Who's next after Grouper?

"Prices are insane!"

That's the obvious observation from a buyer who wants to snap up a great property on the cheap, such as those video-sharing sites with a library of mostly music and silly home videos.

This week, Sausalito, Calif.-based Grouper sold to Sony Pictures Entertainment for $65 million in cash. Grouper had signed a term sheet from a venture capital company for $8 million with a pre-money valuation in the $30 million range. But Grouper decided to take the purchase instead.

Grouper is one of the three dozen or so video sites, such as Revver.com, Guba, Instant Media, Veoh Networks, Heavy, Metacafe.com and a host of others that have emerged in the last 18 months or so. All do roughly the same thing, with a twist here and there to provide differentiation. And, Grouper is the second video site to be sold this month. The first was online production company Atom Entertainment which  Viacom purchased for $200 million.

Was Grouper's price cheap, reasonable, or fantastic? It depends on which side of the table you're on. Buyers -- large media companies -- would definitely think Grouper received a "fantastic" price, maybe even "insanely fantastic" because buyers always want to keep prices low. Sellers -- all the video-sharing operators -- wouldn't deny that the price was fantastic, but would try to justify the price as "cheap," given the booming video opportunity.

My take: it was reasonable, and closer to fantastic, than cheap.

For why, go to BF's Net Sense on MarketWatch

Here's my watch list of video sites (source Nielsen//NetRatings)