Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

TikTok overtakes YouTube for average watch time in US and UK

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 405 posts

Re: TikTok overtakes YouTube for average watch time in US and UK

#331

Post by hcurtiss »

luckylion wrote: post #193
hcurtiss wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which just blows my mind. At a total US development aid of $34 billion in 2019, China is the only country that even comes close. The US's giving in the last fifty years (including massive sums to China) has been unparalleled in recorded history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_development_aid_countr... Of course, that's just development aid. US blows away all other countries in humanitarian aid too: https://www…

> US blows away all other countries in humanitarian aid too The problem is that they often do blow stuff away, quite literally. People aren't going to sing your praise for the new well you've dug after you've bombed their wedding and killed all their friends and family.

Such a cynical position. I predict there will be domestic calls in the near future to significantly curtail the US's extraordinary benevolence -- nobody seems to appreciate it anyway. And that will benefit nobody other than maybe China, which has its own history with killing innocents.

Re: TikTok overtakes YouTube for average watch time in US and UK

#332

Post by codewithcheese »

AlexanderTheGr8 wrote: post #323
billti wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have YouTube premium and love it. I mostly watch it for music videos and technical talks, and love not having ads. Watch some kids shows too with the 5yo. I nearly always use the web site, even though I have the app on my phone. Full screen browser tab on the desktop just feels more “TV-like” and engaging than staring at the phone screen.

why not use ublock origin, rather than buy youtube premium? UO will remove every single ad in browser. It's obviously 100% fine to buy premium; I am just curious about the reasons, if any.

To remove ads on Mobile and Android TV

Re: TikTok overtakes YouTube for average watch time in US and UK

#334

Post by hirako2000 »

randycupertino wrote: post #258
theshrike79 wrote: post #79

Yea, the Youtube algorithm is the "pick me girl" of algorithms. I watched one video by a creator I already follow about their solar panel installation and water-catcher garden irrigation. What do I get in my recommendations? Dozens and dozens of videos from completely random channels about solar panel installation and gardening. I very rarely find new creators on YouTube, who produce consistent high quality content.…

> I've ended up following, among others, an opthalmologist who does sketches about hospital stuff, to mechanics who show the most f'd up cars they get to service, to farrier and sheep shearing videos to a guy who does comedy about weird animal facts. I bet some of the uptick in quality of content on tiktok vs youtube is based on the length of videos. If they only have three minutes, all the interesting things will be…

It's exactly where the issue is. It's no mistake, product management at Google isn't dumb.. here is how it works.

YouTube, for years even post acquisition made no money, kept bleeding to aquire users. At one point a revenue stream is implemented, which must keep growing to recoup the large investments. Not to mention, pure greed.

The algorithm isn't designed to promote quality content to enhance the user experience and love for the product. It's designed to keep users engaged, while allowing for as much ads time possible. So, the 10 or or 16 mins length was identified as sweet spots to allow for at least one ad placement without loosing engagement. Click bait videos aren't demoted, they work. They keep users engaged as they get promoted to watch yet another video, until brain saturation. They maximised profit, they didn't strike the right balance, perhaps too naive to imagine competition could steal from their market share.

Here we have tiktok, knowing very well they would need to be order of magnitude better to gain traction, at least where the market was already taken up by YouTube. They created an app making it easier and faster to push well cut content, with better tech, better suited UI and overall UX proven to be attracting younger audiences who tend to make trends with their creativity.

Take a good look at the YouTube app, despite the few visual improvements it feels like a decade old library system with auto play, ported to mobile phones. Look at tiktok, it's mobile first, it's fluid and design for touch interaction, the social features are right there, not outside the video in the form of two thumbs button and a thread of text blobs.

Google clearly don't understand or refuses to understand trends. They build minimalist systems , boring to look at but that perform very well, and it is now capitalist greed that set the direction of the company, the bottom line is to squeeze more and more money before the competitions finishes them. They got a few years to go on like that.

