Metacafe May Be Sold For $200 Million

How utterly retarded. $200 mil can get you quite a lot more interesting things.

Why would it be a bargain? Ifilm sold for $30m and MetaCafe is less popular then iFilm. Just because one company is another’s biggest competitor does means nothing about the company’s valuation.

If the buyer is Yhaoo, sounds like yahoo is tracing Google…

http://www.ezecho.com

May be and may be again. I think yahoo not interested about this. Just try to buzz food website may be ( may be again ), yahoo intersted to buy. Peace……

Can someone block Wang’s IP please?

Today, all these youtubes loss tones of money. It looks like the only way those user-content web-sharing sites can be profitable is by putting video adds there. But, how many years pass before this video-add model will work? Will the add revenues cover the bandwith / storage expences? It’s much harder than text context adds: no PPC potential, not every one can create such an add etc etc. Sure, the giants like MS or Google can loss money on one buisness, by gaining the auditory. But I am interesting in net user-video content buissness. How you see the future?

it will fit right in with Yahoo Porn Search (aka Yahoo Video)

I said this yesterday about the Wikia funding. It’s begining to feel like it’s 1999-2000 all over again.

I agree, Block Wang - He has like 12 posts in the last 2 days with a total of less than 500 words; he vaule per a word merits a periodic ban (30 days or so)

- On the other hand, if he would just leave his linking to his name, it would be considered slightly not as bad

- on the other other hand- MetaCafe!? 200 million, Over valuation. Yahoo is def. tracing google. not good - they have to be “Yahoo” not google! …

– I think they should trade google, Life-time sponsorship of Yahoo search and google gives them Youtube! .. Yahoo! is a better fit for Youtube..

This would give Yahoo! #1 permanent spot for “Portal” -

This would give Google #1 Spot for “Search” -

- a little cooperation, brings about 2 kings - for a long time

-Rbowles

Metacafe actually has a cooler interface than Youtube. Whether they are tracing Google or not, I think it will do well for Yahoo, especially if they can grab it for $200 million. They are still the most-visited homepage and I’m sure they would plaster it front and center.

$200 Million sounds like a horrible deal. According to Alexa (I know, Alexa’s not great, but it’s at least directionally accurate for larger sites), Metacafe receives about the same # of uniques and pageviews as TechCrunch, and about 1/100th as much as YouTube.

This means that Yahoo (or whoever) would be paying a 10X premium per user over Google’s seemingly inflated price for YouTube. Worse yet, metacafe hasn’t seen a large increase in user base over the past 6 months, vs. other video sites (and particularly YouTube) that have skyrocketed in popularity.

If Yahoo goes through with this, it just shows that their problems run far too deep to be solved by a reorganization. Either that, or it means that Michael Arrington might be sitting on a $200MM web property … hmmm …

This industry is doing very well, yesterday was youtube, today it’s metacafe. let’s hope tomorrow is veetube.

“YouTube is definitely the company’s biggest competitor so considering YouTube was sold to Google for $1.65 billion, whoever gets Metacafe for $200 million will get a bargain. ”

OH COME ON!!! Since when was TechCrunch the bastion of retarded bubble logic?

YouTube apparently had real revenues and DOMINATED the online video world. Metacafe may be cool and may be growing, but do they have even a significant FRACTION of the market share YouTube had?

You guys were quick to point out the stupidity of the Kevin Rose/Digg article. Why change your tune now and repeat the same stupidity I hear from less intelligent folks elsewhere??

I’m a big fan of TechCrunch precisely because you DON’T usually quote this kind of idiocy.

Come on TechCrunch. I expect better from you.

I think Natalie is actually the worst writer on TechCrunch. Not that she’s a bad writer, just that frankly, I don’t like her mundane articles (Apple rumors??) and substandard analysis. When’s Michael coming back?

@ 13 and 14

you people are haters, really, who cares — your getting the latest news, rumours, etc..

There are a ton a players in this space. Some with all UGC and some with original content http://www.gofish.com provides a combination and http://www.maniatv.com has more professionally (some looks pretty rough) generated content. Both seem to have much more value than metacafe, and neither is worth $200+ million.

Just to echo everyone elses comments it seems a little presumptuous to automatically label anything that costs 200M as a “bargain.” Particulary a member of an increasingly crowded marketspace with a particularly fickle and volatile user base.

Let’s hope Yahoo doesn’t snap it up; that would suggest that all of their peanut butter memos and internal shuffling is just please-the-shareholder window dressing - not actually meaningful change.

