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Floatplane – Linus Tech Tips launches their own video hosting platform
- ortusdux 7y agoHere is their explanation video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOOOfZWXPu4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOOOfZWXPu4 Their site is light on details, but the TOS spells it out pretty well: https://www.floatplane.com/legal/terms https://www.floatplane.com/legal/terms
- rwmj 7y agoDoesn't this compete fairly directly with Patreon? Patreon allows some hosting, interacting with the creators directly, and of course taking payments.
- ortusdux 7y agoIt looks to me to be an ad free hybrid of youtube and patreon. Its primary focus is video delivery, monetized via subscription. They go over some of the bandwidth numbers in the video.
- nerdponx 7y agoIt seems like it's meant to compete with both Patreon and Vimeo. Issues with the website CSS aside, I hope it succeeds.
- CivBase 7y agoAs someone who uses Floatplane and Pareon (viewer, not producer), I strongly prefer Floatplane. Patreon is fine as a donation platform, but it's mediocre for content delivery. As a long-time viewer of LTT, I also trust them more with their content moderation policies.
- belorn 7y agoCompared to pateron it would be interesting to know what the cut is between floatplane and the creator.
- e12e 7y agoThey have a video explaining their video hosting platform on a competing video hosting platform?
- dharmab 7y agoThey have millions of subscribers on YouTube that they want to migrate
- MaxBarraclough 7y agoDo they have the ability to host videos? I'm not seeing a live demo of their player.
- jeroenhd 7y agoThey do, they've been dogfeeding on their own platforms for quite a while now. One of the main advantages that I've heard people talk about is the high bit rates, making their 1080p look smoother than YouTube 4k in some cases. Somewhat strange that they lack a free video preview of the quality of the website, but that might just be because launching a service like this with a high quality video front and center might ruin their networking when a giant wave of new people come in.
- ksec 7y agoYoutube compresses to 2.4Mbps inclusive of audio for H.264 1080P, which really shouldn't be a problem if the video uploaded was clean and high bitrate in the first place. I think another reason was Youtube did not support uploading of HEVC content until fairly recently, that has cause lot of problem especially those shoot their video with their iPhone. And Youtube may never transcode and support the playback of HEVC content. Which means you are stuck with 1080P for Apple's users.
- MaxBarraclough 7y ago> shouldn't be a problem Anecdotally, videos streamed from Vimeo (which offers far superior bitrates to YouTube) look considerably better than YouTube.
- RL_Quine 7y agoUnfortunately their landing page doesn’t give and real confidence. It looks like a MVP rather than something they’ve been working on for years.
- ortusdux 7y agoDefinitely a soft launch. The FAQ is empty. The How it Works section of the TOS is pretty edifying.
- choppaface 7y agoLinus is a hardware person, not really a software person.
- minimaxir 7y agoThat's why you hire software/design people.
- leshow 7y agoI mean, I wouldn't really call him a 'hardware person' either. If you consider a hardware person to be someone who does electrical or computer engineering, like designing PCBs or microcontrollers, etc. He comes across to me like a savvy consumer.
- mendelmaleh 7y agoI don't remember him doing any of those things, I think Alex is their resident engineer... In my eyes Linus is just a nerd and a salesman.
- m_samuel_l 7y agoHe's neither.
- phendrenad2 7y agoI don't think looking good is relevant to it's goals or success in any way.
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- bil7 7y agooh, this has an actual site now. Last time I checked, it was using the LTT forum for all intel..
- Zekio 7y agoIIRC it moved off of the LTT forums over a year ago
- gdxhyrd 7y agoVery good news! Competition in this space is hard and is always welcomed, in my opinion.
- hadrien01 7y agoI wonder how it it compares to Nebula (Dave Wiskus, CGP Grey, and Philipp Dettmer). It seems to be roughly the same product, except for pricing ($5/m for Nebula, $3/m/creator for Floatplane)
- devrand 7y agoBiggest difference IMO is that Nebula is going with the Netflix-model for their network of content creators. I'm not sure how they're going revenue sharing, but I'm guessing it's based on proportional viewership. Nebula is probably fine if you have a large pre-existing and engaged subscription base. However, it's probably more difficult for smaller to mid-sized creators. I would worry that they're not going to get enough revenue from their share of watch time to cover their own costs. Also given that Nebula is very heavily skewed education channels, you'd likely have trouble if you're outside of that realm. Floatplane on the other hand seems more targeted: you pay for a specific content creator. This seems more similar to how places like Rooster Teeth operated in the early days, only it's now providing the video streaming as-a-service. Nebula will likely provide discoverability within their catalog of creators in return for the shared revenue model. Floatplane is way more direct but you're left growing your subscriber base outside of the platform. Edit: fixed some typos
- m1el 7y agoTo anyone who makes sites like these, please consider removing the following CSS rule: https://i.imgur.com/RWqwd0P.png https://i.imgur.com/RWqwd0P.png Thank you, -- someone who thinks selecting text is not something you should screw with.
