Plentitube: first legitimate online video talent broker...

Wednesday, November 26, 2008
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Plentitube: Your Agent for Online Video :: BusinessWeek.com
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Plentitube was launched by Jon Labes, 25, and Talia Pulver, 27, to "pioneer the talent discovery industry" and has an inventory of several thousand videos from more than 500 indie producers. The service, which has merely eight employees, empowers content creators to act as their own talent agent, providing them with the necessary resources to market, pitch, and negotiate acquisition or sponsorship for their content.

Plentitube’s revenue stream is both subscription and commission-based.  The bootstrapped start-up operates out of New York and has only raised $75,000 from friends and family of the founders.  The company has an impressive vision for creating a marketplace where media buyers can find premium content from indie producers.  My sense from skimming the company's blog is that it is driven by a passion to find value in UGC, which is a fight not worth waging as far as I am concerned.  However, if they focus on bridging traditional media brands with new media production and distribution partners, these young and innovative digital talent scouts may prove to be a disruptive force in shaping the future of the digital media business.

One opportunity worth Pletitube's attention would be to incorporate live media buy opportunities to help live streaming services generate consistent revenue and push the envelope in terms of realizing the true viability of the Internet as a live broadcasting platform.



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"Online Video Investment Trends" discussion at NewTeeVee Live 2008

Dan Beldy, Managing Director of Steamboat Ventures, speaks at NewTeeVee Live 2008 in this video clip from Vator.tv about the emerging trends among investors in the internet video space.

Mr. Beldy articulates an investment strategy built upon a core emphasis on capital efficiency, driving down of costs for professional and premium publishers.  This idea of creating a TV-like broadcast network of professionally produced content otherwise not leveraged for its broadcast value is at the core of SMV's production and distribution strategies.  In fact, SMV's model refines Mr. Beldy's concept even further to place a special emphasis on live broadcasting of the premium content, which is generally considered to enhance the value of the media due to the highly engaged nature of live broadcast viewers. 


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FT.com: Hulu will equal YouTube's earnings by year-end 2009...

Tuesday, November 18, 2008
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The Financial Times yesterday (11/17) had two very interesting, though highly predictable articles on the state of the YouTube business model in recent months (yes, that is business model, not pageviews) which I thought I would share this morning...

First, the British newspaper profiled the rise of rival video portal Hulu, a joint venture between NBC and News Corp ("Rival forecast to catch YouTube") which serves only professionally produced content as opposed to the user-generated content (UGC) that made YouTube famous and earned its founders their $1.65B exit when the site was acquired by Google two years ago. Arash Amel is quoted in the FT as forecasting Hulu to match YouTube dollar-for-dollar in ad revenues during 2009. “YouTube is in a very tough place right now,” said Mr Amel. “Most of that user-generated content is worthless or illegal. The next 18 months will determine whether or not it was just an expensive mistake for Google.” 

This would be particularly significant considering the massive advantage YouTube has in total user traffic, with 83m unique viewers in the US during September alone, compared to merely 6m unique views for Hulu, according to market researcher Nielsen.  Google has taken a very gradual approach to scaling, monetizing and enhancing the content base of its very expensive social network, which is what YouTube has basically grown to become since it was launched in 2005.  Google has taken the community-driven development approach in their streaming media endevors to-date, with little concern evident (at least on the face of things) over the exorbitant loses YouTube has generated day-after-day as millions of people continue to upload and share their experiences using the free hosting space that each registered YouTube user is alloted.

The paper follows this bold industry analysis with a complimentary evaluation of YouTube's core business model  ("YouTube's popularity fails to sway advertisers") and prospects for improving on its dismal record of convincing ad buyers to take a gamble on its almost universally amateur and wholly unpredictable library of home movies and pirated Tivo recordings.  Tracey Scheppach, video innovations director at Starcom, a media agency is quoted in the article asserting, “YouTube hasn’t done a great job justifying why advertisers should migrate online.”  Clearly there was little thought  among Google management dedicated to how YouTube would eventually return its investment to the company prior to gobbling the site up for 10-figures in 2007.  Without a really great thought soon, the million-dollar per-day cash burn and they swelling database of worthless content to manage may be too much for even Google to bear in these tough times.

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