GooTube

So, Google buys YouTube for 900 million quid; WTF!

I'd love to know what kind of multiple on earnings that represents; if indeed YouTube actually made any money after paying for their bandwidth bill!

I can only speculate what the strategy behind this move is, clearly there is one and it must be something special for this kind of dosh. I wonder if the idea is to create a kind of "alternative" to television; or like MTV did in the 80s invent a new kind of channel? I often look at YouTube, it can be very amusing, but most of it is puerile teenage stuff and people trying to "make it" in media, but hey there are millions of teenagers out there who probably think this is the greatest thing since sliced bread and would happily contribute and watch it all day long. The prospect of targeting this audience with relevant product plugs would certainly be an advertisers wet dream and then some. I do wonder though, much like MySpace and Rupert Murdoch, would trying to exploit such a community in the old fashioned corporate happy-talk manner somehow destroy it or change it in a kind of Heisenbergian way, i.e. to observe it is to change it, or are Google the only company who can pull this kind of thing off?

I have recently been following an interesting blog by Ben Hammersley http://www.benhammersley.com he is a photographer, blogger and technical author, he comments on all things Blog/WEB2.0; Ben is in the process of writing a new book entitled "The Eight Big Ideas You Need to Understand in the 21st Century", one of the "ideas" is "Mass amateurisation - how everyone can publish their work. DIY capitalism such as car-boot sales", I can see how this prophecy could certainly ring (as in kerching!) true for the boys at YouTube (lucky chaps).