Popular YouTubers Are Building Their Own Sites (bbc.com) 91
An anonymous reader shares a report: Whether he's showing off astronomically expensive computer gaming hardware or dumpster-diving for the cheapest PC builds possible, Linus Sebastian's videos always strike a chord, and have made him one of the most popular tech personalities on YouTube. But Google-owned YouTube gets most episodes of Linus Tech Tips a week late. Now, they debut on his own site called Floatplane, which attracts a much smaller crowd. "Google has been very, very good to me," Linus says. "But it's a lot of eggs in one basket." And with a staff of two dozen, he cannot rely on the company to continue being what he calls his "benevolent overlord". He is not the only YouTube star looking for alternatives.
For a long time there have been tensions between those creating content on YouTube and the company providing the platform, ranging from disputes about ad revenue, to copyright problems, and even rows about the way videos are recommended to people. Many successful YouTubers are now sizeable companies in their own right, and are seeking to safeguard their futures. For the last few years, Linus and co-worker Luke Lafreniere have been investing in their own platform called Floatplane. The pair stress that it is not -- and never will be -- a YouTube competitor. But they hope to provide a platform for existing video creators with a loyal audience, who might be willing to pay a few dollars a month to directly support the video-makers they love.
For a long time there have been tensions between those creating content on YouTube and the company providing the platform, ranging from disputes about ad revenue, to copyright problems, and even rows about the way videos are recommended to people. Many successful YouTubers are now sizeable companies in their own right, and are seeking to safeguard their futures. For the last few years, Linus and co-worker Luke Lafreniere have been investing in their own platform called Floatplane. The pair stress that it is not -- and never will be -- a YouTube competitor. But they hope to provide a platform for existing video creators with a loyal audience, who might be willing to pay a few dollars a month to directly support the video-makers they love.
People are building their own sites? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:People are building their own sites? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but still, it's nice for them to actually do it, while Google/Youtube tries their best to keep them locked in (ok, "best" might be an overstatement). It shows that there's still hope for some decentralization, which we are in dire need of.
People going back to the original intent of the internet is something to be happy about, rather than cynically yawn about.
Re: People are building their own sites? (Score:1)
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Are they succeeding though? Why do they have so few viewers?
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1. All the same viewers they would have from Youtube anyways, n.
2. Plus a smaller amount of followers on their dedicated site, x.
n + x > n, for any positive value of x regardless of how small. Now, if they somehow get negative viewers on their small site....
Re:People are building their own sites? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because unless people are spoon fed content they rarely make an effort to actively search for anything.
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Is it so few? Floatplane isn't a YouTube replacement, it's a Patreon replacement. You must have a paid subscription to watch LTT videos on Floatplane. Subscriptions start at $5/mth (there are higher tiers), and they have 20,879 subs. This is far less than the 12.1 million subs they have on YouTube, but what's the average ad revenue from a YouTube subscriber? Their Floatplane subscribers are bringing in at least ~$1.3 million USD a year, and while that's certainly not enough to sustain a company of their siz
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It also represents a big shift ion power. If youtube has all the cards, they get the shaft, but if they demonstrably have one foot out the door, they have bargaining power. Perhaps not if it's JUST them, but the more youtubers there are with one foot out the door, the more power they have.
Re: People are building their own sites? (Score:1)
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There's no way I'm going to pay $5/mo just to watch LTT. I don't even think I'd pay $0.50/mo.
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Are they succeeding though? Why do they have so few viewers?
1. It's new
2. It's niche
3. It doesn't have to be an all or nothing propostion
Since Google started the moral police crusade and banning their own customers, a lot of content providers have moved to a hybrid model. eg use the spread of YT to entice new followers, then steer them to your own subscription site for greater resiliency and profit. 1000 private subscribers is worth more than 100,000 YT subscribers.
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The main issues for me would be a) does it have an Android TV app and b) can I block ads and skip sponsor sections?
Re:People are building their own sites? (Score:4, Informative)
It doesn't seem like a new thing either. There's a ton of YouTube accounts that are basically just the "free portion" of whatever the guy or organization has on Patreon, or their own site. I've been seeing this for years.
Re:People are building their own sites? (Score:5, Interesting)
That was kind of the original intent of the internet. I don't find anything novel about "you tubers" building their own sites. Everyone should be doing that.
I built my own site in the early 1990s and still use it, hosted now on AWS rather than Pair Networks.
However, I wouldn't have a clue how to build my own site capable of streaming videos, HD plus dynamically adjusted bitrates all the way down, with nice enough UI to view on a variety of devices, plus a comments section without security holes. I currently pay for my site out of pocket, about $15/month because it has no visitors and negligible bandwidth. If I started getting millions of visitors and resorted to carrying ads to pay for the bandwidth, I don't know how I'd set that up nor how I'd manage the variability in ad revenue and the variability in bandwidth needs.
