YaTube: Yahoo Considers Its Own Tube

[Turk.]

By Peter Kafka March 28, 2014, 3:03 PM PDT

Google-owned YouTube hasn?t had a serious competitor for years. But Yahoo would like to try: The Web giant has been working on a plan to lure some of YouTube?s most popular stars and networks to show their stuff on the site, according to several sources close to the situation.

The strategy in the works ? which Yahoo hopes to launch in the next few months ? is aimed at taking advantage of persistent complaints by both video creators and owners, who think that they don?t make enough money on YouTube.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has been mulling how to have a much bigger presence in Web video. Under her leadership, the company tried and failed to buy France?s DailyMotion and has been pushing a number of other high-profile media initiatives, such as adding television news star Katie Couric to its site.

But creating an online video service is a much bigger deal and is not just conceptual ? several industry sources say Yahoo has recently been approaching individual YouTube stars and some of the big networks now on the giant online video service.

The come-on? Yahoo executives have told video makers and owners that the company can offer them better economics than they?re getting on YouTube, either by improving the ad revenue or by offering guaranteed ad rates for their videos.
Source

[Alwaysonacoffebreak]

Youtube has been messing up so much lately and Yahoo getting some "stars" on board...it might actually work.

[+Warwagon MVC]

yatube? Lets not confuse users or anything.

[Praetor]

hey Yahoo, welcome to 2005!

[Argi]

The technical challenges of streaming large amounts of video aside, Youtube also has an incredible advantage with its wide integration into a number of products.  Xbox, Playstation, phones, TVs, Chromecast, and so on.  It's extremely hard to imagine a competitor coming in at this point.  The only company I could really see succeeding is Apple due to it's phone and tablet marketshare.  Even Microsoft would have a hard time at the moment.

[Boo Berry]

Yeah... no. Considering how insecure Yahoo has been with its own services (e.g. Messenger and Mail) in the past, no thanks.

[astropheed Veteran]

Awesome!

 

This is the kind of competition that might make Youtube stop acting like they can do whatever the hell they want and keep its users.

[+Eternal Tempest MVC]

They would also be competing with Vimeo, which is also competing with youtube.

[Quillz]

I agree that competition is always good, but I don't see this actually succeeding.