Plizy Aims to Be Pandora for Video on Your iPad
As people begin to consume more and more video content via their mobile devices, expect to hear about more and more startups tackling the space. The latest is Plizy which releases its iPad app today, aiming to provide users with personalized video recommendations.
Like ShowYou which launched last month, Plizy pulls from your social graph to be able to offer video recommendations. It also looks at other factors, including your Twitter interests and your viewing history, in its recommendation algorithm.
The app creates different personalized channels based on these tastes and behaviors and presents them in a format that, at first glance, is rather similar to Flipboard‘s layout. The app starts with several basic channels: Google News, TED Talks, NPR Music, for example. You can also link your Twitter and Facebook profiles to get the videos shared from your friends and follows there.
Over time, Plizy’s recommendation engine will be able to learn your likes and offer your better choices. Of course, how satisfied you’ll be with those recommendations depends very much on where the content can be pulled. At launch, Plizy has content from Revision 3, YouTube, Dailymotion, and Vimeo. According to CEO Jonathan Benassaya, the startup is trying to secure other media partners for the app.
Until then, it remains to be seen how well the startup can gain traction as all these video sources are accessible elsewhere, some with their own systems for users identifying recommended content. The idea of one app that can offer video recommendations is appealing however, and Plizy says it plans to make the platform available on other connected devices soon, including TVs and other tablets.