February 18th, 2007
Will Online Video Remain A Monopoly?
I was struck by this statement from a NYT report about the ongoing dialogue among Viacom, NBC, and News Corp about the future of online video, GoogTube, etc.:
It has become evident that the question of who will rule video on the Web is incredibly tangled. For now, most of the sticky strands lead to Google, and big media companies are trying to figure out whether to fight it or join it.
“Who will rule video on the Web” — it’s amazing how language reveals our biases. Pretty much everything I’ve read about online video assumes, a priori, that online video WILL ultimately be an old school media monopoly — what else would justify Google’s $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube?
It’s still all about CONTROL. The problem is that the Web “hates” control — never has there been a more powerful monopoly busting force than the IP network.
YouTube has a great platform, and it was the first to get the platform right — BUT, the platform, I would argue, is fast becoming a commodity. So what’s left? The COMMUNITY, of course! YouTube OWNS the community, which is why it’s assumed that YouTube will continue to dominate online video.
But the problem is that YouTube’s killer app (or at least one of them) is its easy embed-ability — it’s fundamentally a distributed platform, and, therefore, so too is the community — the community for an online video exists wherever a video is embedded.
People still come to YouTube to search for video, but once video search becomes properly distributed as well (hello, Google?), that will undermine YouTube as a video search destination.
That leaves the community elements of YouTube that are tied to the site itself, i.e. comments, ratings, channels, etc. The real question is whether these community elements are sufficiently strong for YouTube to retain a monopoly on video content hosting. Are video content creators going to feel locked into YouTube because that’s the only place to tap into and leverage community? That seems unlikely on the surface, but perhaps it isn’t.
It would, however, be deeply ironic if “community” becomes the mechanism of monopoly for New Media, replacing the limited access to production and distribution that defined Old Media monopolies.
Topics: Google | Online Video
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Scott Karp / Publishing 2.0 : Will Online Video Remain A Monopoly?
http://publishing2.com/2007/02/18/will-online-video-remain-a-monopoly/
[…] Update 1: Will Online Video Remain A Monopoly?. Scott Karp wonders about the language of the questions being asked and what it says about how folks are thinking about things. […]
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Will Online Video Remain A Monopoly? Posted 77 minutes ago I was struck by this statement from a NYT report about the ongoing dialogue among Viacom, NBC, and News Corp … [Link]
to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good; for he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished . . . ” Tags: networking culture marketing community Will Online Video Remain A Monopoly? “It would, however, be deeply ironic if “community†becomes the mechanism of monopoly for New Media, replacing the limited access to production and distribution that defined Old Media monopolies.”
I used to be a famous Wall Street analyst” Blodget isn’t so sure whether Joost is the right model, and neither is Stan Schroeder. The always insightful Mark Cuban has some thoughts about Google and video, and my friend Scott Karp wrote recently on the topic of online video and monopoly. Meanwhile, Steve Bryant at GoogleWatch has an excellent list of things that Google could do to make YouTube not just look better but work better. Comments
I used to be a famous Wall Street analyst” Blodget isn’t so sure whether Joost is the right model, and neither is Stan Schroeder. The always insightful Mark Cuban has some thoughts about Google and video, and my friend Scott Karp wrote recently on the topic of online video and monopoly. Meanwhile, Steve Bryant at GoogleWatch has an excellent list of things that Google could do to make YouTube not just look better but work better. Comments
I used to be a famous Wall Street analyst” Blodget isn’t so sure whether Joost is the right model, and neither is Stan Schroeder. The always insightful Mark Cuban has some thoughts about Google and video, and my friend Scott Karp wrote recently on the topic of online video and monopoly. Meanwhile, Steve Bryant at GoogleWatch has an excellent list of things that Google could do to make YouTube not just look better but work better. Comments
Beyond Broadcast: Future of Public Access TV Will Online Video Remain A Monopoly? » Publishing 2.0 Center for Citizen Media: Blog » Blog Archive » Beyond Broadcast: Future of Public Access TV Crisis in Darfur: From Second Life event - to video - to educational outreach. Superfly Media: Mobile photo/video journalism
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s hardball. Or more accurately, acting as the technology provider that the content folks couldn’t or won’t create for themselves. Marshall Kirkpatrick worries about end of YouTube’s monopoly (an angle that Scott Karp wrote about recently) - “It would be a real loss to the world if the two tiers of creativity, professional and user generated, were forever bifurcated in different distribution channels
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I agree: Youtube’s value comes largely from its community, but only if you understand that as a certain brand identity with its style and moods, and not just as the sum of its users. This, I think, depends strongly on how the portal - i.e the front page, the ‘channels’, etc - are managed (which is human-curated and not fully automatic). I’ve written more about this here.
Will Online Video Remain A Monopoly? » Publishing 2.0
Yes, YouTube/Google will get a large share of the pie. But we have to remember that in this new world you don’t need massive huge YouTube like numbers to be successful. We are seeing this already in podcasting. The niche is powerful. Would you rather advertise to hundreds of thousands of casual viewers/listeners or to 10-20k passionate users?
We can get to really very targeted groups thru web 2.0. Google and Youtube can keep running cat videos and sell cat food. There is plenty of room for more foucsed small niches because these small niches aren’t that small now that they are global.
You could never have a Macintosh show on TV or radio, just wasn’t enough audicence. there are plenty of podcasts and blogs for Macs becuase the audience gets aggregated.
[…] the video content business is focused — to the point of obsession — with distribution. Viacom is going to distribute through Joost. NBC Universal and News Corp are creating their own distribution channel. CBS is going to […]