Video search co AnyClip heads to Hollywood with Universal

The search engine finds movie scenes based on features such as the actors in it, details of the scene, behavioral information, quotes, or objects.

7 March 11 17:46, Noa Parag

Israeli movie clip search start-up AnyClip Ltd. is going to Hollywood. The company signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Universal Studios under which leading content sites and entertainment services that collaborate with AnyClip can offer users access to Universal's movie library in their search through a database of movie clips. The companies did not disclose the financial terms of the agreement.

This is the second agreement signed this year by a Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) portfolio company and a leading Hollywood company. Last month, casual games developer Funtactix Ltd. signed an agreement with Paramount Digital Entertainment Inc. to develop online virtual worlds based on movies from Paramount Studios.

AnyClip (formerly PopTok), founded by Aaron Cohen, Nate Westheimer, JVP's Erel Margalit, and Mickey Schulhof, has developed a search engine for video and movie clips. The company aims to develop the world's largest database of movie clips. It will offer a search engine to Internet users. The search engine will find any movie scene based on various features: the actors in it, details of the scene, behavioral information, quotes, objects, and labels.

AnyClip CEO Oren Nauman said, "Total searches for movie-related topics top 30 billion, 2% of the 1.5 trillion online searches made a year."

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on March 7, 2011

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