• Fortune, Monday, November 24, 2008 11:46 AM

Fortune's Richard Siklos wonders whether the "You" in YouTube is slowly dissolving. Big media companies are increasingly selling their "video wares" on the Google video site, which used to more prominently feature user-generated videos. Nowadays, it pays to put your video on YouTube's front page or buy placement on the site's search engine, the Web's second largest.

Recent deals with CBS and MGM Studios underscore YouTube's push to play catch-up to the amount of professional video available on sites like Hulu. Google is obviously pursuing this route because advertisers have proven to be more interested in professionally produced Web video. This way, advertisers can be certain of when and where their ads will appear. User-generated videos can guarantee neither of these things.

Moreover, Siklos claims that big media will put more full-length content online for two reasons: one, streaming content is actually harder to steal, and two, more viewers are moving to the Web, anyway, "and it's a zero-sum game." Meanwhile, user-generated content isn't going to go away, but as a business opportunity, it's probably closer to Craigslist (i.e. small margins) than it is to say. As Siklos says, "for the most part (UGC is) a cultural phenomenon, not a commercial one."

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