I kind of suspect that by the time I'd built or assembled all of that, I'd have no time to produce original content! If my talents lay in producing content, I might be inclined to outsource all the technical work. I might even outsource say to a company like Google which is able to provide it all for zero upfront cost on my part!
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Handbrake, Plex, etc (Score:2)
It used to be novel technology, but streaming MP4's is now a mainstream browser feature. I have His Girl Friday streaming behind a secure login on one of my sites just as a proof of concept. It's a public domain movie. It's less than 100 lines of PHP to secure the stream.
The bitrate adjusting might be more difficult but JavaScript can get a lot of information from a user's system and send it to server to fetch the appropriate media path.
It's way less complicated than people make it out to be. People tho
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According to TFS he has 24 people working for him. I suspect that they helped him a bit.
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In addition to youtube, many other services offer playback as an embeddable service. Rumble does it for example.
And once enough people have done the design and programming work, there will likely be "for purchase" code base available, possibly even a FOSS one.
Bandwidth will remain an issue however. Costs on that are going down, but slowly.
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PeerTube has already built all of that for you: https://joinpeertube.org/ [joinpeertube.org]
Also, $15 sounds like an awful lot to pay for a website with little to no visitors. You can rent an entire physical server for about that: https://www.kimsufi.com/us/en/... [kimsufi.com]
Or get a $5 VPS from Linode or DigitalOcean, which would handle the same easily, and then some. AWS is never the cheapest option, and in most cases it's not the best choice for other reasons as well.
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A site like youtube is a natural monopoly. Everyone knows where to go for video. It USED TO be this. Hence the name "You"tube, as in you are the creator.
But Youtube was taken over by the evil empire of Google, and things have gone to hell. Used to be you could build a nice following, make money, and have a good life because you made content people wanted to see. But Google doesn't want you to see that content because it threatens the power structure they defend. So they began making war on the littl
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But Youtube was taken over by the evil empire of Google, and things have gone to hell. Used to be you could build a nice following, make money, and have a good life because you made content people wanted to see.
Youtube was bought by Google in October 2006, and didn't pay anything to any channels until May 2007 (and even then only a select few). It was Google that made it possible to earn money creating Youtube videos.
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Aside from the issues of fragmenting and "audience", the difference now is that making a video site isn't actually that hard - the technology required has become pretty comoditised and is easily available from multiple vendors. You could even run a reasonable experience from a server in your basement, with no other vendors doing anything specialist at all.
When youtube first started you could barely get a video to play in a browser reliably (and that was still true to some extent when Google bought them). We
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But it just does not work. The problem is that everyone it building their own sites. half of the big YouTubes I watch all diversified into separate alternatives. You might convince me to sign up and use 1 YT alternative but you will never convince me to use 5 YT alternatives, I will just stop watching you.
What we need is the return of an RSS that is better than ever. So I can subscribe to Linus on Floaty, Louis on Lbry, Spike on Valour, etc, without adding 1 hour to my daily internet routine.
Comment (Score:4)
That being said, #notmylinus
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Sort of the same problem podcasters (both audio and video) have. Youtube has that dreaded word...marketing. Or awareness of topics I didn't know about. There's the other problem as well. How to pay the bills. Established, like the Beatles were...established means easier to find, and easier to get money from patrons.
Re: Comment (Score:1)
The problem is that the big three still have enough power where âoebuild your ownâ is still not viable.
You can set up your own infrastructure all you want, if Google DNS or Route53 decides otherwise, about 70% of the net will ignore you.
The problem isnâ(TM)t that you need to build your own networks, itâ(TM)s that monopolies need to be held to higher standards and we need to build a network that cannot be censored, filtered or controlled except by the two end points.
Solved. (Score:1)
So use Odysee.com, an interesting alternative to YouTube.
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They're in the content creation business not the infrastructure business.
Relying on ONE site for all your content is just on the other end of the spectrum as creating your own dedicated infrastructure for only your content. I know it's cool in this day and age to be on the spectrum, but simply "focusing" on content and spreading it on various platforms should be reasonable.
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> Distributing on multiple platforms doesn't solve the issue they're looking to address.
In true Slashdot fashion, I have no intention of reading the actual article. However, the summary does point out:
>> Linus says. "But it's a lot of eggs in one basket." And with a staff of two dozen, he cannot rely on the company to continue being what he calls his "benevolent overlord"
So it appears his "issue" is (a) eggs in one basket and (b) answering to benevolent overlord; not "someone else is still taking
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Besides, hosting your own site may be a Pyrrhic victory. Sure you'll keep 100% of the profit, but after you pay hosting and CDN fees the profit is much smaller.
