

Top 10 Tech Failures of the Decade. YouTube...Really? - taylor
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1898610_1898625_1898631,00.html
The New York Times recently wrote that "while YouTube, along with other new media properties like MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, is seen as leading the challenge against traditional media companies, the company itself is struggling to profit from its digital popularity."
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mahmud
Gateway (the Acer of American PC vendors.)

HD DVD (acronym overload, no differentiation from Blu-Ray.)

Vonage (like Skype, but with an AT&T syntax)

Youtube (low definition format, low comment intelligence, low interest
cellphone videos.)

Sirius XM (financiers of Howard Stern lost to the Chinese $5 FM transmitter
makers.)

Microsoft Zune (the portable version of Windows Media Player but only
browner.)

Palm (HTML5 based "OS" might help you now, but I will never forgive you for
that Pilot API.)

Iridium (never heard of them before Miami Vice, the movie, and never since.
Lost to regional sat services)

Segway (a wheel-chair for the able-bodied; early adopters considerably dorkier
than rest of population. Way too much of a "tourism office" gimmick toy than
anything nowadays.)

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TweedHeads
All of them belong to that list, except youtube

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mikeryan
Depends on your criteria for success, For the founders of Youtube it was an
unqualified success. For Google trying to make a business out of it it's so
far been frustrating to say the least.

That being said by this measure, Digg, Facebook and Twitter are in the same
boat (or worse, since they haven't been acquired)

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Dilpil
Yet another rehashing of the (inaccurate) Credit Suisse story.

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vaksel
the real story here, is that when you hit print, it doesn't show the entire
article.

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zimbabwe
If the article is saying something stupid, why submit it here? Better to
ignore it than post it and get no feedback beyond us calling Time stupid.
That's not a valuable use of time.

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padmanabhan01
On a monetary basis, Yes.

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jpwagner
<sarcasm> biggest failure of the 1890s: the automobile.

More costly than a horse, less accessible than a train. How will there ever be
a positive return on investment when it comes to the horseless carriage...

that and more when we return. </sarcasm>

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bena
But when they sold a car, they made a profit. When YouTube serves a video,
they lose money.

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jpwagner
In what year did the first car sell for a net profit?

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bena
Every car that rolled off the line would be sold for more than it cost to make
it. Per unit, cars are profitable.

And even considering sunk costs like automobile design, management overhead,
blah blah blah, every car sold makes the company money. They weren't sold at
or under cost to entice people to buy them.

Whereas YouTube's bandwidth isn't free and every time they serve a video, they
incur a cost that they don't get recompense for.

Sure, the automobile industry may not have been immediately profitable in the
beginning (because constructing cars is a costly business), but don't confuse
per unit profits with overall profits. YouTube had neither for the longest
time and is only now dropping ads into videos.

You cannot under any circumstances make money giving your product away for
free.

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zimbabwe
Define "free". Google gave their search away for free until they added
advertising. Youtube serves ads as well, and obviously it's their hope that
they can make ends meet.

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bena
Google is also an outlier. Hardly representative of business in general.

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jgilliam
When are we going to stop defining "success" by whether something makes lots
of money?

