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How I tried to compete with YouTube and Google with Livevideo.com

211 points by mysticlabs 7y ago

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
pcdoodle 7y ago
Thanks for posting this! The screenshots of the platform look awesome.
AndrewWarner 7y ago
Is there a link to the audio download somewhere? I can’t see it, but Id like to listen to this instead of reading it
- jpeg_hero 7y ago
  https://overcast.fm/+SJPJ9ok9U https://overcast.fm/+SJPJ9ok9U
ryanobjc 7y ago
The words "I should be a millionaire" sure appears a lot. The subject suggests there's a different title, but it really seems like the real subject is how this person isn't a millionaire.
yongjik 7y ago
> At one point, I believe it was over 74 million and after a Google search change, that number went down to less than 12 million overnight, so all the backlinks, all the websites that were linking to my site, that boosted my rank, that gave my site a good search cloud. This was all organic. I did not use tricks or anything deceptive. This was all organic traffic. These were all organic backlinks and all of a sudden Google just decided I’m turning it off and they did. So guess what happened? My search traffic completely plummeted. > I would get called on a regular basis from Google ad execs begging me to put Google ads on my website. > Like you basically have to give them their cut, otherwise they’re not gonna let you play and they’re going to screw with your search traffic. Yeah, no, it doesn't work like that. Google search ranking is not perfect, but they have taken search/ad separation very, very, very seriously. You can't even ask questions like "The google ad customer I'm talking to disappeared from search results, did you guys do anything overnight?" It's a big no-no. It sounds more like a sadly misinformed rant. 90% of startups fail - failure is a natural result. You don't need to bring up a Google conspiracy to explain it.
- microdrum 7y ago
  It’s not a big no-no. There is no Chinese wall. I’ve had AdX reps forward me messages from search quality. It’s all a lie. They want their cut. They’re trying to own the internet. They will be broken up.
- blueboo 7y ago
  Best practices are being followed now; but a large sales team at its worst more than ten years ago might be caught out in bad behavior. Less plausible is the scenario of failing as a result of ad-pay for search-play. If the equation is proven out, then he, a rational and effective founder, would’ve paid!—And his site would’ve played another day. Or are we supposed to read an implication that it was worth burning the company to the ground to take a principled stand against 2008 Google? Meanwhile, the traffic claims defy belief. Livevideo failed to launch.
  - yongjik 7y ago
    Well, I wouldn't be surprised if, once in a while, an unscrupulous sales rep hinted that they can get their customers favorable search positions after buying ads. But I would be really surprised if anyone could follow through with their promises.
    - the-rc 7y ago
      Most sales people at Google wouldn't even know where to start looking. They're more familiar with the ad systems. Heck, a lot of engineers couldn't tell you on the spot where to look or whom to inquire about ranking bugs. Add to that the big gulf between sales and engineering, not to mention the sometimes snobbish attitude of the latter toward the former. (”Sales people take our money and blow it on dinners with clients!", forgetting that the money often came in thanks to sales and that e.g. engineers on average traveled less often, but for quite longer).
  - mysticlabs 7y ago
    The launch of LiveVideo was not the issue. We had more traffic than we knew what to do with, and way more than YouTube at the time. Honestly, things didn't go sideways until Google decided to mess with LiveVideo and the rest of our web properties in search results. Had Google never purchased YouTube, LiveVideo would have probably won that battle hands down. Without Google money, YouTube would have failed, not LiveVideo.
tptacek 7y ago
From what I can tell, this is the story of a 2006-2008 Youtube also-ran that was outbid by Google for celebrity content, had copyright and inappropriate content problems, kept an adult content section on their website, and depended on AdSense for their revenue. I don't see where the concept of "deplatforming" fits into the narrative provided. You can check their old site out on Archive.org (the pages all seem to have "Family Filter" set, despite the fact that the tag clouds and "Most Popular Videos" callouts seem to have adult content in them).
- dang 7y ago
  Ok, we've changed the title to a more neutral sentence from the article body.
- mysticlabs 7y ago
  The sites were delisted from search engines despite content moderation being put in place. That is deplatforming. The adult content was put behind a mature section where ads weren't run against the mature content. LiveVideo and the parents companies network of sites were deplatformed from search results. Delisting competitors from search results who are meeting all of the requirements of their advertising policies at the time is the issue. The mature content was moderated and put behind mature content filters.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    Just to be clear, and without engaging in any other part of your comment: the AdSense guidelines forbid ads on pages that link to or otherwise promote adult content, which this site surely did.
    - mysticlabs 7y ago
      There was absolutely no pornographic content on LiveVideo.com itself. Nor was it ever intended for LiveVideo to have adult content. We created the family filters for mature content. However, sexy content is just simply what people started uploading. We deleted anything that was even remotely pornographic, but there was still some sexy content as there is still plenty of sexy content on YouTube right now. We did not promote any adult content on LiveVideo.com itself. So LiveVideo.com itself wasn't in violation of these rules. Some of the other sites in our network possibly had more adult content in nature, but were not adult content websites and were not running AdSense on them.
mooman219 7y ago
> It wasn’t it wasn’t anything nefarious. > you know, adult content and there’s child porn on some of your properties and whatever > [getting] sued by the major, by the major record companies for [hosting lyrics] > Today we get sued by the record companies I'm not well read on the situation, but it sounds like they had serious moderation problems. It looks like they had adult content on their popular video's page occasionally even with a filter enabled. If they were being de-listed from DMCA and legal complaints, that's on them. A lot of the regulation and laws in this space give a lot of power to copyright holders, and YouTube likely has agreements that give them some leniency that other companies just can't get. I feel like that's less of a Tech Giant problem and more of a massive legal barrier to entry problem.
- mysticlabs 7y ago
  Occasionally something adult slipped through but we caught it as quickly as humanly possible. The government never had an issue with us, and we worked with them. The only company enforcing anything was Google, and they kept moving the goal posts every time we talked to them until it became clear there was nothing we could do to resolve these issues to meet their standards, standards they themselves have not met in the past 11+ years.
TACIXAT 7y ago
This is interesting. I'm starting to make a computer security course right now and I've chosen to put it on pornhub. The monetization options are better for creators (I can sell videos!). Obviously, pornhub is going to restrict the audience a bit, so I've been toying with the idea of making a video hosting site with solid monetization options and categories of ads beyond porn. I think the biggest thing I don't understand is CDNs and delivering the video quickly. If I get some traction in the course, maybe I could launch a site with that content. The monetization options on YouTube are just lacking. You have ads or 5$ / mo subscriptions (if you have 100k subscribers). My model is going to be 90% free videos with just the solutions to assignments paid. I'll make a small bit on ads, but mostly through 1$ video sales. I was going to offer pdf chapters for each module as well, but since ph only allows image formats and it would be a lot of work to write, I've nixed that idea.
- sct202 7y ago
  Is there a reason you wouldn't use Udemy or one of the other websites like that?
  - TACIXAT 7y ago
    I tried to make a udemy course a few years ago, same topic. My biggest issue was that I needed a complete course for that. Maybe my goals are too lofty, but I got 5 or 6 modules in and lost momentum. I wanted a place where I could post as I made things.
- itcrowd 7y ago
  > I'm starting to make a computer security course right now and I've chosen to put it on pornhub. The monetization options are better for creators I find this hilarious, but at the same time I am wondering whether you're serious? I'm confused now..
  - mulmen 7y ago
    Didn't this happen not long ago with gun streamers?
- 7y ago
harperlee 7y ago
> (...) is just like, I don’t know, like maybe half of the features (...) Some editing would be great to readability.
ilostit12 7y ago
Wow! Google needs to be broken up.
privateSFacct 7y ago
