YouTube: 1B Viewers, No Profit
wsj.com
wsj.com
If they want me to sit in front of this as passive entertainment, why not start by giving me an interface to view my subscribed content, in order, as an RSS-reader-like experience? I should be able to hit 'play' and have it scan through all the new videos on the channels I am subscribed to, without hitting 'click to skip' length ads, going into a mysterious related videos algorithm, or manually navigating through a list and clicking on each one.
For that matter, I should be able to interface with a channel in that way regardless of whether they have created a playlist or not, using 'autoplay in order of upload'.
If you wanna get complicated, give me a search functionality that will do the same. 'Autoplay feed of anything mentioning Minecraft mod XYZ in the title/description'
Right now, Youtube has a nominal subscription function that actively deters you from using it smoothly. Fix that before you assume you can't turn it into a 'habit'.
Can you really not do that? I've never had a youtube account. The plan at the back of my head to build a hideously boring looking "advanced" interface for youtube is creeping forward...
I understand why the uploader would want this, but if it results in me watching less Youtube, I do not understand why Youtube would want this.
My entire YT browsing is based on already knowing what I want to watch. I proceed to search and hope that the video is what I am looking for. No previous info about quality, content, anything.
Sometimes I have no clue what I want to watch, I just feel like watching something. Back in the day I would flip through channels until I was caught by something.
YT should have a discover mode that is similar to navigating through channels on the press of a button. Maybe give me some filters and then let me "peak" into videos.
Of course the experience is hard to implement when providers are throttling YT traffic. Flipping through channels would then suck, because the video would take 20 seconds to load all the time.
But yea, that's why I don't use it like TV. I use it more like I use Google Search. When I just want to know random interesting things without knowing what I want to look for, Google Search is not that helpful.
I am subscribed to a dozen or so channels.
The counts on the sidebar for the number of videos that I "haven't watched" is always incorrect. So is the total number of videos that I have subscribed to and not watched.
Clicking on one of your subscribed channels brings to you the channel homepage, but instead of listing new content you haven't seen yet, you see popular content you've seen already.
The only page that seems to be useful and accurate is the subscription list itself, but this isn't prominent or obvious.
I also often get e-mail notifications for newly released videos which I have already watched some hours before the e-mail was sent.
Also, I'd love the ability to pay to remove ads on a channel. The ad revenue for one user watching a given channel has to be trivial, especially for original, instructional content which is what I primarily watch. I bet paying $1 to remove ads on a channel for a year would produce better revenue for YouTube and content producers alike.
Look, I like looking at related videos as much as the next guy, but first I wanna see all the videos I've already expressed an interest in seeing before I'm shown content that I might not find so entertaining.
- comments are completely broken
- finding stuff is a process of trial and error
- too many invasive ads
- no pleasant surprises; every time I open Facebook or Twitter I find something new that interests me, which makes me wanna come back, not so with YouTube. In fact I might find better pleasant surprises opening the homepage of Amazon.
Youtube's problems are that their costs are too high. If you have $4bn coming in, but providing the service to generate that $4bn costs $4bn, then you need to do things to make your business more efficient. It really is that simple. Making a "better" product won't change anything if every dollar you bring in still costs a dollar to service. You'd just push the revenue up and still make no profit.
http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/NFLX/4026650765x0x804...
Is that true? I'm definitely not saying it's not, but it's not self-evidently true.
Is $4 per user per year a lot to pay for being the platform they watch video on?
I agree with your point that their challenge is not about making their product more attractive to new users, but an equally valid conclusion would be that their problem is that their product isn't generating enough value per user, so they can't ask enough value in return - which would be a product design problem, or that their product is generating significantly more value for its users than it's managing to demand in return, which would be a "monetisation" / revenue stream issue.
Is $4 per user per year a lot to pay for being the
platform they watch video on?
If the billion viewers include anyone who has viewed a single video at any quality in the last 10 years, it's a lot less impressive.
I agree that YouTube's ads are invasive and annoying but finding stuff is fairly easy. Agree on comments. Twitter is not at all interesting to me but I can at least understand why some find it interesting, but Facebook - I just don't see that.
Quality content. It's a bit like HN, but with more bells and whistles, broader topic coverage, and with most of the commenters being your personal, real-life acquaintances. Of course Facebook experience strongly depends on the type of friends you have, but I guess a lot of other things in real life depend on that as well.
- I watch a lot of games channels, yet have never watched and constantly tell them I'm not interested in channels that are about Minecraft, yet every time I go my 'What to watch' list there are more Minecraft channels to tell them to ignore.
- I watch a lot of powerlifting/strenght training and rehab videos, and then get recommended with lots of sports channels that are entirely about soccer.
- Recommended channels are almost always non-sensical related to my preferences and browsing history. Currently they have tons of Bollywood/Hindi channels and Jimmy Kimmel in there. No idea why.
