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There are surprisingly few venues for video content outside YT, at least not on a scale that would matter on YT! For example, if you want to get to the top of H

There are surprisingly few venues for video content outside YT, at least not on a scale that would matter on YT! For example, if you want to get to the top of HN, non-video content has much better odds. Many tech- or science-centric subreddits discourage or ban videos too. YT is a fairly closed ecosystem that's both insanely resource-intensive to participate in, and that doesn't give creators too many second chances. My specific claim is that it's more of a crapshoot than running a blog. There are so many great science visualizations with 50 views.

NavinF 2y ago
HN is relatively tiny and HN's allergy to video is not representative of the internet. Just create clips from your video and post them on insta, tiktok, twitter, FB, etc. That's the internet at large. If people are interested, they'll watch the full video.
- doe_eyes 2y ago
  HN is small as a discussion community, but it is huge in terms of the traffic it generates to top-ranked URLs. There are fairly mainstream publications that optimize for HN, and I have spoken to marketers and PR people who described HN as by far the most significant source of traffic to their sites. It doesn't necessarily translate to sales or lasting attention, but if you're after brand recognition or SEO, it's great. Spend some time on /newest to see how many organizations are desperate to get a piece of this.
- DoreenMichele 2y ago
  It's not really that small and I don't know why people say that. Last time I saw stats, it was five million monthly visitors. It's small as a platform. It's smaller than Reddit or Facebook, but those aren't discussion communities. There aren't huge numbers of subreddits larger than five million people and last I looked the largest tended to be about trivial BS. Last I checked, HN is the largest serious tech discussion board on the planet.
  - NavinF 2y ago
    - Individual subs like /r/programming are larger. - HN is ~100x smaller than twitter which is itself not even in the top 10: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_platforms_with_at_least_100_million_active_users https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_platforms_with_...
    - DoreenMichele 2y ago
      Funny I just looked and Reddit says r/programming is 4.1m which last I checked is less than the 5 million unique visitors HN was getting a few years ago when I last saw stats by the moderator and I don't know what it's at now. Twitter works completely differently from most platforms and isn't a unified community.
      - NavinF 2y ago
        Where is that 4.1m number from?
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        DoreenMichele 2y ago
        I tried to edit my comment and missed the edit window. I was looking at the wrong sub. R/programming is currently 6.5m, which doesn't matter because it doesn't invalidate my statement about the last time I checked. If you want to claim r/programming is actually larger now, you need a current citation for HN traffic which you may not be able to find. And keep in mind it's going to be tough to compare because Reddit members isn't actually a comparable figure to MAU, as noted elsewhere.
    - doe_eyes 2y ago
      I've gotten traffic from HN and /r/programming, and the influx from HN is larger. I think it's a function of two things. First, /r/programming is higher-volume (i.e., more front-page links per day). Second, Reddit subscriber counts are not DAU / MAU, it likely includes a ton of inactive accounts.
sbarre 2y ago
I've discovered so much content on YouTube that I would never have found if it was on someone's blog. And on top of that I also find YT content through social media, blogs, forums, etc.. So I hear you, but I guess based on my own experience, I disagree! But that's cool, we can do that. :-)
- BlueTemplar 2y ago
  Why do you think that you would never have found it ? The best blogposts do get shared around, and for worse ones, is it that much of a loss that only few people find them ?
  - sbarre 2y ago
    I'm not super active on social media, and I find that all the big/main aggregator sites (like HN and Reddit and others) have become victims of their own success and good stories just fall off the front page very quickly, and so you miss a ton of stuff unless you're checking all the time, and I don't have that kind of time. Link aggregators aren't good at "long tail"... So your good stories are only really discoverable when they're hot, and get progressively harder to discover over time. Google search just sucks now, it's all shopping links and SEO trash, even if you search for fairly specific subjects.. You can still find what you want but you have to wade through so much garbage... Plus there's no discovery. Like pretty much all search engines you can typically only find what you're searching for as opposed to finding new unknown things that are within your topics of interest. For better or worse I find that YouTube is one of my best resources for surfacing new and interesting things pretty often, and quite regularly from channels big and small that I've never watched before. YT is great at long tail.. So it has become a major source of discovery for me, in many of my areas of interest (which aren't all tech). Of course some content I don't like consuming as video, so I do sometimes find videos that cover interesting subject matter, which I'll then go search for articles or text-based content on instead.
    - BlueTemplar 2y ago
      I see, though I do consider that part of YouTube to be a net negative for everyone but Google considering how it's keeping people on the platform, and therefore less likely to look for more varied sources. But what I meant is that people share links around, whether in public like here, or in one-on-one discussions (and blogs do have their own recommended lists), so it's quite possible that you would still have found out about them without any kind of algorithmic prodding. For instance, to put this in practice, here's a science education focused personal website that I like a lot : http://av8n.com/ http://av8n.com/

