Will Warren Buffett Pay $100 Million A Year For "YouTube Pro"?

In a Huffington Post/Yahoo! News video interview with Willow Bay, Warren Buffet says that he spends so much time and has so much fun watching videos on YouTube that the video giant "should be charging [him] a lot of money" to use their service. As a response to Buffet's statement, YouTube's Director of Product Management Hunter Walk put out a satirical blog post announcing the launch of "YouTube Pro" - a new YouTube subscription offering, available "for a limited time at the low price of $100 million/year." In the video interview, which you can watch below, Buffet talks about how he gets pulled in to YouTube. He says, "I watch a lot of things. Sometimes people will tell me there's something kind of interesting to watch...Or I might go there and listen to Frank Sinatra sing 'My Way.' So I'll click on that, then I'll see eight other things on the side and Sinatra doing something else, then one or two hours will go by and I've had the time of my life." It's good to hear that I'm not the only one who gets sucked into YouTube for hours on end, day after day. Even Warren Buffett, one of the world's most successful investors at 80 years of age has caught the YouTube bug. In his response, Hunter Walk says of the $100 million YouTube Pro package, "We don't expect to sell many, but if Mr. Buffett wants to make sure he's paying his fair share, we take cash, credit and, for him, personal check." Was Walk joking? Probably only in part. After all, a $100 million investment from Warren Buffett would be a sweet deal from YouTube. To add a little punch to Walk's message, a line at the bottom of the post reads, "Hunter Walk, Director, Product Management, recently watched "Tips & Factors for Investing Money." Of course, Walk was at least partly joking in his blog post. But all jokes aside, will there be a paid subscription service in YouTube's future? With other video websites starting to charge for content with services like Hulu Plus, and even The Onion recently starting to charge for video content, it seems like YouTube won't be able to hold out forever. They already offer videos for rent, but is a more comprehensive subscription service on the horizon for YouTube? For now, a YouTube subscription service would not be able to compete with Netflix, Hulu and other paid services as they don't have a wide selection of television and film content. However, they have already begun to buff up their music video selection by collaborating with Vevo. If they can beef up the rest of their library with more compelling professional content then they could be able to create a YouTube Pro service for real - one that could compete with Hulu, Netflix and other paid online video services. However, increasing their library will take time and money, and a $100 million investment could be just the thing to get the ball rolling. So what do you say Warren?

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Will Warren Buffett Pay $100 Million A Year For "YouTube Pro"?

Megan O'Neill

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Megan O'Neill