Bandwidth costs. A lot.
Youtube is heading to about 500 million losses this year, a huge reality check for the streaming mogul. How can you be one of the most important websites in the world, clicked by hundreds of millions every day, and still lose (a lot of) money? Web 2.0 still didn’t find a way to monetize the potential. Think about Susan Boyle: about 100 millions views of her “Talent show fairytale”: how much money Youtube had loss on this, and how much money “Britain got Talent” made? The advantages for the uploader are the disadvantages for the host. Doesn’t really make sense, in an economical point of view.
Check out this really interesting article, “Youtube is doomed” by Benjamin Wayne.
