Ask HN: What is the problem that you find with video discovery in youtube? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is the problem that you find with video discovery in youtube?

11 pointsplayhard17 comments

Do you experience it?How video discovery in youtube can be improved? is it really a problem?

im working on my product which tries to solve video discovery by crowd sourcing video playlists ,which can be followed by people.

Here is the quora question http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-problem-that-you-find-with-video-discovery-in-youtube

Thanks!

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Yes it's a problem! There are slews of videos that aren't discoverable because the person who uploaded the video didn't submit enough or the right content in the title, tags, description and so on. The search fails to account for content within the video, and phrases and terms the author couldn't think of or was inept for whatever reason to add. Using only one tag, a nondescript title and a description that vaguely says "My dog and I". As a result so few videos are searchable for what is otherwise a common phrase. Maybe if the users could add tags or categories themselves to a video for the community, or common terms and phrases within comments or closed captioned could be contributed to the search.

As a side note, I'm often frustrated as a designer when I search for something stylistic and hardly anything shows up, such as "Black and White", when we all know there's plenty of B&W content.

hey thanks. i have almost built the platform! it sounds like what you sayl

Sounds like a time saver! I continuously find myself trying to think of the most general searches and sifting through countless pages to find nothing, it's frustrating.

my twitter http://www.twitter.com/ramakanth_d

i will let you know when we launch!

Actually yeah I experience problems. My wife and I enjoy watching funny YouTube videos—fail compilations, tv prank shows (eg just for laughs), cats falling, etc.

Problem is, the most viewed and top rated sections are littered with soccer plays and these hacks trying to do funny pop culture monologues(completely unfunny IMO). The related videos you get after viewing something are usually crappy remixes or not related.

Our dream is a never-ending playlist of videos based on what we like ... "Pandora for funny videos" would be the best analogy.

Also, we watch everything on AppleTV so whatever you build needs to work well on the iPad so I can AirPlay.

Thanks! it sures works on iPad! Video playlists are curated! As it is crowd sourced,Videos are added by people who know lot about the topic.

I don't have a problem finding videos (or discovering videos) on youtube as much as I have issues with the default YouTube app on iPhone not showing all the content you would normally find on youtube.com through a web browser. I suspect a lot of it has to do with the fact that not all videos are html5 compatible and partially maybe for whatever reason the app isn't pulling the correct results. But that's about the only issue I've come across.

Thanks. How do you discover new videos?

Youtube search throws up a lot of unrelated content. Now this could be the problem of the author not tagging content well enough OR youtube trying to maximize the user visit and just providing him a range of options.

I think it is real problem and that could be addressed by focusing on better search or more a crowd sourced list.

I don't have a discovery problem. I just search and use the date filters ("uploaded today", "uploaded this month", etc). They've made doing so easy -- search for "cats, today" and it'll automatically do a search for "cats" with the "uploaded today" filter selected.

How is the quality of videos you find? Wouldn't be great if a user(maybe you) who discovers awesome 'cat' videos daily and shares the list with friends? This lists can be updated. People who follow this list,discovers videos with your help. A expert on a 'topic' would enable his/her followers to discover new videos.

I can sort any search by popularity, and I can subscribe to users that often post good videos and see both the videos and what they're liking and commenting on. YouTube already has user-created playlists too, completely searchable and discoverable by anyone.

When I'm watching YouTube on my Google TV box, it even suggests playlists for me. I don't know where they come from, but somewhere YouTube is providing them -- everything from "trending videos" to "animals eating cookies".

YouTube really has this handled -- I would not use the service you're describing.

If I'm really bored and have to find some vetted videos, I'd go to http://www.reddit.com/domain/youtube.com/

thanks for your insight.im talking like twitter for videos.

You can do this by creating a 'cat video' board on Pinterest.

sure you can. but my product is a standalone video discovery app where you have a dedicate stream for videos. it is for video lovers to find only videos they want to see. Pinterest is mixed and it is kind of cluttered if you are only looking for videos.Thanks.

Honestly, video discovery isn't a problem for me. I find videos through facebook, reddit, hacker news, etc. I doubt I would ever use a standalone video discovery app, but who knows? :)

I wish they had

1) Find highest rated videos from a given date range (by given keywords and/or tags).

2) Sort comments by rating (should be the default)

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