AT&T's public beta for video search

AT&T has unveiled the public beta of VideoCrawler, a web application designed to allow people to search for, organize, and share online videos and other multimedia content. One might wonder how an application most likely encouraging bandwidth usage fits into a compnay's tiered bandwidth strategy that charges more for bandwidth use.

No matter how much bandwidth you may consume and how much extra you have to pay AT&T for overage bits in the future, VideoCrawler is here to help.  Developed in collaboration with start-up Divvio, VideoCrawler indexes hundreds of millions of video clips from thousands of sites, with new sites and millions of clips added every day. Favorites can be organized into private or shareable collections.

VideoCrawler is free and will be supported by banner advertising - another interesting tactic. The site features a modular, customizable layout that includes a video player window, a collection of some of the most popular videos among VideoCrawler users and a view of search results, including content thumbnails. Users can organize VideoCrawler's layout to match their individual preferences. There's also a "safe search" feature to avoid "objectionable content."

Divvio has proprietary technology to index millions of rich media clips every day and provides site management and monitoring tools to media content providers and distributors. Behind the curtain, there's an API-based architecture to enable value-adds apps for IP-enabled devices and ways to create inter-working scenarios for both consumer and enterprise applications.

For more:
- Read AT&T's press release announcing VideoCrawler.

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