I enjoyed the conversations discussing my position on NBA Players in the Olympics. The sports world is its own social network where much is said , written and quickly forgotten about anything and everything that can be argued about. My last post included.

The sports world however is on an amateur scale when it comes to arguing for the sake of arguing compared to the world of technology fanboys. They are about to see just how overmatched they are

It all starts with this “No Olympics video is allowed to be shown online on any website other than NBCOlympics.com“

Translated, this means that no Olympics video is allowed on Youtube, Veoh or any video sharing site. It means that if you are an Olympic athlete and you want to post video of your Gold Medal winning, world record performance on your Facebook or Myspace page, those sites may just get a takedown notice saying you dont have those rights, leaving the dreaded “this video has been removed…..” text in its place.

If you stayed up all night to watch an amazing finish to an event that you wanted to share with friends, forgettaboutit. Unless you plan on making an expensive fair use legal argument, you re going to be running afoul of the NBC legal department.

For all things Olympics video online, its NBCOlympics.com or nothing.

All of which is fighting words to the very vocal the internet and Youtube can do no wrong fanboys. They will scream, yell and comment spam and response video to the point of hyperventilation. They will do interviews on every sports, technology and cable news show. It will become a multi platform, multi media issue. They will be loud

It will also send the message to the sports world that the Olympics is driven by money. A fact that will resonate every time someone watches the Olympics, except hopefully between the gun and the tape and the starting and ending whistles of events. Which of course means it will be sports talk radio fodder 24×7 on every radio dial in every city in America with ESPN segments everywhere covering the “controversy”

The Olympics will of course be a major topic of conversation this summer, it will be interesting to see how much of the conversation will be about the athletes and which world, technology or sports will have more influence on NBC and their policies.

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This is my original post on the NBA and the Olympics. One thing I will add to it is for each and every blogger who so desires to undertake a simple test. On your blog, add a picture of the Olympics 5 Rings and a picture of your favorite player in their Olympic uniform. Underneath the pictures, add the caption, “My Official Olympics Update” and then chronicle that player in the Olympics with pictures from the official Olympics website. Show your patriotism and pride… that is until the you get a takedown letter or a Cease and Desist ordering you to take it down.

Thats how much about country and pride the Olympics is these days….

A 2nd item to generate some thought is the concept of players and coaches “And 1ing” their nationalities in order to be able to participate or to better market themselves. Whats “And 1ing” ? Being born and/or raised in one country but leveraging a ancestral link to another country where your odds are better to make the team. So for instance, your great, great grandfather was born in Upper Slobobia. in order to play on the Upper Slobobian basketball or handball team, you get a passport from there. Thats “And 1ing”. Adding a nationality so that you can play on their team.

Or what about giving up citizenship from your native country to come here and play on our team. Is that what we want to root for as we face an onslaught of commercials on one of who knows how many cable networks that GE will be filling with Olympic programming ?

Are we sure the Olympics is about patriotism and pride ? Or is it about commercialism ? Im certaintly not against GE and the US Olympic Team making as much money as they possibly can on the game. More power to them. But lets not lie to ourselves about what is going on.

Here is my original post from more than 4 years ago.

NBA and the Olympics

Apr 7th 2004 10:54AM

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It is coming up on 2 years post my declaration that only a moron would buy Youtube and that Google was crazy for actually going through with it.

In that period of time, while Youtube traffic has skyrocketed, they have been steadfast in their admission that they haven’t been able to monetize Youtube’s traffic in a profitable manner. Youtube has become the poster child for the old saying “we are losing money on every sale, but we will make it up in volume”. To the Youtube fan club, its inconceivable that any website with so much traffic and marketshare could be in anything but an enviable position. The fan boys would be increasingly wrong. The Youtube business model is broken and there is no light at the end of the tunnel as they are currently constructed.

The reason is Hulu.

Hulu doesn’t serve up more videos than Youtube. They aren’t even remotely close in number of total users or videos served. But there is one area in which Hulu is just stomping up and down Youtube, and another in which Hulu is laughing at Youtube all the way to bank.

