"We believe that we're on the radar of companies like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, because we're relevant to these giants," said AnyClip Ltd. CEO Oren Nauman in response to the company's latest content sharing agreement.
Anyclip has signed a strategic agreement with Vivendi Entertainment, which will give Anyclip's online library access to Vivendi's library of entertainment. This is Anyclip's second agreement, following last month's deal with Universal Studios. The value of each deal is estimated at $7 million.
AnyClip's technology allows its business partners to search engine for movies and clips by features such as characters, scenes, locations, quotes, or brands appearing in them.
The company was founded three years ago by Mickey Schulhof, a former president of Sony America, and Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) managing partner Erel Margalit. The company has 30 employees, and has raised over $3 million from JVP and GITI.
AnyClip is not yet profitable, because it launched its product only a few weeks ago, but Nauman says that it has no plans to raise more money. "We have enough capital to do our work," he says.
"We're always examining identification companies, but their technologies aren't developed enough," says Nauman. "There are systems that can identify a car in a movie, for example, but cannot necessarily identify the model. The computer also doesn’t know how to identify a romantic scene.
"All tagged information appears in a movie's timeline, which enables search engines to find the things in fractions of a second." He added, "We're sometimes talking about 6,000 items per movie."
Tagging takes about 20 hours, and AnyClip currently has access to a library of 7,000 movies.
In addition to the search engine, which includes a music player for the shared viewing of clips, AnyClip is working on collaborations that will generate profits from advertising. One of the future services that the company plans is to combine its technology with tourism websites, so that a person seeking a particular vacation spot can watch movie clips of scenes at the location on the website. At the end of the clip, a link will appear to buy the full movie at Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) or Netflix Inc. (Nasdaq: NFLX).
AnyClip is currently focusing on the US market, and no plans to approach Israeli studios to tag Israeli movies. Nauman says that the company plans to tag TV content because some of the studios that the company has agreement with also produce TV shows.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on May 17, 2011
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