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Can Large Corporations Buy "Cool?"
TobyToadstool writes "With the recent news that NBC and News Corp. will launch a YouTube rival, CNet asks: Can big corporations buy the zeitgeist or will they inevitably screw up? CNet calls the new wannabe 'Me Too Tube.' The article looks at companies trying to buy their way into user-generated content. Quoting: 'There is something incredibly boring and sad about giant companies who constantly chase the fleeing tailcoats of the latest Internet trends. Like the kid who [leaned] over and copied you in art class, News Corp./NBC are the archetypal corporation — lumbering and so very uncool.'"
Is YouTube cool? I thought it was just a convenient place to post and watch videos.
The NBC/News Corp. site will be a convenient place to watch NBC and FOX television shows. Who cares if it is "cool"?
CNET's never going to become cool if they miss the far snappier monkier of "Mee-toob"!
No they didn't, and that's the point. MySpace was already cool, they bought it and didn't really change it. They didn't MAKE it cool. And more importantly, they didn't compete against MySpace to do it. NBC is looking to try to make their clone cool, when YouTube already exists and gained much of it's early popularity though content they won't allow.
Let's not forget that Google tried to take on YouTube (in a way), and failed. They ended up buying YouTube.
NBC wants to make another YouTube, they have to compete against the original. And with the kind of restrictions that will likely be placed on it, I don't think they'll succeed at all.
They aren't starting something new in a new market. They aren't taking an existing small market and trying to expand it. They are trying to kill a very poplar and nice Goliath.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Seriously. What the fuck would you knobs know about cool?
You probably think it's uncool because it isn't compatible with firefox for unga bunga linux or dragonfire BSD.
NBC and NewsCorp have tons of content people want access too. They will be successful, whether you like it or not, or whether it gets the tag of "cool" from a bunch of geeks.
YouTube cool? Whats so cool about some fat kids video diary?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
In fact, companies aren't really cool. At best, companies make good products and get a good reputation and then people decide that their products are cool (like Apple), but if you actively chase being "cool", then you end up looking foolish.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Slashdot headline:Can Large Corporations Buy "Cool?"
Answer: Yes, they bought MySpace.
That's it.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
According to 99% of corporate marketing consultants just take whatever your message is and make it into a rap!
Learning is fun! "I to learn, it's my style. I'm quiet in class and I always smile." *boom shika boom*
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
The title of the article was misleading. Buying cool versus making cool. Yes, in this case making cool is expensive and they are investing in it, as opposed to the average joe just starting up their own site that becomes cool.
That said, Youtube is not a small time site. It never was. You could say that the original creators did buy cool. One of the two guys is from an affluent family and I believe his wife's father (who is some big CEO somewhere or something like that) helped invest heavily in getting youtube off the ground. It frustrates me when people talk about Youtube like it is some phenom that started from the underground by some kid in his bedroom. It was started by a couple of older guys who had a lot of money and connections and the means to make something big. It's the difference between a Subway and a McDonald's . . . neither of them is your local mom and pop sandwich shop.
Of course, we can argue all day long as to whether MySpace is cool. I think most of us can agree that it certainly is not. Same for Youtube. Both are just places for teenage self-indulgent attention whores to whine about how hard life is, shake their asses and lipsynch on video as if the rest of the world cares.
It appears to me that all NBC is doing is creating a site where you can go to get their content. Of course, you know it's going to be restricted like crazy. But having a place to go and watch NBC content (other than Heroes, what the hell is there to watch?!) doesn't make it a youtube site. Youtube is Youtube because it has tens of millions of videos by tens of millions of wannabe stars who live for attention.
Newscorp didn't go out and create their own myspace. They bought myspace. NBC isn't going out there and buying youtube. They're trying to create their own. And it's not going to work. As bad as youtube sucks ass, the NBC version will be even worse.
NBC creating their own "youtube" will be like a poor kid who has to wear clothes that his mom made for him out of scraps, while all his friends and classmates go to school in brandname. It'll be the K-Mart and Value Village of video sites.
Sorry, I'm not for sale.
Can Large Corporations Buy "Cool?"
Of course they can! A good example is the entertainment industry's Captain Copyright!
Why, if that doesn't make little Timmy stop downloading his Metallica MP3s, then by golly nothing will! Captain Copyright is totally fresh!
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
slashdot is something much more bigger than you think.
...
/. is the place where majority of people who build the web and tech world hang out - not excluding high level techies, executives, prominent tech pioneers, industry celebrities, very high profile personas, ages-old black & white hat hackers with long list of deeds behind them. ah, also a number of politicians.
you are probably thinking that who are hanging out in slashdot are a bunch of long haired geeks in their mom's basement and half lit university labs. along with a couple of linux, ms and nasa junkies
reality is that
not to mention countless hordes of developers & programmers, whose collective mind decides the fate of programming languages, numerous software and hardware products, and even ideas, for the future.
ever wondered why there are so many anonymous posts in slashdot ? only for trolling better ? afraid of persecution ?
think again.
Read radical news here
They can't buy cool. They _can_ earn it. IBM has gone a complete and total change over the last 20 years. Nintendo has over the last four.
The coolness has to come from within.
The problem is always the same: It's design by committee, by a bunch of people whose jobs are on the line.
Look at all the great applications, that just blew up out of nowhere. They're all started by people who are so amazingly fucking stoked about this idea! It's the coolest thing ever! It's going to change the world! I used to work with a guy who had that vibe, and it's like fricking crack, those people are just so into it, and amazed by it, and they want to use it, they want it to be like their dreams, and they think about it constantly.
Contrast that with a group of people whose sole goal is to try to take apart this successful thing, and pick out its success, and put that into their own thing so it'll be successful. It's like taking a famous piece of art and trying to pull the art out of it...They're looking for an ephemeral thing. They don't know why it's cool. They don't know what it is about it that makes it great.
The thing is, YouTube is hardly unique. The idea is a simple idea. There are a lot of other sites out there that allow you to host your videos for other people to see. But it has that thing...That ephemeral thing...Hell in this case, it could just be that it built a great user base out of daily show clips, and now those people are putting great stuff on YouTube, so it has great content...And it's by no means certain that another venture, no matter how well funded, will be able to tap that secret sauce. They may though. Never underestimate the power of a sufficiently large integer with a "$" in front of it.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Case in point: Nike tried for years to get into the skateboard shoe industry... an industry which has been dominated by smaller companies since its inception.
At first, they failed miserably. But with each attempt, they learned a little bit more about how the subculture worked.
Now they probably sell more "skateboarding shoes" than any other company.
Of course, all they've done is buy the mind-share of young people through some adept marketing... but is there any difference between that and "buying cool?"
Holy crap, you guys actually consider Myspace COOL?!?