Chase Norlin has spent over a decade in the online space. For example, he was a senior business development executive at ValueClick (NASDAQ: VCLK). He also served as an executive at InfoSpace (NASDAQ: INSP). Oh, and he also helped to create Sony's (NYSE: SNE) first online photo sharing service.
His latest gig: Pixsy. It's a fast-growing company in the online video space.
Well, this week, I had a chance to catch up with Chase.
Q: How are things at Pixsy?
A: Image and Video Search are the fastest growing consumer search verticals on the web. In fact, Image Search is 10% of Google's (NASDAQ: GOOG) traffic and grows 100% every year. We said early on, "if image and video search are so popular, why doesn't every website have it?" And that's the driving growth behind our business. Pixsy is unique in that we can provide image and video search to a website, under their brand, with content tailored to that specific vertical, and enable that site to have their media searched or combined with the Pixsy index. All of this provides great value to publishers: new search traffic, users stay on the site longer, new content tailored to that site, and new ad inventory is created. Additionally, the service provides great value to content providers as they receive free, targeted traffic from users performing image and video search queries. We now have a backlog of 8,000 providers trying to get content into the Pixsy index as a result.
Q: What are some of the big things you are seeing in the video world?
A: The biggest trend we're seeing in the space is that more and more publishers are waking up to the realization that they need to have multimedia content on their site. Our philosophy is, "if Google is so successful, everyone should be in the Google business." We believe every site should have deep vertical multimedia search as a tool to retain and grow an audience. If the site doesn't have this functionality, typically the user leaves to perform that search somewhere else.
Q: You have a new offering? What makes it different?
A: Pixsy is launching a series of multimedia search widgets that can be targeted to any site based on keywords. For example, a Facebook user that's interested in "Britney Spears" could have a multimedia widget that updates with all the latest multimedia content for their site, updating to the minute. The service is called PixsyPower. It can be targeted to any keyword that a user is interested in.
Q: Widgets are getting a lot of buzz. What's your take on it?
A: Widgets are getting a lot of buzz for their ability to be easily created and spread among users quickly. This is why we're launching our new PixsyPower widget platform that makes getting targeted multimedia content quick and easy.
Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook
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