Ask HN: Why doesn't YouTube have a competitor? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't YouTube have a competitor?

#121

Post by mohanmcgeek » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 4:50 PM UTC

Everybody here seems to be focusing on the YouTube the video hosting platform which has a lot of competitors: p2p video platforms, edtech websites, paid history YouTube streams, a gazillion VOD platforms in my country, all the tiktok clones that consume just enough bandwidth. Video hosting isn't hard, relatively speaking.

Instead, YouTube the video search engine is the product without any competition.

And since people search for a video on YouTube and not on odysee or peertube, these other platforms have poor video discoverablity. On these platforms I tend to watch creators that I already found using YouTube.

The video search is what somebody building a competitor needs to be focusing on.

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't YouTube have a competitor?

#122

Post by danielrhodes » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 4:50 PM UTC

YouTube does have competitors: Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Netflix.

YouTube is a clear winner in a few big categories, but video is a huge market and they haven’t gotten an edge on anything new in awhile, for example short form.

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't YouTube have a competitor?

#123

Post by snek_case » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 4:51 PM UTC

sharemywin wrote: post #113

snek_case wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right that Netflix and Pornhub have both been able to replicate this. IMO, it might be wise for Netflix to start their own YouTube-like service. For example, subscribe to Netflix, get access to user-created videos on a separate app. The best part is that users would then generate content for a fraction of what they currently pay to produce content, and they could have basically what YouTube has, but ad-free.

Netflix doesn't own it's own infrastructure.

Which means its hosting infrastructure is not even as cost-efficient as it could be.

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't YouTube have a competitor?

#124

Post by mohanmcgeek » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 4:52 PM UTC

gtirloni wrote: post #26

BitwiseFool wrote: post #5

I think the average person generally isn't aware of YouTube alternatives. Alternative video platforms don't seem to be a thing people seek out. In my own experience, I only know about Rumble and Odysee because a content creator I like wanted to mirror their work on other sites in order to avoid having all their eggs in one basket. If it wasn't for that, I probably wouldn't even be aware of these platforms. Going a st…

Google Search does video search across multiple platforms relatively well.

I hardly see a non YouTube video on Google video search results

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't YouTube have a competitor?

#125

Post by clarge1120 » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 4:52 PM UTC

ztauras wrote: post #63

Joe Rogan moved away, and it seems he is losing influence. https://www.sportskeeda.com/mma/news-monthly-listeners-joe-r...

Spotify employees, not a tolerant group, has been pushing to have Rogan deplatformed since he moved to Spotify. Yet, his reach has increased dramatically even while the listener numbers, according to this source, had decreased.

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't YouTube have a competitor?

#126

Post by armchairhacker » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 4:53 PM UTC

randomdata wrote: post #88

gwbas1c wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The content may have matured, but has YouTube really changed? I always thought the point was to make it easy for anyone to publish an original video? (And then to make it easy for anyone to watch the video.)

> but has YouTube really changed? Unquestionably. If you recall, YouTube originally made its mark by having pirated copies of the SNL Lazy Sunday skit floating around, which quickly saw it become recognized it as the place to watch all kinds of pirated TV shows. Eventually they started enforcing duration limits to quash people uploading entire episodes, but it wasn't until the content ID system was implemented that i…

When was the content id system implemented? I'm sure there were plenty of pirated videos on YouTube (honestly there still are but they use cuts/filters/awful quality to get around), but I remember homemade videos in the top charts even before 2008.

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't YouTube have a competitor?

#127

Post by ethbr0 » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 4:54 PM UTC

systemvoltage wrote: post #112

ageitgey wrote: post #47

YouTube is a huge technical achievement that would require billions of dollars to replicate: 1. It consumes nearly unlimited bandwidth. 2. It consumes nearly unlimited CPU for transcoding and serving media at different bitrates. 3. It consumes massive resources to police, from user moderation to appeasing content owners by building systems and databases like ContentID, etc. 4. It generates endless PR and legal headac…

This is the least informative hyperbole I've read on HN. It's a bunch of smoke and mirrors, everything is unlimited, cannot be replicated, forget about it. Let's accept defeat. I thought HN was the opposite of this - finding ways to upend fat companies from occupying monopoly positions. "Hacker" news. More reasons to break up Big Tech from a government regulations perspective - The only democratic politician talking…

It's a two-sided coin. It's not a very smart bet to say "I can out-compete a US$182.53 billion revenue company... by doing things that require massive amounts of capital."

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't YouTube have a competitor?

#128

Post by gizdan » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 4:55 PM UTC

Zanni wrote: post #98

jimmaswell wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like PornHub or similar could easily branch into providing a separate service for general videos if they wanted. They already have all this stuff down for the most part.

They may not have to even offer a separate service. There's a math tutor sharing his lessons on PornHub already: https://www.vice.com/en/article/dyp8wa/math-tutor-video-less...

Sure, but, assuming it's not already blocked by IT, are you going to be sending out a link to your colleagues/students/professor with the name "pornhub" in the URL?

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't YouTube have a competitor?

#129

Post by Trex_Egg » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

Hekioi wrote: post #111

snek_case wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right that Netflix and Pornhub have both been able to replicate this. IMO, it might be wise for Netflix to start their own YouTube-like service. For example, subscribe to Netflix, get access to user-created videos on a separate app. The best part is that users would then generate content for a fraction of what they currently pay to produce content, and they could have basically what YouTube has, but ad-free.

Netflix only provides one very static huge library. As long as you move a few PB around the globe on your video release date, Netflix is fine. It's very easy to build a Netflix in comparison to yt. I would argue that for Netflix going into yt direction would eat up there revenue baseline fast.

what is mean by "PB"?

Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't YouTube have a competitor?

#130

Post by renewiltord » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

ballenf wrote: post #91

LegitShady wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my guess is pornhub has been on steep decline since most of their payment processing methods has been removed. I will admit I haven't checked back but last I checked they were essentially crypto only.

Don't forget user surveillance and data mining. Probably a profitable market for them to sell user profiles.

To whom exactly. All the high spend customers are not going to participate.

So that leaves a volume of shit-tier players. That's not that worthwhile.