Travis Vocino Experiments in Art, Science & Technology.

Sony’s $65 million deal to acquire Grouper.com opens the door for other acquisitions in the space. Many observers believe that YouTube, the dominant player in the user-generated online video content space, might be one of them.

Grouper.com only has around 1% of the videosharing market. At that price, what might YouTube’s 43% be worth?

My opinion is that YouTube is far too over-valued right now to be seriously considered for a media buy. The extremely simple nature of YouTube makes it hard for a larger media company (Like FOX with MySpace) to come in and start pushing warez to users. YouTube users may be hovering around the same plane as MySpace users but something tells me they’re just a little more in tune with advertising and being pushed.

C|Net has a story about the possible cost of YouTube.

Entertainment analysts have predicted in recent weeks that sites with large followings would command a high price. The Sony deal proved them right. But while the Grouper deal helped establish a benchmark, there is still plenty of confusion about the fair value of online video companies. This is because the typical metrics for measuring a company appear to have gone out the window–just like they did during the bubble years of the late 1990s.