• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, February 8, 2007

In the latest twist to online video-sharing, entertainment portal Lycos today unveiled a new feature, Mix, that lets users create playlists of video clips from the likes of YouTube, Google Video and MySpace video. Lycos Mix also enables users to invite others to watch videos and chat about them online.

The new service builds on the "watch and chat" technology Lycos debuted in November when it launched Lycos Cinema, where users can gather in virtual screening rooms to watch and discuss movies. With Lycos Mix, "the goal was to create a product that allows groups of people to pull content from a variety of sources around the Web," said Lycos COO Brian Kalinowski.

To create video playlists, users retrieve clips from YouTube, Google or MySpace and place them into designated categories on the Lycos Mix site including music, news, comedy and sports. A downloadable bookmarking feature allows users to add videos from other sites without having to cut or paste Web addresses. A playlist can be either public--allowing others to add clips--or private. Once created, users can invite other Lycos members to view playlist videos.

Kalinowski likened Mix more to an "art gallery experience" than Lycos Cinema because it enables people to share and discuss a collection of different works. While other video sites such as YouTube allow users to create personal video collections from their own content, he said Lycos was the first to allow the creation of video playlists from outside sources.

Lycos plans to offer banner ad units and sponsorships around the Mix community features. Eventually, the company plans to offer licensed video content for Mix that would carry in-stream ads.

The new video service is the latest in a series of steps Lycos has taken over the last year to transform the former search engine into a Web 2.0 entertainment hub. In addition to Lycos Cinema, it has added a movie trailer site and video search capability through a deal with Blinkx, among other moves. But so far the makeover hasn't translated into a bigger audience for Lycos, as unique monthly U.S. visitors to the site dropped to 22.6 million in December 2006 from 24.7 million a year ago.

Kalinowski attributed the declining traffic to Lycos' divestiture of various online properties including quote.com, Matchmaker and Wired News. "We expected some decline in traffic because of the divestitures," he said. But during 2007, he expects Lycos will begin to see its traffic rebound.