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NYC: Roo chief counters Mirror.co.uk video criticism and talks friendly fire footage

Posted: 09/02/07 By: Oliver Luft

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The CEO of Roo Media, the company supplying video technology and content to the recently revamped Mirror.co.uk site, has countered criticism of the service.

Rob Petty spoke to Journalism.co.uk at the Digital Hollywood Media Summit conference, in New York, about the seemingly ill-fitting video content on the revamped Mirror site.

"It's really, really temporary. The aim was for it to be a soft launch, you'll see the content expand dramatically within weeks, if not days even," he said.

"It's just a start. If you look back to the Sun when it first launched video it was very similar but over three or four months it started to develop a personality and the content became more specific.

"It changed dramatically and I expect the Mirror group to do the same and become very exciting.

"From now on the focus will be the content and getting it right for the market. We're very conscious of it, as is the Mirror Group. It's a fantastic group and they will do some great things with it.

"Some of the things that we have done on this site have never been done before, it has three different players. From a technology point-of-view it is state of the art."

Mr Petty added that services at other publishers supplied with Roo content and technology were now flourishing - he singled out the Sun's 'friendly fire' video.

"It has been very successful in the past few days. Within 24 hours that video was viewed over a million times.

"The whole of the UK market is really embracing video and doing some really exciting things too, it's not just doing run-of-the-mill video."

In the UK, Roo Media works with Scottish Media Group, the Sun, the Times, Daily and Sunday Mirror, VNU, and, according to Mr Petty, more to come as video becomes ubiquitous.

"What you'll see over the next 12 months is a lot more content and the correlation between the print publications and their websites will become a lot closer. I think you will see things developing like the option to view in other formats.

He added: "From a technology point of view, we would really like to get access to TVs in the next 12 months so the user can not only visit the Times, the Mirror or the Sun website through the computer but through the TV as well. Potentially access through their mobile phones too, I think that would be exciting."

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