Comcast Corp., the No. 1 U.S. cable operator, has bought theplatform, a small online video start up, which has a client list including ABC and the Wall Street Journal, as part of its plans to expand its online video services.
Before purchasing the company, Comcast itself was a client, delivering over 2 million short videos a day on its comcast.net website.
The online video space has become a hot area in the last year, with the growth of high speed Internet access allowing easier delivery; sites including YouTube, Google Video and Yahoo! Music have all seen a strong growth in user figures.
"Our long term vision would be to be able to provide digital media video to whatever platform our customers are looking at," said Sam Schwartz, executive vice president of Comcast Internet Media.