A couple of weeks ago, Valleywag linked to a video of InterActive Corp.’s new building, designed by architect Frank Gehry. Today, Fred Wilson did so as well, adding that IAC is featuring it on IAC’s Vimeo service, which was acquired by IAC when it bought Connected Ventures, the parent company of College Humor, the most popular site in its category.
I had a chance to meet CV’s co-founder Josh Abramson a couple of years ago, and for the past few years, we’ve exchanged emails here and there. Point is: nice, intelligent guy, and definitely very deserving of his success when IAC bought 51% of his company for a reported value of $20M.
What’s interesting about CV is that the same guys who developed College Humor also developed Vimeo. Vimeo, for what it’s worth, was basically YouTube before YouTube was around; Vimeo was launched in November 2004, YouTube in May 2005!
You can say what you want about missed opportunities, but why look at the glass as half-full? There’s also such a thing about being ahead of the curve… The guys at CV, notably late add-ons (relative to Abramson and co-founder Ricky Van Veen) Jakob Lodwick and Zach Klein spearheaded Vimeo. I have no idea if Vimeo will ever be a Top 3 video file sharing service, and I have argued that when Google bought YouTube, it was a dark day for all YouTube challengers… and even then, I am not sure if user generated will be anything that will really drive value at companies, making YouTube, Vimeo and company hard-to-value assets.
But the thing that baffles me, is not that the CV guys thought and launched a YouTube six months before Chad Hurley and Steven Chen did… it’s that a few years before that, they developed CampusHook. When I first saw CampusHook, I thought it was going to be a massive success. Campus Hook was ultimately half Myspace, half Facebook. At the time, there was little value in social networks, and the CV guys were rightfully building the CollegeHumor.com site… eventually, they sold CampusHook… but right there, that shows that one team not only managed to build CV into a successful enterprise that IAC integrated into its online unit, but they also went on to recognize two of the greatest trends in online media of the past five years.
That’s pretty impressive. Anyway, we certainly went on a side issue there, but check out IAC’s new headquarters, on Vimeo.
To conclude (I swear there’s a point here), the lesson is that with IAC, technically, College Humor might have lost the race to YouTube, but if IAC does 10% of what they want to do in video online, Vimeo could end up winning the marathon.
All right, that might be very optimistic, but remember, online the game is never over. Sure, YouTube cashed out for $1.6B in stock, but long term, whomever is in the lead today has absolutely no guarantee to remain on top… and that’s why we haul our asses out of bed every day and get to work.
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