The New York Post is reporting the price tag for YouTube is around $1.5 billion. Several media giants including News Corp, the owner of MySpace are reported to be interested, but not at that inflated number. YouTube is arguably the hottest toy of Gen Y right now. Even with the short life span of Internet start up companies these days the growth of YouTube seems assured through the 2008 presidential elections. Catching politicians looking stupid in an on-demand format should keep the interest growing until the polls close. Beyond 2008 there are many questions including the obvious: will the YouTube generation tire of seeing homemade video clips? Will they adversely react to paid advertising such as the type they'll see resulting from the recent deal with Warner Records? Will deeper content find a place on YouTube? YouTube is already getting many more competitors and even a poor competitor is a competitor nonetheless. Some music media insiders suspect that the great awakening is coming when a generation, a group of creative start up entrepreneurs and technology companies all finally start to realize that without outstanding content sites like YouTube will be reduced to simply being amateur television. Advice to the 22-year old founder of YouTube: Take $650,000 million and hold your nose. The window to sell to a traditional media company is growing shorter especially once they figure out that they have the content advantage after all.
YouTube Overpriced At $1.5 Billion
The New York Post is reporting the price tag for YouTube is around $1.5 billion. Several media giants including News Corp, the owner of MySpace are reported to be interested, but not at that inflated number. YouTube is arguably the hottest toy of Gen Y right now. Even with the short life span of Internet start up companies these days the growth of YouTube seems assured through the 2008 presidential elections. Catching politicians looking stupid in an on-demand format should keep the interest growing until the polls close. Beyond 2008 there are many questions including the obvious: will the YouTube generation tire of seeing homemade video clips? Will they adversely react to paid advertising such as the type they'll see resulting from the recent deal with Warner Records? Will deeper content find a place on YouTube? YouTube is already getting many more competitors and even a poor competitor is a competitor nonetheless. Some music media insiders suspect that the great awakening is coming when a generation, a group of creative start up entrepreneurs and technology companies all finally start to realize that without outstanding content sites like YouTube will be reduced to simply being amateur television. Advice to the 22-year old founder of YouTube: Take $650,000 million and hold your nose. The window to sell to a traditional media company is growing shorter especially once they figure out that they have the content advantage after all.