Re: TikTok overtakes YouTube for average watch time in US and UK

#335

Post by webmobdev »

jbluepolarbear wrote: post #266
franciscop wrote: post #222

Note that this is "average time on app", which draws two potential pitfalls: • Youtube is consumed A LOT on the website, including some people using the mobile website (not the app) to keep it playing in the background (duh). This only compares average time on app. • It could also be totally skewed, if let's say 100M people spend 2h/day on average on Youtube, and 1k (a tiny amount) spend 2.5h/day on average on Tiktok…

I refuse to use the YouTube app. The ads have gotten so bad. The website I can use an ad blocker and it’s fine to watch. I try using the app iOS or TVOS and it’s 3 ads to start and an ad every 5 minutes.

Vanced is a fantastic YouTube alternative app for android - https://vancedapp.com/

Re: TikTok overtakes YouTube for average watch time in US and UK

#336

Post by billti »

AlexanderTheGr8 wrote: post #323
billti wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have YouTube premium and love it. I mostly watch it for music videos and technical talks, and love not having ads. Watch some kids shows too with the 5yo. I nearly always use the web site, even though I have the app on my phone. Full screen browser tab on the desktop just feels more “TV-like” and engaging than staring at the phone screen.

why not use ublock origin, rather than buy youtube premium? UO will remove every single ad in browser. It's obviously 100% fine to buy premium; I am just curious about the reasons, if any.

As someone who lives very comfortably on a software engineer’s salary at a big software company, I generally avoid trying to “work around” their business models. If I’m going to use the software/service, I’m happy to pay those engineer’s salaries too. (And if it makes the product unusable, then I don’t use it).

Re: TikTok overtakes YouTube for average watch time in US and UK

#337

Post by LordAtlas »

ng12 wrote: post #204

Can someone explain to me what happened to Vine? I feel like it beat TikTok to the punch by ~8 years before it was bought and then unceremoniously killed by Twitter. Was that the first example of US innovation being suffocated by the big tech oligopoly?

The Twitter Touch: the opposite of the Midas Touch. Everything they touch turns to shit.

Re: TikTok overtakes YouTube for average watch time in US and UK

#338

Post by SilverRed »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #329
est wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now, I don't know for sure, but I cant imagine that YouTube is integrating App Annie metrics into their YouTube App, right? It's based on Android battery stats. You can download 3rd party battery stats from Google Play and view other app's usage time.

Novel but this, and any other metric that App Annie is using, is only a crude approximation. An inefficient video codec would result in higher battery usage.

I'm pretty sure the battery stats also show the time the app was on the screen / active.

Re: TikTok overtakes YouTube for average watch time in US and UK

#339

Post by mdoms »

sudosysgen wrote: post #164
mdoms wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say there can be - is China one?

If you admit that, the issue becomes actual reality, not authoritarianism per se, and the comparison between the US and China becomes very uncomfortable when democracy is no longer a crutch.

What the hell are you talking about? China is currently undergoing an active genocide.

Re: TikTok overtakes YouTube for average watch time in US and UK

#340

Post by SilverRed »

theshrike79 wrote: post #79

Yea, the Youtube algorithm is the "pick me girl" of algorithms. I watched one video by a creator I already follow about their solar panel installation and water-catcher garden irrigation. What do I get in my recommendations? Dozens and dozens of videos from completely random channels about solar panel installation and gardening. I very rarely find new creators on YouTube, who produce consistent high quality content.…

I saw so much promotion of the tiktok algorithm on HN so I decided to check it out. For the first hour I was laughing at almost every video. The app very quickly optimized to show me funny videos from people like me. And then after a few times using the app, I quickly became bored. I don't want to see endless funny videos, I want to watch some longer informative videos and I couldn't see how to make the app do that.

When I go on youtube it shows me 10-20 minute science and engineering videos which I can put on and sit on the couch watching. This provides lasting value for me because I never get bored of these like I do with 20 second comedy videos.

Post reply on HN