Slate’s got a nice article discussing how YouTube may have fewer legal problems than many think they’ll have. The gist is that YouTube and other user content is protected under “Safe Harbor” provisions demanded by Telcos to protect…themselves.
Evan, a founder of blogger which was sold to Google, has returned big VC cash to investors in his ODEO music project and started a new company called Obvious Corporation.
This statement about why he’s changing course is a very articulate vision of the new web economy. As he suggests the new web is getting more uncertain and experimental every day. I think success will increasingly follow biological evolutionary form and be more a function of experimentation, following niche specialization, and lucky survival much more than following textbook approaches.
Business week is fretting over how Google will monetize the YouTube content and whether they’ll share with Myspace owners News Corp. Myspace users have embedded tons of YouTube video content in their personal pages so this is potentially a big stream of cash for somebody. Poor Rupert Murdoch doesn’t have enough money as it is, so heaven forbid that the content producers or the users would be put first in line for a piece of the action that *they generate*.
Business Week:
Google could soon have the ability to stream ads to MySpace users who are viewing YouTube videos embedded onto their MySpace pages. The question is whether News Corp. will get a slice of that revenue, and if so, how much …
I think a more relevant question is how much of that revenue should go to those generating the content and the billion daily page views.
Sites (like Google) are doing a fine job of making it possible for Average Joe’s to find the web pages of other Average Joe’s over at Myspace who in turn does a fine job helping people build silly pages filled with videos and images from other infrastructure sites like Flickr and Youtube. They should be well compensated for this and I think 25% is a good number, with 75% of the total revenue generated going to the “users” who are generating all that content and all those page views.
“Professional” users like me already get a piece of the action from Google – about 60-70% of the ad revenue I generate at my websites comes back to me via Google Adsense payments, and I think that’s probably a fine relationship. At least until Yahoo or MSN wake up to the fact they can jump start their contextual advertising services with a temporary 100% revenue share with publishers. Then I, and a large chunk of the 43% of Google’s Adsense Revenue, will be jumping ship. Booking services only give me about 50% of the commissions I generate but that’ll trend upwards over time (ha – it used to be only 20% revenue sharing).
However it’s very intriguing how the big players in the mega money deals leave out the key people in the equation – the Average Joe user. Part of that is simply scale. An average myspace user is only generating nickels and dimes (literally) per month in ad revenue. Collectively it’s a truckload of money but individually not much and Myspace does provide a good service to the user. Win Win? Maybe, but I think the trend will be towards people valuing their own content and their eyeball time more selfishly than they do right now.
The problem with all this great people-generated content — clearly the heart and soul of the new internet — is that the people generating it are getting left in the revenue dust. There are exceptions who manage to turn a few bucks here and there from the crumbs dropped by the mega monetizers like Google, but the average Joe who blogs and posts pictures and has a Myspace page with his Youtube videos gets nothing but the use of the online tools. That searchability and infrastructure is worth something. Arguably it’s worth a lot and clearly Average Joe is happy so far getting sh** for all his content effort.
However, I think over time Average Joe will become more demanding, perhaps even having the audacity to suggest that the collective fruits of all that online labor should be shared not just among Google and friends, but shared with those who watch it all and who make it all worth watching.
Irrational exuberance in the dot com shopping aisles?
No, it’s a chess game and Google’s winning….again.
I’m really starting to understand what seems like irrational exuberance on the part of Google and the major players. A Google aquisition of Facebook would be consistent with what Robert Scoble suggested is happening: Google is building a moat around it’s advertising business.
Steve Ballmer also suggested this notion in his recent BusinessWeek interview, ironically fretting that Google could monopolize the media business. Yikes, Steve would really run out of chairs then?
I can almost hear Ballmer to Schmidt:
“Hey Cowboy, there’s only enough room in this here internet for ONE monopoly you, you, you dirty monopolistic sonofabitch BASTARDS!”
Schmidt to Ballmer:
“HEY! DROP that chair and step AWAY from the Vista Browser!”
