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The content that Google and Facebook produce is garbage. It’s only barely better than nothing at all. Most people would not pay for the kind of content that sho

The content that Google and Facebook produce is garbage. It’s only barely better than nothing at all. Most people would not pay for the kind of content that shows up on Facebook and YouTube by so-called “content creators”. Facebooks ads are garbage except in certain circumstances. Everyone knows this, including the big brands, but they continue to do it because it makes the board happy when they see their brand on FB. AdWords is the only ad platform that works, works well, and is pretty universal. Disney has a real good chance here though because Disney has actual valuable content. As in, literally valuable. You know, because people pay for Disney content with money.

shawn 8y ago
Most people would not pay for the kind of content that shows up on Facebook and YouTube by so-called “content creators”. This isn’t really true. I’ve been trying to demonstrate this by curating some interesting and educational YouTube videos in one place: https://www.laarc.io/l/videos https://www.laarc.io/l/videos You’re right that there’s a lot of noise to sift through. But there are real gems. People may not pay for it directly, but they pay for it with their time and attention. In most cases that can be translated to dollars for popular items. You can get a sense of estimated value by looking at socialblade. Here’s a content creator that recently rose to fame: https://socialblade.com/youtube/channel/UC5_do3JQAPHA1rIlM-2iS6g https://socialblade.com/youtube/channel/UC5_do3JQAPHA1rIlM-2... (If anyone knows how this guy got ~300k subscribers almost overnight, I’d love to hear from you. It’s a mystery, but it doesn’t seem like foul play. Just lucky social exposure with some good timing.)
throwawaymath 8y ago
> Most people would not pay for the kind of content that shows up on Facebook and YouTube by so-called “content creators”. Are you sure? Why are you sure? And as a corollary: even if most people won't pay for it, are you sure it won't still obtain a majority in its market? For any given successful product, most people don't buy it.
- themagician 8y ago
  Yeah I’m sure. Most of the content that gets views is click-baity garabage. Not all, just most. People watch it because they are conditioned to, not because they want to or even find it entertaining. Some people can make it in a paid model—most can’t. Most of those who can graduate out being a “content creator” for a living.
darkpuma 8y ago
The success many youtube creators have on Patreon demonstrates that many people would gladly pay for their content. Whether they'd pay google for the content instead of the creator themselves is another matter entirely... People like the content creators a lot more than they like google/youtube itself.
- StevePerkins 8y ago
  I believe your second sentence negates the first. But even if it didn't, Patreon is a glorified busker's tip jar. There are only a small number of individuals on earth who can make a full-time living from it. There's no sign that this model could work at scale for a large corporation. Even if it theoretically could, in practice your second sentence would again come into play.
  - darkpuma 8y ago
    >There's no sign that this model could work at scale for a large corporation. Why should it? Most of the content people are now enjoying day to day isn't coming from large corporations. What we're witnessing now is the infancy of a shift away from the centralization of entertainment started by the industrial revolution (with access to printing presses, radio broadcasting, etc being relatively limited by economies of scale or similar reasons) back to a more community focused model that provides greater diversity in content. Most are welcoming this change as it brings them access to media of the sort they've never before had access to, as well as closer two-way relationships with the producers of that content. This isn't limited to youtube/video content either by the way, it's happening in music and other forms of art/entertainment as well. The platforms used to provide the distribution of content and used to collect payment will prove to be interchangeable; they aren't the part of the picture that matters. What matters is the relationships creators and their patrons can now cultivate. Now that people know this model is possible, the cat's not going back into the bag. Even if youtube or patreon were to close up shop, the demand would still be there and new platforms would be adopted or created if necessary because now people have seen a glimpse of what's possible and don't want to go back.
    - 8y ago
xapata 8y ago
Much of that "garbage" content is remarkably successful at capturing attention.
hyperbovine 8y ago
I would pay to use Google. Especially if it meant they would remove the tracker from out of my ass.
- harry8 8y ago
  Pay me and I'll lie to you about what Google will do if that's what will make you happy. No sillier than paying Google given their credibility is zero and there are so consequences to them for lying.
  - judge2020 8y ago
    What are you referring to? I can't think of one incident where Google straight lied to the customer about what they do. They also remove tracking and ads from certain partner websites if you do decide to pay for it: https://contributor.google.com/v/beta https://contributor.google.com/v/beta
    - harry8 8y ago
      Do you really, honestly, truly believe they don't track you if you pay them not to? Genuine question.
      - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
        Um, yeah, I do, unless there's evidence to the contrary. Do you really honestly truly believe Google is outright lying?
        harry8 8y ago
        Absolutely.
- zozbot123 8y ago
  I wouldn't. Google search is garbage these days (if only because it's pretty much a monoculture, and that leads to SEO arms races) and their other services can easily be replaced by paid equivalents that are far less likely to be a single point of failure.
chiefalchemist 8y ago
> "Most people would not pay for the kind of content..." I'm fairly certain an economist would tell you they are paying now. That is, in simple layperson's terms: "Time is money." All that time on FB - contributing and consuming - is being paid for. AND FB gets to serve them ads as well. It's hard to believe it's legal ;)
- aasasd 8y ago
  Finally, I know the workings of the mythical exposure. I'm so happy now for all the people who made the hundreds of films I've watched for free on the web.
b_tterc_p 8y ago
99% of YouTube may be garbage but there’s still some great content in there
- tehwebguy 8y ago
  Exactly, the same is said about TV / cable / satellite and those have infinitely less content. Anyone can upload to YouTube, of course most of it sucks!
rosege 8y ago
Agreed. I once bought something I saw on a Facebook ad and it was such terrible quality and took so long to be delivered that I'm extremely sceptical of anything else I see advertised there now and don't think I'll ever order anything from an unknown company from there again.
MarkMc 8y ago
It doesn't matter whether people will pay for content. If that content can be monetised through advertising then it's valuable.
- ethbro 8y ago
  The thing about unpaid content is that you have no market signal about its true value. We know Avengers can bring in X ticket sales + Y movie purchases + etc. But what's a million YouTube view video worth? The actual content value is important because it tells you what people are willing to do to watch it. If you over-ad something that people are only watching because it's free and doesn't have ads? I'm guessing that doesn't end well.

