As just announced, yesterday Google acquired YouTube, the most popular steaming video site and the 10th most popular online destination. I found very interesting the analysis of some blogs around about one of the main reason for Google to spend 1,65 billion dollars…
“Why would Google buy YouTube? To start, 35 million users in the US and 100 million daily video views. But it’s not just the sheer numbers that grabs Google’s attention. YouTube is a gem because it figured out what Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, and all of the other video players in the marketplace couldn’t – that it’s not about the video. It’s really about the community that’s around the video.
Take a look at the screenshot of the same “Extreme Diet Coke And Mentos Experiment” video on YouTube and Google Video. You’ll notice that YouTube has many things you can do with the video – rate it, save it to favorites, comment on it, share it, see other related videos, and view the user’s playlists, etc. I think you get the idea.”
“Community: YouTube enjoys a much more active, enthusiastic and loyal following than any video service which has been launched by a search engine company, even more active in terms of uploading and sharing by netizens than Yahoo Video.
With 35 million users in the United States alone, YouTube has proven that the success of online video is based upon sharing, commenting, ranking, embedding and suggestions… in other words: community.”
and
Rupert Murdoch famously claimed that Google could have purchased MySpace for half of the $580 million he paid for it but the search engine passed — if he’s to be believed. Assume, however, he’s telling the truth and that Google miscalculated badly in passing on MySpace. They then went on to do the $900 million ad deal with News Corp./Fox.
They wouldn’t have had to make those sorts of pricey commitments had they bought the social networking site for the $290 million and owned all that traffic themselves.
I think these articles suggest many things like: how powerful a community can be, how much a simple function like “Edit”, “Send it”, “Share it” can add to any kind of content and how important is to establish a two-ways communication channel using a web site.
