If George Orwell lived in the YouTube era, I am sure he’d pen something along the lines of “all video streams are equal, but some video streams are more equal than others”.

In fact: all video streams are equal, but some videos are more equal than others, or rather, some video streams are worth less than others.

Susan Boyle’s appearance on Britain’s Got Talent is a massive hit, yet it “is not being monetized,” a Google spokeswoman tells Wired (via Business Insider).  The video has been seen 100,000,000 times.  To put this into context, since 2006, all of WatchMojo.com’s videos have been seen 50,000,000.  Both are pretty impressive figures, but it does reiterate a new theme:

How - if at all - can you monetize something?  

As we have written before: YouTube (and online video in general) is a great promotional and commercial platform.  In this case though, it’s just the former.  That’s a shame.

But the Boyle video does capture the many misses that Venture Capitalists have backed: companies that managed to capitalize on online video’s promotional value (UGC, for example) but not its commercial opportunities, be it by way of e-commerce or advertising.