Google's paying $1.6Bn worth of GOOG stock for YouTube looks to date as the most appropriate illustration of the excess preceding some crisis. And, since the transaction has been made in stock and not cash, it may well be heralding a stock market crisis. In other words, this event is so not as much about Google, since it paid with its somehow inflated currency, as it is about the public market itself that, thinking Google can do no wrong, rewarded GOOG handsomely after the transaction.
Writing about crises, I am not sure though how much of a crisis this transaction signals for the established media. I would posit that YouTube, in any foreseeable form that builds on the current model, could become a first-class channel to capitalize on the potential of the long tail effect associated with specialized media. In this context, specialized media is an euphemism for personal productions or copyleft material. This blog illustrates well the former category, while the following clip illustrates the latter:
So, while I can see millions of users deriving some sort of benefit by uploading/viewing personal productions, I could also see Google's aggregating enough demand for, let us say, the Celibidache-Michelangeli rendition of the Ravel Piano Concerto to even sell it in its entirety for up to $25.
Writing about crises, I am not sure though how much of a crisis this transaction signals for the established media. I would posit that YouTube, in any foreseeable form that builds on the current model, could become a first-class channel to capitalize on the potential of the long tail effect associated with specialized media. In this context, specialized media is an euphemism for personal productions or copyleft material. This blog illustrates well the former category, while the following clip illustrates the latter:
So, while I can see millions of users deriving some sort of benefit by uploading/viewing personal productions, I could also see Google's aggregating enough demand for, let us say, the Celibidache-Michelangeli rendition of the Ravel Piano Concerto to even sell it in its entirety for up to $25.
While I have your attention, I would advance a quippish thought: I expect YouTube to make possible enough Blair Witch Projects in the next 5 years to even justify its price tag. As for the main media, one could only wish the model of three or more channels of the same thing on cable were over, or the newspapers, TV-, and radio-stations, fulfilled indeed their public service charters.
