Blinkx 'Red Label' opens video search interface
The site will let others build its video search results into their Web sites, but requires revenue sharing for larger partners.
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Blinkx, whose technology lets people search for videos hosted elsewhere on the Internet, is making it possible for other Web sites to incorporate its search results and share any resulting revenue.
Through a program called Red Label, the company is opening its application programming interface (API) so other sites can pipe video search queries to Blinkx, retrieve the results, and publish them, said Chief Executive and founder Suranga Chandratillake.
"If you have fewer than 10,000 searches per day, you can have access for free. If you have more than 10,000, we ask you to monetize it and share with us," Chandratillake said. Sites can incorporate Blinkx's advertisements and split revenue evenly; those sites that already have monetization under way must work out a specific revenue-sharing plan with the company, he added.
Blinkx already had several one-off search deals with various sites including Ask.com and Lycos, and the Red Label project makes such partnerships easier to set up in the future, Chandratillake said. Blinkx has two new deals with such partners that are using the API: MSN UK and Rambler Media, he added.
Blinkx searches videos not just by examining textual metadata such as titles, tags, and descriptions that accompany videos, but also by performing speech recognition to convert audio to text and by visual recognition that can recognize text and some famous faces in the videos themselves.