Waaaagh!

I remember those days... days when you had a product that was cool but there was no way to capitalize on it. Our society pokes fun at bad business concepts - the scotch tape boutique, flanders leftorium, tyco... hell pud makes a living letting people piss all over these idiotic wastes of money.
Over the years I've seen board rooms drop tens of millions of dollars on bad business models... huge successful businesses drop hundreds of millions on software development projects that were fundamental misunderstandings of the market... and worked with hugely successful companies throwing money down the toilet of consulting firms and SAP faster than 18yr old boys can veer off the path of righteousness in amsterdam.
Over all these years, having been an executive and having had to deal with multimillion dollar budgets etc - there's one thing that's clear. An MBA is oft times a certificate of Snakeoil. Seldom have I encountered a consultant or a vendor who had the best interest of my business at heart - and that was less and less likely the more 'educated' they were.
So today we have Youtube - a bigger pile of DMCA violations than ISOhunt and Torrentspy combined - sitting back and saying to themselves 'ok - we've attracted an audience (albeit using OTHER people's content that we had no right to use) - how can we monetize it? (because honestly the bandwidth and server costs are killing us)'.
So what's their answer?

Paris Hilton

That's right... the business model doesnt work? just make up a new one midstream... it's the late 90s all over again. There's a business in branded podcasts - well, there are a bunch of people who've invested heavily in it as the next 'big thing' in push-media - but it doesnt work. I have a friend who was talking to a media firm in california that wanted more money than it would have cost to advertise on the superbowl for a 10-15 second sponsorship of a podcast. Idiots. Odd - no one seems interested - fancy that.

Still... honestly... oh sure, most people who think 'tube' and 'paris' are thinking metro (ok, maybe not...) - but if I were thinking of wanting to find paris hilton on a youtube-type site it'd probably be somewhere else. (nsfw... duh...)