Yahoo Buys IntoNow In Eight Figure Deal [IntoNow Allows You To Identify What You're Watching With Your Phone, And The Soundtrack]

Posted on TFTS by Steve Anderson on Monday, 25. April 2011 under: Audio,Visual, Mobile/Cell Phones

If you’ve ever known a movie buff, you know that some of them can actually identify what they’re watching by the first couple minutes of sound, even if they’re blindfolded or in another room. I myself have been known to identify a movie by the opening audio, depending on what it is (I once pegged Amityville Horror II after the first 15 seconds of sound started playing) and how many times I’ve seen it. But I’ve got nothing on IntoNow, whose service can identify one of 2.6 million television episodes by exposure to between four and 12 seconds of audio from the soundtrack. And that kind of prodigious skill landed them a buyout offer from Yahoo itself.

The offer was pegged at somewhere between 13 and 30 million dollars (some sources say 17 million with some earnouts), and includes IntoNow’s iPhone app, which not only identified what you were watching, but then allowed you to share said program on social networks, find out more about said program, or just add the DVD to your queue on Netflix.

And while that’s pretty cool in its own right, word has already emerged tying IntoNow’s own SoundPrint technology with Yahoo’s Connected TV systems.

Not a bad idea, really, but still–it’s hard to see whether something like IntoNow would be all that useful, considering how many devices these days come with “info” buttons and the like. I certainly mash that button like crazy on my Dish service–figuring out what’s on when I wander in in the middle, or want to know more about a program. Admittedly, adding it to a Netflix queue is something of a new step, and a worthwhile one, but how many people will use it for that when the Netflix queue is just a surf away on the laptop?

Still though, hopefully this will end well for Yahoo, who could certainly use a little help these days.