Myspace Video is now Myspace TV.
Interesting to see “Myspace and Yahoo! gunning for Google’s YouTube”:
Yahoo and MySpace are battling it out for No. 2 behind YouTube. MySpace has more viewers, but Yahoo actually streams more videos. Along with NBC and Fox, they all seem to be ganging up on YouTube. (Watch this Disruptors video to see some of the tensions surfacing). Folgner is also concentrating on improving video search across the Web and bringing up relevant videos depending on what part of Yahoo people happen to be on (news videos in Yahoo News, sports videos in Yahoo Sports, music videos in Yahoo Music, etc.).
Reading that I thought of a few things:
1. Isn’t this awfully reminiscent of MSFT and YHOO chasing Google for search market share when Google was slightly smaller… now it’s almost not even a competition. It’s like Google is in one league and YHOO, MSFT are in another… and then AOL and Ask are in yet another.
2. Specifically with regards to video, neither MySpace, YouTube or Yahoo! own any rights to the videos. They’re a platform, which is great if you buy the whole “the network is the shiznit” argument, but ultimately, isn’t it also one big house of cards?
I don’t know. MySpace has an edge because they are backed by News Corp., who does own a lot of good content and as a representative of old media can parlay the old guard to assign them rights. Though of course, despite the news today that MySpace was rebranding itself etc., MySpace is a bit too noisy for a web video portal, no?
Of course, Yahoo! too can’t be counted out because they actually stream more videos than YouTube MySpace, according to the B2.0 article I mention above (thanks to Randy Catan for spotting the typo)… but trust me, Yahoo! is slow to act. Yes, that’s the WatchMojo.com executive producer talking.
And, despite all of the litigation and accusations, YouTube has almost doubled since the Google sale…
Disclosure: former NWS employee, long YHOO stock.
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June 28th, 2007 at 11:34 am
What numbers are you using when you say yahoo streams more videos than youtube?
June 28th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
Randy thanks for pointing that out, it was a typo.