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How I tried to compete with YouTube and Google with Livevideo.com

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Re: How I tried to compete with YouTube and Google with Livevideo.com

#121

Post by otakucode »

TACIXAT wrote: post #11

This is interesting. I'm starting to make a computer security course right now and I've chosen to put it on pornhub. The monetization options are better for creators (I can sell videos!). Obviously, pornhub is going to restrict the audience a bit, so I've been toying with the idea of making a video hosting site with solid monetization options and categories of ads beyond porn. I think the biggest thing I don't unders…

Keep in mind, YouTube recently announced that they're planning on going after computer security information with their claws soon. That means Google doesn't like that information either. Even though PH is very limiting, that would probably be a better option than YouTube because you're very unlikely to ever see a cent from monetization there. I follow a lawyer with a small (100k) YouTube channel and he has to fight tooth and nail with YouTube for every video he uploads, no matter how innocuous. Whether you follow their rules or not, even if you walk on eggshells and avoid everything even remotely controversial, none of it matters.

Have you considered Patreon?

Re: How I tried to compete with YouTube and Google with Livevideo.com

#122

Post by heimatau »

maxk42 wrote: post #116

Without revealing details -- I worked for this company at this time. I was privy to certain financial details. Google did not destroy them. A combination of poor business decisions and possibly corruption did. I watched these decisions unfold in person and I won't provide certain details because I don't want to say anything that might be considered libelous, but this guy is straight-up throwing a pity party for himse…

> they were engaged in shady SEO tactics then bitches that Google delisted them.

As someone who did SEO for many years, Google was very serious about eliminating the 'black hat' SEO tactics. They were cheap, they were plentiful. Google eliminated them throughout their index because bad actors were skewing the results. This article does sound like a pity party but it sounds like someone isn't willing to accept they dropped the ball when it was passed to them.

Re: How I tried to compete with YouTube and Google with Livevideo.com

#123

Post by Marsymars »

mrep wrote: post #109
Faark wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is probably choice from an end-user's point of view, yes. On that front you are arguing about best search results. But as site owner, you need traffic. SEO for some search engine built by your brother, used exclusively by your family, wont help you grow your business. You need eyeballs, and more than 90% of those are on google [0]. Pretending this is a perfectly functioning market and websites can just ignore g…

It's definitely not a perfectly competitive market but this trope about GAFAM being monopolies is tiring. A monopoly can stagnate development on their product, raise prices and there's nothing customers can do because they have literally no other option. That is why monopolies are bad. If Google were to try and charge users for search, everyone would immediately switch to bing which keeps them in check from raising p…

The pedantry around the term "monopoly" is also a bit tiring.

If you substitute "harmfully disproportionate market power" for "monopoly", the points most people are making remain similar.

Re: How I tried to compete with YouTube and Google with Livevideo.com

#124

Post by zaphirplane »

privateSFacct wrote: post #14

This article should say - you can't compete with google using google. The "final blow" was adsense being cutoff. Their revenue model to compete with google was ... adsense. OK. Their traffic model was google search. Ok. Between the lines it sounds like some aggressive SEO, and maybe the network click bounce thing (you click on one video, and then it clicks through to another site etc). Be curious what their content m…

I am assuming you are implying that a human in google made the decision to bury competition search results and deny the competition’s AdWords relationship and not benign factors like bad SEO or misbehaving website

Google has been stung and made to show search results in an unbiased way with relation to their products. While it happened in the past the current monopoly, anticompetitive, antitrust commission in Europe California and some awaking Asian countries prevent that kind of behavior

That is the crux of antitrust/monopoly protection commission. The reason the exist

Re: How I tried to compete with YouTube and Google with Livevideo.com

#126

Post by techsin101 »

TACIXAT wrote: post #75
Mathnerd314 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious place to put it is an online learning platform, just googling "create online course" shows a dozen different websites with various monetization options. Or you could do unlisted YouTube videos and a simple pay site. Or Vimeo has some embedding options. The main problem I see is product differentiation, e.g. MIT has a computer security course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqmQg-cszw4&list=PLUl4u3cNGP...…

Unlisted is not very well protected. Once someone has the url, it is out there. PH at least ties the purchases to an account. Sure, someone can download and throw them on torrents, but it feels less like leaving the barn door open. As for differentiation, simply, my course will be the best. It's designed to take you from zero to security analyst. Those MIT lectures are taught with chalk and don't lay the foundations…

Are you collecting emails for launch news, if love to check it out when it's out

Re: How I tried to compete with YouTube and Google with Livevideo.com

#127

Post by harryf »

privateSFacct wrote: post #14

This article should say - you can't compete with google using google. The "final blow" was adsense being cutoff. Their revenue model to compete with google was ... adsense. OK. Their traffic model was google search. Ok. Between the lines it sounds like some aggressive SEO, and maybe the network click bounce thing (you click on one video, and then it clicks through to another site etc). Be curious what their content m…

> Seriously, if you are building a google competitor, you probably need to use something other than adsense. And a reminder, adsense is a key revenue generation value add.

