4 ms·

These myths are officially busted. No they aren't. Myths are busted with science and testing and experimentation. All this article did was contradict the myt

by pj 17y ago

These myths are officially busted. No they aren't. Myths are busted with science and testing and experimentation. All this article did was contradict the myths. It did nothing to show the truth or falseness of the claims. If you are going to use something like the high quality show, Mythbusters, to model your contradictions, you should learn something about science from the show and actually prove whether or not your contradiction is true. This post didn't even come close to doing that.

jerf 17y ago
"It did nothing to show the truth or falseness of the claims." This is a primary source. If YouTube says that more traffic makes YouTube more money, nobody else is in a position to contradict them. I believe that lying about that in public could have legal repercussions.
- sunir 17y ago
  I'm with the parent poster. The myths are not busted until some hard facts come out. There are artful ways to say true things that make the reader jump to conclusions that they intend, but are false. For instance, by claiming that they are in a position that growth is good, they make us think they are making profit per view, but that isn't what they said. They could have any number of non-profitable reasons to like growth, like strategic market share or building a huge content database. Further, their refutation that advertisers are not afraid of YouTube may lead some readers to conclude that 70% of Ad Age Top 100 Marketers are paying YouTube directly, whereas many (most?) are not. They are either using YouTube as part of a social media campaign or advertising within some user content hosted on YouTube. It's not clear at all what's happening on their balance sheet, so speculation will continue. To what end, I don't know, but after "What is Twitter's business model?", guessing how much money YouTube burns a year is the Valley's favourite party game. ;)
  - jerf 17y ago
    "I'm with the parent poster. The myths are not busted until some hard facts come out." If you adopt this position, then even "hard facts" won't satisfy you, since, again, they'd have to come from YouTube, a source you don't trust. To be honest, that's the position I'm in; I don't trust them on this point, though I don't particularly care, either. I quite carefully didn't say that the claims are true in their most obvious form, merely that this is as good as it is going to get for now, and in particular, that there is no applicable "science and testing and experimentation" to be done.
    - sunir 17y ago
      I would say we agree except to note that YouTube is owned by a public company, so it may make substantial disclosures at a future time that are subject to audit. That's not exactly the same thing as taking its word for it.
- ojbyrne 17y ago
  Oh? I'm somewhat supportive of youtube but my experience with large well funded startups from Northern California is that they don't lie, they spin. And spinning doesn't have legal repercussions. So on your particular quote, the spin is simple. Define "more money." I would guess that the sentence that inspires that is "We are at a point where growth is definitely good for our bottom line, not bad." Which basically doesn't say much of anything. How much growth is good for the bottom line? How do they define the bottom line? If you invested 2 gazillion dollars in hardware and it's all sitting idle, then any growth at all (even 1 extra view) is good for the bottom line.

by pj 17y ago

jerf 17y ago

"It did nothing to show the truth or falseness of the claims." This is a primary source. If YouTube says that more traffic makes YouTube more money, nobody else is in a position to contradict them. I believe that lying about that in public could have legal repercussions.

sunir 17y ago
I'm with the parent poster. The myths are not busted until some hard facts come out. There are artful ways to say true things that make the reader jump to conclusions that they intend, but are false. For instance, by claiming that they are in a position that growth is good, they make us think they are making profit per view, but that isn't what they said. They could have any number of non-profitable reasons to like growth, like strategic market share or building a huge content database. Further, their refutation that advertisers are not afraid of YouTube may lead some readers to conclude that 70% of Ad Age Top 100 Marketers are paying YouTube directly, whereas many (most?) are not. They are either using YouTube as part of a social media campaign or advertising within some user content hosted on YouTube. It's not clear at all what's happening on their balance sheet, so speculation will continue. To what end, I don't know, but after "What is Twitter's business model?", guessing how much money YouTube burns a year is the Valley's favourite party game. ;)
- jerf 17y ago
  "I'm with the parent poster. The myths are not busted until some hard facts come out." If you adopt this position, then even "hard facts" won't satisfy you, since, again, they'd have to come from YouTube, a source you don't trust. To be honest, that's the position I'm in; I don't trust them on this point, though I don't particularly care, either. I quite carefully didn't say that the claims are true in their most obvious form, merely that this is as good as it is going to get for now, and in particular, that there is no applicable "science and testing and experimentation" to be done.
  - sunir 17y ago
    I would say we agree except to note that YouTube is owned by a public company, so it may make substantial disclosures at a future time that are subject to audit. That's not exactly the same thing as taking its word for it.
ojbyrne 17y ago
Oh? I'm somewhat supportive of youtube but my experience with large well funded startups from Northern California is that they don't lie, they spin. And spinning doesn't have legal repercussions. So on your particular quote, the spin is simple. Define "more money." I would guess that the sentence that inspires that is "We are at a point where growth is definitely good for our bottom line, not bad." Which basically doesn't say much of anything. How much growth is good for the bottom line? How do they define the bottom line? If you invested 2 gazillion dollars in hardware and it's all sitting idle, then any growth at all (even 1 extra view) is good for the bottom line.