My colleague sent me a list of largest video sites on the Web, dating back to July, 2006; a “mere three months ago.”
Please note that this is not a list that we have compiled at WatchMojo.com. It’s a list I saw, and I simply updated; you’ll see why I stress this fact.
First off, the list is admittedly incomplete, since it omits large offerings by companies like MySpace, Google, Yahoo! and AOL. The reason why the list omits these is that the ranking is based according to Alexa, the popular and free service - acquired ages ago by Amazon.com - that ranks websites according to how popular they are amongst those who have downloaded the Alexa toolbar. Everyone (present company included) admits that Alexa is extremely biased towards media planners/buyers and techies, but by virtue of it being free it does offer a nice tool on the Web. Furthermore, it’s not like Nielsen NetRatings and comScore Media Metrix have rankings that are perfect either, so Alexa, NNR and MM are all nice measurement tools for relative measurement; taken with a heavy dose of salt. If you want to read my thoughts on why Google might one day strike against all of the current, existing audience measurement services, click here.
Let’s take a quick look at the list, with positions according to Alexa back in July, 2006 and today, October 17, 2006, and then we’ll consider some points.
Alas, the purpose of this little exercise is to highlight a few points:
- First off, before anything gets taken out of context: a hats off to all of those sites for meshing technology with marketing savvy to even get on the list, incomplete and random as it might be.
- Second, our shout-outs and props to the folks at AOL, Yahoo! and Google Video and other large sites who have bigger, better and badder offerings, but because they do not break down their offerings separately under a separate url, cannot be tracked.
- Third, forgive me for even relying on Alexa…
All right, enough disclaimers:
Down With the King… Long Live the King!
Yes, online video is still very much in its infancy, but by the same token, it’s not premature by any stretch of the imagination. Some of these sites have been around since the late 1990s. iFilm is a case to consider, it was financed to the teeth and was one-time, in a faraway time, the undisputed king of online video (at least in the eyes of mainstream / pop culture).
Remember when Jon Stewart went on Crossfire and lambasted the hosts, when you heard about that the next day, you didn’t go to YouTube, did you? No, you probably saw it on iFilm. The point is we’ve already had one darling in this space be dethroned.
In theory it can happen again. Then again, iFilm was sold to Viacom for $49 million, and it was large, but it had nowhere near the traction that YouTube did. Google paid $1.65 billion for YouTube, ironically, I would estimate that iFilm’s revenues per user were far larger than YouTube’s. Mainly, I doubt this will happen because Google has enough eggs to hatch on its own not to meddle too much with YouTube, and on the flip side, YouTube can tap into Google’s traffic to grow faster than ever. To find out why we think it would suck to be a YouTube competitor after the deal, click this.
I am probably not saying anything too shocking here, but having spoken to a one-time executive of the fledgling company, after Viacom acquired iFilm, iFilm was pratically shackled when it came to dealmaking and business development efforts. Everything had to go all the way up the food chain, back down. I had struck a deal with iFilm before the Viacom deal and already, it was not an overnight process. It took the same amount of time that most “dot com deals” took; not too quick, not too slow. But after launching WatchMojo.com, in January 2006, I found myself sitting in a room with a gentlemen from iFilm and the bottom line was that Viacom had effectively suffocated iFilm’s growth.
As an extra side note, in 2005, IGN acquired my then employer. Also in 2005, IGN was almost acquired by Viacom, instead of News Corp., both News Corp. and Viacom are fine global media companies with almost similar personalities atop the respective empires, but the sense was that News Corp. would prove to be more nimble. Calling News Corp. nimble might be like calling Lorena Bobbitt diplomatic, but you get the idea.
What Defines an Online Video Site?
2006 will certainly go down in history as the year in online video. For more on that, click here; for more on what we think will get bigger in 2007, click here.
But when we look at online video, there are many categories to consider:
1 - content management platform technology companies (Brightcove)
2 - advertising creation and management companies (Klipmart)
3 - content aggregation and distribution (ROO)
4 - video file hosting and sharing (YouTube)
5 - video content editing tool (Adobe’s Macromedia/Flash, Jumpcut)
6 - content producers (Our own WatchMojo.com)
Note that some of these are offline products (Macromedia Flash) while others are online websites (Jumpcut). Of course, if we’re looking at largest websites, that means that we will not even address the offline players. But even when we look at online companies, ie. websites, it becomes clear that we have yet to clearly define the subcategories of online video properties.
For example, the list above ManiaTV, which last time I checked, was not a file sharing or social networking site. Clearly, there are subcategories required to compare apples with apples.
