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Monday Oct 09, 2006
Google and YouTube to own the world
Moments ago Google announced that they were buying YouTube for US$1.6 billion in stock. It's quite incredible how YouTube in little over a year has become the hottest thing on the internet. In Saturday's (paper) copy of the Guardian I counted four articles that mentioned the video-sharing site.
But is anyone that interested? Does this news really matter to the people who don't obsess about blogs, podcasts and the long tail business models (and if this research is right, then that's almost everyone)?
Well yes, it does matter. Just because people don't know what podcasts are, it doesn't mean that radio people aren't running scared. Or that video sharing isn't making TV broadcasters gulp with fear. Or that anyone who is involved in top down, non-digital media isn't thinking about their careers.But this is just an issue fo media-folk, right? Wrong. Anyone who wants to get messages out needs to understand how and where people are moving (or in some cases, moved). This is a big thing for charities and non-profits too. I spent last Thursday with a bunch of people at NCVO looking at social networking and how charities might benefit (or at least cope) with the new, distributed, peer-to-peer world. The key point for me was that the opportunities are massive for charities willing to dive on in.
And if they don't, others will. The US government is already posting just-say-no drug videos on YouTube. The enemy has struck first; now it's time to respond. ;-) Posted by Dom Waghorn ( 9:06 PM ) Link to this post Comments[0]
