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YouTube has gotten consistently worse under her leadership in my experience. Creators have been squeezed dry with less and less revenue, ads are obnoxious and

YouTube has gotten consistently worse under her leadership in my experience. Creators have been squeezed dry with less and less revenue, ads are obnoxious and terrible, and experiments like shorts are badly implemented, make little money for creators and should be aborted. YouTube 10 years ago was a place for people to do what they loved and build a following, now it's just a click bait farm where everyone is gaming the algorithm with the same thumbnails, the same content, and even hawk their own ads/partnerships because YouTube revenue can't support them anymore. Good riddance IMHO. I hope whoever comes next actually focuses on creators and their needs.

RationPhantoms 4y ago
She's being replaced by a person from the Doubleclick acquisition. What does that signal to you will happen to the already embattled creator space?
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
  It sucks. Every single creator I've followed has had some variation of, "well shit, YouTube isn't making me enough to sustain this anymore" video in the last few months. Things are going to really dry up and go down hill fast as more creators are forced to give up.
0xDEF 4y ago
YouTube rewards creators more than any other platform. However they're ruthless about the subscriber demographics. A few thousand subscribers is enough to become Ramen profitable [1] if they are high income people from high income countries. [1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
  Uhhh no, you need well over 100k subscribers and videos getting consistently thousands of views to make 'Ramen profitable' money. And even that is tenuous as inflation just keeps jacking up the cost of ramen for everyone.
izietto 4y ago
Who comes next is the current CPO, so I wouldn't expect anything different
sublinear 4y ago
I have no justification for saying this other than personal work experience, but I'm fairly certain none of that has anything to do with Susan. In fact with her gone I expect it to only get worse, but don't take my word for it.
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
  What? Being the CEO of the product means she isn't responsible for a decade of it's performance? This makes no sense.
  - sublinear 4y ago
    A CEO does not implement or even necessarily strategize. They... execute. Their job is to make the right decisions at the right time. The decisions available come from a team which a good CEO should trust and not have to micromanage. I would not expect her to choose the performance indicators. I would expect her to choose another plan if expectations are not being met, but not necessarily come up with those plans. It's a business, so the goal is making money. YouTube certainly made money when she was calling the shots. We'll see what happens.
kenjackson 4y ago
But despite all this I consistently hear from creators that YouTube is the best place to make money with content. Note, IG is the best place to simply do product placement -- like wearing and advertising a brand. But if you're doing video content YouTube is still the best place to do it, compared to IG Reels, TikTok, Vimeo, Facebook Watch, etc... Similar to response about someone ranting against Teams -- I just don't see the huge issue with YouTube. It seems to work solidly and there are definitely people who make good money from it. Of course there is a long tail. Which is to be expected when my 9 year old nephew and half of his friends have YouTube channels. I just don't think people really have thought through at YouTube level scale what it would mean to "make things better for creators".
derefr 4y ago
Why would YouTube ever “focus on creators and their needs”? YouTube is an ads business run on top of user-generated content. YouTube’s customers are advertisers. Susan greatly “improved product-market fit” during her tenure, by forcing many changes upon creators which made advertisers happier and more willing to run ads on the platform. YouTube only cares about creators insofar as advertisers care about the eyeballs being there to watch their ads (which, yes, they do); and the people with those eyeballs have a preference for high-quality content (which, uh… undetermined); and there is a seller’s market for content (which, no, there isn’t; the long tail of eyeball-attracting content on YouTube is created completely without compensation.)
Aunche 4y ago
> Creators have been squeezed dry with less and less revenue Actually, I think Youtube is highly underrated in this regard. The reason so many creators complain about Youtube is because they're the only social media platform that pays people any substantial sum of money in the first place. For other platforms like Twitch, the money they pay you is mostly comes from the viewer. This is why MKBHD called Youtube the only S-tier social media platform.
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
  MKBHD is in the top 1% of the top 1% of YouTubers, of course they will consider it a S tier platform. The more interesting thing would be if they were to start all over from scratch, could they do it again with YouTube as it is today? I suspect even getting to 100k subs would just be a total roll of dice and luck now.
lofatdairy 4y ago
A bit inflammatory imo, given the scale of the challenge[^1], but definitely there were several failures under her tenure that are worth noting. Youtube Red (later Premium), Music, and Originals all seemed to not really pan out, and as a result YT seems desperate w.r.t. existing revenue streams. Copyright is also pretty bad, probably bending over backwards for advertisers which also seems to stem from that same desperation. In fact so much of the burden for following regulations, laws, and policies falls to the content creators (stuff like making minor-appropriate content) that yt's monopoly power over the video creator space really is evidenced. Even then, communication is so poor even by google's standards that one wonders yt employees even use the platform - if they even exist at all. On the other hand, yt streaming and shorts seem to be slowly improving, in the same way google as a whole only seems to innovate insofar as they match exactly what their competitors have already produced. And problems aside, yt is still seems to be growing in popularity and relevance, even with TikTok's competition. If yt can figure out how to actually obtain revenue w/o turning to shadier and shadier advertisers, they might not have to push creators just shy of abandoning the platform, but it's not like creators have anywhere else to go. [^1]: Revenues for yt continue to miss expectations, payouts for creators and ad spam are obviously low hanging targets. Doesn't make it right, but running a video service isn't cheap.
- trogdor 4y ago
  Why do you think Premium is a failure? I am a creator with a subscriber base of 2+ million, and a subscriber to Premium. Trivia: on a per-view basis, I make more from Premium views than ad-watching views.
  - lofatdairy 4y ago
    Eh, I'm not an analyst, but to the best of my knowledge yt premium falls under google services, which operates at a net negative. TBF it's mixed in w/ other revenue streams w/ most likely higher cost of revenues, but it's possible that the cost of original programming and exclusivity deals are also higher than income. There's also the issue that even with the mediocre original programming and rather lacking exclusive streaming deals, there's nothing to help it compete against free adblock. FWIW it's a step in the right direction, and I'm glad creators earn directly from premium views, but i don't think anyone is saying that yt is going to win the streaming war for commercial content, but if it can tie premium into its creator streaming content like twitch does for subs (maybe like yt premium gives a free sub like amazon prime) then the system seems more well-positioned.

