Fliqz

Feb 23, 2011

You have successfully emailed the post. "YouTube Is Doomed" Guy Throws In The Towel And Sells His Company Feb. 23, 2011, 1:17 PM 8,302 print Fliqz Almost two years ago, Benjamin Wayne, CEO of web video startup Fliqz , attracted a lot of attention with a guest post for this site, in which he essentially argued that YouTube was doomed . "Despite massive growth, ubiquitous global brand awareness, presidential endorsement, and the world’s greatest repository of illegally-pirated video content, Google’s massive video folly is on life-support, and the prognosis is grave," Wayne wrote . (We followed up with him here in 2010 , and he talked about it with  AdAge in 2009, too . ) Fast forward two years, and it's clear that YouTube is anything but doomed. But Wayne's own Fliqz has been sold -- or rather, the assets of Fliqz -- to another web video company called VBrick. Online video industry watcher Dan Rayburn pegs the deal at "well less" than $20 million , and was told that Fliqz had about $5 million in revenue last year. Wayne, who signed up about 600 customers, including MLB, WebMD, Nokia, and others, will not be staying at VBrick. For a company that has raised $12 million in venture capital, that's not a good result. It's not horrendous, but it's not good, either. Meanwhile, YouTube continues to be a hugely popular site, and is becoming increasingly important to Google , too. (YouTube revenue more than doubled last year, Google said on its Q4 earnings call . ) Yes, Google has changed YouTube to focus more on professional content as opposed to the early "dog on skateboard" stuff. But it's still not going anywhere.