Dailymotion to launch new app as part of strategic repositioning

Vivendi-owned YouTube rival Dailymotion plans to launch a new app in April as part of a strategy to create a prime video destination that people will go to looking for videos that match their tastes, and that can push videos to users based on their personal requirements, according to a report in French financial daily Les Echos.

According to the paper, the plan is to differentiate Dailymotion for YouTube, which provides a vast range of largely undifferentiated video content on one hand, and Facebook, which pushes video to its users, on the other.

Canal+ and Dailymotion CEO Maxime Saada told the paper that the core of the idea was to position the site to put premium content in news, sport, entertainment and particularly music in front of its users. However, he said that that this strategy would not alter Dailymotion’s role as an open site that does not seek to take editorial responsibility for content posted on it.

Saada said that Dailymotion would continue to be primarily advertising-funded, with revenue shared between the site and those responsible for editorializing the content, adding that the company had no current plans to buy rights or launch a premium paid for segment.

He said that the goal was to appeal to a primarily grown-up audience and to be one of the 10 or so apps that people download and use on their smartphones.

While Dailymotion’s revenues dipped last year, Saada said that the site had sought to remove sexually explicit content and content with extreme violence, and had reduced to 3% the amount of traffic generated by bots, which had previously accounted for up to 20% of the total.

Saada told Les Echos that Dailymotion would up its staff count to about 400 by the end of the year, from 260 today.