CBS has acquired Clicker, a TV Guide for internet programming, according to a release just issued by the companies. Clicker’s CEO Jim Lanzone has been named President of CBS Interactive. Terms of the deal were not disclosed; Clicker raised a total of $19 million in funding. According to multiple sources, the deal was in the $50 million to $100 million range.
Clicker is a comprehensive search engine for TV content on the web. The startup made its debut at TechCrunch50 in 2009, and currently indexes more than one million full length TV episodes on the web. → Read More
The big product launch this week was Rupert Murdoch’s new iPad publication, The Daily. On this episode of Fly or Die, CrunchGear editor John Biggs and I weigh in on its prospects for survival. We also discuss Clicker’s iPhone app and the Dell Streak 7 tablet, and we are joined by a surprise guest from one of the companies whose products we evaluate.
While The Daily not exactly the direction I would have taken, it’s paywall is easily circumvented, and it does take forever to load, it is very well packaged and a truly immersive experience. When I read it, I spend a considerable amount of time in the app flipping through pages to see what else is in store. And I’m a former magazine guy who’s given up on magazines, so that’s saying a lot. Biggs also finds it intriguing. → Read More
Over the last several months, Facebook has been slowly ramping up its Instant Personalization program, which allows select third-party sites to access your public Facebook data as soon as you visit them, without having to ‘Connect’ to Facebook. Done right, it can be a pretty slick experience, and today Facebook is announcing that it’s adding one more site to the program: Clicker, one of the web’s best resources for finding TV shows and movies online.
It’s a logical integration, and it should help users sift through the vast amount of video content that’s been indexed by the site. After logging in, Clicker told me that I’d probably be interested in the latest episode of Glee, based on ‘Likes’ from 9 of my friends. Good job, Clicker — I happen to be a Glee fan, though the plot lines sometimes me make want to throw my remote across the room (breathe, Jason, breathe). The site is also recommending Terriers based on one ‘Like’ from a friend of mine, which sounds interesting. I’m not sure what to make of the suggestion to rate the ‘Mariah Carey: Merry Christmas to You’ special. → Read More
With all the new Internet TV boxes and services sprouting this holiday season—from Google TV and Apple TV to the Boxee Box, Shufflr, and beyond—there is a lot talk about people cutting their cable cords and just getting all of their TV from the Internet. That is not going to happen anytime soon until the best TV shows and movies become available online at the same time as on TV, but the direction is clear. Today at the SAI Ignition conference in New York City, Boxee CEO Avner Ronen declared, “Resistance is futile.”
Ronen was responding to the question of when will there be something worthwhile to watch on the Web. Getting Web video to your TV is becoming increasingly easy, but there are so many restrictions on the best video (network TV shows and Hollywood movies) that it is still not worth watching on the Web for anybody but geeks. Ronen himself admits that his modest goal is to get “from geeks to early adopters.” → Read More
In a post this weekend, I wrote about how the cable tv industry was finally stepping towards the cliff. And we’d learn more today when Comcast, the largest U.S. cable operator, reported earnings. Well, the numbers are out, and it’s not a surprise.
275,000 Comcast subscribers cut the cord last quarter. Its subscriber count is down 3.5% from the same quarter last year. To be fair, some of that loss was offset by a gain in 219,000 digital cable subs. Revenue was up as customers bought higher priced bundles of tv, internet and phone service.
During the earnings call, Comcast blamed the drop on the lousy economy. Always a handy excuse. Sure, many people are struggling right now, and it makes sense that the high cost of cable is an expense they can no longer afford. Comcast said, based on exit interviews, only a ‘small number‘ seemed to cut the cord for over-the-air signals, and they are not planning to switch to internet tv alternatives. But …. → Read More
We’re big fans of Clicker, a comprehensive search engine for TV content on the web. Clicker, which made its debut at TechCrunch50 last fall, indexes over 650,000 full length TV episodes spanning 10,000 shows The startup also recently started indexing live programming on the web. Today, the startup is taking its online video guide to the next level with launch of Clicker Social, which allows people to discover, share, rate, discuss, and check-in to shows on Clicker and third party partner sites, and Clicker Mobile, which allows users to access Clicker’s service through free Android and iPhone apps.
Clicker Social aims to help people discover what’s worth watching from their social circle. People can follow their friends’ activities on Clicker, or follow users they don’t know, but who share their tastes in television and movies. Clicker users establish their own Profile page to designate their playlists, friends, recommendations, interests and recent activities on Clicker. Similar to Twitter, users can “follow” other users to see their recommendations and playlists. Clicker also allows users to import their social networks via Facebook Connect (with Twitter OAuth soon to follow) so that they don’t have to recreate their own social graph on the site. → Read More
Live video is starting to take off on the Web on livevideo sites such as Livestream, Ustream, and Justin.TV. And every network TV website also offers live video from time to time. It’s hard to keep up. What is needed is a TV Guide for live video on the Web.
