Posts for 'YouTube'

Well not quite yet, as the lawsuits are not yet flying. But we're getting there. After some flip-flopping on this last fall, today Viacom officially told YouTube to take down its clips, reputed to number over 100,000. Obviously you'd need to be involved in these negotiations to know the details of what the offers and counter-offers have been, but it's a disappointment for both parties not to be able to work things out.

As I wrote back in November, "Big Media's Most Vexing Challenge (and How to Overcome It)", companies like Viacom are going through a painful adjustment process to the new broadband-dominated world. This flare-up with YouTube is yet another example.

Chicago Tribune article suggests that user generated content producers being paid for their works will soon be ubiquitous. Of course Revver and others have been doing this for a while now. Steven Starr from Revver raises the “recognition vs. reward” question that undoubtedly passes through any UGC producer’s mind.

I’ve said for a while that if someone had laid the YouTube business plan next to the Revver business plan back in 2005, logic would have suggested that Revver would have better prospects given its willingness to share revenues with producers (thereby creating more incentive to post there).

However, what would have been missing from that logic would be the 2 things that I believe made YouTube an early (and big) winner – namely its willingness to push the envelope in allowing copyrighted material to be posted on its site and its superior user experience. Having won the first battle, YouTube appears poised to overlay the financial incentive long missing for content producers. If well-executed, this should make the landscape even tougher for all the others to succeed.