Mark Evans

Maybe YouTube Should Do an IPO

Here's an unorthodox - or different - thought for a Friday in the summer: maybe YouTube should strike while the iron is red, red-hot and do an IPO. Maybe co-founder Chad Hurley's refusal to flat out deny the possibility IPO reflects his gut instinct the video-sharing service's popularity would make it a slam-dunk IPO candidate. Sure, YouTube's business model is still work in progress, it's losing lots of money (expensive server and bandwidth costs) and there's that sticky, hush-hush, lets-not-talk-about-it issue involving the availability of unlicensed content such as The Daily Show. BUT YouTube is getting 100 million downloads a day, it has millions of loyal users, the potential to come up with a lucrative advertising model, and tons of buzz (Hurley sneezes and there's a story on TechMeme within minutes!). So let's assume YouTube is convinced to do an IPO, I would imagine there would be tons of interest from investors. For one, Vonage managed to raise $500-million - and it's a money-losing company in an ultra-competitive market. Another thing playing into YouTube's hands is the lack of Web 2.0 IPOs, which makes the investment landscape completely different from the dot-com boom when lots of YouTube-like companies (lots of buzz, little revenue, large losses) did IPOs based on “eyeballs”. So maybe YouTube should adopt a carpe diem approach and hit the market with an IPO given investors would probably beg for stock. For more thoughts on YouTube's IPO dreams, check out Blogging Stocks.