Comments on: Why the NBC/Newscorp Video Venture is a Great Idea

By: Mike

Mike — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 19:56:39 +0000

YouTube could fail, sure. And NBC/News Corp. could fail, too. Someone else will figure it out…so the question really is, at what point do we stop getting television?

Mike

By: Panda Passport

Panda Passport — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 23:29:35 +0000

Hey Mark,
Any thoughts on the Chinese youtube clones such as youku or tudou which seem to be enjoying immunity from copyright law? Full movies, full seasons of tv shows, all streaming youtube-style.
(Actually they\'re quite faster than youtube).

Here are a few examples I\'ve found:
http://www.pandapassport.com/china-stolen-media/china-pirated-media-1/

By: Amy

Amy — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 20:14:45 +0000

How about thoughts on \”Joost\” or \”Bittorrent\’s – Entertainment Network\”? These are about to be launched (Joost is in beta) and Bittorrent was launched this February….seems a nice competitive playing field is emerging.

By: april

april — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 18:42:20 +0000

Everybody and their grandma are trying to create some type of online community to sell advertising. I think about 21 of 25 of Business 2.0\’s Companies to Watch are online advertising related.

Soon there\’ll be more companies selling advertising then anything else.

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 19:15:00 +0000

What if there was a site that allowed students at universities around the word to post self generated content that covered everything from their school\’s athletics teams to cool, new independent, unsigned bands? What if students were given the chance to generate college oriented material that was entertaining but clean, factual and responsible? What if there were no issues with copyrighted material because all the video and music was student generated? For students, by students. Sounds cool right? It is. It\’s called thepalestra.com. It may be the next cool thing on the web. You decide.

By: Bri

Bri — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 13:06:14 +0000

I thought that you might like to see Vidmeter\'s report on copyrighted videos on YouTube:

http://www.vidmeter.com/i/vidmeter_copyright_report.pdf

By: RandomThoughts

RandomThoughts — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 17:18:14 +0000

The talks between NBC and News Corp are important to both Viacom and to Google. If Viacom wins the lawsuit, YouTube would be at the mercy of the content providers. If YouTube signs on with NBC and News Corp, YouTube would have good content and leave Viacom with no access to the huge audience that YouTube brings to the table.

By: Joe Duck

Joe Duck — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 23:00:42 +0000

Several excellent points Mark. The challenge for the new venture is that legacy media has shown a lot of incompetence with respect to online stuff. Can they get this right when even Google seems to be struggling with online video?

By: googguy

googguy — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 12:47:25 +0000

Mark,

Did you notice that the Sequoia Capital guy who sat on Google\'s board AND Youtube\'s board of directors - Micahel Moritz - two days ago abruptly resigned.

The rumor is that the Google purchase was nothing more than a huge criminal fraud designed to enrich Sequoia partners. They controlled the board of Youtube after making an 11 million dollar investment, and until late last year they were the single largest shareholder of Google and controlled its board.

Buy purchasing Youtube for 1.65 billion, Sequoia effectively put 500 million dollars of profit in their pocket for 6 months effort.

Nobody ever expected the deal to make sense or work. It was all about the payoff.

This sort of thing happened all the time with dot.coms back in the day.. large public company would buy small private company for vastly inflated price, just days after the public company\'s executive staff made equity investments in the small company.

All perfectly legal, but completely ripping off existing shareholders. Silicon Valley as usual.

By: MS

MS — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 20:51:33 +0000

Mark of course has been calling out YouTubes shortcomings from its very launch. Ultimately, the problem with putting faith in NBCU and News Corps video sharing service is putting faith in NBCU and Newcorps.

I cant tell you how many times I get called out, by technical colleagues working for tech companies, on why my own company (full disclosure: Viacom employee) doesnt have so and so RSS subscription features, or roll out so and so widget application.

Its the Engineering dummy!

Read on here… http://www.sunbulli.com