Marketing Pilgrim

I’m pretty sure that if it were not for its enormous size and price tag, Google would have shutdown YouTube along with all the other services that couldn’t turn a profit for the search giant. As it stands, Google has so much invested in the video sharing service that to fail would likely wipe at least a dollar from its share price.

So, it’s not surprising that Google has announced yet another business model for YouTube, this time it’s hoping a combination of new shows and movies, combined with new Google TV Ads Online, will inject something into its bottom line.

I know it has everything to do with journalistic integrity and it is the right thing to do but when a newspaper the stature of the New York Times reports on the cuts it must make to its sections to ‘survive’ it’s still sad.

The Times announcement is almost dog piling the evidence of just how bad things are for newspapers in the current environment. We have reported it here quite bit but it is important for the Internet marketing crowd to see what is happening to be able to see what opportunities may arise from this shift in the balance of power in media.

Despite a 3% drop in revenue from the previous quarter, Wall Street seems content with the numbers Google just posted for Q1, handing the company a 5% share price increase in after hours trading.

To be honest, I’m not shocked by the decline. After all, Google has been aggressive in trimming the fat–both in services and personnel–and CEO Eric Schmidt has sent many warning signals over the past few weeks. His Q1 statement was equally balanced between optimism and caution:

"Google had a good quarter given the depth of the recession–while revenues were down quarter over quarter, they grew 6% year over year, thanks to continued strong query growth. These results underline both the resilience of our business model and the ongoing potential of the web as users and advertisers shift online," said Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. "Going forward, our priority remains investing for the long term to drive future growth in our core and emerging businesses."

Ning has hit a pretty significant milestone reports cnet. The social network enabler has just seen its one millionth network set up. This was accomplished in two years which makes the number even more impressive (average of 1,370 networks started per day).

Of course, it doesn’t hurt when Marc Andreessen is a co-founder and the timing was good considering the upswing in popularity of social marketing / media / networking over the past two years. The flip side of that is the possibility that the folks at Ning had a pretty accurate crystal ball and called this one pretty well. Either way, being good fortune or recognizing opportunity the success is there.

Ning has overcome its fair share of adversity as well.

Conflicting reports, none confirmed, are circulating today about Facebook’s latest attempts at raising funding. TechCrunch says that Facebook has been shopping itself around at a $4 billion valuation somewhat unsuccessfully, while VentureBeat says they just decided not to accept funding at that level.

In October 2007, Facebook announced a major deal with Microsoft—1.6% of the company for $240 million, placing the overall valuation at $15 billion. However, in the intervening eighteen months, the company’s speculated value has fallen off, being projected as low as $5 billion last June. By October 2008, many sources thought Facebook was headed for financial ruin.

TechCrunch’s story is that Facebook is having trouble coming up with new funding:

While Gannett and the newspaper industry had a chance to celebrate last week for the first time in a long time it appears that the party has been raided and closed down today.

While the news of investment last week by Ariel Investments was welcomed even that was short lived as noted in the WSJ on Monday. You see there are some serious games being played with Gannett and all are happening with full knowledge of the fact the newspaper advertising industry is spiraling downward as quickly as ever.

Today at All Things Digital the real news on Gannett was given as they delivered their Q1 numbers. First, the ‘good’ news. The company’s earnings per share beat the street by a penny. Ok, not so bad. In addition, the company did generate $1.38 billion in revenue which is a very big number although it fell short of the $1.44 billion estimate.