Google, with tons of cash to burn and a staggering market cap, has far less to lose in the high stakes internet poker game than Yahoo, Ebay, or even Microsoft. Microsoft is bigger than Google and theoretically richer, but unlike Google Microsoft has yet to figure out good ways to monetize their (improving) search services and (not improving) content services.
Ballmer’s juggling how to preserve his big ticket MS Office and Vista projects. Yahoo’s worried about plunging valuations and people leaving and the fact that a billion represents a lot more to them than it does to Google. This is almost certainly complicating the Yahoo Facebook negotiations right now. Ebay’s pretty fat and happy where they are. Meanwhile, Google can focus in laser-like fashion on keeping Google in the driver’s seat with it’s superb contextual advertising monetization.
The best defense is a good offense, so they are buying up properties to increase their control over the advertising space and keep those hundreds of millions of eyeballs out of the hands of MS and Yahoo.
Will this work? I say probably not for similar reasons it was stupid for Yahoo to buy Broadcast.com years ago. Video is junky and won’t monetize well. It’ll be more of an encumbrance to Google’s core competencies than an asset. But … things change, and in the meantime it’s fun to watch this high stakes game of chess unfold.
It’s a show you won’t see on YouTube.
Here’s a good summary of the Google YouTube deal from the New York Times. They note that one analyst suggests this is not a spreadsheet valuation as much as a way to keep competitors away from all the juicy eyeballs at YouTube.
I still just don’t understand how any big player could not put the money to better use and grow their own. I was under the impression that many used YouTube rather than Google Video because the latter took longer to post – presumably because they screened content more aggressively -I would have thought that Google Video would have tried the same configuration as YouTube before spending so much, but this also supports the idea that this was a way to keep MS and Yahoo (who is currently the video stream leader), from gaining the market share Youtube will now provide to the Google family of sites.
I don’t think this is a shark jump by Google, but I think this may go down as the most expensive “junk content” site aquisition in history.
Danny Sullivan says he does not have much to say about it over here at Search Engine Watch. (Hey, I thought you left SEW Mr. King ‘o Search Optimization?!)
Mark Cuban, no stranger to online video having made about a billion in that field, challenges Google’s sanity in the YouTube deal here.
It seems to me Cuban’s been the most insightful of those reviewing this deal and my first reaction is “brilliant stuff from an insider”, but I also respect how clever Google is and will continue to be at re-railing the online train.
Big producers will do big deals with Google as they are right now. The growing community of small time content producers (e.g me) is a lot more willing to share and forget about copyright encumbrances *as long as you cut me in on the action*.
If Google can monetize my stuff better or close to as much as I can then more power to Google. I’m rooting for Yahoo! winning the monetizing battle though because …. I like them better and have stock. But there’s room for both, and I think we’ll see in the coming years that the rising tide of online ads will lift most of the ships.
I’m confident I’m speaking for 80%, and probably 98%, of the long tail when I say that the long tail, especially in video, is going to attach to the entity that can best monetize their work be it professional full length movies or stupid cat trick clips.
Can the other 2% of content people sue them? Sure, but not painfully enough to stop the online video train o’ progress, a train that’s sure to bring us the most garish, irrelevant, superficial, and poorly produced video yet seen on earth and then find a way to turn a few bucks on showing it off to people. God bless America!
This Myspace post moved to TR
Surprised to find that Oh Shenandoah, the beautiful haunting song which is the official song of Virginia, has origins outside of the Shenandoah Valley.
Oh, Shenandoah, I long to hear you,
Away, you rolling river
Oh, Shenandoah, I long to hear you
Away, I’m bound away, cross the wide Missouri.
Oh, Shenandoah, I love your daughter,
Away, you rolling river
Oh, Shenandoah, I love your daughter
Away, I’m bound away, cross the wide Missouri.
Oh, Shenandoah, I’m bound to leave you,
Away, you rolling river
Oh, Shenandoah, I’m bound to leave you
Away, I’m bound away, cross the wide Missouri.
Oh, Shenandoah, I long to see you,
Away, you rolling river
Oh, Shenandoah, I long to see you
Away, I’m bound away, cross the wide Missouri.
Joe Duck 