BY THE NUMBERS
Aiming for Web Video's Next Revolution
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KZO Innovations of Herndon doesn't have a catchy name like YouTube, but it thinks its technology might help online video take a big leap.
What KZO offers is two-fold. First, it allows just about anybody with a webcam to set up a six-way video conference for free at http:/
Second, and what KZO says is really key, it allows users to combine video with other content -- for instance, live comments of people watching the video, PowerPoint presentations and images. Most sites focus on hosting only video. "It's a big Web 2.0 video distribution platform," said chief executive Wes Cruver, 26.
KZO is selling the technology to big companies and universities that need to host hours-long videos for training, lectures and other purposes. The most important element of the technology: tags. Now, if you type a keyword into YouTube's search, you can get back videos tagged with that word. That works fine for a three- or four-minute video, but for a video of an hour or longer, it's not easy to find exactly the segment you're looking for. So KZO software allows people to assign keywords to sections of a video, and users can search for segments and go right to them.
One big KZO customer, the networking giant Cisco, uses its technology to broadcast training videos to some of its tens of thousands of employees. Another hope is that customers like Mary Washington University, would allow students to leave questions at parts of recorded lectures, to which professors could respond. Cruver said a sports social network may consider using the technology to tag scouting videos when a player hits a home run or scores a goal.
KZO is talking with VisualCV, a local start-up focused on multimedia résumés and job recruiting, about creating a feature that would allow employers to interview prospective hires over the Web, saving the cost of traveling for an initial in-person interview.
Both KZO and VisualCV are backed by Valhalla Partners of Vienna. Valhalla and a local investor that KZO declined to name have put $1 million into KZO.
Cruver founded KZO about a year and a half ago. It's not his first online venture. When he was 11, Cruver co-founded Kidz Online, a nonprofit provider of multimedia targeted at young people.
-- Zachary A. Goldfarb
