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Video is Coming to Reddit

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Re: Video is Coming to Reddit

#31

Post by MBCook »

mandie wrote: post #11
minimaxir wrote: post #7

A couple months ago I found that Reddit submissions using Reddit's native image hosting, a year after its implementation, surpassed those of its main competitor, Imgur (HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14595212 ) I'm not entirely sure the same will happen with video. Not only are the videos typically posted on Reddit's largest video subreddits are from the YouTube community (and intended for the Yo…

Image hosting is easy, if you don't care about losing money. As long as you provide direct links to images, you're better than everybody else. Video hosting? You need a good player (nothing will ever top YouTube's) and a good CDN. That's a tough nut to crack. Especially for a company with no money.

> nothing will ever top YouTube's

A video player that doesn't make me wait a long time before going to full resolution,or that lets me select full resolution when I'll not on desktop, would be a huge plus for me.

In the last week goon to YouTube's site on mobile to watch videos has often been broken. Turning off my adblocker doesn't fix it. Going to the desktop site sometimes fixes it. Very off-putting.

And you know what I would kill for? A display of how long a video is before I play it. And maybe an indication of if it has sound.

I'll point out I don't use any apps and even on mobile I use the desktop site.

But YouTube seems to be getting slowly worse, which doesn't really surprise me. Imgur had DEFINITELY gotten WAY worse than even a year or so ago.

Good luck to Reddit. This may be a serious improvement.

Re: Video is Coming to Reddit

#32

Post by niftich »

pgrote wrote: post #2

What is the end game for Reddit? Control of the videos so they can sell ads, right? Does the benefit redditors? No. Based on the testing so far the mobile player is not ready for prime time nor is the backend video infrastructure. Videos lag horribly and spin sometimes forever .. as if the connection was broken.

Definitely control of videos so they can sell ads, but also an effort to cultivate a captive ecosystem and reduce reliance on outside sites. These largely circle back to 'sell ads', but it's too drastic to suggest that it doesn't benefit the community. It, however, does continue the process of changing its character.

Captive content ecosystems, despite their widely-recognized drawbacks, aren't devoid of engagement. Vine was a captive content ecosystem whose attributes resulted in many creative works; Snapchat and its Facebook-run clones -- most notably the Stories inside Instagram -- are another, where the content is made and consumed by the official app and never escapes out onto the public web. As an extreme example, Hulu is a captive content ecosystem where all the content happens to be professionally produced.

Captive content ecosystems are excellent places to sell ads, because you track the user's content consumption habits, and control the client such that they can't easily avoid the ads using technical means.

Re: Video is Coming to Reddit

#33

Post by MBCook »

chatmasta wrote: post #15
gallerdude wrote: post #12

I think it's obvious why they're doing this - accessibility. In moving r/all to r/popular, image hosting, removing default subs, and now this, they're trying to cater to more people. Four years ago I joined reddit, tried it out for about 2 hours, and quit. I couldn't get past the (admittedly small) learning curve (especially acronyms: ITT, OP, TIL, etc). Two years ago I joined it for real after putting in an hour to…

How does an embedded YouTube video (the status quo) make the Reddit experience less accessible for new users? Chances are, reddit's implementation will be significantly worse than embedded YouTube videos. If anything will create confusion for new users, it's having both YouTube embeds and Reddit videos on the same page. Nobody who is new to Reddit is unfamiliar with the YouTube player, but is definitely unfamiliar wi…

You know I didn't even consider upload. A few years ago I remember going trough tons of hoops getting integrations setup so I could post to YouTube from my WiiU and PS4. It was a huge pain.

If Reddit can make video uploading easier for people without a YouTube account or who forgot their password or don't want to visit 3 sites to get it done.

Re: Video is Coming to Reddit

#35

Post by pakitan »

MBCook wrote: post #31
mandie wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Image hosting is easy, if you don't care about losing money. As long as you provide direct links to images, you're better than everybody else. Video hosting? You need a good player (nothing will ever top YouTube's) and a good CDN. That's a tough nut to crack. Especially for a company with no money.

