First, of all, cool name.

YouTube irrelevant? No, not my point here. It’s still a viable, wonderful resource. It’s still the major player in the online video world. My point was that it wasn’t so essential by itself that major media outlets see it as a must for their own content.

We’re not likely to see any one dominant source for all video.

I used to watch some NBC content on YouTube.. about once in a blue moon, but I did watch the occasional Heroes clip. Most of the content I’ve watched there is strikingly independent. I don’t consider the loss of NBC from there to be a significant one. It’s no different than the same kinds of content that was pulled from google before, but YT has the readers, and the community around it.

I think NBC pulling it’s content is a part of the same strategy they pulled with Apple: “Produce the content, own the content, position the content, sell the content. Do what we know how to do, because there just isn’t anything happening over there (there meaning Apple or YouTube) we shouldn’t have full control of.”

This wasn’t anything I wasn’t expecting NBC to do, and both Apple and Google were fools if they actually believed NBC wasn’t eventually going to go somewhere. It’s a miracle in this day and age that Google and Apple held on to NBC as long as they did in their respective presentation models. NBC could have started up an initiative right away to set up their own site that held their own content and they could have begun selling it at the same horribly high prices they sell merchandise for at the NBC store in New York…

NBC’s gone the right way at least with Hulu, and holding off selling the content outright and just getting it done and paid for with advertising.

However, I don’t this will render YouTube irrelevant. There are millions of people using YouTube for distributing their privately produced content that continues to generate huge views. Add to that when Google gets into more content creation, we might see YouTube as a real competing network, competing directly with the likes of NBC and NewsCorp. In the meantime Hulu’s got a long way to go for me to consider YouTube irrelevant.

Anyway, just some thoughts.