we’re excited to announce that boxee has received an investment from Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures.

starting today, Bijan Sabet from Spark and Fred Wilson from Union Square will join our board.

Bijan brings a history of living room innovation from his days in WebTV Networks and Moxi Digital. Fred has been investing in the Internets since before Al Gore invented it.. they understand the web, the users and what makes a product successful on a unique level. together they bring to boxee lots of relevant experience (as well as a great taste in music – fred, bijan).

so what is it that we see in this space that has us so excited?… change. people are turning away from the traditional broadcast or cable TV experience in favor of:

• a true on-demand experience – to watch a specific episode of The Office right now (and do it for free)
• a connected experience – to play a song and see the lyrics, choose to watch the music video for it, or start singing the karaoke version
• a social experience – to see a friend has a season-pass for Battle of the Bods, watch it for a few minutes, and tell them you no longer want to be their friend
• an open platform – to play any media from any source, run any app, without a gatekeeper restricting what you can or can’t do
• something that’s easy to use – even for grandma!

looking at these trends, both Bijan and Fred believe that boxee is positioned to become the software running tomorrow’s living room, where the Internet, social networks and TV are intertwined.

our growth from an idea based on XBMC to what you see today of boxee has not been easy. over the past year, with the support of families and friends, we’ve put our heart, soul and an unhealthy amount of time into making boxee come true. when we launched in June our goal was to attract 5,000 alpha testers. this past weekend, we passed 100,000 sign-ups.

these numbers prove people are looking for new ways to enjoy their entertainment. we’ve heard over and over again from users on our blog, forum and twitter that boxee is their favorite way to play media in the living room and on their computers. with each new user, article, and blog post about us we grow one step closer to our goal of becoming the firefox of media centers.

join us. it’ll be a fun ride!

our goals for 2009:

• grow out of our comfortable closed-alpha cocoon and launch a kick-ass beta
• build even more functionality and content into boxee while making it easier to navigate
• listen to user requests, ideas and frustrations (and improve the product accordingly)
• work with team-xbmc, developers and partners to extend boxee beyond the confines of our limited resources
• finish the year with ~ 1,000,000 users