Predicting the future of YouTube

Every article I’ve read about YouTube predicts that YouTube:
* will be sued for copyright infringement
* won’t be sold because possible suitors are afraid of lawsuits
* will burn through their cash trying to cover bandwidth costs

As David Pogue pointed out last week, everyone was making wild predictions about Apple’s death in ‘95 and ‘96, and they were soon proved wrong. I’m not going to make a prediction one way or the other, but I do think it’s worth pointing out that there are clear business and technology moves that YouTube can make to address the concerns that have been raised; and the model for monetizing user-generated video hasn’t been fully realized.

Cordless powerdrills

I have a Coleman Powermate Cordless Drill and it is such a pain because it doesn’t have an option to plug into the wall; it only operates if the battery is charged. Today when the battery died after about 30 minutes of use, I started calling friends to see who else had a drill I could borrow, but everyone seems to have a cordless drill that won’t plug into an outlet (and of course, nobody keeps their battery charged). Why can’t Coleman or Black & Decker make the drill work both cordlessly and when plugged into an adaptor or outlet? Another pain with these drills are the fact you have to wait 3-8 hours for the battery to charge. Imagine if you had to wait 3-8 hours for the laptop battery to recharge before you could use it?? At a minimum they should allow you to plug in and use at the same time.

Purchasing users and page views

The buzz this week was the rumored negotiations between Yahoo and Facebook and whether someone will also buy YouTube

With Facebook’s rumored $900 million valuation, some of the questions that I have about such a deal are:
* Yahoo has similar technology with Yahoo 360 so the advantage of a purchase seems to be acquiring a strong user base and lots of page views to monetize w/ ads. With Facebook’s 9+ million users, the valuation equals roughly $100 per user. Will each of those users rake in $100 over the next x years? Dick Parsons has similar thoughts
* Given the history of the social networking sites (ie. Friendster), I think it’s risky to think that they can maintain the strong user base as trends change between users and generations. With MySpace being popular with younger kids, how likely is it that MySpace users will create Facebook accounts when they go to college?
* With Yahoo’s various acquisitions of Flickr and Delicious, how will they drive this traffic to other, more profitable, Yahoo services, like web search? Does Ask.com’s strategy of placing an Ask searchbox on their properties work, like this one on Ticketmaster

Summer sailing in SF

I spent Thursday->Sunday racing in the Rolex Big Boat Series Regatta at the St. Francis Yacht Club Our boat, Chance, missed first place overall in the J-120 fleet by 1 point and it was disappointing that our one bad race put us into 2nd overall.

Some great video of the regatta especially the Sunday photo finish in the J-120 fleet.

This is our boat ’scorching’ downwind:

Monopoly Here & Now

Monopoly, perhaps the most classic boardgame, has release a new iconic / pop-culture version called Here & Now where the game pieces are a Starbucks coffe-cup, Toyota Prius, Motorola Razr, New Balance running shoes….and so on. When my girlfriend got home tonight she asked if I had New Balance shoes, because almost all the other pieces fit me. Now I definitely have to get a new car, phone, and coffe shop so I’m not as predictable as Hasbro thinks.

Five years after 9/11/01

I’ve never spoken much about my experience on 9/11/01. It created so many different feelings that I’ve had a difficult time talking about it. When I walked out of the subway at 9:30am on Broadway & Houston, it was an eerie scene and I immediately knew something was wrong. The sidewalks were empty, people were walking in the middle of the road, and there was no traffic. I started running towards work and when I rounded the corner on Spring St, I ran into someone and asked them what was happening – that’s when I first heard that two planes had hit the WTC. I ran over to West Broadway to see what was going on and both towers were on fire.

My office was on Grant & Wooster, so I walked over to check in with coworkers. While inside, we heard on the radio that the first tower fell. Nobody could believe it, so we went outside to West Broadway & Canal St to see what was happening. There were tons of people in the street, cars and taxis were parked with their radios on loud so everyone could hear what was happening. I also remember hearing one car with Howard Stern, who was still broadcasting live and covering the events.

While standing on the corner of W Broadway and Canal, we saw the 2nd tower fall around 10:30. This intersection is about 13 blocks from the WTC. It was most horrific scene to see it crumble from the top down, causing a mushroom cloud. At that point, people who were near the WTC when the first tower fell were walking by, covered in dust and soot. They looked like ghosts and people in the street just stared at them and sobbed.

At this point, it was unclear if there were going to be other attacks, so we all decided to head somewhere safe and get out of lower manhattan. I threw on my running shoes and ran from Canal St. to 34th st, where I caught a bus to 59th st, then ran home to 105th st. I spent the rest of the day with my roommates watching tv and calling friends and family to make sure others were safe. I remember that some of my friends working on Wall St were stuck in buildings and couldn’t leave until later in the day.

Memories of 9/11 have entered my thoughts, either conscious or sub-conscious, just about every day since then. I left NYC in Dec 2002, as I didn’t really feel comfortable or safe living in the city that I loved. Now that it’s been 5 years since 9/11 and I’ve been in San Francisco for a few years, I maintain a level of awareness that those who weren’t in manhattan wouldn’t comprehend. It was probably post-traumatic stress disorder at some points (fear riding the subway, looking at bridges just to make sure they’re still there, police sirens creating worries), but I’ve now come to terms with it and don’t have these fears any longer. Maybe I’ve accepted that it’s just a different world that we live in now.

Christian

Adieu Andre

The 2006 US Open has been billed as the Andre Agassi http://www.agassiopen.com Agassi has been one of the most charasmatic and exciting players in tennis over the last 20 years and it’s sad to see him leave, especially in the poor physical condition that he’s in.

The Agassi story line for the ‘06 Open attracted a lot of attention in the early rounds and seemed to overshadow the terrific drama unfolding.

As a tennis fan and Agassi fan, I would have rather seen Andre leave in better shape, like last year when he had a terrific match w/ James Blake and played Federer in the US Open final.

Anyway, looks like a good final match is going to happen. Federrer vs. Nadal/Roddick/Hewit ?