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Nebula: A paid alternative to YouTube, curated by the creators
- jonaphin 7y agoThis business positioning reminds me of what "App.net" did to Twitter a few years back.
- stcredzero 7y agoWhat's that? I just went to app.net and all I found was a mostly empty map.
- bdz 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App.net https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App.net
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- chrisseaton 7y agoExactly... they ended up doing nothing.
- robot 7y agohttps://medium.com/vidme/goodbye-for-now-120b40becafa https://medium.com/vidme/goodbye-for-now-120b40becafa
- dymk 7y agoAnd yet there are still swaths of HN commenters claiming that people would surely support paid, ad-free alternatives to YT, if only they existed. Well, this is try two. Think people will still try to claim it’s a viable model over ads after this one?
- greenhatman 7y agoI honestly think it is, and becoming more so. I've personally already signed up for YouTube premium, because I hate ads. I've signed up to this as well. I'd gladly pay for quality content. My time is worth it. And are most people's.
- bsder 7y ago> Well, this is try two. Think people will still try to claim it’s a viable model over ads after this one? Is Nebula shooting for organic growth, or did they take VC money like Vidme did? If Nebula took VC money, they are as equally doomed.
- xrjpi 7y ago> And yet there are still swaths of HN commenters claiming that people would surely support paid, ad-free alternatives to YT, if only they existed. Nobody will and whoever claims that is either 1) mad wealthy or 2) out of touch. Or both.
- dymk 7y agoConsidering how well paid tech is, and how willing we are to resign ourself to our little HN bubble, I'm unsurprised to see the claim made so often here.
- trazire 7y agoIt is a viable method, you just won't get many customers. For a smaller userbase, it is entirely feasible and profitable to do stuff like this based on subscriptions. Ad revenue can be higher, but is volatile and harder to implement. Personally, I feel like this is delving too close to other SVOD services. While a potential four figure CPM is alluring, I don't think we'll truly begin to see it.
- manigandham 7y agoHow is a smaller user base more viable? You can look at Patreon to see just how few accounts make anywhere near a fulltime salary, let alone enough to pay for top tier video production. This model depends on scale. Also how are ads "harder to implement"?
- desireco42 7y agoI think these initiatives are great. But they lack a tiny bit of thought to pass the hurdle of adoption.
- radicalriddler 7y agoIt's cool to see that they have some quite popular channels on there already. Crash Course is on there, as well as some of my personal favourites; PhilosophyTube and Coding Train.
- stcredzero 7y agoHere's the impression I'm getting looking at that page: It's like YouTube Originals. Curated, safe, sanitized. As an adult, this is like the last thing I'd want in a YouTube-like site, for my viewing. I don't feel like I'm likely to find something unusual or unexpected. On the other hand, if I was a parent looking to distract my very young kids, curated, safe, sanitized, and ad-free is exactly what I'd want. EDIT: Issac Arthur is on there. Maybe I'll give it a try. Maybe this site can use YouTube as its "Bush Leagues." That's only going to work if it can portray itself as "The Majors."
- duxup 7y agoYeah I've sworn off YouTube for my kids... you can't whitelist anything and the amount of garbage even on YouTube kids is terrible.
- bscphil 7y agoThat's a reasonable choice in my opinion. If you want to make any videos available to younger kids, you might have a look at Youtube-dl which would allow you to store pre-viewed videos offline on a device for them to watch.
- ericd 7y agoYoutube-dl is great, especially paired with a NAS running Plex server.
- ehsankia 7y agoThat was one of my biggest complaints too, but Youtube Kids added whitelisting ~9 months ago.
- ballenf 7y agoWhat I'd like is a feature that requires kids to completely finish watching a selected video once before another will start. On Plex or YT. Maybe I'm just "old", but something feels very unhealthy about enabling kids' propensity to flip between shows as soon as one gets the slightest bit slow. Or make them get up and walk over to the TV to switch channels :).
- greenhatman 7y agoSeems like there are a few bugs. I still subscribed. I hope this succeeds.
- jasode 7y ago>No algorithm. A personal observation... On that Nebula site, I see creators like CGP Grey, Wendover Productions, Real Engineering, etc. I learned about their existence from Youtube's algorithmic suggestions. Probably 99% of any channel I watch regularly on Youtube came from algorithms instead of url referrals of HN or reddit. Yes, algorithms have a dark side such as the ElsaGate situation. All I can say is that they were effective in suggesting the type of topics (education) I like.
- untog 7y agoOf course, that's why YouTube insists on keeping recommendations despite the horror stories. It works 98% of the time. But .2% of the time it assembles a playlist of content finely tuned to the tastes of a pedophile. But you can't take the smooth without the rough. The plus side of the recommendation algorithm is great, but is it worth the bad side?
- chasontherobot 7y agowhat happens the other 1.8% of the time?
