Tom Peters writes about how business used to be “ready, aim, fire!” and later it became “ready, fire! aim,” but that nowadays it’s just “Fire! Fire! Fire!” When I first conceived the idea for Video Bubble, I didn’t think about it very much before acquiring a domain, hosting, and slapping up a sign-up homepage. I figured I’d work out the details later. I knew it would be a blog about what’s happening in web video and video sharing. Since this is such a hot space right now, and will only get hotter, success seemed assured.
But the more I looked at it, the less there was to like about it. What was the business model? Nothing beyond advertising with AdSense. Who was my audience? Tech-savvy people participating in the video boom—probably the least likely group to go clicking on a bunch of ads. The traffic wouldn’t be huge, either. Other questions began to nag at me: was I really providing anything of value to anyone? It didn’t seem so: culling choice bits from a ton of press release RSS feeds is something that could (and probably should) be automated—sort of like autoblogging without the nasty spammy aspect. Would I have the time? Only if I never wanted to see my family. Without any strong contacts in the web video space, worthwhile original content would be too difficult and time-consuming.
So: little earning potential, low value proposition, plus inordinate amounts of precious life energy utilized to make it happen equals not a good idea, after all. After reading Blue Flavor’s Art of the Finish, I knew the right thing to do with Video Bubble was pull the plug on it. If you were all a-tingle with anticipation, I apologize.
Technorati Tags: video, web video, video bubble, video sharing, internet video, online video, bubble 2.0, media bubble, media 2.0, social software
