Click.TV Player Joins the Deadpool
Nick Gonzalez
21 comments »
Deep video tagging service Click.TV sent an email to their users today stating that they will be shutting down their video player, taking any videos served by Click.TV offline. We’ve covered Click.TV before as well as the other deep tagging startups. Click.TV says the shutdown will be accompanied by bigger plans for the future. We’re adding Click.TV to the deadpool in the meantime and have contacted them for clarification on the plans. In their email below they say “You’ll be seeing Click.TV technology very soon doing *much* bigger and better things,” so perhaps the Click.TV story is not quite over.
Here’s the letter:
Dear Click.TV User:
Effective June 8, the Click.TV Player will be shut down. Thus, videos
placed on web pages using the Click.TV Player will not play. If you
would like to continue playing those videos on your web page(s), we
suggest that you replace the Click.TV Player with another video
player.While I regret this shutdown, I am very excited by the reason behind
it. You’ll be seeing Click.TV technology very soon doing *much* bigger
and better things.Lastly, I want to thank you wholeheartedly for your interest in and
support of Click.TV. Customers like you, along with your videos, are
incredibly important to us.- Mike Lanza
Some more site closures to keep us sober.
I got the email, too. The opportunity for snatching up player/widget technologies (esp. for audio and video) has got to be a no-brainer for bigger media companies. It’ll be interesting to se if they stay in the dead pool, or if there’s something else going on. Exciting times!
Carter Harkins
Intrascopic Media Inc.
Yeah, this sound suspicious. I would suspect a quiet acquisition took place.
To be honest, there is absolutely no “new” technology behind the click.tv (or most other deep linking video startup) video player. Deep linking a flash movie is so basic that the greenest flash developer can do in 2 minutes.
“Customers like you, along with your videos, are incredibly important to us”
hmm. so important that we’re just shutting down in 2 days with no explanation.. nice
Maybe its going to come back much bigger and with better things as they say. Having said that it would be interesting to know how long the break will be.
Funny how “bigger plans for the future” gets interpreted as joining the Deadpool. Well, I guess someone has to start these rumours, so why not Techcrunch
I do like the special touch of “you’re in the deadpool until we hear otherwise”, kinda like “your guilty until proven innocent”. Nice one 
Their text addition to video seems like a good idea kinda distracts from the video experience. Mixing messaging mediums maybe off for our minds in this stage of human development, etc
they are getting acquired for peanuts by a larger company that will use their technology, which (as someone correctly pointed out) can be build VERY easily. The value is in the domain name and time saved in not hacking this together over the 2-4 weeks that it probably took them to build it.
go to newteevee for more information
I would rather have click.com instead / of - click.tv
- I think if I had to shut down my company the letter would say / “Bigger things in the future” too
- rb
I have read a semi-secret that Joost is to have an “annotated television” feature, which is Digg-esque commenting that appears as you watch a show, which if true, will be really fun:
http://newteevee.com/2007/04/1.....ta-stupid/
http://www.leosimons.com/2006/.....oject.html
Maybe Joost got lazy and decided to buy Click TV instead of developing the technology from scratch.
I really don’t care who eventually develops it, but the idea of entering a snotty comment at a specific point in the time line of a show ( be it YouTube or Joost or Apple TV ) then have my comment “pop up” as my friends watch the same show is really appealing and I want that feature super bad.
They have a pretty good domain name. Wonder if they will sell it?
Rumor has it that this is an acquisition.
I’ve seen this:
http://www.namepros.com/domain.....ck-tv.html
Hello! Good Site! Thanks you! lgjyfnctykf