4 ms·

Hard to convince a company to provide good service when they can make more money by not doing so.

xmprt 6y ago
I'm not sure about that. It's pretty common knowledge that YouTube isn't the endgame for a lot of content creators. If instead, YouTube supported their users more (especially the larger ones) they would have potential to be in the loop for other services like livestreaming, merch, and donations instead of having creators resort to using services like Twitch, Squarespace, and Patreon.
- DecoPerson 6y ago
  The revenue of Twitch [0], Squarespace [1] and Patreon [2] combined pales in comparison to that of YouTube [3]. The revenue potential in the advertising space cannot be underestimated. Merch has high fixed costs and does not scale dynamically. Live-streaming is inaccessible for both streamers and viewers (in comparison to YouTube videos). Donation fees aren’t a secure revenue source. Either the donators or the creators could turn off donations at any time. But ads are guaranteed. There’s so much to the ad space that isn’t publicly known; Google’s operating on a whole‘nother level. It’s also a lot more complicated to start ten $300 million projects than to optimize one $3 billion project. The people steering the ship (CEO, CFO, CTO, ...) only have so much time and brain power. They could delegate projects to others, but that requires hiring the right people and that’s really hard. If you have 4 layers of accounting management, and the probability of a bad hire is 25%, the chance of each layer being managed well is only 32%. Whereas if you have only one or a few big projects, you can have less layers, so the probability of success increases all round. (You might say that Google should do all these projects so can diversify. But why should they take the risk? There are thousands of startups out there testing the waters. They can just acquire those when they show promise. If those startups fail, Google loses nothing.) (The claims in this comment are educated guesses from reading a lot of articles. I definitely haven’t run a $300 million project!) [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattperez/2020/01/08/report-amazons-twitch-not-meeting-ad-revenue-expectations/#19f011e67164 https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattperez/2020/01/08/report-ama... [1] https://www.drift.com/blog/squarespace-billion-dollar-growth/ https://www.drift.com/blog/squarespace-billion-dollar-growth... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/elisabethbrier/2019/07/16/next-billion-dollar-startup-patreon-a-membership-platform-for-artists-raises-60m-in-latest-funding-round/#5201d1455adf https://www.forbes.com/sites/elisabethbrier/2019/07/16/next-... [3] https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21121207/youtube-google-alphabet-earnings-revenue-first-time-reveal-q4-2019 https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21121207/youtube-google-al...
- young_unixer 6y ago
  The overlap between Twitch-able content and Youtube-able content is rather small, and the Twitch audience is much smaller (and different) than Youtube's audience. Patreon and Squarespace are not competitors to Youtube, they're in completely different races. There is no real competition to Youtube when it comes to UX (specially loading speeds and availability of different resolutions) just due to the sheer number of CDNs and server infrastructure that Youtube has. Youtubers can complain and complain (sometimes rightfully), but 99% of them are not willing to abandon the platform, because that's equivalent to abandoning their online career altogether.
  - woodrowbarlow 6y ago
    the overlap _used to be_ huge. "let's play" was the single largest genre on youtube for a while. then they all moved to twitch.

I'm not sure about that. It's pretty common knowledge that YouTube isn't the endgame for a lot of content creators. If instead, YouTube supported their users more (especially the larger ones) they would have potential to be in the loop for other services like livestreaming, merch, and donations instead of having creators resort to using services like Twitch, Squarespace, and Patreon.

DecoPerson 6y ago
The revenue of Twitch [0], Squarespace [1] and Patreon [2] combined pales in comparison to that of YouTube [3]. The revenue potential in the advertising space cannot be underestimated. Merch has high fixed costs and does not scale dynamically. Live-streaming is inaccessible for both streamers and viewers (in comparison to YouTube videos). Donation fees aren’t a secure revenue source. Either the donators or the creators could turn off donations at any time. But ads are guaranteed. There’s so much to the ad space that isn’t publicly known; Google’s operating on a whole‘nother level. It’s also a lot more complicated to start ten $300 million projects than to optimize one $3 billion project. The people steering the ship (CEO, CFO, CTO, ...) only have so much time and brain power. They could delegate projects to others, but that requires hiring the right people and that’s really hard. If you have 4 layers of accounting management, and the probability of a bad hire is 25%, the chance of each layer being managed well is only 32%. Whereas if you have only one or a few big projects, you can have less layers, so the probability of success increases all round. (You might say that Google should do all these projects so can diversify. But why should they take the risk? There are thousands of startups out there testing the waters. They can just acquire those when they show promise. If those startups fail, Google loses nothing.) (The claims in this comment are educated guesses from reading a lot of articles. I definitely haven’t run a $300 million project!) [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattperez/2020/01/08/report-amazons-twitch-not-meeting-ad-revenue-expectations/#19f011e67164 https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattperez/2020/01/08/report-ama... [1] https://www.drift.com/blog/squarespace-billion-dollar-growth/ https://www.drift.com/blog/squarespace-billion-dollar-growth... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/elisabethbrier/2019/07/16/next-billion-dollar-startup-patreon-a-membership-platform-for-artists-raises-60m-in-latest-funding-round/#5201d1455adf https://www.forbes.com/sites/elisabethbrier/2019/07/16/next-... [3] https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21121207/youtube-google-alphabet-earnings-revenue-first-time-reveal-q4-2019 https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21121207/youtube-google-al...
young_unixer 6y ago
The overlap between Twitch-able content and Youtube-able content is rather small, and the Twitch audience is much smaller (and different) than Youtube's audience. Patreon and Squarespace are not competitors to Youtube, they're in completely different races. There is no real competition to Youtube when it comes to UX (specially loading speeds and availability of different resolutions) just due to the sheer number of CDNs and server infrastructure that Youtube has. Youtubers can complain and complain (sometimes rightfully), but 99% of them are not willing to abandon the platform, because that's equivalent to abandoning their online career altogether.
- woodrowbarlow 6y ago
  the overlap _used to be_ huge. "let's play" was the single largest genre on youtube for a while. then they all moved to twitch.