Have you ever come across a video on youtube about something you have always wanted to watch, because it represented a memory from your childhood or a special moment, or it was a special event that sticked in your mind and you just wanted to revive? Sometimes you get to this video and then a few days later, just like that... it's gone...

Everytime I see this image (or any of its variants) I want to... 

It's so frustrating there aren't pretty words to express what it feels, so I'll ponder about it in today's blog asking the following question: What is the reason why someone can't come up with a business model that can stop this from happening?

"If you build it, they will come"....
In marketing it's "if you build it, it can be marketed"

One of my Marketing teachers taught me that one the principle rules that marketers must learn is that if it can be built it can be marketed. Recently we have had a lot of tension between congress, the MPAA, anonymous, the internet community, dealing about all these copyright rules that are supposed to protect intelectual property. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against copyright, but the position that both parties are taking make the situation very uncomfortable for the community who is neither interesting in stealing anyone's property, nor they want to sabotage the empire of a chaotic cyber society. Let's face it, if I want to watch the highlights of the 1999 All Star MLB game when Pedro Martinez struck out those six hitters like they were 8 year old kids, I should be able to do it. But I can't because there isn't a place where it can be hosted without being taken down for legal reasons; so what if I want to show it to a friend? or a boy who wants to know how good Pedro Martinez was? Why is it a crime to upload a video of content that potentially millions of users want to view. How many of these accounts have been shut down for making information public that has no harm to anyone.

Are you looking for this video on youtube? Sometime soon it may become a myth...

If today February 27th you do a youtube search on Ronaldinho highlights, the first thing that you will notice is how almost every single Ronaldinho highlight video has been removed. You can tell because all the videos that come up as results of the search have less than 1,000 views and the quality of them is very low. About six months ago you could get about ten high quality Ronaldinho video with over a million hits each one. By the way, is it true that the first youtube video that got 1,000,000 hits was that Nike Ronaldinho ad of him hitting the post with the football? Anyway let's move on.

Facebook has proven that advertising is a profitable business as long as you get people interested and hooked to your service. They follow a formula that was developed early by the inital .com portals from the late 90s and was perfected by Google through their resources of Ads. The principle is very simple: you pay what you use and that's it. It has also been translated to other fields in the form of subscription and virtual credits. So in my opinion it is all about finding a balance between those two elements that define economics: supply and demand. Companies like Netflix and Blizzard with their signature product World of Warcraft have been able to find a balance between those two variables, and the harmony works so well that revenues are extremely high and both supplier and consumer are happy with the relationship. What is it that you pay for all monthly movies you want on NetFlix? or how much you pay for a full month of countless hours of play in WOW?

Among the many reasons why the internet got so big to the point where it's at today, I have to say it is because it allowed users to search, find and enjoy bits of information that at some point were thought lost forever or simply too hard to obtain. I'm not only referring to sports highlights, I mean concerts, bloopers from our favorite shows, never seen footage, documentals, historic events that were caught on film, lectures... so many useful resources that can be part of our society and also part of a profitable business.

Only a few -including myself- had seen this rare clip of
John Lennon and Mick Jagger before it was made public on youtube.
Today it's a miracle if it lasts a month without being removed.

I understand youtube's position and the responsibility their are intitled to by having to remove every video that has a copyright infringement; what I don't and can't understand is how come there hasn't been an initiative to meet the needs of supply in demand when it comes to these type of videos. There are a lot of internet users out there who would easily pay for a monthly subscribed service that would feature all their videos on demand, just like there are a lot of companies who would pay to advertise on a website that showed these videos. Instead, we are left today with either poor quality videos or content that is not up to the standards that we are looking for.

When youtube started to get popular, I remember I had serious doubts about its future and the possibility to have an actual website that hosted media survive in time, because I figured most companies and artists were not going to be happy of their free content online. Yet youtube survived and went on to maintain videos that included ranges from cooking lessons, to football or baseball player highlights, to rare concerts and never seen footage from musicians or actors we know and like. Today, we have landed just where I thought we were eventually going to be. A bit later than expected, but well... I can't make perfect accurate predictions.

Certainly no movie studio wants to see a movie of theirs posted on youtube from start to end. I agree with that assessment, however: what if I'm a psycology undergraduate student and I'm fascinated by the interaction scene between Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter  in their initial meeting, and I want to use a small segment of that five minute scene as a resource for a college paper I am writing? Wasn't it easier and more convenient that that particular moment had been uploaded to youtube by another fan who also shared my fascination for it? Instead, I'm left with no choice but to buy the entire movie and find myself a video editor to cut that specific segment. Yes, of course it can be done... but isn't technology supposed to take us forward and not backwards? Isn't technology supposed to make things easier for us and improve our quality of life?

I think that classic scenes deserve their own spot on the web too. They never get old

I may be speculating -as my sources on youtube numbers are non existant-, but I'm willing to put $100 on a table, affirming that youtube's page views have decreased dramatically in the past years due to all the videos that have been removed from their engine. I'll even toss in another example:

The 2012 Australian Open final played last month... Nadal vs Djokovic. It was a live event that drove millions of viewers all over the world, not only to the actual live transmission but also to the re-run of it later the following day. Once it's passed, it exactly ...a thing of the past. The money to be made from it was the day of the actual live event; if anyone wants to make more money from it, I would classify that revenue as "marginal", so any money made from then an onwards is "marginal revenue".  So why not allow its content to become part of a subscribed website that charges consumers a small fee to view any video they want that has copyright laws but can also bring money to their respective sponsors (or producers) on a marginal revenue principle? Six months from now, people will still be interested and looking back to watch the highlights from that classic six hour match, especially when you consider that it was six hours long, and rarely someone is going to sit through it entirely. Thinking that online videos can generate a profit that is entitled and traceable to the original production costs is like saying that Beethoven should receive royalties for everytime his symphonies are posted on youtube. Whoever is interested in either watching the full Nadal vs Djokovic match, or watching Silence of the Lambs, will likely go the extra mile and buy them.

iTunes biggest contribution to us: it revolutioned the whole music and software industry
youtube was close to doing it but now fell behind and has stepped back.
However the opportunity for a business model that combines both is still present. 

Steve Jobs changed the music industry with the introduction of iTunes, a store that makes every bit of sense a business man can make of it. Someone can do a similar model for online videos. Let's sit down, and let's see how can my company can make a profit with the service of offering these videos that so many people demand, and give you a piece of those profits given the fact that you provide the supply for the videos.





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