Time Warner’s AOL recently purchased Truveo.com, a video search site that opened its virtual doors to the public in September 2005; only three months later the startup became part of AOL and may be the enabling mechanism behind its forthcoming video store.
The big scoop came from senior writer Jonathan Berr at TheStreet.com, reporting on comments from AOL executive Kevin Conroy. Conroy said AOL is seeking deals with cable and broadcast companies, aimed at placing AOL video content on their sites:
Pricing details for the service are still being worked out and Conroy wouldn’t divulge the names of any of the companies that are in discussions with AOL. He said content providers won’t limit their Web distribution to AOL.
A debut could happen by the end of 2006. It wouldn’t be surprising to see Truveo at the heart of Conroy’s content initiative. Truveo had a core team of incredibly intelligent people developing the technology: Tim Tuttle, Adam Beguelin, and Pete Kocks, doctoral degree-holders all in tech fields.
Not only did Truveo’s “visual crawling” work, it worked very well. TechCrunch blogger Michael Arrington praised it at launch, and other glowing reviews followed.
Google has some reputation in the search world, but as of yet that hasn’t translated to video search success. Yahoo launched video search ahead of Google, and AOL picked up SingingFish from Thomson, the French tech company behind the Quaero search project.
Now, AOL looks poised to replace SingingFish with Truveo. With a video service in the works, and Conroy working the negotiations to put the service in front of lots of broadband users, Truveo holds the key to unlocking user bank accounts: relevant video search results from a high-quality content base at Time Warner.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
