Comments on: Cuban: Internet video progress 'disappointing'

Little has happened in 10 years, Cuban said, in part because YouTube focused on ubiquity over monetization.

[nicmart]

Imagine what Mark Cuban thinks of dull old books of the sort which have no photographs or musical buttons. It's damned near impossible to think of a way to monetize Aristotle.

[aMUSICsite]

It's like the people who said this new car thing will never take off because horses are used by everyone in the early 1900's. Back then it seemed impossible to put a petrol station in every city and village across the globe. But it happened!

YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Myspace will all find a way to make more money over time and will be the new Esso, Shell and BP of the future.

Not bing american I've never heard of Mark Cuban before, but understand he's involved with TV somehow. I remember TV, it's what we all used to look at before the internet took off...

[Police_States_of_America]

not going to happen unless bandwidth gets cheaper and we catch up to the rest of the civilized world in terms of speed. of course the mafiaa is lobbying against that with everything they can

[SIGHUP]

"not going to happen unless bandwidth gets cheaper and we catch up to the rest of the civilized world"

What civilized world are you referring to? Japan and Korean? Japan has a population density of 337 (Pop per km2) and South Korean has a population density of 498 (Pop per km2) compared to the United States of Americas 31 (Pop per km2) . It does not pay to run expensive fiber throughout the country yet. If Verizon and some of these other telcos did, you would be paying a lot more for your bandwidth.

[Police_States_of_America]

the US isnt even in top fastest connected countries and more dood. thats pretty sad

[nicmart]

Here's a thought. Maybe the people who want fast connections have them, and the people who can live with slower connections have them. Maybe what the US has that some other countries don't have is called "choice," and to eliminate choice is neither just nor economically wise.

[terminalblue]

mark cuban had a reality tv show, and he calls the internet tired.

[groink_hi]

I totally agree with Cuban. I think right now Internet video is the pits! Over the last decade, what do we have?

- We have thousands upon thousands of videos showing white people doing completely stupid stunts and pranks.
- We have millions of video blogs showing people whining about who knows what.
- We have no consistency regarding licensing of video content and other legalities. We have no agreement between anything or anyone on who owns what.
- We have way way too many so-called entrepreneurs who are practicing the usual video streaming business model: stream stuff they don't own a license for, attract billions of hits and boost their ranking, receive venture capital, and then become just another spec in one of the bigger networks.
- We have too many - far too many streaming services! I already thought cable TV had too many channels... The Internet makes the number of cable TV channels a total joke!

[aMUSICsite]

We also have people like me who have uploaded dozens of good quality videos, mostly of bands/live performances.

These have ben watch by over 100,000 people and hopefully enjoyed by most.

The bands have benefited from this by gaining exposure to audiences they never would have been able to get otherwise.

I guess if you are a greedy owner of highly profitable copyrighted owner it's not so good as it levels the playing field and cheapens the whole market. A big named group may only make thousands instead of millions, but a small independent can make thousands instead of pennies/cents.

What I don't get is how come flicker does not get the same grief/new attention for doing the same to images. I guess the people that create great images have never had the same sort of Mafia industry as the music/movie industry to rip people off.

Welcome to the 'Media revolution' just like the early 'Industrial revolution' products get cheaper with a bigger market and you have to ship more to make money. Unfortunately the 'Industrial revolution' came alongside globalization and increased the market size. For the media companies the market is stagnant.

The only options seem to be for the content creators to cut out all the people in the middle (like Mark Cuban and the other big winger Paul McGuinness, manager of U2) and sell direct to the public. That's why these people are making such a big noise. Their jobs are redundant in the new age.

[talking poo]

I like Cuban, read his blog, but I disagree with him here. The positives far outweigh the negatives.

To counter groink's points:

-Sure you have videos of ppl doing stupid pranks and stunts, but we also have 1000's of video tutorials on how to fix cars, plumbing, computers, etc...that make learning practical and free.
-Sure video blogs bring out the whiners, but that's like banning the pen & paper b/c anyone can write gibberish. Just set you RSS reader to the few good vloggers you respect, ignore the rest.
-Having too many entrepreneurs is better than having too little.
-Like any new fad there are always "too many" in the beginning, I'm sure as the streaming service industry matures they will consolidate. Having too many cable channels is different than having too many internet channels. Internet is all about on-demand and choice. Watch what you want, When you want, If you want.

In the last 10 years Internet video has been a game changer. HD Streaming Video from studios (Hulu, Netflix), Instant News Breaks (CNN, ESPN), Videos for the everyday person (Youtube), Quality mobile video (Iphone, Pre). All this has been nothing short of inspiring. Save $60/mo by not paying for cable. Another $100/yr--at least--by not going to the movies as often. And another $100/yr by not renting or purchasing DVDs aside from Netflix.

[C0mmanderB0nd]

Cuban is a spinster who now has a big pile of money from Yahoo overpaying for Broadcast.com back in the day, with which he bought a basketball team.

So now he gets to big the worlds biggest dallas mavericks fan as well as the owner of the team, and in his free time he gets to flaunt his opinions on technology.

In fact just a few weeks ago when he wasn't pretending to be a "tech expert" he was telling Kenyan Martin's mother, who is from Dallas that her son was a thug or a punk or something distasteful to yell at someones mother. He was quite a poor sport considering this was after the Nuggets just beat his Mavericks in Dallas in another disappointing playoff showing for his team.

[sam99999999]

Yeah--I've never understood why Cuban is considered a digital luminary and why the media is so apt to quote him. He's no Steve, Bill, or Larry.

Cuban was smart enough to get an internet business going "back in the day". But his business was as big a fraud as the rest of the pet-sock dot coms. Cuban was extremely lucky that Yahoo was dumb enough to cash him out. That doesn't translate into him being a seer.

It seems fairly disingenuous that in this article (and others) Cuban is basically bashing all that he earlier hyped and sold to Yahoo. It basically makes him out to be a huckster.

[MarketBug]

I'm sorry, Mr. Cuban, but aside from your endless rants as a technology "expert," I don't really find much boring about the Internet.

If you're talking about mainstream, highly accessible, widely distributed, free video content, then yeah, there's really only one player in the game (esp. now that word is spreading about Hulu starting to charge for access to at least some of its content). But really, who wants in on that game? Why would I go through all the trouble of producing a video just to ship it into the vast video void that is YouTube? Too many marketers are crossing their fingers and hoping videos go viral -- it just doesn't work that way.

As a member of the generation behind Mr. Cuban, I'll say this: if the creators of digital media can't figure out what we, the Open-Source Generation, want, then they are too blind or too stupid to deserve our attention. We want compelling content tailored to our specific interests delivered directly to us the moment it becomes available. That should be easy, but no one's doing it.

Lots of people, Mr. Cuban included, are complaining about it, but no one's doing it.