Blinkx Launches Video Search Platform for Site Publishers
Blinkx has decided to package and sell parts of the technology it has developed over time for its video search engine, in an attempt to capitalize on the rapidly increasing amount of online video.
As they create and license more and more video content, Web publishers need software to categorize, organize and index their clips and make them easily searchable by their sites' visitors, a Blinkx executive said.
"We can help you do that. We've taken a lot of the technology we've built for video search, turned it into components and launched it as a platform," said Suranga Chandratillake, Blinkx's CEO and founder.
Called AMP (Advanced Media Platform), the Blinkx platform consists of four packages that can work in tandem or as stand-alone components, he said.
One piece is designed for handling video content and includes the search functionality and a feature to match and link the publisher's videos with its text articles.
Another component adds an element of community, suggesting relevant videos to users based on their previous choices and on clips' overall popularity.
A third product automates the categorization of clips in the video library by generating a taxonomy based on the videos included.
Finally, AMP also contains technology for doing search engine optimization (SEO) to the video clips so that they will be more fully and accurately indexed by the likes of Google and Yahoo. When doing SEO on the clips, AMP goes beyond simply using their metadata by applying Blinkx's speech-to-text technology and generating a text transcript of what is said during each video.
AMP is available now and Blinkx will sell it in two versions: as conventional software that customers can implement on their premises and as hosted sofware-as-a-service.
Pricing varies widely based on how many components are bought and how they are used, but it ranges from the tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Already some sites are planning to implement AMP, including Conde Nast's business publication Portfolio, personal finance magazine Kiplinger's and financial news site WallSt.net, Chandratillake said.
