When is there going to be a legitimate YouTube contender? Seems like it's ripe for a replacement...
If you wish to compete with Youtube, consider a feature match of the followings:
1. Fast streaming, everywhere, on phones and browsers.
2. Super High resolution videos.
3. Huge content reserves.
4. Good search and discovery experience.
5. The ability to battle spams and handle external copyright claim to avoid lawsuit.
6. Robust ad platform and sales and the infrastructure to sustain operations.
Youtube has achieved this because they are part of Google, they enjoy all kinds of technological advantage: Storage/Serving/Spam filtering/Video encoding/Machine Learning, and years and years of accumulation of data, losing billions of dollars while getting constant cash injection from Google.
It is hard to replicate Youtube, heck, even Chinese doesn't succeed to copy one of their own. None of the video streaming websites in China is exactly the model of Youtube.
That's also vital. Otherwise you're risking your entire platform on lawsuits from film and music companies when copyrighted content is inevitably uploaded.
8. An ability to pay for bandwith costs without going broke as soon as your service starts to grow.
I think YT is in a unique position where the scale of your service has to be massive before your costs become manageable. This reason for this is b/c you need to operate as a network peer and have the ability to do edge caching. The vast majority of players in this space and startups simply cannot compete on that level.
One could probably mitigate high operating costs by charging for the service or limiting who can post on the site. But I think these two factors greatly contribute to YouTube's monopoly status.
If you went to Amazon videos for all of your video-consumption, Amazon would know exactly how to target you without having to pay Google.
Twitch has been attempting to compete in the video game space by adding uploads and comment systems on videos, but Twitch has its share of problems such as a haphazard dashboard and a terribly designed mobile app.
Vid.me was around for a while but recently shut down.
It's not a very competitive space imo.
But Vimeo's Samsung Smart TV app broke last year, and they haven't fixed it in months. They blame Samsung, and they're probably right, but Netflix, YouTube & Amazon have continued updating their apps during those months. It just feels like Vimeo isn't giving their product the attention that it needs.
(Well, sort've... I get a blank white screen at launch for 30 seconds, then a blank grey screen for another 10-15 seconds. But after that, it actually works! This is with v2.0.8. I'd never thought to keep waiting through the white screen. Thank you!!)
It is showing v2.0.8 as a 2016/11/10 release in the Samsung App Store, but their store also shows it near the top of "What's New" today. (I'm sure Samsung have been 'fun' to deal with.)
My email is in my HN profile, happy to help if I can!
In the meantime, download anything you enjoy today, because it may not be there tomorrow.
I think that YouTube has reached Google levels of optimization. Sure, it could be better, but not better enough that people are willing to switch.
For any specialized market, probably a lot; YouTube may be the ultimate least-common-denominator user-submitted-video streaming service, but it's not the only one there is room for.
This is doubly true for services like Google Search, and yet (for example) security-oriented engines like DDG are barely making a dent.
I honestly don't think niche is the way to go if you're trying to go after Google/YouTube/Facebook. You'd need to figure out a core issue or core need that has been overlooked. And I just don't really see one.
DDG is making a huge dent in the narrow segment it is designed to appeal to, which is all any specialized service can hope for. I think DDG fans persistently overestimate how many people find Google’s personalization a net cost.
> I honestly don't think niche is the way to go if you're trying to go after Google/YouTube/Facebook. You'd need to figure out a core issue or core need that has been overlooked.
Sure, if you are trying to replace one of those as the dominant mass market player in its domain you need to do that.
Also, I think you are more likely to find a core need by dealing with a need that seems niche but is really just more pronounced and visible in that particular niche than by digging around in the dark for a core need.
The parent post was discussing disrupting the major player -- YouTube. Me making some tiny website that caters to videos of, say, amateur astronomy, while interesting and successful in its own right, would not so much as make a dent (let alone disrupt) YouTube.
That was my point: that disrupting YouTube (like disrupting Google) seems, to me, nigh impossible.
Unless your niche audience is willing to pay per minute, it is going to be difficult to pay the bills.
Google isn't removing any videos, but they are using the demonetized videos as bait to get you to watch their monetized videos.
You basically need your own data centers and wholesale bandwidth, aka scale.
Building a reliable service, handling peak, etc. is hard, and driving down latency will probably cost more... But 40TB can be done a lot cheaper than 3-4k USD.
I'm sure if you rented hundreds of those and actually used the bandwidth they would kick you out.
Basically niche videos will just be replaced by other people who will find ways to monetize it...or not even motivated by money at all but just to put content out there and for people to enjoy.
So far, all the comments on HN are about how they won't get paid, they will be replaced by people who do it without monetary rewards or saavy enough to monetize through external revenue sources.
Yeah, if there is an adequate substitute for your monetized product provided by an ever-refreshing pool of people willing to work for free, you're in a precarious position. Pretty much independently of the behavior of any middleman.