What If…. Google Hadn’t Bought YouTube?

Adotas has a story today about Google’s problems monetizing YouTube. 

If you remember, Google bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.7 Billion, which after complex calucaltions, came out to be a multiple of about $1.7 Billion.  That’s not true, they made some money, but the valuation was shocking.  Revenue this year is estimated to be $200 Million.  A fine amount of money. 

But, my goodness the costs must be enormous.  How many trillion streams are they broadcasting at what processor and bandwidth cost?   Wikipedia estimates $1 Million per day on Bandwidth alone.

So now imagine for a second that Google had not bought YouTube, and allowed it to lose money at an astonishing rate.  If YouTube was currently running around the investor community asking people to pony up money to fund the TV watching habits of the next generation.  At some point, the bleeding would have to stop.  Imagine some new scenarios for owners of YouTube:

  1. Comcast:  *Poof* All of a sudden it’s a paid subscription channel, and no copyrighted broadcasts would make it to air.
  2. Microsoft?: YouTube becomes MSN Video
  3. An "Orbitz-like" joint partnership between Disney, Viacom, and General Electric: YouTube meets Hulu.
  4. Fox: The new MySpace Videos?

I guess my point is that next time you are enjoying some free entertainment, be happy YouTube was bought by a company who thought it was a cool idea, and would figure out how to make money on it 5-10 years down the road.

 

 

Seattle Loses A Piece of Itself, What Does a Fan Do Next?

Well there you go. 

A region with Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks, Boeing, Washington Mutual, Safeco and Weyerhauser couldn’t find enough tax dollars to keep a piece of history intact.  An international talent pool of software executives, engineers, bankers and real estate moguls, with more college graduates per capita than anywhere in the nation, couldn’t find a few people to hammer out a suitable solution.

So who do you blame?  Sure, you want to blame Clay Bennett.  While he may be a liar, he’s simply a guy who is going to be given a hero’s welcome and key to the city in his hometown.  He never again has to fear taking a wrong turn and running into a homeless heroin addict drinking a latte on Broadway.   Given the chance to take your two-bit town and and make it a major league city, wouldn’t you do the same thing?

So now try to blame Howard Shultz.  He got snookerd into selling to Bennett.  But he didn’t want to sell.  He did everything but beg for some money to renovate Key Arena.  The team was losing money like there was a hole in the bottom of its bank account.  And here’s the dirty secret.  It wasn’t Howard that was getting killed.  His 50+ partners, the guys who retired from Microsoft and thought the stock market would never stop rising, were the ones who needed to stop writing checks every year to cover the losses.  So they went to Olympia, and Olympia gave them the finger.

So is it Olympia’s fault?  The City Council’s?  Well of course, but there is a bigger culprit in all of this.

It’s the fault of the fans who live in and around Seattle. It’s at least partly our fault.

We did the famous passive-aggressive Seattle shuffle.  We complained, but took no action.  How many of us vote regularly, or ever, in a City Council election?  How many of you know your District Rep or State Senator in Olympia?  One day we all looked up and realized some pseudo communist named Nick Licata, who starts meetings about the Police budget with a poem, was in charge of the team’s fate. And even then, we relied on the Save Our Sonics guys. (Great effort guys.  I exempt you from this.  You really did all you could, and we should commend you.)

But scroll through the list of successful executives who live in Seattle, and then match it to the backgrounds of the people on OUR City Council.  It’s a shame.  It’s embarrassing.  We voters have all been asleep at the switch.

Now let’s take it one step further.  It’s just basketball.  There are really WAY more important things than basketball.  Like Schools and  Transportation to name two.  These are complex problems with many variables.  The Sonics situation was a simple problem with a single variable – how do we creatively make a fiscally responsible decision that also helps the owners of the team?  Simple problem.  Give me and 10 friends a night at Dad Watson’s with all of the relevant data and we could come up with something.

But OUR elected officials couldn’t handle something this simple.  Now, what makes you think they can handle Transportation or Education?