Identity Crisis
We’ve also seen a rush to transform some companies that have been around for a while into social networking video file sharing websites. Bolt.com, for example, was a publisher of content for teens. At some point, it dropped all of that (or most of it) and repositioned itself as ”Bolt Media, a media company that for ten years has been creating and managing some of the most popular youth-oriented sites online. Since our inception we’ve focused on enabling people to interact and express themselves in original ways. We think the new Bolt is a fitting new addition to that legacy.”
Sure thing. I like it. So did Universal Music Group when they sued you for $150,000 per song for copyright infringement. Maybe that will give you a bolt or two. I am certainly not trying to be a smart ass here folks, but all of this “let’s erase our mission statement, and slap on a Web 2.0, social networking angle ASAP” is reminiscent of how Starbucks repositioned itself as an Internet play and/or the B2B craze of the dot com bubble.
Think of it: Bolt.com had a very viable business model, but when it saw the flavour du jour companies like Facebook, MySpace and others get handsomely rewarded by private and public investors, it dropped all of that at the drop of a hat and repositioned itself, and got sued because, in the words of Universal Music Group: “Grouper and Bolt… cannot reasonably expect to build their business on the backs of our content and the hard work of our artists and songwriters without permission and without compensating the content creators,” a Universal spokesman said. Maybe Mark Cuban was right after all.
All to say: I wish Bolt.com the best of luck and my comments therein should not be scrutinized more than that. I’m just calling for some good old fashion common sense.
Avoid Legal Quagmire
And speaking of legal issues, it’s worth nothing that vidilife was founded by Brad Greenspan. If the name rings a bell, it should. Mr. Greenspan was the founder and one-time CEO of Intermix Media, aka eUniverse. While Chris deWolfe and Tom Anderson co-founded MySpace, Greenspan bankrolled it. He was against the News Corp. acquisition. When he launched Vidilife, he did so to prove something to the world. But, instead of focusing on that, he focused a bit too much on getting sweet revenge against News Corp. For that, read this. Incidentally, News Corp. is suing me! But we won’t even get into that.
The point is: the instant you get into litigation, you lose. Vidilife had the pedigree to win, but it got derailed.
How Virtuous is Focus?
I wanted to mention the Bolt.com example to highlight that sometimes, you cannot blame a company for repositioning itself - or wanting to - when you see an emerging trend. After all, MySpace sold for $580 million, Facebook is being shopped around for almost $1 billion, YouTube just got a massive payday in the $1.65 billion sale to Google.
That is why the following comment is not a criticism at all, but rather a simple observation. On that list, one of the players I thought was going to gain traction considerably was Vimeo. Vimeo is developed by the folks at Connected Ventures, who also run and manage CollegeHumor.com. I’ve met Josh Abramson of CollegeHumor.com and I can tell you that at a time when many young CEO founders get a bad rep for [insert anything you wish here], Josh is as smart and down-to-earth as you can get.
Barry Diller recognized that and his InterActive Corp. acquired a majority controlling stake in Connected Ventures. CV also has the Busted Tees and Shocker franchises. All together, the company grossed $6 million in 2005 and expects $10 million in 2006. So, all to say, don’t feel too bad for them.
But when I met him late last year, I asked him what happend with CampusHook.com, a site they had developed, launched (according to Alexa at least) in 2002 that was a social networking site akin to MySpace for the college crowd, an open Facebook of sorts. He explained to me that his team was focusing on CollegeHumor.com so they did not get to maximize Campus Hook. I fully understand and commend his razor sharp focus. Eventually, they unloaded the site to another company.
What’s the point? The point is that Vimeo is a service that CV launched last year, and yet, over a year later, the site is not where I expected it to be. Think about it, if you have a wonderful media property like CollegeHumor.com that gets million of college kids 18-24 to the site, why not heavily promote Vimeo to them? Isn’t that after all the sweet spot that YouTube connected with?
Traffic and technology alone do not make automatocally translate to a success in the marketplace. Google’s technology was very good, but it could not crack the top 5 video rankings. Vimeo had CollegeHumor’s traffic to leverage, it’s still a challenger and not a leader.
The two guys in YouTube turned out to be wildly lucky (or clever) in allowing web surfers to embed their videos everywhere on the Web (mainly MySpace). They got their users to syndicate their content for them. That was genius.
The two guys in MySpace turned out to be wildly popular (or clever) in allowing anyone to set up their space and use it as a promotional vehicle to all of their network. They got their users to market their website for them. That was genius.
The two guys in Google turned out to be wildly popular (or clever) in allowing anyone to grab their contextual ad code and increase their reach online. They got their clients to market their ads for them. That was genius.
What’s the next stroke of genius?
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