AOL launches developer program for video search

Posted Sep 18th 2006 4:26PM by Jon Ogg
Filed under: Launches, Internet, Competitive Strategy, Time Warner (TWX)

If you haven't figured out the online video craze is in full tilt, it's time to get with the program. This is becoming the next "NEXT BIG THING," although if you are in the post-college or younger age group, it has been here for a long time. AOL now has launched its developer program on an open platform basis that will allow real-time submissions and search across AOL and third party platforms and video content owners.

This announcement will not have any significant positive or negative financial impact on any of the Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) and AOL subsidiaries, but it is one of many focused core strategies that is getting the AOL name ready for the next move. Initiatives are ramping fast now and the company is really trying to show it can be just as nimble as the kids over at Google (GOOG) and as savvy as the competition at Yahoo! (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT).

AOL is essentially saying it will be there for the explosive growth in real-time video search. That may not sound as exciting as it is. If you don't recall how fast video can change public opinion, think back to "American Pie" and how a live video feed changed things. That was in a fictional story of course, but that was based on current technology for the year 1999. Digital video technology has come a long way, and the new video compression standards have only contributed more and more to the viral wave of video on the web. Imagine what happens when near real-time amateur video comes out when a politico makes a comment he or she thinks is off camera, and that is instantly available for the world to see.

Through its new AOL Video Search developer program, AOL has made available a set of open video search APIs (application programming interfaces) as well as implemented a system for video content owners to submit feeds to the AOL Video Search index through new AOL Director Accounts. The AOL Video Search Developer site can be found at http://developer.searchvideo.com.

"With more and more video content coming online each day, we believe video search will become increasingly important as a way for consumers to find all of the rich content on the Web - from high quality branded content to the most popular viral videos from across the web," said Kevin Conroy, Executive Vice President, AOL. "In an effort to help deliver the best results for the user, we are opening our platform and enabling developers to integrate video search results into their websites so that they can in turn offer their users easy access to the best search engine for finding video on the Web."

The best thing about this API being released is that this is more of a content neutral strategy, so AOL won't force content owners and content creators to only use their system. With the prolific rise of sites such as MySpace and YouTube, this open format is a winning one. There is still an issue of how exactly the video downloading operations out there are going to be self-sufficient, but for now no one cares. The Street knows that near real-time video from the mass public can be a powerful tool and the business model will sort itself out in time.

This particular initiative comes on the same day as AOL's announcement of the launch of AOL Video for the Intel Viiv (TM) platform. With this new service, thousands of original, licensed and distributed content in the AOL Video library can be viewed by consumers from a "10-foot" living room TV viewing experience via Intel Viiv-enabled PCs.

Tags: AOL, API, developer, Intel, Video Search, VideoSearch, Viiv