What Could YouTube Be Worth?

An anonymous reader writes "C|Net has a story about the possible cost of YouTube. Sony just paid $65 Million for small-time videosharing outfit 'Grouper'. That site has around 1% of the videosharing market. The article asks, at that price, what might YouTube's 43% be worth?" From the article: "Entertainment analysts have predicted in recent weeks that sites with large followings would command a high price. The Sony deal proved them right. But while the Grouper deal helped establish a benchmark, there is still plenty of confusion about the fair value of online video companies. This is because the typical metrics for measuring a company appear to have gone out the window--just like they did during the bubble years of the late 1990s."

$65 mil * (43%/1%) = ???

[Tim_sama]

I'm thinking $2.795 Billion.

This is some sort of trick question, right?

I don't know

[Anonymous Coward]

what might YouTube's 43% be worth?

I don't know, but I thought it was higher before I saw this [youtube.com].

Re:$2,795,000,000

[Jesterboy]

Too conservative; I'm thinking 5 hojillion.

Dollars.

Canadian dollars.

Uh waaahhh?

[Mayhem178]

Entertainment analysts have predicted in recent weeks that sites with large followings would command a high price.

In other news, Entertainment analysts also predicted unanimously that tomorrow the sun will rise. Other predictions include that next week will have exactly 1 Monday and that Elvis and Jimmy Hoffa will not be candidates for the 2008 Presidential election.

More at 11.

Re:Youtube may be worth the hardware they run on..

[imemyself]

Even if YouTube were to go bankrupt tomorrow, someone would still pay *big* bucks for their domain name. Probably someone like Google, Yahoo, or MS.

Re:Bubble Business Model?

[joe_bruin]

Duuuuuude, shut up. You're ruining it for the rest of us. Give me a few more years to ride around on my Razor scooter between the Aeron chairs, developing cool software with no regard to ever making any money, getting company-sponsored lunch and free soda, and collecting worthless stock certificates for IPOs that will never happen. Those of you that missed the bubble the first time around: it's a good time to be an engineer, enjoy it. Find a job where culture is everything. Get a raise every six months. Meet a girl with a nose ring. Do cool shit, work hard, have fun, live it up. Eventually it will all blow over and we'll all have to get the blue out of our hair, so try to enjoy it while it lasts.

Re:Wait for the revolution

[Anonymous Coward]

Then the intellectual property barons came out and put a quick end to that dream. It's sad, really, when you think of what the Internet could have been.

But someone has to pay for the tubes!

Re:Way to make money ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that's +5, Informative!

Re:Way to make money ...

[jrmiller84]

In other news, XTube.com's user base grows exponentially after a slashdotting.

Re:Way to make money ...

[danfromsb]

Not only is this informative, it is a link to porn!

I think you should ask like Emmalina like...

[syousef]

"...because like, you know, like well, it's hard to explain but like it's really good, y'know."

Yes that's enough from some silly teen bimbo shaking her backside on YouTube and thinking she's made a revolutionary discovery.

What's it worth? Very little. Probably a little for the interface, a little for the interface, and a little for the brand name recognition. What will greedy morons pay? Who knows! Stopped trying to predict that during the .com boom. It seems

Re:Way to make money ...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"I think I should remind everyone that pornotube has 99% gay (male) content."

What'd you think 'tube' meant?