Imagine easily uploading and globally streaming videos to friends, family, or potential customers without surrender-ing ownership rights or exposing your personal footage to the vast gaze of the Internet community. Best of all, imagine doing so with a trusted, secure brand. Mydeo is quickly becoming that brand. As a premier Internet broadcasting service, fully integrated with Windows® Movie Maker, Mydeo enables custom-ers to create and send streaming-video e-mails and add videos to personal Web sites or to blogs.

Europe’s First and Only Movie Maker 2 Video Hosting Provider Partner

Traditionally, size restrictions on files and limited bandwidth have prevented small to mediumsized enterprises, as well as home consumers, from sharing videos and presentations over the Internet. Mydeo set out to change that. It came up with an innovative technology that allows customers to upload videos to a global high-speed network and stream them to anyone they wish in a convenient and cost-effective way.

While Mydeo faced many hurdles in establishing itself in the marketplace and generating a critical mass of registered users, it sought out just the right partner.

By partnering with Microsoft, Mydeo was able to embed its product in the latest release of Windows Movie Maker 2, enabling it to reach the millions of Windows XP users who already edit and store their videos locally.

According to Cary Marsh, chief executive officer of Mydeo, “Integrating our service with Windows Movie Maker has given us a truly global reach. We now have customers in more than 160 countries, something we would never have been able to achieve, as a UKbased startup, without such a global partner. The partnership drives qualified, targeted customers directly to our service, resulting in a conversion rate from visit to reg istration from the Windows Movie Maker channel of over 60 percent. And our current sign-up rate is increasing 25 percent each month.”

Mydeo continues to develop its core streaming products on the Windows Media® platform due to the products’ ease of use and ubiquity. During the integration process, Mydeo worked closely with the Movie Maker product team to ensure seamless integration and effective deployment. In the future, Mydeo looks to build upon the success of the partnership through integration into Windows VistaTM and other product groups, including Microsoft® Photo Story 3.

Co-Branding with Tiscali UK

Tiscali UK, one of the largest DSL broadband providers in Europe, cobrands its service with Mydeo. This enables users to add home videos to their Web sites, blogs, or personal Web space areas and send streaming video e-mails. Alex Hole, commercial director of Tiscali UK, says it best: “Streaming video and broadband are a natural fit. As Mydeo were quite a new company, the existing partnership with Microsoft gave us great reassurance that the service was right to introduce to our broadband users.” Microsoft Partnership Mydeo’s Marsh believes the partnership with Microsoft has also benefited Mydeo in other, less tangible ways: “The Microsoft partnership has given an enormous amount of confidence to companies considering partnering with Mydeo. We are integrated into both Tiscali and Orange consumer portals, giving us exposure to millions of broadband users.

These partnerships would have been extremely difficult to win had we not had such a highprofile partnership with Microsoft in place when we pitched.” Says Martin Ashley, a business angel investor, “When considering investing, I was very impressed that Mydeo already had in place such a highprofile partnership with Microsoft. Investing in a startup always has its risks, but the Microsoft partnership made me far more confident that Mydeo would be a good investment.”