Lets start with the 2nd, Hulu laughing at Youtube. Youtube has presented to Hulu something that we can simply call The Youtube Arbitrage. Whats the Youtube Arbitrage you ask ? Simple. Hulu posts clips, not full episodes, clips on its Youtube channel and elsewhere on Youtube. Those clips are preroll AND overlays AND post rolls promoting Hulu and its full episodes of shows and movies. All of which costs Hulu the ginormous cost of ….nothing. From which it generates traffic to its Hulu site on which it sells, to the point of often selling out, display and preroll ads. That’s the ultimate arbitrage. We pay you nothing, and you send us traffic that generates ad revenue for us.

Which leads us to the one area, OK lets say two areas that Hulu is just stomping all over Youtube;
1. Revenue Per Video
2. Revenue Per User

Hulu has one HUGE advantage over Youtube, it has the right to sell advertising in and around every single video on its site. It can package and sell any way that might make its customers happy. Youtube on the other hand, has that right for only the small percentage of the videos on its site that it has a licensing deal with. For probably 99pct or more of the videos on the site, Youtube isn’t supposed to know what they even are.

How can that be ? Because Youtube hides behind the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Hulu is a media site that presents videos with advertising. It can do whatever it wants. Youtube ts a hosting service. Its not allowed to know what videos are uploaded by users and its not allowed to generate revenue against those videos. It can only sell advertising around videos it has licenses to.

Which leads to a question and a prediction.

The Question: Which site currently has more monetizable video and traffic, Youtube or Hulu ? I don’t know the answer. I’m guessing that its already a close race and may even be in Hulu’s favor. I do know that Youtube’s need for more monetizable traffic is why they added the check box for Partner Videos. Notice that those are the only videos that you see ads next to.

The Prediction: That by next year, not only will Hulu have more monetizable traffic than Youtube, but it will have more total revenues than Youtube as well. It wouldn’t sup rise me if they are already at a higher annual run rate than Youtube.

All of which puts Youtube in a VERY BAD spot. Because Hulu can monetize 100pct of their growing traffic, they should be in a position to pay for the best content available. Not a lot of money, but even with the tiniest of guaranteed payments to producers, they will not only attract better content than Youtube, but they will also increase the cost to Youtube for the content they want most to license. Furthermore, because Hulu knows exactly what they have on the site and can sell 100pct of it, their professional sales force will be in a better position to package and sell bigger and more profitable ad solutions.

It will be interesting to see how Youtube responds.

As it stands today however, there is no doubt that Hulu, if it doesn’t already, will have more monetizable traffic and greater revenues than Youtube going forward.

Which means that the more traffic Hulu generates, the more money it makes. The more traffic Youtube generates, the more money it loses.. Maybe they think they will make it up with even more volume ?

I’m sure the fan boys are convinced they will.

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It is coming up on 2 years post my declaration that only a moron would buy Youtube and that Google was crazy for actually going through with it.

In that period of time, while Youtube traffic has skyrocketed, they have been steadfast in their admission that they haven’t been able to monetize Youtube’s traffic in a profitable manner. Youtube has become the poster child for the old saying “we are losing money on every sale, but we will make it up in volume”. To the Youtube fan club, its inconceivable that any website with so much traffic and marketshare could be in anything but an enviable position. The fan boys would be increasingly wrong. The Youtube business model is broken and there is no light at the end of the tunnel as they are currently constructed.

The reason is Hulu.

Hulu doesn’t serve up more videos than Youtube. They aren’t even remotely close in number of total users or videos served. But there is one area in which Hulu is just stomping up and down Youtube, and another in which Hulu is laughing at Youtube all the way to bank.

Lets start with the 2nd, Hulu laughing at Youtube. Youtube has presented to Hulu something that we can simply call The Youtube Arbitrage. Whats the Youtube Arbitrage you ask ? Simple. Hulu posts clips, not full episodes, clips on its Youtube channel and elsewhere on Youtube. Those clips are preroll AND overlays AND post rolls promoting Hulu and its full episodes of shows and movies. All of which costs Hulu the ginormous cost of ….nothing. From which it generates traffic to its Hulu site on which it sells, to the point of often selling out, display and preroll ads. That’s the ultimate arbitrage. We pay you nothing, and you send us traffic that generates ad revenue for us.

Which leads us to the one area, OK lets say two areas that Hulu is just stomping all over Youtube;
1. Revenue Per Video
2. Revenue Per User

Hulu has one HUGE advantage over Youtube, it has the right to sell advertising in and around every single video on its site. It can package and sell any way that might make its customers happy. Youtube on the other hand, has that right for only the small percentage of the videos on its site that it has a licensing deal with. For probably 99pct or more of the videos on the site, Youtube isn’t supposed to know what they even are.

