Friday, September 28, 2007

Yahoo buys Web video site Jumpcut

September 28, 2006 (IDG News Service) -- Yahoo Inc. agreed to buy Web video editing and publishing site Jumpcut.com on Wednesday, as Internet companies continue to seek ways to compete with YouTube Inc.

The move comes nearly four months after the Sunnyvale, Calif., company revamped its own Yahoo Video site, and could foretell further acquisitions in the Web video space. Microsoft Corp. recently opened the beta version of its online video-sharing service last week, Soapbox on MSN Video, while AOL LLC unveiled a revamped video portal in late July to strengthen its position against YouTube and Google Video.

Yahoo and Jumpcut both announced the deal on company blogs, and Jumpcut even made a short video to commemorate the event.

The video site will join a host of other Yahoo properties, including Flickr and Del.icio.us. The deal will help Jumpcut reach a broader audience, and gain "more creators, more content and more exciting things to do," it said.

Yahoo said Jumpcut would be part of the Yahoo Video family, indicating that the online Web video service would not replace Yahoo's own video service

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Jumpcut was founded and run by MiraVida Media Inc., a San Francisco company.

YouTube thrashed all rivals in a count of U.S. visitors from Hitwise Pty. Ltd. earlier this year, with 43% of traffic to video sites, nearly double the share of runner-up MySpace.com. Myspace, in turn, held twice as much market share as the third- and fourth-place video sites, Yahoo and MSN. In a more recent survey earlier this month, YouTube captured 60% of all U.K. online video traffic.

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