MeFeedia

Industry

Video Search and Discovery 

Profile

MeFeedia, a video search and discovery site, helps consumers find and watch video, no matter where the content is hosted or which platform or player is used. Since it began in 2004, MeFeedia has grown to more than six million unique users per month, up 323 percent in 2008. As a video search engine, MeFeedia stands out from other video sharing sites as it helps people find any video, from any site, and conveniently enables users to watch, organize, and share them in one place – MeFeedia.com.  

“We have hundreds of thousands of new videos come in every day,” said MeFeedia CEO, Frank Sinton. “Our core search constantly looks at more than 23,000 different sources covering more than 200 million videos around the web. Today, almost every website has, or is looking into adding, video as a core component. We plan to index it all.” 

In addition to search features, MeFeedia allows people to personalize their media experience, which brings users back again and again. Through its “My Queue” feature, MeFeedia offers a customized way to aggregate videos from thousands of sources into one, adaptive “Queue of Videos.” Based on users’ interests, this Personal Queue is able to recommend new videos, shows and channels similar to what they have watched previously.  

MeFeedia also boasts a strong user community, where users can create profiles and share favorite videos on specific topics and more on the “Meeps” social network. MeFeedia’s network of Meeps shows users what their friends are watching, and helps them find and filter videos based on popularity.  

With such a strong video search offering and dynamic, live community, MeFeedia relies on being online at all times. The impact of any downtime would take a toll on revenue and reputation. “If our site were to go down today, it would be like having our house burn down,” said Sinton. 

Challenge

In fact, in its beginning stages, MeFeedia did experience “having the house burn down” with its original hosting provider. Although the online company was not the size that it is now, it experienced continued network problems. For example, at one point its hosted network went down in the midst of peak usage and took an entire weekend to get back up. This not only incurred revenue loss for MeFeedia, but had the potential to affect the perceptions of the young company.  

MeFeedia could not risk having these types of issues continue. They needed a hosting provider with a reliable and robust network, and quality service to ensure that its site was viable at all times. Also, MeFeedia was experiencing strong viral growth and needed to ensure that it had the proper IT infrastructure and hosting system in place to scale with higher traffic.  

Solution

In the year since MeFeedia moved over to PEER 1 managed hosting, the company has experienced explosive growth. When the company made the switch in 2007, it had one million unique visitors per month. Today, six million people visit the site per month and it continues to grow. 

PEER 1 is able to scale efficiently with MeFeedia’s fast growth, offering solutions and upgrades that fit each stage of development. MeFeedia’s multi-server solution with PEER 1 includes servers for search, web and database management. With PEER 1’s network backbone, MeFeedia also has the peace of mind knowing that they can keep up with any amount of user demand. 

“Since we moved to PEER 1, they have saved our business thousands of dollars,” said Sinton. “The PEER 1 team has worked with us to find the best solution that fits our needs, not what would make them the most money, unlike other providers.” 
 

Benefits 

Customizable Solution and Pricing

Outsourcing its online IT infrastructure with PEER 1 is cost effective for MeFeedia, as it’s cheaper for the company to host with PEER 1 than to hire an additional tech engineer. MeFeedia relies on PEER 1 to handle any software and hardware upgrades, as well as troubleshoot and fix any issues that may arise in an immediate, efficient manner. 

In addition, PEER 1 has worked closely with MeFeedia to customize pricing to help the company weather difficult economic conditions. This kind of service is unique in the industry, and illustrates how PEER 1 values each customer and is committed to help each one succeed. 

FirstCall Support™

“We are very impressed,” said Sinton. “Every time we call in, our call actually goes to a real person. They are interested in our problems and can fix them almost immediately.”  

With PEER 1’s FirstCall Support, MeFeedia has the security of having its issues or questions taken care of on the first phone call. This means there is not a wait for tickets to be addressed or hardware to be replaced. MeFeedia also has the guarantee that any failing hardware will be replaced within one hour, to ensure minimal hardware downtime. 

Additionally, MeFeedia’s PEER 1 support staff is actually located in the same datacenter as its equipment, meaning that its dedicated Technical Account Manager has immediate access to hardware and can troubleshoot as needed.  

Scalable and Flexible

As a fast-growing company, it has been difficult for MeFeedia to predict its rate of expansion. In 2008, the company experienced 323 percent year-over-year growth. Even with this dramatic increase, PEER 1 has kept up with and even one step ahead of the company. PEER 1 has provided flexible and scalable solutions that can grow as needed, and offer the best solution at all times.  

As MeFeedia continues its growth, it is looking into some of the more advanced solutions that PEER 1 offers. Soon the company is going to need a bigger solution, while still remaining flexible, to keep up with its customer demand, while still remaining flexible and maintaining high transfer speeds. 

“We know PEER 1 is there to help us decide on the best solution both now and looking forward,” said Sinton. “We are very happy with PEER 1 infrastructure, backbone and support.”