(Photo: Vyou)

VYou, the NYC-based video question and answer site that raised $3 million back in May 2011, will be shutting down its consumer-facing product next week. The company, which operates from an office in SoHo, sent out an email to users today announcing that they will no longer be able to upload videos starting April 3rd. By April 5th, the site will shut down completely.

VYou cofounder Steve Spurgat told Betabeat by phone that the shutdown was primarily tied to the well of VC cash running dry. "A lot of it was capital related," he admitted. "I think in the end it was just more of a business decision  We had a very dedicated, very active community, but there just weren't enough of them." Mr. Spurgat declined to share user metrics.

Despite the fact that regular users will no longer be able to record and share videos on the site, VYou won't be shutting down completely. The core team of five will continue working on custom integrations for celebrities and media companies "In the end all of our traffic was happening off the site rather than on the site," Mr. Spurgat said, meaning that the majority of VYou's traffic came from VYou products embedded on outside sites.

The company had wrangled a host of big names, like Oprah, Kat Dennings and the cast of Doctor Who, to join up. Recently the site hosted high profile VCs like Adam Ludwin and Dave Tisch (both VYou investors) as part of its "Ask Angel Investors & Venture Capitalists Group." Given this news it's hard not to see the Ask a VC series as a last ditch effort to enlist financiers to spur more interest in the consumer side of the business.

Here's the full text of the email sent out to users:

Dearest VYou Community,

Video answers to life's questions, spread all over the web. VYou was founded on that simple idea and generated millions of videos, from YouTubers falling off of chairs to Martin Luther King III sharing stories about his father.

Now, sadly, this email comes with unfortunate news. VYou is shutting down. Keeping the website running is no longer possible.

Next Wednesday, April 3rd, the website will no longer allow you to record videos. On Friday, the website will come down entirely. You will be able to receive all of your videos at that time (more info here).

Through all the peaks and even the outages, the tight knit VYou community has meant so much to us. The VYou team is still together and working on awesome stuff - this won't be the last you hear from us.

We'll still be around, always. Feel free to email us at hi@vyou.com

Much Love,
The VYou Team

Well, now we can add one more duty to Ms. Sandberg's list of adult responsibilities: managing Zuck's philanthropic giving. According to Fast Company, emails released last month show that Ms. Sandberg played a major role coordinating Mr. Zuckerberg's $100 million donation to the support Newark, N.J.'s public school system.

In the emails, the planning team talks candidly about trying to make the donation look participatory, getting big names and big round numbers involved, and making sure the billionaires look "modest" and feel "special."

The emails, which can be read in their entirety here, speak to the degree to which Ms. Sandberg took control of managing the process of completing Mr. Zuckerberg's generous donation. In an email to Newark mayor Cory Booker and one of Mr. Booker's advisers, Ms. Sandberg asked for a breakdown on operating expenses for the fundraising, and details on community outreach efforts. In another email, a Facebook communications employee says he reworked a press release announcing the gift at Ms. Sandberg's encouragement.

Talk about micro-managing! Some things, it seems, are best left to the grownups.

(Screenshot: Zagg)

Between the Windows 8 sales that hit "well below" expectations, empty retail stores and the numerous YouTube videos featuring a sweaty Steve Ballmer trying to amp up a bored crowd at a product launch, it appears that any person or thing that touches Microsoft is destined for a mortifying moment or two. Even Oprah Winfrey, Queen of All Things Ever, is not immune to the challenges inherent to hawking a Microsoft product.

Betabeat was surprised to find that the Surface, Microsoft's attempt at cornering the tablet market, appeared on Oprah's annual holiday list of Favorite Things alongside a corksicle and some jelly sandals. But it seems that even though she called it a "wowser" on her Favorite Things list, Ms. Winfrey's devotion may be more marketing than true love.

Last night, Oprah tweeted, "Gotta say love that SURFACE! Have bought 12 already for Christmas gifts." The Surface may be good enough for those 12 people, but not for Ms. Winfrey herself, it seems. Zagg noted that the tweet was actually sent via Twitter for iPad; Betabeat confirmed that according to Tweetbot, the tweet was indeed send from an iPad.

