Is You-Tube's Revenue-Sharing Plan A Threat To Cable?

YouTube's announcement that it has plans to create a revenue-sharing agreement with the contributors to the popular website is eerily not being discussed by the 'traditional media' even as YouTube has become an Internet sensation and a household name.

Is YouTube's latest move yet another a nail in the prepped coffin of mainstream television and cable programming?

As more information, videos, photographs, music and so on premiere on the Internet first nowadays - including announcements from presidential candidates - even regularly scooping mass media organizations on important news, there seems to be no way to stop the decline of traditional media. Can you stop a slip and slide that is in full motion? I doubt it.

In a few years, just about anyone will be able to report over the Internet on breaking news - they only need be in the right place at the right time and have a modern cell phone, which increasingly offer quality, real-time video.


The media cannot be everywhere, but the millions of people who post to the Internet can be. That's going to be the fundamental difference, as it is already playing out.

I remember telling friends and family back in 1995 that the Internet will revolutionize not just commerce, but that it would find its way into every nook and cranny of ordinary life. One classmate told me that I was crazy after I predicted the majority of people would eventually get their music from the Internet and that record stores were at peril. (I'm not saying I'm a fortune teller, it just seemed the natural progression at the time).

Just like I'll say right now that video stores will disappear as well and the majority of people will download their movies on the Internet and have the ability to watch them on their televisions, big-screens, iPods, computers, and so on. Services such as Vongo.com and Movielink.com are the seeds of this revolution.

The Internet continues to change almost everything we do (except buy groceries, sorry PeaPod). It was simply the natural progression of a relatively easy and accessible technology with broad exposure to get your message out for very little money (in comparison to, say, newspaper and magazine publishing).

Ordinary people, like bloggers, programmers, artists and users of the Internet are setting the trends for news reporting, entertainment, communications, commerce, fashion, business, social networking, banking and finance, and the list goes on.

How will television as we know it fit into the enormous Internet culture of bloggers, web sites, online media and so on? This has been a question for years and now seem more of a threat than ever before. TV has suffered (except for American Idol), especially local news programming, and most especially those that have been in denial and not provided a web alternative to their newscasts or print editions. There is 24/7 access to anything anyone wants to read, watch, listen to or download.

How many people will abandon their cable companies because they can more easily, cheaply and quickly get whatever they want commercial-free from the Internet (connected to a TV or Widescreen) when they want and how they want. CNN Pipeline at $2.95 a month is one fine example.

A decade ago, Microsoft introduced what was touted as a revolution in the history of online media, claiming it would change how every household uses the Internet and television.

Remember WebTV?

The service allowed subscribers to surf the Internet on their televisions. However, the service was clumsy and unreliable, and therefore never gained the popularity anticipated by Bill Gates and others at Microsoft.

Most damaging to the WebTV model was probably the approach MS initially used, luring people into accepting it's model (or vision) for the future of Internet and computer use. It was, at its best, a novelty.

But in the last decade, the Internet has become a mass communication channel - the most extensive, widely-used and globally significant communications device in the history of mankind.

So it shouldn't be a surprise that the natural progression of technology-on-demand is the future, and the industries involved will need to adapt or be replaced.

What is the Deal With Blogger's Profile Random Question Feature

Has anyone else noticed the bizarreness of Blogger user profile page's Random Question? I must be missing something.

My first 'secret' question was: "If you had to dig a hole to China, where would you start? "

What?! Where? I dont' know, Peoria? Las Vegas? The Mayan temples? Under the White House? The basement of a fortune cookie manufacturer in Brooklyn?

How the hell do I know? Am I supposed to make something up that I'll forget? Should I have just put in my hometown? What if it was 'wrong' would my profile changes not be saved?

There was no help link or icon so I didn't really get it, and there is no way I can be the only one person out there that doesn't get it. I also saw nothing about it in Google Help Center or their company blog.

So I reloaded the page to get another 'random question': "What's the best time you've ever had licking stamps?"

Ok, now I'm thinking this is just a joke and I don't get it. Like there is some secret answer on the Google website somewhere and I have to somehow find it. Do I have to enter a treasure hunt?

Considering most stamps haven't been "lickable" for years now, what's the trick here? Should I say Marilyn Monroe? Snoopy? How about this (fictional): The best time I had licking stamps was when I got really drunk in high school and I was sending out college admission applications. Geeeez.

Come on Blogger folks, at least have a clickable help icon to make it clear what the heck this is about.

So, I can't answer this question because it quite frankly is the stupidest thing I think I've ever been asked. Well, except the time when I was a teenager and I was working at the gas station and an older woman asked me what the "N" was on the shift in her car. I asked her if she was serious and made sure it wasn't April 1st.

"I always wondered what it was for but I was scared to see what it would do." I kindly explained what it was and wondered if I had just been played with or if there was a mental health issue. It couldn't be that she was serious. I mean, come on.

So, Google folks, please clarify what this random question thing is all about.

Third and last question was the final straw and I gave up. Swear to whatever that this was the question:

Paper or briefs?

Well, now that is interesting. Because I could give the Clinton answer or the Gore answer. Which do you wear? Maybe I should just say NASA aluminum, hydro-suction diapers. Would anyone ever know, or even care?

Google has funny ways of doing things, and sometimes they are brilliant; other times they are pure nutty (or an inside 'joke' - like the Valentine's logo) and sometimes they are completely in violation of fundamental usability design, content and common sense.

Try it for yourself, what is your favorite Blogger Random Question and how would you answer it?

I love to hear other people's experience with this or other strange usability oopzies.

The Blog That First Broke The Google Valentine 'Hoax' Logo

This story was first reported on my other blog (http://www.monkeytypesthebible.com - named after a Stephen Colbert episode) at 7:23am on Valentine's Day. What happened to the "L"?

MTB was the first on the Internet to break the gooey story early Wednesday morning about the strange Google Valentine's Day logo on their homepage. See Wikipedia's Google Hoaxes page and looked for the "Google's Valentine Massacre" link.

In the hours that ensued following my posting, and my website traffic soared, blogs and news sites all over the world began reporting the 'messy logo' story. My weblogs can actually support my claim because I can see who the visitors were and then look on their website to see their version of the story, or a link to mine.

When I conducted a search two hours later on 'google valentine logo' my blog was the third listing on the Google results page.

When I searched on the same keywords today, all the other "big" sites had knocked my blog out of the results. Is that fair?

My story still shows up on the first page of Google search results for 'googe google logo' but not many people are searching on that term.

Google should list in their search results ranked on the "time" a blog stamps a story. Isn't that only fair?

Here's the original posting

Google Seeks Web Domination

Google is conquering the world. Be Googly or not. Or, is there competition out there in the works that threaten to dethrone the giant of the Internet?

Yahoo of course is fighting tool and nail to keep up, but it's a difficult battle when you're revenues are not growing even near the rate, and in raw dollars, of the competition.

But then there is Web 2.0. I will have a full series of stories on this blog in coming weeks so sign up for my feed or check back.