Sony snags Grouper video sharing site for $65 mil

In news from the "what are they thinking?" department today, Sony Pictures Entertainment has acquired video sharing site Grouper for a cool $65 million. What's that? Never heard of Grouper? You're certainly not the only one, with Nielsen/Netratings reporting just 430,000 visitors in July -- although Grouper's co-founder Josh Felser says it's actually closer to 8 million. Either way, it's well behind the current rockstar of the video sharing space YouTube, which, if you follow some analysts' reasoning, is now worth something in the $2 billion range. As a result of the deal, Grouper says it'll work with Sony to promote the company's movies and TV shows on the site. Another reason Sony apparently found Grouper particularly appealing is because it operates its own peer-to-peer network -- a way to distribute high-quality downloadable movies, perhaps? Either way, it seems a little bizzare, given Sony's Connect service, but hey, they really friggin' want you to put those clips on the PSP, because lawd knows most people aren't using it for games, or, ahem, UMD movies.

[david b @ Aug 24th 2006 4:31PM]

ive been to the website its nice (and stuff)

[Jiggsaw @ Aug 24th 2006 4:48PM]

OMFG .. Did the president of Sony kick and his 10 year old son took over while nobody was looking? JFC. Who's running the show over there? Exploding laptop batteries, The PoS3 VAPOR CONSOLE (http://tinyurl.com/jk7o5), and now throwing money at an irrelevant YouTube clone. What's next - they'll buy out yahoo auctions and hope to compete with ebay? Come to think of it they'd probably have an easier time pulling that off than trying to cut in to Youtube's popularity, becase YouTube was first-in and now they're the unstoppabe juggernaut. If someone sent me a link to a shared vid at "grouper.com" I'd delete it right off because the domain name is too lame to go any further.

..and this just in - now the Japanese government no less has ordered Sony to fix the f*ckin battery problem or face fines/shutdown. W A Y T O G O.

If you own any Sony stock (you idiot) SELL SELL SELL.

[Pedro @ Aug 24th 2006 4:55PM]

> 430,000 visitors
> says it's actually closer to 8 million

What the hell? Am I missing something here?


Anyway, I'm pretty sure that I could code a video sharing site in a couple of months (read: 8-9). I'm sure Sony could hire a team of professional code monkeys to whip something up - they sure aint buying Grouper for its existing userbase. They could have saved a packet...

[sycks @ Aug 24th 2006 5:15PM]

@jiggsaw

Honestly and I'll try t say this as non-flaming as possible. Please go outside and mingle with the rest the world. Your Sony hatred has grown to unhealthy levels, as it seems all you do now is post anti-sony gibberish or anti-sony FUD just about every day on any post about a Sony product.

Unfortunatly for the lazy ones, or for the people who don't have the time to read the whole article, your FUD is clearly a blight on the comment seection of this site.

Maybe you are paid to do this, like the Wiki watchers most public companies have now. In that case you should ask for a promotion, and take some vacation days while you're at it.

[Nick @ Aug 24th 2006 5:51PM]

I'm not sure what everyone has against SONY these days. I've only owned a few SONY products in the past but every simgle on of those products worked better than all the others that I owned.

As for this video service, I don't think that SONY is trying to take on YouTube. I read another article on this topic today on CNET which stated that YouTube may not even be worth $50 Million due to the fact that it generates revenue via advertisements and does not have any other revenue stream. (please no comments about how that is similar to google, google has a businress tructure behind what they are doing).

SONY is looking to have a video service to share and distribute it's own media. This is mothing like YouTube since SONY will be charging for everything that is downlaoded from the site.

[Kenjix @ Aug 24th 2006 7:26PM]

You got me as well, there is a lot of bad press for Sony these days and it's strange. I'm in shock about the DS outselling the PSP and the complaint about lack of good games? I feel like I'm in the twilight zone.

[bob @ Aug 25th 2006 3:47PM]

Really strange considering they HAD a video sharing site that they shut down two years ago-- little ahead of it's time. Allowed users to share and edit video online. Nice, slick ajaxie interface...

[Jake Lockley @ Aug 26th 2006 10:59PM]

Actually I think is pretty smart. Try not to think of the consumer applications alone. If Grouper is a transcoding service and Sony Pictures Entertainment Bought them (Not SOE or one of the other divisions) at thevery least they could use it to transcode and log all of their digital video for all of their productions - think dailies, ad agencies cutting commercials for approval etc, with the consumer being the long tail for all of that content. Internally it could save them at least what they paid for it in media costs - assuming they know what they are doing. Otherwise the studios would have to pay for or set up a service that third party production companies and agencies could use when they are probably saying to themselves - gee I wish this billion dollar company had asset management tools that accomplished what YouTube does.