This article should say - you can't compete with google using google. The "final blow" was adsense being cutoff. Their revenue model to compete with google was ... adsense. OK. Their traffic model was google search. Ok. Between the lines it sounds like some aggressive SEO, and maybe the network click bounce thing (you click on one video, and then it clicks through to another site etc). Be curious what their content moderation story was. Seriously, if you are building a google competitor, you probably need to use something other than adsense. And a reminder, adsense is a key revenue generation value add. The paying of creators definitely anti-competitive. I do think there will be a youtube alternative (small scale) eventually. The problem is a lot of these "competitors" get filled with absolutely trash / hateful content right away because the first people to use them are the rejects from youtube and the moderation teams are so glad to have someone show up they don't moderate heavily enough. Checkout some of the reddit competitors, total disgusting trash.
- noobermin 7y ago
  Nothing you said is wrong, but that is part of the problem right? To do anything online, you have to use google to some extent, so how can you compete in the first place? Google is already a monopoly in search which makes it impossible to make something online that requires search (ie., almost everything) and have it properly compete.
  - defen 7y ago
    Hey, if you want to compete with Standard Oil just build your own railroad line.
    - HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
      Until Standard Oil builds pipelines. That literally happened.
  - darkpuma 7y ago
    Exactly. You may as well try to compete with a railroad monopoly while at the same time not using any of their existing rail infrastructure. Good fucking luck.
aexol 7y ago
Hi, I was really screwed by Tech Giant Companies many times in my life for a big money. But now, here I am reborn to bring justice. I reported 1 case to the European Commission and cases like mine led to a new law which was introduced last month: "Get up, stand up, don't give up the fight!" https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32019R1150&from=EN https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
- aexol 7y ago
  If somebody is too lazy too read. Search providers have to publish their search algorithm inside European union within one year from the date of publication
  - itcrowd 7y ago
    Sounds like a bold claim .. and yes it is. Only the "main parameters" must be published. From your source (emphasis mine): > Providers of [..] online search engines should not be required to disclose the detailed functioning of their ranking mechanisms, including algorithms, under this Regulation. [..] > A general description of the main ranking parameters should safeguard [against bad faith manipulation of ranking by third parties] Main parameters being defined as: > The notion of main parameter should be understood to refer to any general criteria, processes, specific signals incorporated into algorithms or other adjustment or demotion mechanisms used in connection with the ranking.
    - aexol 7y ago
      It's the first step. If everybody will report criminal behavior( if seen ) of some of Tech Giants, then we can move this mountain.
quocble 7y ago
Im glad to see more of this. You can learn a lot more from failures which arent discussed well online.
sjg007 7y ago
I mean Twitch succeeded so that's a counterpoint. Vimeo is still going.. If I were to start a video company today, I'd go mobile first.
- on_and_off 7y ago
  Dailymotion is still there as well (although I find their product really inferior to the competitors)
zackmorris 7y ago
I wonder if a standard library or service could be written that detects search engine manipulation, in order to provide a mathematical confidence that it occurred of some kind. So for example, you make metube.com and it shows up on all the search engines. Off the top of my head, maybe it watches the rank over time, kind of like a stock ticker. If Google detects metube.com and buries your listing, but the listing stays the same on more egalitarian search engines like duckduckgo.com, that would show as a divergence in the historical rankings. So you could get answers like "there's a 77% likelihood that Google buried your link" or "Google's result diverges 23% from other search engines" or something like that. Then an overall measure of the top million sites or whatever could be used to generate an overall fairness/bias rating. If it showed enough manipulation over a long enough time, maybe that would be grounds to regulate or break up the largest search engines. Or maybe the law wouldn't be necessary, because a browser plugin could say "there's a 95% chance that this search result has not been manipulated" or even request results with a high degree of manipulation as a way of finding the canonical truth. Hmmm that gives me an idea for a search engine...
- judge2020 7y ago
  Might have been possible back in the day, but now the search engine market is just Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo's upcoming crawler (their own bot indexes my website but I'm not certain if it's being used for results). Even Yahoo uses bing for results: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8174763.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8174763.stm https://techcrunch.com/2015/04/16/microsoft-and-yahoo-renew-search-allian/ https://techcrunch.com/2015/04/16/microsoft-and-yahoo-renew-... You would need to go to the country-specific search engines like Yandex and Baidu, which may not be that great for english or US-based content.
dangerboysteve 7y ago
And he posted his video to YouTube. The irony.
on_and_off 7y ago
Is there a non ranty description of what happened ? I read the first couple of paragraphs and between the rantings how he should be a multimillionaire and how Google will destroy all of his projects, I gave up. It is obviously a very emotional subject for Trent, but that's just not the best way to present what happened to a third party.
- deckar01 7y ago
  Summary of claims from the interview: Live Video was a more successful video platform in the mid 2000s until Google bought YouTube and leveraged their monopoly on search and ads to cut off traffic to Live Video. They also paid content creators to leave Live Video and sign exclusive contracts with the cash Google injected to the company. The only reason Justin TV survived is that they pivoted to gaming to avoid competing with YouTube.
Havoc 7y ago
>Compete with youtube I admire the spirit. It's right up there with lets see who we can attack....hmm...US military...yeah they seem about the right size as a worthy opponent.
trilila 7y ago
The only company competing successfully with google is facebook, and they are both giant ad factories that will violate your privacy without batting an eye. Wondering if there is a ceiling in how much revenue an ad company can make using reasonable methods to generate revenue, and there just is no other way but by pushing crap to our browsers. So to compete and beat facebook and google one has to be good at the ad game not just the content game. Whoever thought google will allow a competitor to use google’s own platform to grow and threaten their own video ad stream should probs not be in a company’s board for a while.
nosefrog 7y ago
I have a hard time believing that their website was more popular than YouTube. I remember using loads of different video streaming services before YouTube was bought by Google (e.g. Vimeo, Google Videos, etc) and I've never heard of livevideo. Also, Google Videos was Google's own YouTube competitor from before they bought YouTube, which arguably was anti-competitive because it was much easier to search for Google Videos from Google than for YouTube videos. The more likely explanation for why their search rank plummited is their shady backlinking between their properties. > The only one that survived was Justin. That eventually became twitch because they picked video games as a category and just eliminated everything else. And YouTube didn’t really go after one market like that. They went after all video on the internet, so Google let them kind of have video games and that was it. Their explanation for why Twitch succeeded doesn't hold water. My understanding is that video gaming is currently one of the most popular categories on YouTube today and probably has been since the beginning (e.g. PewDiePie started as a video gaming youtuber). They're directly going after Twitch with YouTube Gaming. And Twitch obviously hasn't been deplatformed by Google Search.
- bduerst 7y ago
  Also it's not good branding. I immediately thought this was LiveLeak, which is a different site than LiveVideo. But you're right - there are lots of players who carved out niches on the market to be profitable, since hosting video content is expensive. Vimeo, Twitch, even LiveLeak, cater to specific content while the generalist Youtube burned money for over a decade. When all the other generalists were pivoting, LiveVideo plowed ahead with something that wasn't profitable. This post-hoc rationalization and finger pointing feels like sour grapes.
  - nostromo 7y ago
    This was 2006. LiveLeak wasn't a thing yet when LiveVideo launched.
  - PunksATawnyFill 7y ago
    Google's branding is the worst, however. They had to buy YouTube, in part, because Google Video was such a failure. Nobody saw Google Video as something to put video INTO; everyone assumed it was a search engine for online video. They haven't improved. Google's app store is still called "Google Play," which doesn't tell anyone it's an app store. It sounds like something gaming-related, and that's it. Google Plus... need we go on?
