Revenue Sharing: How YouTube may be a profitable venture after all

Google may have had a plan all along when it acquired the online video warehouse, YouTube for a paltry $1.65 billion. According to a YouTube spokeperson, they are actively exploring a variety of ways to help the community to monetize content through a revenue-sharing scheme.

There are already several online media outlets following this model, but they are small potatoes in YouTube’s dominance of this market. Here’s a potential scenario: If my son’s Thomas video (masterpiece posted above) get’s a substantial amount of views, it could share in a pre-determined percentage of the revenue generated by an advertisement appended to the video clip. Similair to the way Google ads work, a web operator can share in ad-based click-throughs, except this time they’re just clicking on your video.

I think that this will only bolster activity and participation which is already at a fever pitch. The prospect of making some cash will almost certainly increase the quality of the offerings and make a case for targeting YouTube as the primary point of consumption. And let’s face it, right now there is a lot of garbage videos posted out there. This will also allow for clearer seperation in terms of the good and the bad, nevermind making a clearer case for the major networks (ABC, NBC, Fox, etc…) to post a greater selection of their content on youTube for free. If we can all watch “Lost” whenever we want and CBS is making a profit all the while, you can imagine what kind of viewership this could create. Certainly in the millions. Either way it will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

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BusinessWeek: The Apple Economy

BusinessWeek online has an entire series on Apple Computer covering a series of trends the company has set including design standards, influence, it’s rise in market share, and the ethics behind it’s policies with offshore supply lines. On the eve of Macworld expo it’s a great read to tide us over before the lions-share of new products come out tomorrow.

BTW, Apple’s stock is at just about $85 at market close today. Something tells me it may go up tomorrow so investor’s may want to take a look-see.

Red Herring: Is 2007 the Year of Tech?

First of all Happy New Year folks! 2006 was a great year for me and I look forward to having an even greater 2007.

So how will 2007 play out? Red Herring has rounded up two tech industry mutual fund managers, Paul Wick and Ajay Diwan, to make some predictions for 2007 for the tech industry. Unsuprisingly, their outlook is quite positive with the market performing so great as of late. It’s also great to see aggressive tech based funds performing like they did on the bubble in 2000. It’s a quick read so take a peek.

A few business predictions from me:

1. Apple will finally put out some sort of two way communication device to the market place and will offer an interesting convergence of their media offerings (music, video, etc…). They won’t piggy back on a Verizon or Cingular. Just like their retail stores, they’ll do it on their own terms. Hopefully they can succeed where MVNO’s like Helio and ESPN have failed. I also see Apple reshaping their brand, with an emphasis on “Mac”. The whole “i” brand (iMac, iPod) will be and should be phased out. If you check their webpage for the new year, they are boldly touting the last 30 years as just the beginning. Their marketshare and stock will continue to rise. We’ll obviously know a lot more in a few weeks after Macworld.

2. Consumer Electronic Show (CES) will take a large step in settling this whole Blu-Ray, HD-DVD fracas. The industry wants this format war resolved. Sales of both formats (players and discs) have been smaller than expected, and there is a clear feeling of frustration among retailers and the movie studios about the prospects of having two very similar formats to confound the customer. Typically studio’s renew or change their commitment’s to these formats at CES so if enough of them jump one way or the other it may help define a front-runner. All I know is I have an X-Box 360 and I am eyeing that HD-DVD add-on but have forced myself to abstain thus far. I don’t know how much longer I can control my gadget impulses.

3. Sony will continue their descent and Playstation 3 and Blu-Ray will be a major contributor. The holiday’s were not good to Sony. The marketing strategy with releasing the PS3 seemed to have back-fired. It was expensive, marred by production issues and hardware flaws, and conspicuously easy to get by Christmas. In buying one, you were also committing yourself to Blu-Ray. However the Nintendo Wii with it’s innovative gameplay and affordable pricepoint was virtually unavailable. Nintendo’s growth has been astonishing last year in both value and marketshare and they are in a prime position to knock Sony off the top of the console pile. As a disgruntled Sony customer I can’t say I feel bad for them as they seem to have lost touch with their customers.

I could go on but that’s it for me. It’ll be interested to see how I did when I take a look at this on New Year’s Day 2008.