Flixster, the social network for movie reviews, reportedly raises VC round

flixsterlogo.bmpFlixster is a San Francisco Web site that lets you share movie ratings and reviews with friends.

It has reportedly raised a round of financing of $2 million or so from Silicon Valley’s Lightspeed Venture Partners, though we haven’t confirmed this. [Update: One authoritative, albeit off-record source tells VentureBeat the funding was more than $2M]

We haven’t mentioned this company before, but it is noteworthy for its scorching marketing tactics. By November, after just ten months of operation, it said it had signed up 5 million registered users, who had posted 190 million movie recommendations. It drove this with aggressive policies, such as automating a way to invite friends on your contact list with messages that reportedly weren’t necessarily always true. Upon signing up, Flixster engages you immediately, asking you to rate 50 films to determine your preferences, and offers you a profile with spiffy movie-star avatars and backgrounds — and thereby gathering quite a bit of data about you. It places your movie reviews to the “movies” section on your MySpace page.

Last but not least, there’s the gawk appeal that such a site has for young people: Page after page of good looking folks to look at.

flixsterscreen.bmp

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About the Author, Matt Marshall

Matt Marshall is editor and CEO of VentureBeat. Follow him on Twitter at @mmarshall, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • News travels fast!

    I got an Out of Office Auto reply email from Joe last night reading “I will be on vacation in Aruba indefinitely. Please do not try to reach me.”

    [Laughs nervously]

    #s aren’t quite right above, but I can say we’re very excited to be investors in the company. I’ve posted a bit about why we like them at the Lightspeed blog - click on my name in this comment if you’re interested.
  • I am wondering if there are venture capital firms or non-profit foundations out there that are going to donate to the non-profits Wikipedia and the Citizendium. These are both free online encyclopedias that can help change someone's life. They can truly help make this country better and smarter.
  • Jeremy, I've updated with some new numbers, which are pretty solid, as I've got a pretty good source on this one. Let me know if you've got any feedbak.

    Matt
  • MSG
    Lame site. There's already a site that does this WAAAYYY better, and it's much more professional and polished. It's called IMDB, and it has a MASSIVE user base. Let's move on.
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