about us
what is ffwd?
We grew up flipping through channels with a remote, but our experience with the Internet makes us expect more than a limited number of mass-market channels. However, when we turn off the TV and turn on our computers we’re often disappointed again, not because of the video quality but because the first generation of video sites are clumsy tools for discovering programs one-at-a-time.
The fast forward solution does not remake television in the image of the Internet nor vice versa, but instead reinterprets the television channel from the perspective of crowd sourcing, personalization and the social graph. The result is a personal remote control for the video web that is as simple as channel surfing but more powerful than search.
Our product design philosophy is to make existing behaviors, like channel surfing, radically more powerful rather than proposing entirely new ways of doing things. ffwd is crowd-sourced, personalized, and social. It has unlimited content potential syndicating from any source including YouTube, Funny or Die, New York Times, Comedy Central, Hulu and CBS. Perhaps most importantly, it is "in the cloud," which makes it ready for TV that crosses platforms.
Later this year an our API will make that kind of TV possible by un-tethering your ffwd channel from ffwd.com, allowing developers to create thin client applications that allow an even more ubiquitous, accurate, relevant and consistent web video viewing experience over multiple platforms including living room and mobile hardware.
Our goal is to create the only channel you’ll ever need.
company background
ffwd was started in 2007 by innovators from iLike, CNET Entertainment and Eveo. Our mission to help audiences more efficiently navigate the web video explosion, increasing market size and engagement for the entire video entertainment ecosystem. Draper Fisher Jurvetson invested in our Series A and we launched the web version of our service at ffwd.com on September 8th, 2008 at the DEMOFall08 conference in San Diego. There’s eight of us now fantasizing about the next generation of internet video and the future of television at our offices in San Francisco, CA.