A new report claims that Yahoo! Inc. will be releasing a YouTube-like video platform this summer.
People familiar with the moves who asked to remain anonymous, said the company is in conversations with video producers to introduce the service this summer, according to CNET.
Video creators would be able to set up their own channels and host videos on Yahoo.
Signing a contract with Yahoo will give creators a publishing dashboard that will allow them to distribute in different properties of Yahoo, such as the home page and blogging service Tumblr, along with a network of non-Yahoo websites, a report from AdAge stated.
The report added that in addition to talking with video producers, the company has been recruiting producers included in Google Preferred, which lets big brand advertisers buy videos made by the top 5 percent of creators.
News first came out in March about Yahoo's interest in making its own streaming video site, VentureBeat reported. The company was able to draw talent from YouTube by promising a bigger share of revenue on videos.
Yahoo attempted to buy DailyMotion for over $300 million last year, but the deal did not work out. Marissa Mayer, chief executive of Yahoo, said several times that the company is currently looking to get more involved in video content in order to obtain a larger amount of revenue from spending on video ads. One move taken to achieve this goal was signing an exclusive deal over the past year to run content from Saturday Night Live.
The company has made other moves to establish its presence in video content, such as hiring broadcast news star Katie Couric, working more on long form original series, and releasing its Screen app with huge media company partnerships, CNET reported.
A spokeswoman for Yahoo said the company doesn't comment on gossip.
According to the rumor, Yahoo originally planned to introduce the new platform last month, VentureBeat reported. However, the plan was delayed until later in 2014 due to contract negotiations .
