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[itvt] Interview: Mark Pascarella and Patrick Donovan, Gotuit Media

Markpascarella2007Patrickdonovan2007_2Gotuit Media--a company that offers metadata technologies which, among other things, allow end-users to instantly access the parts of a piece of video that interest them, and which can also be used by video publishers to allow end- users to make mash-ups out of their content--was recently tapped by Fox Reality Channel to power an interactive broadband video service for its Really Awards. The company's other customers include Sports Illustrated (for which it powers a search and navigation portal called the FilmRoom), the NHL (for which it powers a searchable, interactive, broadband version of the show, "NHL On The Fly: Final"), and Sprint (for which it powers NFL Fantasy Video, a mobile application that allows subscribers to watch their own custom video highlight reels of their favorite players).

Gotuit's president and CEO, Mark Pascarella, and the company's VP of product management, Patrick Donovan, recently spoke to [itvt]'s Tracy Swedlow about the significance of the Fox Reality deal, about the company's technologies and services, about using those technologies to monetize video content, about new types of Internet video programming that its technologies could enable, about its future plans, and more.

[itvt]: Could you tell us about Gotuit's new deal with Fox Reality?

Donovan: Last year, Fox did the first-ever awards show for reality television--the Really Awards--on its Fox Reality channel. This year, we're powering a broadband video site that they have dedicated to their coverage of these awards. We're indexing their video, both of the '06 ceremony and the '07 ceremony. The site also has a voting feature where viewers can vote for the most memorable reality star of '07. The winner of the vote will be announced at the awards ceremony on October 13th.

Gotuitimage12007 Now what makes this project so significant for us is that it's the best example yet of how our metadata and indexing technology can be used to enhance entertainment programming. Our technology makes it possible for the viewer to get instantly to video of whichever moment, segment, personality, or award they're most interested in. So, when you go to the Really Awards site, looking to view video of the 2006 awards, you're not faced with one, big, impenetrable, hour-long video; instead, you find that the video is indexed by--and accessible by--categories such as awards, funniest moments, presenters, musical acts, favorite characters, and so forth. So what our technology is doing is providing a way for viewers--as soon as they land on the page--to personalize their experience of the video by being able to instantly access the playlists and scenes that most interest them.

[itvt]: How long after Fox Reality's broadcast of their 2007 awards ceremony will indexed video be available on the site?

Gotuitpullquote12007_3 Donovan: As soon as it airs, we'll index it and can put it up within a half hour after the broadcast is over. Prior to that, you can access indexed video of the '06 ceremony. [Note: Donovan emailed [itvt] Tuesday, to let us know that "Fox made the decision to wait before releasing the video to broadband, and it will be up later this week."] The reason we're so proud of this project is not only that it's significant that a well-known brand like Fox and Fox Reality has chosen to use our technology, but that the project provides such a great showcase for our technology: people can actually experience the kinds of new possibilities for on-demand video that our metadata technology makes possible--they can see how much better their experience is when it's indexed with Gotuit metadata.

[itvt]: How is Fox Reality going about promoting the availability of this indexed broadband video service?

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Gotuitimage22007_2 Donovan: Fox Reality has a whole marketing push going on around the linear TV show itself. They are also messaging that there's a broadband destination site that has all the video from last year available, and that the site also lets you take part in the awards by voting. If you look at any of the reality TV blogs, magazines, etc., you'll see that they're doing a lot of outreach to promote the site and the vote. Last year, the winner of the viewer vote got 3 million votes. This shows how interested they are in driving audience to the site to take part in the voting, and also to consume the video.

[itvt]: Why do you think Fox Reality chose Gotuit for this project?

Donovan: Well, they have a 60-minute show with 13 to 16 different award categories--last year it was 13, this year it's 16--with various presenters, and with a ton of different personalities and shows being talked about. They were looking for a way to let the viewer get quickly to whatever their favorite show or star is, because, if you're a "Big Brother" fan, that doesn't necessarily mean you're a "Survivor" fan or a Flavor Flav fan. So when we showed them how--by wrapping their video in our indexing technology--you can present viewers with these playlists and allow this kind of instant access to the parts of the video that most interest them, the people at Fox Reality really liked that.

The other thing they really liked--and this is a feature of our second-generation player--was that they could take our technology and customize it with the exact look that they wanted. In other words, they could give it a look that was similar to the look of the linear TV show. You can see how very different what we've done for Fox Reality is from what we've done for Sports Illustrated, for example. So Fox Reality not only liked the fact that our technology could offer a much better viewing experience, they liked the fact that they could customize our player to reinforce their branding.

