I see Disney and Time Warner teaming up to buy Veoh rather than partnering with Hulu. Everybody wants their own thing.

Intel puzzles me just as much, unless they have some chip working on that connects with video and I don’t get it. That is far outside my area of competence though

“A-list” in the traditional industries doesn’t mean you can pick out winners in the new Web 2.0 economy. Beyond just faith in Veoh’s (questionable) business model, it would be interesting to study the possible additional motives behind each investor.

My bet is Adobe wants to use Veoh’s off-line client to be built-on and influence the propagation of its Adobe AIR platform.

Time Warner and Disney probably wants to leverage Veoh as their content distribution platform, since they don’t seem to be associated with Hulu (correct me if I’m wrong).

And Intel I have no clue why.

As for why the big names – we all know that 1 big name results in more following, like buffaloes in a herd.

No one wants to be the guy who missed the bandwagon and with Veoh throwing around Michael Eisner’s name from almost day one, it was bound to lead to some big names joining up with a wish.

Why are they “A-list” anyway? Just how many ventures have these A-listers invested in that have gone on to become viable, profitable companies that last more than 10 years?

We need to redefine “A-list” in the investing world.

Now is Sequoia or Kleiner was throwing money at them I might be inclined to think that there really is something we don’t know that’s in their business plan.

You are right – in my opinion, right now there is nothing much that differentiates Veoh from the Metacafes and Vimeos of the world.

What perplexes me is why are there so many A-list investors behind Veoh, including Adobe, Intel, Time Warner, and the much-ballyhooed Disney’s Michael Eisner.

Is Veoh actually doing something right that we don’t see?

I still don’t understand why Veoh has not reversed the decision after all the bad PR. That move would atleast reduce the damage done to the brand.

Profitable next year? Only if they offer a subscription service that comes with higher quality (HD?) and bonus content. The advertising-only model is not profitable for online video destinations unless you can charge high cpms (some serious targeting would have to be offered or you have a specific audience), or you follow Hulu.com (which is still not profitable but has hope in my opinion).

Veoh is just YAVS – yet another video site – and the only way that they have differentiated themselves is exactly what you said: Exclude 83% of the World.

Brilliant.