mattlondon 7y ago
> I should be a multimillionaire ... we should have been what ... a major competitor of YouTube and we should be a multibillion dollar Unicorn Tech Company. And the only reason we’re not is because of anti competitive behavior from Google Hmm ok. Are you sure that was the only reason? All those organic links from those 74 million of websites do not disappear even if you do disappear from the search results. The mention that google executives contacted them to discuss the $3,000 a month he could of made if he ran google ads - that is genuinely peanuts. This makes me think that was a really small operation that didn't have a hope in hell in going big and competing with vimeo or dailymotion, let alone google. For comparison I was running an AdSense site around the same time and was easily clearing £800-1000 (approx $1500 I guess) a month with only about 150,000-200,000 visits/month (CPMs were higher in those days - I get about the same traffic now but only about £150-300 a month now) If you these google "executives" (p.s. these wont have been "executives" wasting their time on a tiny publisher like this, you'd be lucky to even get a call from an actual google employee at that size - any tiny publisher deals like this would be farmed out to third party "partner" companies... the real actual executives would be talking to the New York Timess/Conde nasts/ESPNs of the world where the serious money is worth their time) are suggesting you could get up to $3,000 a month then sorry you were never destined for the big time. Sounds like those 74 million (74,000,000 sites linking to you - that is loads) sites sending traffic your way were actually only sending in a trickle of users otherwise you'd be able to sell a lot of advertising. Even if each site only sent a single measly user per month, 74,000,000 visitors a month is a chunky visitor base and would easily net you more than $3,000 - even with a CPM of 25c ("good" publishers can expect rates well in excess of this - easily $1 and perhaps $3,4 or even 5 for really top-tier stuff) you'd be looking at about $18,500 a month. You'd easily be able to do direct deals with advertisers and get better CPMs at that sort of level. Start ups fail all the time. It is hard and it is sad but I don't like it when people don't accept responsibility for their own failures though. This attitude of "it was everyone's fault apart from mine!" annoys me a lot
- mysticlabs 7y ago
  You're confusing stats from my other company with LiveVideo. Those numbers are from my second startup that Google messed with. It was a much smaller operation nowhere near the size of LiveVideo.com. The amount of traffic I did in a year with my startup was a weekend for LiveVideo.com.
jdtang13 7y ago
The article is 90% delusional
- idonotknowwhy 7y ago
  It feels like it's 90% "you know,"
alexanderklein 7y ago
Very good article. Yes, Google is indeed a very strong competitor for startups.
notyourday 7y ago
The product had no USP. And it was a suckier product. That's it. It is not possible to compete with Google using Google-like business model. It is already being used by Google and Google is very good at it. Who manages to compete with Google using a slightly different business model? Facebook. Why? Different USP. Different product. Who else? Amazon. Why? Different USP, different product. Who else? Pornhub. Why? Different USP, different product. List goes on.
FabHK 7y ago
Is there an article? I just see videos (and a transcript of a video), and when I click on "Read" in the top right corner, lots of other articles appear?
jaimex2 7y ago
My thoughts on this: Did Livevideo offer anything new or different to what Youtube already had? Was it better than Youtube in any way? We shouldn't forget Google couldn't compete with Youtube either. Google had to buy Youtube because Googlevideo was not as good. Twitch found a way to compete just fine.
- mysticlabs 7y ago
  Yes. It had live video, and live streaming in 2007 that is better than what YouTube even offers today. LiveVideo.com had way more features than YouTube even has today. Justin.tv which eventually became Twitch actually struggled and almost failed before they were able to capture the live streaming gaming market.
LearnerHerzog 7y ago
I would think the interface/front-end would be the most obvious and important way to catch the attention of visitors when competing against any decent-sized online company; I have never heard of livevideo.com, but at very first glance, I am certain it was never a threat on google/youtube's radar even if you had the best backend system in the world. No offense, but it looks like a 1990s yahoo.com version of youtube, and that introductory how-to video is already way more than enough to lose the attention of the majority viewers. A search engine landing page with more words/distractions from the search bar than google.com has (even a fraction of a second longer than what people expect) is already a red flag. Similarly, a streaming site must have extremely uniform, visually stimulating, well defined and relatable content for any hope of keeping visitors interested at a fraction of the rate youtube does. Consider how even the cheapest of porn websites (an industry with tens of millions of competing and ever-improving video streaming websites) know to float uniform rows of well tested, clickable video thumbnails as the first thing one sees, along with any and all instructions/options compressed onto a single dropdown button in the top corner— sometimes they don't even show the title unless you hover over it. My point is you have to figure out a way to make it even more accessible to new visitors than google is to their non-new visitors; and the amount of front-end text, options, and non-uniform content on livevideo.com is several leagues behind where it would need to start to consider a plan of attack... even against YT or the googs 10 years ago, circa 2009
- mysticlabs 7y ago
  Not sure which 2006-2008 you lived through, but this was pretty standard web design back then. YouTube from 2007: https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/timeline/youtube-2007 https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/timeline/youtube-2007 Had the company been allowed to exist and compete fairly, it would have evolved into something more modern and mobile friendly. Judging a startup from before the pre-mobile era, and blaming the design for its failure is kind of silly. This was the norm back then, if I were creating a video sharing website in 2019 of course I'd approach it differently, but alas there's no point in even trying.
fabioyy 7y ago
Google is Tier 1, they don't pay bandwidth. no one can compete with them
mgamache 7y ago
I am not sure if the stories are accurate, but if they are this is exactly the kind of anti-trust activity that Microsoft was prosecuted for (under US law). This is extending market power (monopoly) from one area to another (search and ads to video streaming). I know it looks like some of the startups broke some 'rules' like porn or pedophilia, but really YouTube breaks the same rules and uses the same (flagging/review) technique used in some of the startups. It's hard to start anything web related without a good Google index. Google has 93% market share in search [http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share]
barli 7y ago
you didn't try to compete against Youtube and Google, you had an early vision of Periscope and House Party. Do you still have access to MySpace guys?
- mysticlabs 7y ago
  Not really. I could maybe track down Toan, I still check in with his brother occasionally. But Brad is in the wind, tried to track him down but it seems he doesn't want to be found.
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idonotknowwhy 7y ago
57 matches for "You know" in that transcript. I got about half way through but can't finish this, it's so annoying!
maxk42 7y ago
Without revealing details -- I worked for this company at this time. I was privy to certain financial details. Google did not destroy them. A combination of poor business decisions and possibly corruption did. I watched these decisions unfold in person and I won't provide certain details because I don't want to say anything that might be considered libelous, but this guy is straight-up throwing a pity party for himself. It has nothing to do with reality. Google was not actually evil back then. Did they offer contracts to content creators? Maybe. No reason Live Universe couldn't have done the same. There actually was lots of adult content on the Live Universe network of sites. Just -- everywhere. Content moderation was ineffective because so much of the community was driven by porn: Users wouldn't flag adult content because that's what they were there for, so massive amounts of it just piled up. Google had every reason to stop doing business with them. This guy straight-up admits there was child porn on the site and they were engaged in shady SEO tactics then bitches that Google delisted them. "I literally [built a YouTube competitor" -- no you didn't, man. You were just an employee for someone who did.
- heimatau 7y ago
  > they were engaged in shady SEO tactics then bitches that Google delisted them. As someone who did SEO for many years, Google was very serious about eliminating the 'black hat' SEO tactics. They were cheap, they were plentiful. Google eliminated them throughout their index because bad actors were skewing the results. This article does sound like a pity party but it sounds like someone isn't willing to accept they dropped the ball when it was passed to them.
