Last November VC Fred Wilson asked an interesting question of the blogosphere: Can you fake authenticity?
It's an enormous question of course-the stuff of a thousand dissertation-particularly for Americans. After all, our culture is based on the artificial invention of identities that project authenticity.
But Fred was asking specifically about social media businesses-can the sense of community that inspires the viral growth of companies like del.icio.us, Digg, craigslist, and, yes, YouTube, be intentionally replicated through corporate planning?
Well, it looks like we're about to get a text-book test case with impending announcement that NBC Universal and News Corp's Fox will launch a YouTube competitor this summer.
The effort is hardly a surprise. For months Big Media's war on YouTube has been shadowed by talk of looming corporate competitors. Staci Kramer at paidContent had the latest chapter nailed on Tuesday â€" that the JV was coming together, and that Fox and NBC were soliciting Google's online and tech competitors like Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo with Viacom an on-again, off-again possible collaborator.
PaidContent reports that Fox and NBC video, including material from shows like Heroes and Family Guy, will be distributed on MySpace, Yahoo and MSN.
Also, Terry Semel told an AdAge conference that the new service will be chock-a-block with YouTube-like sharing tools.
Pre-announcement commentary abounds on the Net this morning following the publication an LA Times piece which included this locker room bulletin board fodder:
Google executives' disdain for the project is evident in their nickname for the consortium: Clown Co.
24/7 Wall Street picks up on the LAT's comment that big media JVs have a checkered history:
The plan is cumbersome and complex making it unlikely to work. Sites like Yahoo! already have a large store of video content and a huge number of other channels, so making content from major media companies stand out will be very difficult. The same holds true for the other large web portals that the venture will target for distribution.
Mike at Techdirt hedges obliquely:
There are plenty of ways the networks can (and probably will) screw this up, but at least they're doing something.
Whether or not the JV succeeds will, of course, depend on how cooperative the big media powers can be. It may also depend on legal matters-if the big media companies collaborate on exclusive online distribution, it that illegal, anti-competitive collusion? I also suspect that companies in the traditional distribution channels for TV content-MSOs, TV station owners-will offer some push back.
But most of all the success or failure of the JV will depend on the answer to Fred's question about authenticity. There's no doubt that users will show up wherever popular content is posted, especially if it is posted at sites with big traffic like Yahoo and MySpace. But will users confer on this new effort the vibe of Internet authenticity? Will users think NBC and Fox are keeping it real?
That will depend on how much Fox and NBC give to users. Success in social media depends on following the Beatles' dictum: the love you take is equal to the love you make. Will sharing be limited to the friendly confines of approved destination sites? How intrusive will advertising be? Will users be able to make mash-ups even across ownership (say a Heroes/24 hybrid)? If so there's a good chance that NewTube will be the feel good hit of the summer.
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