6rounds wants to add video to all your web activity (invites)

For anyone wanting to have a video chat with their friends, there’s no shortage of options. But a startup called Gixoo is hoping there’s room for a new service, called 6rounds, which adds new ways to interact with people while chatting.
Right now, you can see the service in action at the 6rounds website, although the company plans to expand the service far beyond the site. It’s easy to start a video chat with friends or other people you find, and 6rounds even tries to help the conversation along by suggesting interests you have in common (based on user profiles). More importantly, it isn’t just about having conversations. You could play a game together, or watch a YouTube video, or shop on Amazon during a chat — activities open in a window in the center of the screen, while the chat windows are pushed to the side.
Eventually, however, chief executive Dany Fishel says, “We hope that 95 percent of the video chats don’t occur at 6rounds.com. We don’t see it as a destination site.”
To that end, there should soon be a 6rounds Facebook application, and after that similar applications for other social networks and websites — either built by the company itself or by third-party developers; Fishel and chief operating officer Ilan Leibovich say they plan to give developers access to the 6rounds service through application programming interfaces (APIs). It’s also possible to embed your 6rounds profile on other sites (see the sample embeddable profile here).
6rounds is still in a private beta test, but VentureBeat readers can check it out by clicking here (Gixoo gave us 250 invites).
The Israel-based company plans to make money through virtual gifts, personalization, e-commerce, licensing, and advertising. It has raised a total of $1.5 million in venture investment, with backing from Rhodium Investment Group and the Israeli Startup Factory.