Somewhere out West, Steve Ballmer is having a rage stroke.

(Photo: waywire.com)

While you were clinging to your A/C unit over the weekend, Newark mayor and Twitter addict Cory Booker was ushering his new startup out of stealth mode. The company, called #waywire, is a media platform that combines original and syndicated videos with relevant user-generated content from young adults about what's important to them and their perspective on issues in the news.

Wait, didn't Al Gore have the same idea in 2005?

"Traditional news sources aren’t in any way talking to millennials," Mr. Booker tells TechCrunch. Perhaps the site can start with whether any young adult actually wants to be labeled a "millenial"?

Mr. Booker's cofounder in the startup is Nathan Richardson, #waywire's CEO. (He also goes by Nate.) Mr. Richardson was most recently the president of Gilt City. His departure for the startup world was announced on the heels of significant layoffs at Gilt Groupe in January. Sarah Ross, TechCrunch's former chief marketing officer, is also a cofounder.

The startup has already raised a $1.75 million seed round from Oprah Winfrey, Eric Schmidt's Innovation Endeavors, Lady Gaga's manager Troy Carter, First Round Capital, and LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner.

Mr. Richardson tells TechCrunch that #waywire plans on launching with 10,000 minutes of original content hosted by "all-millenial newscasters," along with clips from more established news outlets. Video responses, like, say, a reaction to the Supreme Court's healthcare decision, from the #waywire community and your social network will appear alongside the professional content.

Booker believes “There are practical solution to [creating] more jobs, lower crime, better education. If more people could find their voice and be part of the national dialogue, we could solve these problems.”

Any discussion or rebuttal you record can easily be shared via social networks. In fact, #waywire plans on pulling in data from Facebook and Twitter to build a personalized newswire of what's relevant to each user. The startup also plans on offering a badge and reward system that lets trusted users determine what content to highlight on the platform.

In a promotional video shot in Washington Square Park (below), fresh-faced,  politically-engaged young men and women wag their fingers at the divisive soundbite- and celebrity-obsessed state of news today, eager to offer a more circumspect take on the issues. Aaron Sorkin would be so proud!

Oprah, in the wild. (Photo: Oprah.com)

Vyou, the New York City-based Q&A platform, has a very familiar face on its new service: media mogul Oprah Winfrey. The former daytime diva is using Vyou's video service to enrich the recently-rebooted Oprah's Book Club 2.0.

Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail--the Eat Pray Love-ish hiking memoir that inspired Ms. Winfrey to relaunch her book club--also joined Vyou answer reader's questions. Both women have been soliciting questions on Oprah.com and posted recorded video answers today.

On Oprah's Vyou profile, she pledges allegiances to this whole 2.0 business, telling viewers, "I just love the digital world because we can now talk about my favorite thing, reading." Favorite thing--see what she did there?!

On the phone with Betabeat, CEO Steve Spurgat said Vyou designed a special skin for the site to match the design of Oprah.com--a free service the company has offered other big-name users like Senator Chuck Grassley and the BBC's Doctor Who.

Mr. Spurgat said he was approached by Oprah's staffers about a possible integration after they saw him speak at a YO! Social conference. "We’re not monetizing at all," Mr. Spurgat said of the company's current plans. "We’re very focused on driving adoption to the platform and building this really great thing." Vyou's first attempts at monetization will come later this year, he added, by offering partners a revenue-sharing opportunity with pre-roll advertising.

The company seems to have pivoted more towards brand-name and high-profile clientele, but Mr. Spurgat said Vyou is still cultivating different users. "I love all the use cases we have. Everyone from young people to see us as more of a Formspring with video, and then celebrities and influential people."

Oprah's team has been promoting the partnership in O magazine, but Mr. Spurgat wasn't sure if the doyenne would personally shout-out the service to her 12 million odd Twitter fans. "We shall see," he said, "She manages her own account."