RationPhantoms 4y ago

She's being replaced by a person from the Doubleclick acquisition. What does that signal to you will happen to the already embattled creator space?

qbasic_forever 4y ago
It sucks. Every single creator I've followed has had some variation of, "well shit, YouTube isn't making me enough to sustain this anymore" video in the last few months. Things are going to really dry up and go down hill fast as more creators are forced to give up.

0xDEF 4y ago

YouTube rewards creators more than any other platform. However they're ruthless about the subscriber demographics. A few thousand subscribers is enough to become Ramen profitable [1] if they are high income people from high income countries. [1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html

qbasic_forever 4y ago
Uhhh no, you need well over 100k subscribers and videos getting consistently thousands of views to make 'Ramen profitable' money. And even that is tenuous as inflation just keeps jacking up the cost of ramen for everyone.

izietto 4y ago

Who comes next is the current CPO, so I wouldn't expect anything different

sublinear 4y ago

I have no justification for saying this other than personal work experience, but I'm fairly certain none of that has anything to do with Susan. In fact with her gone I expect it to only get worse, but don't take my word for it.

qbasic_forever 4y ago
What? Being the CEO of the product means she isn't responsible for a decade of it's performance? This makes no sense.
- sublinear 4y ago
  A CEO does not implement or even necessarily strategize. They... execute. Their job is to make the right decisions at the right time. The decisions available come from a team which a good CEO should trust and not have to micromanage. I would not expect her to choose the performance indicators. I would expect her to choose another plan if expectations are not being met, but not necessarily come up with those plans. It's a business, so the goal is making money. YouTube certainly made money when she was calling the shots. We'll see what happens.

