More and more television content is making its way online. But because of different deals by various networks, it’s all over the place. Even the huge sites like Hulu, only skim the surface in showing what is out there. Clicker, a service launching today at TechCrunch50, wants to be the most comprehensive way to find the video content you’re looking for on the web.
While there are no shortage of video search engines out there, Clicker believes its offering is superior because it creates a structured database of programming, organizing shows by things like network, genre, and show name. This type of data not only allows for better search results, but it allows you to browse content without having to do text-based searches, which you probably won’t be doing when television and future web-enabled tablets start to serve up this content. Clicker already has a deal with Boxee.
The goal is really to be the best search engine for video content. Clicker will point you in the direction of whatever you are looking for (and will do embeds if they’re available), but won’t serve up the videos themselves. They will also delve into surfacing content not explicitly produced for television, but is still high quality web video content. But they don’t want to be YouTube, which is cluttered with user-generated content. Clicker is going for a different market.
Clicker will also allow users to edit and submit information about shows wiki-style.
As a search engine, the business model will obviously be search and display advertising. But eventually, there is a plan for Clicker Pro premium accounts, which the company envisions might be used for storing you favorite videos online, kind of like a DVR of sorts.
CEO Jim Lanzone (former CEO of Ask.com) and COO Paul Wehrley presented Clicker today on stage at TechCrunch50.
Expert Panel Q&A (paraphrased)
The experts: Don Dodge, Yossi Vardi, Ron Conway, George Zachary, and Jason Hirschhorn.
Q: Is this automated?
JL: Where content resides is always changing, a lot of it is automated, but we have to find stuff too.
Q: How do you monetize.
JL: We’re looking at the IMDb model. And eventually we’ll have a Pro version. And there’s a downstream model since we’ll be sending a lot of traffic.
Q: What do you think about Bing?
JL: That’s not fair. I think it’s fantastic for pushing beyond 10 blue links. A lot of it looks familiar though.
Q: How do you get the market penetration?
JL: Part of it is branding, some of it is distribution deals. We’ll also be very heavily SEO’d.
Q: What’s the business model?
JL: It’s mostly advertising, and we’ll get into Pro later, again. But IMDb makes $75 to $100 million in just what they do.
Q: Is this funded?
JL: Yes, earlier this year Benchmark and Redpoint – $8 million.
Q: Would you invest?
JH: This is a big problem for web video.
RC: Great product.
YV: I can never predict if products will succeed so I bet on people. Jim is a good one to bet on.
Video:
Other Coverage:
TC50: Clicker is a TV guide for the Internet age VentureBeat.
Clicker Guides You To Internet TV #TC50 Techgeist.
Clicker’s Guide to Online Video Technologizer.
Stealth Report: TV / Video search engine Clicker AltSearchEngines.
Former Ask.com CEO Lanzone Launches Video Search Engine paidContent.
I LOVE this product. I can’t wait to get my invite. They did a great job presenting too.
This I love. I can’t wait to get an invite.
I would love to get an invite as well.
This looks great. tvrage.com killer.
They did a fantastic demo.
And Clicker with Boxee integration will make all the TV networks clench. Love it.
Can’t wait to try it out!
If you are interested in this kind of a product, be sure and also check out http://mag.ma which launched at the TechCrunch Real Time Conference:
http://mag.ma
Its a similar site though Magma is more comprehensive and designed more for people.
Uhm… not even close…
http://mag.ma/s...=charlie%20rose
I do believe Magma is relevant to the conversation here so I’lll leave another comment.
If the point is that there are not a lot of search returns for your query, Anonymous Dude, that’s true. Clicker may be a better search engine if you are are searching for videos. We have a search feature, but find that YouTube and Google have search down pretty well.
The main problem with video is that there are too many to search. I believe Magma is more comprehensive (not not because of the # of videos) but because of the product offerings.
Id be happy to discuss more about this if anyone sees these two platforms as similar offerings.
Click on “in-depth” to see the various product offerings for Magma here:
http://mag.ma/about
I also think eGuiders.com is relevant to this conversation… I liked their presentation, but you still need people at the heart of tech to point people in the right direction. I think our media mavens and pros do that better than a program.
We also have a deal with Boxee.tv that is live now and a syndication deal with Tribune Media Services at http://TMSbranded.com.
We also just went live in The Palm Beach Post website (A Cox Newspaper). http://video.pbpulse.com/ This is the first of many markets for us…
To be a TV Guide for the web you still need guides.
You guys should check out http://www.yidio.com
– doing it already with a TON of traffic
You should check out http://www.yidio.com
tons of traffic
Well , when are they sending the invites ? cant wait for it
Isn’t http://www.casttv.com/ doing the same thing? TechCrunch covered it long time ago also …
Nothing to original, a lot of sites with the same ‘idea’ out there .. although the product looks great.
As search engine, that means that they will embed TV episodes from sites like G Video or MegaUpload which isn’t really legal … how they plan to deal with that?
Yup this sort of reminded me of CastTV and they have been doing this for more than a year now, categorizing and finding full episodes of TV all over the net.
If this product goes mainstream, i think we might have a tv-killer here. One-stop tv? Sounds good
This product looks great! If any of you TV aficionados remember tvtome.com (later bought and ruined by TV.com), this seems to be a similar product, but ready for a world in which TV is widely available on the Internet.
The site looked great in the video and I’ve already signed up for the beta. I look forward to seeing what they can do!
I also think eGuiders.com is relevant to this conversation… I liked their presentation, but you still need people at the heart of tech to point people in the right direction. I think our media mavens and pros do that better than a program.
We also have a deal with Boxee.tv that is live now and a syndication deal with Tribune Media Services at http://TMSbranded.com.
We also just went live in The Palm Beach Post website (A Cox Newspaper). http://video.pbpulse.com/ This is the first of many markets for us…
To be a TV Guide for the web you still need guides.
It’s a when scenario for something like this but it’s early.
There’s someone doing something similar out of the internet telecom space that was announced a few weeks ago that’s also pretty compelling. They know they’re early too but have a real slow burn rate and are prepared for it.
I was curious if the numbers from the Pew study was all online video or online TV shows, or both or what. The number seemed really high for TV shows.
This is not just a TV killer, it is much bigger than that. I for one love it.
Give me fiber of give me death!
Will that be the new cry in the night?
Awesome site and awesome interface especially the playlist feature I love it already…
http://thetechn...omplete-review/
Nothing new, but it’s nice to see more websites like this popping up out there. Get rid of the adverts within the videos, and add choice of live streaming as well as the on demand, and they may be as cool as http://www.ovguide.com/
^^