In-Brief: Another company MSG has followed from the start moves into expansion mode. This time it’s Veveo, a company that covers the bases, allowing users to browse search and discover mobile video content, as well as create their feed of personalized and relevant video content. To this end, Veveo has created a large, diverse and ever-growing index of video content – to date more than 150 million Web video clips from thousands of websites including YouTube and MySpace. To round out the offer, the company can also link with social networks such as Facebook and MySpace, allowing users to link their profiles and preferences with their personal vtap Feed of video content and with those of their friends.

Thanks to Kathleen Goodwin and her team who set it up, Veveo pre-briefed me on the European launch last week. Schedules are tight but I still have high hopes that I’ll connect face-to-face with Murali Aravamudan, Veveo founder and CEO, this week at CTIA for an interview and a demo. Even if we don’t connect during the show, you can count on a podcast/Q&A that deep-dives into the nuts and bolts of the service and how it enables the creation of a personalized and dynamic feed of video content.

During the phone briefing, Murali told me his big-picture strategy revolves around making video part of our daily mobile routine.

As he put it: “Video is the future of the mobile Internet – users will soon turn to video, not text, for the majority of their entertainment and information needs. Just as mobile email usage has become a habit, and encouraged the development of handsets like the Blackberry and smartphones, we believe that we will soon see the proliferation of a mobile video habit amongst consumers all over the world. Related services, devices and revenue generating opportunities will emerge accordingly.”

By way of background, Veveo focuses on three constituencies. For brand and content owners, the idea is to extend the reach of their Web video content distribution to mobile through Veveo’s vtap offer; for advertisers, the focus is on delivering relevant advertising linked to user context and with the help of “psychographic information gathered through user profiling”; and for handset makers, the aim is to boost their multimedia capabilities by baking mobile search and discovery in from the start — much the same way PCs come bundled with content and search from the get-go.

Murali tells me the company, which recently sealed a licensing deal with Motorola, is set to announce another one with a major manufacturer soon. As always, please check back regularly – it’ll be worth your while.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 31st, 2008 at 2:39 pm and is filed under Content Discovery, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Content, Mobile Search, Mobile Social Networking, Personalization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.