I don't quite understand why YouTube rubs Mark Cuban the wrong way, but it clearly does. You may remember his comments in September of last year when Google announced they were purchasing YouTube. Well, he's at it again, with some very strange comments in light of the Oscars. Mark is arguing that the Oscars, as well as other "content creators" are being hurt by YouTube because they're losing control of the content as well as the brand. So what does he advocate? From Mark Cuban's blog:
"To capture Youtube viewers, the first step would be to OVERWHELM Youtube with partial clips of full length that tease Youtube users and point them to Oscars.com. For this Will Ferrell clip, I would have created a video that showed the first 10 secs of the clip, then had 4 minutes of a billboard that said " Great videos from the Oscars telecast and exclusive behind the scenes videos are all available at Oscars.com"
IN addition to the billboard in the video you would have an active link to Oscars.com on the Youtube video page. I wouldnt post this video 1 time. I would post this video 100 times."
Say what? Not only is the idea of Mark Cuban advocating spamming YouTube preposterous, what does he want to do, turn YouTube into nothing more than a 10 second preview site? Mark has a bias because he himself is a "content creator", with his entertainment ventures. But it's an irrational bias. There are plenty of other "content creators" who have embraced YouTube, and certainly not in the manner he's advocating. CBS, Showtime and many others have formed partnerships with YouTube to distribute their content, because they KNOW that it isn't going away anytime soon. In fact, YouTube traffic is still growing at an astronomical rate.
Why can't someone who's supposed to be at the forefront of technology not come to terms with this? Frankly, I'm surprised, Mr. Cuban. Read his full comments here.
Link via Podcasting News.
Well, YouTube spamming will be a serious threat -- and one that has already revealed itself when a major blog tried a similar tactic, but got caught -- link:
http://advancedmediacommittee.typepad.com/emmyadvancedmedia/2007/02/bootlegging_boo.html
Mark Cuban has content he wants to sell, so naturally he would be bothered by it being stolen. What I don't get is -- content creators are being so slow to offer some alternative -- some way to see their material online.
Until they get with it, piracy is going to dominate. It's obvious.
- Alexandra
Posted by: Alexandra | March 01, 2007 at 10:21 AM
Does anyone else find it hilarious that a dude who got rich by stealing other people's content is mad at people stealing content?
Posted by: Ryan | March 01, 2007 at 05:36 PM