The NY Times reported today that YouTube and Verizon have inked a deal that will enable consumers to view YouTube videos on their cellphones. I love the concept and its definitely the future, but this deal STINKS for a numbers of reasons.
Here are the interesting facts from the article:
* Requires a $15/month subscription to Verizon’s VCast. $15/month is completely ridiculous and overpriced.
* Users only have access to an unspecified number of videos selected and approved from YouTube. This defeats the whole foundation of what made YouTube a success – its community. They even went so far as saying that YouTube editors will select short videos and Verizon will then approve them based on their guidelines.
* Verizon has exclusive rights to distribute YouTube videos for a limited period of time.
Hopefully, no one will signup for this service and the others will open their networks up a bit so we can get some real innovation. Until then, nothing really exciting will happen in mobile. Evenutally, it will happen – I’m just not sure when.
