Pseudo.com Shuts Down

Problems at the six-year-old site led to a dwindling cash reserve, despite weeks of searching for outside funding.

“We ran out of money, it was that simple,” Pseudo’s Senior Vice President Jeanne Meyer told Reuters.

Monday afternoon, CEO David Bohrman told Pseudo’s 175 employees the company was folding its tent.

“As of today, we are all former Pseudo employees,” Bohrman said.

The site specialized in streaming video over several Internet channels, covering topics such as music, entertainment and technology news.

Pseudo’s money troubles became public in June, when it laid off 60 employees and scaled back production to 12 hours of live video rather than more expensive video pieces.

Pseudo received heavy media coverage in August with its painstaking coverage of the Republican National Convention. The site featured live video from five 360 degree cameras stationed throughout the convention hall, live interviews with newsmakers and 24-hour chatrooms where site users could carry on their own political discussions.

At the convention, Bohrman told the Online NewsHour the media attention would help Pseudo to make its mark.

“[The media coverage] has exposed what we’re doing to a whole new kind of audience,” Bohrman said. “I think we have surpassed our expectations in the attention we’ve gotten.”

Meyer said the attention helped Pseudo attract guests as well as viewers.

“It’s going to help us book some great guests,” she said. “We’re getting pitches instead of the other way around.”

But despite the staff’s enthusiasm and the site’s programming blitz, the company reportedly failed to draw enough viewers to sustain its coverage and scaled back its operation at the Democratic convention two weeks later. Both Bohrman and Meyer declined to disclose how much Pseudo’s political coverage had cost.

Now, after several last-ditch efforts at finding a buyer, the site is closing up shop. The New York Post reports there hasn’t been any talk among staffers of continuing without pay, though Bohrman and Pseudo president Tony Asnes said they had been working without pay for a week.

“It’ll be a badge of honor to have worked here,” Meyer told The Post. “What’s amazing is that we did streaming audio and video here for five years — before anyone else.”