- icebraining 7y agoIs there even a good reason for the existence of that CSS rule? Browsers should just stop honouring that crap.
- phendrenad2 7y agoThere are, look them up. That said, there's no reason to put it on the whole page like this, other than laziness.
- michaelmcdonald 7y agoWhy on earth would they even do that?! It's just as infuriating as sites that muck around with the scroll. No...just don't. Don't try to be fancy, leave the scrolling to me.
- leppr 7y agoIt's part of making a Progressive Web App: the user should believe they're using a regular smartphone app, and being unable to simply select and copy text goes a long way towards maintaining the illusion. /s
- arkanciscan 7y agoShould we also force our users to download a 30mb update every week? Just to really emulate the native app experience!
- twobat 7y agoThis linked page alone has 10 MB.
- Havoc 7y agoInteresting. I like their content. Or rather about half of it, which is pretty good by YouTube standards So I wish them well with this new venture
- ortusdux 7y agoI've followed them for a while now on youtube and it has been interesting to watch them evolve their format, content, and presentation to appease youtube's algorithms. They have been pretty open [1] about how they don't like some of the changes they have had to make to stay popular on youtube. I hope they roll back some of the more annoying changes. It appears that the ugly thumbnails sadly still persist in on floatplane [2]. It would also gladly pay for a return to 5 minute videos vs the now standard 15+ min length that gets a middle youtube ad-break and increased revenue. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzRGBAUz5mA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzRGBAUz5mA [2] https://youtu.be/oOOOfZWXPu4?t=71 https://youtu.be/oOOOfZWXPu4?t=71
- ocdtrekkie 7y agoSo, it seems like I can't view any of these creators' content without logging in. Not even so much as a preview of it. That's a big fail if they're hoping to run up against YouTube. The biggest thing I'm going to expect is that it needs to have solid RSS support: If not part of a centralized site, it needs really good support for feed standards like RSS so I don't have to check it daily.
- devrand 7y agoThey're not trying to compete with Youtube -- like at all. It's seems like they're going for a closed-network of pre-approved creators with a existing sizable subscription-base. They pretty explicitly said this is a platform you'd be growing your subscriber base on as they have zero interest in providing discoverability. They basically are just providing a streaming platform for content creators to share their videos with paid subscribers. Kind of like old-school Rooster Teeth as-a-service.
- CoolGuySteve 7y agoIt's not meant to compete with YouTube. It's meant for patreon subscriber live streams and the like.
- tux1968 7y agoYup, i'm not signing up to watch video. But there is some justification for it, they really only want consumers who are willing to sponsor content. My guess is that this is in lieu of advertising injected by the platform itself. It's good that this is being tried, but i'm not sure you can get to critical mass this way.
- buboard 7y agoa few people have started their own platforms, and there s also generic alternatives like bitchute steem etc. I wonder who will become the open source "wordpress of youtubers"
- big_chungus 7y agoA serious video CDN is one of those things that makes sense at scale. You have to get POPs all around the world, transcode lots of different bitrates, store it all, etc. and that sort of thing is expensive enough to get up and running that I don't forsee a lot of small-time people putting up their own versions (a la wordpress).
- buboard 7y ago> A serious video CDN is one of those things that makes sense at scale. Torrents provide a lot of this funcitonality (Also, the CDN doesn't even make sense for youtube - they are not profitable)
- big_chungus 7y agoMeh, torrents provide some. They don't handle the different qualities you might want to select for, say, a fast desktop vs a slow mobile connection. They also make controlling distribution much harder.
- Zekio 7y agodepends I've seen a pretty decent solution before using WebRTC to it amongst clients, can't remember the name of the company who had the solution tho...
- RL_Quine 7y agoIf you use my bandwidth to serve your own traffic, fuck you, honestly. The internet is hard enough without wondering if random websites are slowing down my connection by seeding torrents with webRTC.
- baybal2 7y agoClicked on it in disbelief. This happened to be another Linus.
- benbristow 7y agoSo it's like YouTube but you have to pay a subscription for every channel? Ugh.
- ropiwqefjnpoa 7y agoRight, how about a flat fee subscription service where creators get paid on the backend per views? And then you can choose to support a channel separately.
- phendrenad2 7y agoI think they're co-opting YouTube as the discovery wing of FloatPlane. Find channels to watch on YT, and if you like them head on over to GP and support them.
