Why does everything suck?: The Stats Are In. YouTube Really Is A Turd | Hacker News Reader

Why does everything suck?: The Stats Are In. YouTube Really Is A Turd

whydoeseverythingsuck.com

7 pointspchristensen11 comments

I don't know why so many people presume Google are trying to turn a profit on Youtube. Google has deep pockets and long term thinking; it seems far more likely that they are happy to position Youtube as the dominant online video site, while crushing competitors by giving it away for nothing. Then one day when online video has settled down and bandwidth is even cheaper, they can just turn on the revenue tap and drown themselves in video-ad money.

Work well for railroads but with all those hungry hackers and greedy VCs, there will always be competition. If there's profit to be made, people will always be chasing it.

I think this article is jumping to conclusions. YouTube isn't a turd. Google just haven't figured out the best way to advertise on YouTube.

Anyone who brings desirable content and lots of viewers together is basically doing the job of a TV, and there are ways to monetise that (even though they are changing). This video was very interesting, on the topic.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1720068211869162779

I guess ad-revenue does not make sense as a business model anymore. So where does that leave us? - Subscription revenue - Donation - Sell your company

There are other ways to be free that don't require ads!

As long as your revenue engine benefits from lots of traffic, then giving stuff away (which is cheap on the internet) will be one way to get that traffic.

One example is 37 signals. Their blogging (free content given away) gets them traffic, and they can take a shot at converting that into customers for their paid for products. No ad vendor in sight.

I'm glad someone else pointed out that Google's ad-funded largesse won't last forever, and the free web will take a big hit when it does.

I'll guess that longer term free video will be distributed via some p2p system. Torrent-like capabilities will be transparently integrated into players, the kinks will be worked out and video will be smooth, and free sites for reliably indexing and distributing the "torrents" will emerge.

I doubt youtube is viable long term. They are popular because they hand out free bandwidth and storage, and have lots of copyrighted material. Youtube will be pointless once it's as easy to post a video as it is to stick a picture somewhere online.

Youtube will be pointless once it's as easy to post a video as it is to stick a picture somewhere online.

So it will be as pointless as Flickr is right now?

The flickr of video is a vastly different proposition than youtube. Flickr has paying subscribers.

You think that people will pay to host (smaller) photos, but not (larger) videos?

The fact that people are willing to pay for smaller photos is a fantastic sign that they would pay for larger videos!

They might pay to host higher quality or longer videos. Here are some things a premium youtube could provide:

- longer videos

- higher quality videos (for screencast, plays, etc)

- spam filtering or policing comments

- ???

The fact that people are willing to pay for smaller photos is a fantastic sign that they would pay for larger videos!

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