otakucode 7y ago
I don't think that even if Google avoided the tactics they used, you still could not compete with YouTube. Alphabet has as one of its goals cultural "guidance". This is openly advocated by Eric Schmidt in his book 'A New Digital Age.' They ran YouTube at a gigantic ongoing loss for over a decade solely to suppress competition and establish themselves as the only viable video platform. If you can build a billion-dollar infrastructure, and after those bills are paid you can lose hundreds of millions of dollars a year running it, than and only then can you compete with YouTube and face these tactics in addition to all of the legal and political pressure Google can produce. They haven't even needed to break out political pressure (and by that I mean getting government to establish regulations and legislation that YouTube is omitted from by being grandfathered in, not any kind of 'conservative/liberal bias' sort of thing) yet. And so long as Alphabet is profitable, we may never see those tactics as they're simply not needed. YouTube is a key factor in Alphabet exercising the cultural 'guidance' that Eric Schmidt argues is not only Googles responsibility but moral obligation. For people who agree with Schmidt and disagree with the position that the public should be permitted to decide their own future, good or bad, it will be impossible to gain their support. Make no mistake, that viewpoint is the one that has supported every monarchy, dictatorship, theocracy, and non-democratic social structure throughout history. Political scientists call is Conservatism with a capital C, whereas the view that the public should play a role in their own governance and decide their own fate, for good or ill, is the alternative that drove the American Revolution, French Revolution, and countless blood-soaked revolutions across the globe. It won every single one of those wars. But it, too, lost to Google. Just consider, if 70+% of the public today believed that interracial marriage was offensive and disgusting, which was true when interracial marriage was legalized by the Supreme Court in the 1960s, Google would deplatform anyone who agreed with the legalization of interracial marriage in order to defend that status quo. They do not seek to provide an open, global platform that can host or play a part in public debate about serious issues. They seek to exercise cultural guidance as Eric Schmidt sees fit. It has been the public which has reliably improved over time and progressed while still containing contingents of nuts and extremists. And it has progressed not despite that, but because of it. No closed and centrally managed society in history has become more progressive except through dreadfully bloody revolutions that destroyed its management.
baalimago 7y ago
Yes, you know, I know. Maybe do some filtering on the autotranscripts? Interesting read otherwise.
jackjeff 7y ago
Wow... what a ton of BS. I disagree with most of it. - "Google/YouTube made an anti-competitive move against LiveVideo". Ok, on the face of it (if you believe everything Lapinsky says) then it is really bad, as in "illegal" kind of bad. It makes me wonder how Google/Youtube avoided being sued. I whole heartily condemn YouTube/Google IF they did this. It sounds plausible btw, since they have done jerk things to Yelp or flight search engines, etc... - "There is child porn on YouTube". Really? I don't believe it. They do a very good job with regular porn. I have never seen a pair of boobs on YouTube over the years. I don't know how they do it, but it seems to me that moderation of "nakedness" probably using AI works pretty damn well. I have never seen an article about porn issues on YouTube. - "Google is no longer a neutral digital intermediate because they promote fairness". Yes. They do. And if they were not doing it, governments around the world would force them to do it. Also their advertisers do not want to be associated with the likes of Alex Jones and are putting pressure on YouTube to sort the issue. This is the sad reality, but Google, Facebook and Twitter are forced to moved from a "neutral" digital platform to something more akin to a "publisher". People on the board of Google are no more elected that the directors of publication of the largest newspapers. And if you think that shows an anti-conservatice bias, look at who is President of the US, who is going to be Prime Minister in the UK, etc... I don't think this is going to be easy but Google (and social media) to find a right balance where most people are able to publish, but the most fringe/toxic members of the community deserved to be demonetized. Will Google abuse its powers of f//k up from time to time? Sure they will. But I agree with the overall trend. And again, they do not have a choice. - "Google changed its search engine to promote sites with responsive designs". I absolutely agree with the change. Most people use mobile devices. You waited until 2013 to realize you had to do that? A website that is not responsive today and back in 2013 probably sucked anyway, and it is "right" for Google to demote them. There is nothing anti-competitive about that. Btw, I can predict the future too. For instance, at some point Google will promote sites that support HTTP/2 and not just HTTP/1.1, so maybe you think of doing that on your next "Wordpress business". - "Google wanted ads on my website". Just say "no". And I don't believe in the logical fallacy that _because_ you refused that is why the website was delisted. Seriously dude, your website was way to small for Google to care that much. - The business was overly dependent on Google search results. Google tweak its algorithm from time to time. Most of the time Google has genuine reasons for the changes. Sometimes they want to demote a "large" competitor in an anti-competitive move (which btw, I think it's going to get harder and harder for Google to get away with that). But your tiny site that depends on search results... it's just an unintended consequence. Google does not care about you. And if you get most of your sales from Google, your business model is highly volatile and can disappear overnight. I don't want Google to stop making tweaks to improve the quality of results and destroy dark SEO hacks, just because occasionally they happen to accidentally destroys someones under-diversified business model. I am sure it sucks to be on the receiving end of this, but imagine a world where Google never tweaked the algorithm. Search results would be utterly worthless today.
billpg 7y ago
I had a LiveVideo account. I had made a (terrible) music video made from clips of my driving around and sped up. I put it on my YouTube, but they ended up over-compressing the video so it was all blurry. (Fast-moving clips don't compress very well.) At the time, some fairly medium-to-high prominence YouTubers (back when Peter Oakley/Geriatric1927 was the most popular channel) had moved to LiveVideo so I tried uploading my video there. They didn't re-compress it all and it was still high quality. Time passed, and YouTube changed their rules to not compress so much. I re-uploaded my video (having to make a small change to avoid the hash collision) and it stayed up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg2gjrUFx9c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg2gjrUFx9c
cryptica 7y ago
>> You know, I should be a multimillionaire right now like we should have been what YouTube is today or at least a major competitor of YouTube and we should be a multibillion dollar Unicorn Tech Company. I find this statement extremely arrogant. It incorrectly assumes that the value and quality of a product is correlated with the financial success of the product. It hasn't been the case for decades. To everyone outside of the elite 'I used to go to MIT and was an early employee of MySpace' crowd, this was always the case and it's not news at all. When I build a product, I assume that there is a 90% to 99% probability that it's going to fail and I know exactly why it's going to fail and it will have nothing to do with product quality or strategy. I just assume that I'll have to build many exceptional products to even get a shot at making a living out of one of them. I expect success to be completely random and inexplicable. There are many superior products and technologies around but nobody talks about them and they are not being built upon. Everyone only talks about the mediocre tech that comes out of Google, Facebook, Amazon, or the elite Silicon Valley VC startup funnel. I enjoy reading these kinds of articles about elites getting a dose of the highly centralized monopolistic reality that they and their friends helped to create (e.g. especially those about Foursquare founders whining about Google over and over) - They're getting a taste of their own poison IMO. And yes, if you used to go to MIT, Stanford or Harvard or were on the founding team of MySpace, you are part of the elite; you have no excuse to complain, you are in the 'in crowd'; you could just have called the right people to make your problems go away; you failed to do that. Most people don't even have the option to socially network their problems away. But by all means keep whining; at least when elites whine, maybe other elites and politicians are more likely to listen.
learnstats2 7y ago
"And the only reason we’re not is because of anti competitive behavior from Google." I closed at this point. I'm no fan of Google, but if your business fails, I expect there to be some self-reflection.

