Everyone's Gunning For YouTube
That isn’t stopping the competitors from trying to get a piece of the action, though.
YouTube has a slew of direct competitors, but the network effect kicked in long ago for YouTube and its unlikely that loose copyright policies or higher quality videos are going to make any kind of dent in their market share. But the networks are still goggling that $1.65 billion price tag for YouTube, and they want their pound of flesh.
Competitors Running In Circles
Comscore worldwide data is nearly identical, showing YouTube with a 66% market share. See the chart to the left for the side-by-side numbers.
It’s clear that the market is probably big enough for a few competitors to be successful, but no one is knocking YouTube off the thrown any time soon.
Clown Co. Still Clowning Around
Lack of a name hasn’t stopped them from making some bold steps, though. This week they named Jason Kilar, a Harvard MBA and former Amazon executive, to lead the unit. And now there are reports saying they’ve been out trying to raise $100 million in venture capital on a billion dollar valuation. YouTube raised just a fraction of that.
To be fair, Clown Co. isn’t supposed to be a direct competitor to YouTube, and has promised a more distributed approach. And they’ll have (legally obtained) content from both NBC and News Corp. properties, a big advantage over competitors. We’ll have to wait and see once it launches. But the naming problem, as well as the fact that the parent companies described it as “the largest advertising platform on earth” in a media call, suggest it is off to a very bad start.
News Corp. Places Another Bet
Having the MySpace property behind MySpace TV is a great competitive advantage, although Google’s search engine is behind YouTube, which more than evens the playing field. And since MySpace has shown a willingness to block third party videos if there is even a hint of advertising, YouTube may, over time, find it can’t do much there.
For that reason, MySpace TV is the biggest direct threat to YouTube. But in my opinion it won’t be enough to knock them from the top spot even in the long run. YouTube is now firmly entrenched in the mainstream user’s head as the site to go to see user generated videos and copyrighted video clips, and they are backed by Google. No one is taking that from them any time soon.