Apart from network effect, and Google's Ad Monopoly, what does YT have that has made it a clear winner in this field? What would a competitor need to take on them?
Ask HN: Why doesn't YouTube have a competitor?
1–10 of 226 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't YouTube have a competitor?
#2There is a new "free speech" alternative called Rumble emerging. Rumble for now promises Not to become a censorship platform like YouTube is now currently.
Even though some high profile civil libertarian and free speech advocates like Glenn Greenwald and Zaid Jilani have chosen Rumble as home, YouTube is still lights years ahead. But if they continue to censor, alternative free speech platform will emerge.
Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't YouTube have a competitor?
#3for me personally Peertube checks all the boxes because it is in the fediverse and can be selfhosted.
you can do whatever the hell you want and that is quite a big thing for people who have been burned by youtube.
edit: Tilvids.com is a good example of the power of peertube
Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't YouTube have a competitor?
#4Because it’s impossible to draw eyeballs without content and impossible to draw content without eyeballs.
Many well funded companies have successfully drawn some content with money in the form of production budget, guarantees & advances but few with a developed audience elsewhere are willing to give it up and people watch the content they like where it is most convenient.
Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't YouTube have a competitor?
#5I 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 step further, people use YouTube like a video search engine. If people want to see a video they type in the terms they are looking for and see the results. They don't search for an alternative platform first, and then enter the keywords on those sites. Perhaps designing a video search engine that looks across multiple platforms would address this?
Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't YouTube have a competitor?
#6It comes preinstalled on all mobile phones.
If YouTube were just a website like any other video host, people wouldn't care. Do you really care about which video host a video you want to watch is on? No, more than likely you care about the video itself.
But YouTube is an app, on your phone, click it and search for what you want, oh whatever you're looking for is probably on YouTube anyway.
And that's another thing, YouTube is basically the only site with google search embedded into itself that only searches itself. Imagine a video search engine like YouTube that showed you results from all sorts of video sites.
These two things together are why. Want to find a video? Click the video finding app on your phone. Oh, it only searches YouTube? Oh well, the video is probably on YouTube anyway.
Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't YouTube have a competitor?
#7CEO of vimeo will cry themself to sleep after reading this post
Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't YouTube have a competitor?
#8Rumble
Odysee
WTV
Bitchute
Daily Motion
Peer Tube
..ad infinitum
There's literally hundreds out there, not everything needs to be 'Facebook scale' to be successful.
edit: formatting
Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't YouTube have a competitor?
#9Bandwidth and storage cost a lot. YouTube wasn't even profitable till a few years ago. Any new "free speech" video platform will be inundated with content that YouTube bans, things like hate speech, gore and calls for violence etc. which are not palatable to advertisers.
Re: Ask HN: Why doesn't YouTube have a competitor?
#10content, and pure scale, video hosting is enormously expensive to do at scale, youtube is able to do so because it is backed by google.