How can that be ? Because Youtube hides behind the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Hulu is a media site that presents videos with advertising. It can do whatever it wants. Youtube ts a hosting service. Its not allowed to know what videos are uploaded by users and its not allowed to generate revenue against those videos. It can only sell advertising around videos it has licenses to.

Which leads to a question and a prediction.

The Question: Which site currently has more monetizable video and traffic, Youtube or Hulu ? I don’t know the answer. I’m guessing that its already a close race and may even be in Hulu’s favor. I do know that Youtube’s need for more monetizable traffic is why they added the check box for Partner Videos. Notice that those are the only videos that you see ads next to.

The Prediction: That by next year, not only will Hulu have more monetizable traffic than Youtube, but it will have more total revenues than Youtube as well. It wouldn’t sup rise me if they are already at a higher annual run rate than Youtube.

All of which puts Youtube in a VERY BAD spot. Because Hulu can monetize 100pct of their growing traffic, they should be in a position to pay for the best content available. Not a lot of money, but even with the tiniest of guaranteed payments to producers, they will not only attract better content than Youtube, but they will also increase the cost to Youtube for the content they want most to license. Furthermore, because Hulu knows exactly what they have on the site and can sell 100pct of it, their professional sales force will be in a better position to package and sell bigger and more profitable ad solutions.

It will be interesting to see how Youtube responds.

As it stands today however, there is no doubt that Hulu, if it doesn’t already, will have more monetizable traffic and greater revenues than Youtube going forward.

Which means that the more traffic Hulu generates, the more money it makes. The more traffic Youtube generates, the more money it loses.. Maybe they think they will make it up with even more volume ?

I’m sure the fan boys are convinced they will.

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It is coming up on 2 years post my declaration that only a moron would buy Youtube and that Google was crazy for actually going through with it.

In that period of time, while Youtube traffic has skyrocketed, they have been steadfast in their admission that they haven’t been able to monetize Youtube’s traffic in a profitable manner. Youtube has become the poster child for the old saying “we are losing money on every sale, but we will make it up in volume”. To the Youtube fan club, its inconceivable that any website with so much traffic and marketshare could be in anything but an enviable position. The fan boys would be increasingly wrong. The Youtube business model is broken and there is no light at the end of the tunnel as they are currently constructed.

The reason is Hulu.

Hulu doesn’t serve up more videos than Youtube. They aren’t even remotely close in number of total users or videos served. But there is one area in which Hulu is just stomping up and down Youtube, and another in which Hulu is laughing at Youtube all the way to bank.

Lets start with the 2nd, Hulu laughing at Youtube. Youtube has presented to Hulu something that we can simply call The Youtube Arbitrage. Whats the Youtube Arbitrage you ask ? Simple. Hulu posts clips, not full episodes, clips on its Youtube channel and elsewhere on Youtube. Those clips are preroll AND overlays AND post rolls promoting Hulu and its full episodes of shows and movies. All of which costs Hulu the ginormous cost of ….nothing. From which it generates traffic to its Hulu site on which it sells, to the point of often selling out, display and preroll ads. That’s the ultimate arbitrage. We pay you nothing, and you send us traffic that generates ad revenue for us.

Which leads us to the one area, OK lets say two areas that Hulu is just stomping all over Youtube;
1. Revenue Per Video
2. Revenue Per User

Hulu has one HUGE advantage over Youtube, it has the right to sell advertising in and around every single video on its site. It can package and sell any way that might make its customers happy. Youtube on the other hand, has that right for only the small percentage of the videos on its site that it has a licensing deal with. For probably 99pct or more of the videos on the site, Youtube isn’t supposed to know what they even are.

How can that be ? Because Youtube hides behind the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Hulu is a media site that presents videos with advertising. It can do whatever it wants. Youtube ts a hosting service. Its not allowed to know what videos are uploaded by users and its not allowed to generate revenue against those videos. It can only sell advertising around videos it has licenses to.

Which leads to a question and a prediction.

The Question: Which site currently has more monetizable video and traffic, Youtube or Hulu ? I don’t know the answer. I’m guessing that its already a close race and may even be in Hulu’s favor. I do know that Youtube’s need for more monetizable traffic is why they added the check box for Partner Videos. Notice that those are the only videos that you see ads next to.