One final thought: when it comes to selling properties like these, the buying price should be apportioned on the basis of contribution, IMHO.

I.e.: take a look at the source’s of the sites success and spread the wealth accordingly. Certainly investors and managers are a big part of that, but in the case of user community driven valuations, I think theres a strong case for taking the top 500 sources of traffic (i.e.: top 500 videos), summing their page views, and then dividing up some portion of the purchase price on the basis of contributed page views.

SO - for example, MC could take 150M. The remaining 50, to go to the top contributors - i.e.: if your video drove 12% of the site’s pageviews, .12 x 50M goes to you.

I’m not sure how the 150/50 split should be calculated, however… hard to value sweat equity contributed by founders against member equity…

Sorry you feel that way Alaska Miller. You could try to spell my name right if you’re going to be so unpleasant though.

Natali, I still think you’re a hottie. Call me sometime :P.

I think the overall quality on TechCrunch good, and writers obviously have different styles so no one should expect the writers here to have the same tone.

Well Natali, I reach TechCrunch for Michael, and when Marshall too did a great job. But it seems like now all I’m getting is rumors without much consideration. If anything I hope your articles can reflect theirs a bit more in terms of depth, like I said you’re not a bad writer but the content could use more work. But maybe it’s just cause Michael’s got you on a short leash, no pun intended.

*read

lol I’m a horrible writer.

I like Natali

I’m so rarely accurate that I need to quote myself from Oct. 17:

http://nalts.wordpress.com/200.....on-target/

“It’s the highest independent site on the top 10 lists, and I would predict it’s purchased by a paranoid media player by the end of the year, but certainly no later than end of Q1 2007.”

I personally like Metacafe more than Youtube, and it’s not just because of those R-rated videos Metacafe is more pleasant to the eyes than YT. Great move for whoever purchased it.

By the way Natali, I enjoy your writings and the best way to deal with haters is to just ignore.

I agree with Ian. Tech companies are starting to “party like it’s 1999″. Those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.

Wow, buying a video sharing service. How Web 2.0 and original thinking on Yahoo’s part.

Is the typical Yahoo executive day’s spent just watching what Google’s going to do and then try it out. Well except for the Flickr purchase, but they haven’t integrated that into Yahoo completely yet.

@15. George P.

“you people are haters, really, who cares — your getting the latest news, rumours, etc.. ”

If you actually read what I wrote it would be pretty clear that I ADMIRE TechCrunch and the main reason for my admiration is that they DON’T usually propagate this kind of BS thinking. IMO, TechCrunch does a great job of actual real journalism, rather than just rumour spreading and bubble-feeding.

Yes TechCrunch is an opinion piece, and that’s great. It filters the news and I frequently agree with the opinions as they are expressed.

To me, the “bargain” statement seemed totally out of line with what I normally expect from TechCrunch. Perhaps the author didn’t mean the piece to sound so bubble-like, but that’s the way I read it, and apparently I’m not alone.

But it’s much easier to spew BS about “haters” than make constructive criticism, isn’t it… And that kind of laziness is what pollutes so much of the web and reduces its value for all of us.

Seriously… What’s the difference between George P.’s comment and a viagra selling spam-bot? At least someone might be able to use the discount viagra for something practical…

How about TechCrunch starting a new service ‘VideoCrunch’ (videos from web2.0 companies). Already there’s a good bunch of visitors to Techcrunch. Who knows Yahoo! or Google might be willing to acquire ‘VideoCrunch’ in the future.

Comments are all welcome, even critical ones. This story is actually still developing. Om Malik is reporting the price could be as high as $700 m. We’ll be writing a new post talking about what may be going on behind the scenes.

Love their site, being able to charge this much because of the recent YouTube buyout makes perfect sense for companies that want to compete with YouTube.

Would be really surprised if it was Yahoo - they are in a middle of reorg and splashing 700 million might not be the best idea…

GigaOm is way off I think. $700m was the original guidance provided by the bankers, from what I understand. I think it is worth $300M at best.

YouTube may be the leader in online video with around ten times as many video views as Metacafe, but comparing the two sites just by the video views of each site’s top 200 videos, Metacafe actually wins… Check it out:

http://www.computers.net/2006/.....outub.html

This is a ridiculous valuation for MetaCafe. The only reason the site is popular is because of the quasi-porn orientation. Once Yahoo sanitizes the site (or gets sued) the value will plummet like a telecom. All they needed to buy was the engine. The existing content is stale after a month or two and they could build traffic much faster than MetaCafe could alone. $200 million for that server side code and some datacenter equipment is crazy.

