Business Week just released an article covering the huge success of everyone favorite YouTube.
It's amazing to see a web site with 19.6 million monthly unique users with a business model still in question. Everyone is trying to guess from where YouTube will "show us the money".
Most analysts speculate it will come from showing short ads before each video (like competitor metacafe). This sound like an obvious choice but the real question is how will people react to the sudden addition of ads. Will they still flow to the site at the same rate?
There are many talks those days about how the big old media companies are jumping into the Internet wagon. Everyone is looking to see how they will use the Internet to distribute their movies and TV series.
But what if the future is actually going to take us on the opposite way?
What if instead of seeing the media companies goes into the Internet, the real revolution will come when the Internet will go into the media companies court - Radio, newspapers and of course the TV?
I think we can all agree that there is huge amount of quality content around the net. from blogs to podcasts to videos, it's all there.
Imagine yourself opening Financial Times business section and reading the best blog post of the week, chosen by professional editors. Wouldn't you want to open the technology section and read Engadget review of the latest gadgets?
And what about broadcasting the best podcast over the radio. Wouldn't it be cool to hear Gillmore Gang on the car radio on your way to work?
And now think of a TV series featuring the most favorites YouTube videos... Now you are talking about reaching many more households, about advertising budgets much bigger than any web site can dream of. Now, this is a way to really "Show me the money".