> nothing will ever top YouTube's A video player that doesn't make me wait a long time before going to full resolution,or that lets me select full resolution when I'll not on desktop, would be a huge plus for me. In the last week goon to YouTube's site on mobile to watch videos has often been broken. Turning off my adblocker doesn't fix it. Going to the desktop site sometimes fixes it. Very off-putting. And you know…

> And you know what I would kill for? A display of how long a video is before I play it

Every youtube video thumbnail has that in the lower right corner.

Re: Video is Coming to Reddit

#36

Post by koolba »

> If you’ve spent any time on r/HighQualityGifs, r/mealtimevideos, or just about any other Reddit community, you know that videos and gifs represent a major proportion of the content shared on our site. But prior to this launch, content creators had to go through a time-consuming, circuitous process to post videos, using third-party hosting platforms, copying URLs, and sharing them as link posts. This inhibited many users, especially those who capture videos on their phones and want to share them quickly with their favorite subreddits.

I've never heard anyone complain that copying a URL is too onerous.

I don't get what they're plan is. How does a company that is currently losing money plan to make more and be a sustainable enterprise by adding features that only increase their costs? Video uses a lot of bandwidth. Especially compared everything they've done so far (i.e. all text).

They had a good thing going with the mooching off free hosting on YouTube and Imgur. Why kill that? All I see them gaining are a bit more details on how many times someone played a video. And you could probably do that with some custom JS wrapping the YouTube player (guessing here ... not sure how that works in practice).

Re: Video is Coming to Reddit

#37

Post by thinbeige »

Slightly OT: I started to blocked HN at daytime recently. Great impact on my productivity and a side effect was...

- I visit Reddit more often (which is unblocked)

- Reddit is surprisngly not that addictive; you skim it for few minutes and leave again

- AND this is the most important thing: Reddit is sometimes so funny, the posts and especially the top voted comments that I am cracking up every time, almost at the point of crying. After Reddit I am always in a very good mood.

Re: Video is Coming to Reddit

#38

Post by [deleted] »

koolba wrote: post #36

> If you’ve spent any time on r/HighQualityGifs, r/mealtimevideos, or just about any other Reddit community, you know that videos and gifs represent a major proportion of the content shared on our site. But prior to this launch, content creators had to go through a time-consuming, circuitous process to post videos, using third-party hosting platforms, copying URLs, and sharing them as link posts. This inhibited many…

[deleted]

Re: Video is Coming to Reddit

#39

Post by j-walker »

koolba wrote: post #36

> If you’ve spent any time on r/HighQualityGifs, r/mealtimevideos, or just about any other Reddit community, you know that videos and gifs represent a major proportion of the content shared on our site. But prior to this launch, content creators had to go through a time-consuming, circuitous process to post videos, using third-party hosting platforms, copying URLs, and sharing them as link posts. This inhibited many…

> I don't get what they're plan is.

"This launch is a giant step forward in our efforts to bring rich content to Reddit, following last year’s release of native image hosting and our introduction of native video ads earlier this year."

Which means having to watch a 30 second ad before a 15second video clip.

Re: Video is Coming to Reddit

#40

Post by criley2 »

koolba wrote: post #36

> If you’ve spent any time on r/HighQualityGifs, r/mealtimevideos, or just about any other Reddit community, you know that videos and gifs represent a major proportion of the content shared on our site. But prior to this launch, content creators had to go through a time-consuming, circuitous process to post videos, using third-party hosting platforms, copying URLs, and sharing them as link posts. This inhibited many…

Yeah a good thing for reddit that users get bombarded with heavy Youtube and Imgur ads?

If Youtube and especially small company Imgur can profit this way, so can reddit.

And seeing as reddit has so few avenues to monetize users, letting Google and Imgur mop up the vast majority of link ad revenue seems very silly.

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