The British company has progressed from desktop and web searches similar to those now built into Microsoft and Apple operating systems to aggregating audio feeds like Podcasts as well as video searches.
"Much of the most current and compelling content on the Internet is in multimedia format,” said Blinkx founder Suranga Chandratillake. The company promotes its SmartFeed service to help users navigate multimedia sources online.
Surfers visiting www.blinkx.tv can create customized searches from 30 channels available to the company, then gather the feeds within their RSS readers, finding the collected content organized in hyperlinks.
Companies such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have all jumped into the A/V search field recently, but Blinkx hopes to distinguish itself by offering advanced speech recognition to grab content more effectively.
Analysts say the market for multimedia searches, dubbed “rich searches,” is not yet mature, so advertisers are still cautious. Pointing to the five million visits AOL received for its Live 8 coverage, however, companies like Blinkx can establish a strong presence if they an distinguish themselves from the herd.