Online video guide Clicker is taking a stab at that with the launch of Clicker Live. It is starting with thousands of feeds of premium live video on the Web. The clicker site will have a new Live tab where live shows will be promoted as “On Air Now” and can be searched. There is also a calendar showing what’s coming up, and you can browse by topic or title. Here are some examples of the types of shows and live video streams that will be indexed on Clicker Live: → Read More
As we’ve reported over the past few days, a number of online video sites are jumping on the HTML5 bandwagon so that their content can be viewed on the iPad (which doesn’t support Adobe’s Flash). However, some online video sites have not adjusted their video content to be iPad friendly (a.k.a these sites are still using Flash). Clicker, a comprehensive search engine for TV content on the web, is launching a special version of its site for the iPad that will only surface videos from the web that will be able to stream on the device.
Clicker, which made its debut at TechCrunch50 last fall, makes it easy to search through the vast amounts of video content available online. Clicker’s index includes over 600,000 full length TV episodes spanning 10,000 shows. The service also allows users to search through premium content including Netflix’s Instant Streaming movies and Amazon Video on Demand (though you have to pay to watch them). Additionally, the site indexes music videos, and has started teaming up with schools to index their lectures and other original content. Clicker doesn’t actually host any of this content — instead, it provides deep links that point you directly to whichever episode you want to watch. → Read More
Clicker, a comprehensive search engine for TV content on the web, has closed an $11 million Series B funding round led by JAFCO Ventures, with existing investors Benchmark Capital and Redpoint Ventures also participating. JAFCO’s Joe Horowitz will join the Clicker board. The new funding brings Clicker’s total funding to $19 million, after an $8 million round the company closed in October 2008.
Clicker doesn’t actually store content on its servers, but instead makes it very easy to search through the vast amounts of content available online. Clicker’s index includes over 600,000 full length TV episodes spanning 10,000 shows. The service also allows users to search through premium content including Netflix’s Instant Streaming movies and Amazon Video on Demand (though you have to pay to watch them). The site also offers music videos, and has started teaming up with schools to index their lectures and other original content (UCLA is the first school to try the system out). → Read More
I don’t watch a lot of television programming, and I’m not particularly patient with the way “Big Media” treats me, the consumer. I really wanted to like Flash Forward, but it’s pretty clear that the show is more interested in hitting that 100 episodes mark to earn syndication than it is in delivering an interesting, gripping story. So I gave up on that, and on a lark decided to try Fringe, to kill some time. Unfortunately, Hulu doesn’t have the beginning of the series, let alone the beginning of the current season. I’m not excited about jumping into the show midstream. I’m also not interested in navigating the various network websites to find their hosted copies of the shows I might watch. Isn’t that what Hulu was supposed to do for me?
Enter Clicker.com. “Clicker aims to become the complete programming guide to Internet television.” Indeed, they have an impressive catalog of more than 400,000 television episodes from 7,000 different shows, not to mention movies and original web content. They’ve been around for awhile, but today they’re unveiling their new Boxee app, allowing you to access their impressive catalog of content from within Boxee. → Read More
Clicker, the startup that looks to be a comprehensive video search engine for television content on the web, has launched to the public. The site made its public debut at TechCrunch50, where it generated quite a bit of positive buzz, and has gradually ramped up its private beta over the last couple months.
I spoke with Clicker CEO Jim Lanzone (formerly CEO of Ask.com), who says that the site’s beta was actually shorter than expected, in part because intital feedback has been quite positive.
Since appearing at TechCrunch50, Clicker has added 33% more content to its database, growing from an index of 300,000 up to 400,000 full length episodes. These 400,000 episodes come from over 7,000 different shows across 1,200 content sources around the web. → Read More
So former Ask.com CEO Jim Lanzone is starting a new company, Clicker. It’s like a TV guide for online video, and the experts named it as one of their favorite companies they saw today. I like Lanzone, but I had to ask: Does a company with a well-known CEO and $8 million already in the bank really need to win our $50,000 prize?
His answer and more about why he’s jumping back into the start-up fray and his “divorce” from Barry Diller on the video clip on the jump. → Read More
More and more television content is making its way online. But because of different deals by various networks, it’s all over the place. Even the huge sites like Hulu, only skim the surface in showing what is out there. Clicker, a service launching today at TechCrunch50, wants to be the most comprehensive way to find the video content you’re looking for on the web.
While there are no shortage of video search engines out there, Clicker believes its offering is superior because it creates a structured database of programming, organizing shows by things like network, genre, and show name. This type of data not only allows for better search results, but it allows you to browse content without having to do text-based searches, which you probably won’t be doing when television and future web-enabled tablets start to serve up this content. Clicker already has a deal with Boxee. → Read More
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