AOL Opens Video Search Engine to Developers

mytrip writes to tell us CNet is reporting that AOL has opened up their video search engine to developers. This push is being made in the hopes that it will drive more websites into using their service. From the article: "The goal for the APIs is different than the one that AOL had in mind when it opened up a number of its other applications to developers — notably its instant-messaging client AIM and IP telephony service AIM Phoneline. The AIM and AIM Phoneline toolkits were designed to enable modifications to the existing software, whereas the purpose of the new video-search APIs is to spread its video search engine to sites other than AOL."

Comments

I wanna see...

[beckerist]

I wanna see a program (I can't imagine it'd be in anything but Flash, at least given today's technology) that actually grabs words and basic content material from a video, and auto-tags it. Until then, a "video search engine" is really only a "video tag search engine."

AOL has some real hurdles

[mcrbids]

AOL has spent its karma. They're on a strong, downward spiral. This in spite of the fact that one of the largest, coolest things to come out was largely funded by them. (Mozilla) Here's what they need to do to get back on track:

1) Fire everybody in marketing. Re-hire a whole new marketing arm from the likes of Earthlink.

2) Retrain their call support centers. Make it possible to quit AOL.

3) Make a new corporate motto "don't be evil". Follow it. (Google seems to be weakening its resolve)

4) Hire a bunch of highly qualified engineers, let them play, and let them decide what to sell.

If they do the above, they have a ghost of a chance. If they don't, they're fodder for a buy out within another year or two. They might do OK if they merge with the likes of Earthlink - but not as equals. Only where Earthlink takes control and they do it the right way.

Re:AOL has some real hurdles

[MosesJones]

Spent their Karma? AOL has NEVER been cool, AOLer was not a term of endearment went they first hit the internet, I was stunned in the mid 90s that people would pay AOL money to get on the internet. AOL is a marketing company their engineering has never been strong. Giving the keys to the asylum to a bunch of engineers is not going to help a company that is aimed at the mass market.

If AOL wants to survive they need to concentrate on brand, and what they say they offer, rather than trying to compete with what others offer. Its a sad fact but when aiming at the mass market having the best product is almost a sure way to fail.

Fodder for a buy out? You mean sell off I assume as they are currently merged with Time Warner.

Re:AOL has some real hurdles

[wfberg]

When AOL partly funded mozilla, it was already in its downward spiral. AOL was never a great company, but it was at one time a fucking huge company worth bajillions on the stock market.

Up until the dotcom hype, AOLs businessmodel was pretty simple; you sell a subscription service that is slightly (but not vastly) expensive. Obviously, to maximize profits from subscriptions (and to make sure you don't suddenly lose 50% of your income from one month to the next) you have to make it hard for people to quit, and easy to signup (hence the AOL coasters that you got in the mail, magazines, etc.)

It's a fairly straightforward business; you provide a simple service and try not to annoy people so much that it seems worth their time to jump through the hoops to cancel their subscription. Much like bland, unadventurous magazines and newspapers - their contents is maybe 10% useful and the rest is filler, but they stay clear of printing too much gore or "incest - how to?" columns. And they flood you with those subscription inserts.

Then the dotcom hype happened, which meant that AOL was now worth bajillions based on basically it's name. "America" - can't go wrong there, you don't want to invest in Lithuania, and "Online", well, that has dotcom written all over it.

In this period they did the stuff like fund mozilla, and buy the guys behind winamp (whose media player hasn't improved vastly, but their shoutcast streaming audio site is just how streaming audio should be).

Then, after the dotcom crash (and Time Warners (reverse)takeover of/merger with AOL) came the stark reality of post-dotcomhype business. Being an ISP is no longer a simple affair - with technlogies like cable (docsis 1.0, 2.0), (V)(H)(A)DSL (1/2+) being upgraded every two years, the death of dialup at the time where dialup had just become so ubiquitous that it's built into telephone exchanges; there's not much value in being an ISP (too much competition) and doing it right is hard. AOL had always been doing the ISP bit a bit halfheartedly, and even with TimeWarner on board, they found they can't really be a persuasive content company!

So, cut to present time, and AOL is trying its damn hardest to get away from being an ISP, and to be as much as Google and Yahoo as they can.

There's no reason they shouldn't be good at the things Yahoo and Google do. Except that they've sullied their brandname by sucking at everything they've ever done. And being mismanaged.

Opening up AIM and trying to get their video search on other people's sites is just recognizing a simple fact; their brand sucks. They desperately need people to use their services first, find out they're worth using, and then worry about reeling them into 'the AOL experience' (with AOL's ads) later.

AOL's best bet would be to start doing stuff under different brand names, if possible to set up small companies with just a few people, with a start-up kind of atmosphere, where they don't have to bother much about tying into AOL's infrastructure (and management structure) beyond perhaps using AIM screennames as some sort of single sign on mechanism.