MeeVee a start-up that styles itself as a TV Guide for the web, has bought another start-up -- Top 10 Sources -- in an effort to revamp its own website.
The Burlingame, Calif, company's vision -- to help people manage their online and off-line TV and Video viewing by letting them manage it through a web-based dashboard -- is not unique. TV Guide, for example, has a directly competing service in beta. There is also Couchville and Sidereel, among others.
MeeVee has not had an easy time, and laid off 20 percent of its workforce this summer. It did, however, manage to raise $3.5 million.
The acquired startup, Top 10 Sources, is a content aggregator that makes it easy for human editors to find and highlight appealing material for its destination website. Top 10 has generally focused on celebrity gossip.
MeeVee uses Top 10's editorial tools to hand-pick contributors and let them add content. Chief executive Michael Raneri says that the new arrangement will set his company apart and let "citizen's journalism take over," to make the best content easy for users to discover.
MeeVee's homepage now features editorially-created "interest" channels" for topics ranging from TV shows to baseball players. An interest channel for a TV show, for example, features news and gossip relating to the show, episode guides, user reviews, and clips to watch, while an interest channel for a baseball player has sports footage and some photographs but not much other content.
You can also create your own interest channels, find users with similar interests and browse their channels.
The company hopes to make money by analyzing its users' interests and targeting ads.
