so heavily.
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