[itvt]: Now, as I recall, when Gotuit started out, you were very much targeting your platform at the cable industry. Now you seem to be working directly with broadcasters and other content providers, and focusing your efforts on the broadband video space...

Pascarella: You're right that cable--and, in particular, cable VOD--was the initial entry point for our technology. We've conducted trials with both Time Warner Cable and Comcast, reaching a peak of our technology being available in over a million homes throughout the Northeast. Then, more recently, we expanded the technology to both broadband and mobile video formats. It's always been our vision to not only deliver this unique viewing experience, where the consumer has complete control and can enjoy video content in a highly personalized, non-linear fashion, but to be able to do that regardless of platform or device. So we started in cable television, and then expanded to broadband and mobile. We've seen empirical data across all three platforms we've offered our services on that confirms that when you make it simple and easy for consumers to access the parts of a program that they find most interesting, they'll stay longer and watch more. Also, we've found that, when you can delineate and precisely describe what occurs in each scene within a video, you have greater flexibility and more monetization opportunities from an advertising standpoint.

[itvt]: What is the current status of your various cable VOD deployments? Are you proactively seeking additional cable deployments at this point?

Pascarella: The market trials that we did with cable VOD, which peaked at over one million homes, have all been completed, and delivered outstanding results in terms of increased views and advertising served. The data clearly shows that end-users loved to be able to bring up an index of the program they were watching and navigate to a particular scene, or choose a compelling playlist that cuts across the entire video library.

Gotuitimage32007Viewing time on Gotuit-enabled channels was significantly higher than before the content was enabled with Gotuit technology. Gotuit-enabled channels dominated other channels from better-known brands that were not enabled by Gotuit. The business case is further supported by the fact that Gotuit technology creates an advertising capability of both on-screen banner ads and in-stream video ads, that did not exist before. We are ready to help the cable industry distribute our patented technology more broadly when they make it a priority.

[itvt]: So I take it you're not abandoning the set-top box?

Pascarella: No. We believe that the traditional livingroom-television environment will be a large and interesting part of our business going forward. However, at the moment, the largest and fastest-growing components of our business are broadband and mobile. It's nice to be able just to talk directly to the content publishers and work with them to create the kind of user experience and monetization opportunities they want.

[itvt]: Now, just to clarify, when one goes to the Fox Reality site and accesses different parts of the 2006 or 2007 Really Awards video, those different parts are not actually video clips, correct?

Gotuitpullquote22007 Donovan: Exactly. The big difference with Gotuit is that we don't actually create clips or edit the video in any way. What you're seeing on the Really Awards site is the video file of the 60-minute broadcast still existing in its original, intact form. What we do is create a set of metadata describing it, which allows Fox to offer viewers a detailed playlist of individual segments of the video--and which also allows those viewers to take a scene they like and send it to a friend or embed it on their blog: when the viewers do that, they're not actually sending clips; all they're doing is sending our metadata. Actually, Fox is very interested in using our technology to encourage their viewers to take their favorite moments from the show and distribute them throughout the Internet.

[itvt]: How does an end-user go about embedding the video on their Web site?

Donovan: Similar to other services, right underneath the player, there are embed codes and link codes for the particular playlist or scene that you're watching. So the end-user just has to copy and paste that into their blog or Web site to have an embedded player for that portion of the program.

[itvt]: Now, one of the more interesting things about your technology is that it enables people to experience video in quite a different way from traditional linear television...

Pascarella: Exactly. I think this is the larger point of our work with Fox and our other customers. What a lot of people are highly interested in--and this is something that has ultimately influenced their purchase decisions--is that our technology enables Internet video that isn't just modeled on broadcast--i.e. that isn't just experienced in a linear way--but that leverages some of the unique things that the Internet makes possible.

Video delivery has been around since 1941, and the Internet--taken purely as a delivery mechanism--hasn't really improved on the traditional methods. That is, of course, if you think of video purely as a passive, linear experience. However, what the Internet does is that it opens up a space for a different video experience--i.e. for interactivity that allows individuals to customize their experience of programming in a way that hasn't been possible before. We feel that our Gotuit PowerVideo Suite technology, by wrapping video content in rich and granular metadata, unlocks the potential of Internet video by making it easy for individuals to really define their own experience of a piece of video--and even to manipulate, personalize, and share that video. And it makes this possible, even as it leaves the video itself intact and unaltered. We've had a lot of people look at our technology and realize that it really enables a paradigm shift in the way that audiences consume video--and, of course, they can also see that it has major positive benefits in terms of monetizing that video.

