This article was published on January 22, 2013

Blinkx launches its redesigned video search engine, focusing on personalization and social integration


Blinkx launches its redesigned video search engine, focusing on personalization and social integration

Last month we reported that video search engine Blinkx was joining Dailymotion Publisher Network (DPN), just after it had announced healthy financials and the launch of a completely new video discovery in open beta.

Today, Blinkx is officially launching this new service out of beta at Blinkx.com, and it says it’s designed to “enhance the video discovery and viewing experience”, with a heavy focus on recommendation and personalization, as well as integration across users’ social graphs.

Throughout the open beta phase, Blinkx reports an increase in ‘dwell time’, with visitors spending four times more time on the new site compared to the previous incarnation. Moreover, it says that mobile usage grew by 400% too, as a direct result of the site’s new responsive design – which helps it adapt to different form factors across devices.

“We’ve been delighted with audience response to the new Blinkx.com,” says Matt Scheybeler , CTO at blinkx. “In transforming the site, we prioritized discovery and personalization because social networks and mobile devices have profoundly changed the way we consume content online.  We’re deeply engaged with Facebook pages and Twitter feeds – a unique content universe created for us by our friends and the people we follow, so we designed the new Blinkx.com to support this behavior: optimized for sharing, discovery and mobile access.”

Blinkx

The new Blinkx portal also features My Stream, a continuously-updating video-stream customized based on a user’s social graph, topics they elect to follow and viewing preferences, while Pause and Pick-Up lets users start watching video on a single device, hit pause, and pick it up again from where they left it…on a different device.

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Blinkx draws from an index of more than 35 million hours of online video, and the new site is integrated with Blinkx’s advertising platform, AdHoc, a “contextual advertising platform for online video.” So revenue-making is firmly built-in to the new platform, as you’d expect.

“The proliferation of connected devices and near ubiquity of broadband networks have established the foundation for the irreversible and accelerating growth of online video,” says S. Brian Mukherjee , CEO at Blinkx.

“eMarketer forecasts that by 2016 there will be 1.3 billion online video viewers and Blinkx is committed to delivering a world-class experience to this audience across all platforms,” he continues. “Capitalizing on our industry-leading technology, we have transformed our flagship consumer product to deliver an elegant, personalized experience that enables users to discover and watch video from any device with a consistent look and functionality.”

Blinkx powers video-search for the likes of Ask.com and AOL, and has expanded into mobile video and connected TV through partnerships with Samsung, Sony, Roku and other companies.

Feature Image Credit – Thinkstock

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