Posts from the ‘YouTube’ Category
Robert Young has a good post today on NewTeeVee on the Newscorp/NBC YouTube competitor.
His basic point is that Murdoch is the ultimate winner in getting the major media companies (or at least one of them to date) to make their content available for online distribution. Google will have no choice but to come to terms with the networks. And the only company that will both own content and online distribution will be…Newscorp.
Worth a read.
The much anticipated NBC/Fox online TV consortium was announced today.
My pal George Kliavkoff will be leading the effort, at least on an interim basis.
I found it curious that the initiative entails distribution partenerships with AOL and MSN. What exactly is the consortium going to do other than cut licensing deals with the portals?
My first reaction, though, is that this is a great thing, in that it reinforces that the TV industry is embracing the web rather than fighting it, as the music industry did. Internet TV has always been a matter of timing, but I have to say I am surprised at how quickly the TV business is coming around.
The prospects should be bright: consumers are becoming more and more accustomed to watching video online; the technology exists; and advertisers are falling over themselves to find more online video inventory. You’d think these guys would have to try to screw it up. Then again, media company consortia don’t have the best track record of executing, so who knows what will happen here.
All in all, though, I think it is a good step forward for online video.
According to the Wall St. Journal, Viacom filed suit today, and released the following statement:
“YouTube is a significant, for-profit organization that has built a lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others’ creative works in order to enrich itself and its corporate parent Google. Their business model, which is based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws. In fact, YouTube’s strategy has been to avoid taking proactive steps to curtail the infringement on its site, thus generating significant traffic and revenues for itself while shifting the entire burden — and high cost — of monitoring YouTube onto the victims of its infringement.
This behavior stands in stark contrast to the actions of other significant distributors, who have recognized the fair value of entertainment content and have concluded agreements to make content legally available to their customers around the world.
There is no question that YouTube and Google are continuing to take the fruit of our efforts without permission and destroying enormous value in the process. This is value that rightfully belongs to the writers, directors and talent who create it and companies like Viacom that have invested to make possible this innovation and creativity.
After a great deal of unproductive negotiation, and remedial efforts by ourselves and other copyright holders, YouTube continues in its unlawful business model. Therefore, we must turn to the courts to prevent Google and YouTube from continuing to steal value from artists and to obtain compensation for the significant damage they have caused.”
The gist of the suit is that, while YouTube takes efforts to filter and remove certain “inappropriate” content, YouTube deliberately does not take similar efforts with respect to copyrighted materials, (since keeping that content up is in YouTube’s interest) instead leaving the onus on copyright holders to find copright violations and then request that they be taken down.
The complaint itself is included below.
Will be interesting to hear GooTube’s response…
viacomyoutubecomplaint3-12-07.pdf
I have finally gotting around to trying the WordPress “Post It” integration with YouTube.
And, I have to say, it is awesome.
All you do is register your WordPress blog with YouTube, and then you can post YouTube videos directly to your blog with a single click of the mouse, without even leaving YouTube.
It is really, really easy, and, for this blogger, really really cool.
Expect to see lots more videos…
YouTube has added WordPress as a blogging service for which it is brain dead simple and easy to post a YouTube video.
This has been a while in the making, and certainly is good news for WordPress and (my portfolio company) Automattic.
More importantly, though, it makes it really easy for me to add videos to this blog!
Here is a really fun Chris Pirillo podcast with Greg Spiridellis on the history of JibJab, Goog-Tube, turning down a Hollywood movie deal and the promise of digital media.
So, yesterday I posted about the YouTube-MySpace competition heating up. Which it is.
But, apparently, I missed another YouTube rivalry from within my own portfolio!
According to the multinational media publisher VNU :
… YouTube had to fend off strong competition in the video traffic space from Heavy.com during the week ending 8 October.
Website traffic analysis firm Hitwise reported that Heavy.com, the largest independent broadband network in the US, is the second largest entertainment video site on the web with a 17 per cent market share
This compares with YouTube’s 35 per cent market share for the same week in October.
Heavy.com outranked MySpace, Google Video and Metacafe for video traffic based on visits.
I’ll try not to sandbag my own portfolio companies in the future! I’ve actually gotten ahold of the Hitwise data, and will post once I figure out how to…
This hardly comes as a surprise, but it sure seems as if the rivalry between MySpace and YouTube is turning up a notch after the Goo-Tube deal.
Search engine watch reports that MySpace has quietly added a “Video Space” that is likely to drive more traffic to member videos.
Yesterday I was visiting with the Allen & Company guys, who told me that the reports of all the media giants fawning over YouTube CEO Chad Hurley at their Sun Valley event were in fact accurate. The video sharing boy wonder was the star of the show, which was populated by industry titans the likes of Rupert Murdoch, Barry Diller, Meg Whitman, etc…
Not surprisingly, Valleywag has weighed in with a contrary and boldly critical angle, professing to explain “Why YouTube is About to Die.”
Curious to know if any of you are persuaded by Valleywag’s argument?
Om Malik predicts a dramatic shakeout amongst the online video sharing sites, with many casualties. I have to agree.
Clearly, I think opportunities still exist for unique and/or well branded video on the web. But, watching the VC funding pouring into the user-generated/video sharing market, I can't help but be reminded of 1999…
VCMike's Blog