Google formally announced on Monday that it had acquired Next New Networks, a Web video production company.
We all love videos of babies biting fingers and cats doing funny things but thankfully Google can see more potential in YouTube.
The big G themselves won't be producing its own content, they've made that very clear "We want to make as clean a line as possible for us to build the platform on YouTube and then let the content production happen with our partners," said Tom Pickett, director of global content operation at YouTube.
What's happening is Google knows that the majority of us visit YouTube watch a video and then leave but Google wants to keep us there for longer thus they are looking into bringing groups of videos, AKA programming and longer, more film like videos to their website.
One of the ways they'll do this is by dishing out grants and training and working with the newly acquired Next.
Remember the 'bed intruder song' well it was Next that transformed that from a single 200,000 viewed funny video to a multi-million viewed video series.
This is exactly the type of thing Google are working on. Popular groups of videos which encourage the viewer to come back regularly for the latest instalment. YouTube sopa opera anyone?
One thought on “YouTube’s Next Move”
This is very shrewd move by Google. Although YouTube attracts more visitors than any other site they still can’t keep viewers there for as long as sites like netflix or megavideo. Maybe Google should think about allowing users to simply post longer videos – 15 minutes is a bit tight!