Inside Online Video

Yahoo Still Doesn’t Get Online Video

by Mike Abundo on August 3rd, 2007

Pop quiz, online video lovers: what’s wrong with Yahoo’s latest promise to beat YouTube?

Music videos, movie trailers, television shows and sports highlights are among the features that will be available on the new site, Mike Folgner, Yahoo’s general manager for video, said in an interview. Yahoo’s Flickr photo-sharing site will also be adding video, he said.

“One of our strategies is to put video everywhere you are on the Internet,” said Folgner, who joined the Sunnyvale, California-based company last year through Yahoo’s acquisition of video site Jumpcut. “We’re going to build a much better destination for you to access all this different content.”

Answers after the jump.

1. “Music videos, movie trailers, television shows and sports highlights” can’t whip the Long Tail of niche shows enabled by online video. Expensive mainstream media shovelware is not the killer kontent key to online video success. YouTube succeeds because it’s YouTube.

2. “We’re going to build a much better destination for you to access all this different content.” Online video succeeds through superdistribution channels, not destination sites. YouTube works on its embeds.

The way it’s described, Yahoo’s new video site will fail for the same reasons many mainstream media video sites fail. Yahoo’s spending the next two months exorcising the Hollywood attitudes of former CEO Terry Semel. Mr. Folgner should join that exorcism.

If Yahoo people see online video through the lens of mass media, then I’m doubly worried about Veoh. They just took on an ex-Yahoo exec as CEO.

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