It’s official – Google buys YouTube for 1.65 billion. Yikes, the early estimates of 1.6 billion were off by 0.05 billion which is real money even to Google. Unless Zuckerman wises up soon that 50 million will be the entire Facebook deal value!
Deals with Youtube and Google are flourishing today in the fertile ground of a 1.6 billion dollar aquistion of the online video leader* by the online money and search leader. The announcement is expected this afternoon or evening that Google’s bought Youtube for 1.6 billion. If Yahoo picks up Facebook (rumored but I think unlikely) it’ll signal an interesting consolidation of key Web 2.0 sites by the more established huge players. This consolidation seems to support the idea that the big guys see it as cheaper to wait until the rich and creamy high traffic sites rise to the top and then buy them up (Microsoft made an early and successful habit of doing that as well).
However at these billion+ valuations I’m skeptical the strategy can work as effectively as buying smaller companies to consolidate niche traffic. ie Flickr=good deal for Yahoo, Facebook=bad deal.
CORRECTION: Really, Yahoo is the online Video leader, Myspace second and Youtube third. Google video added to Youtube will probably push them to number one, but as usual Yahoo!’s doing it right but not getting credit for their leadership.
Poor Mike Arrington. From his blog it sounds like Mike was the token sacrificial lamb at the recent Online News Association conference where his comments were not taken well by the crowd of what sounds like mostly conventional journalists (or conventional *thinkers*) hoping to get a grip on the sea change going on, and going online, right now. They should listen to Mike carefully, because he’s been good at seeing the future. (ummm except Edgeio, which probably won’t fly).
There’s a lot of news in the news business but journalists are often missing the critical factors which include blogs, user interaction, and emphasis on real time reporting in real time from real people who are making that news themselves or direct witness to that news (e.g. who really wants a journalist in the middle when you have webcams on all the parties in the dispute?)
I remember how intense Mike got at Mix06 in his remarks about the future of offline Yellow pages, telling them “You are DEAD!”, and I can only imagine how the ONA folks reacted to his insights about the future of news and media in the online world.
His real sin was to become an expert early on in the Web 2.0 world and to profit from that expertise. Nothing pisses people off like somebody figuring things out early and profiting from that knowledge.
Good for him, but he better stick to events like Yahoo Hack Day or Mashup Camp if he wants a warm reception from like minded folks….folks who also understand that the changes are only beginning and will rock the news world like it’s never been rocked before.
It’s now almost official that Google will buy Youtube for a whopping 1.6 billion. They’ll announce it after the close today. Here’s the NYT take on things. I’d have listened to Mark Cuban because it seems to me he’s in a very unique position to analyze the prospects here, but they didn’t and soon Google will have a huge video footprint. Google Video has about 1/4 the traffic of Youtube. Combined I think they’ll dwarf the competition – at least initially, though this market, which should really be called “American’s stupidist and most mundane home videos” is still in it’s infancy.
It’s not clear to me that people will continue to spend hours and hours surfing and watching for the few gems in an ocean of crappy short clips but Google seems to think so, and it’s also true that there is an enormous amount of advertising money now spent on network TV that may flow to this venue. Google’s recent talk about NOT producing their own content and moving into offline advertising venues may relate to this decision – they want to become a key source to soak up as much of the dumb money now spent on extravagant, low ROI offline campaigns.
Here are my choices of the seven best of eleven entries in this week’s Blog Carnival of Marketing. Please give your feedback here and/or to the authors. If YOU have an article to submit for NEXT week’s carnival send it on in via the form or to jhunkins@gmail.com. This site is hosting the Carnival of Marketing again on October 15.
* Tam Hanna presents BenqSiemens pushes the nationalism button
posted at TamsPalm-the Palm OS Blog.
* Jim Cronin presents No Time To Blog? Bloggers’ Block? 6 Strategies To Developing Quick and Beneficial Blog Content
posted at The Real Estate Tomato.
* David Maister presents davidmaister.com > Passion, People and Principles > What Would the Client Say?
posted at Passion, People and Principles.
*Eliot presents Rise of the Niche: Survivor, Web 2.0, Feminist Blogs
posted at Red Inked.
* David Lorenzo presents Five Keys to Sales Leadership
posted at Sales Intensity.
* Adnan presents Pay Per Product – Make Your Own or Affiliatise
posted at Blogtrepreneur | Entrepreneur Blog.
* Todd presents Have you ever considered that you are not good enough?
posted at Aridni.
All posts are here
Over at Battelle’s House ‘o Search info he’s summarized Google Zeitgeist conference, where Google’s big news appears to be “We will NOT do content” and “We WILL do offline media advertising”.
I don’t agree with John that this means the YouTube purchase is a good idea. In fact I think Google will see the light of the dimly flickering videos and realize that monetizing this type of content won’t be worth the trouble of publishing it. But I wouldn’t bet much on my prediction they’ll pass on the deal since the cost of publishing video is dropping very fast, and Google probably has a great idea of the bottom point in terms of these costs, they may see something I can’t. Also, so much is currently wasted on traditional TV campaigns that there is a lot of “dumb money” floating around. If even a fraction of this flows to YouTube it might make that company worth it to Google.
