Is DIY Internet video a new media type? Or just a minor league development system for traditional media?
The announcement that CBS is acquiring Wallstrip, a business group vlog covering stocks, sure looks like the classic minor league or indie rock development path. Wallstrip founder Howard Lindzon tells the rather unremarkable tale of the company's development on his blog under the headline "You Can Make Money from Blogging!!!" But that headline is a big of misdirection. First, Wallstrip isn't a blog, it's a vlog. If it were a blog CBS wouldn't have been interested. Second, proof that a company will acquire your vlog is hardly proof that the vlog can make money.
I don't mean to dis WallStrip-in fact I've never seen one of its vidcasts and my friend Fred Wilson is involved and I know he has impeccable taste when it comes to Internet companies. I just want to put the deal in perspective for all the new media triumphalists out there who insist that Internet video is killing the TV stars. It looks more like Internet video is creating TV stars. And, as Om Malik points out, "the Wallstrip deal does put a price tag on these 'talent' oriented buyouts." The price for the Wallstrip talent acquisition was $5 million according to reports, but what exactly is CBS buying? Said Duncan Riley at Techcrunch:
From my previous discussions with my source close to the deal, WallStrip has close to no revenue; indeed he claimed that WallStrip has no revenue at all. The cost of CBS or other media outlets establishing a rival video blog to WallStrip would be relatively low and CBS now faces that real threat, the purchase of WallStrip bound to create new startups targeting the investor focused video podcasting market.
I think I understand CBS's thinking. The company needs to prepare content for the new Internet video distribution channels sprouting like mushrooms (like AOL and Joost). It needs a team that understands how to make content that suits that form and feed the monster, and the Wallstrip team has proven it can produce video if not revenue.
But if getting a pretty girl to read news and commentary online is worth $5 million....well, any pretty girls out there interesting in starting a social media vlog?
Facebook Opens Up: MySpace may be the biggest operation in the social media business, but Facebook is the best.
At every step of the way the company has made the right decisions, at least according to my standing focus group-my 15 year old daughter and her friends. Staying elite before going open kept the creeps out. Keeping the nav and design clean make it quick and easy to use where, according to the girls MySpace was clunky and slow to load. Today my daughter keeps a ghost MySpace page (I wonder how many MySpace members are, in fact, vestigial), but she and her friends live their lives on Facebook.
Now the company is apparently ready to open itself to third party developers who will do everything from widget building to social shopping, as yesterday's WSJ story noted. If there were social shopping on Facebook my daughter and her friends would never visit Amazon or J.Crew; if there were music recommendation and downloading they'd never go to iTunes.
Yesterday's WSJ piece was the kind of Monday morning leak that only reporters at the WSJ and the NYT get, and it touched off a lot of speculation as to the true nature of Facebook's new program, which will supposedly be unveiled on Thursday.
Tony Hung described it as a "reverse API" strategy:
But, what is Facebook doing?
Its letting *other* companies build mashups *for* Facebook *within* Facebook, and then not sharing any revenues (if any are made) with that company.
Wow.
Whatever you call it and however it shakes out, Facebook's strategy is 180 degrees opposed MySpace's vertical integration strategy of buying backend service providers.
Link Love:
Sharing the Widget Wealth
Change.org, The Network for Political Change
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