The team is gone.  For most of us, it’s the first time we realized our leaders were so inept.  But it’s our fault for not paying attention.  We should have clued in after the Monorail debacle, and we all paid $500 for car tabs for a mode of transportation that didn’t exist.  We should have clued in when our gas tax skyrocketed and the roads got worse.  Now maybe we’ll get it.  Do some research.  Personally, I don’t know much about Drago, Godden, Licata, Curly, Larry and Moe, but I will certainly find out. 

If the loss of basketball in Seattle pains you, then realize this Council, this Governor, and this Legislature, WILL hurt you again.  Blame the first pain on your own naivety, but blame any upcoming pain on being inactive, and not working hard now to correct who is "representing" you.   

If you can’t make fun of a mass exodus, what really can you make fun of?

I suppose we all should have seen something like this coming.  With nearly every key executive who is not named Yang fleeing the sinking ship formerly known as Yahoo, a few enterprising young folks put togteher this web site to make it easier to write your resignation letter.  Ah, must be good times down there. 

Down the road it will be fasicnating to review the complete company history of Yahoo, and analyze their strategic decisions.  Can you think of any other company that had such a specacular rise and (possible) fall in just a 15-20 year period? 

More NBA Image Problems

Ok, if you are the NBA, how do you address this PR nightmare?  You already have an NBA official who has admitted to taking money to throw games.  Now this official is naming other refs and other games that have been fixed – playoff games at that.

Anyone who has ever watched an NBA Playoff game has walked away wondering, "There were some weird calls in that game…"  In fact, I believe Mark Cuban even hired his own stats guys to chart how refs called games, and which ones were more inconsistent than others.

Contrary to opinion, it really would be easy to fix a game.  Consider that each team has the ball about two times per minute.  And you figure almost every player touches the ball at least once per possession.  And maybe 1/2 the touches result in some sort of light contact from the defender.  A couple of quick innocuous foul calls in the 1st quarter put a player on the bench.  A couple more in the second half keep him on the bench.  And most teams can’t compete when they have a starter on the bench all game.

But the question is, how does the NBA respond?  Do you believe the guy who admitted to being guilty?  Or do you believe the guy who is moving a basketball team from Seattle to Oklahoma City for what he says is in the "best interest of the league."   Who really has more to lose at this point? One guy who has no hope at ever getting his job back is trying to cut down the number of years he’ll be in jail.  The other guy is trying to maintain the image and value of his billion dollar enterprise.  Who do you think would be more willing to stretch the truth to protect their interests?

And just a side note – is there a coincidence that this allegation comes as the Lakers play the Celtics, a revival of when the NBA was great, and a chance to showcase the NBA’s heir apparent to Michael Jordan and coach of the century.  Plus, many people wonder how a GM who was vilified by press and fans for being inept, managed to get Kevin Garnett from his buddy Kevin McHale and Ray Allen from an owner who wanted to move his team to Oklahoma City.   Did the league orchestrate the move to bring power back to Boston?  Maybe that’s the next revelation….

Interview With Facebook Execs at “All Things D”

I found these interviews with Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg & Mark Zuckerberg at FaceReviews.com. The interview was part of the All Things D Conference.

Very interesting interview that runs through the Facebook goals and vision, some insight into what they thought was important as they went from a 3 man side project to Media powerhouse, how FB applications will evolve, and some looks to the future.



Wall Street Journal Scoop – Agencies are Offshoring Creative

I tell you what. You hear complaints about the mainstream media being out of touch at times. But thankfully the Wall Street Journal is able to restore my faith in their relevance by coming up with scoops such as this: 

More Digital Ads Are Produced Offshore
Marketers Ship Work To Costa Rica, Bulgaria; AvVenta Reaps Rewards

Really?  People are offshoring their creative?  I had no idea.  I mean, when I used elance.com last month to have 35 ad banners made for $400, and 25 different firms bid on my project, I just thought I was unique.  It never dawned on me that there was an actual industry around connecting American companies to leverage affordable and talented creative folks from abroad.  Thanks to the WSJ, my eyes have been opened to this 5-10 year old phenomenon.