The Prediction: That by next year, not only will Hulu have more monetizable traffic than Youtube, but it will have more total revenues than Youtube as well. It wouldn’t sup rise me if they are already at a higher annual run rate than Youtube.

All of which puts Youtube in a VERY BAD spot. Because Hulu can monetize 100pct of their growing traffic, they should be in a position to pay for the best content available. Not a lot of money, but even with the tiniest of guaranteed payments to producers, they will not only attract better content than Youtube, but they will also increase the cost to Youtube for the content they want most to license. Furthermore, because Hulu knows exactly what they have on the site and can sell 100pct of it, their professional sales force will be in a better position to package and sell bigger and more profitable ad solutions.

It will be interesting to see how Youtube responds.

As it stands today however, there is no doubt that Hulu, if it doesn’t already, will have more monetizable traffic and greater revenues than Youtube going forward.

Which means that the more traffic Hulu generates, the more money it makes. The more traffic Youtube generates, the more money it loses.. Maybe they think they will make it up with even more volume ?

I’m sure the fan boys are convinced they will.

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Today is the youngest you will ever be. Act like it.

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I love to pick on technology dogmas. There is absolutely no reason to ever be religious about technology. The internet is not now, nor will it ever be the be all end all that some portray it to be. Its has reached the point of diminishing returns after 15 years of excitement, just as PC CPUs, Windows Software, Desktop PCs and many other formerly exciting technologies have.

I happen to think that there is much more excitement and opportunity on networks that offer gigabits of bandwidth, personalization and high levels of quality of service than on the internet. But thats just me.

As much more opportunity as I believe there is, its not a slamdunk that these networks will dominate because their owners have not historically been innovators as a regular matter of business. Fortunately, I think thats starting to change, but its not a given it will accelerate.

The most evident example of this is the DVR. There is absolutely no reason for any cable or telco video subscriber to have a DVR in their home. None. Just as Yahoo Mail, Hotmail and GMail moved our email storage from our PCs to their storage farms, our 2 way video providers should be moving our DVR storage to HardDrive Storage farms. In fact, its even easier than it sounds. Rather than having a show like Lost stored across thousands of DVRs across their subscriber base, they can just store 1 copy and share it.

Its crazy that every set top box has an 80gbs or bigger harddrive and the electronics to add more storage. All they do is jack up the cost for the provider and the consumer. Its a no win situation.

So why does it occur ? Because the 6 or so major media companies that control all the biggest TV networks won’t let the cable and telcos do the right thing and offer networked DVRs. Its been 2 years since Cablevision was sued for offering a Network DVR and a year since they lost the case. Could the big media companies be any more ridiculous ? Chalk this up as one more reason why the consolidation of media power in the hands of just a few major media companies is a bad thing. This belongs right up there with the RIAA suing every grandmother they can find in levels of stupidity.

But wait, there is more. A properly designed network dvr can completely destroy Apple TV and every other wanna be in home internet video to the TV solution. How ?

Nodular Hosting

Whats that ?

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When it comes to broadband internet access, you can have speed or large volumes of data transfer. You can’t have both. One certainty in the broadband world is that for those of us with cable or DSL modems connecting us to the internet, there is still a finite amount of bandwidth available. When a user consumes a disproportionate and significant amount of bandwidth, it can and will slow down everyone. I hate that.

If the choice is between your being able to download more movies or other video and my getting the best possible speed from my internet connection, I’m thrilled when you get kicked off. It can’t happen soon enough. Speed is what I need. Take all your P2P downloads and get the hell off my internet.

I have no sympathy for bandwidth hogs. You all are productivity killers for the rest of us. People who are working, people who are trying to play games, people who are in virtual worlds, people who are networking, people who are just trying to watch a Youtube video or their favorite TV show, you all are the reason why we get incredibly annoyed by slowdowns and buffering.

Leave and take your bit torrent client with you.

Its been amusing to read all the blog posts with the math telling all of us just how many standard def or high def movies tiered subscribers will be limited to. You can have 2 or 3 of your favorite SD TV shows per day, or X number of HD movies per month. Say what ?