- aprvchndrs 7y ago> So it's like YouTube but you have to pay a subscription for every channel? Ugh. I think it’s more of a Patreon alternative focused on delivering video.
- bpfrh 7y agoThe terms of service are not that great, no step up from youtube. I can't understand why current businesses think it is right to simply allow themselfes to arbitarly raise fees and delete accounts and content without any warning.
- tiborsaas 7y agoYou have to protect yourself. If you get offensive content then your best course of action is to get rid of it asap. Think of nazi propaganda, animal abuse or other freaky shit. And yes, the lines are blurry.
- bpfrh 7y agoIt would be alright for me if the terms of use where: If your content is against the law, or does not conform to the guidelines that where written in the terms of use, it will be removed. And for the guidelines: A Guideline change will be communicated at least half a year before the changes This gives people ample time to other plattforms or move videos. EDIT: And of course if you are a repeate offender you get banned for X weeks/months/years, or you have to have a manuall review on each update which raises your fees.
- tiborsaas 7y agoYou are just framing the same thing in a different way. The ToS is lawyer speak, how they enforce it is a really different question. To provide a service for the vast majority you need powerful legal tools against the small, but smart devious users. Strict wording is part of this never ending battle. At YouTube scale it's very hard and injustice is baked into the system. With a service like Floatplane, you can police it fairly easily. To a point... :) Then they will start to feel the heat.
- bpfrh 7y agoNot really. My idea binds them to certain terms e.g. they can only ban accounts if they don't follow guidelines,which means they have to give a reason which can be legally challenged. They can only change the guidelines after a warning period, which means they have more incentitive to be constructive with the community as they can move away in that time. As of now, if you join the plattform you only have very few gurantees. As per the terms right now, they could happily send you an E-Mail at around 1AM and change pledge fees to 300%. If that lands in the spam folder, you could not notice it until you have to pay. Then they could ban you and delete your account without any reason, without any refunds. Do I think they will do it? No Do I think a company which presents itself as a fair new company who wants to be fair etc. should have terms of use which enable such behaivour? No, I think it is high time that such terms of use are banned. I'm not even sure such terms would be legal in some countries.
- traspler 7y agoAFAIK it was started as a replacement for Vessel which shut down a while ago. As far as I remember the initial idea was to provide a platform where creators could release their videos in an "Early Access" Model to paying subscribers while their back catalog would be freely available. Not sure if this is still the plan though, seems like it has become a more all-encompassing paid video, streaming and community platform.
- arkanciscan 7y ago.
- sfoley 7y agoIs there context to his? I've not heard anything.
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- parasense 7y agoI see no way to setup my own video channel, and so this site is useless. I'd love to find a way off YT, and this is (apparently) not the way forward. But nice try I guess, I don't have any other remarks really, because honestly I'm not at all interested in starting multiple subscriptions at $5 a months for these two-bit channels. $1 per channel is a massive flex, but $5 is like some fantasy world flex.
- parasense 7y agoTo be clear, at $5 per channel that is like saying the channel is half as valuable as Netflix, which is simply not possible. That said, we get it... not everyone has the scale to race to the bottom like Netflix, but that's the situation just the same.
- kllrnohj 7y agoI watch more LTT than I do Netflix. It's more relevant to my hobbies and, critically, Netflix has lost a ton of content over the years. As a different comparison point, HBO NOW is $15/month and that gets you a very small amount of content.
- asdasdasdasdwd 7y agoI'd pay $5 for access to a number of channels, say 10, and then they distribute their earnings depending on the time I spent on each channel.
- Dayshine 7y ago> We encourage you to contact us if you have an issue. If a dispute does arise out of these terms of use or related to your use of the service, and it cannot be resolved by way of a discussion between us, the matter of the dispute shall be resolved by way of binding arbitration in British Columbia in accordance with the Arbitration Act (BC). The costs of such arbitration shall be borne by the losing party. Wow, that's a hard pass then...
- nerdponx 7y agoIs this any different from Youtube, Twitch, Vimeo, or Patreon? I would assume they all have abusive binding arbitration clauses.
- gruez 7y ago>Youtube https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms no hits for "arbit"(ration)
- jeroenhd 7y agoI suppose YouTube doesn't need arbitration, they'll just van your accounts and ignore you until you make enough of a stink on social media. I expected YouTube to have an arbitration class myself but as it probably didn't have one from the start and the extra stink of adding it now would only serve to make people more hostile to the platform, adding it probably doesn't make sense.. Most (American) Internet companies do have an arbitration clause though so I can see where the parent comes from. It's expected to be in the terms of any web company these days.
