Lerza
10-13-2006, 11:46 AM
I was arguing this point with a friend and thought I'd open the discussion up to other members of this community. Basically, I would like your input on my viewpoint here.
First, I'd like to establish a few knowns:
- Blinkx is a video search engine that indexes content with an automated crawler through a sophisticated combination of image and speech recognition.
- Blinkx does not provide video hosting.
- YouTube is the most frequented video community on the web and has a significant head start in branding.
- YouTube's users make the community successful.
- YouTube's categorization of videos is solely dependant upon how accurately a video has been tagged.
- YouTube's search technology is very limited and can often require arduous browsing to find a specific video.
- Internet users are dependant upon their preferred search engine to such an extreme extent that most never use their browser's address bar.
- In terms of search engines, generally speaking, eventually superior technology will triumph.
I am of course not debating the financial feasiblity of such a purchase, but rather the business implications.
Basically, what Blinkx is in need of is a little publicity (and a more appealing site design) to get the visitors rolling in. Their company is solely a search engine, not a hosting service. It would be impractical to undertake the enormous cost of bandwidth, even if with it comes the promise of billions of daily pageviews and the promised land of potentially relevant advertising.
Now, I am quite aware that the "if you build it they will come" strategy does not apply on the internet. You need to provide a unique service and give users a reason to come back. I think Blinkx currently has both of these factors working in its favor - so it is only a matter of time before their popularity soars.
IMO, Blinkx and YouTube can coexist because they fill very different roles. Blinkx's primary strategy for moving forward has got to be promotion of their technology. If it works as touted, their indexing capabilities are far superior to YouTube's tag-reliant structure and would thereby prove to be a much more efficient method of searching for video.
Simply put, Blinkx didn't buy YouTube because it is certainly not in their best interest to host the videos themselves. While the base audience is enough to tempt any potential purchaser, their intent is to index the video content, not to host it.
And now to make my implicit suggestion explicit: Should Google have bought Blinkx instead?
First, I'd like to establish a few knowns:
- Blinkx is a video search engine that indexes content with an automated crawler through a sophisticated combination of image and speech recognition.
- Blinkx does not provide video hosting.
- YouTube is the most frequented video community on the web and has a significant head start in branding.
- YouTube's users make the community successful.
- YouTube's categorization of videos is solely dependant upon how accurately a video has been tagged.
- YouTube's search technology is very limited and can often require arduous browsing to find a specific video.
- Internet users are dependant upon their preferred search engine to such an extreme extent that most never use their browser's address bar.
- In terms of search engines, generally speaking, eventually superior technology will triumph.
I am of course not debating the financial feasiblity of such a purchase, but rather the business implications.
Basically, what Blinkx is in need of is a little publicity (and a more appealing site design) to get the visitors rolling in. Their company is solely a search engine, not a hosting service. It would be impractical to undertake the enormous cost of bandwidth, even if with it comes the promise of billions of daily pageviews and the promised land of potentially relevant advertising.
Now, I am quite aware that the "if you build it they will come" strategy does not apply on the internet. You need to provide a unique service and give users a reason to come back. I think Blinkx currently has both of these factors working in its favor - so it is only a matter of time before their popularity soars.
IMO, Blinkx and YouTube can coexist because they fill very different roles. Blinkx's primary strategy for moving forward has got to be promotion of their technology. If it works as touted, their indexing capabilities are far superior to YouTube's tag-reliant structure and would thereby prove to be a much more efficient method of searching for video.
Simply put, Blinkx didn't buy YouTube because it is certainly not in their best interest to host the videos themselves. While the base audience is enough to tempt any potential purchaser, their intent is to index the video content, not to host it.
And now to make my implicit suggestion explicit: Should Google have bought Blinkx instead?