shawn 8y ago

Most people would not pay for the kind of content that shows up on Facebook and YouTube by so-called “content creators”. This isn’t really true. I’ve been trying to demonstrate this by curating some interesting and educational YouTube videos in one place: https://www.laarc.io/l/videos https://www.laarc.io/l/videos You’re right that there’s a lot of noise to sift through. But there are real gems. People may not pay for it directly, but they pay for it with their time and attention. In most cases that can be translated to dollars for popular items. You can get a sense of estimated value by looking at socialblade. Here’s a content creator that recently rose to fame: https://socialblade.com/youtube/channel/UC5_do3JQAPHA1rIlM-2iS6g https://socialblade.com/youtube/channel/UC5_do3JQAPHA1rIlM-2... (If anyone knows how this guy got ~300k subscribers almost overnight, I’d love to hear from you. It’s a mystery, but it doesn’t seem like foul play. Just lucky social exposure with some good timing.)

throwawaymath 8y ago

> Most people would not pay for the kind of content that shows up on Facebook and YouTube by so-called “content creators”. Are you sure? Why are you sure? And as a corollary: even if most people won't pay for it, are you sure it won't still obtain a majority in its market? For any given successful product, most people don't buy it.

themagician 8y ago
Yeah I’m sure. Most of the content that gets views is click-baity garabage. Not all, just most. People watch it because they are conditioned to, not because they want to or even find it entertaining. Some people can make it in a paid model—most can’t. Most of those who can graduate out being a “content creator” for a living.

darkpuma 8y ago

The success many youtube creators have on Patreon demonstrates that many people would gladly pay for their content. Whether they'd pay google for the content instead of the creator themselves is another matter entirely... People like the content creators a lot more than they like google/youtube itself.

