AOL Gives Truveo Video Search Its Own Site

AOL is turning Truveo loose.

Since acquiring the company in late 2006, AOL has licensed its technology to power video search for a variety of sites, including AOL Video, Excite, Flock and others.

Now Truveo gets to power Truveo.com.

AOL today announced it launched a new version of Truveo.com, which Truveo CEO and senior vice president of AOL video Timothy Tuttle characterized as a "destination site" video search engine. It's like Google, only for Web video instead of Web pages.

Tuttle told InternetNews.com that on Truveo.com, users can save and share links to videos, receive personalized video recommendations based on their preferences and configure custom video searches. Interested developers can access a set of open APIs to build video search mash-ups, and content creators can submit videos using RSS feeds.

The site is more like video search engine Blinkx.com, in that it searches for video across the Internet, Tuttle said, rather than Google Video or YouTube, which are video hosting services.

But Tuttle said Truveo holds a clear advantage over Blinkx.com because of its millions of users whose searches help Truveo increase its search engine's relevancy.

One advantage Blinkx.com may have over Truveo, however, is a clearer monetization scheme.

Most recently, Blinkx announced AdHoc, a platform that helps its partners monetize their video content with relevant advertising.

Tuttle said that Truveo isn't sure exactly what kind of advertising will eventually monetize the site.

"The advertising models that exist today we do not think will be the ideal models that will monetize video search in the future. Display advertising and even the text advertising you see with Web search, those models do not work well enough with video search."

He said that for now, Truveo is "investing" time into figuring all that out.

In the meantime, and with or without Truveo.com, Truveo continues to generate revenues for its parent company by powering video search on some of the Web's most popular destinations.

Those sites include AOL Video, AOL Search, Microsoft, Qwest, Brightcove, Infospace, Excite, YourMinis and hoards of others.