I know Timo sited this story earlier but there are a couple of things sticking in my craw. First, in the Times article yesterday, quoting Charlene Li, from Forrester:
“YouTube figured out what Google and Yahoo and Microsoft and all the others in the marketplace didn’t,” she said. “It’s not about the video. It’s about creating a community around the video.”
Is this true? Does "creating community," other than simply forwarding amusing stuff to your friends, have all that much to do with YouTube's success? Isn't it really YouTube's ease-of-use and its initial compatibility with MySpace (plus the SNL clip) that really placed and keeps YouTube in the big-time?
Which brings up a second bone of contention, via this absurdity of a quote in the AP piece, from Trip Chowdhry of Global Equities Research:
''YouTube's brand identity is no less than Google's and is no less than Coke's.''
Oh, really? I bet that authoritative statement really plays out in the three companies' respective market caps. Seriously, does anyone really care if they're getting and giving their video clips via YouTube or SmoothGroove or BlueMoon as long as it's easy and it works? I don't.
But YouTube is easy and it does work, particularly as a way to multiply outlets for advertisement placement. It works because of the eyeballs and because the kind of content each specific eyes check out should be trackable, leading to ever-increasingly finely-tuned, and personalized advertising delivery. Ultimately, the analysts are more or less right that YouTube would probably be a good purchase for Google, but much more for Google to expand doing what it's already doing and much less for the reasons these analysts state.
No comments:
Post a Comment