kenjackson 4y ago

But despite all this I consistently hear from creators that YouTube is the best place to make money with content. Note, IG is the best place to simply do product placement -- like wearing and advertising a brand. But if you're doing video content YouTube is still the best place to do it, compared to IG Reels, TikTok, Vimeo, Facebook Watch, etc... Similar to response about someone ranting against Teams -- I just don't see the huge issue with YouTube. It seems to work solidly and there are definitely people who make good money from it. Of course there is a long tail. Which is to be expected when my 9 year old nephew and half of his friends have YouTube channels. I just don't think people really have thought through at YouTube level scale what it would mean to "make things better for creators".

derefr 4y ago

Why would YouTube ever “focus on creators and their needs”? YouTube is an ads business run on top of user-generated content. YouTube’s customers are advertisers. Susan greatly “improved product-market fit” during her tenure, by forcing many changes upon creators which made advertisers happier and more willing to run ads on the platform. YouTube only cares about creators insofar as advertisers care about the eyeballs being there to watch their ads (which, yes, they do); and the people with those eyeballs have a preference for high-quality content (which, uh… undetermined); and there is a seller’s market for content (which, no, there isn’t; the long tail of eyeball-attracting content on YouTube is created completely without compensation.)

Aunche 4y ago

> Creators have been squeezed dry with less and less revenue Actually, I think Youtube is highly underrated in this regard. The reason so many creators complain about Youtube is because they're the only social media platform that pays people any substantial sum of money in the first place. For other platforms like Twitch, the money they pay you is mostly comes from the viewer. This is why MKBHD called Youtube the only S-tier social media platform.

qbasic_forever 4y ago
MKBHD is in the top 1% of the top 1% of YouTubers, of course they will consider it a S tier platform. The more interesting thing would be if they were to start all over from scratch, could they do it again with YouTube as it is today? I suspect even getting to 100k subs would just be a total roll of dice and luck now.

lofatdairy 4y ago

A bit inflammatory imo, given the scale of the challenge[^1], but definitely there were several failures under her tenure that are worth noting. Youtube Red (later Premium), Music, and Originals all seemed to not really pan out, and as a result YT seems desperate w.r.t. existing revenue streams. Copyright is also pretty bad, probably bending over backwards for advertisers which also seems to stem from that same desperation. In fact so much of the burden for following regulations, laws, and policies falls to the content creators (stuff like making minor-appropriate content) that yt's monopoly power over the video creator space really is evidenced. Even then, communication is so poor even by google's standards that one wonders yt employees even use the platform - if they even exist at all. On the other hand, yt streaming and shorts seem to be slowly improving, in the same way google as a whole only seems to innovate insofar as they match exactly what their competitors have already produced. And problems aside, yt is still seems to be growing in popularity and relevance, even with TikTok's competition. If yt can figure out how to actually obtain revenue w/o turning to shadier and shadier advertisers, they might not have to push creators just shy of abandoning the platform, but it's not like creators have anywhere else to go. [^1]: Revenues for yt continue to miss expectations, payouts for creators and ad spam are obviously low hanging targets. Doesn't make it right, but running a video service isn't cheap.

trogdor 4y ago
Why do you think Premium is a failure? I am a creator with a subscriber base of 2+ million, and a subscriber to Premium. Trivia: on a per-view basis, I make more from Premium views than ad-watching views.
- lofatdairy 4y ago
  Eh, I'm not an analyst, but to the best of my knowledge yt premium falls under google services, which operates at a net negative. TBF it's mixed in w/ other revenue streams w/ most likely higher cost of revenues, but it's possible that the cost of original programming and exclusivity deals are also higher than income. There's also the issue that even with the mediocre original programming and rather lacking exclusive streaming deals, there's nothing to help it compete against free adblock. FWIW it's a step in the right direction, and I'm glad creators earn directly from premium views, but i don't think anyone is saying that yt is going to win the streaming war for commercial content, but if it can tie premium into its creator streaming content like twitch does for subs (maybe like yt premium gives a free sub like amazon prime) then the system seems more well-positioned.