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Blinkx.TV : More Video Than Google, Yahoo or YouTube

Blinkx.TV : More Video Than Google, Yahoo or YouTube

When it comes to search, the big boys on the block tend to receive the bulk of attention when they offer a niche search service, even if some smaller innovators are holding their own in the ultra competitive fields.

One such niche is that of Video Search. Recently, Yahoo redesigned their Video Search service into a more interactive social media oriented video search and sharing service. Likewise, Google Video has transformed itself over the past quarter to be more of a user friendly video service which, like Yahoo, has borrowed a page from YouTube.

YouTube, the Flickr of video search and sharing, has notched its own dominating space in Google and Yahoo’s backyard, which was once dominated by AOL’s SingingFish and Yahoo’s Altavista – two video services which have been left behind in the dust, something Altavista should be used to by now (although AV is sort of Yahoo Video’s foundation).

YouTube’s dominance has led to MySpace entering the picture, as most active MySpace members have videos embedded in their profiles. MySpace Video is quite similar to YouTube, with the MySpace ‘ease of use’ – which could be defined as the back mirror reflection of most usability guidelines.

But before we send you off to all of these supercool 2.0 video tagging and swapping tools I’d like to share a bit of information on one video and multimedia search engine which is still kicking it hard, hard enough to offer more video than Google, Yahoo or YouTube… blinkx.tv.

blinkx.tv is the largest video search engine in terms of indexed content with over 4,000,000 hours of video content available.

blinkx made the announcement today:

As the number of places to watch video content online explodes, blinkx.tv wants to be the one-stop destination for retrieving video, delivering more content than Google, Yahoo, or any of the popular user-generated content providers. Using advanced speech recognition technology to automatically listen to and understand audio and video content, blinkx.tv endeavors to deliver results that are more accurate and reliable than metadata-based keyword services, such as those offered by Google and Yahoo!.

Suranga Chandratillake, Founder of blinkx adds, ”The last twelve months have seen an explosion of online, user-generated content. Straightforward tools and a cheaper, faster Internet have made it possible for everyone to be a producer, an author, a composer, and most importantly, a publisher. First, podcasting and video-blogs, and now short form user-generated content — or what I call ‘Garage TV’ — have become tremendously popular on the numerous video sharing sites. The volume of this material will soon rival that of online content from the traditional media groups. Just as CNN and the BBC have long been silos of trusted news content, YouTube, Google Video and others are fast-becoming the home for all kinds of Garage TV.”

Althought Blinkx.tv has all kinds of content available via their video search, according to HitWise, they’re not even in the Top 10 Video Search Engines:

1. YouTube 42.94%
2. MySpace Videos 24.22%
3. Yahoo! Video Search 9.58%
4. MSN Video Search 9.21%
5. Google Video Search 6.48%
6. AOL Video 4.28%
7. iFilm 2.28%
8.Grouper 0.69%
9. Dailymotion.com 0.22%
10. vSocial.com 0.09%

So, what does blinkx have to do, with its 4 million hours of indexed video, to achieve YouTube, Yahoo Video, MySpace and Google Video buzz? Here are my recommendations:

1) CAPITALIZE Blinkx.tv
2) Do a better job at differentiating blinkx.tv, Pico and blinkx.com
3) The Blinkx.com homepage says “Less is more” then boasts the size of its Blinkx.tv index, this is confusing
4) Look at this headline; “blinkx Partners with Playboy.com to Add Hours of Free Adult Entertainment Content to www.blinkx.tv” – is it blinkx or blinkx.tv?
5) Again, the branding seems mixed and bipolar, is it blinkx or blinkx.tv? After reading this release, I’m still not sure.
6) I type “blinkx.tv” into my browser and am redirected to tv.blinkx.com… WHAT?!? Why is Blinkx doing this after branding themselves as blinkx.tv in this release title; “blinkx.tv Reaches 4,000,000 Hours of Searchable Video Content”

blinkx.tv (tv.blinkx.com, blinkx.com, Blinkx) is doing some really cool stuff, but their marketing message seems to be as busy and non-linear as their search results, which may be leading to confusion and ignorance by the video searching masses.

Now that I’ve gotten this news and opinion off my chest, here are some of the other video search engines with less video hours available than blinkx.tv:

YouTube
Google Video
Yahoo Video
MySpace Videos
AOL Uncut Video (AOL’s answer to YouTube)
AOL’s SingingFish

Wendy Boswell has a nice selection of more video search engines in her post Find a Video with Video Search Engines at About.com.

Category SEO
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SEJ STAFF Loren Baker Founder at Foundation Digital

Loren Baker is the Founder of SEJ, an Advisor at Alpha Brand Media and runs Foundation Digital, a digital marketing ...

Blinkx.TV : More Video Than Google, Yahoo or YouTube

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