211 points by mysticlabs 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

pcdoodle 7y ago

Thanks for posting this! The screenshots of the platform look awesome.

AndrewWarner 7y ago

Is there a link to the audio download somewhere? I can’t see it, but Id like to listen to this instead of reading it

jpeg_hero 7y ago
https://overcast.fm/+SJPJ9ok9U https://overcast.fm/+SJPJ9ok9U

ryanobjc 7y ago

The words "I should be a millionaire" sure appears a lot. The subject suggests there's a different title, but it really seems like the real subject is how this person isn't a millionaire.

yongjik 7y ago

> At one point, I believe it was over 74 million and after a Google search change, that number went down to less than 12 million overnight, so all the backlinks, all the websites that were linking to my site, that boosted my rank, that gave my site a good search cloud. This was all organic. I did not use tricks or anything deceptive. This was all organic traffic. These were all organic backlinks and all of a sudden Google just decided I’m turning it off and they did. So guess what happened? My search traffic completely plummeted. > I would get called on a regular basis from Google ad execs begging me to put Google ads on my website. > Like you basically have to give them their cut, otherwise they’re not gonna let you play and they’re going to screw with your search traffic. Yeah, no, it doesn't work like that. Google search ranking is not perfect, but they have taken search/ad separation very, very, very seriously. You can't even ask questions like "The google ad customer I'm talking to disappeared from search results, did you guys do anything overnight?" It's a big no-no. It sounds more like a sadly misinformed rant. 90% of startups fail - failure is a natural result. You don't need to bring up a Google conspiracy to explain it.

microdrum 7y ago
It’s not a big no-no. There is no Chinese wall. I’ve had AdX reps forward me messages from search quality. It’s all a lie. They want their cut. They’re trying to own the internet. They will be broken up.
blueboo 7y ago
Best practices are being followed now; but a large sales team at its worst more than ten years ago might be caught out in bad behavior. Less plausible is the scenario of failing as a result of ad-pay for search-play. If the equation is proven out, then he, a rational and effective founder, would’ve paid!—And his site would’ve played another day. Or are we supposed to read an implication that it was worth burning the company to the ground to take a principled stand against 2008 Google? Meanwhile, the traffic claims defy belief. Livevideo failed to launch.
- yongjik 7y ago
  Well, I wouldn't be surprised if, once in a while, an unscrupulous sales rep hinted that they can get their customers favorable search positions after buying ads. But I would be really surprised if anyone could follow through with their promises.
  - the-rc 7y ago
    Most sales people at Google wouldn't even know where to start looking. They're more familiar with the ad systems. Heck, a lot of engineers couldn't tell you on the spot where to look or whom to inquire about ranking bugs. Add to that the big gulf between sales and engineering, not to mention the sometimes snobbish attitude of the latter toward the former. (”Sales people take our money and blow it on dinners with clients!", forgetting that the money often came in thanks to sales and that e.g. engineers on average traveled less often, but for quite longer).
- mysticlabs 7y ago
  The launch of LiveVideo was not the issue. We had more traffic than we knew what to do with, and way more than YouTube at the time. Honestly, things didn't go sideways until Google decided to mess with LiveVideo and the rest of our web properties in search results. Had Google never purchased YouTube, LiveVideo would have probably won that battle hands down. Without Google money, YouTube would have failed, not LiveVideo.

tptacek 7y ago

From what I can tell, this is the story of a 2006-2008 Youtube also-ran that was outbid by Google for celebrity content, had copyright and inappropriate content problems, kept an adult content section on their website, and depended on AdSense for their revenue. I don't see where the concept of "deplatforming" fits into the narrative provided. You can check their old site out on Archive.org (the pages all seem to have "Family Filter" set, despite the fact that the tag clouds and "Most Popular Videos" callouts seem to have adult content in them).

dang 7y ago
Ok, we've changed the title to a more neutral sentence from the article body.
mysticlabs 7y ago
The sites were delisted from search engines despite content moderation being put in place. That is deplatforming. The adult content was put behind a mature section where ads weren't run against the mature content. LiveVideo and the parents companies network of sites were deplatformed from search results. Delisting competitors from search results who are meeting all of the requirements of their advertising policies at the time is the issue. The mature content was moderated and put behind mature content filters.
- tptacek 7y ago
  Just to be clear, and without engaging in any other part of your comment: the AdSense guidelines forbid ads on pages that link to or otherwise promote adult content, which this site surely did.
  - mysticlabs 7y ago
    There was absolutely no pornographic content on LiveVideo.com itself. Nor was it ever intended for LiveVideo to have adult content. We created the family filters for mature content. However, sexy content is just simply what people started uploading. We deleted anything that was even remotely pornographic, but there was still some sexy content as there is still plenty of sexy content on YouTube right now. We did not promote any adult content on LiveVideo.com itself. So LiveVideo.com itself wasn't in violation of these rules. Some of the other sites in our network possibly had more adult content in nature, but were not adult content websites and were not running AdSense on them.

mooman219 7y ago

> It wasn’t it wasn’t anything nefarious. > you know, adult content and there’s child porn on some of your properties and whatever > [getting] sued by the major, by the major record companies for [hosting lyrics] > Today we get sued by the record companies I'm not well read on the situation, but it sounds like they had serious moderation problems. It looks like they had adult content on their popular video's page occasionally even with a filter enabled. If they were being de-listed from DMCA and legal complaints, that's on them. A lot of the regulation and laws in this space give a lot of power to copyright holders, and YouTube likely has agreements that give them some leniency that other companies just can't get. I feel like that's less of a Tech Giant problem and more of a massive legal barrier to entry problem.

mysticlabs 7y ago
Occasionally something adult slipped through but we caught it as quickly as humanly possible. The government never had an issue with us, and we worked with them. The only company enforcing anything was Google, and they kept moving the goal posts every time we talked to them until it became clear there was nothing we could do to resolve these issues to meet their standards, standards they themselves have not met in the past 11+ years.

TACIXAT 7y ago

This is interesting. I'm starting to make a computer security course right now and I've chosen to put it on pornhub. The monetization options are better for creators (I can sell videos!). Obviously, pornhub is going to restrict the audience a bit, so I've been toying with the idea of making a video hosting site with solid monetization options and categories of ads beyond porn. I think the biggest thing I don't understand is CDNs and delivering the video quickly. If I get some traction in the course, maybe I could launch a site with that content. The monetization options on YouTube are just lacking. You have ads or 5$ / mo subscriptions (if you have 100k subscribers). My model is going to be 90% free videos with just the solutions to assignments paid. I'll make a small bit on ads, but mostly through 1$ video sales. I was going to offer pdf chapters for each module as well, but since ph only allows image formats and it would be a lot of work to write, I've nixed that idea.

sct202 7y ago
Is there a reason you wouldn't use Udemy or one of the other websites like that?
- TACIXAT 7y ago
  I tried to make a udemy course a few years ago, same topic. My biggest issue was that I needed a complete course for that. Maybe my goals are too lofty, but I got 5 or 6 modules in and lost momentum. I wanted a place where I could post as I made things.
itcrowd 7y ago
> I'm starting to make a computer security course right now and I've chosen to put it on pornhub. The monetization options are better for creators I find this hilarious, but at the same time I am wondering whether you're serious? I'm confused now..
- mulmen 7y ago
  Didn't this happen not long ago with gun streamers?
7y ago

harperlee 7y ago

> (...) is just like, I don’t know, like maybe half of the features (...) Some editing would be great to readability.

