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TwitVid Offers Real-Time Video Search And Analytics For Twitter

twitterbird/vid cam

Google and Yahoo aren't the only search engines moving to capitalize on real-time search. TwitVid.com on Monday unveiled real-time video search and video analytics, along with virtual gifting. The company, which debuted in May as a basic video upload tool, competes today with Twitmatic, TwitLens, Twitc, Tweetube, among others.

The real-time video search feature serves up the most popular videos on Twitter as they're posted. The San Francisco-based search engine aggregates all TwitVid and YouTube video links currently being shared on Twitter. A real-time ranking algorithm ranks the videos based on relevance to the search keyword term, popularity and buzz on Twitter. Newest videos rank highest.

Mo Adham, co-founder of TwitVid.com, wants to build a search tool inside TwitVid that would bring in videos from across the Web and rank them according to geography, time and popularity. "We want to capture any hot video being shared on Web," he says. "A lot of them will come from mobile, as we become more dependent on devices and carriers implementing high-speed networks."

Research firm eMarketer released a study Friday that estimates growth in spending for video ads will far outpace any other online format, growing between 34% and 45% from 2009 through 2014. The high growth rates are the result of video ads moving center stage, becoming the main form of brand advertising in the digital space, according to eMarketer senior analyst David Hallerman.

TwitVid also launched an analytics tool that segments tweeted videos online by day, week, month or total number. It also identifies when people watched the videos. People can see how many times their video has been viewed, the global location of clicks and the people linking others to the video.

Adham says the analytic tool will identify where the search originated, such as the various search engines, before videos were viewed. "We want to give the person uploading the video as much information as possible," he says.

Adham hopes that one day Twitter includes more engaging search options for video, such as integrating an expandable video display in the tweet. But could too many features interfere with the simplicity of real-time information from Twitter and other sites?

Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan isn't suggesting real-time search provides too much information in engine queries, but he does say search engines got a little "tipsy" of late on what he calls "real-time cat nip." (Check out twitspy.com, for example.) Sullivan argues that Google didn't need to embed a dynamic, scrolling display of the latest tweets alongside matches for other content to engage people searching for information. Google would have done just as well to bring up a static list. And while I typically agree with Sullivan on most things, (no relation) on this point I strongly disagree.

As I've noted in past posts, the scrolling effect will keep people on search engines longer, providing more opportunity for advertisers to gain mind share. If nothing else, the innovation shown in the scrolling list demonstrates the incredible power and possibilities of search on the Web.

1 comment about "TwitVid Offers Real-Time Video Search And Analytics For Twitter".
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  1. Tonya Fitzpatrick, December 14, 2009 at 4:04 p.m.

    Thank you for sharing!

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