Influx

Yesterday’s announcement that Sony paid $65 million for Influx’s neighbors Grouper, means that Sony now joins Viacom in the short list of big media that have recently purchased video sharing sites.

Sony and Viacom now have some challenges to make these expensive purchases work.

Here some rules that Influx believes they might be wise to follow.

Rule Number One- Keep Your Objectivity

The more time marches on, the greater the temptation will be to load these sites with the content and the promotional materials for that content and in Sony’s case, become a branded software tool for its camcorder business.

This needs to be done very carefully otherwise you could risk turning these into corporate sites that may have limited interest.

Rule Number Two- Define and Innovate Your Point of Difference

Currently Atom is all developing its own short form unique content. This is smart and there can be some interesting cross-pollination between the networks and the site.

Grouper’s difference is less obvious, it appears to be pretty user friendly and it does have the ability to allow users to create videos.

While both these “features” currently make the sites a little different from You Tube, it is not impossible to imagine You Tube incorporating both of them into its existing site.

So it might be less about what your difference is now and more about what it can be. So this puts a premium on the teams at Atom and Grouper being able to innovate above and beyond their current offerings.

Rule Number Three-You Need Awareness and Trial

The Internet tends to favor dominant brands like Amazon, E-Bay and Google. It doesn’t mean there isn’t room for more players, but it’s likely they will have to accept a smaller share. However, if you can find smart, interesting viral ways of demonstrating your unique advantages, you will get more users, but you need to invest to make this happen.

Rules Number Four- Embrace the User

Despite Hollywood’s obvious creative talent and the talents at Sony and Viacom, it would be tempting to unleash that talent on these sites.

However, looking at the most viewed videos on You Tube, it’s the user-generated content that leads the rankings, so the brand that might win this could the one that best embraces the users creative talent.

These are early days in the battle, with more big media players likely to join as well as Yahoo and Google, but this sure looks like one interesting fight.