ilostit12 7y ago

Wow! Google needs to be broken up.

privateSFacct 7y ago

This article should say - you can't compete with google using google. The "final blow" was adsense being cutoff. Their revenue model to compete with google was ... adsense. OK. Their traffic model was google search. Ok. Between the lines it sounds like some aggressive SEO, and maybe the network click bounce thing (you click on one video, and then it clicks through to another site etc). Be curious what their content moderation story was. Seriously, if you are building a google competitor, you probably need to use something other than adsense. And a reminder, adsense is a key revenue generation value add. The paying of creators definitely anti-competitive. I do think there will be a youtube alternative (small scale) eventually. The problem is a lot of these "competitors" get filled with absolutely trash / hateful content right away because the first people to use them are the rejects from youtube and the moderation teams are so glad to have someone show up they don't moderate heavily enough. Checkout some of the reddit competitors, total disgusting trash.

noobermin 7y ago
Nothing you said is wrong, but that is part of the problem right? To do anything online, you have to use google to some extent, so how can you compete in the first place? Google is already a monopoly in search which makes it impossible to make something online that requires search (ie., almost everything) and have it properly compete.
- defen 7y ago
  Hey, if you want to compete with Standard Oil just build your own railroad line.
  - HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
    Until Standard Oil builds pipelines. That literally happened.
- darkpuma 7y ago
  Exactly. You may as well try to compete with a railroad monopoly while at the same time not using any of their existing rail infrastructure. Good fucking luck.

aexol 7y ago

Hi, I was really screwed by Tech Giant Companies many times in my life for a big money. But now, here I am reborn to bring justice. I reported 1 case to the European Commission and cases like mine led to a new law which was introduced last month: "Get up, stand up, don't give up the fight!" https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32019R1150&from=EN https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

aexol 7y ago
If somebody is too lazy too read. Search providers have to publish their search algorithm inside European union within one year from the date of publication
- itcrowd 7y ago
  Sounds like a bold claim .. and yes it is. Only the "main parameters" must be published. From your source (emphasis mine): > Providers of [..] online search engines should not be required to disclose the detailed functioning of their ranking mechanisms, including algorithms, under this Regulation. [..] > A general description of the main ranking parameters should safeguard [against bad faith manipulation of ranking by third parties] Main parameters being defined as: > The notion of main parameter should be understood to refer to any general criteria, processes, specific signals incorporated into algorithms or other adjustment or demotion mechanisms used in connection with the ranking.
  - aexol 7y ago
    It's the first step. If everybody will report criminal behavior( if seen ) of some of Tech Giants, then we can move this mountain.

quocble 7y ago

Im glad to see more of this. You can learn a lot more from failures which arent discussed well online.

sjg007 7y ago

I mean Twitch succeeded so that's a counterpoint. Vimeo is still going.. If I were to start a video company today, I'd go mobile first.

on_and_off 7y ago
Dailymotion is still there as well (although I find their product really inferior to the competitors)

zackmorris 7y ago

I wonder if a standard library or service could be written that detects search engine manipulation, in order to provide a mathematical confidence that it occurred of some kind. So for example, you make metube.com and it shows up on all the search engines. Off the top of my head, maybe it watches the rank over time, kind of like a stock ticker. If Google detects metube.com and buries your listing, but the listing stays the same on more egalitarian search engines like duckduckgo.com, that would show as a divergence in the historical rankings. So you could get answers like "there's a 77% likelihood that Google buried your link" or "Google's result diverges 23% from other search engines" or something like that. Then an overall measure of the top million sites or whatever could be used to generate an overall fairness/bias rating. If it showed enough manipulation over a long enough time, maybe that would be grounds to regulate or break up the largest search engines. Or maybe the law wouldn't be necessary, because a browser plugin could say "there's a 95% chance that this search result has not been manipulated" or even request results with a high degree of manipulation as a way of finding the canonical truth. Hmmm that gives me an idea for a search engine...

judge2020 7y ago
Might have been possible back in the day, but now the search engine market is just Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo's upcoming crawler (their own bot indexes my website but I'm not certain if it's being used for results). Even Yahoo uses bing for results: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8174763.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8174763.stm https://techcrunch.com/2015/04/16/microsoft-and-yahoo-renew-search-allian/ https://techcrunch.com/2015/04/16/microsoft-and-yahoo-renew-... You would need to go to the country-specific search engines like Yandex and Baidu, which may not be that great for english or US-based content.

dangerboysteve 7y ago

And he posted his video to YouTube. The irony.

on_and_off 7y ago

Is there a non ranty description of what happened ? I read the first couple of paragraphs and between the rantings how he should be a multimillionaire and how Google will destroy all of his projects, I gave up. It is obviously a very emotional subject for Trent, but that's just not the best way to present what happened to a third party.

deckar01 7y ago
Summary of claims from the interview: Live Video was a more successful video platform in the mid 2000s until Google bought YouTube and leveraged their monopoly on search and ads to cut off traffic to Live Video. They also paid content creators to leave Live Video and sign exclusive contracts with the cash Google injected to the company. The only reason Justin TV survived is that they pivoted to gaming to avoid competing with YouTube.

Havoc 7y ago

>Compete with youtube I admire the spirit. It's right up there with lets see who we can attack....hmm...US military...yeah they seem about the right size as a worthy opponent.

trilila 7y ago

The only company competing successfully with google is facebook, and they are both giant ad factories that will violate your privacy without batting an eye. Wondering if there is a ceiling in how much revenue an ad company can make using reasonable methods to generate revenue, and there just is no other way but by pushing crap to our browsers. So to compete and beat facebook and google one has to be good at the ad game not just the content game. Whoever thought google will allow a competitor to use google’s own platform to grow and threaten their own video ad stream should probs not be in a company’s board for a while.

nosefrog 7y ago

I have a hard time believing that their website was more popular than YouTube. I remember using loads of different video streaming services before YouTube was bought by Google (e.g. Vimeo, Google Videos, etc) and I've never heard of livevideo. Also, Google Videos was Google's own YouTube competitor from before they bought YouTube, which arguably was anti-competitive because it was much easier to search for Google Videos from Google than for YouTube videos. The more likely explanation for why their search rank plummited is their shady backlinking between their properties. > The only one that survived was Justin. That eventually became twitch because they picked video games as a category and just eliminated everything else. And YouTube didn’t really go after one market like that. They went after all video on the internet, so Google let them kind of have video games and that was it. Their explanation for why Twitch succeeded doesn't hold water. My understanding is that video gaming is currently one of the most popular categories on YouTube today and probably has been since the beginning (e.g. PewDiePie started as a video gaming youtuber). They're directly going after Twitch with YouTube Gaming. And Twitch obviously hasn't been deplatformed by Google Search.

bduerst 7y ago
Also it's not good branding. I immediately thought this was LiveLeak, which is a different site than LiveVideo. But you're right - there are lots of players who carved out niches on the market to be profitable, since hosting video content is expensive. Vimeo, Twitch, even LiveLeak, cater to specific content while the generalist Youtube burned money for over a decade. When all the other generalists were pivoting, LiveVideo plowed ahead with something that wasn't profitable. This post-hoc rationalization and finger pointing feels like sour grapes.
- nostromo 7y ago
  This was 2006. LiveLeak wasn't a thing yet when LiveVideo launched.
- PunksATawnyFill 7y ago
  Google's branding is the worst, however. They had to buy YouTube, in part, because Google Video was such a failure. Nobody saw Google Video as something to put video INTO; everyone assumed it was a search engine for online video. They haven't improved. Google's app store is still called "Google Play," which doesn't tell anyone it's an app store. It sounds like something gaming-related, and that's it. Google Plus... need we go on?

