17 Comments Add your own

• 1. Steve Safran  |  December 28th, 2006 at 4:42 pm

  Mark is looking at this from the wrong angle. As you point out, it’s the Long Tail effect that matters. Mark is not the first person to discover that the stuff on YouTube is mostly crap. But that’s not the point of YouTube. Mark’s being too programmer-centric here. The point of YT is to let people upload and share video easily. It doesn’t matter what’s in the top 20. It’s what’s in the millions of clips that get 10-20 views each that make this such a brilliant concept.

  As for the concept of “commercials,” here again Mark is, well, off the mark. A clip from a TV show is only a “commercial” in the invasive sense if someone is forced to watch it. Otherwise it’s entertainment. Movie trailers are ridiculously popular online - and they’re just commercials for films.

  YouTube would have been nearly as big a hit if it had no front page at all. Simply offered as a tool for video sharing, it would have been huge. Mark is looking at it as being a portal which, absolutely, it stinks at. But it’s like the rest of the web in that sense - loaded with stuff, hard to wade through, but well worth the effort.

• 2. Havelock Holmes  |  December 28th, 2006 at 6:06 pm

  Banksy: “If you want an audience, start a fight.”

  Seems to be Mr. Cuban’s objective and method. It’s not working, though. As you and Mr. Safran point out, Cuban’s premise is flat-footed and lacks punch.

  Today I wanted to learn more about the Hajj. YouTube, whether we like it or not, is becoming a cultural treasure. Numerous videos returned, many in Arabic, many fascinating.

  Why, you can even get video of and about…Mark Cuban!

  http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mark+cuban&search=Search

  Tell me how to do that on HDNet.

• 3. mark  |  December 28th, 2006 at 9:43 pm

  What i tried to do is look at it from a business perspective. Youtube cant subsidize bandwidth forever.

  if its merely a hosting service for the LongTail, then they are going to have a huge bandwidth bill. how are they going to pay for it ?

  Putting post roll , 15 sec videos after the video of grandma at the wedding ? Will users accept that ?

  Youtube has publicly said that the number of people just using it for hosting away from youtube.com is declining. Particularly since myspace has added their own hosting.

  And I am a fan of youtube. I just think its interesting when a big company takes on such huge risk> Im also interested when everyone thinks this is a change in the media landscape. I dont see it that way.

  And if YT is just about hosting personal video on blog, but on YT servers. Well Im not sure thats a business even google can sustain with what we are seeing right now.

  but if anyone can figure out how to monetize, its google

• 4. mark  |  December 28th, 2006 at 9:45 pm

  1 more thing

  I define the clips as commercials because they were uploaded by the corporation that owns the content. A promotion, a commercial… if you see a clip of richard simmons on David Letterman in a CBS show .. Its a commercial. if you see it on YT, its still a commercial

• 5. discreet_chaos  |  December 28th, 2006 at 11:09 pm

  An online friend recently joked about his boss being in awe of the amount of information on the internet and he wondered where it was all stored. My friend broke it down by explaining that the internet isn’t any one place, you couldn’t bake a cake in its shape. After sharing the laugh over his boss’ ignarance and making reference to the “series of tubes”, I commented that the Google cache may be pretty close to being an exact duplicate of everything available online, so in fact, Google might someday possess all information.

  Also there’s the whole story about Google buying all the dark fiber. So though I think someday their stock price will quit being such a prop for the company, they may actually have a plan and we’re just not yet privvy to the information.

  The potential for monetizing the interface could possibly come from using Adwords in a sidebar, midstream rolls for longer clips and advertising charges for the “commercials”. At least those are the things that I’d consider, but as for the embedded video, it’d probably have to be financed with a pre-roll.

  And, as for all of the junk listed from their mainpage, I really wish they would find a way to eliminate the chaff. Over the years, I’ve gotten in the habit of occasionally perusing iFilm’s “Top” lists and for a time, I subscribed to some of their RSS feeds, but they eventually proved overwhelming.

  I’ve tried on occasion to do something similar with the YouTube lists, but far too much of it was misleading. I realize that the unpoliced nature of YouTube is part of its viral popularity and I do use the site, but from the standpoint of the user knowing what they’re going to get, iFilm is at a distinct advantage. Plus, they’ve been using pre-roll for years and though they were a bit slow with the ability to embed and that may have had some effect, but their actual traffic stats don’t appear to have suffered because of the ads.

• 6. discreet_chaos  |  December 29th, 2006 at 1:30 am

  Ok - I’m going to have to quit PSing, but it appaers they’ve redesigned iFilm since was last there and after spending some time watching lots of video, I haven’t seen a single pre-roll. This may change, but that’s the situation at this moment in time.

• 7. Safran  |  December 29th, 2006 at 5:51 am

  Mark: Completely respect your opinion and knowledge on this matter. I suggest that the advertising potential lies far beyond pre- or post-rolls. Contextual advertising, page (or player wrapper) sponsorships, contests and other creative advertising mechanisms yet to come along will be the more likely monetization for YT.

  I disagree with your notion of what a commercial is, at least from the user perspective. I’ve maintained that “advertising is news if it’s information people want.” The truth is that we like advertising - if it’s for a product we’re considering. If I’m in the market for a computer and a contextual advertisement informs me that the computer I want is now 1/2 off, that’s a big news story for *me.* Saving my family $500 is *news.*

  So if NBC plays nice and lets me watch and share their latest Digital Short - yes, it is a promotion for SNL. It’s also fun. We’re always going to have commercials. What we in the industry need to do is provide commercials that engage users. People don’t hate ads (they love some of them), they hate noise.