[itvt]: So you're saying that your metadata technology could enable new genres of programming that are Internet-specific--as opposed to traditional linear programming that's just delivered via the Internet as another channel. Could you speculate on some of the new kinds of programming you feel your technology could eventually enable, if more and more creatives get their hands on it?

Donovan: Sure. Imagine your favorite multi-character drama, like "Lost," being indexed in this way. The viewer could now choose "Character View," and only see scenes of Jack, Hurley, Sawyer, etc. Or he could choose "Flashbacks," and watch only the scenes from before they crashed on the island.

Gotuitpullquote32007 For an example of a brand-new kind of programming, imagine a video experience like the old "Choose Your Own Adventure" books. Publishers could produce programming knowing that they would allow the audience to choose their own path through it, based on what they wanted to watch. Do you want the character to live or die? Depending on your choice, you would see a new segment or playlist.

Another example would be new, personalized video products. I am a huge Boston sports fan, and I might sign up for a video product that would allow me to see only the teams, players, or plays I am interested in. Some of our work with Sports Illustrated shows this kind of ability--for example, the NFL and NBA Draft products.

Gotuitimage42007 Same concept applies to news--allowing the viewers to personalize the topics they are interested in. Training and enterprise video is another area where applying metadata to enable personalized access would be very effective.

You are also seeing publishers and brands put the creative control in the hands of the audience, by making content available and allowing the audience to remix new video experiences, such as ads, movie trailers, etc. Gotuit metadata can be leveraged the same way, by using metadata to define a new path--a remix--through the video library.

However, the core need that publishers have to drive greater monetization from their current video assets is what our solution best addresses today. Publishers don't have to invent new content; they simply have to enrich the content they already have with a new level of metadata.

[itvt]: Now the tools within the Gotuit PowerVideo Suite that enabled this new offering from Fox Reality are Gotuit VideoMarker Pro, Gotuit VideoPlayer, and Gotuit VideoDiscovery, correct?

Gotuitimage52007 Pascarella: Yes. Gotuit VideoMarker Pro is the tool that is used to generate the metadata that's wrapped around the video file. Gotuit VideoPlayer is our set of highly customizable modules that is integrated into the customer's player environment to make them Gotuit- enabled. Gotuit VideoDiscovery is our video search capability, where all the metadata that is created is available for the viewer to search across the video library and within each video asset.

[itvt]: Could you talk us through the process of how your technology indexes/generates metadata for a piece of video? How long does it usually take?

Donovan: How long it takes depends on the type of content and how rich the publisher wants to make the metadata set. In the case of the Really Awards, it's fairly straightforward content. Beforehand, we'll pre-load as much data about the content as possible. In other words, we'll pre-load the playlist structures that the publisher has defined and any attributes that will be associated with each segment for search or advertising purposes. For the Really Awards, these attributes include things like "Character Name," "Program Name," and "Award Category"; for other customers, like Sports Illustrated and Sprint, attributes are things like "Player Name," "Team Name," "Position," "Play Type," "Date," etc. The system is flexible to allow the publisher to define the attributes that their audience will want to search for, or that their advertisers will want to advertise against. Publishers can create rules to define the required attributes that must be present to ensure that the metadata will be consistent and complete.

Then the person doing the indexing will start watching the show. They'll mark the logical start- and end-points of each meaningful segment, and give those segments a title and a description. They'll capture a thumbnail, and then associate any attributes or tags to that segment using the pre-loaded lists--again for the purposes of either search or advertising. Once the segments are defined, they are placed within the playlist structure that the publisher has defined. This is done with a simple drag and drop.

Using VideoMarker Pro, we can do the indexing as the show is airing. It's a process that actually does not take nearly the time it takes to air the show. But, of course, we can't finish until the show is over, if we are indexing it live like we do for the NFL games each weekend. When the process is finished, it gets checked for quality and completeness, and gets published to the broadband site or mobile destination. It can usually be available within a half hour of the end of the show.

In general, programming with more natural segments, like news, training video, interviews, etc., can be indexed in a fraction of the actual content duration. More fluid content, like basketball, soccer, or hockey, takes a little longer to index, but it is still less than the actual content duration. The important point to realize is that for a minimal investment in time you get out an extremely valuable data set.