StevePerkins 8y ago
I believe your second sentence negates the first. But even if it didn't, Patreon is a glorified busker's tip jar. There are only a small number of individuals on earth who can make a full-time living from it. There's no sign that this model could work at scale for a large corporation. Even if it theoretically could, in practice your second sentence would again come into play.
- darkpuma 8y ago
  >There's no sign that this model could work at scale for a large corporation. Why should it? Most of the content people are now enjoying day to day isn't coming from large corporations. What we're witnessing now is the infancy of a shift away from the centralization of entertainment started by the industrial revolution (with access to printing presses, radio broadcasting, etc being relatively limited by economies of scale or similar reasons) back to a more community focused model that provides greater diversity in content. Most are welcoming this change as it brings them access to media of the sort they've never before had access to, as well as closer two-way relationships with the producers of that content. This isn't limited to youtube/video content either by the way, it's happening in music and other forms of art/entertainment as well. The platforms used to provide the distribution of content and used to collect payment will prove to be interchangeable; they aren't the part of the picture that matters. What matters is the relationships creators and their patrons can now cultivate. Now that people know this model is possible, the cat's not going back into the bag. Even if youtube or patreon were to close up shop, the demand would still be there and new platforms would be adopted or created if necessary because now people have seen a glimpse of what's possible and don't want to go back.
  - 8y ago

xapata 8y ago

Much of that "garbage" content is remarkably successful at capturing attention.

hyperbovine 8y ago

I would pay to use Google. Especially if it meant they would remove the tracker from out of my ass.

harry8 8y ago
Pay me and I'll lie to you about what Google will do if that's what will make you happy. No sillier than paying Google given their credibility is zero and there are so consequences to them for lying.
- judge2020 8y ago
  What are you referring to? I can't think of one incident where Google straight lied to the customer about what they do. They also remove tracking and ads from certain partner websites if you do decide to pay for it: https://contributor.google.com/v/beta https://contributor.google.com/v/beta
  - harry8 8y ago
    Do you really, honestly, truly believe they don't track you if you pay them not to? Genuine question.
    - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
      Um, yeah, I do, unless there's evidence to the contrary. Do you really honestly truly believe Google is outright lying?
      - harry8 8y ago
        Absolutely.
zozbot123 8y ago
I wouldn't. Google search is garbage these days (if only because it's pretty much a monoculture, and that leads to SEO arms races) and their other services can easily be replaced by paid equivalents that are far less likely to be a single point of failure.

chiefalchemist 8y ago

> "Most people would not pay for the kind of content..." I'm fairly certain an economist would tell you they are paying now. That is, in simple layperson's terms: "Time is money." All that time on FB - contributing and consuming - is being paid for. AND FB gets to serve them ads as well. It's hard to believe it's legal ;)

aasasd 8y ago
Finally, I know the workings of the mythical exposure. I'm so happy now for all the people who made the hundreds of films I've watched for free on the web.

b_tterc_p 8y ago

99% of YouTube may be garbage but there’s still some great content in there

tehwebguy 8y ago
Exactly, the same is said about TV / cable / satellite and those have infinitely less content. Anyone can upload to YouTube, of course most of it sucks!

rosege 8y ago

Agreed. I once bought something I saw on a Facebook ad and it was such terrible quality and took so long to be delivered that I'm extremely sceptical of anything else I see advertised there now and don't think I'll ever order anything from an unknown company from there again.

MarkMc 8y ago

It doesn't matter whether people will pay for content. If that content can be monetised through advertising then it's valuable.

ethbro 8y ago
The thing about unpaid content is that you have no market signal about its true value. We know Avengers can bring in X ticket sales + Y movie purchases + etc. But what's a million YouTube view video worth? The actual content value is important because it tells you what people are willing to do to watch it. If you over-ad something that people are only watching because it's free and doesn't have ads? I'm guessing that doesn't end well.