"That may be good messaging to stockholders, but it isn’t what the public cares about."

Michael Arrington puts his finger on the problem with the unnamed NBC-NewsCorp joint venture that aims to challenge YouTube:

The two key messages Chernin and Zucker were selling were (1) afocus on respecting copyright, and (2) the fact that they were creatingwhat they called “the largest advertising platform on earth.” That maybe good messaging to stockholders, but it isn’t what the public caresabout.

I think a better approach would have been to focus on the userexperience, but this was hardly mentioned (except at one point whenZucker said “we are shocked at the willingness of the consumer to sitthrough the whole show with ads on NBC.com”). It’s either arrogance orit’s blindness to the reality of this Bittorent and YouTube world.Either way, it suggests they are in over their head.

He also reminds us of the history of similar ventures: "As Valleywag pointed outtoday, EMI, BMG, and Sony Music banded together in 1999 to deal withthe Napster situation and created Musicnet, which was a dismal failureand was named by PC World as one of the worst tech products of all time."

Dear Clown Co.: Name This Thing Fast Before Its Too Late

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