Has YouTube Peaked?
Hard on the heels of the news that Facebook is out trying to sell itself for $1 billion, the New York Post reported Monday that YouTube is looking to get bought out for $1.5 billion.
Had to love the quote from an unnamed source who said:
“If they were willing to take $200 million to $300 million, I would buy it tomorrow,” a senior industry source told The Post.
The problem with YouTube is simple. Almost all the content violates copyright law. If YouTube isn’t careful it will end up as the Napster of the video world. In order to generate revenue from advertising it needs to show legal content. YouTube was built on the wild wild west philosophy of anything goes and now it is too late to rein in the horses.
YouTube has received funding totaling $11.5 million VC firm Sequoia Capital. My suggestion to Sequoia is to take the $200 to $300 million and run. The opportunity has passed to turn YouTube into a legitimate video site. The question is who will develop the social medial equivalent of iTunes for video which could well turn into the Next best thing?
From a marketing perspective, I expect that the ongoing copyright infringement issues will make corporate America very hesitant about advertising on YouTube. Once what little advertising dollars there is dries up, then the death knell of YouTube will be sounded.
Filed under Social Media Optimization : Comments (0) : Sep 26th, 2006
