Yahoo has upgraded its video offerings with a new uploading and sharing offering designed to rival market leader YouTube. Yahoo's product--unlike YouTube--offers video clips from established
publishers, and can search the Web for content.
"We're truly crawling the Web, and receiving feeds from tens or hundreds of thousands of sites that allow us to index their content,"
said Jason Zajac, Yahoo's general manager of social media. "Whether you're looking for content that's looking for premium news sources, or you're looking for music content that may be on Yahoo Music,
or AOL Music, or content that users upload to us directly as well--it's all under one umbrella, in a consistent user experience that allows you to watch it, rate it, and share it."
YouTube's
momentum comes from a 42.94 percent share of all video search engine visits--compared to Yahoo's 9.58 percent, MSN's 9.21 percent, and Google's 6.48 percent, according to a Hitwise report released in
May. The site's market share increased 160 percent between February and May, while Yahoo's search site remained relatively stagnant.
"No one is denying that YouTube has created momentum for
themselves in a unique way," said Zajac. "What we're trying to do is put together all the assets that Yahoo has in video, including core search."