Apple: Building A YouTube Killer? | Hacker News Reader

Apple: Building A YouTube Killer?

blogs.forbes.com

12 pointskylelibra8 comments

This is ridiculous. The article spends 9/10ths of it explaining the current video infrastructure, then takes one paragraph to say "Apple has to create a youtube killer. Expect it to be called iVideo and unveiled at WWDC."

Maybe this guy has sources he doesn't want to burn, and he wants to be able to point out that he was right, but for us readers, the people the guy should be writing for, he's burning us w/ conjecture and a story about the recent changes in video, not about the future.

Also, why does everything get called a "Killer"?

Not only is the terminology getting beaten into the ground (see "solution" in the early 2000s), it's rapidly becoming associated with products that are flat, and could never hope of dethroning the product they're supposed to rival.

Headline-bloat. 'Killer' expresses a concept really quickly (ie this aims to displace that) which has some utility, but you're right, eventually it loses its actual meaning.

Solution doesn't actually seem to have any real meaning, or at least the buzzword bingo quotient (see the new up-and-comer: Agile) makes any headline using it lose credibility.

Maybe this is the cynic in me, and people will come back to this as they did with Slashdot's famous "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame" for the original iPod, but I can't fathom how they could beat YouTube. There's already seemingly an endless amount of other video sites as it is that hold a piece of the market (Vimeo, Metacafe, Break, DailyMotion, etc), and I can't imagine any feature that would make me switch over (although I've always wanted an online fully featured video editor).

Id much sooner believe that the 1bn data center is for Cloud iTunes than for a YouTube competitor.

TL;DR Author thinks Apple should build a video upload service, forgets about MobileMe.

The author spends most of the piece talking about YouTube hasn't made money; but now they have a plan to make money (or so he thinks.) He neglects to tell us how Apple's iVideo will make money. Subscription fees like Mobile Me? That sounds like a niche play. Alas, our guru does not mention how this "YouTube Killer" will hunt and gather the dollars.

Yet another pundit giving an use to the North Carolina data center.

Apple makes awesome software to boost the hardware sales, cheaper software lowers the barrier for people to buy the hardware.

Apple is a company that cares about earnings. Why would Apple want to get into a business that is known to be at best marginally profitable?

Apple may get into the video business, but making a YouTube killer would be a giant money wasting expedition. Netflix is profitable. If they do anything, it is more likely to be a Netflix killer.

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