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> Game developers pushed the limits on text, then images, then video, then 3D > Social media drives content creation costs to zero first on text, then images,

> Game developers pushed the limits on text, then images, then video, then 3D > Social media drives content creation costs to zero first on text, then images, then video > Machine learning models can now create text and images for zero marginal cost Search was also text, then images, then video files... and I imagine the next step is searching video content. Before you say we already have Google video search or search on YT, I'm talking about indexing and categorizing something like the TikTok video feed and letting users access the content they want, not long-form videos with 3 minutes of intros and "please smash that like button and subscribe". Like searching for "what should I cook today?" and finding a 30-second video of someone cooking penne alla puttanesca while describing the recipe. Extra points if that search is a voice command. Also FTA > That phrase, “Facebook is compelling for the content it surfaces, regardless of who surfaces it”, is oh-so-close to describing TikTok; the error is that the latter is compelling for the content it surfaces, regardless of who creates it… YT and Google video search are too focused on who creates the content. Who cares about channels and likes and subscriptions? "Just give me the shortest answer to my query and give it to me in video now".

axg11 5y ago
> YT and Google video search are too focused on who creates the content Correct - YouTube's feature roadmap is driven by monetization, which is in turn driven by monetizing attention through advertising. How often do you search directly for videos? I just looked through my recent YouTube search queries; 70% of the searches are for channels/content producers. Compounding that, most of my time in YouTube is spent consuming their recommendations rather than directly seeking content. So even during the rare times when I use YouTube search, it's usually not for specific video content. The types of queries you're describing are better served by text. Perhaps a mix of both text and video content.
- yellow_postit 5y ago
  The attention could be split in a content-first vs. personality-first ranking approach, the key problems becomes (1) signal quality, fame/likes/subs can be a rough proxy and (2) monetized attention can exist across both but its easier to end up with a meaningful monetization payout when aggregated by fame.
RC_ITR 5y ago
The easier way to do this (counterintuitively) is what Tik Tok has already done - don't try to parse the content of the video, instead use user feedback to proactively serve the content that a user wants. For us, a crowd of 'do-it-yourself' type-A's this seems like an incomplete solution, but the future is probably not one defined by user-generated search as much as it is defined by 'the computer just knows what I want.'
gwern 5y ago
Yes, video search is about to become one of those things which Just Work™. The large Transformers combined with self-supervised learning have been burning up the video search/classification benchmarks, particularly from FB & Google. (Even just using CLIP on a few frames works reasonably well.)

axg11 5y ago

> YT and Google video search are too focused on who creates the content Correct - YouTube's feature roadmap is driven by monetization, which is in turn driven by monetizing attention through advertising. How often do you search directly for videos? I just looked through my recent YouTube search queries; 70% of the searches are for channels/content producers. Compounding that, most of my time in YouTube is spent consuming their recommendations rather than directly seeking content. So even during the rare times when I use YouTube search, it's usually not for specific video content. The types of queries you're describing are better served by text. Perhaps a mix of both text and video content.

yellow_postit 5y ago
The attention could be split in a content-first vs. personality-first ranking approach, the key problems becomes (1) signal quality, fame/likes/subs can be a rough proxy and (2) monetized attention can exist across both but its easier to end up with a meaningful monetization payout when aggregated by fame.

RC_ITR 5y ago

The easier way to do this (counterintuitively) is what Tik Tok has already done - don't try to parse the content of the video, instead use user feedback to proactively serve the content that a user wants. For us, a crowd of 'do-it-yourself' type-A's this seems like an incomplete solution, but the future is probably not one defined by user-generated search as much as it is defined by 'the computer just knows what I want.'

gwern 5y ago

Yes, video search is about to become one of those things which Just Work™. The large Transformers combined with self-supervised learning have been burning up the video search/classification benchmarks, particularly from FB & Google. (Even just using CLIP on a few frames works reasonably well.)