Pascarella: We view Gotuit as establishing the standard for video metadata. We believe that anyone producing video ought to wrap their video content in the most granular and rich metadata set possible, for two reasons: first because this maximizes the utility of a video for the audience--by making it possible for each individual audience member to get the maximum value from that video by quickly and easily finding those parts they're most interested in. Secondly, because it brings about new monetization opportunities, allowing for greater flexibility and greater yield in delivering targeted advertising. Advertising can be targeted specifically by keyword to the video content. As a video producer, why would you ever want to ship your product to any digital platform, without first wrapping it in rich, granular metadata, that truly unleashes the power of your video library?

[itvt]: Could you give us some more detailed examples of how your technology can improve video publishers' and site operators' ability to monetize their content?

Donovan: Sure. Most broadband content today is supported through in-page and in-stream advertising. To improve monetization, the publisher must 1) attract and retain a greater audience, 2) have them watch more video, and 3) drive a higher CPM for the in-page and in-stream ads. Gotuit impacts all three dimensions.

First, allowing the audience to quickly and easily discover the content they are most interested in helps to keep the audience loyal and returning to the site. The audience grows as viewers have more interesting playlists and segments from a Gotuit-enabled library to spread virally instead of just disconnected clips. It also grows by having more detail about the video assets to publish out to third-party video search aggregators to drive traffic back to the original site. For example, instead of Fox having one item in their MRSS feed for the Really Awards, there are now 40-plus different items that can be syndicated out.

Second, viewers spend more time watching Gotuit-enabled video libraries. The video itself is productized to present more interesting views when the viewer first gets to the page. For our work with the NHL, for example, each 30-minute episode has a "Big Hits" playlist that grabs the viewer's attention immediately. A large percentage of content viewed on Gotuit-enabled sites is due to a viewer choosing a playlist to watch, rather than just a single clip. Viewers navigate the playlists while they watch the video, queuing up the next items they want to watch. We have seen visit time more than double for some of our customers.

Gotuitpullquote42007 Third, and probably most important, all the metadata that is defined can be used to drive more targeted and valuable in-page and in-stream advertising revenue. Instead of just buying "Soccer," for example, advertisers could choose "David Beckham" and pay more to only show their ads next to, before, or after any scenes that include David Beckham. There are many ad networks out there, but in order to be most effective, you must have the data to use for targeting. Gotuit metadata is the most useful and actionable data, especially for in-stream video advertising. Not only does each segment have a rich data set, but the entire video asset gets defined with logical points at which to insert an ad. The publisher is no longer tied to forcing a pre-roll before every clip, but instead can define when to insert an ad based on the time spent or the number of segments watched. This optimizes the realized revenue without driving the audience away by showing too many ads.

[itvt]: As you just mentioned, when a video producer uses Gotuit's technology to index a video, the video is available to video search engines complete with its indexing, correct?

Donovan: Yes. When we index a video, all of those segments that are defined--along with their titles descriptions, thumbnails and so forth--are published out in MRSS feeds that these third-party video-search aggregators are equipped to ingest, and then index themselves. A non-Gotuit-enabled broadband video site will just send asset-level information to those third parties. We, however, send segment-level information that can be discovered by those third-party search engines, so you end up with a much larger dataset describing that video.

Gotuitpullquote52007 And, because the video remains intact and the granularity is in the metadata, you have an advantage when somebody discovers your video in a third-party search engine. For example, say someone were to do a search for "Rob and Amber" from "Survivor" on a search site that had indexed our MRSS feed from the Really Awards. When they clicked on the search result from our feed, they'd come back to the Really Awards video to the exact segment where Rob and Amber appeared in the show. However, they wouldn't just be discovering a Rob and Amber video clip; they'd be discovering the point in the original video file where the Rob and Amber segment occurred. So, they'd be able to see the segment in its original context, and would see both what happened before that segment and what happened afterwards within the playlist. And, in turn, what that means is that our technology drives longer viewing sessions, deeper user-engagement and, ultimately for those same reasons, better monetization.

Pascarella: Our technology makes broadband video infinitely more discoverable, regardless of what your access point may be--whether it happens to be a search engine, or the actual video asset on FoxReality.com. By having this layer of metadata for a video, we enable the viewer to search for elements within a video asset, rather than just to search for the asset as a whole.

[itvt]: Do you work proactively with video publishers to make their indexed video discoverable by search engines?

