The entertainment industry, particularly television, has long despised social networking sites such as MySpace and even YouTube because they cannot control the content, distribution, and therefore, the ad dollars—a model that everyone in entertainment is desperately trying to preserve. The results are that many companies in media and entertainment have attempted to create their own social network with their own content to compete and gain eyeballs—from which to attract advertisers. The latest creation in this mad dash to create a social network is “Bebo,” the terribly named “Open Media” venture by Turner, CBS, MTV, BBC, and Sky, among others, which is intended to offer branded content in channels that consumers can then sort through and put into favorite buckets and supposedly share with friends.
The idea is to pull all of these entertainment properties together to get users to come in under 1 umbrella with 1 entry point, from which consumers can then scatter to various branded content, from which advertisers can spew out ads on various channels which the broadcast channels can then keep. However the point that Bebo creators are missing is that the value of YouTube and MySpace models allow consumers/users the ability to promote their own creations and find out new content that never even makes it to the mainstream: It’s a pull model vs. push model of old-school media. New media, such as MySpace and YouTube are all about creating one’s own content and sharing, not going to content from media companies, whereby then such media companies can target ads.
The stupidity of Bebo (other than the name), is that the creators think they can create a destination whereby people will actually create water coolers around their content. The bad logic continues as Richard Cohen, commercial director of Premium TV, among the broadcasters behind Bebo says, “The idea of trying to drive people to your own site is now defunct.” And yet, isn’t that exactly what they too are trying to do through Bebo? Drive viewers to their newly created aggregate media destination? He goes on to say, “You have to recognize where people are and want to be and capture their attention there, not dictate where they should be. Plus, this gives us the ability to monetize—it’s a natural extension to syndication.”
It’s almost funny that Mr. Cohen doesn’t even see the flaw in his own logic in that first, he’s trying to get people to come to his destination, Bebo, from which to control their content distribution and ads; and then claims that you have to go where people already are to monetize. Clearly, the broadcasters behind Bebo think that hordes of people want to go to their sites for their content, which is a 2nd mistake. At Label Networks, our primary data has shown for years that TV viewership among today’s youth culture continues to decrease as TV simply loses traction as a main destination for entertainment among 13-25-year-olds. As we’ve noted in our Global Studies, today’s generation of entertainment watchers want control to not only watch what they want (which is becoming less and less dependent on mainstream broadcasts), when they want to watch it, and how they want to watch it: Grainy, fuzzy resolution, even tiny cell phone vids, are really “OK” of this means they can get the story (or create it) when they want it and share it. (Bebo reminds us of another poorly planned idea when Anhauser Busch actually spent millions to create Bud TV until someone realized they didn’t know the marketplace, dynamics of new consumers and entertainment patterns, and scrapped it.)
Media companies have invested so much in the ad-driven model that when it comes to new media, almost every solution for revenue continues to stem around this antiquated concept simply because that’s what they know. Models like Revver or even YouTube contacting video creators to attach relevant ads (not remnant “Punch the Monkey” ads) googled when finding relevant videos in an ad-share affiliate program with the creators, is simply not enough revenue for most mainstream broadcasters who are used to eating the entire pie. It’s all very Grinch-like. Ironcially in the midst of new media outings, Rupert Murdoch struck on brilliance when he bought MySpace at the same time as selling exclusive rights to Google for the ads, which was for more than he paid for MySpace. Google basically helped Murdoch buy MySpace (and IGN) for contextual ads.
But back to Bebo, Joanna Shields, President of Bebo in a recent article goes on to say that the spectrum of “social networking is evolving beyond utilities and applications. Bebo is a social media network where culture and content come together and people use media and entertainment as a form of self-expression.” The question is, whose entertainment is she talking about? What’s so inspirational about saying your favorite TV show is XYZ? That’s not at all how a 15-year-old is using a social network like MySpace or self-created entertainment center like YouTube.
If ever there was a more blatant example of a new media/technology/entertainment Generation Gap, it is now with the “new vision” of Bebo. And yet, according to Advertising Age, Bebo is the 3rd largest social networking site in the U.S. and largest in the UK with a core audience of 16-24-year-olds. In the past 7 years that Label Networks has tracked global youth culture, including the U.S. and the UK, and attracting equally cutting-edge Fortune 500 subscriber clients our data has never shown that Bebo has even scratched the surface among top preferences in social online networks among this age group in either country.
So while Bebo gets hyped as the new YouTube (mostly by the media broadcasters creating Bebo) we say YouTube really doesn’t have much to fear quite yet.
