YouTube CEO on Facebook video ambitions: 'They should get back to baby pictures'

Do you think the 4000 watch hours in the past 12 months is too high or just right?

Create a group. They get feed priority from what I've been able to gather.

People don't really read in the same way as you might have previously expected. ("Reading a short blurb or a tweet" is not the same thing.) Can't or don't want to, I don't know, but they don't. You see the edges of it here, too--tl;drs on HN posts, sometimes, that are less than a screenful of text. And people think you're "spending a lot of effort" when you bang out a post about as long as yours is--and, sometimes, try to frame it as a bad thing.

I tend to think Thomas Pettitt has a point[1].

[1] - https://archives.cjr.org/the_audit/the_future_is_medieval.ph...

The ui is bad, the # clicks needed is growing, autoplay random videos vs playing what I actually want to watch[1], all of these issues are getting worse.

[1] If you scroll through a page, and click a video to play it, then keep scrolling, the video comes along with your scrolling. But once you want to watch another video, when you click on the new video in the stream, the old video stops but still stays on the screen frozen. there is some odd interaction between these 2 actions (I'm assuming controlled by javascript) and it's like the videos are fighting each other over what should be shown/played. It's really stupid - I can 100% predict the issue is because the teams working on these 2 features are not communicating with one another, and so are trying to optimize the user to "pay attention" to both things at once. This kind of engineering just turns me off so much that 90% of the time I close facebook and go find the video on youtube and watch it there.

You could have made this exact argument in 2012 when FB was worth $20/share. Was this argument wrong in 2012 but correct in 2018?

One of the most common complaints was something like "I'd never use Facebook, because I hate the company!"

Also, frankly, the tech product for livestreaming isn't anywhere near feature competitive.

Everybody remembers when Facebook took over from Gmail, right?

In particular, a major difference between streaming and edited short-form videos is the density of content, and the preference for that highly depends on the availability of your time. If you have all the free time in the world (or even an actual need to spend it because you're stuck waiting somewhere where you don't want to be), then streaming is excellent; if you're generally busy and overwhelmed with things you want/need to do, streaming sucks, you want an edited, compressed "highlight reel" that gets straight to the point.

So the fact that streaming is the thing for particular group (even if generally trend-setting) doesn't mean that streaming is where the puck is going; they might stick with particular brands/services/tools/ecosystems because of the habits they form now, but they are likely to use less streaming in a decade (and the youngsters replacing them are going to take up streaming) because of changing needs in their life.

This statement intrigued me a bit, so I decided to check out what Google Photos is (sorry, you have so many products and change them so quickly I'm not keeping up anymore). So it looks like a refurbished version of Picasa. I understand why someone would like to use it, but I also know why neither me nor many of my friends will ever use it: since we're forced to use Google services almost everywhere, every instance when we don't is a small win. For a growing number of people reducing dependency on Google is of paramount importance.

twitch has cut out a new market IMO, it's not directly replacing youtube. i expect different things on twitch -- generally speaking, more boring, unprofessional and unedited content that's focused almost entirely on learning how to play games better and occasional audience interaction.

as for facebook, i have no idea what they should do because i don't know anyone who likes it anymore

Do you mean that Google Photos is a better way for you to share your photos than Facebook?

Like sure Gmail has its problems, but ultimately it is an excellent web based email system that's hard to beat because it's a great product.

Youtube's main strength seems to be primarily its first mover advantage, and the fact that building a video hosting site is a rather costly venture.

Neither of those are a very defensive moat against competitors like Amazon and Facebook