As those of us making a living online know well the money comes from optimal monetization of content rather than the creation of the content. Google, as usual and brilliantly, is working to keep themselves in the driver’s seat as the premier way to monetize content online and moving to offline optimization.
They have the technology to optimize ROI on offline spends that (hopefully and probably) will blow many agencies out of the water. Traditional media campaigns and traditional ad agencies are a garbage dump of bad decisions and no research fueled by the ignorance of math-illiterate clients. Google has the power to change that and I’m glad they are looking in that direction.
Today a very sharp friend said that even though he uses Yahoo mail and some of their default screen navigation, he always uses Google to search. Why? Because Google is not cluttered and makes it very easy to leave Google to visit external sites. Yahoo, especially Yahoo News, he felt, tries to keep the user at Yahoo too aggressively.
A similar point about the ease of navigating to external sites was recently made by Mike Arrington when talking about Web 2.0, noting that it’s important to let folks feel they can easily leave the site for other web locations if you want return visits and credibility.
Relevancy, conspicuously, was not the concern of my friend. He just didn’t like the Yahoo search user experience. I agree and realize that for me it’s the fact that with Google I can get and visually scan *a lot more results* much faster than with normal Yahoo search. Like my friend it’s not the relevancy as much as the navigation that keeps me at Google despite the fact I own Yahoo (well, actually I own about one two-millionth of Yahoo). I don’t trust either engine to give me great results, but I know that I’ll usually find what I need somewhere in the first few pages of sites. Google makes it easier to preview a lot of sites fast.
I have stronger negative feelings about most of the travel sites. Online Travel 1.0 is a nightmarish blend of booking screens, pitches for Hawaii and cruise packages, and tourism sites all trying to convince you they are the only destination both offline and online.
It’s particulary frustrating when sites expect me to learn their navigation and nomenclature just to use their damn site, especially if I’m trying to preview dozens of websites for a trip! Most of the worst offenders are overproduced by expensive print media firms using the pretense they know about “online marketing”. In fact most big firms have about as much web savvy as an inebriated, obnoxious, and arrogant tourist and appear to be designing the sites for …..themselves.
Like most users I’d prefer a Craigslist format so I can easily jump to the information I need rather than wading through popups, pictures, video, and other nonsense when I’m trying to plan a trip. With some exceptions the mantra “just the facts please” would serve online travel promotion better than the foolish extravagances that confuse users and also search engines which struggle to find meaning in garrish flash and pages filled with 100k high resolution photos.
What will Travel sites look like as Web 2.0 shakes out? I’m optimistic that they’ll be much, much better, and hoping to figure out how before it’s obvious to everybody.
One of my favorite blogs is John Battelle’s Searchblog. John provides the best and the most intelligent analysis and discussion focusing on the search industry.
So, when John (and his readers) started experimenting with a digg-like reader-controlled “SearchMob” run using the very clever Pligg community software to provide reviews and links to search related news and articles I was very optimistic. In fact I quickly became one of the top submitters and voters at SearchMob.
Although I write a lot about search issues I have avoided posting my own articles there. I don’t think there’s a problem posting a few of your own pieces, but the system becomes fairly useless if the bulk of activity is self-promotional. This appears to be a problem at SearchMob now.
Of the “top stories” listed this afternoon it appears that every single one was posted by the author. It also appears that some of these authors have several SearchMob accounts so they can vote for their own stories which pushes them to the top.
There are some easy spoofs of the current system, which does not require a log in to vote, that make it easy to push your own articles to the top of the heap, and I fear this is driving the top stories rather than reader interest. This also keeps “legitimate” stories from appearing where they can get more votes, further undermining the integrity of the system.
Solutions need to be largely spoof proof, especially in a reader community filled with SEO specialists. I think requiring complete contact information for anybody posting articles might help to make abuses easier to track. Also it may be necessary for the community to start hassling those who are using this too opportunistically via the discussion feature, though this does not seem to be the intended use of “discussion”.
Here are the top 4 stories now, all appear to have been submitted by the … author and most have questionable vote totals:
An Investment Approach to Marketing
http://googlejet.blogspot.com
Mobile Sites for Information
http://www.resourceshelf.com
A social news service for free advertising
http://targetyournews.com
Google Checkout Now Working with Froogle
http://www.oneparkavenuereality.com
It’s great to see Adam Sah’s Google Gadgetry project move ahead with today’s announcement that Gadgets can be created to work on any website. Adam was at both Mashup Camp 1 and Mashup Camp 2 and it was neat to see how a little project had become a big project over a period of only 4 months. It’s likely now to become a gigantic project as Yahoo, Google, and MSN vie to maximize their online presence on, within, and interacting with other websites.
This announcement suggests to me even more strongly that the browser and desktop are going to move in the direction of becoming a place populated by many different gadgets – basically mini applications – and users will organize their offline and online experience using them.
This bodes significant changes in our typical website model as people slice and dice their sites and gadgets in the coming web 2.0 world where information flows freely and according to the needs, demands, the stupid and the smart whims of the users.
The rumors are true. The Carnival of Marketing started by Noah during a flash of brilliant inspiration moves here on October 8th and October 15th. Thanks to the many who’ve sent in articles already. I’ll pick the seven “winners” soon and post them and links to their sites on October 8th. Send your best marketing article or links to good marketing articles to jhunkins@gmail.com.
Joe Duck 