A while back we wrote about Spideo, a startup with a powerful video recommendation engine, that is already being used by content publishers like Canal+ to power CanalPlay’s video recommendation. At the time when we first introduced them, they were on their way to New York for the Digital Tech Tour, where they might publishing executives from the likes of Viacom. That was back in December.
Earlier this month they finally brought their powerful video recommendation engine directly to users through their first B2C app. Currently available on iPad in the US only, the app was featured on the app store just days after its launch, and it currently racking up downloads by the dozen. While the company continues to work with video publishers to provide a better online recommendation system – founder Gabriel Mandelbaum said selling to Publishers on an annual license has been pretty easy, as most video publishers made the error of trying to build their video recommendation engine in-house, without the expertise.
Mandelbaum originally comes from the production industry, and found himself launching Spideo alongside cofounder Paul de Monchy in 2010 looking to solve a major industry problem: a whole bunch of video content, and no way of presenting it to users in a way that keeps them viewing.
I previously worked in the video recommendation space, and having seen several players in this space – TVShowTime & Cinemur in France, not to mention the “big” players like Jinni.com – I’m always excited to see new entrants come along, and have been particularly impressed with Spideo since I met them.
Mandelbaum said Spideo will be in France in a matter of weeks, so for now, French users will have to wait – don’t worry, we’ll keep you posted!