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The problem is Wistia (and the likes) is crazy expensive if one of your videos goes viral, in addition to the streamer having to handle monetization, promotion,
by rtsil 5y ago
The problem is Wistia (and the likes) is crazy expensive if one of your videos goes viral, in addition to the streamer having to handle monetization, promotion, DMCA complaints, audience interaction. People became captive of Youtube because Youtube made complicated and expensive things easy and cheap. People became used to how practical it is, even if the price is putting their livelihood at the whims of Google.
The ideal world would be if video hosting was like websites, where you have multiple separate and competing companies for domain names, DNS, file hosting, database, load balancing, ads, CDNs, email marketing... And if you're not happy with one of them, you can easily switch to another, all while remaining in full control of your contents and where they are displayed.
- richardfey 5y ago> People became used to how practical it is, even if the price is putting their livelihood at the whims of Google. I wonder what alternative history we could have had if YouTube wasn't acquired. It makes for an interesting short story writing prompt as well.
- londons_explore 5y agoIf YouTube wasn't acquired it would have died. There was no way to host video cheaper than ad revenue. Video just requires too much compute, storage and bandwidth compared to the few cents you get from an occasional ad click. Google could offer it cheap bandwidth and storage. They could use consumers love of Google products to force ISP's to deliver YouTube video traffic cheaper when ISP's threatened to block YouTube because it used too much bandwidth. Even with that, it wasn't profitable for 10+ years!