TRAACKR

By Laurent Liscia and Pierre-Loic Assayag

After reading Mark Cuban’s latest angry post about the unavoidable failure of “a la carte” online video, we decided to wait a day before commenting thinking that Mark was probably still upset by the Mavericks getting spanked by New Orleans last week…

But another post in NewTeeVee today by Liz Gannes, reacting to Cuban’s prompted us to not hold back any longer. Liz made some good counter points to Cuban’s post, especially the fact the legacy model where big dollars meet expensive shows can not be the benchmark for the success or failure of online video. Small productions are already catering to niche audiences very successfully and are pushing legacy models upmarket. If you read Clayton Christensen, this is a typical case of disruptive model surreptitiously moving incumbents towards seemingly more profitable customer groups – until the point they marginalize themselves.

A critical point was barely touched on by NewTeeVee though. Cuban, quoting Craig Moffett of Bernstein Research, reinforces the all-too-often-accepted view that there are only 2 ways to create sustainable revenue models for user generated content: pay for content or ads. This very simplistic and bipolar view of a much more diverse and complex issue is subversive as it incites people to only think of solutions inside that box while we should all be thinking about new ways to capture the value in this new market.

The pay-for-content or ad-based models represent 2 extreme and cartoonish perspectives on ways to capture the value of web content. If we believe that value is created by content producers, measuring that value is the first step towards finding ways to monetize it.

Further, the emphasis on monetization per se is bizarre. Isn’t UGC about individual expression vs. business-plan-driven editorial policies? We’re not making a value judgment here, just making an economic point. People are using their content as a way to heighten their profile in the real and offline world – either to advance their careers, make a splash, or create a movement.

Corporations may be fixated on monetization. Marketers, however, are beginning to understand that influence is a valuable intangible.

BTW, this is a very serious trend even venerable government institutions such as the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia are beginning to try and put a dollar figure on intangible assets. No doubt, a day will come when parental investment in rearing their kids, society’s effort to educate young people, and artistic production that moves people to feel and want a better life will be accounted for.

Similarly, influence will be quantified (and note that quantified does not necessarily mean monetized). This is what we’re doing at Traackr with our buzz, popularity and reach scores, which will soon be translated into play dollars. Look out for Traackr dollars in the third quarter of 2008.