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A few days ago news broke that Comedy Central had requested YouTube take down a bunch of video clips from their shows, including The Daily Show, South Park, and The Colbert Report. They have the right to do so under copyright law and the DMCA, of course, but the fact that they hadn't bothered for such a long time made me think that maybe they understood why YoutTube works.

Did the takedown notice mean they didn't get it after all? Were their lawyers just procrastinating? It looks like they do get it, after all - YouTube and Viacom have reached a licensing agreement.

Now I'm not arguing that Comedy Central and other content producers aren't within their rights to demand their clips be taken down, or that watching commercial content for free is a basic human right, or anything like that. But I will argue that in most cases, they shouldn't.

First, linkrot is bad. Every time someone searches YouTube or reads a blog entry and the video is no longer available, you've made a mistake. Want to drive traffic and attention to your content? At the very least, put it somewhere and leave it there for a while. Make sure it has a stable URL, so that if 10,000 bloggers want to show it to their readers they won't have to rip and host video themselves, can find and post it easily, and are driving traffic and veiwership data directly to one place.

This is the long tail. This is why the web works so well, and why YouTube and similar sites work so much better than weird embedded or streaming media that doesn't really fit on the web. Not only can 10,000 bloggers link to it on day 1, but people will still be running across Stephen Colbert coining the word truthiness a week, month, or year later. Use the web to do things you can't with broadcast TV.

Second, providing or allowing bits of content out for free on a regular basis can be much better than advertising. Here's some anecdotal evidence. There are only a few reasons why I might get cable or satellite again, and two of them are Comedy Central and Cartoon Network. When I moved and didn't bother getting cable hooked up, for a little while I really missed The Daily Show. Months later, when I started seeing links to clips on YouTube on blogs, emailed by friends, etc., it reminded me how much I missed the Daily Show and I got interested in the Colbert Report as well. This has made me reconsider getting cable.

Now, surely content producers like Comedy Central can't just sit idly by while some web site makes money off their content. They have two options which take advantage of the web and don't destroy value:

1) Actually compete. Improve video offerings on comedycentral.com so they function like YouTube clips. They would still not have the critical mass of YouTube but at least writers, bloggers and emailers could still link to them and they are still a real part of the web. Provide community tools, make uploading easy, and toss in a contest to get the best user-contributed videos run on the station and you might be able to beat YouTube at their own game.

2) License with Youtube. This is a little tricky, but it is possible to work out a contract that benefits both sides. One of the annoyances of YouTube is inconsistency, so official Daily Show and Colbert Report clips from Comedy Central would benefit YouTube. In exchange, Comedy Central gets free video hosting (not a bad deal), access to Youtube's viewership (including possible listings in the top videos), and access to YouTube's community. I still think Google will fix video ads just like they fixed online ads, so this could be a money making venture for both.

Viacom and Comedy Central have decided to go with option 2, but how many producers go with neither option, and just send out take down requests?

As you've probably heard, Google has bought Youtube.

There has been a lot of talk about this on the web over the past few days. Now that the deal is done, some people are just glad it's over. Om Malik still thinks it's not a good idea in the long run. others think that only Google has the advertising muscle to make Youtube profitable.

But I don't think it's just a matter of plastering YouTube with Adsense ads, at least I hope not for Google's sake.

Think about it this way: why didn't advertising on the Internet work before Google? Well, the banner ads were repetitive, uninteresting, and eventually became an animated, distracting annoyance. The popup ads were worse, and worse still were those disgusting Flash travesties that covered up what you were trying to read. I talk about these ads in the past tense as if they are gone, but they still lurk all over some sites.

The point is that Google took something that was a ubiquitous annoyance and turned it into something that created value for both users, site owners, and advertisers. They made ads that were:

1. Not hideous—basically they don't detract from the browsing experience.
2. Actually relevant to what a user is looking for. This is an important point, because it means that adding these ads to your site might actually provide value to your users. If they got to your page by searching for “how to get a good divorce lawyer,� they are in the market for a divorce lawyer and might find one through the ad.
3. Measurably effective for advertisers, without all sorts of “mindshare� vagueness.

