Internet Entrepreneurs Blog

Along the same lines of social network ghettos I wrote about a couple years ago, there are still thousands of  websites trying to be the YouTube for fill in the blank. “The blank” could be adrenaline sports (BroadbandSports.com) or Christian values (GodTube.com) and everything in between. Heck, there’s even a pornographic YouTube that’s actually one of the few successful incarnations but that’s another story

In this analysis I’ll stick to discussing BroadbandSports.com since it’s the video site I’m most familiar with but the lessons here are applicable to all the YouTube wannabes. The idea behind these sites is that niche audiences want their own place to share videos with like-minded viewers, something that isn’t possible with YouTube. Or is it?

YouTube already allows members to tag, rate, and comment on videos, making it easy for anyone to find what they’re looking for. For example, a mountain biker doesn’t need to go to BroadbandSports.com to find mountain biking videos - just type in ‘mountain biking’ and you’ll see YouTube has more than 39,000 videos (compared to a lower but respectable 800 videos on BBSports). Of course there is also a social aspect to sharing videos and YouTube has that covered as well with channels and groups which help segment viewers and videos into niche specific mini-sites.

BBSports faces an uphill challenge on the technical side as well. Processing and distributing online video isn’t trivial and the associated bandwidth costs can be excessive. The latest press releases from BBSports tout new features that allow folks to embed BBSports videos on MySpace and other social networks - a feature YouTube has included since its beginning years ago!

On the business side online video is still a fairly new concept and advertisers are still trying to figure out how to reach video consumers effectively. Even YouTube, owned by the internet advertising Goliath Google, isn’t a profitable endeavor on its own - not to mention the fact that it’s practically a lawsuit magnet for copyright holders. It seems the best finanical outcome for sites like BBSports is that someday they will be purchased by YouTube since all the money is in acquisition these days rather than in meaningful ad revenue.

For me video, like pure social networking, is an opportunity that is quickly vanishing for smaller internet players. While it’s still possible to start up a blog or a rich online community for your niche, I’d say stay away from video unless you’re prepared to slog it out with the big boys or you have a killer technological innovation up your sleeves.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 at 7:53 am and is filed under Business, The Internets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.