YouTube hit pay dirt with the purchase by Google for 1.6 billion!  Believe it or not YouTube has been around for less than two years.  During this period they built a community that attracted over 20 million unique visitors per month.  The business model sounds similar to another recent story headlined ‘Skype bought by eBay’.  I have read with interest the debate on whether YouTube ‘sold out’ to the big goliath and will lose its value because it will not hold its edge or community support in the segment it helped spawn.  Others say this is the infancy of the world of internet media and in order to sustain a lead, capital is required. Therefore the partnership was necessary or YouTube would not survive the coming onslaught. Most of the time there are truths to each argument.  A YouTube member may consider the loss of autonomy like their lost innocence of childhood.  Yet who can deny the reward to the YouTube founders and employees. 

A larger question this poses to me is: When does your creative idea taken from inception to a viable tangible product become larger than the owner themselves?  At what point does the intellectual property have legs such that it can take over - relegating the originator(s) to the back seat for the ride and letting another driver control its destiny?

Happy Nuking!
Chris Chodnicki
Bi4ce