Oh, No, Not Web Video Again!

摘要

If you are old enough to recall the crashes and burns of TheDen and Pseudo.com, then you must join me in smirking at the current mania for Web video. A perfect storm has formed around the platform; media companies point to a "critical mass" in broadband penetration and anecdotes of massive video stream numbers, while advertisers desperately chase eyeballs as they flee primetime TV. But have we learned anything meaningful about Web video as a media platform or thought through the revenue models enough since that first disastrous run at Internet TV? It's hard to argue with the raw numbers, of course. AOL is already talking up a "Web 2.0" where people get even more multimedia online than they do from TV. AOL SVP Tina Sharkey recently told the Connections Conference that a music video by rapper 50 Cent got streamed 6.1 million times from her service. "MTV would dream for numbers like that," she said.