mattlondon 7y ago

> I should be a multimillionaire ... we should have been what ... a major competitor of YouTube and we should be a multibillion dollar Unicorn Tech Company. And the only reason we’re not is because of anti competitive behavior from Google Hmm ok. Are you sure that was the only reason? All those organic links from those 74 million of websites do not disappear even if you do disappear from the search results. The mention that google executives contacted them to discuss the $3,000 a month he could of made if he ran google ads - that is genuinely peanuts. This makes me think that was a really small operation that didn't have a hope in hell in going big and competing with vimeo or dailymotion, let alone google. For comparison I was running an AdSense site around the same time and was easily clearing £800-1000 (approx $1500 I guess) a month with only about 150,000-200,000 visits/month (CPMs were higher in those days - I get about the same traffic now but only about £150-300 a month now) If you these google "executives" (p.s. these wont have been "executives" wasting their time on a tiny publisher like this, you'd be lucky to even get a call from an actual google employee at that size - any tiny publisher deals like this would be farmed out to third party "partner" companies... the real actual executives would be talking to the New York Timess/Conde nasts/ESPNs of the world where the serious money is worth their time) are suggesting you could get up to $3,000 a month then sorry you were never destined for the big time. Sounds like those 74 million (74,000,000 sites linking to you - that is loads) sites sending traffic your way were actually only sending in a trickle of users otherwise you'd be able to sell a lot of advertising. Even if each site only sent a single measly user per month, 74,000,000 visitors a month is a chunky visitor base and would easily net you more than $3,000 - even with a CPM of 25c ("good" publishers can expect rates well in excess of this - easily $1 and perhaps $3,4 or even 5 for really top-tier stuff) you'd be looking at about $18,500 a month. You'd easily be able to do direct deals with advertisers and get better CPMs at that sort of level. Start ups fail all the time. It is hard and it is sad but I don't like it when people don't accept responsibility for their own failures though. This attitude of "it was everyone's fault apart from mine!" annoys me a lot

mysticlabs 7y ago
You're confusing stats from my other company with LiveVideo. Those numbers are from my second startup that Google messed with. It was a much smaller operation nowhere near the size of LiveVideo.com. The amount of traffic I did in a year with my startup was a weekend for LiveVideo.com.

jdtang13 7y ago

The article is 90% delusional

idonotknowwhy 7y ago
It feels like it's 90% "you know,"

alexanderklein 7y ago

Very good article. Yes, Google is indeed a very strong competitor for startups.

notyourday 7y ago

The product had no USP. And it was a suckier product. That's it. It is not possible to compete with Google using Google-like business model. It is already being used by Google and Google is very good at it. Who manages to compete with Google using a slightly different business model? Facebook. Why? Different USP. Different product. Who else? Amazon. Why? Different USP, different product. Who else? Pornhub. Why? Different USP, different product. List goes on.

FabHK 7y ago

Is there an article? I just see videos (and a transcript of a video), and when I click on "Read" in the top right corner, lots of other articles appear?

jaimex2 7y ago

My thoughts on this: Did Livevideo offer anything new or different to what Youtube already had? Was it better than Youtube in any way? We shouldn't forget Google couldn't compete with Youtube either. Google had to buy Youtube because Googlevideo was not as good. Twitch found a way to compete just fine.

mysticlabs 7y ago
Yes. It had live video, and live streaming in 2007 that is better than what YouTube even offers today. LiveVideo.com had way more features than YouTube even has today. Justin.tv which eventually became Twitch actually struggled and almost failed before they were able to capture the live streaming gaming market.

LearnerHerzog 7y ago

I would think the interface/front-end would be the most obvious and important way to catch the attention of visitors when competing against any decent-sized online company; I have never heard of livevideo.com, but at very first glance, I am certain it was never a threat on google/youtube's radar even if you had the best backend system in the world. No offense, but it looks like a 1990s yahoo.com version of youtube, and that introductory how-to video is already way more than enough to lose the attention of the majority viewers. A search engine landing page with more words/distractions from the search bar than google.com has (even a fraction of a second longer than what people expect) is already a red flag. Similarly, a streaming site must have extremely uniform, visually stimulating, well defined and relatable content for any hope of keeping visitors interested at a fraction of the rate youtube does. Consider how even the cheapest of porn websites (an industry with tens of millions of competing and ever-improving video streaming websites) know to float uniform rows of well tested, clickable video thumbnails as the first thing one sees, along with any and all instructions/options compressed onto a single dropdown button in the top corner— sometimes they don't even show the title unless you hover over it. My point is you have to figure out a way to make it even more accessible to new visitors than google is to their non-new visitors; and the amount of front-end text, options, and non-uniform content on livevideo.com is several leagues behind where it would need to start to consider a plan of attack... even against YT or the googs 10 years ago, circa 2009

mysticlabs 7y ago
Not sure which 2006-2008 you lived through, but this was pretty standard web design back then. YouTube from 2007: https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/timeline/youtube-2007 https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/timeline/youtube-2007 Had the company been allowed to exist and compete fairly, it would have evolved into something more modern and mobile friendly. Judging a startup from before the pre-mobile era, and blaming the design for its failure is kind of silly. This was the norm back then, if I were creating a video sharing website in 2019 of course I'd approach it differently, but alas there's no point in even trying.

fabioyy 7y ago

Google is Tier 1, they don't pay bandwidth. no one can compete with them

mgamache 7y ago

I am not sure if the stories are accurate, but if they are this is exactly the kind of anti-trust activity that Microsoft was prosecuted for (under US law). This is extending market power (monopoly) from one area to another (search and ads to video streaming). I know it looks like some of the startups broke some 'rules' like porn or pedophilia, but really YouTube breaks the same rules and uses the same (flagging/review) technique used in some of the startups. It's hard to start anything web related without a good Google index. Google has 93% market share in search [http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share]

barli 7y ago

you didn't try to compete against Youtube and Google, you had an early vision of Periscope and House Party. Do you still have access to MySpace guys?

mysticlabs 7y ago
Not really. I could maybe track down Toan, I still check in with his brother occasionally. But Brad is in the wind, tried to track him down but it seems he doesn't want to be found.

manubeauty 7y ago

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idonotknowwhy 7y ago

57 matches for "You know" in that transcript. I got about half way through but can't finish this, it's so annoying!

maxk42 7y ago

Without revealing details -- I worked for this company at this time. I was privy to certain financial details. Google did not destroy them. A combination of poor business decisions and possibly corruption did. I watched these decisions unfold in person and I won't provide certain details because I don't want to say anything that might be considered libelous, but this guy is straight-up throwing a pity party for himself. It has nothing to do with reality. Google was not actually evil back then. Did they offer contracts to content creators? Maybe. No reason Live Universe couldn't have done the same. There actually was lots of adult content on the Live Universe network of sites. Just -- everywhere. Content moderation was ineffective because so much of the community was driven by porn: Users wouldn't flag adult content because that's what they were there for, so massive amounts of it just piled up. Google had every reason to stop doing business with them. This guy straight-up admits there was child porn on the site and they were engaged in shady SEO tactics then bitches that Google delisted them. "I literally [built a YouTube competitor" -- no you didn't, man. You were just an employee for someone who did.

heimatau 7y ago
> they were engaged in shady SEO tactics then bitches that Google delisted them. As someone who did SEO for many years, Google was very serious about eliminating the 'black hat' SEO tactics. They were cheap, they were plentiful. Google eliminated them throughout their index because bad actors were skewing the results. This article does sound like a pity party but it sounds like someone isn't willing to accept they dropped the ball when it was passed to them.

