France Telecom's Orange is looking for ways to bolster its content offerings, including a new video search project. The telco is trialling a French language news site that operates through partnerships with various TV and radio stations and the print media, totaltelecom reports.
The site presents the top seven or eight stories on a rolling basis, based what it receives from partners, and allows users to make video, audio or text searches.
"It started with Didier Lombard, who said the next Google will be a video and entertainment recommendation engine," said Raoul Roverato, executive vice president of new growth businesses at Orange, told attendees at a press briefing last week, according to the website.
The [France Telecom R&D] team focused on... video search has very interesting technology that can recognise faces or the tone of a voice," Roverato said.
Currently Orange earns 6% of revenues from what it terms new growth businesses, which include content distribution, healthcare, Internet portals and advertising. The operator wants to earn 15% of its revenues from new growth businesses by 2010.
By limiting search to content partners, Orange claims it will be better able to compensate rights holders and guarantee advertisers they will be linked to identifiable sources of content, the report says.
