Here’s a different angle on the Google + YouTube deal. Imagine there were a Facebook-style social computing revolt. OK OK, but for real this time – that people actually left the site instead of just whining about it.
With all of the acquisition activity around social computing sites, it surprises me that we haven’t seen a user-led revolt to distribute some of the riches back to the asset creators. Let me say that again – why aren’t users pushing to be rewarded for the content they create – which is now paying off in the billions?
Let me say that again – why aren’t users saying "show me the money?"
If you strip away all of the page views – if people just stopped going to YouTube today, then Google would have ended up paying $179 per video. That’s a lot of cash for lipsyncing Chinese kids and copycat geyser experiments. But it’s what they paid for the ASSETS – eyeballs aren’t guaranteed and they probably have a better video platform already.
Remember that the key to social computing is that consumers are in control. They’ll go where they want. I think we see the start of the with video users migrating from YouTube to Revver. We know social computing sites don’t implode, they deflate (e.g. Friendster). Facebook better sell soon or they’ll be left without a chair.