No  - this is not a post about a hip hop song as one may think after reading the title.  It’s a post about business transformation for the point of relevancy, competition and further revenue streams.

Recently, YouTube made known its upcoming project called Leanback, which consists of swaying user viewing habits from short videos of a one bite size to viewing content reminiscent to how television viewers consume television media.

Although it is uncertain how many loyal YouTube viewers will take to the TV’ish solution provided by video site, they’ve been smart to somewhat separate the path to the new and old video viewing solutions.  The Leanback service will be viewable as a personal channel hosted on Google TV, separate to the current point of entry used to view YouTube hosted videos.

So, what does this move by YouTube have to do with the newspaper business you may ask – well… a lot.  YouTube, like newspapers, is finding it difficult to appropriately monetize their product, given the free access mentality of its users, but what they did that many newspapers didn’t, is that they took the time to perfect their product at all costs (negative margins), and  engage users to the point where YouTube is deemed a naturally embedded tool in a web users activity.  People source YouTube for comedic relief, news bits, branding videos, DIY, tips on using different software  and the list goes on and on.  By being a trusted source to so many and to so many different types of users, they’ve created a foundation of fans that will follow their next steps.  Arguably, newspapers could have done the same thing in the early part of the 21st century.  Moves to improve and align both offline and online products with user behaviours, and by users we mean the greater web and not only print readers, would have enabled newspapers to keep a position of leverage today.  Still, depending on the newspaper location and reach, there is room for them to use what recognition and loyalty they have in their markets to follow the Leanback way.  The unfortunate thing though, is that many won’t make attempts to do so, as it would mean making sizable investments into digital properties that won’t show a positive ROI for 18 to 24 months – the minimum time required to gain share, increased level of users, and to ferment a products viability and sustainability in a market place.

YouTube’s Leanback initiative will soon be released to beta and as sentiment to the expected success, the beta release is deemed as much anticipated by mainstream press and bloggers and has picked up a lot of steam on social networking feeds.  It will be interesting to see what this product does for the companies revenue plans.