Blogspotting reports that YouTube has raised $8 million from Sequoia Capital.
YouTube, the video sharing service, raised $8 million, bringing the total amount it has raised so far to $11.5 million. The backer is Sequoia Capital, the VC that originally financed the startup in November.
So, even as the company is just beginning to try to shed its copyright problems and transition to becoming an entertainment partner for big media companies, it's bringing in dough. It's had some recent luck signing up established folks, including E! and Comcast's G4 cable network.
YouTube also has the recent MTV partnership. They should be able to get many more content deals in the future. TechCrunch notes that YouTube also has some new competition: JumpCut and Motionbox. Both of these video sharing tools also offer some video editing capability.
Any new service has to battle YouTube's rapidly growing popularity. YouTube claims 35 million video views every day and 35,000 new videos uploaded daily. They also have the feature in Technorati's popular section that shows the most popular YouTube videos linked to by blogs. Still leading the pack are Bush Was Right, PeCa bio hazard highlight and Real Life Simpsons Intro. The MySpace to Movie is also worth watching if you have a few minutes to kill.