Gotuitpullquote62007 Donovan: Yes. It's actually a standard part of our offering. We assume that folks who want their video indexed want it discovered as much as possible. So we automatically send out MRSS feeds to third-party search engines and aggregators. Of course, if they don't want their feed sent somewhere, we can turn it off for them--part of our process with a publisher upfront is to specify those kinds of details.

[itvt]: Are you forming partnerships with the advertising networks out there, or do you leave that to your publishers?

Donovan: That's up to the publishers. We're independent of third-party ad providers, and we integrate with whichever ad provider the publisher is using. To date, the ad providers we've worked with include Advertising.com, Broadband Enterprises and DoubleClick. If a publisher uses an ad provider we haven't yet worked with, we'll simply integrate with them. If a publisher doesn't have any advertising relationships, we can serve ads for them through a relationship we have with Advertising.com. Typically, though, we're focused on premium, professional video content, so most of our customers have their own ad sales group and sell their own advertising.

[itvt]: What's Gotuit's business model for the Really Awards project?

Pascarella: Our business model in this instance and in general is software licensing. So we're being paid based on the software technology that we deliver, and their usage of that.

[itvt]: Do you expect to work with Fox Reality on additional projects going forward?

Pascarella: We would certainly hope that to be the case. I think we've undertaken this relationship with the expectation that we'll continue to work together to do more exciting, innovative things. What's been clear from our discussions is that there's real interest in creating new viewing experiences around television programming for the broadband environment.

I think we both feel that it's important to move beyond simply repackaging or redistributing programming content in its original linear format, so that the broadband experience of that programming is truly unique and differentiated. To that end, Fox Reality is not just providing broadband viewers with new functionality enabled by our technology--i.e. the ability to navigate to the precise parts of the show that they're interested in and to embed that video in their own Web sites, etc.--they're also providing broadband viewers with exclusive access to footage of the event's red carpet. Their goal is to ensure that broadband viewers of the Really Awards show get a very different experience from viewers who have watched it in its linear broadcast format.

[itvt]: Your technology also has applicability to mobile video, correct?

Gotuitpullquote72007_2Donovan: Absolutely. Any metadata we create with the Gotuit PowerVideo Suite is independent of platform. So if Fox Reality, or any other customer, wanted to offer a linked broadband and mobile experience, the metadata we created for their video would apply equally well to either platform. The only thing that would happen differently is that the video would be transcoded into the appropriate format for the mobile platform--so Flash or 3GPP or whatever. Actually, one of the differentiators for Gotuit is that the metadata we create is platform-independent, and so we're live today on broadband, cable and mobile.

Our flagship mobile application is NFL Fantasy Video, which we built for Sprint. It is one of the only mobile applications that allows for a personalized video experience--in this case, NFL football highlights. Subscribers can choose their favorite players and then see the video highlights of just those players on their Sprint mobile phone each week. In addition to their favorite players, they can also scout any other player in the league to see their highlights. This is possible because we index every play of every NFL game each week, and publish the metadata along with the video. The archive of all the plays from this year and last year is available for the subscribers to easily watch for a cost of $5.99 per month.

Gotuitimage62007 [itvt]: Presumably, Gotuit is going to face more competition as people realize the usefulness of rich metadata for broadband video...

Donovan: That is true, but I don't think I've seen anybody doing broadband video in the way we do it. Other people are certainly clipping their content--they'll create a bunch of clips that they'll send to YouTube or whatever. But, as we discussed earlier, if you do that, not only do you create many more assets that now have to be managed, but you lose the original context of each clip.

What makes our solution superior is that it's much more efficient and much simpler. You keep the original content the way it is. You describe as many metadata sets as you like for as many products as you have and in as many different ways as you want to represent that content, but from an asset-management point of view, you only have one asset to worry about.

The tools that we've built into the PowerVideo Suite to index video are extremely efficient. As we discussed earlier, it lets you load in data beforehand, and assists the indexer in creating a very rich dataset. As we mentioned, for our mobile application, we index every single NFL game, and that content--the video with all the rich metadata we generate--is available within a half hour of the conclusion of each game.

The bottom line is that we've got very strong intellectual property around this use of metadata for improved search, navigation and monetization of content that was written back in 1996 and granted in 2000. If someone is doing it the way we just described it, they may well be using IP we've already defined.

