Inside Online Video

Yahoo Still Thinks Online Video is TV

by Mike Abundo on March 26th, 2008

Goddammit Yahoo, are you a personalization portal or a production studio? First you try to compete with Wallstrip, and now you launch a TV review show.

This is just so wrong, for two reasons. First, this sort of flashy editorializing has absolutely nothing to do with Yahoo’s mission of mass personalization. It’s just another piece of peanut butter. Second, original show production is not how you compete with YouTube, it’s how you get on YouTube.

TV studios are conditioned by the economics of offline video to both produce and distribute content at the same time. Some TV studios are actually getting smart, outsourcing more and more of their content production. Apparently, Yahoo is going in the opposite direction. All you need to do is watch the first few seconds of Yahoo’s Primetime in No Time blaring about Britney Spears to know that Yahoo is an Old Media company, more concerned with promoting other Old Media than connecting you with your real passions.

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