Wednesday, December 30, 2015

YouTube Enters into Crowdfunding

written by 
Crowdfunding Expert
Updated December 08, 2015.
Appeared in crowdfunding.about.com on December 08, 2015
Quietly, Google has been making its way into crowdfunding in a big way (What is crowdfunding?).
It hasn't done so by launching large, splashy rewards-based crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter or peer to peer lending networks like Lending Club. 
Instead, Google is placing its bets on existing platforms with money from its investment arm, Google Ventures. And rightly so, Google is positioned atop a list of the top investors in crowdfunding and it's done so with investments in equity crowdfunding platforms Angel List and CircleUp and peer to peer lender, Lending Club.
Lending Club's CEO, Renaud Laplanche said about Google's investment in his firm:
We believe our relationship with Google will be very helpful in better serving our customers. We couldn’t be more excited to have them on board.
When you look at Google's investment activity in the crowdfunding space, it's clear that the firm believes in the potential of crowdfunding. But some news that the search/technology firm dropped today may point to a more hands on approach it will be taking to crowd funding in the future.

Google Announces That YouTube Will Launch Crowdfunding
With a video and blog post, Google announced some new changes it would be making to the creation tools for publishers of videos on its video network, YouTube.
One of those changes would be that YouTube would be joining the crowdfunding excitement.
Here's why: Google monetizes the billions of videos watched on YouTube by showing advertisements to viewers. In turn, YouTube shares those revenues with the producers of such videos. But here's the thing: a lot of those videos are made to promote products and services sold off of YouTube.
Once someone clicks off a video, YouTube loses the opportunity to make more money off a user.
So, this new announcement that Google would begin providing a mechanism for viewers to directly pay the makers of videos on YouTube changes the rules of the game.
YouTube Product Manager Rehan Ratnatungha explained:
“The problem is, a lot of this funding happens off YouTube. So I’ve been thinking about we can do this directly on YouTube, allowing fans to fund the creators that they really love.”

How will YouTube inject crowdfunding into videos?

Sources say that many content creators on YouTube have voiced their frustration that advertising revenues have been dropping over time. That's actually lead to a few of the larger publishers to leave YouTube in search of better revenue-producing platforms.
YouTube -- and parent, Google -- recognize the potential size of the crowdfunding market (expected to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars in the future), so it's working hard to collaborate with the Kickstarters and Indiegogos of crowdfunding. 
Unfortunately, Google's announcement didn't give more details on what crowdfunding would look like or how crowdfunding would work on YouTube, but that hasn't stopped analysts, journalists, and bloggers from speculating.
YouTube has been cooperating with crowdfunding sites for some time; Kickstarter and Indiegogo were some of the first external websites that video producers could link to via video annotations. The video service didn’t offer any additional details on what its own crowdfunding features will look like, but given that history, it’s possible that YouTube will try to complement Kickstarter rather than directly compete with it.
If people can put a few bucks in the virtual tip jar without visiting another website, that could be more convenient.
The iconic Veronica Mars stands as an industry touchpoint  for the power of crowdfunding to finance films that may have not found studio backing.  While there is no indication YouTube is getting into the film production industry for tentpole movies – a successful funding structure would certainly aid in setting a strategic tack to head in that direction.
Whether it's financing new forms of movies or just providing a mechanism to donate money to video creators, it's clear that Google is intent on investment more money -- and resources -- into ensuring that it's a dominant force in the crowdfunding industry.






Insane but perfectly feasible crowd sourcing and crowd funding predictions for 2016.

written by James de Rin in London

Apple will buy Netflix …and here’s why? Apple has been stalled out the gate with their content play, Apple TV package, they abandoned it last month because they could not get the rights to the content they wanted they have left it too late!  Tim Cook’ strategy will be to go shopping with the $200 billion he has in cash. Apple will buy Netflix for $50 billion. The algorithm Netflix has created and the deal it has in play and the market mover advantage will kick start Apple TV to form Apple Content.  The 60,000,000 Netflix  subscribers watch content and tell Netflix by what they click on and for how long and what they watch and when will actually crowd source the data Netflix needs to keep going. To put a crowd sourcing and crowd funding spin on it Apple could fund new content from the 60,000,000 subscribers at $10.00 a month on top of the Netflix existing membership payment, as a standalone investment vehicle to create a Netflix crowd funded studio actually modeled on Disney’s Silver Screen Partners Fund from the 1980s to fund new content that the public have shares in. Imagine not only be a member of Netflix but actually an investor in their content pipeline and get a credit and a return on your investment if they knock it out of the park. Imagine $600,000,000 crowd funded each month for Netflix to create new content for Apple TV. Netflix Studio, Netflix independent, Netflix documentary, Netflix theatre and on and on…In 2016 Netflix will spend $3 billion on new content, imagine Apple owning Netflix letting it run as a standalone but with a crowd funding fund that replenishes every month and is not on the balance sheet of Netflix as debt.  Talk about Crowd Source Capital!

or

 Disney will buy Netflix… and here’s why? Because of Bob Iger’ existing relationship with Netflix and his penchant for acquiring content rights so far Pixar, Marvel and now George Lucas it makes total sense to acquire the pipeline for content distribution that leads the world. With ESPN falling off a cliff with traditional cable unbundling like expanding foam why not transition ESPN and content to Netflix make it the pipe of content distribution as traditional dies off. Just imagine all the Star Wars content available one movie at a time on Netflix how many would join just to sign up for each film and remain hooked…As Disney is in the content business why not have the public crowd fund a second tier of content for you and give them risk with reward how exciting would that be…

The Salvation Army charity buys Kickstarter or Indiegogo! Now that Kickstarter and Indigogo are proven business models for rewards crowd funding how about the Salvation Army buying www.Kickstarter.com or www.Indigogo.com with what you say? On January 20th 2004 the Salvation Army received $1.5 billion from Joan Kroc’ wife of McDonald’s founder… she died on October 12th 2003. The $1.5 billion went to building community centers all 35 of them. So the money has been spent, but not leveraged as of yet. However with this model they would have a perpetual income every year. Add www.justgiving.com and they would be a power house in the crowd funding  and charity space. 

Google Ventures decides to invest further in the crowd sourcing and crowd funding space in crowd and on line funding platforms. They have already invested $17,000,000 on top of $42,000,000 in On Deck Capital  which raised $200,000,000 in an IPO in 2014 and before that Google invested $125,000,000 in www.Lendingclub.com which floated the same year. So Google Ventures makes a play for www.fundingcircle.com and www.crowdcube.com I am expecting a call from Google Ventures to my office here at www.crowdsourcecapital.com. Just kidding...Google Ventures targets on line platforms specializing in the provision of debt. (see You Tube Enters into Crowd funding by Zack Miller. YouTube will announce in 2016 a new platform partnership between YouTube and crowd funding. It already owns stakes in Angel List and Circle Up.

That’s all my predictions folks…see you in 2016