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apr 17
2009

Boo Tube

I couldn't sleep last night. I don't know what sorts of thoughts occupy your mind at 4am, but I was recalling the blog/news coverage from 3.5 years ago when Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion. It was nearly all positive at the time, but I was calling bullshit. Today, YouTube is still pulling in nickels on its investment, and reportedly losing another half-billion to bandwidth costs. This is a stupid thing to lose sleep over, but this morning I awoke to the news that YouTube will be setting up a payment program for premium content. Yawn.

3 comments

I share your "Yawn" sentiments, I know they've been struggling to monetize the site for a while now, but I'd hate to see them start charging for content.

posted by ShellMedia at 3:45 PM on April 17, 2009

I don't know why, exactly, but I think they'll still pull it off. I just remember laughing at how much murdoch paid for myspace, and even though my central premise was right - that social network dominance was ephermeral and someone would come along and make a better one - he made his money back in no time. So I can't help think that YouTube will as well. Sometime. Somehow.

posted by Rick Webb at 6:02 PM on April 18, 2009

Did you know Google asks for a cut from their top subscribed channel producers, if said producer does any type of product placement or mention which they are getting paid to do?

posted by taulpaul at 8:45 PM on April 18, 2009




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