Published: October 13, 2006 04:58 pm            

In light of YouTube’s $1.65 billion payday, what’s next for video sharing?

Google’s $1.65 billion purchase of YouTube puts video sharing front and center. But, what’s next?

For starters, does it mean the rest of us can start making a couple bucks posting our videos online? Does it create more copyright headaches? And, over time, does it speed up the demise of TV as we know it? Asap considers the possibilities.



Spreading the wealth

So you want a piece of that $1.65 billion? Ha.

“The hosting sites like You-Tube, like Google Video, they’re making all the money while the people that provide the content are making nothing,” says Kevin Flynn, a video creator who wanted a different model.

The result: Eefoof.com, which shares advertising revenues 50-50 with providers of original content. Right now, it works out to about $4 per 1,000 hits, says Flynn, who is Eefoof’s founder and CEO.

The ever-decreasing costs of bandwidth and hosting make it a viable business model, he says. “I think eventually everyone is going to have a revenue-sharing model. ... I think that’s definitely the next big wave.”

Other revenue-sharing sites abound — including Revver.com, which monetizes videos even as they are spread virally to other sites.

But in sum they are just a fraction of the size of YouTube, with nowhere near the array of offerings. That’s partly because the revenue sharers don’t accept non-original content. You can’t make money by posting ripped-off clips of “The Daily Show.” Which brings us to...



Copyright issues

Clips of shows such as “The Daily Show” drive a lot of YouTube traffic, but the danger always is that the big TV networks will crack down and have their content removed. On the other hand, the clips are free advertising for the long-form TV show. As long as networks see the stolen clips as a net gain and not a net drain, they will likely let them stand, says Joe Laszlo, senior analyst at Jupiter Research. “If media companies wanted to sue YouTube out of existence, they would have done it already,” he says.

More productive would be to develop a way to make money off viral fan activity, says Allen Weiner, research director at Gartner Inc. For example, let’s say you make a video set to Mar-vin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing,” and there’s a link at the end that lets viewers download an audio track of the song for 99 cents. You’re using the song for free, but you’re also creating a free advertisement for the song, Weiner says.

The same could work for video: After a “Daily Show” clip there could be a link to Comedy Central enticing you to buy “Best Of Daily Show” collections and other merchandise, he says.

The networks, instead of fighting video sharing enthusiasts, “have got to turn these people into viral agents for them,” Wei-ner says. “It’s just so obvious.”



Making TV obsolete?

Between video sharing, video downloads and digital recording, the future clearly points to entertainment on-demand — watching what you want, when you want on whatever device you want.

“What’s the reason of watching TV when you can go on the Internet and see exactly what you want in five seconds?” says Flynn, who anticipates that revenue-sharing in particular will bring more original content and more high-end content straight to the Internet. “With TV you have 500 stations. With the Internet you have 50 million people providing content.”

        

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