Only A Moron Would Buy YouTube
written by John Chow
In a yesterday’s story by Reuters, Dot Com Billionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said only a “moron” would buy YouTube. Cuban explains that YouTube will be no more because it will be sued into oblivion.
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“They are just breaking the law,” Cuban told a group of advertisers in New York. “The only reason it hasn’t been sued yet is because there is nobody with big money to sue.”
That seems to make sense – YouTube is not profitable and has limited cash. Winning a lawsuit is one thing, collecting on it is another. While YouTube does have many copyrighted materials on the site, I also see more and more user created content. Cuban seems to have a problem with this as well.
“User-generated content is not going away,” he said. “But do you want your advertising dollars spent on a video of Aunt Jenny watching her niece tap dance?”
“Somebody puts up something really good and you get, what, 60,000 viewers?” Cuban added during the event at Advertising Week in New York.
I don’t know what rock Mr. Cuban has been hiding under but you can so tell he hasn’t really look at YouTube lately. 60,000 viewers? I guess he wasn’t among the 15 million viewers who watched the Lonelygirl15 video blog, or the 33 million plus to the Evolution of Dance. Numbers like these would qualify as hit TV shows on the major networks.
It is easy to understand why Mr. Cuban feels threaten by YouTbue. His new HDNet venture competes for the same advertising dollars that YouTube will be going after. He cautions advertisers against investing heavily into viral campaigns on YouTube but touted opportunities to run commercials on his HDNet network.
More than a few people call Rupert Murdoch a moron for paying $580 million for Myspace. Who is laughing now? Someone will buy YouTube. And someone is going to make a massive amount of money off it. It’s just a matter of time. Check out this Forbes feature on The YouTube Revolution.
Maybe what Mark Cuban is most upset about is that not a single show on his HDNet network approaches the viewership of one Lonely girl. 60,000 viewers? Will the real moron please stand up?
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from the Forbes article:
“The participatory slot has been sold out ever since [Aug. 22, 2005], likely bringing in about $175,000 and 400,000 viewers a day.”
What Mark seems to be missing is that most of the content on YouTube isn’t copyrighted material - I mean if I can just watch Television to see a music video or comedy show, why bother to download a video of it.
Also there’s the pirate glimpse issue, I’d never seen “Family Guy” before I accidentally saw a clip online - I now watch it on TV all the time, so how is that supposed to hurt their IP.
Microsoft have shown that giving someone a taster for something (in their case game demos) often leads to people purchasing something they never might have without that exposure. The people who are worried right now are the people who put out pure crap, whether its music, films, games etc… They are scared that if you glimpse their product before purchase, you wouldn;t give it the time of day.
Cuban is an idiot. obviously he is getting screwed by youtube and his HDNet crap is not taking off. who cares what he thinks …
[...] Mark Cuban said anyone who buys YouTube is a moron. This coming from a man who also said, “Somebody puts up something really good and you get, what, 60,000 viewers?” In his latest blog entry, Mr. Cuban no longer calls Google a moron – he calls them crazy. Maybe he is getting ready to pin the moron label on himself for thinking his Benefactor would be a hit. [...]
[...] I made a post about Mark Cuban and YouTube here. I don’t watch her videos. The few I did see were pretty funny. I think Youtube is a reflection of the direction we’re heading - short attention span. YouTube videos are short. People don’t seem to watch to sit around and enjoy things slowly anymore. They that instant hit for some reason. [...]
One Billion Dollars for YouTube? Maybe.
There’s a lot of talk about the billions of dollars that are being discussed and passed around regarding the sales of YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, etc. Mark Cuban has stated only a moron would pay that much for YouTube. I’m sure if we coul…