Sony to buy user video site Grouper

Cory Bergman August 23rd, 2006

The first big media acquisition of a user created video site, Sony Pictures Entertainment has agreed to buy Grouper for $65 million. “Many people in the Grouper community use Sony cameras to create videos and Sony Vaio computers,” said Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton. “It makes sense to complete the circle by having Grouper be part of Sony.” Says Ben Bajarina, a consumer technology analyst, “What they are likely going to want is to capitalize on their own content and marry it with some user-generated content.” For context, Grouper makes up less than a one percent share of video shared on the web compared with YouTube’s 43 percent share. It will be very interesting to see how this shakes out, especially in light of Sony’s potential increased legal exposure.