New York, NY, January 19, 2010
Unigo, a Webby-nominated site that Walt Mossberg called “a college selection resource built for the age of YouTube and Facebook”, has selected Kaltura, developer of the first open source online video platform, to deliver video on Unigo.com, including its newly launched initiative with The Wall Street Journal — WSJ On Campus (http://wsj.unigo.com). Unigo.com provides current college students a platform to publish reviews, photos and videos about their school to educate and inform prospective students during their college selection process.
“When we created Unigo.com it was clear that video would be a huge part of what we were trying to achieve. Kaltura’s platform is a clear choice – it is extremely flexible, has advanced user-generated-content features, and the Kaltura team has great experience in supporting video both for social networks and for institutions in the Education space.” said Jordan Goldman, Unigo Founder and CEO. “At the end of the day, the use of video powered by Kaltura allows contributors to easily share their perspective in the most vivid and realistic way.” added Barry Goldberg, Unigo CTO.
Unigo users can view, share and upload videos using Kaltura’s online video tools. Kaltura also powers video for ‘WSJ On Campus’, a recently launched strategic relationship between Unigo and The Wall Street Journal, which teams up Unigo’s student correspondents from more than 2,000 colleges across America with The Wall Street Journal to illuminate what students and parents really need to know about choosing a college, getting in and college life.
“It’s inspiring to see new ideas and initiatives like Unigo take off, and we’re proud to be part of this very needed and helpful resource,” said Ron Yekutiel, Kaltura Chairman and CEO. “This is a great example of how Kaltura’s flexible open source platform and unique interactive UGC features allow publishers to build their own video experience to fit their specific needs.”
About Unigo
Founded by 26 year-old Jordan Goldman, Unigo.com gives current college students a platform to create reviews, photos and videos about their schools. Since launching in September 2008, tens of thousands of students have weighed in – on many campuses, 5-10% of the entire student body has contributed — making Unigo one of the world’s largest resources for college information. The New York Times reported “Unigo’s college reviews make the U.S. News summaries read like junk mail … they are vivid in a way no guidebook can match”, NPR said Unigo “has 50 times the college content of any book or website that already exists,” and The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg called Unigo “a college resource built for the age of YouTube and Facebook.”* Unigo was named “one of the 100 private companies with the biggest impact on the public sector” by Always On, listed amongst “The Top 10 Social Networks for Generation Y” by Mashable, and was a finalist for a 2009 Webby Award in the category “Best Social Networking Site.” Current and past advertisers include Apple, Best Buy, The Limited, Dell, ROTC, The British Council and several top-tier colleges. Unigo’s Founder and CEO, Jordan Goldman, has a history in the college information space — at 17 he was profiled by New York Times reporter Jacques Steinberg in his best-selling book about the college admissions process, The Gatekeepers. At 18, Jordan created the first 100% student-written series of college guidebooks, Students’ Guide to Colleges, which was released in five editions from Penguin Books. At 26, as CEO of Unigo.com, Jordan was named “one of the 100 most influential New Yorkers in the digital business community” by Silicon Alley Insider.
About Kaltura
Kaltura provides the world’s first Open Source Online Video Platform. Over 48,000 web publishers, integrators, and application developers use our flexible platform to add advanced video and photo functionalities including uploading, importing, editing, annotating, remixing, publishing, syndicating, searching, monetizing, and monitoring. Founded in 2006, Kaltura’s open source code is available as a free Software Development Kit and as downloadable plugins for leading platforms, including content management (Drupal, Joomla, Alfresco), blogging (WordPress, BuddyPress), collaboration (MediaWiki, TikiWiki), enterprise (MindTouch, Elgg), and education (Moodle, Sakai). Kaltura’s SaaS platform includes, streaming and hosting, ad serving, content syndication, and aggregation of related third party services, as well as maintenance, support, integration and professional services. Kaltura’s self-hosted platform is offered as a free community edition, Since its public launch, New York-based Kaltura has won numerous awards and endorsements, including the coveted TechCrunch40 People’s Choice award, Mashable’s ‘Open Web’ award, Microsoft’s 2009 ‘most promising Israeli web startup’ award, AlwaysOn’s ‘top 250 startup’ and ‘top 100 media company’ awards, LeWeb’s ‘top 30 web startup’ award, the Open World Forum ‘Open Innovation’ award, Esquire Magazine’s ’8 most promising Web 3.0 companies’, TV Week’s ’5 most promising video startups for 2009’, and IDC’s ‘top 10 innovative application companies’. Kaltura is also a founding member of the ‘Open Video Alliance’ (www.openvideoalliance.org), a coalition of organizations dedicated to fostering open infrastructure, tools, and standards for online video.