After wondering onto the uLinkx video search engine the other day I was so impressed that I poised the question whether uLinkx could be the next Google of video?
The reason I liked uLinkx so much was for two reasons:
- Its searches are quick and relevant
- You don’t have to leave the site to watch videos so it feels like a video sharing site in itself, but with more videos.
So warmed by uLinkx I decided to get in touch with the people behind it. I got hold of Saket Kumar who was happy to answer my 15 questions. Here’s what he had to say:
Saket Kumar of uLinkx.com
- I’ve heard there are just 3 people working on uLinkx at the moment – who are they?
Myself, Arvind Singh and Rabindra Gaurab are working on this project. I and Arvind Singh are working from Bay Area, California and Rabindra Gaurab is working from India.
- Sum up uLinkx.
Our mission is to make video searching, organizing and watching experience easy and enjoyable by making uLinkx as the destination for the web videos.
- What differentiates uLinkx from all the other video search engines?
Besides providing fast and relevant search results, we provide functionality to organize videos in playlists/collections. After making playlists, user can put playlists widget in their blog or subscribe to the gadget in Google personalized page.
Apart from doing video search on uLinkx, users can directly search on YouTube, Google, MySpace, Metacafe, Yahoo, Revver, Grouper at uLinkx. We call this feature “LIVE” search.
- The results of uLinkx are definitely up there with some of the other video search engines like Blinkx and PureVideo. Is there anything that sets the search technology behind uLinkx apart from the competition?
uLinkx search results are faster and relevant. Our search engine crawls for relevant videos based on what users are searching. We call this feature “self learning search engine”.
- Is there a coincidence between the name of your competitor Blinkx and your chosen name uLinkx.
When we first started uLinkx, we wanted to be online media organizer. So, we were searching and organizing both music and video. Letter ‘u’ signifies universal, ubiquitous or ur (your) and Linkx(s) is web media links. So, it’s just a mere coincidence that our name sounds/spell close to blinkx.
- I really like the way uLinkx feels like a self contained video sharing site in itself. What made you choose this design?
Great, that you like the site layout, design and functionalities. We came up with the current design after going through lots of users/friends feedback cycle. Thanks to our users/friends for their constant feedback and support.
- How many videos do you have indexed?
Till now, we have indexed around 2.7 million videos and constantly adding thousands of relevant videos every day.
- How many visitors are you currently receiving?
Our traffic has significantly increased in the last few weeks. We are getting more than 10,000+ unique visitors everyday and more than 1 million page views per month.
- Currently you just index YouTube, MySpace, Google, Yahoo, MetaCafe and Revver. Do you plan to index any more, if so which ones?
We also index Grouper, Dailymotion, Veoh, AtomFilms, iFilm and plan to include many more in near future.
- What’s your favorite video that you’ve found through uLinkx?
I have lots of favorite videos. You can see them here. One of my favorite is this.
- Often we see 2-5 of companies dominate a single online sector. There are several new players emerging in the video search space but no-one is yet storming out ahead. Who do you think will be the 3 big players in 2 years time?
It’s hard to say who will be the 3 big players in the next 2 years. As the video market is very hot we believe many new players will come to the video search space, maybe some with a different flavor. We are ready for this challenge.
- uLinkx is offering to share revenue with people who make playlists. What do you foresee the purpose of playlists to be? I’m thinking it would be perfect for someone to create a library of videos on a particular subject, are you thinking the same?
Exactly, that’s the whole point of organizing videos in the playlists. Have a look at this user’s playlists, who seems to be in IT education field.
- uLinkx recently launched a section for the ICC Cricket World Cup which shows a collection of highlights and results of recent matches. The section is very well organized and I can envisage it being very popular among cricket fans. What other niched sections are you planning next?
We are getting very good response from the cricket section of our site. In the near future, we are going to focus on niche areas based on current events (US election is one).
- Expanding on the whole playlist idea will you allow trusted users to create these sorts of niche video sections?
We encourage user to organize videos in playlist and publish it to their blog or use it in google personalized page. We have Video Search API (through the RSS feed), which user can use to create their own video search web sites. If user wants to create web site based on their videos then they can use RSS feeds of their playlists and use that information.
- What’s next for uLinkx and are you looking for investment?
We have lots of new features in pipeline which we are working on. We plan to index news and entertainment videos in the coming months.
We are open for discussion on investment opportunities
Thanks to Saket for taking part in this interview!
[uLinkx]
