Sparkeo Teams with Kaltura to Power Innovative Video Portal for Experts
Using Kaltura’s open source online video platform, Sparkeo has launched a new video widget and portal allowing experts to share their knowledge, and allowing users to interact with experts and their content through unique Kaltura-based video tools.
New York, NY(04 Mar 2010)
Sparkeo (www.sparkeo.com) and Kaltura (www.kaltura.com) announced today that the new innovative Sparkeo.com video application and portal powered by Kaltura's open source online video platform and toolset. Sparkeo.com, which enables experts, consultants, teachers, and passionate entrepreneurs to promote and sell their expertise using an innovative video application, which allows users to both interact with and pay for course content, is based on a custom video player with interactive features developed using Kaltura's flexible video platform.
"Currently, the highest quality end content is not online since the experts have no motivation to give it away. Until now, many experts have refrained from sharing the depth of their expertise since they lacked an appropriate online vehicle to incentive them to do so. Sparkeo provides a new way for experts to share and monetize on their knowledge," said Frederic Aknin, Chief Executive Officer of Sparkeo. "We were looking to build a new video application, and Kaltura was the only video platform that could allow the construction of the advanced functionality and services we required. Kaltura's platform was exactly what we needed in order to transform Sparkeo from a vision to a reality - it was flexible, easy to extend and customize, and already had a slew of interactive features that we could leverage. And of course, the company's culture revolves around knowledge sharing, flexibility and community - it's a perfect fit."
Experts can sign up for Sparkeo.com and upload video courses, which they then promote across the Web. The courses are displayed in a video player developed by Sparkeo that is based on Kaltura's player. The player includes very specific features such as purchasing the content directly from within the player, adding comments within the video, submitting questions to the expert, navigating through chapters, highlighting preferred content, and more."
"We see hundreds of different video applications built off our platform across all verticals and industries, but it's always inspiring to see a truly innovative and new approach to video like the one proposed by Sparkeo," said Ron Yekutiel, Kaltura Chairman & CEO. "This is a great example of how Kaltura's open source framework and video widgets can be morphed to power new and innovative video experiences."
About Sparkeo
Sparkeo offers a portable video platform specifically designed for experts in any field to create, distribute and monetize their expertise online. Sparkeo is a service where educators can decide how much their knowledge is worth. All parts of the functionality are part of the video player itself, enabling the educator to take the player and embed it on his website or blog. Payment via PayPal takes place directly through the player, transforming it into a portable store for the expert all over the Web, generating extra revenues for the course owner. Students who purchase a video course can highlight parts of it and make their own annotations directly on the video, as well as contact the teacher if they have a question. On Sparkeo.com, teachers can access video analytics directly, including the number of purchases and account balance. For more information: www.sparkeo.com
About Kaltura
Kaltura provides the world's first Open Source Online Video Platform. Over 52,000 web publishers, integrators, and developers use our flexible platform to power advanced video, photo and audio functionalities, including publishing, management, syndication, monetization and analysis, as well as content uploading and remixing. Kaltura's SaaS platform includes full video services, such as streaming and hosting, ad serving and aggregation of related third party services, as well as maintenance, support, integration and professional services. Kaltura's platform can also be deployed as a self-hosted solution and is offered as a free Community Edition, and as an Enterprise Edition under a commercial license. Founded in 2006, New York-based Kaltura is also a founding member of the ‘Open Video Alliance' (www.openvideoalliance.org), a coalition of organizations dedicated to fostering open standards for online video. For more information: www.kaltura.com and www.kaltura.org