Alley Insider today has a post written by Ben Wayne, CEO of Fliqz titled YouTube is Doomed.
But before I get into why this unlabeled editorial is incorrect, I think the lack of journalistic integrity here on the part of Alley Insider should be directly pointed out.
Hand it to a site started by Henry Blodget, a guy whose career was built on inflating the value of technology stocks without any basis for his recommendations to offer a link-bait laden assortment of “news” combined with advertorials like the aforementioned post with no up-front disclaimer that it is written by an online video executive in indirect competition with YouTube.
I’ll also state that I’m a relative fan of Fliqz, they offer a good mid-range solution for mid-budget companies looking for a quick-and easy online video player solution. But really, if you’re going to post this as a column state up front that Ben Wayne is not a writer for Alley Insider and that the post is opinion.
OK, enough of that, readers are having a field day in the comments so I’ll leave that to them. On to why YouTube will be around for a long time.
1. They own video – Google has 43% market share. Despite copyright issues which YouTube has now largely resolved, YouTube is the first place people go to share and view video.
2. They own video search – Google drives traffic to YouTube and YouTube drives search and advertising revenue for Google.
3. Google has plenty of cash, sure bandwidth is expensive but they own so much infrastructure that these costs are minimized and will continue to decline as bandwidth is further commoditized.
4. They own distribution – no one in online video space has the aggregated eyeballs that Google has, and for the same reason that the ability to reach millions of people simultaneously is the core value prop of TV, YouTube’s mass audience is no one else can compete with online.
Yes. There should have been some disclosure on Ben’s company.
Personally, I think this boils down to more than simply economics. Video will fragment for all the same reasons e-tail, online travel, text-based content, etc., all fragmented.
I posted on our corporate blog about this – http://blog.delvenetworks.com/2009/04/09/youtube-is-doomed/
And yes, we’re a white label video platform provider too. I’m not going to deny that we have a vested interest in the fragmentation of video.
There will be some fragmentation, YouTube can’t be everything for everyone, but my point is YouTube’s scale is a core competency. Because they have more video than anyone they have 43% penetration, the key is getting the advertising smart enough to monetize all that long tail content- not easy to do, but as the cost of content delivery comes down so does the breakeven – and if they can effectively target the right people to the point where they make money on every play they’ll have a really solid long term business model.
It’s a shame that AI seems to be after numbers to satisfy their advertisers more so than after good content. Tough business. Doing anything to justify the end, is a game that Henry Blodget knows the ending of quite well
Fragmentation is a huge word in this space, with company killing consequences. I always pair it closely with discovery, which is the solution to fragmentation. As the tail gets bigger though, I think this breaks down and serves no one well enough to do justice.
I think YT should add a more rigorous uploading page, requiring a detailed and confirmable identity, and possibly even an uploading fee (e.g. fifty cents). It should be micropayment-oriented. I think Paypal offers a great example of this process. People adding content WOULD BE REQUIRED to add some detailed meta-data for their own content. This meta-data would then be the basis for ad-insertion. This would ease the process of choosing which content to select for ads. Content that was wrongly described would be deleted and the uploader banished. This would require some sort of auditing, much like what is in place now. Adding an upload fee would discourage the frivolous upload from the e.g. drunken redneck, but it would still allow the vast majority to continue uploading. The token fee would also pay for some of YT’s enormous bandwidth costs.
Specialty video will never be a money maker in this current online model. I think specialty content will evolve into a subscriber-based model likely in a walled garden, where the people who have the interest in the topic will pay to see that content.
I think the general viewer will get an increasingly poor experience growing ever shorter in duration, as more watered-down, bland pablum, with a sensational headline, increasingly takes center stage. At some point viewers will turn away because the content has become so unsatisfying. The numbers will drop and evolution will continue.
Media and making money from media has never been pretty. New media is no better than old media when it comes to this part of the business.
Good luck to all!
Jeff Bach
YouTube isn’t Dead; Alley Insider’s Integrity Is. | Online Video Watch…
Alley Insider today has a post written by Ben Wayne, CEO of Fliqz titled YouTube is Doomed. But before I get into why this unlabeled editorial is incorrect,…
Youtube is my favorite website and i am so addicted in watching music videos in it,,
Youtube is my favortie site to visit aside from facebook. most of the time i watched movie trailers and music videos on it.