- egypturnash 7y agoHi! Would you like to learn about why all the non-white races are inferior? It'll be fun! Just click on this thumbnail we keep on suggesting.
- untog 7y agoIt forwards people to Nazis. (or just shows them a video they aren't interested in)
- HNLurker2 7y ago<gruesome> >But .2% of the time it assembles a playlist of content finely tuned to the tastes of a pedophile. I knew about this stuff since pokemon go in the summer and I mean in 2016 What I used to do is search on YouTube something like "pokemon go challenge" and then look at videos posted 1 hours ago or today and then see videos of with children. Then if you looked at their channel you'll sometimes find gold because kids are bored and record themselves and put it online. I don't think much has been done they just stopped the comments with timestamps of poses </gruesome>
- cartman82 7y ago> No algorithm They are conflating what they care about vs. what the audience cares about.
- smaddock 7y agoThis seems be directed at creators interested in their platform, which would be their audience at this stage. The "algorithm" on YouTube can decide whether or not a video will be discovered. Guaranteeing that subscribers will see their recent content could be a good selling point.
- runevault 7y agoThe trick is, you want to not screw with viewers you already have while still having discoverability tools for the rest. Theoretically this would be like what the sub page SHOULD be plus the home page that recommends stuff based on your viewing habits. Gimme both well segregated and I'm interested.
- p1necone 7y agoBased on what creators I watch on youtube frequently complain about the problem with youtube is less the recommendation algorithm and more the constant changing of rules around how the UX works, with little/no documentation. There's also the seemingly arbitrary demonetization of videos with little to no recourse from creators. An example: you used to "subscribe" to a youtuber to get notifications about new videos, but then notifications frequently don't happen, then they added the little bell toggle which supposedly controls whether you get notifications or not, but then notifications still don't seem to happen all the time.
- bscphil 7y ago>Guaranteeing that subscribers will see their recent content could be a good selling point. Sorry, doesn't Youtube already do that? I subscribe to 20-30 channels, and in my subscriptions feed it simply shows all the videos from channels I'm subscribed to in reverse chronological order - exactly the way people say they want to see these feeds.
- opan 7y agoI don't see this working better than something like peertube. We don't need centralized alternatives, we need decentralized alternatives.
- dvduval 7y agoHow could they possibly challenge a Monopoly like YouTube?
- ALittleLight 7y agoMy perception is YouTube has a hostility toward independent creators, and this niche could be better served. 1. Copyright system is easy to abuse and harshly punishes people perceived as infringing. 2. Videos demonetized for unpredictable reasons. 3. Trending page is basically off limits to YouTubers in favor of corporate media. E.g. Logan Paul requires 11 million views to hit the trending page whereas ESPN requires 500k. Naturally ESPN trends much more than more popular YouTubers. httpss://www.theverge.com/2019/5/29/18642833/youtube-trending-coffee-break-pewdiepie-late-night-sports-highlights 4. YouTube's discovery system is opaque. I have a small YouTube channel and my most successful video has about half a million views. This video has worse metrics than my other videos proportionally but somehow gets recommended a lot whereas my other videos don't and I have no idea why. Conversely, imagine YouTube shared details about what metrics you need to hit to get recommended or surfaced in the search page. 5. Discovery. As a small channel, it's tough to get views. Why not gamify this: if you average X watch time and Y likes on 3 videos, we'll put your video in the suggestions for 100 people who wouldn't see it otherwise. There should be an easy way to see who is streaming too, which is difficult for some unknown reason. 6. Help with content creation. YouTube must know what people are searching for on YouTube and what search queries have good or bad results. Why not give that information to creators? I could check and see that X people search for Y, and Y has really weak results. Okay, great, if I like X, I can put together a video to answer the query and collect some sweet views helping me and YouTube.
- kkarakk 7y agoyou do realize logan paul is ALSO a corporate creator right? there is a whole consortium of people that fund his antics in exchange for him shilling their stuff. It was an artificially created brand right from the beginning...Dude was a disney actor,why do you think his channel is indie in any way? your point stands but your choice of example is strange.
- rfwhyte 7y agoSeems like more and more "content creators" are getting into the platforms business, and I genuinely don't think many, if any of them are going to succeed. If Legendary Pictures, with their Chinese government money and big acquisitions of Nerdist and Geek and Sundry couldn't make their subscription site work, what makes these guys think they'll be any different? As a consumer of content, I don't want dozens of different platforms, all taking a share of my wallet and attention, I want one single platform with all of the content.
- cannonedhamster 7y agoThere were failed social media platforms before Myspace and Facebook. If you'd have said Facebook would outgrow Myspace people would have thought you were crazy. At some point someone is going to unseat YouTube. It's going to take timing, luck, and a product that delivers something better or different than YouTube. Is this it? Who knows? Most likely not, but that's why you keep trying.
