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Early on, afraid to invest online with a long term outlook and adopt progressive strategies that might cannabalize huge print revenue streams (but would position them to have a valuable online audience as the model changes). So by not cannabalizing themselves, they left the market open to predators who happily and easily took their market share. Now the advertising dollars are shifting to the Web in a huge way and newspapers are too late to the game.

It remains to be seen whether many of these Web 2.0 have real staying power as businesses. They have certainly captured the imagination of the popular culture and I do think that social media is here to stay, but what it’s going to look like a year from now and whether many of the companies that are currently on the acquisition radar can actually develop into real companies with significant revenue that makes them worth acquiring (or investing in) at current valuations remains to be seen. Furthermore, these startups are built on technology that is basically a commodity now. All the major media companies have the resources to build their own social media platforms and if they can’t get the users on them (which is why they acquire), then they should be analyzing why they can’t attract users themselves because that will reveal what they’re doing wrong in today’s market. It may also reveal why acquisitions will eventually fail if they can’t understand the recipe for success for what they acquire. I should note here that News Corp. has done a fantastic job with MySpace, but there’s no guarantee that MySpace will be as popular in 2-5 years as it is now.

With all the overfunding and copycat Web 2.0 startups with no differentiation and business model, there’s certainly going to be a fallout at some point. A number of startups will succeed and those that don’t could very well serve as cheap acquisitions for the likes of the NBCs of the world once these companies are part of the firesale. And for the successful startups, eventually eyeballs will need to be converted to dollars and I think more of the “successful” Web 2.0 startups will turn into decent medium-sized businesses than the next Googles.

One of the major problems I’ve always had with major American corporations is their short-sightedness. This is no doubt due in part to the short-sightedness of Wall Street. If you study the decline of the American automobile maker, when the Japanese first started competing in the marketplace, almost all of the American auto companies pursued short-term strategies to protect their market in the immediate term that were were disasterous in the long-term. Companies like NBC (and even Yahoo) face real challenges in a changing media world and M&A is a short-term band-aid for bigger problems. It does no good for them to take a short-term approach that enables them to take an “out of sight, out of mind” position that kills their business down the road. Just ask GM and Ford.

N.B.–this does not necessarily hold for smaller companies and start-up’s whose role in many cases is to deliver new technologies to the market (and who don’t have an entrenched customer base asking for something else).

Abc.com has very low traffic — am surprised - they had a number of TV hits recently. Or, am I missing something? (Compete.com does not let to see traffic for abc.go.com)

http://snapshot.compete.com/ab.....m+cbs.com+

i did a quick/dirty analysis/review of google’s stock movement for the last few months before and after the youtube purchase. i don’t agree with your implied assessment that the youTube purchase is the reason for the stock price.

when google purchased youTube, goog was ~410, thereafter the price moved up to 423 where it moved around/oscillated around (423-419) until oct 20, where it moved again. to understand the movements (if you can really ‘understand’ price movements) i would argue that a portion of the movement might be attributed to the youtube purchase, but i would more strongly argue that the upward movement was/is reflective of the strong growth in marketshare, as well as earnings from the advertising engine of google.

this timeframe also correlates to announcements of earnings/information regarding the end of the quarter.

so. i’m not as of yet willing to say that the purchase of youTube has been the great deal that others might.

just my 0.02 worth…

peace…

while the market may later downgrade (or further upgrade) the company’s market cap based on YT performance & monetization, there’s no question the deal was a win from a market & market cap perspective.

the more interesting part of the story wasn’t that Google paid up $1.65B for YT, but that they effectively put the Google Video effort second priority behind gaining market share. i believe *that* is the “bold stroke” mike is referring to, and the decision that is much harder for entrenched players with existing revenue streams (and less optimistic shareholders / less volatile stock).

In a sense though sometimes you have to understand as it is the deviation from the core that is sometimes the deadliest…

i gotta move fast.. to make sure i get there before someone else, (whereever there is), and i need to be cool…

mike. the fact is, google did spend 1.65 billion for youtube. the fact is, it’s waaay to early to tell if they’ll ever be able to recoup that value back.

business is littered with people who spent on businesses/strategy/technology/etc because it was ‘the smart’ thing to do, only to have it blow up in their prespective faces.

frankly, i seriously believe in the idea of content delivery. i’m not convinced in the idea of ’streaming’ as the solution for everything.

in case you haven’t noticed, the cost to ’stream’ something to you is way more costly than the cost to blow it over the airwaves… who’s paying for that additional bandwidth/customer delivery pipe?

having said all of this, i believe there is a present/future for content delivery, but as the ceo of netflix has stated, ‘this market is negligible’ for now.

the key players, have plenty of time to sort through/figure this out.

no need to rush in as was done 5-6 years ago!!! bu it seems like people like you have forgotten this.

peace

Over at Google Video, with its Flash player, the “instant play” is already a reality (even for 2-hour movies), so it’s not a technical hurdle for NBC to make its vast media library available online for anyone with a broadband connection, plus by now Netizens are used to watching a 320 X 240 box two feet from their eyes anyway.

The only issue NBC execs get to exercise their lung power about during their internal meetings will be to determine a price structure: 99 cents one stream, or 99 cents a day, or 99 cents for an 8-hour-play-window. Gee wiz, guys, make your parents proud that they paid for your Ivy-League education.

Honestly I think there’s a bigger thread to them from Tivo than from YouTube.

This is the reason that start-ups can prevail. I frequently refer to the book, “The Innovator’s Dilemma” on our blog. The last time was in reference to the ongoing Netflix vs. Blockbuster debate, which I find fascinating from a word-of-mouth perspective:
http://www.bazaarblog.com/2006.....round-two/

If your readers want to learn more, I suggest they read that book. It will give them the confidence to bob and weave in the midst of slow-moving giants.

Best,
Brett

It also gives me hope that much of this social media phenom will ultimately prove to have served more than just forcing corporates to engage their customers in a better way. Dark I know, but ultimately these moves into new markets are more about control and defense than we often mention.