The Frank Caliendo Effect

I, Cringely: Sony's purchase of Grouper is about market research, not market share. "This video sharing business fascinates me because right now it is a shell game built on a shell game.

The opportunity, then, is for you and me to start a business that further leverages this financially risky double play. One such example is comedian/impressionist Frank Caliendo (it's in this week's links), who sells direct his own very funny DVDs using a simple web site stocked with video hosted for free on YouTube and others. This guy has to be making a killing and it costs him almost nothing. Who needs a studio or network deal with a system like that?

Sony is actually doing something a lot smarter than Murdoch: the studio is buying market research... The success of YouTube (and Grouper) scares the studios because it shows the market no longer values the slick production values of major films. This, along with global marketing, is the major strength the studios have long thought they brought to the film business. If some kid can get hundreds of thousands of views of a video showing him lighting farts, how can Sony compete with that? They can't.

The sad part, of course, is that we have to sit through so much crappy content, but that's yet another market opportunity for companies to harness technology to help us find the stuff we really want... Of course, the biggest challenge of all is finding a way to make money from this content business, but here Google is again rising to the task. Or at least appears to be doing so, as CEO Eric Schmidt revealed earlier this month that the search giant plans to bring targeted advertising sales to the $74 billion U.S. TV market."