Why DoGooderTV if we have YouTube?
by Michael HoffmanThursday, October 12th, 2006
Several people have asked me, or have written on blogs, about the need and potential for DoGooderTV when we have YouTube. I just want to share what we are thinking about here on this subject.
First, YouTube is great. Free hosting, free embedding, not much in terms of advertising. (YouTube will get more commercial and you will begin to see a lot more advertising on the site - it has to make back its $1.6 billion price tag.) But what’s not to like? I think any nonprofit with a video should stick it into their organizational channel on YouTube. There is no downside really, except maybe negative comments from the community – but that’s the entrance fee to social networking.
But lets face the facts. Even if you’re video is pretty good, you’re no LonelyGirl15. Or Stewie. Or William Shatner’s interpretation of “Rocket Man”. Can your video compete with Betty White roasting William Shatner? Or Captain Kirk farting? (Notice a theme?)
There are about 8 million videos on YouTube and it is growing by at least 60,000 per day. So saying that you added something to YouTube is like saying you added a website to the internet. If you don’t have something extremely viral, or make an investment in marketing it (something we manage for clients at See3), then you are unlikely to see much benefit.
DoGooderTV, unlike YouTube, is being built as a social video community around issues and organizations. In addition to the hosting benefits of YouTube, we will provide organizations with access to a community of people who are talking and reading and sharing and discussing issues from Darfur to King Tut. We will give these folks, and organizations, a platform to organize, educate and raise money. To use marketing language, we will provide qualified leads - from an organization’s point of view.
I am reminded of being back in my venture capital days when people would say about any software project… “Couldn’t Microsoft just do that?” Well, yeah. But they won’t do everything. And they won’t do everything well. In the social networking space, MySpace is king. But YouTube came along and built a social networking site (which is really what it is) around video. And LinkedIn built a social networking site around business, and Facebook around college students, and so on and so on. So…stay tuned. In the next month we will be releasing a lot more info about the progress and launch schedule for DoGooderTV. And… if you know about good nonprofit video, let us know because we want it up and online at launch time (which is after breakfast.)
