I love Dropout! I think they’ve captured something in a bottle that British light entertainment has, but the American markets haven’t figured out: comedic personalities in game shows. Shows like Taskmaster or 8 out of 10 Cats does Countdown seem like a direct analogy to Game Changer and Make Some Noise and it’s just good fun!
One thing that could be tweaked could be the need for moderation. It’s unclear how much of the 45% YouTube keeps that’s for development vs servers vs moderation, but it seems all big social sites need to deal with moderation at some point and that creates a floor under how cheap the service can be.
The problem is of course that the videos that require a bigger moderation effort on YouTube are not the ones people go on the site to find, so it can make sense for the biggest YouTubers to make their own site that presumably doesn’t need video moderation. And then they might be able to collect more dollars with a different business model - YouTube also has a subscription where users viewing more videos don’t equal more ad revenue to distribute and getting around that seems quite nice.
I feel like a striking omission to this commentary (which maybe will come in part 3) is to have the strategy of showing things that the first mover will not. To say the quiet part out loud: yes I mean porn. Pornhub (and I think only fans) is wildly profitable with number that rival their safe for work competitors (though note: quick Google search gave me some conflicting information about this). Could this strategy work for site that doesn't want to be a porn site? Could and "R" rated YouTube exist? It would mean being sandwiched between a "PG-13" (YouTube) and "X" (pornhub) rated competitors, but there is certainly an appetite for such content among fans and creators alike. My strategy rating:6/10.
You're completely right - for some reason my brain completely blanked on what has been a primary use case for the internet since before the World Wide Web even existed. Porn has always been huge online and it's a very profitable video industry.
Indeed, I think an interesting element linking several of these is content the first mover can't (porn, Livestreaming) or is at least perceived as being unwilling (conservative content) to show. YouTube can't show porn, because parents don't won't their kids being served it next to their Minecraft videos. While now not the case, initially YouTube wasn't technically equipped for live streaming and vertical videos, missing out on being the first mover of that niche. While I don't actually think this is true, there is at least the perception by the creators and/or the audience that conservative voices will be unfairly censored. I think you touched on most of this in your article, so I am mostly just retreading things here, but interesting to think about how what allows pornhub to exist is the same thing as all these other platforms. The only thing I have to add, is that I think there is the opportunity for someone business savvy enough in pornhub to branch out into other content under a different brand, given that they essentially have the technical side of things already built. The biggest reason not to is that pornhub would have to accept age verification to make it work, rather than just our right banning access in certain areas. They apparently perceive that as a threat to their core business, so perhaps there is space for someone else.
Some other technical ideas, that mostly ignore path dependency:
PeerTube might automatically scale up as it is, if it had YouTube-levels of users + creators. Don't know enough about the technical details, though. Another option would be if Microsoft or Apple were to do something like PeerTube, but integrate it at OS-level. Or the invention of better compression formats, that reduce storage and streaming costs. Or perhaps sending a compressed signal, that the GPU fully renders client-side, perhaps also via [something something AI].
I love Dropout! I think they’ve captured something in a bottle that British light entertainment has, but the American markets haven’t figured out: comedic personalities in game shows. Shows like Taskmaster or 8 out of 10 Cats does Countdown seem like a direct analogy to Game Changer and Make Some Noise and it’s just good fun!
One thing that could be tweaked could be the need for moderation. It’s unclear how much of the 45% YouTube keeps that’s for development vs servers vs moderation, but it seems all big social sites need to deal with moderation at some point and that creates a floor under how cheap the service can be.
The problem is of course that the videos that require a bigger moderation effort on YouTube are not the ones people go on the site to find, so it can make sense for the biggest YouTubers to make their own site that presumably doesn’t need video moderation. And then they might be able to collect more dollars with a different business model - YouTube also has a subscription where users viewing more videos don’t equal more ad revenue to distribute and getting around that seems quite nice.
I feel like a striking omission to this commentary (which maybe will come in part 3) is to have the strategy of showing things that the first mover will not. To say the quiet part out loud: yes I mean porn. Pornhub (and I think only fans) is wildly profitable with number that rival their safe for work competitors (though note: quick Google search gave me some conflicting information about this). Could this strategy work for site that doesn't want to be a porn site? Could and "R" rated YouTube exist? It would mean being sandwiched between a "PG-13" (YouTube) and "X" (pornhub) rated competitors, but there is certainly an appetite for such content among fans and creators alike. My strategy rating:6/10.
You're completely right - for some reason my brain completely blanked on what has been a primary use case for the internet since before the World Wide Web even existed. Porn has always been huge online and it's a very profitable video industry.
Indeed, I think an interesting element linking several of these is content the first mover can't (porn, Livestreaming) or is at least perceived as being unwilling (conservative content) to show. YouTube can't show porn, because parents don't won't their kids being served it next to their Minecraft videos. While now not the case, initially YouTube wasn't technically equipped for live streaming and vertical videos, missing out on being the first mover of that niche. While I don't actually think this is true, there is at least the perception by the creators and/or the audience that conservative voices will be unfairly censored. I think you touched on most of this in your article, so I am mostly just retreading things here, but interesting to think about how what allows pornhub to exist is the same thing as all these other platforms. The only thing I have to add, is that I think there is the opportunity for someone business savvy enough in pornhub to branch out into other content under a different brand, given that they essentially have the technical side of things already built. The biggest reason not to is that pornhub would have to accept age verification to make it work, rather than just our right banning access in certain areas. They apparently perceive that as a threat to their core business, so perhaps there is space for someone else.
> YouTube can't show porn, because parents don't won't their kids being served it next to their Minecraft videos.
Oddly they will, but it has to be called "naked yoga".
What confuses me, that there is zero high refresh rate content out there. I would rather watch 1080p@120hz than 4k@60hz.
Some other technical ideas, that mostly ignore path dependency:
PeerTube might automatically scale up as it is, if it had YouTube-levels of users + creators. Don't know enough about the technical details, though. Another option would be if Microsoft or Apple were to do something like PeerTube, but integrate it at OS-level. Or the invention of better compression formats, that reduce storage and streaming costs. Or perhaps sending a compressed signal, that the GPU fully renders client-side, perhaps also via [something something AI].