Now, lets look at television advertising—is this a similar situation? If the number of TiVos and DVRs sold is any indication, people are sick of commercials. People are willing to pay money for a device that lets them skip ads. Part of the reason DVD box sets of entire seasons of television shows are so popular is that they have no ads.

Why do people hate commercials so much? They are repetitive—if you watch two hours of prime time TV you're bound to see the exact same thing 6 or 7 times. They are annoying, employing tactics to try to grab your attention, or played at a higher volume than the shows. And despite marketers best efforts, most commercials do not directly interest you.

So here's what Google can do:

Make deals with networks, studios and content producers. Google is already doing this, and it must be done to make the fun steps below possible without thousands of lawsuits.

Now, imagine you want to watch the Colbert Report. You go to YouTube, find today's episode, and watch it. At the end, there are a few commercials. They are:

1. Polite. The ads don't pop up over the video you want to see, they don't interrupt at inopportune moments of the plot, they don't jam up the volume, and they probably don't play before the video at all – most likely after, with a break or two in the middle of longer shows.

2. Relevant. It's not just a matter of targeting video ads toward keywords – like text ads, Google weighs better ads that get more responses more than crappy ads by deeper pocketed advertisers. Google might use their knowledge of your search patterns, but I doubt they will, just because they won't need to. They'll be able to mine enough from user discussions to make very good guesses about what you might be interested in seeing next or buying.

3. Measurable. Not only does YouTube have much better data on viewership than the Neilsen ratings could ever dream of, but the actual user response to the ads is trackable by clickthroughs and conversions.

If Google understands this, then they will make their 1.65 billion back and then some. If they don't understand this, I'd be more than happy to come explain it in person, just drop me a line.

All My Children recently featured a long discussion about the muscian Mike Patton. "WTF?" is as overused as standing ovations, but sometimes it fits. WTF?! It reminded me of when Ryan Starr from American Idol did a Sun0))) song. [youtube]inQlkhZr0ec[/youtube]

Do you work in an office? Do you work for a large company? Does your company have a mission statement, core values, or a bold declaration of what principles that it holds dear?

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These two clips are brilliant – and the first, more than the second, is a really interesting artifact. First, it shows that Microsoft, hated by Linux geeks and Mac fans the world over as the evil empire, has a sense of humor. Or at least, the Values Team has a sense of humor, and the latitude to have something like this made.

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The second reason this is interesting is that it makes a mockery of the notion that a company has values. Ricky Gervais' character, despite being genuinely hilarious, is a standard trope in corporate training films – the Goofus, brought in as an example of how not do do things. Even Conan O'Brien has played this part.

Usually, though, there is a corresponding Gallant character to show us the way. Not in this case - Stephen Merchant's character is distressed by what has been said, but we're not given very many examples of what these values should mean to each and every one of us.

I wonder. Are these videos just played as ice-breakers, followed by 40 minutes of more standard corporate training? Is Microsoft guerrilla marketing to their own employees, hoping that grabbing their attention will be enough to get some message across?

The first video seems to almost be an acknowledgment that, although we have yearly training and a whole team dedicated to managing them, corporate values are just expensive common sense. Every company is different, obviously, but if you read the news everyday, you're bound to get the impression that if many companies were actually (not just legally) people, they would be sociopaths with multiple personality disorder. They have Core Values too. I wonder if having values and communicating them to your employees has any correlation with ethical behavior, motivation, or success.

How does a values team measure their accomplishments? Do they get bonuses every year the CEO doesn't pull an Enron? Do they get bad reviews when the guy on the loading doc ships his personal items on the company account?

This is not to say that all this is worthless. It would be a really, really interesting research project to figure out how to even measure efficacy, and then see if they are effective. A brief look at the literature suggests it's still a big question...