Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Youtube Entertainment

Amazon Goes After YouTube With New Online Video Posting Service (bloomberg.com) 61

Spencer Soper, writing for Bloomberg (edited and condensed): Amazon will let people post videos to its website and earn money from advertising, royalties and other sources, putting the company in more-direct competition with Google's YouTube. Amazon already offers movies and television programs over the Internet -- including its own original productions -- to compete with Netflix. The new product dubbed Video Direct will let Amazon give consumers more options about what to watch without an upfront fee because many of those posting videos will be paid based on how their content performs. Competing streaming services have been driving up the cost of this material. Amazon used a similar strategy to boost its inventory of electronic books through Kindle Direct Publishing, which lets authors bypass traditional publishers and reach readers directly by posting and selling their own e-books online. The Seattle-based e-commerce giant said the service is designed for "professional video producers," but its only requirements are that the videos be high definition and have closed-captioning for the hearing impaired.The company is offering 15 cents for every hour of viewing a video creator's content via Prime Video in the U.S, and six cents an hour for views outside of the U.S. Content creators can also allow Amazon to show their videos to any visitor for free. In such case, Amazon says it is offering 55 percent of all ad revenue their clips generate. Content creators can also sell their videos via its subscription service, or its rental its store -- in which case, Amazon will offer 50 percent of the revenue. YouTube has been long criticized for paying less to YouTube creators, forcing many to leave the platform, or look for alternate revenue channels.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Amazon Goes After YouTube With New Online Video Posting Service

Comments Filter:
  • What about Vimeo? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M ( 4212163 ) on Tuesday May 10, 2016 @10:32AM (#52083643)

    There's more options out there than "YouTube or nothing".

    • IMO, they do a great job, Vimeo is a great platform. I've found gbox.com does a great job of direct to direct sales as well.
    • Vimeo's guidelines [vimeo.com] reject certain categories of video entirely.

      • "Upload only videos you created yourself" rules out videos created by a minor child or videos uploaded by someone acting on behalf of an author without unmetered or at least 100 GB/mo broadband.
      • Users may "showcase your creative work" but not "upload videos with a commercial intent". The guidelines don't make it easy to tell where Vimeo draws the line between the two.

      But some older restrictions appear to been loosened:

      • For six years (July 2008 through October 2014 [vimeo.com]), the Vimeo guidelines also stated "No screen-captures of video games or gameplay videos", which meant video game reviews must be posted to a service other than Vimeo.
      • Until recently apparently, users of iOS and Android were blocked from viewing the video unless the uploader subscribed to Vimeo Plus at the time of the upload.

      You mentioned plural "more options out there". Which of said "more options" fills these gaps in what Vimeo allows users to post?

    • Well, they didn't think the name very well. I'll get it on VD.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 10, 2016 @10:44AM (#52083727)
    "This video is reserved exclusively for prime members." - coming soon to their exciting new video service.
  • by Archangel Michael ( 180766 ) on Tuesday May 10, 2016 @10:51AM (#52083775) Journal

    Is Amazon going to form its own "Social Networking" too?
    Is Amazon going to form its own Search Engine?
    Is Amazon going to form its own Email services?

    Doing the "Me Too" thing now, is like closing the barn doors long after the horses have left.

    • They're going to start selling things over the Internet because they heard about another company that already does this, called "Amazon" or something.

    • by solios ( 53048 )

      With Yahoo! looking for a buyer, someone has to pick up the slack.

    • Amazon is the 900 pound gorilla in cloud server and storage services [srgresearch.com]. Sites that use Amazon Web Services include Netflix, Expedia, Adobe, Pinterest, Smugmug, Reddit, Tumblr, and until recently Dropbox.

      However, their service interface is really geared for enterprises which can devote a team of IT professionals to managing it. That's why companies like Dropbox were able to successfully re-sell Amazon's cloud storage to the home and SMB user with a shiny user-friendly interface on top. A lot of us have b
    • >>Is Amazon going to form its own "Social Networking" too?

      Internet Movie Database!

      >>Is Amazon going to form its own Search Engine?

      Alexa!

      >>Is Amazon going to form its own Email services?

      https://news.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org] answered this one...

  • but pretty decent for homemade videos for fun.

    If a 3 minute video gets 3 million views the video creator would get $22,500 USD. Assuming it takes two people who make videos for a living 2 weeks to make and edit a video, and that they are the only two people in the video, that works out to $35 an hour per person($22,500 / 640 hours).

  • Too late (Score:4, Insightful)

    by LichtSpektren ( 4201985 ) on Tuesday May 10, 2016 @11:09AM (#52083875)
    Everybody's already uploaded everything to YouTube, and the service is really good--all you need is an adblocker and it's just about perfect. Why would anybody switch to Amazon?
    • Everybody's already uploaded everything to YouTube, and the service is really good--all you need is an adblocker and it's just about perfect. Why would anybody switch to Amazon?

      Because your MySpace friends told you that's where all the cool AOL people hang out?

  • Marketing (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Oh boy, a service with a 5 syllable name that shortens to "VD". That should help with consumer uptake. "I got VD and I want to share it with all my friends!"

  • Ugh, I really don't need longer videos. It's a shame intros and filler are being incentivized.

  • by pablo_max ( 626328 ) on Tuesday May 10, 2016 @12:17PM (#52084387)

    When I think of Amazon, I think of buying stuff online. Perhaps even the upcoming new Top gear.
    I cannot imagine thinking...hey.. I'll go to amazon a look at lol catz.
    There is no way they can compete with youtube. Just like there was never any chance that google+ was going to take off. People think of Google as the place to go to search for what you want or to get your email, but not to post social media.
    Same is true for Amazon and personal content.
    Hell, I am even a Prime member and have not watched a single show their site. Why? Because while they have loads of shows, nearly everything I want to see is "extra" and I will never pay 3 dollars to watch a single episode of a TV show. Ever.
    Maybe if it was like 10 cents, but 3 bucks? Nope.
    And most folks I know think the same.
    Youtube for random videos and Netflix or Hulu for streaming.
    Though... I would use amazon to buy the router I would use to connect to those other services.

  • <rant>It really pisses me off when there is a breaking news story talking about something which launches today yet there is no link to the actual service!</rant> https://videodirect.amazon.com... [amazon.com] <note>If I missed the link in the article disregard rant, thanks</note>
    • Possibly, Venture beat would have been a better submission. http://venturebeat.com/2016/05... [venturebeat.com] additionally the story follwing that is "Pornhub launches bug bounty program with rewards ranging from $50 to $25,000", which could be useful knowledge for some around here.
    • Not only was there no link to the service in the summary, there was not a single link in the article that was linked to!

      How can we even have a discussion without knowing the details of the service.

      Like for instance the unmentioned million dollar bonus for the top 100 videos in addition to the stated streaming payments...

      • Like for instance the unmentioned million dollar bonus for the top 100 videos in addition to the stated streaming payments...

        Man, I didn't even see that! Thanks

  • Can I watch Prime Video on my Android device yet? Oh ...

  • Youtube ads went beyond annoying long ago. They should have known this would be inevitable, after all they are smart people according to them. Nice to see Amazon sticking it in where it hurts.

  • My son and I make YouTube videos as a hobby, and in an average month we'll get around 15,000 hours per month of views. $0.15 per hour would be about 10x what YouTube's AdSense currently pays for those views.

    If they can match YouTube's sheer volume, or even within an order of magnitude, this is a no-brainer for hobbiest content producers. I like YouTube overall, so if the only effect is that it raises AdSense's payout to compete, then it's a win-win.

Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man -- who has no gills. -- Ambrose Bierce

Working...