otakucode 7y ago

I don't think that even if Google avoided the tactics they used, you still could not compete with YouTube. Alphabet has as one of its goals cultural "guidance". This is openly advocated by Eric Schmidt in his book 'A New Digital Age.' They ran YouTube at a gigantic ongoing loss for over a decade solely to suppress competition and establish themselves as the only viable video platform. If you can build a billion-dollar infrastructure, and after those bills are paid you can lose hundreds of millions of dollars a year running it, than and only then can you compete with YouTube and face these tactics in addition to all of the legal and political pressure Google can produce. They haven't even needed to break out political pressure (and by that I mean getting government to establish regulations and legislation that YouTube is omitted from by being grandfathered in, not any kind of 'conservative/liberal bias' sort of thing) yet. And so long as Alphabet is profitable, we may never see those tactics as they're simply not needed. YouTube is a key factor in Alphabet exercising the cultural 'guidance' that Eric Schmidt argues is not only Googles responsibility but moral obligation. For people who agree with Schmidt and disagree with the position that the public should be permitted to decide their own future, good or bad, it will be impossible to gain their support. Make no mistake, that viewpoint is the one that has supported every monarchy, dictatorship, theocracy, and non-democratic social structure throughout history. Political scientists call is Conservatism with a capital C, whereas the view that the public should play a role in their own governance and decide their own fate, for good or ill, is the alternative that drove the American Revolution, French Revolution, and countless blood-soaked revolutions across the globe. It won every single one of those wars. But it, too, lost to Google. Just consider, if 70+% of the public today believed that interracial marriage was offensive and disgusting, which was true when interracial marriage was legalized by the Supreme Court in the 1960s, Google would deplatform anyone who agreed with the legalization of interracial marriage in order to defend that status quo. They do not seek to provide an open, global platform that can host or play a part in public debate about serious issues. They seek to exercise cultural guidance as Eric Schmidt sees fit. It has been the public which has reliably improved over time and progressed while still containing contingents of nuts and extremists. And it has progressed not despite that, but because of it. No closed and centrally managed society in history has become more progressive except through dreadfully bloody revolutions that destroyed its management.

baalimago 7y ago

Yes, you know, I know. Maybe do some filtering on the autotranscripts? Interesting read otherwise.

jackjeff 7y ago

Wow... what a ton of BS. I disagree with most of it. - "Google/YouTube made an anti-competitive move against LiveVideo". Ok, on the face of it (if you believe everything Lapinsky says) then it is really bad, as in "illegal" kind of bad. It makes me wonder how Google/Youtube avoided being sued. I whole heartily condemn YouTube/Google IF they did this. It sounds plausible btw, since they have done jerk things to Yelp or flight search engines, etc... - "There is child porn on YouTube". Really? I don't believe it. They do a very good job with regular porn. I have never seen a pair of boobs on YouTube over the years. I don't know how they do it, but it seems to me that moderation of "nakedness" probably using AI works pretty damn well. I have never seen an article about porn issues on YouTube. - "Google is no longer a neutral digital intermediate because they promote fairness". Yes. They do. And if they were not doing it, governments around the world would force them to do it. Also their advertisers do not want to be associated with the likes of Alex Jones and are putting pressure on YouTube to sort the issue. This is the sad reality, but Google, Facebook and Twitter are forced to moved from a "neutral" digital platform to something more akin to a "publisher". People on the board of Google are no more elected that the directors of publication of the largest newspapers. And if you think that shows an anti-conservatice bias, look at who is President of the US, who is going to be Prime Minister in the UK, etc... I don't think this is going to be easy but Google (and social media) to find a right balance where most people are able to publish, but the most fringe/toxic members of the community deserved to be demonetized. Will Google abuse its powers of f//k up from time to time? Sure they will. But I agree with the overall trend. And again, they do not have a choice. - "Google changed its search engine to promote sites with responsive designs". I absolutely agree with the change. Most people use mobile devices. You waited until 2013 to realize you had to do that? A website that is not responsive today and back in 2013 probably sucked anyway, and it is "right" for Google to demote them. There is nothing anti-competitive about that. Btw, I can predict the future too. For instance, at some point Google will promote sites that support HTTP/2 and not just HTTP/1.1, so maybe you think of doing that on your next "Wordpress business". - "Google wanted ads on my website". Just say "no". And I don't believe in the logical fallacy that _because_ you refused that is why the website was delisted. Seriously dude, your website was way to small for Google to care that much. - The business was overly dependent on Google search results. Google tweak its algorithm from time to time. Most of the time Google has genuine reasons for the changes. Sometimes they want to demote a "large" competitor in an anti-competitive move (which btw, I think it's going to get harder and harder for Google to get away with that). But your tiny site that depends on search results... it's just an unintended consequence. Google does not care about you. And if you get most of your sales from Google, your business model is highly volatile and can disappear overnight. I don't want Google to stop making tweaks to improve the quality of results and destroy dark SEO hacks, just because occasionally they happen to accidentally destroys someones under-diversified business model. I am sure it sucks to be on the receiving end of this, but imagine a world where Google never tweaked the algorithm. Search results would be utterly worthless today.

billpg 7y ago

I had a LiveVideo account. I had made a (terrible) music video made from clips of my driving around and sped up. I put it on my YouTube, but they ended up over-compressing the video so it was all blurry. (Fast-moving clips don't compress very well.) At the time, some fairly medium-to-high prominence YouTubers (back when Peter Oakley/Geriatric1927 was the most popular channel) had moved to LiveVideo so I tried uploading my video there. They didn't re-compress it all and it was still high quality. Time passed, and YouTube changed their rules to not compress so much. I re-uploaded my video (having to make a small change to avoid the hash collision) and it stayed up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg2gjrUFx9c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg2gjrUFx9c

cryptica 7y ago

>> You know, I should be a multimillionaire right now like we should have been what YouTube is today or at least a major competitor of YouTube and we should be a multibillion dollar Unicorn Tech Company. I find this statement extremely arrogant. It incorrectly assumes that the value and quality of a product is correlated with the financial success of the product. It hasn't been the case for decades. To everyone outside of the elite 'I used to go to MIT and was an early employee of MySpace' crowd, this was always the case and it's not news at all. When I build a product, I assume that there is a 90% to 99% probability that it's going to fail and I know exactly why it's going to fail and it will have nothing to do with product quality or strategy. I just assume that I'll have to build many exceptional products to even get a shot at making a living out of one of them. I expect success to be completely random and inexplicable. There are many superior products and technologies around but nobody talks about them and they are not being built upon. Everyone only talks about the mediocre tech that comes out of Google, Facebook, Amazon, or the elite Silicon Valley VC startup funnel. I enjoy reading these kinds of articles about elites getting a dose of the highly centralized monopolistic reality that they and their friends helped to create (e.g. especially those about Foursquare founders whining about Google over and over) - They're getting a taste of their own poison IMO. And yes, if you used to go to MIT, Stanford or Harvard or were on the founding team of MySpace, you are part of the elite; you have no excuse to complain, you are in the 'in crowd'; you could just have called the right people to make your problems go away; you failed to do that. Most people don't even have the option to socially network their problems away. But by all means keep whining; at least when elites whine, maybe other elites and politicians are more likely to listen.

learnstats2 7y ago

"And the only reason we’re not is because of anti competitive behavior from Google." I closed at this point. I'm no fan of Google, but if your business fails, I expect there to be some self-reflection.