  And you’re absolutely right - underestimating Google’s ability to monetize is becoming a national pasttime.

  Go Celtics!

• 8. Ken Leebow  |  December 29th, 2006 at 6:48 am

  It must be frustrating: While everything is going HD — as is Mark Cuban with HDNET — the whole world is going crazy over YouTube.

  Here’s what YouTube and other video sites do that TV does not:

  1. Searchable
  2. On-Demand
  3. It doesn’t have to be 30 to 60-minutes
  4. It operates 24/7. TV goes on hiatus all the time — repeats, repeats, repeats.

• 9. Rick Ellis  |  December 29th, 2006 at 7:56 am

  Mark’s point about bandwidth charges is a good one. While I appreciate the fact that YouTube is there, in the end, there has to be some way to monetize it all. And just because Google *can* afford to eat the bandwidth charges doesn’t mean that it’s good business.

  There are a number of commercial and sponsorship opportunities, but it’s not at all a slam dunk. While it’s easy to monitize that SNL clips, figuring out a way to make money off of someone’s fake porn is a harder challenge.

  Which brings me to a tangental point. I think the networks should spend less time focusing on YouTube and more time making those same clips available to as many sites as possible. Rather than CBS uploading Letterman clips to YouTube, they would be a lot better off creating a Letterman video widget (with ads as either a preroll or embedded in the player) that sites could add at their discretion. Plus, make the clips available separately to as many sites as possible, to offset the bandwidth charges for CBS.

  You would think that the networks would have learned from their iTune experience, and work on organically growing the long tail audience, rather than letting a third party aggregate it for them.

• 10. thedetroitchannel  |  December 29th, 2006 at 8:40 am

  that bandwidth argument is as old as the hills.

  i respect mr. c for taking the $ and running back when, but he is way off on this point.

  the cost of bandwidth has come down substantially. and it will continue to decline.

  find a new angle.

  and yes, “the networks should spend less time focusing on you tube”. look how newspapers failed to address a text-based internet and how that applies to a video-based on in which bandwidth costs are no longer the issue they once were.

  happy new year to everyone!!!

• 11. Rick Ellis  |  December 29th, 2006 at 10:54 am

  With all due respect, the bandwidth issue is not “old news.” It was enough of an issue that YouTube was essentially broke by the time Google acquired it (despite having received a healthy round of funding, they had to reportedly get an “advance” to keep the doors open unitl the sale finalized.)

  Yes, bandwidth is cheaper. But it’s not so cheap that it isn’t an issue when you’re delivering a few hundred million streams a month.

• 12. thehartfordchannel  |  December 29th, 2006 at 11:11 am

  right back a’cha with the respect, rick.

  but, if they’re serving up a “few hundred million streams a month” then there’s your audience waiting for a business model.

  terrible problem to have, right?

  and i remain convinced that the bandwidth argument is smoke…if no one used the site the bandwidth cost would be zero.

• 13. Protecting My Page Ranks  |  December 29th, 2006 at 1:02 pm

  I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for Google to come up with something “new”.

  Adwords/Adsense were licensed from Overture; Scholar and Book already had people in the space; They do webmail and they acquired an old newsgroup interface and archive, then they slapped derivative front-ends onto the things; Now, they’re doing Paypal and they’ve tried to follow iTunes into selling video clips. I find it extremely doubtful that they’ll find a completely new money trail all on their own and any way you look at it, banner ads (page wraps) wouldn’t qualify.

  Right now, Google and YouTube are trendy, as is hate for some of the older outlets. In my opinion, they both have some good services, but one’s a search engine that tries to pretend it’s not a portal and if you took out all of the copyright violations and misleading clips, the shelves of the other would be pretty bare.

• 14. Safran  |  December 29th, 2006 at 7:56 pm

  PMPR: Excellent observations. I disagree with what would happen if you “took out all the copyright violations,” etc. - the top videos are nearly always homebrewed and the long tail of YT is what makes it work after all.

  You’re absolutely right about Google and innovation. But to your point I would add: “So?” Microsoft has made a hell of a business out of Other People’s Ideas. Henry Ford didn’t invent the car. Ray Kroc paid the McDonald’s brothers for their restaurant idea. And Steve Jobs brought his MP3 player to market way after plenty of competitors.

  This is similar to the arguments when Google started: “How are they going to monetize search?” And they found the money there. There’s money in YouTube and if anyone can milk it, it’s Google.

  I really admire Mark Cuban for his willingness to put controversial ideas out there for debate. Agree or disagree with The Maverick, ya gotta love what he brings to the game.

• 15. Stephen Downes  |  December 30th, 2006 at 4:55 am

  If you go beyond the top 10 lists, YouTube is mostly not what Cuban described. It is mostly home video.

  So, rather than being suspicious of YouTube as a whole, I am suspicious of the Top 10 lists. How are they created? Who populates them?

  You may not need to pay to post a video on YouTube, but I would not be surprised to see payment required for a Top 10 list placement.

• 16. Lucy  |  January 14th, 2008 at 11:49 am

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• 17. Liey  |  January 18th, 2008 at 7:23 am

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