OK but this story begins in 2006. At that time there basically was only Google for generating significant traffic. Facebook was growing and Twitter had just launched but neither had the size of audience (or real ad products) to generate the type of traffic Google could

Re: How I tried to compete with YouTube and Google with Livevideo.com

#128

Post by Shaanie »

mrep wrote: post #109
Faark wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is probably choice from an end-user's point of view, yes. On that front you are arguing about best search results. But as site owner, you need traffic. SEO for some search engine built by your brother, used exclusively by your family, wont help you grow your business. You need eyeballs, and more than 90% of those are on google [0]. Pretending this is a perfectly functioning market and websites can just ignore g…

It's definitely not a perfectly competitive market but this trope about GAFAM being monopolies is tiring. A monopoly can stagnate development on their product, raise prices and there's nothing customers can do because they have literally no other option. That is why monopolies are bad. If Google were to try and charge users for search, everyone would immediately switch to bing which keeps them in check from raising p…

His point is that Google isn't a monopoly from the user side. What if Google started offering the ability for websites to pay to increase their pagerank?

Re: How I tried to compete with YouTube and Google with Livevideo.com

#129

Post by Nyandalized »

cobookman wrote: post #87
nemothekid wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At least nowadays, network traffic is cheap. But it's not. Your example is contrived, as Hetzner likely doesn't expect you to stream a 100 hours of 1080p HD content to 100 people simultaneously . Your users would have a laughably bad experience at scale. On a single box, it's unlikely you could max out your throughput - you could at most support 45 users on a single Hetzner node (1080p @ 22Mbps on a Gigabit connect…

1TiB of CDN egress at market rate for large customers is less than a cup of coffee

Which you'd not be if you were just starting out. The cost also won't come down 90% no matter who you are. Big streaming networks often have to build their own to compete.

Re: How I tried to compete with YouTube and Google with Livevideo.com

#130

Post by jackjeff »

Wow... what a ton of BS. I disagree with most of it.

- "Google/YouTube made an anti-competitive move against LiveVideo". Ok, on the face of it (if you believe everything Lapinsky says) then it is really bad, as in "illegal" kind of bad. It makes me wonder how Google/Youtube avoided being sued. I whole heartily condemn YouTube/Google IF they did this. It sounds plausible btw, since they have done jerk things to Yelp or flight search engines, etc...

- "There is child porn on YouTube". Really? I don't believe it. They do a very good job with regular porn. I have never seen a pair of boobs on YouTube over the years. I don't know how they do it, but it seems to me that moderation of "nakedness" probably using AI works pretty damn well. I have never seen an article about porn issues on YouTube.

- "Google is no longer a neutral digital intermediate because they promote fairness". Yes. They do. And if they were not doing it, governments around the world would force them to do it. Also their advertisers do not want to be associated with the likes of Alex Jones and are putting pressure on YouTube to sort the issue. This is the sad reality, but Google, Facebook and Twitter are forced to moved from a "neutral" digital platform to something more akin to a "publisher". People on the board of Google are no more elected that the directors of publication of the largest newspapers. And if you think that shows an anti-conservatice bias, look at who is President of the US, who is going to be Prime Minister in the UK, etc... I don't think this is going to be easy but Google (and social media) to find a right balance where most people are able to publish, but the most fringe/toxic members of the community deserved to be demonetized. Will Google abuse its powers of f//k up from time to time? Sure they will. But I agree with the overall trend. And again, they do not have a choice.

- "Google changed its search engine to promote sites with responsive designs". I absolutely agree with the change. Most people use mobile devices. You waited until 2013 to realize you had to do that? A website that is not responsive today and back in 2013 probably sucked anyway, and it is "right" for Google to demote them. There is nothing anti-competitive about that. Btw, I can predict the future too. For instance, at some point Google will promote sites that support HTTP/2 and not just HTTP/1.1, so maybe you think of doing that on your next "Wordpress business".

- "Google wanted ads on my website". Just say "no". And I don't believe in the logical fallacy that _because_ you refused that is why the website was delisted. Seriously dude, your website was way to small for Google to care that much.

- The business was overly dependent on Google search results. Google tweak its algorithm from time to time. Most of the time Google has genuine reasons for the changes. Sometimes they want to demote a "large" competitor in an anti-competitive move (which btw, I think it's going to get harder and harder for Google to get away with that). But your tiny site that depends on search results... it's just an unintended consequence. Google does not care about you. And if you get most of your sales from Google, your business model is highly volatile and can disappear overnight. I don't want Google to stop making tweaks to improve the quality of results and destroy dark SEO hacks, just because occasionally they happen to accidentally destroys someones under-diversified business model. I am sure it sucks to be on the receiving end of this, but imagine a world where Google never tweaked the algorithm. Search results would be utterly worthless today.

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