Singingfish
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Internet, Search engine |
| Founded | June 1999 |
| Founder | John DeRosa, Eric Rehm, Ken Berkun, Mike Behlke |
| Defunct | February 7, 2007 |
| Fate | Acquired by AOL (2003), service discontinued (2007) |
| Headquarters | Seattle , United States |
| Products | Multimedia search engine (audio and video) |
Number of employees | 50 (2000) |
Singingfish operated as a specialized audio and video search engine, delivering multimedia search capabilities to various platforms such as Windows Media Player, WindowsMedia.com, RealOne/RealPlayer, Real Guide, AOL Search, Dogpile, and Metacrawler. Established in 2000, it was one of the pioneering search engines focused exclusively on multimedia content. After its acquisition by AOL in 2003, Singingfish was progressively merged into AOL’s broader search services. The standalone service was discontinued by February 2007.
Although Singingfish’s audio search features continued briefly on AOL Search and other AOL properties, its video search was terminated and redirected to AOL Video. Development efforts largely ceased following August 2006.
Overview
Singingfish employed a proprietary web crawler named Asterias,[1] which was specifically designed to identify online audio and video links. Between 2003 and 2004, Asterias indexed roughly 50,000 new multimedia items daily. The company developed a unique system to extract and improve metadata—addressing the frequent issue of inadequate or missing metadata in multimedia files—before indexing the content. Many initial URLs were sourced from cache logs supplied by the NSF-supported National Laboratory for Applied Network Research (NLANR) IRCache Web Caching project.[2]
History
Founded in mid-1999 by John DeRosa, Eric Rehm, Ken Berkun, and Mike Behlke, Singingfish had grown to a team of 17 employees by January 2000, operating out of its first office located in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.
The company unveiled a public alpha version of its multimedia search engine at Streaming Media East in New York City in June 2000. By the fall of that year, Singingfish’s workforce expanded to over 50 employees. In November 2000, it was acquired by the French corporation Thomson multimedia (now Thomson SA). The company announced its initial client, Zurich-based Internet AG, in December 2000. By mid-2001, Singingfish Search was integrated into Internet AG’s "Swiss Search" as well as InfoSpace’s Dogpile and Metacrawler platforms.
At this point, Singingfish had become the leading multimedia search engine by indexing more audio and video content than its rivals while providing highly relevant search outcomes. In late 2001, RealNetworks formed a partnership with Singingfish to power audio and video searches for the RealOne Player. Microsoft followed suit in January 2003 by embedding Singingfish’s search technology into Windows Media Player and WindowsMedia.com.
Following its acquisition by Thomson multimedia, Singingfish underwent significant downsizing during the summer of 2001 and experienced further reductions after AOL purchased it in October 2003. Despite these cutbacks, Thomson continued to invest in research and development related to multimedia metadata standards such as MPEG-7 that enhanced Singingfish’s technological capabilities.
After being acquired by AOL, Singingfish’s multimedia search engine was incorporated into AOL Search, broadening AOL’s range of search products powered by this technology. As of August 2006, Singingfish still supported multimedia search functions for Microsoft and RealNetworks while being fully integrated within AOL’s directed media division.
The remaining Singingfish employees were laid off in December 2006. Since February 7, 2007, all traffic directed to Singingfish has been rerouted to AOL Video.
Supported Formats
Partner Feeds
Various content providers delivered audio and video through direct data streams, offering detailed metadata that improved Singingfish's search database and guaranteed prompt results for news-oriented searches.