Among the many sad parts of this article, is the fact that the story was obviously planted by a firm called avVenta Worldwide.  So not only does this WSJ writer, Emily Steel, make it appear that she just found out about creative outsourcing, she also makes it appear that she thinks that avVenta Worldwide is somehow revolutionary in the space.  The article basically tells this story.  "Agencies needed a way to cut costs and bill their Fortune 500 clients the same amount.  So they hire avVenta Worldwide, who has a team of creatives in Costa Rica, Bulgaria and the Ukraine. The agency margins grow, avVenta Worldwide margins grow and no one knows the difference."

Well, no one knows the difference until your PR team gets an article placed in the WSJ and all of those Fortune 500 clients who thought they were paying for Madison Avenue heavyweights with Masters in Graphic Design say, "Uh, WTF?"

Monday Night MLS Soccer

Dear MLS,

I must admit, I’ve been trying to get excited about watching your games this year in anticipation of Seattle’s entrance to the league next year.  But I’m having a hard time tracking you down on the TV dial.  Also, it seems like your games are generally on in the middle of weekend afternoons, and frankly, there’s just too much other stuff to do.

May I offer a quick suggestion that would fit better with my schedule?

Monday Night Soccer.  Remember the old days of Monday Night Baseball?  Think back before ESPN, when the only ways to watch baseball were Saturday’s Game of the Week with Kubek and Gariagiola, and then MNB with guys like Cosell. Drysdale and Michaels.

Here’s why this works.

  1. Monday is a travel day for most basbeall teams, which leaves sports fans with not much to watch.
  2. You can start every game at the same time.  You only have 14 teams so it shouldn’t be hard to build a schedule to get everyone within a timze zone of each other so that all the games kickoff at 6:15pm PST for West Coast Days and 5:15pm PST on days when they play on the East Coast.  If you start 7 games at the same time, and lets say there’s 1.5 goals per game, then you are showing goal highlights  from other games every 9 or 10 minutes.  Every American can appreciate goals being scored at that pace.
  3. Here’s your opportunity to build some personalities into your broadcasts.  I’m sure we all appreciate that the guys who used to play U.S. soccer need jobs now, but you have a sport with a lot of dead time.  Where is soccer’s Howard Cosell?  Bring me someone who can spin tales for 90 minutes.  He should be able to quote from TMZ, Perez Hilton, the London Times and LeMonde in successive sentences.   There would be no better place to have a real "character" to promote the games into living rooms.
  4. Monday is a huge day for adult soccer leagues, and these teams go to bars after games.  Make sure your TV broadcast partner replays the broadcast, so guys who get done playing soccer can sit around watching MLS highlights rather than home runs. ESPN 2 should have no problem with this.

Monday Night Soccer.  Excuse the mixed metaphor, but this is a slam dunk.

Explaining Kids’ Hyperactivity

Here’s an odd report that comes out of England.  Does it mean that pregnant women must add Cell Phones to the list of things they can’t use? Perhaps.  

In a nutshell, the suprised researchers found that cell phone usage while pregnant leads to hperactivity wwhen the kids are born.  Specific results:

  • Mothers who did use the handsets were 54 per cent more likely to have children with behavioural problems
  • The likelihood increased with the amount of potential exposure to the radiation.
  • When the children also later used the phones they were, overall, 80 per cent more likely to suffer from difficulties with behaviour.
    • They were 25 per cent more at risk from emotional problems.
    • 34 per cent more likely to suffer from difficulties relating to their peers.
    • 35 per cent more likely to be hyperactive.
    • 49 per cent more prone to problems with conduct.

So if your kid is hyper – don’t blame them….it sounds like it’s your fault 🙂  Can’t wait to see the first lawsuit to come from this…. 

 


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