Online Video: Cody Willard's "Google Put"

Cody Willard has a powerful article on Financial Times about the future, near future, of online video.

From the article:

"Nothing drives me crazier than when people point to the huge, early successes of MySpace and YouTube, clearly the respective de facto standards in social networking and in user-generated video, and try to explain that they have “won” the game. Nothing could be further from the truth. YouTube is certainly a home run, but it is a home run on the fourth pitch in the first inning of internet video. YouTube is to internet video as the original three TV networks were to television."

Some good snark:

"Unlike the video sites of the “Great Dotcom Bubble”, such as Mark Cuban’s Broadcast.com (purchased by Yahoo for a bubblicious $5.7bn back in 1999) which about 12 people anywhere ever used back in the day, people today are actually watching internet video."

The Google Put:

"And as the new video internet sites find their own legs and gain their own momentum and viewership, the monetisation will continue, because the audience is there already. And Google knows how to monetise audience.

That means that any company with a decent brand that generates serious traffic on the internet is going to get bought by Google, or by any of the Google-wannabes who don’t want Google to buy it first. I call this “The Google Put”.