It all started when Sony
bought Grouper for $65M.
Similar to real estate
sales in your neighborhood, that transaction established a benchmark against
which other video sharing websites could be evaluated.
YouTube
was valued at $1B USD.
Mark Cuban didn’t agree
and said “only a moron
would buy YouTube.”
People against the $1B valuation,
like Cuban and some analysts, said that most content on YouTube was stolen and that would eventually
lead
to their demise.
People that support the
valuation point to YouTube’s increasing
audience, easy
to use toolset, and social networking environment.
YouTube passed
NYTimes.com traffic in March and MySpace
traffic in July. Click through to
the charts they’re pretty impressive.
Warner Music
Group decided to give YouTube a shot.
The
New York Times quoted Alex Zubillaga, Warner’s executive vice president for
digital strategy, “This is a framework that allows us to monetize our assets
while we unleash the creativity of the user.”
Time will tell what
YouTube is really worth.
The bottom line: Can
YouTube be both profitable and legal?
Some ideas on that …
tomorrow!
UPDATE 10/6: Google in talks to buy YouTube for $1.6B; YouTube Worth It?
YouTube: All or Nothing?
Isn’t it interesting many people consider the fate of YouTube to be an all or nothing proposition? Either YouTube is great (worth $1B) and will one day rule the world or it’s nothing and has no future at all. This
YouTube: Making it Work
For YouTube to be profitable and legal, they have to find a way to leverage their assets (audience, toolset, and community features) to the benefit of copyright holders. Chad Hurly and Steven Chen (YouTube’s co-founders) are against putting advertiseme…