NavinF 2y ago

HN is relatively tiny and HN's allergy to video is not representative of the internet. Just create clips from your video and post them on insta, tiktok, twitter, FB, etc. That's the internet at large. If people are interested, they'll watch the full video.

doe_eyes 2y ago
HN is small as a discussion community, but it is huge in terms of the traffic it generates to top-ranked URLs. There are fairly mainstream publications that optimize for HN, and I have spoken to marketers and PR people who described HN as by far the most significant source of traffic to their sites. It doesn't necessarily translate to sales or lasting attention, but if you're after brand recognition or SEO, it's great. Spend some time on /newest to see how many organizations are desperate to get a piece of this.
DoreenMichele 2y ago
It's not really that small and I don't know why people say that. Last time I saw stats, it was five million monthly visitors. It's small as a platform. It's smaller than Reddit or Facebook, but those aren't discussion communities. There aren't huge numbers of subreddits larger than five million people and last I looked the largest tended to be about trivial BS. Last I checked, HN is the largest serious tech discussion board on the planet.
- NavinF 2y ago
  - Individual subs like /r/programming are larger. - HN is ~100x smaller than twitter which is itself not even in the top 10: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_platforms_with_at_least_100_million_active_users https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_platforms_with_...
  - DoreenMichele 2y ago
    Funny I just looked and Reddit says r/programming is 4.1m which last I checked is less than the 5 million unique visitors HN was getting a few years ago when I last saw stats by the moderator and I don't know what it's at now. Twitter works completely differently from most platforms and isn't a unified community.
    - NavinF 2y ago
      Where is that 4.1m number from?
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - DoreenMichele 2y ago
        I tried to edit my comment and missed the edit window. I was looking at the wrong sub. R/programming is currently 6.5m, which doesn't matter because it doesn't invalidate my statement about the last time I checked. If you want to claim r/programming is actually larger now, you need a current citation for HN traffic which you may not be able to find. And keep in mind it's going to be tough to compare because Reddit members isn't actually a comparable figure to MAU, as noted elsewhere.
  - doe_eyes 2y ago
    I've gotten traffic from HN and /r/programming, and the influx from HN is larger. I think it's a function of two things. First, /r/programming is higher-volume (i.e., more front-page links per day). Second, Reddit subscriber counts are not DAU / MAU, it likely includes a ton of inactive accounts.

sbarre 2y ago

I've discovered so much content on YouTube that I would never have found if it was on someone's blog. And on top of that I also find YT content through social media, blogs, forums, etc.. So I hear you, but I guess based on my own experience, I disagree! But that's cool, we can do that. :-)

BlueTemplar 2y ago
Why do you think that you would never have found it ? The best blogposts do get shared around, and for worse ones, is it that much of a loss that only few people find them ?
- sbarre 2y ago
  I'm not super active on social media, and I find that all the big/main aggregator sites (like HN and Reddit and others) have become victims of their own success and good stories just fall off the front page very quickly, and so you miss a ton of stuff unless you're checking all the time, and I don't have that kind of time. Link aggregators aren't good at "long tail"... So your good stories are only really discoverable when they're hot, and get progressively harder to discover over time. Google search just sucks now, it's all shopping links and SEO trash, even if you search for fairly specific subjects.. You can still find what you want but you have to wade through so much garbage... Plus there's no discovery. Like pretty much all search engines you can typically only find what you're searching for as opposed to finding new unknown things that are within your topics of interest. For better or worse I find that YouTube is one of my best resources for surfacing new and interesting things pretty often, and quite regularly from channels big and small that I've never watched before. YT is great at long tail.. So it has become a major source of discovery for me, in many of my areas of interest (which aren't all tech). Of course some content I don't like consuming as video, so I do sometimes find videos that cover interesting subject matter, which I'll then go search for articles or text-based content on instead.
  - BlueTemplar 2y ago
    I see, though I do consider that part of YouTube to be a net negative for everyone but Google considering how it's keeping people on the platform, and therefore less likely to look for more varied sources. But what I meant is that people share links around, whether in public like here, or in one-on-one discussions (and blogs do have their own recommended lists), so it's quite possible that you would still have found out about them without any kind of algorithmic prodding. For instance, to put this in practice, here's a science education focused personal website that I like a lot : http://av8n.com/ http://av8n.com/