The takeover speculation continues. As Grouper CEO Josh Felser says: "All the major media companies will have meaningful, user-generated video portals within the next year ... We are at the start of a
movement and the smaller [online video] companies that don't participate in that movement will be left out."
BusinessWeek named five that it predicts will be scooped up by bigger media fish in
the coming months. YouTube--not surprisingly--tops that list, and it would be by far the most expensive, with traffic approaching 16 million uniques in July and more than 100 million videos a day. The
company wouldn't discuss acquisition speculation, but it's estimated to be worth as much as $2 billion. It's uncertain, however, whether YouTube even wants to be acquired, or whether a major media
company would want to run such an expensive site. A smaller site like Guba, which is among the Nielsen//NetRatings top 20 video sites, might be more attractive. Company CEO Tom McInerney says Guba
already has distribution deals with Warner Bros. and Sony to sell and rent their videos. He adds that the company is speaking with several companies about partnerships and a possible acquisition. It
has a "tremendous respect for Viacom," apparently. Blinkx, the video search engine, is a perennial acquisition target. The site recently partnered with Time Warner's AOL, and is actively pursuing
other technology exchange deals--but not necessarily an acquisition. Veoh, which has high-profile backers like Michael Eisner, Time Warner and Spark Capital, has more than 1.3 million U.S.
users--making it one of the top video sites on the Web. Several big media companies, including Time Warner, are said to be eyeing the company. Metacafe is the last of the magazine's video acquisition
targets. It has more than 20 million unique visitors worldwide, and streams more than 450 million videos each month.
Read the whole story at BusinessWeek »
