Viewdle is All That and a Bag of Chips

Have you heard about Viewdle? Viewdle is a start up that has technology to index video through facial recognition. They are building an enormous catalog of faces that will make video searchable just as easily as text is for Google.

How does it work? Hell if I know. All I know is that this is the coolest thing since sliced bread. To see how cool, roll over the underlined name "Barack Obama", wait a few seconds, and see what happens.


Barack Obama

Now roll over this one about John McCain

John McCain

What Viewdle is doing is bringing up segments of the latest videos available containing these persons. And it is finding those segments via facial recognition, not keyword indexing.

Oh, and what you're looking at is their little freebie widget. Obviously the concept is a lot bigger than a little clip of Barack.

There are a number of challenges facing video, of which one of the most significant is how to index the unbelievably massive stream of vids that are added to the web every moment. Round one of video indexing was via keywords that were added by video producers. But that isn't a real solution -- much better that technology be able to do all that indexing for us. And also more accurate, given the number of times the 24 hour news stations put the wrong name below a face.

Honestly, I know this is a big money area -- video search and indexing I mean. In addition to the critical utility purposes that are so telegraphic, Viewdle technology also holds the promise of other monetization solutions. Hey, I am no visionary, I'm more of a here and now person. But as the world explores many new ways of monetizing of video, the ability to index and catalog video contact by person seems a no brainer as a potential source of big bucks. Whether video ends up being mostly an ad supported media form (as I expect) or whether consuemrs can be convinced to actually pay for video content, this technology helps in either scenario. Content and context are both central to the future of video, and Viewdle seems a big step forward in both areas.

The widget doesn't only work for pols.

Jessica Alba

Viewdle says they are building the largest facial recognition database in the world, which I love the sound of. Here's their 60 second elevator pitch from the Tech Crunch site.



Can you tell I love this?

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