Sony Fries Grouper, Hears Crackle

Joseph Laszlo | July 16, 2007, 03:34 PM

Last year Sony spent $65m getting into the user generated video game by buying Grouper, one of countless small aspirants to the then-fashionable YouTube model.

Now that everyone's woken up to the fact that the Long Tail isn't taking over anytime soon, Sony's remade Grouper into Crackle, which is decidedly not about user generated content, but rather like Revver and Veoh (and a host of other small aspirants) is trying to make a business out of "semi-pro" or "mid-tail" content.

User-generated video sites consist of a community, a brand, and maybe a library of content--but little else. Sony's evicted the community, dumped the brand, and I don't know how much Grouper content made it through to Crackle, but I bet it's not going to be featured.

Sony may get lucky, nurture an Internet hit or two, and see Crackle start to attract viewers and advertisers. Still, though, they could've built it from scratch for way cheaper than they paid for Grouper.