- sgillen 7y agoThe person you are responding too isn’t saying that youtube will never be overtaken, he’s saying he doesn’t think it will be overtaken by dozens of smaller content platforms, but rather one large one.
- cannonedhamster 7y agoBut you don't become a large company without first starting small. Even large corporations tend to use pilot programs in order to establish product market fit. Disney for instance tested their software on less valuable material before deciding to create Disney+.
- SlowRobotAhead 7y ago>I genuinely don't think many, if any of them are going to succeed Yea, of course. All it takes is one though.
- zrobotics 7y ago
- elliekelly 7y agoI (naively) expected the platform to be paid for by the creators in a way where they all shared the operating costs while finding some “fair” way to allocate advertising income. Instead they’ve taken Jay-Z’s Tidal strategy: create a premium platform for the content creators and expect the content consumers to pay a premium price for it.
- notatoad 7y agoTidal is a perfect analogy. It's a bunch of artists sitting around saying "hey, what if we just stopped caring about what our customers want?"
- skocznymroczny 7y agoFor better or worse, it worked for Steam.
- kjsbfkjbf 7y agoRather, it's a bunch of artists sitting around saying, "Hey, what if we got paid fairly?".
- pjc50 7y agoIt's not enough for the artists to agree on what "fair" means, the customers and whoever's actually paying have to agree too.
- kjsbfkjbf 7y agoNot really. An individual can absolutely value their output at any value they so choose and be correct. The idea that "the market" is a "fair" determinant of value should be challenged at every step lest we allow people to suffer because they do not have enough money to pay for the "fair" amount for healthcare. That is not even mentioning that we do not have perfect information (to come to a "fair" value) and that facets orthogonal to product value (i.e. marketing, brand inertia) play a huge role in determining what customers are willing to pay for. But even playing along with the naive model: Tidal has a non-zero amount of paying customers. Some people enjoy music (+ Tidal exclusives) enough to treat it as more than a cost:convenience ratio.
- ilovetux 7y agoThey need more selection. If they had "codyslab" and "extra credits" I would probably sign up. I know it's probably weird to suggest specific channels, but honestly these two channels represent the only real genres of YouTube that I watch.
- themagician 7y agoThis is so funny to me. The vast majority of creators really don't understand their "role", so to speak, in the YouTube ecosystem. The ego, I think, consumes them. Most content on YouTube—most views, most videos, most trending content—is just slightly better than nothing at all. The bar is both surprisingly low and high at the same time. Most people will not pay for most of the content that gets upload to YouTube in any way. And the reality is that the people who complain about demonization—the vast majority of them—would have zero revenue anyway because no one is going to pay to advertise against their content either. The keyword is most. There are a handful of creators whose content is more valuable than nothing at all. They are not bound by YouTube. Never have been. They choose to host on YouTube because it's a good deal for them, but they could just as easily survive hosting their content somewhere else. If you've got valuable content you can host it somewhere else and people will watch it. They will share it far and wide. Some people will spend money for it. Advertisers will gladly work with you and you'd be surprised just how quickly they find you and want to cut you a deal for a :30 spot. But most content isn't valuable outside of YouTube. Most content isn't even valuable enough to pay for the bandwidth it takes for people to watch it. The YouTube alternative already exists. It's called hosting the content yourself.
- dylan604 7y agoBy the very name YouTube was about individuals creating content, and not a select few creators. YouTube is a successful example of the old saying "content is king". People just wanted to be entertained, and cared little for the quality or lack thereof (whether in the content or the encoding). Even Vimeo hasn't quite the traction that YouTube has even with it's focus on encoding quality.
- CobrastanJorji 7y ago> If you've got valuable content you can host it somewhere else and people will watch. I'm not sure I agree. Discovery is a big deal. There are many lifetimes of content out there that I want to watch, and some of it exists in places I've never heard of. Content that's already famous will be fine, but quality content alone is not enough to attract viewers, in the same way that a quality business that nobody knows about goes out of business.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago>No programmatic ads The "programmatic" qualification has a weird smell and makes me suspicious.
- 64738 7y agoSame here. The moment I saw "programmatic ads" I thought, "then what kind of ads do they have?"
- khrbrt 7y agoMaybe they mean they don't add ads before/during/between the videos, but leave in sponsored ads the creators put in the videos themselves. Is there a better word for that? Is there a broadcasting term for the type of ads you'd see more in the '50s, ie. "This program brought to you by Lucky Strike! Hmmm, it's toasted!", where the ad is embedded into the show and not a separate block of 15, 30 second segments?
- dlbucci 7y agoHow is this any different from vessel? (Apart from being more expensive than the $3 per month that site was?)
