Stage6

Stage6

Screenshot of the previous Stage6.com home page
Type of site	video sharing
Available in	English
Owner	DivX, Inc.
Created by	DivX, Inc.
Website	http://www.stage6.com
Alexa rank	~90 (February 2008)
Commercial	Yes
Registration	Free
Launched	2006
Current status	Offline

Stage6 was a video sharing website owned and operated by DivX, Inc., where users could upload, share, and view video clips. Stage6 was different from other video services in that it streamed high quality video clips that were user-encoded with DivX and Xvid video codecs.

The website never went beyond beta status, and was shut down by DivX Inc. on February 29, 2008 because of apparent inability to support Stage6 financially, or other officially unspecified reasons.

In June 2008, CNET hailed Stage6 as one of the greatest defunct websites in history.

First launched in 2006 by DivX, Inc. and in public beta, Stage6 was similar to other video sharing sites like YouTube in allowing streaming video to be uploaded freely by anyone willing to register.

At approximately 16:00 GMT on February 9, 2008, Stage6 was hacked. People that visited the front page of the website were redirected to multiple shock sites. Several thousand user accounts that were used to upload videos between December 7, 2007 and February 10, 2008, are thought to have been compromised by the attack Approximately two and a half hours later, a site maintenance notice was put up by the Stage6 team.

Service to the site was restored at approximately 11:30 GMT on February 10, 2008. The upload and publishing functions were disabled after the attack, and restored on February 14, 2008. The motive for the attack and extent of damage remain unclear to this day.

On July 24, 2007, DivX, Inc. announced that it would be seeking to separate Stage6 as a company from the rest of DivX, Inc. Co-founder and Executive Chairman Jordan Greenhall would be switching from his current role as CEO to manage the separating Stage6, which, if successful, was expected to be completed later in 2007.