É o cliente, estúpido! (Uma curiosidade e algumas constatações):
1) quando o Google adquiriu a Pyra Labs/Blogger, o
anúncio foi feito por um blogger.
Quando o Google comprou o YouTube, o anúncio foi feito por um blogger.
2) quando o Google adquiriu a Pyra Labs/Blogger, houve quem se questionasse sobre o que iria fazer: "They've always said, 'We'll be only focused on search.' How does (the Pyra purchase) have anything to do with search? It doesn't," said Danny Sullivan, publisher of industry newsletter SearchEngineWatch.com.
Quando o Google comprou o YouTube, "I still think Google is crazy :)" (complementado com este "I was wrong").
Em ambos os casos, a identidade própria das marcas adquiridas foi preservada (para garantir a comunidade ou uma posterior venda?).
3) O que este "Dot-com boom, this? Nah" mostra é que se está a passar da compra de empresas com bens (produtos, serviços) - que vão continuar, claro - para a aquisição de comunidades.
O Blogger foi pioneiro (se esquecermos que, em 2001, já tinha havido a dos "newsgroups" também pelo Google) mas a compra do Flickr pelo Yahoo!, do MySpace pela News Corp. e agora o YouTube (quando já se fala do interesse do Yahoo! pelo Facebook) confirmam essa tendência.
Esta não é comparável aos "sites" de comunidades dos tempos pré-2000 por uma razão simples: "A trip to the Geocities homepage on the "Wayback Machine" circa December 19, 1996 (courtesy of The Internet Archive) yields this decidedly quaint statement from the company: "We have more than 200,000 individuals sharing their thoughts and passions with the world, and creating the most diverse and unique content on the Web." Replace "200,000" with "100 million" and you could almost imagine this sentence appearing on the MySpace homepage.
The Geocities vs. MySpace comparison not only demonstrates the commonalities between the internet of 1996 and 2006, but it also provides a point of departure for understanding concepts of online presence in the Web 2.0 era. While the Geocities model relied on the metaphors of a place (cities, neighborhoods, homepages), MySpace anchors presence through metaphors of a person (profiles, blogs, links to videos, etc.). Geocities encouraged us to create our own cities and neighborhoods as points of entry to our personal worlds; MySpace cuts to the chase and enables direct access to the person, as well as access to his or her social world. And whether we call the current world 2.0 or 10.0, there's no question that the internet of today will look positively beta to future generations."
Em resumo, a escala é agora muito maior, a banda larga facilita os acessos entre pontos da rede, entre a pessoa "online" e quem com ela quer comunicar. Entre o Google e eu, por exemplo, quando tenho tantas oportunidades de interagir com a mesma empresa, quando antes tinha de saltitar entre fornecedores de serviços...
O "Google domination factor" não é nada de novo, apenas preocupante. Já era há um ano: "If [Google] built out a hosting platform for people to upload all kinds of content that could be searched by Google and monetised by Google, like video and podcasts... it takes money to do, and with the search capabilities as their strong suit it could be something they could do," [Gartner analyst Allen] Weiner said. "Google could say, 'We'll host it for you; you point to us.' That could be huge."
Problemas? "by plunging into new markets with seeming abandon, Google is creating a lot of enemies whose survival may depend on making sure it doesn't succeed in them all".
E como é que se impede a sobrevivência dos mais fortes?
A ler:
Smart Move or Silly Money 2.0? Everyone from Time Warner and Viacom to Yahoo! and Microsoft is under enormous pressure to acquire the next MySpace or YouTube. But amid steadily rising valuations, Old and New Media executives alike are afraid of overpaying and being punished by their shareholders.
Parsons Weighs in on New Media, International Prospects: The YouTube deal demonstrates the power of user-generated content today. ?The question is,? [Richard Parsons, the chairman and CEO of Time Warner] said, ?where is it going and how do you make a business out of it? Is it going to take over edited or professional content? No. I don?t think its going to overrun TV or movies.?
Online Ad Agency Says Google, YouTube Need to Tackle Video Organization and Presentation: Talk of video and social networking, two core elements of the YouTube site, dominated the quarterly call. While Organic has seen clients' third-quarter interactive advertising spending increase 15 percent to 20 percent year-over-year, the vast branding budgets of Fortune 1000 companies have yet to migrate from TV to the Web, [digital ad agency Organic Inc.'s chief executive, Mark Kingdon] said.
That's because Web companies haven't figured out how to make video advertising appealing to them, he said. Yahoo's structured display advertising allows companies to create big brand splashes on its content pages. In the same way, Google, YouTube and others hoping to make money in the video space need to come up with a new way for advertisers to reach video viewers, Kingdon said.
Bravo, Comedy Central get boost from Net homes: If you have an Internet connection at home, odds are you're watching less television. Maybe as much as 25% less, depending on the broadcast or cable network, according to research now being distributed to TV executives by Nielsen/NetRatings Inc.
"It's not that people are abandoning TV for the Internet. Sometimes, they do both," said Mainak Mazumdar, the company's vice president of Product Marketing and Measurement Science. "We only have 24 hours a day... (that's) a finite amount of time to consume media."
