Having a look around the web, there isn’t much positive about the recent Verizon deals with YouTube and Revver…
Ovum has given the deals a thumbs-up, claiming it should give Verizon V Cast a boost. “Ovum estimates that out of the 20 million Verizon subscribers with V CAST-enabled phones, only about 10% are willing to pay the premium for the service. Adding video content from two popular online sites, however, could help, the research firm said…”This is certainly a bit of a coup for Verizon and should provide some pretty compelling mobile content to the heavily targeted youth market,” said Ovum analyst May Ann O’Loughlin in an e-mail…Assuming the services are available on time, the agreements are expected to give YouTube and Revver “serious wireless credibility,” O’Loughlin said.”
In contrast, Wendy Davis at Just an Online Minute has refered to the deals as “a blip on screen”, pointing out the material is already available for free online, so she didn’t think too many people would fork out $15 per month to view the content on a small screen. “Additionally, Verizon, YouTube and Revver will select the videos to be available on the service. Maybe that’s because it’s not technically feasible to enable users to search and choose the videos they wish to see. But won’t most early adopters–the ones who are big enough technophiles to want to subscribe to mobile video–also want the ability to choose which videos to watch?”
True, and this last point is what the blogosphere seems to be focusing on — the whole point of video-sharing sites like YouTube is the community and the long-tail aspect of them…summarized by ZDNet. Actually, I’ve seen very little good commentary about this.
TechDirt has focussed on what it considers the poor idea of the content providers signing exclusive deals with the carriers (Revver is for 12 months, YouTube isn’t stated but apparently Verizon has implied a minimum of six months). I would agree, the deals hurt the content providers (assuming that Verizon isn’t paying for the privilege of exclusivity), and they don’t help Verizon. Despite any hype about mobile content or social networking the number of people who are going to switch carriers just to get a particular service on their handset will be negligible. Rather than attracting data-using customers, carriers should be focussing on getting their current customers to use mobile content, and exclusive deals don’t help that.
Subscriber content
?
Subscriber content comes from Gigaom Research, bridging the gap between breaking news and long-tail research. Visit any of our reports to learn more and subscribe.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
["wijax_46c5b5e476b6aea1585568e509964b62","wijax_f50ade5bf2243e564e75652138b8874d"]
{"source":"https:\/\/gigaom.com\/2006\/11\/30\/pretty-poor-reaction-to-verizons-video-deals\/wijax\/49e8740702c6da9341d50357217fb629","varname":"wijax_1fa2b1fb8a4d7d25bfd86ec61dedd46d","title_element":"header","title_class":"widget-title","title_before":"%3Cheader%20class%3D%22widget-title%22%3E","title_after":"%3C%2Fheader%3E"}
{"source":"https:\/\/gigaom.com\/2006\/11\/30\/pretty-poor-reaction-to-verizons-video-deals\/wijax\/49e8740702c6da9341d50357217fb629","varname":"wijax_1fa2b1fb8a4d7d25bfd86ec61dedd46d","title_element":"header","title_class":"widget-title","title_before":"%3Cheader%20class%3D%22widget-title%22%3E","title_after":"%3C%2Fheader%3E"}
Comments have been disabled for this post