recently there’s been talk at work of our attempts to produce the next ‘youtube’ for some of the big-5 media companies (you know the ones…). they’ve come to us because we have a reputation as the ‘go to guys’ for online video players (even if none of them work on mac). aside from video players, the sites and applications we typically develop for our customers fall into the following categories:
- sites/applications that serve as ads (movie websites, banners, interactive ads, etc…)
- sites/applications that provide a new revenue channel (your online ‘marketplaces’, mobile stores, etc…)
my guess is that any site that the media companies would want developed would not fit into either of these categories. their idea of a ‘youtube’ clone is a site that provides episodes or clips of episodes of their crappy tv shows with space for ads (pre roll, post roll, or on the page itself). essentially just a new source of ad revenue. this is not what made youtube what it is.
the power of youtube is in the users. as a youtube viewer/user you can:
- rate content
- comment on content
- share content with your friends
- repost content on your website
…and most importantly… - add your own content
somehow i don’t see the big-5 going for that last part, or any of it for that matter. why would CBS open up their fall season to ridicule by 10000 monkeys with typewriters, or even put themselves at legal risk when someone uploads some copy-written material? that’s not to say that our team doesn’t get the picture, but the idea that youtube is just a ‘place to watch videos’ is completely wrong. it’s community driven content, free of the constraints of copyright (for the most part), market research, focus groups and demographics. if you eliminate the community you eliminate the ‘youtube’-yness
