BUSINESS BLOGS
BUSINESS BLOGS
category: business
12 Jul 2006
related tags: Internet & Web | Video |

I try not to knock major companies.  Ok, that’s a lie.

When I do though, it’s with good intentions.  I own Yahoo! shares, and admire them boatloads, so naturally I want them to do well. 

I’ve been keeping my eye on Yahoo! (and all companies, frankly) to guage what they do with online video.  That’s to be expected since I work at WatchMojo.com, a video producer.  Everyone these days is drinking the User-Generated Content (UGC).  Our biggest challenge at WatchMojo, frankly, is to let everyone know that we actually produce 99% of the videos, (apart from the odd movie trailer, or random clip we might link to).

Anyway, Yahoo! is a company I’d love to work with on the video front.  (Technically, I work with them by virtue of them powering the first incarnation of our sister site, the search application MetaMojo.com.)

When Yahoo! hired ABC’s Lloyd Braun, people expected big things.  Yahoo! was going to produce a lot of video.  Over time that changed.  That does not mean that Yahoo! threw in the towel, it only means that they shuffled the cards a bit.

To this day, I could not tell you what Yahoo! does with video.  I have seen a few things here and there, but apart from Yahoo! Video, which is a version of YouTube, I do not think they have produced anything.  That’s fine.  You have to be a masochist to producer video, let alone produce video for the Web.

But this week I came across Yahoo 9, or is it 9 Yahoo.  Obviously, it’s something that they crafted and pitched to Pepsi.  Great, I see Pepsi is into video on the Web.

But, you would think the darn thing would have some meat on the bone.  As Rafat Ali of Paid Content put it:

“Yahoo Adds Up “The 9″: Yahoo has launched a new online show, called “The 9″, which is sort of circa-1996, geez these nine great websites only we’ll take 9 minutes to describe these links by a pretty girl kinda show. How retro, how broadband…”

It probably doesn’t help that I am more into brunettes, but just seeing a cute girl running down 9 random videos is very lame.  The reason for that is that by the time Yahoo! gets its hands of the video, every one has seen the darn thing.  Who is Pepsi trying to target?  The retarded kids that are the last to get the joke?

Ok, that was a bit mean.  But you get the idea.

Yahoo! has the opportunity to do some cool things with video.  This is the best they can offer?

Worst crime of all?  Today’s nine clips link to 2 clips from Flickr (which Yahoo! bought) and 3 from Yahoo! Video.  That’s 5 out of 9, more than 50%.  If at least you had 10 clips, then it would be only 50%.  All right, I’ll stop being a smartass.  But you get the idea.

And, while we are at it, isn’t this a diluted, compressed version of VH1’s Web Junk?  That is Viacom’s idea of synergy between iFilm and VH1, at least when it came out, it was new and unique. 

I totally understand why Ms. Sansone would direct traffic to Yahoo! (they did, apparently, lose out to MySpace last week in terms of traffic)’s properties, but come on, give us something to work with, don’t insult our intelligence.

And as far as Pepsi is concerned, they will probably get lukewarm responses to this, and subsequently balk at doing video-initiatives in the future.  That hurts Yahoo! very little since Pepsi will continue advertising on Yahoo!, but it does hurt honest video producers who turn to the Web to skip out on the Hollywood trap and will require ad-supported revenue streams.

Incidentally, Mr. Braun left Hollywood for Yahoo!’s greener pastures, in other words, the flexibility and freedom to develop ideas and take risks that otherwise would not fly at ABC.  Right now, it looks like at the very best, all Yahoo!’s viewers get is a me-too offering lacking the too.

I guess there goes the likelihood of Maria featuring this clip.