- The subscriptions list doesn't order them to put the ones with unviewed new videos near the top of the list. On my laptop there is only room to show 3 channels before the rest get put into a hover-to-show overlay, so I have to take that extra step every time to discover whether there are new vids in 90% of my subs.
On the plus side:
- They also finally removed the need to click twice to not be interested in a channel, even though it was the only option in the click-to-show list.
I'm not suggesting that change for the sake of change is an essential part of UI innovation, the opposite is often true; the right experience can stand the test of time. But the Youtube user experience has been pretty poor for a long time in my opinion, and in places feels actively worse by design.
My only real success story with it is their live stream service for watching live League of Legends is awesome compared to Twitch or Azubu.
I think failing is perhaps an overly strong interpretation of the situation though.
Almost all of the content I find on YouTube is 1080P, and some of it is running at 60FPS.
What I'd like is the option to filter by video length. Anything under 45 seconds seems to be posted by teenagers, and I just don't care.
Add to that list:
- searching for music is completely (but silently) broken after Youtube music was launched and geo-restrictions imposed on the serarch-results.
Knowing what used to be there, it just seems like someone took a format c: over entire youtube and nobody running the show noticed.
My 2.5yo can open YouTube app on whatever device she finds on the coffee table and usually find content through suggestions. 8yo already got banned from YouTube by watching excessive amounts of Minecraft videos, until summer.
We hosted a reunion event for kids of close and distant relatives during the semester and 1/4 of the day spent on YouTube, a stat based on 5 kids ranging from 2.5 to 11.
I don't see any other platform reaching every kid in the world other than YouTube. Are there any? Google will sure monetize it better than today, all TV entertainment in the future will be consumed through companies like YouTube, Twitch etc. It's easier to see it if you live with younger people.
How? I keep youtube in the background for music almost all day and didn't know you could get banned for "watching too much"
I listen to Jazz and this sounds like something I need to know how to do
Similar app is NetMBuddy , but it is not working for too many videos and it's UX is terrible for me. However it's open source.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/streamus/jbnkffmin...
I gotta say, I missed switching on the TV, leaning back and just droning off, remote in hand.
On-demand video is great, but it requires too much involvement. This isn't a bad thing, necessarily, but sometimes, you want to turn on a screen and just push channels.
Another problem with YouTube: too many ads. I can't count the number of times I've skipped a clip because of a pre-roll ad. I'm okay watching a 30 second ad if the clip itself is 30 minutes long. But a 30 second ad to watch a 45 second clip?
Please. I've got better use of my time.
That doesn't happen. At least be realistic in your arguments please. Maybe sometimes you might get a skippable advert that long but you can skip those after 5 seconds
"Ads can be a maximum of 15 seconds (next to short-form videos <10 minutes long), or 30 seconds (next to long-form videos >10 minutes long)."
http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.youtube.com/en...
At this point I hope merely that google doesn't do anything that inadvertently destroys whatever magic is happening at youtube before a diversified field of real competition exists elsewhere.
I have spend so much time enjoying the content. Also content ID take a lot of parodies and analyzes and gaming reviews.
I didn't realize Facebook had such a small revenue figure - could anyone explain their market cap in that regard? It's highly unusual.
For example, they might attribute the costs of building a new data-center to their YouTube branch, but actually use it for all their services. And they're probably not making their collected data on you into account.
Why might they do this? To make their main business seem stronger at the expanse of YouTube for whatever reason, to help justify lower CPM on YouTube content, because admitting that data-mining your customers is your long-term plan is generally not a smart idea (even if you're Google and people should know by now).
There are other ways to play this; e.g. microsoft once included MacBU (very profitable Mac office) in E&D (xbox...). But at the end of the day, it doesn't really help anyone.
https://www.google.com/search?q=YouTube%3A+1+Billion+Viewers...
Either way, this is a lousy 2-paragraph article that says YouTube isn't making a profit and Google hopes the Music Key program fares better.
Of course that isn't laid out in $$$...
Not only this, but being able to have a larger pool of employees without losing money has its own benefits, like easily reallocating the best performing or fitting people on other, more profitable projects or urgent problems.
Plus I bet they do get their money through some tax loops or some other form light money launder.
If not the money, they do get gigantic userbase they can harvest for data, unlike G+.
Discovery is the problem. Not a lack of quality content.
Off-site schemes like Patreon are far more popular. That allows people to donate a small amount monthly, or a small amount per piece of new content. They get incentives (à la Kickstarter) to donate extra.
Patreon has addition appeal possibly because it doesn't make you entirely reliant on Google for your income. Even those making millions of YouTube get shitty support and could have their channel kicked off YouTube (or pulled out of the Partner Program) at a moment's notice for no good reason, with nobody to complain to if that happens.
If YouTube isn't making money, then of course they're going try to alter their deals, no matter how many indie musicians it pisses off.