- Dayshine 7y agoYouTube doesn't, patreon doesn't, vimeo has a small claims exemption. So, yeah, not at all universal
- authoritarian 7y agoYou must pass on a lot of services then, considering how prevalent similar arbitration clauses are in ToS
- leshow 7y agoMaybe someone can explain, why would I pay for something like this?
- SirYandi 7y agoFor the same reason you pay towards a creators Patreon or Twitch, you want to support an individual creator you like.
- authoritarian 7y agoTo support creators and avoid youtube/google
- mendelmaleh 7y ago...and the creators usually provide exclusive content or early access as extra incentives.
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- gridlockd 7y agoFirst of all, the name is bad. It's not self-explanatory. I don't care why it's called that and I don't care to find out. Secondly, creator-centric platforms don't pay off. Platforms bring the audience, creators bring the content. Platforms make creators, not the other way around. No creator got from zero to hero without a platform that has attained critical mass. That mass isn't attained by catering to the creators, but to the audience. The audience doesn't care about creators until the platform introduces them. If creator-centric platforms paid off, there wouldn't be these insane commissions (often upwards of fifty percent) that creators are willing to give up just to be on the platform. Competition would drive commissions down. Rather, it's more of a winner-takes-all game, and those winner platforms get away with it. Low-commission platforms don't bring the traffic, and vice versa.
- aprvchndrs 7y ago> Secondly, creator-centric platforms don't pay off. Platforms bring the audience, creators bring the content. Platforms make creators, not the other way around. No creator got from zero to hero without a platform that has attained critical mass. That mass isn't attained by catering to the creators, but to the audience. The audience doesn't care about creators until the platform introduces them. You are thinking of this as a YouTube alternative. It’s not. It’s a supplementary platform that is creator focused. They are not making this for discovery. LTT put out a video explaining this. This is more of a Patreon alternative. A place to support creators - and for creators to fall back to in case YouTube shuts down monetization.
- reggieband 7y agoI'm very interested in this space. I had an idea about 3 years ago for what appears to basically be Nebula (which I just found today based on another comment in this thread). My idea was basically: * Creators are curated and are seeded from existing Youtube channels. Curation happens on the creator level where illegal content means removal of the channel. * No advertising so latitude for monetization of brand-unfriendly content. * User pay a monthly subscription fee. * Money is divided amongst creators based on watch time. Some ideas I had that I don't see represented: * Users have the opportunity to pay more per month and can elect to spend this money in a discretionary way, like a "tip". This isn't shared based on watch time but by direct action from the user towards creators they want to show appreciation above and beyond. * Creators can elect some of their content as "free" content, e.g. introductory videos, videos older than 3 months, etc. in order to attract and grow an audience. This free content does not contribute to their "watch-time" that comprises their share of subscription revenue but it can attract discretionary tips. A couple of points: * Anyone who scoffs at the idea of the discretionary monthly "tip" idea has not watched the flood of donations to Twitch streamers. However, some kind of feedback would be required in a similar way to TTS shoutouts - I'm not sure on this. We tend to focus on the majority who say "I would never pay $Y for anything!" while ignoring the whales that would happily pay $Y * 100 given the right incentives. If you've worked in free-to-play games then you know the revenue potential of whales. If you remove the ceiling of what people can pay, some people will pay above your wildest expectations just because they can. * I worked in video distribution and I was closely involved in managing costs. Most people cannot believe the costs involved in delivering video. Linus mentioned terabytes of data but that is the tip of the iceberg for popular content. Costs can ramp up to $100k/month for even modest audience sizes when storage and delivery are considered. That doesn't include server costs to run the multiple back-end and front-end services needed, nor the salaries of engineers and devops to keep it up. I was unable to find a way to make the $$ work without serious up-front investment. This isn't a space you can bootstrap on free tiers of cloud services. Ultimately the real "whales" are businesses. I don't believe any subscriber funded effort can ever attract the kind of spend that massive advertising budgets can leverage. That means that platforms funded by advertising will always have a war-chest to snipe the best content creators. Think how Mix payed for Ninja and Shroud. Even if a content creator gets popular on one of these subscriber-supported platforms there will always be an advertising platform ready with cash-in-hand to steal them away. Despite some pessimism, I am actually very bullish on this idea and I truly hope the idea succeeds!
- Railsify 7y agoI hope this works but for any creators who are making money on youtube: Are you allowed to upload the same content on multiple sites and still remain a youtube monetizable creator? Are they recommending creators move to floatplane?
- bobbean 7y agoTo answer shortly: Yes No
- dayaz36 7y agoThey need to make this a youtube competitor if they want it to take off
- matthew27 7y agoHey Linus