The big get bigger and the rich get richer. That's why
McDonald's (NYSE: MCD) slogan "Billions and
billions served" is so memorable -- you feel like you're part
of a worldwide
movement
every time you have a Big Mac.
And for much the same reason,
Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) has adorned
video-sharing site YouTube with a fresh logo, just in time
for the third anniversary of its acquisition. The new header:
"YouTube 1Bn -- 1 billion views per day!" The image file
itself bears a cheeky name, too:
"logo_holy_crap_1bn_a_day."
According to
Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) Web traffic tracker
Alexa, only three sites can top YouTube's traffic today:
Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO),
Facebook , and Google's own search service.
And the fact that Google is employing tried-and-true
marketing techniques like this twist on the "billions and
billions" tagline means that YouTube still wants
moreeyeballs.
In a blog post, YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley calls this
milestone "a great moment in our short history" and pledges
to help users (a.k.a. content providers) turn their "hobby
into a real business." There's no word on exactly how Hurley
intends to help us monetize our hip-hop wedding videos better
than today, but the company keeps dropping little nuggets of
money-making powerlike Gretel dropped bread. This time,
the marked path leads to real money.
Many people assume that YouTube is losing money, but
I am convinced that the site is a money-maker for Google
today. And when YouTube adds more members, more content,
more viewers, economies of scale should kick in and make the
site more profitable as it gets even bigger. There are
revenue-sharing deals with media giants like
Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS) and
CBS (NYSE: CBS), and YouTube has a plethora
of cash-conversion tools for
media-sharing individualslike you and me.
Google's advertising chutzpah makes the company a better
partner for YouTube than Yahoo! or
Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) could ever hope to
be. In the long run, this investment will pay Google back in
spades. It'll just take a few years to cover that
$1 billion buyout premium. Are you with me so far, or am
I crazy? My psychoanalyst wants to know -- tell him in the
comments below.
This article was originally published as
Where Does YouTube Go From Here?on
Fool.com
Copyright © 2009 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights
reserved.
|