AT&T Jumps On Board With Jinni

Jinni, the content search and recommendation specialist, has added a new high-profile company, AT&T, to its growing list of pay-TV customers.

Multichannel News reports that AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) has now integrated the Jinni Media Ltd. solution into its U-verse TV service, extending Jinni's reach into another 5.5 million US pay-TV homes. The Jinni "Entertainment Genome" is powering content discovery features for the U-verse video-on-demand (VoD) library. According to Jinni CEO Yosi Glick, AT&T implemented the recommendation engine about three weeks ago.

AT&T is far from the only big name on Jinni's client roster. Jinni signed an agreement with Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) in 2011 and then added Time Warner Cable Inc. (NYSE: TWC) and VUDU Inc. as customers in a roundup of wins announced in January 2013. In June 2013, Light Reading learned that Jinni is also the recommendation engine embedded in the latest version of Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK)'s next-gen X1 user interface. (See Jinni Lands Licensing Deals and Jinni Powers Comcast X2 Recommendations.)

Jinni's claim to differentiation is a technology that combines standard metadata with mood-based data tags and a machine-learning system designed to adapt to a user's specific tastes. The company offers web and mobile applications in addition to services for pay-TV and streaming video providers.

The world of standalone video search and recommendation solutions is quickly shrinking. Jinni and ThinkAnalytics Ltd. remain the two most popular offerings that haven't yet been snapped up by larger companies. TiVo Inc. (Nasdaq: TIVO) bought competitor Digitalsmiths Corp. in January, and Rovi Corp. purchased rival Veveo Inc. in February. (See TiVo to Acquire Digitalsmiths and Rovi Snaps Up Veveo.)

— Mari Silbey, special to Light Reading