Earlier this month Joost set down its arms in the race to beat YouTube, Hulu and others to become the predominant consumer online video giant. It fixed its sights instead on providing white label video platforms for companies. However, there is of course already plenty of competition. Brightcove is a long, well known player and Magnify is growing its white label service. Ooyala recently signed more than 40 mid to large publishers on 12-24 month agreements and they also have a growing self-serve products. Others in that space include Videobloom and Worldtv.
But it’s this self-serve end of the market which is now being targeted by a new entrant: Quick.tv
They are now launching out of a private beta with an application which allows video makers to skin their content with clickable feature like ads and polls, and also pull out metrics from the responses.
The site delivers a video publishing service including asset management, play-out and analytics combined with a tool-set to add features like advertising overlays, voting or form filling inside the player itself. Users can create custom players and channels, and the site supports HD and Standard Def and all major video formats for upload.
Once you publish a video you get an embed code, and all the viewer responses are channelled back to Quick.tv’s analytics system. What co-founder Nick Bell sees happening is that publishers will still upload videos to YouTube and similar for the viral effect, but use Quick.tv for a response mechanism on their own site.
However currently they only offer a paid for service at various levels, which may limit the uptake – although professional video content owners like newspapers won’t balk at this.
The startup is VC and Angel backed with £1.2m seed funding and based in Newcastle upon Tyne and London, UK. Bell and co-founder Tod Yeadon claim they set about creating Quick.tv after seeing the scene in Fight Club in which Edward Norton’s apartment becomes part of the Ikea catalogue. Makes sense, kinda.