Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) announced last week that it was licensing technology from Jinni, an Israeli company, that helps consumers find video content. It uses a genome of video terms, in a similar fashion to the one Pandora uses to help find music.

Jinni is an intriguing service that lets you enter nebulous information such as mood or plot, then uses semantic search technology to help you locate movies that match your search criteria. You can then "squeeze" these results by limiting your search to a number of other search terms, Jinni exposes based on your first search term.

As you enter information, Jinni provides you with a list of possible titles, which you can then expand or narrow as you wish.

Venture Beat has speculated that Microsoft will use this technology in conjunction with the video services available on the XBox game machine to help users find video content using services like Netflix.

A good search tool is essential to help people find movies, TV and videos from the growing body of content online, so this is a smart move by Microsoft.

It's important to note that this is a licensing deal and not an outright purchase. Jinni is also a GoogleTV partner.

For more information:
- see the Venture Beat article announcing the deal

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