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Now that YouTube is back up I take this opportunity to put this thread to a good use and ask what does it take to create an alternative to YouTube? Would love

by soheil 6y ago

Now that YouTube is back up I take this opportunity to put this thread to a good use and ask what does it take to create an alternative to YouTube? Would love your opinions/wish list/must haves.

Mountain_Skies 6y ago
The folks at MindGeek probably can answer that better than anyone.
- soheil 6y ago
  p0rn is not really an alternative to YT
brewdad 6y ago
First, collect a few billion dollars....
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- soheil 6y ago
  Do you have any evidence for that?
  - manquer 6y ago
    Building the tech part of product is not challenging part. Distribution has always been historically expensive for any content. While digital distribution is cheaper than ever, B/W costs for a product like YT is enormous . To make unit economics to any sense, you will need to spin your own CDN and buy b/w from other CDNs when that it is cheaper. For your own CDN, you are looking at few hundred PoPs and thousands of peering agreements with ISPs in each geography maybe lease cables too . This is a substantial investment. Even if do all this you still have to compete with Google on android where they have a distinct advantage, YT is pre-installed in billions of devices and user account already activated. You will have to pay OEMs a lot of money to get the same kind of user base pre-installed and still do your own user activation. There is a reason why nobody is trying seriously. the next largest competitors DailyMotion and Youku are 1% of YT size.
tkgally 6y ago
Although I sometime upload things to YouTube, I'm primarily a YouTube viewer. Nevertheless, I think that the greatest strength of YouTube is the ease of uploading content. So many people have uploaded so much material on so many topics that just about anything you might want to learn about or enjoy is likely to be covered well on YouTube. Many people have pointed out issues with recommendation algorithms, both on YouTube and elsewhere—particularly the “falling down the rabbit hole” phenomenon of getting deeper and deeper into conspiracy theories. I generally stay away from politics on YouTube, though, and most of my recommendations are actually quite helpful: good videos on topics that I’ve been viewing recently or have searched for. So, for me at least, alternatives to YouTube would have to have those two features at a minimum: seamless uploading with few restrictions, and good recommendations. Whether that would be feasible commercially I have no idea. Oh, one more thing: Hire the HN guys to design the moderation system for the new service's comments. YouTube comments are, in general, horrible.
- hnick 6y ago
  > good recommendations That would be sweetly ironic, considering Google's original success came from better search.
  - majewsky 6y ago
    What I would like is for creators to be able to influence the recommendations on their videos. Maybe not "prefer my own videos", but "prefer videos by $other_creator" or "never recommend videos by $nutjob". I usually ignore the algorithmic recommendations outright and only pay attention to when the creators I know call out other channels in their videos.
lovehashbrowns 6y ago
Our opinions and wish lists don’t matter. Content creators make money from being on YouTube. If you want to create an actual alternative, be ready to subsidize the income of a couple thousand content creators to the level that they can afford lambos. Then maybe you can create a competitor. Maybe. Because the step after that is to throw money at global infrastructure and still somehow make a profit.
- soheil 6y ago
  The question wasn't so much what the content creators want as much as what the average viewers wants. I get that viewers are seeking creators' content, but going a step beyond that what are some of the things in the first place that if implemented would create a viable alternative to YouTube?
  - lovehashbrowns 6y ago
    Is this a thought experiment or are you actually wanting to create an alternative to YouTube?
- jcims 6y ago
  So basically TikTok stretches into YouTube.
  - majewsky 6y ago
    Also Twitch.

by soheil 6y ago

Now that YouTube is back up I take this opportunity to put this thread to a good use and ask what does it take to create an alternative to YouTube? Would love your opinions/wish list/must haves.

Mountain_Skies 6y ago

The folks at MindGeek probably can answer that better than anyone.

soheil 6y ago
p0rn is not really an alternative to YT

brewdad 6y ago

First, collect a few billion dollars....

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
soheil 6y ago
Do you have any evidence for that?
- manquer 6y ago
  Building the tech part of product is not challenging part. Distribution has always been historically expensive for any content. While digital distribution is cheaper than ever, B/W costs for a product like YT is enormous . To make unit economics to any sense, you will need to spin your own CDN and buy b/w from other CDNs when that it is cheaper. For your own CDN, you are looking at few hundred PoPs and thousands of peering agreements with ISPs in each geography maybe lease cables too . This is a substantial investment. Even if do all this you still have to compete with Google on android where they have a distinct advantage, YT is pre-installed in billions of devices and user account already activated. You will have to pay OEMs a lot of money to get the same kind of user base pre-installed and still do your own user activation. There is a reason why nobody is trying seriously. the next largest competitors DailyMotion and Youku are 1% of YT size.

tkgally 6y ago

Although I sometime upload things to YouTube, I'm primarily a YouTube viewer. Nevertheless, I think that the greatest strength of YouTube is the ease of uploading content. So many people have uploaded so much material on so many topics that just about anything you might want to learn about or enjoy is likely to be covered well on YouTube. Many people have pointed out issues with recommendation algorithms, both on YouTube and elsewhere—particularly the “falling down the rabbit hole” phenomenon of getting deeper and deeper into conspiracy theories. I generally stay away from politics on YouTube, though, and most of my recommendations are actually quite helpful: good videos on topics that I’ve been viewing recently or have searched for. So, for me at least, alternatives to YouTube would have to have those two features at a minimum: seamless uploading with few restrictions, and good recommendations. Whether that would be feasible commercially I have no idea. Oh, one more thing: Hire the HN guys to design the moderation system for the new service's comments. YouTube comments are, in general, horrible.

hnick 6y ago
> good recommendations That would be sweetly ironic, considering Google's original success came from better search.
- majewsky 6y ago
  What I would like is for creators to be able to influence the recommendations on their videos. Maybe not "prefer my own videos", but "prefer videos by $other_creator" or "never recommend videos by $nutjob". I usually ignore the algorithmic recommendations outright and only pay attention to when the creators I know call out other channels in their videos.

lovehashbrowns 6y ago

Our opinions and wish lists don’t matter. Content creators make money from being on YouTube. If you want to create an actual alternative, be ready to subsidize the income of a couple thousand content creators to the level that they can afford lambos. Then maybe you can create a competitor. Maybe. Because the step after that is to throw money at global infrastructure and still somehow make a profit.

soheil 6y ago
The question wasn't so much what the content creators want as much as what the average viewers wants. I get that viewers are seeking creators' content, but going a step beyond that what are some of the things in the first place that if implemented would create a viable alternative to YouTube?
- lovehashbrowns 6y ago
  Is this a thought experiment or are you actually wanting to create an alternative to YouTube?
jcims 6y ago
So basically TikTok stretches into YouTube.
- majewsky 6y ago
  Also Twitch.