Does the Blinkx CEO have any shares in his own company?

Over on iii, on the Blinkx discussion thread, 'sobeit' posted the following yesterday, about last year's AGM:

"Having finished his speil I got up and then through the chair asked him [Chandratillake, I assume], since he thought the company was so good, how many shares he held. He had to admit he had none. So I asked him why? That took quite a lot of wind out of his sails."

If this is true - and one must always be wary of believing what anonymous posters put on public discussion forums - the obvious question is: why? Why is Chandratillake happy to spout off to anyone who will listen - journalists, Martin Sorrell - about what a bright, nay stellar, future Blinkx has before it, when he hasn't bought - apparently - a single share in the company? (And I believe I'm correct in saying that he sold some of his options at the company's IPO - I'm happy to correct that if it turns out I'm wrong.) Not exactly a vote of confidence in the company's future, is it?

Facebook hits 300 million users

"In August 2008, Facebook claimed 100 million monthly active users worldwide. By April 2009, the social networking outfit doubled that number. In July, it reached 250 million monthly active users. And now, two months later, Facebook has passed 300 million. Quite a milestone, but one that pales a bit in comparison to this one: Facebook is cash-flow positive."

from All Things Digital

...and this is a video-search market which Blinkx is completely ignoring.

Facebook has open APIs, for chrissakes - anyone can write an app!

except Blinkx, apparently...

Super cool

VMS to Leverage blinkx Video Index for Comprehensive News Monitoring and Reporting Services

RNS Number : 0312Z

Blinkx Plc

15 September 2009



VMS to Leverage blinkx Video Index for Comprehensive News Monitoring and Reporting Services

Worldwide leader in integrated media intelligence solutions taps blinkx to enhance its extensive suite of products

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. - September 15, 2009 - blinkx, the world's largest and most advanced video search engine, today announced a technology partnership with VMS, provider of the industry's most comprehensive news monitoring and measurement, and ad intelligence business solutions. VMS clients will now have organized access to blinkx's index of over 35 million hours of audio and video web content.

Industry leader VMS provides public relations firms, advertising agencies, and marketers worldwide with fully integrated news and advertising monitoring across all media, including television, radio, Internet, print, blogs, international, outdoor and cinema, in more markets than anyone else. Furthering its commitment to providing clients with the most cutting-edge services available, VMS has partnered with blinkx to enhance its media intelligence software suite. Thousands of VMS clients will now have easy access to relevant video news coverage, drawing from blinkx's massive index of over 35 million hours of Internet content.

'blinkx's advanced video technology indexes news feeds from a wide variety of sources across the Web, and makes sense of huge amounts online video quickly and accurately,' said Suranga Chandratillake, founder and CEO, blinkx. 'We are pleased to provide VMS's clients with a comprehensive roundup of the most timely, relevant news coverage possible, and are confident clients will be pleased with the results.'

'Across all media, in all markets, public relations practitioners and marketing professionals rely on us to better understand the pulse of the editorial and advertising world,' said Peter Wengryn, CEO of VMS. 'Our new partnership with blinkx will enhance our client offerings and enable them to access a more holistic understanding of their business environment,' added Wengryn.

As the pioneer in video search technology, blinkx has built a reputation as the smartest way to find rich media on the Web. The company has made more than 530 partners and indexed over 35 million hours of video and audio content to date.

About blinkx

blinkx plc (LSE AIM: BLNX) is the world's largest and most advanced video search engine. Today, blinkx has indexed more than 35 million hours of audio, video, viral and TV content, and made it fully searchable and available on demand. blinkx's founders set out to solve a significant challenge - as TV and user-generated content on the Web explode, keyword-based search technologies only scratch the surface. blinkx's patented search technologies listen to - and even see - the Web, helping users enjoy a breadth and accuracy of search results not available elsewhere. In addition, blinkx powers the video search for many of the world's most frequented sites. blinkx is based in San Francisco and London. More information is available at www.blinkx.com.

About VMS

VMS is the world leader in integrated media intelligence solutions that bring together news monitoring and advertising monitoring across all media - broadcast, radio, print, Internet and outdoor.

The firm just debuted the first-ever integrated platform, Vantage, which enables communicators to see the affects of PR on advertising and vice versa, for their organizations and competitors, complete with correlations to business outcomes.

VMS provides public relations firms, advertising agencies and marketers worldwide with the most comprehensive, cutting-edge editorial and ad retrieval, management and analysis solutions, including a broad spectrum of industry-leading advertising and public relations measurement and tracking tools. VMS recently acquired access to new software solutions enabling them to take advantage of state-of-the-art meaning-based computing to enhance their search capabilities.

VMS provides access to the largest continually updated advertising database in the world with over five million ads and commercials through the market leading AdSight platform. The competitive advertising intelligence VMS provides includes U.S. and international creative content as well as domestic spending and occurrence data from Nielsen for the top 100 U.S. television markets.

For more information about VMS call 1.800.VMS.2002 or visit www.vmsinfo.com.

-------------------

Welcome, of course, but I'd rather have had an iPhone app or a Facebook widget, or a tie-up with Yahoo...

Bing: Now With Visual Search

"Hoping to further differentiate its new Bing search engine from market leader Google, Microsoft is moving away from the proverbial “10 blue links” we so often associate with the search experience. During a presentation at the TechCrunch 50 event in San Francisco, the company announced Bing Visual Search, a Silverlight-based feature that replaces those links with images."

from All Things Digital

My, but that image looks a lot like Cooliris or Blinkx's video wall.

If Blinkx are involved, surely it would be worth an RNS?

And if they're not involved, isn't that further evidence that Blinkx mgmt aren't moving fast enough and are being left behind...?

What Blinkx can learn from Blade Runner...

"Apple’s App Store Downloads: 1.8 Billion Served

Every Apple event is good for some revealing statistics. This morning Steve Jobs let drop that the App Store to date has delivered a whopping 1.8 billion downloads to iPhone and iPod touch users. That’s a lot of zeroes.

There are now over 75,000 total applications to choose from, and 30 million iPhones sold in the past 2+ years running them..."

from Mashable

And not one of those downloads was of a Blinkx-branded video search app. And why? Because Blinkx management don't seem to think that reaching the iPhone owner demograhic - young, wealthy, huge consumers of media, with 'unlimited' (fair use) data limits - are worth targetting.

To be sure, competing with 75,000 applications wouldn't be easy, but as Roy Batty pointed out in Blade Runner: you can't win if you don't play. And if you don't play...

edit: and as for the total absence of a Blinkx-branded Facebook widget - don't get me started...

BLINKX VIDEO SEARCH ENGINE - Suranga Chandratillake talks