Advice from Google-YouTube

Cory Bergman April 17th, 2007

David Eun, who heads up content partnerships for Google, took the stage at NAB to show off some of YouTube’s successes. The room was packed — standing room only — as he ran through YouTube’s feature set. Sure, he’s talking about broadcasting’s nemesis, but Eun gave some great advice. “It’s not about holding people hostage on your website,” he said. Web 2.0 is about sharing, openness and ubiquity. “YouTube is more than a destination.” He showed a long tail graph. “It’s not a question of whether I find particular content appealing, the question is will someone else?” And he adds, “Just as there’s a long tail of content, there’s a long tail of advertisers.” (A great point that many broadcasters still don’t understand.) He said that YouTube is focused on two customer touch points — video search and upload — and user experience is key to their success. As for traffic, “YouTube is well over, WELL OVER, 100 million clips a day,” he said. “This is the first time that media has become truly democratic.” All through Eun’s presentation, as you might expect, he reached out to content providers. “We want content providers to have control,” he said. “We see the glass half full.” As Eun’s boss, Eric Schmidt, said yesterday, YouTube’s “Claim Your Content” technology is slated to launch “very soon” that would automatically block unapproved copyrighted content from appearing.