I agree that it’s starting to feel like it’s 1999 again - and I don’t buy the “it’s different this time because it’s not public money” crap. Yahoo is public money and they’re throwing away shareholder valuation.

To the person who used Alexa to come up with the idea that Tech Crunch and Metacafe are similar in size….you’re very, very wrong.

Everyone knows it’s techies that use the Alexa toolbar the most, so that’s why sites like tech crunch, sitepoint, etc have ridiculously inflated Alexa ratings. Metacafe has a completely different audience and is quite a bit bigger than tech crunch.

Whether it’s worth 200 million or not, I’m not sure. I wouldn’t say that’s a bargain, but it could turn out to be a great deal.

That is unreal - valuing these businesses is a tricky business - and thats where things went wrong 6 years ago.
I’m looking forward to it this time round - the bust that is.

Crap. 200 million is a bargain for metacafe. I was expecting somewhere between 500-700 million.

@ fewquid (#27)

I don’t need to ramble on to get my point across - there is a big difference between what I said and a viagra spam bot… don’t hate on my ghetto colloquial slang

While $200M is outrageously high, Google set the bar so high for buying out these video hosting sites that anyone following behind them has to pay higher. I doubt it will go for $200M I am thinking more along the lines of $500M.

Somebody also claimed that Metacafe doesn’t make money, well I don’t know if you haven’t been to the site but they have advertisements that run before videos.

These companies are paying for the potential of these media sites, even though with $1.6 BILLION Google could of started a video site that payed its content suppliers partial 1.6B and been able to wipe the map with Youtube.

Oh Well.

I like Metacafe more then Youtube , its has better interface and the comments there are more matured then Youtube’s.

By the way , i think Natali is doing a good job, let’s remember , this is a blog and should cover rumors, i my self come here looking for tech rumors, and i don’t care if they turned to be false , all i care is to know it first , and i think Techcrunch is doing a great job here.

I also found a new upstart video aggregation site called http://www.uberchannel.com.

Don’t really know what their model is, but looks like a community approach.
They let you add videos from diff hosts, so you can creaate a channel with video sourced from youtube or google, and you can have other people add to the channel as well. Pretty neat, but don’t know if this new wave of video sites will be picked up anytime soon…

As previously posted, please FK OFF WANG and block his IP.

As for Alaska Miller, think you need to FK OFF as well for a few reasons:
1) Because this is a tech article, written well.
2) Because you a delinquent moron and I see no way how MIke could have covered this in comparison to Natali
3) Guess what - Apple is a TECH COMPANY. This site is called “TECHCRUNCH” - add 1 + 1 together FK WIT.

All please now remember

FK OFF WANG & Alaska Miller

God bless Yahoo. Don’t buy it.

Goolge, please buy this as well! You will dominate the so-called market.

Thats a decent bit of traffic - though I think Yahoo! could do better just focusing those funds internally on developing their video technology. If they offered better content (e.g. tv shows) I’d spend more time there.

I wonder where is Microsoft in all this excitement? Too wrapped up with Vista to be missing the Video revolution.

A list of Web 2.0 sites, Metacafe isn on of them is given here.
http://mediavidea.blogspot.com.....sites.html

I’m not sure why Michael tolerates personal insults in the comments. If any of you have a problem with an author’s writing style, how about you privately contact him/her with constructive criticism? It saves everyone some unpleasant embarrassment, and doesn’t distract readers from their busy schedules. I’d be happy to read comments criticising the actual content or analysis, but certainly not anything that strikes below the belt.

With that said, give Natali some time. This post is admittedly rather shallow with a lack of analysis, but as others have mentioned, it’s still a developing piece of news!

61 comments and trackbacks, yeah, must really be a snoozer Alaska, no pun intended.

What exactly is the problem with running a developing story of possible purchase also published by another site? Anyone?

Isn’t the great thing about the web that you can publish a lot of stories and see them develop in real time? geesh…

checking in with the metacafe rumors…will the come true in 07? what about other sites like musicplustv.com, revver.com and maniatv.com - any selling rumors?

Hi everyone,
I’ve earned over $1,500 from Metacafe.com with my movie. I love Metacafe and hope it grows bigger and bigger! It may be worth more than $200 millions already I guess! See it to believe it! Cheers….star500k.blogspot.com

Hi everyone,
I’ve earned over $1,500 from Metacafe.com with my movie. I love Metacafe and hope it grows bigger and bigger! It may be worth more than $200 millions already I guess! See it to believe it! Cheers….100everyday.com -star500k.blogspot.com

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