Verizon Wireless is hoping to parlay YouTube’s reputation as the premiere Web site for posting and sharing homemade videos into success for its own mobile-video service by delivering YouTube clips to subscribers of its premium V Cast service starting next month.
The deal is expected to be officially announced later today and launch next month but it’s important to note that you won’t be paying $15 per month for the YouTube you know and love. Nope, the video service will be a part of V Cast, Verizon’s multimedia hub, and won’t be a replication of the content you get on the actual YouTube Web site.
There is no chance this is successful. YouTube is successful because you can do a quick search, and find whatever video you were looking for. Your friend mentions that he saw this great video clip of something, and you go to YouTube, and there it is. You watch, it’s funny, you tell your friend, “Hey, I saw that, it was funny.”
Now, with Verizon’s YouTube-branded substitute, your friend mentions a video, you search VerizonTube, and you get a one minute clip of “24” made specially for your cell phone. You go to your friend, telling him you couldn’t find it, and he stops returning your phone calls.
It doesn’t make any sense to me. YouTube had a hugely successful idea. Now, Verizon thinks they can come in and copy YouTube without the user community that made it popular, and be successful? That’s just stupid. What they’re really doing is more like making a mobile version of network television with the YouTube brand to generate interest.
I hope Verizon loses a ton of money on this, and it teaches them (and the idiots who will no doubt follow them) a lesson. And it’s annoying, because I need a new phone, and I currently have a Verizon phone. I know that if I go to the Verizon store, they’re going to push stupid VCast junk at me that I don’t want.