VideoSurf rides surging Web video wave

SAN MATEO, Calif. -- The scene is prototypical Silicon Valley start-up. Open floor plan. Barren walls. A ping-pong table that sits idle because workers are hunched over laptops watching videos.

And the boss couldn't be happier.

"When I see that, I know they're doing their job," says Lior Delgo, CEO of VideoSurf, a new website with a singular mission: to make finding and consuming online videos faster and more intuitive.

Say you're eager to see Kate Winslet cry at the Golden Globes. Punch her name into most video search engines and you'll get clips of that teary acceptance speech, which you'll have to troll through to find the moment of her unraveling.

Search with VideoSurf — which has been in development for more than a year and launched a public beta version in October — and you get that same clip with a detailed timeline stretching across the screen like an unrolled piece of 35mm film. Want just the weepy part? Find it in the timeline, click, and Winslet bawls.

Powering VideoSurf's technology are facial recognition algorithms (developed by the team's Israeli-born founders) that map and store the distinguishing characteristics. The profiling is so detailed "it can easily tell the difference between Sarah Palin and Tina Fey impersonating Sarah Palin, based on things such as the measured distance between the eyes," says Eitan Sharon, VideoSurf's chief technology officer.

Among other benefits of this approach is that searches won't be thrown by phony videos with tags bearing the only subject's name — the typical way search engines find videos, which allows scammers to draw consumers to unrelated footage.

"The current user experience is claustrophobic," says Delgo, who previously sold a travel search-engine company to Yahoo. "People are consuming more and more video, but they want a less frustrating and more targeted experience."

Those innocent days of 2005, when the boys at YouTube dared suggest that people might want to screen the occasional online video, now seem quaint. In November, 12.7 billion videos were watched, up 34% over November 2007, according to research firm comScore. The length of time we watch each is creeping up as well, from 2.7 to 3.1 minutes. "That's due to a trend toward long-form, professional video, namely network shows found online," says Andrew Lipsman, comScore's director of industry analysis.