Yahoo looks for ways to strengthen its position against YouTube

September 28, 2006

Yahoo agreed to buy Web video editing and publishing site Jumpcut.com on Wednesday, as Internet companies continue to seek ways to compete with YouTube. The move comes nearly four months after the Sunnyvale, California, company revamped its own Yahoo Video site, and could foretell further acquisitions in the Web video space. Microsoft recently opened the beta version of its online video-sharing service last week, Soapbox on MSN Video, while AOL unveiled a revamped video portal in late July to strengthen its position against YouTube and Google Video.

Yahoo and Jumpcut both announced the deal on company blogs, and Jumpcut even made a short video to commemorate the event, which can be seen here. The video site will join a host of other Yahoo properties, including Flickr and Del.icio.us. The deal will help Jumpcut reach a broader audience, and gain "more creators, more content and more exciting things to do," it said.

Yahoo said Jumpcut would be part of the Yahoo Video family, indicating that the online Web video service would not replace Yahoo's own video service, available here. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Jumpcut was founded and run by MiraVida Media, a San Francisco company.

YouTube thrashed all rivals in a count of U.S. visitors from Hitwise earlier this year, with 43 percent of traffic to video sites, nearly double the share of runner up MySpace.com. Myspace, in turn, held twice as much market share as the third and fourth place video sites, Yahoo and MSN. In a more recent survey earlier this month, YouTube captured 60 percent of all U.K. online video traffic.