Friday, May 18, 2007

eric schmidt doesn't care about 16th century literature

Tom Friedman from The New York Times is interviewing Eric Schmidt, CEO from Google, who, by the way, is a great storyteller.

Friedman asked Eric to talk about YouTube and where he believes it will go. After earlier discussing the impact of search on reputation, Schmidt made the point that video has an even greater impact on reputation. For example, if you heard that a politician took a long time to get his hair blow styled, it would not have the same impact as seeing as a video of it; former Senator George Allen (R-VA) saw how impactful a snippet of video could be.

As far as where YouTube is going, Schmidt is a believer in the "long tail" and doesn't think that YouTube will evolve into adopting a more current commercial broadcast model. For example, he doesn't give a sh*t about 16th century literature, but for someone out there, that information is the most important thing in the world. There are enough people, with enough diverse interests and needs to ensure that the need for the diverse and seemingly useless content on YouTube will persist.

You can follow the "official" live blog from the Personal Democracy Forum.

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