- Bukhmanizer 7y agoI'll play devils advocate here, and say that I could potentially see this idea working. The difference between this and the plethora of different video services, is that the product here may not be the actual video service, but can be seen as a way to support the various video creators. Most of the creators on Nebula are already drawing in pretty large followings on Patreon, so it's clear that they are able to retain dedicated audiences that will pay for content. Even as someone who doesn't watch much Youtube, I can recognize a lot of great channels, like CGP Grey, Lindsay Ellis, Crash Course, etc. Also, I can totally see the advantage of having a service like this compared to youtube for kids. It's a bit scary how fast children are being exposed to the internet nowadays. All that being said, it's clearly very difficult and risky to start a video service nowadays, but I think this has a slightly higher probability of being sustainable compared to many of the other offerings I've seen.
- notatoad 7y agoThe biggest mark against this site is that it's basically what YouTube has been trying to do for years, and had failed at. If YouTube and their huge install base can't do it, I'm skeptical that nebula can.
- zrobotics 7y agoAs someone who supports multiple youtubers on patron, I am really sceptical of these alternative services. For instance, I really enjoyed motortrend's roadkill series, but haven't bothered once they moved to motortrend.com. One huge advantage, and one of the reasons I canceled Netflix, is that I can easily see in one place what is new. If I have a half-hour to kill, I don't want to have to check 8 different sites, I'd rather just open up my subscriptions tab. Perhaps what is actually necessary is a RSS equivalent, since I fully understand how YouTube is screwing creators. But this (and the equivalent projects, like LinusTechTips' floatplane) just seem like they are destined to follow vimeo.
- Bukhmanizer 7y agoThe problem is that a lot of creators already have RSS feeds, but almost no one uses them. Also, RSS doesn't address the problem of having a sustainable business model. As much as people may criticize youtube, it's really the only service that has come up with a long-term business model for video creators. It's a massively flawed model, but it's still a model.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- vorpalhex 7y agoI was checking their ToS to see if they'd allow creators demonetized by youtube and found this clause: > Refusal to vaccinate your children may result in the termination of your service and, probably, your children. While I agree refusal to vaccinate your children is dumb, they're starting off on the wrong foot by already setting a very awkward line in the sand. What about hawking fake cures for cancer like vinegar? Either they need to go full moderation/walled garden, or entirely hands off. Trying to land in the middle is going to end with a bunch of people exploiting their precise ToS and legitimate users being annoyed at lack of clarity.
- kkarakk 7y ago>a very awkward line in the sand sounds more like a line made in concrete - anti vaxx = booted off platform
- corobo 7y ago> full moderation/walled garden They are full moderation. It's a curated bunch of creators. I think the submission's title has confused 99% of the folks commenting on this post. It is not an alternative to YouTube. It's an alternative place to YouTube to view these content creators' videos
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tus87 7y ago> Refusal to vaccinate your children may result in the termination of your service and, probably, your children. Did you say something about wanting my money or was I just imagining it?
- aerovistae 7y agoWhen I land there I don't see videos and content, I see a sign up button and a sales pitch with a subscription price tag. Instant failure. Zero chance.
- user00012-ab 7y agoI clicked "browse all channels" to see what kind of content they had, but they just show me a bunch of pictures and if I want a description I need to click on each one? This interface is mostly useless unless you already know all of these people. categories would be nice.
- vecplane 7y agoHow will this service succeed where so many others have failed? The audience, algorithm, and network effects of YouTube are what make it a valuable and viable platform for content creators. You can't put this content behind the paywall of an unknown service and expect to get anything close to similar results. As much as I would like to see competition in the online video market, I would be surprised to see this still operating a year or two from now.
- paxys 7y ago"Alternative to YouTube" where you can't upload videos? It's funny to see a bunch of content creators who got to where they are only because of YouTube and its algorithms now decrying all of that as evil. And to fight that they are creating a closed community where new contributors will be carefully selected by them, not the users.
- philwelch 7y agoI like this idea, but they need more content. Right now, this site is a paid service where you can get a handful of good YouTube channels. Thing is, this only has maybe 1/3 of the good YouTube channels I actually subscribe to. If I just use YouTube instead, I can watch all of these channels, plus Scott Manley, The History Guy, Military History Visualized, a handful of gun channels, Essential Craftsman, a bunch of genuinely worthwhile sports channels....
- whisdol 7y agoDave Wiskus, one of the co-creators of the standard.tv network behind this platform, gave some insights on the /r/CGPGrey2 subreddit [0] and on Twitter [1]. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/CGPGrey2/comments/bs52a1/nebula_an_educational_streaming_service_from/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CGPGrey2/comments/bs52a1/nebula_an_... [1] https://twitter.com/dwiskus/status/1131587829136601088 https://twitter.com/dwiskus/status/1131587829136601088
- ajna91 7y agoI may sign up for this solely to support the kind of future I want.