Me Too Usually Mean Peugh
BlogTV.ca led a short and completely unspectacular life.
But it’s not like anyone should be surprised. As the 642th video-filing sharing service to be launched, BlogTV.ca hinged its prospects on a very thin threat: it was going to Canada’s YouTube - not withstanding the fact few people on the Web consider a company’s nationality to matter.
BlogTV.ca failed because it was just another video-sharing service in a market awash in YouTube wannabes. BlogTV.ca learned the hard way that jumping on the bandwagon as a “me too” service was a recipe for disaster. Unless you come out with something different or unique than what’s currently popular, it’s really not even worth trying.
Yet everyone thinks they can invent a better mousetrap. If you look at the video-sharing market, for example, there are still plenty of companies attracting venture capital. In the last couple of months, Dailymotion has raised $34-million, kewego (who?) $6.9-million, Metacafe $30-million and Veoh $26-million. I’m sure the VCs backing these companies believe they have great prospects given the video market’s growth but some of these bets aren’t going to pay off.
Even more troubling is there continues to be too many ill-conceived “me too” investments in many markets such as photo-sharing, storage, social media and social bookmarking where the market is already crowded and growth is now far from spectacular. Sure, entrepreneurs and investors are eternal optimists but just because it’s now easy to launch an online start-up in a hot or warm market doesn’t mean it has to be funded. Unfortunately, this hasn’t stopped the bandwagon investment philosophy that seems to be alive and well.
Maybe that’s the where the bubble that concerns everyone is happening. Rather than seeing high-profile companies blow up like the dot-com book, most of the failures will likely happen to late-to-the-game start-ups that managed to raise some venture capital at the slim hope they could win the lottery and become the next YouTube. So rather than blaring headlines about the shocking demise of a much-hyped start-up, the bubble will quietly burst in the hinterlands where it will receive, at best, modest, attention.
Before ending this mini-rant, I would remiss if I didn’t add that there will always be exceptions to the rule. Sometimes, the right company with just the right strategy and good timing will be successful. Canada’s video.ca, for example, is apparently alive and well.
September 22nd, 2007 at 10:06 am
You have a mistake.
It is not a video sharing service. it is a live broadcast service and it is successful in the US.
September 22nd, 2007 at 8:00 pm
Here is a real problem for blogtv.ca. Earlier this week Jeff Pulver was asking people to watch his blogtv broadcast, so I type in the URL he gave — blogtv.com/Shows/96 - and what do I get? A redirect to blogtv.ca with access to only Canadian content. Come on guys and gals, the Internet ignores borders — especially when you’re trying to launch a service that needs user generated content. If I can’t get content from my US acquaintances, (or from anywhere else worldwide), I’m not going to use the service.
Do a search at blogtv.ca on Pulver or Scoble and you come up dry.
Blogtv.ca executives must be ex-CRTC people, thinking they know better than I what is good for Canadians to see. Tonight I could still get blogtv.ca but if they are going off the air, they deserve to die.
September 23rd, 2007 at 4:28 pm
I was invited to participate in the beta, which I did as a lurker/viewer and occasional comment poster. I never really got into the whole thing mind you, probably because it didn’t strike me as being new, interesting, and unique.
The difference between live broadcast and non-live video sharing, to me, is minimal in today’s internet culture. Few broadcasters at BlogTV.ca seemed to have the time to produce a show aired at a regularly scheduled time, and so audience building was difficult, if not impossible. Visitors to the site were thus bombarded with a hodge-podge of low quality videos, erratic programming, and unclear, restrictive channel assignments.
The point against the lack of regular scheduling was that if you happened to miss an episode by your favourite broadcaster, that it was archived and you could click to view past, non-live shows. What you have in that case is…..YouTube.