AT&T Extends Business, Launches Video Search Engine

AT&T announced yesterday the launch of a public beta version of its VideoCrawler web application designed to allow users to search, organize and share online videos and other multimedia content. Such a release from such a source at this particular moment couldn’t be more surprising. The telecom giant’s move doesn’t come anywhere near its array of interest (or at least, didn’t).

The site can be regarded as having the role of a cable network for the web, using indexing and searching technology from Divvio to amass videos across popular sites like YouTube, Hulu, MySpace Video, Google Video, Break, and other. The following are pretty much the main video community features: allows users to create custom playlists, e-mail clips to friends, add ratings, share videos over a number of social services like Twitter, Facebook, and blogs, and have a quick look at the most popular material on the site.

The good news for users is that the service is free as it is supported by banner ads.

"We want to do everything possible to connect customers to the content they want, and today more than ever, what they want online is social media," said Sean O'Leary, vice president, AT&T Business Development. "With thousands of popular video Web sites, it's become more and more challenging to find, sort and manage all of the best clips that are out there. That's exactly what we're working to solve with VideoCrawler by allowing users to search from an index of the most popular media sources from across the Web."
The layout of the service is easily customizable just by simply clicking and dragging. You can organize videos into collections, which can be shared using social networking widgets.