Investment, is NOT revenue; moneys exchanged for the sale of YouTube were for an exchange in property [and, I can guarantee you that the owners of that property realized nowhere near the full dollar value of the investment].

Profit is not really a term relevant to that type of transaction…

With respect to ownership; there is no argument over who owned YouTube as this would have been well documented in the ‘corporate’ papers. Unless, YouTube had some form of ‘exchange in stock options’ with the folks posting content, then they have no argument or entitlement to the sale of the property…

Back to revenue sharing… before people start complaining, perhaps they should have negotiated a revenue sharing agreement with YouTube BEFORE submitting their video of a dog riding a skateboard… As you know, Viacom did.

Thank you for putting me onto Ning!
I had not yet heard of it and intend on exploring it further.

All the best
Collin

collin

First of all; to me, thats just goblty-gook with respect to the topic of your post here on “fatigue”; or the sorting and dispersal that naturally takes place when ‘any’ medium reaches the mass-market tipping point.

“It is my position that consumer content is at least equal to the value of professional content (even if that value is nothing.) when building brands, messages or equity in a social media platform. We have the numbers in this medium to measure and distribute the wealth fairly…”

Do you have numbers on the revenues being generated by the more popular Social Networks? It would be interesting to see exactly what this wealth you want fairly distributed is?

…on your last point; is Viacom getting compensated for the content they bring, OR the assumed “built-in” audience that comes along with this content… Of course, we may find out that giving money to Viacom was indeed based on p-retty poor assumptions.

thanks again for the input Gord.

ps.
It is my position that consumer content is at least equal to the value of professional content (even if that value is nothing.) when building brands, messages or equity in a social media platform. We have the numbers in this medium to measure and distribute the wealth fairly… that is a major cornerstone to my work here.

If Viacom gets pay-per-view on YouTube, so should everybody who posts.  Even better, Viacom should pay for the privilage to be next to public contributed videos. But that is for another post.
collin

Ah, Chris… A like minded angel… but that’s not what I came here to post…

Dissipation IS the natural order of all things media; especially now in the age where access to distribution is quite easy. I mean, really is not what MAY be happening to MySpace, Flickr and YouTube not just what is happening [or has happened] to CBS, NBC and ABC…

That audience is fragmenting into smaller chunks based on more specific needs provided to them by ’boutique’ content providers.

Funny enough, I saw this happen to the Internet Porn industry over a matter of months, right before my eyes while working for one of the BIG 5 back in ’98…

eh, hem… Rather than ‘fatigue’, which I’m sure you’re personally feeling right now Collin; I’d call it more a ‘sorting-out’ period. The groups within Flickr et al, are solidifying and becoming there own ‘something’ within their host larger networks. It will be interesting to see just how well these ‘larger networks’ will fare this fragmentation… Lets follow this up the pipe…

I may be confident that the management of MySpace, Flickr and YouTube would be savvy and nimble enough to massage their ‘babies’ through this transition; HOWEVER, I am less confident in the management of New Corp, Yahoo and Google to do so given the folks who own the ends of those leashes… It will come down to, paragraph 56.32.11.2 section A, subclause -6B5a to see who gets to make the call the first time ad revenues [or subscription revenues in the case of Flickr] stumble for a quarter.

In the end, if any of those networks above falter, no matter, the audience will find another venue; as you have pointed out… some already have.

[On another note, I'm still trying to work out that response to convince you that content, indeed, has no value :-]

Thats why ning has a great future.

I believe we are slowly moving from the mass to micro-communities that will have greater control over their members and marketing messages directed at them.

happy easter

A.