TC50: Clicker is a TV guide for the Internet age

Clicker, a startup launching at the TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco today, says one of the problems with watching TV online is figuring out what’s on: Where’s our TV guide for the web? Clicker says it’s the first “structured, comprehensive and unbiased guide for online television.”

It’s raised $8 million from Benchmark Capital and Redpoint Ventures. It also has an upcoming distribution deal with Boxee, to let users search for content directly on their TV sets.

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The problem with the web now is that video search engines are often incomplete or poorly designed, Clicker says. You can search Hulu, but the results only show excerpts and don’t include clips from other sites. YouTube, naturally, only searches the mostly user-generated content it hosts.

Clicker not only tells you what video is available on the web now, but also what’s missing. It demonstrated this by searching for Seinfeld and coming up with only six episodes. Clicker points to the page where the video’s hosted; it doesn’t necessarily host or embed the videos itself. Users can also add data about the show, putting in tags or memorable quotes.

The site is in private beta over the next few weeks. It has a couple of business models: it could function on advertising or share revenue with sites it directs a lot of traffic toward. It could also offer a paid pro version.

Investor Feedback

Jason Hirschhorn, chief product officer of MySpace: I see a lot of exits for this.

Yossi Vardi, angel investor: Notes the team is experienced and from Ask.com. He says investors have a 50 percent higher chance of succeeding with a entrepreneur that has a track record. But he says, those higher odds come with a cost. He wonders how much the team would ask for, especially because they’ve raised capital already from Redpoint and Benchmark.

Click here for more startup news coming out of the TechCrunch50 conference today.