Pascarella: You're right. More and more people in the industry are coming round to understanding the importance of metadata and how it needs to be used. And, with the rise of on-demand video, audiences are starting to look for the kind of experience that our rich metadata technologies can enable. People are starting to say, "Boy! I should be able to do things differently with an on-demand video, right? I shouldn't have to sit and wait to see what's going to happen, like with a live broadcast, because it already happened. I should be able to jump to the point I want. I should be able to just see the scenes with my favorite character, or just see the scenes I need to catch me up with this plotline."

Metadata is the key that unlocks all of that. And the key thing for us is that we've been doing it since 2000. We've got a set of tools that optimizes the production of it, as well as the consumption of it on the player side. We can save publishers a lot of time and effort by using our tools to jumpstart the performance of their video libraries.

[itvt]: Since Gotuit seems to be focusing more on broadband video these days, why not create a low-end version of your tools that would work for smaller content creators--or even for regular people who want to put their video up on the Web and ensure that it can be easily found by search engines? So a version of your tools for user-generated-content environments.

Pascarella: Well, we started to do something a little bit like what you're describing--putting our tools in the hands of consumers--with SceneMaker.net, and I think you'll see more development around that--where we let consumers index user-generated or professional video and compile their own playlists or video mash-ups. And you're right: the amount of video being produced--by individuals as well as by premium publishers--is increasing exponentially by the day, and rich metadata is needed to describe all that video.

Gotuitpullquote82007For now, though, where we think the best business case for us lies is in offering a premium toolset to premium brands--to content owners and programmers. And we therefore haven't prioritized user-generated content very highly. But our solutions, or a version of them, could definitely be used for user-generated content, and certainly could be used by smaller publishers. In fact, later this quarter, we'll be making some announcements about new toolsets that could be used by smaller publishers, as well as by larger publishers, to index their video--solutions that, if they're using some other broadband video solution, would be able to merge the metadata with the solution that they're using. If you've already built a broadband video environment, that doesn't mean that you can't enhance it with Gotuit technology: you can apply the advanced discovery and navigation components that our technology enables, without having to swap out your existing environment.

[itvt]: At one point, wasn't Gotuit attempting to develop its own destination broadband video site at Gotuit.com? What happened to it? Gotuit.com now appears to be a corporate site...

Donovan: Yes, when we first entered the broadband market, we had our own destination site where we had content that we licensed ourselves across Music, News, Sports, Weather and other categories. This was done primarily to showcase what our technology could do. As we have been able to attract customers such as Sports Illustrated, the National Hockey League, Fox Reality and others, there is no longer the need to have our own consumer-focused site, so we re-launched our corporate site at Gotuit.com to focus on our business-to-business value proposition.

Gotuitimage72007[itvt]: As you just mentioned, Gotuit's metadata technology can also be used to facilitate mash-ups. You recently enabled a mash-up service for Capitol Records Nashville. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Donovan: Gotuit VideoMixer is the latest module within the Gotuit PowerVideo Suite. As you mentioned, it was most recently used by EMI/Capitol Records Nashville to promote the launch of the first album of one of their artists, Luke Bryan. Capitol Records has made five videos available--the original music video, footage from three live concerts, and the video press kit--and allows the audience to define their own segments and then remix them into their own video experience.

Publishers can either allow people to use an audio bed for their remix, or just the natural scene audio. For the Luke Bryan Remix project, his hit single is the audio bed for each remix. Capitol Records is using this to promote a contest where the audience makes their own music video for the hit single. One thing we have learned is that a portion of the audience will like using the pre-defined scenes that were provided, while others will define their own scenes to make exactly what they want.

Capitol Records likes how it is driving a deeper engagement with Luke Bryan's fans, without having thousands and thousands of new videos being created. With Gotuit, each remix is simply another metadata set, defining that user's path through the video library. There is no new video to store or manage, but the user can send out links and embed their remix wherever they want.

Gotuitimage82007 [itvt]: What kinds of announcements should we expect to hear from Gotuit over the next few months?

Donovan: We will have several new customers and products to announce over the coming months. We are also proud of some awards that will be announced soon, such as the Streaming Media 2007 Readers' Choice Award, where Gotuit won for "Best Search and Indexing Platform."

[itvt]: How is Gotuit funded? Is the company still seeking venture funding at this stage?

Pascarella: Gotuit is privately held and funded by investments from Highland Capital Partners, Atlas Venture, Motorola and private investors. We are not actively seeking additional funding at this time, but may seek additional investment in the future.

URL: http://www.gotuit.com


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