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Verizon Wireless, YouTube make it official
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Confirming rumors leaked earlier this month, Verizon Wireless officially announced it signed an agreement with YouTube to bring the popular video-sharing website's content to the carrier's V Cast multimedia service. Beginning in December 2006, VZW will enjoy exclusive access to selected YouTube mobile content for an unspecified limited time; the carrier will update its YouTube offerings on a daily basis. Verizon and YouTube declined to discuss specific terms of their deal, including whether the carrier will share V Cast revenues with YouTube. In turn, YouTube also declined comment on whether its licensing agreements with major media companies, among them Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, CBS Corp. and Sony BMG, apply to premium downloads on mobile phones.
While I still endorse YouTube's entrance into the mobile space, I do have questions about Verizon's ability to midwife the service's transition from PCs to handsets. Specifically, I wonder whether VZW will offer the weird, wild clips that have made YouTube such a grass-roots phenomenon, or deliver little more than a dumbed-down, vanilla version without all the breakdancing midgets and other cool stuff. If the carrier plays it safe and censors content in an effort to please everyone, they'll end up pleasing no one--and it's difficult to muster much faith in a company that seems to operate under the mistaken assumption that the "Can you hear me now?" weasel represents cutting-edge creativity.
For more on the VZW/YouTube deal:
- read this release
Comments
Posted by Kevin Wells | November 28, 2006 - 4:56pm
Why ruin a perfectly cool thing like YouTube on your handset by editing the videos available on V-Cast for "taste and community standards" or some such nonsense.....? The "Cool factor" instantly drops to ZERO.
The experience will be lessened and all the content that made YouTube great will be left on the digital cutting room floor due to "concerns"
For instance---will the Diet Coke / Mentos videos be dropped because of fears over Coca Cola's legal team? Will some underground band's killer remake of the Gilligan's Island theme song be deleted due to copyright fears?
See? It just isn't YouTube anymore.
When will the carriers learn that the wireless consumer does not need or desire their vendor's opinion on what to watch or listen to on their handset?
Welcome to 1984 all over again...
Posted by zelber | November 29, 2006 - 2:32am
When will telcos understand that they are walling in their gardens to death ? In their fear of losing control over the their clients content they are strangling their users.
imode is a good example. Their portals/decks are really amongst the best in the world. Nevertheless more than 30 of the traffic leaves their portal and goes out to the un-official mobile internet!!!
Posted by Jimmy Reno | November 29, 2006 - 7:27am
YouTube on the mobile sounds good to me, although not in such a restricted form. I would have as much desire to watch this 'safe, censored' content as I would have in watching a video advertisement.
So, perhaps what we are witnessing here is not entirely a YouTube trial, it could be part of a clever marketing ploy on Google's behalf to measure the general public's tolerance for viewing undesirable content (i.e. video ads).
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