Judging by the number of people lined up to talk with Nickhil Jakatdar, CEO Vuclip, and the interest from judges immediately after his presentation today at the Under the Radar conference (Mountain View), it seems Vuclip may be Under the Radar's next dealmaker.
Why is Vuclip so cool? Because the company's objective to make it completely frictionless has been achieved. No login, no fee, and an easy to use interface has made Vuclip a hit with consumers. During September 08, Vuclip claims to have had over 100 million page views and served in excess of 17 million videos worldwide. We had a chance to talk with Jakatdar after his presentation.
Vuclip (previously blueapple.mobi), a mobile video search and trans-coding service makes searching, finding, and playing video on mobile phones extremely simple. In less than 15 seconds, Vuclip will search for video on the Web, trans-code (or convert) it on the fly, and deliver it to your mobile phone in the correct format. And this is what sets it apart from competitors.
While trans-coding sounds like a simple process, surprisingly few companies can do this. Videos come in all sorts of formats and need to be converted before they can be played on a mobile phone. According to Jakatdar, there are only about 20 companies that claim to do trans-coding, and of those, only 10 percent do it on the fly (Avot, Ripcode, and Vuclip) - all others need to pre encode. Firms that offer pre-encoding need to store that information somewhere, we don't," he said.
"Major competitors Avot and Ripcode trans-code on the fly, but they don't offer search. Vtap and Truveo offer search, but no trans-coding. This means you may find the video, but when you hit play, it needs to be trans-coded (unless the specific video is in the cache) and this can take time; it's not a good user experience," said Jakatdar.
Vuclip CEO Nickhil Jakatdar at Under the Radar
According to Jakatdar, the company originally made the decision to focus on the consumer, but three months ago, they took their direct to consumer product and made it self serve. Vuclip now offers three models to B2B; each allowing businesses to replace the Vuclip branding with their own. While there is no difference for the user, benefits for business can be significant; enabling online publishers and content owners to mobilize their Web video content via a simple API.
1. Send to Mobile: For companies that have video on their website, but no way to send it to mobile phones
2. Video Powered by Vuclip: For mobile sites that have video but only support specific phones, for instance iPhone or G1
3. Site powered by Vuclip: For sites that don't offer video of their own but want to start offering it to visitors
Vuclip's technology represents significant progress in trans-coding and offers a rich multimedia experience across all wireless networks and handsets. We think it's definitely a company to keep your eye on, although our friends over at Venture Beat have a different take.
If you're interested in watching the Media Delivery track where Jakatdar presents alongside Avot Media, Bambuser, and iVisit, visit the Under the Radar blog.
Comments
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FYI, Truveo Mobile video search offers on the fly transcoding of videos and has more than 350 partner sites indexed (whose contents are desktop optimized) than any other mobile video search. Please cross verify your statements against facts.
Posted by: anonymous | November 12, 2008 10:24 PM
After installing this application on my Nokia E51, my Installation folder doesn't show installed applications icons, it just shows the menu icons... Reinstaling OS :(
Posted by: roba3000 | November 13, 2008 1:55 AM
Anonymous - sorry I can't seem to find any information about trans-coding on the fly on Truveo's site. If you could point it out it would be great.
Roba300 - sorry to hear that. As far as I know, there is nothing to install; you just navigate to the Vuclip's homepage and search for the video you want
Posted by: Lidija Davis
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November 13, 2008 6:47 AM
@roba3000 -
i think this may be the source of confusion...vuclip, as stated by lidija, isn't an application and as such wouldn't show up in your installed applications folder.
instead, you may think of vuclip as a visual bookmark to a website. click the bookmark and it should take you directly to www.vuclip.com which is a rather brilliant way to save time.
@ anonymous -
i've tried truveo's service and i'm afraid it's vastly inferior to vuclip. there's a reason why vuclip is the runaway leader in video search, as measured by no. of videos streamed monthly.
kindly have a look and judge for yourself.
Posted by: daren benzi | November 13, 2008 1:03 PM
Lidija, I also see there are no text mentioning about "on the fly transcoding" on Truveo's site, but I am pretty sure that sites which they provide in search results dont have mobile optimized videos.
Daren, I dont know what kind of experience you have, but here in India, I feel truveo is better.
Also, vuclip also keeps pre-transcoded file(s) in its servers and offers for download. If you search for some random terms which none would have visited, then you might witness yourself it takes a while for vuclip to load video and keeps the page refreshing till transcoded file(s) is/are ready.
Sample: http://vuclip.com/w?cid=44752464&p=0&n=19279&frm=w
Posted by: anonymous | November 13, 2008 10:41 PM