I have news for all of you that want to dedicate their internet connections to downloading movies. There is a new and exciting development. Its called an Application Specific Integrated Video Service (ASIVS) . What is an ASIVS ? Its a computer dedicated specifically to downloading and playing both standard definition and high definition video. You connect it to a network that is dedicated to delivering GIGABITS PER SECOND of high quality video with ZERO buffering. Its amazing, it always works and connects right to your standard def or High Definition TV, easily. Most of the systems I have seen have a pretty good programming guide and scheduling system and they will let you download AS MUCH VIDEO AS YOU WANT , limited only by the size of its hard drive!!

If you haven’t heard of the ASIVS, its because most people call it a DVR.

If downloading TV shows is so important to you, add a DVR to your cable or satellite service for 5 bucks a month and download all you want. If you want to watch those shows on your laptop, connect the composite video out in your DVR to the composite in on your laptop. Same with movies.

Cant download movies illegally, tough.

The internet is a great resource for unlimited quantities of video. Downloading video is an internet given right. Using he internet to fill up your PC turned DVR at the expense of the performance of every user around you is not.

Im a heavy internet user. I’m online hours per day. To me, the promise of the internet comes not from how many bits I can download, its in finding new ways to leverage the utility and stability of the internet as a platform for new applications. The performance of the net is key to new applications working and gathering users. Internet consumers avoid new applications that are slow. Even when they don’t realize that the application is slow because the latency on their net segment has skyrocketed because of bandwidth hogs disproportionate consumption of bits.

Now some of you might think that the reasonable solution for all of this is for your provider to create as much last mile bandwidth as is necessary to make everyone happy, with no limits on use and at a low price. In a lot of respects, I would agree with you. It would be nice if every network were upgraded so that the amount of bandwidth available to us would be bottomless. Nice, but not here and now.

Until that day comes, the only real option is to push the bandwidth hogs to slow usage periods and create packages that allow for increased consumption of bandwidth during off hours, or to push them off typical ISP network. If tiered broadband offerings enable that. I say thank you.

Speed is what I need. If that means that those 5 pct of users that consume 65pct of bandwidth are kicked off or charged per bit to reduce their consumption…. so be it.

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Its not often you can have two movies out that get 100pct on Rotten Tomatoes. If you dont know what that means, it means that 100 pct of the reviews on both our movies, Surfwise and Bigger Stronger Faster are postive. Its an amazing feat for one movie, but to have two out is incredible.

Surfwise is about a surfer, Doc” Paskowitz. Once an admired figure in the medical community, Doc decided while at the height of his success to do what many have dreamed of, to leave it all behind, and head to the beach. While traveling the world in search of the next great wave, Doc got married , and had nine kids.

Rather than retreating to a “normal” life to raise his kids, Doc did the opposite. He never placed his kids in school, raised his kids, and lived, all 10 of them, in an ever moving camper. The only required routine was that they surf every day and eat organic. Doc wanted to raise his family the way animals live, free of the material world. The film takes viewers on a turbulent ride through the family’s complex history, first focusing on its patriarch and then slowly moving through the years with commentary by the family’s seven now-grown children. Careful never to judge, SURFWISE simply presents the story as experienced by those on the inside. Scenes of complaint by the adult children are countered by a hopeful reunion at the end. Its an incredible look at a real family who tuned out, and the reality that followed.

Critics have called the movie mesmerizing, thought provoking, fascinating, absorbing, remarkable, powerful and more. For more information and where you can see it, check out the Surfwise website and see the movie. I promise you will love it.

Another amazing, favorite movie of ours is Bigger Stronger Faster. The reviews are just as amazing. RAUCOUSLY FUNNY, SURPRISINGLY COMPREHENSIVE AND INSIGHTFUL (LA Times). Fascinating ! (Entertainment Weekly), Poignant and hilarious.” – Stephen Holden, NY Times, The film treats jocks like humans, not stars or superheroes, and in the end has managed something unique for documentaries these days: IT’S AS ENTERTAINING AS IT IS FAIR.” – Stephen Hunter, Washington Post, Alternately funny and harrowing.” – GQ,

The reviews really say it all. I love this movie because its a hysterical look at the sports world. Steroids are the common theme in the movie, but its a theme that is ripe for humor. How can a guy with guns like Gregg Valentino not be (pic below). This movie takes on everyone and takes no prisoners, pointing out the hypocrisy of how we view winning in sports.

If you like docs by Morgan Spurlock Like SuperSize Me, you are going to love , love , love this movie. Go see it and post what you think. More info and the trailer are here

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