I don't design my own cars to spite the car companies. But I'm also not tied to a single car company.
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But if there are four or five platform then you are not at the mercy of one platform.
I'm think of Buffy moving from WB to UPN, or more recently, Lucifer moving from Fox to Netflix. I'm envisioning a future where there are several competitors out there.
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In real world, you're at mercy of many actors. That's why you're at mercy of no one in the end. When one store refuses to sell you food, there are many others. When one cleaning company refuses to offer you cleaning services, there are many others.
The problem here is de facto monopoly of YouTube that exists off what it effectively Google(/Alphabet) dumping. Google finances the loss leader that is YouTube, and money is made on data collected from it more so than just advertising side on YouTube which runs at
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So use Odysee.com, an interesting alternative to YouTube.
Wow, an alternative to youtube. Nobody has ever tried that before.
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It reminds me of the South Park episode where the town gets a Walmart and eventually realizes it's a bad idea and burns it down and vows to prevent things from reaching that state by supporting a local store instead only to turn that into the next Walmart because everyone moved their business there instead of YouTube. If you think YouTube itself is some kind of a problem, moving to another platform may just result in a classic
the DMCA laws needs to change may need court (Score:2)
the DMCA laws needs to change may just need an court order for any take down no bots.
So an DMCA clam needs an real judge to look at it over first.
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Okay, "GeoGulch.gun" for rural folks.
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GeoCats.com
with? (Score:2)
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I always heard that as "Hookers and Flapjacks"
Re: with? (Score:1)
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Sites and Advertisers (Score:2)
The hard part will be getting advertisers on board. These guys need revenue to make it work, not enough people will pay.
Re:Sites and Advertisers (Score:4, Insightful)
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If you have a big enough audience, the advertisers will eventually find you.
Re: Sites and Advertisers (Score:1)
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> The hard part will be getting advertisers on board.
Sponsors may be better. If you're watching an ad for the F150 Heavy Duty it's an advertisement that may not be interesting to you. If they're being paid to feature the latest SSD in some video editor you may actually find the product introduction of value.
It's not the advertisers he needs onboard (Score:2)
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Even if the viewers move to a new site, which seems reasonable for fans to do, without a revenue stream the new site won't last.
Just give viewers exclusives that only appear on your own site, sell it in videos on Youtube. Getting fans to do something is easier than you think. Keeping them there long enough to make a buck will be the hard part.
Convincing your advertisers to try your new site is much harder than getting someone to take a free look. Advertisers want to flow the ad dollars to places they know
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The new site is paid-only, $5/mth for LTT. It is by definition a revenue stream.
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Will be interesting to see how that plays out.
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Why would anyone use the YouTube app? Unlike a browser or NewPipe, it shows ads.
What Advertisers? (Score:2)
All you had to read was TFS to find out they want to sell micro-subscriptions, not be ad supported.
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All you had to read is what I wrote, "not enough people will pay."
I can get Disney+ with lots of great content for $7/month. Why would I pay $5/month for LTT? I'm saying its not sustainable without advertising, which includes sponsors.
youtubers (Score:1)
do they have hookers and blackjack? (Score:2)
do they have hookers and blackjack?
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No, that's Xhamster
Content: creation vs distribution (Score:1)
They might be able to create content but to distribute their content is not as straightforward for many. Like it or not, YouTube has a global network, reach, bandwidth, viewers and the advertisers any content creator would take a while to not even come closer to. Still is a step into the right direction as Alphabet is a pretty monopoly in this realm. Wishing more creators take this route - and luck for them to make this happen.
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True, but if you set up on AWS instead of just your own box you'll have the ability to scale up if you need to.
I imagine that Azure has similar abilities if one has an issue with Amazon.
It might be a good "Step 2", but they'll still have to make content that people will want to see.
Its only a matter of time. (Score:1, Insightful)
These poor saps are miserable and trying to take everyone down with them. If you are one of these self hating sjw trolls, its not to late to step away
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Foxnews literally canceled Lou Dobbs.
Inevitable, but ad-tech still is a problem (Score:5, Interesting)
For those who were wondering, YouTubers themselves can be extremely influential... some folks have livestream broadcasts that exceed typical ratings for low-end network television.
The main difference between the internet of 1996 and today is that we had a massive influx of people interested in the WWW and willing to put in the effort, and the walled gardens of the major online services (AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy) couldn't match the freeform mass of info accessible simply by typing a domain name into a browser. In 2021, we have an entire generation that's been raised on passive social media algorithms and recommendation engines, and that makes *discoverability* a major barrier for anyone trying to get their name out there. People simply aren't surfing the web in numbers that will make it possible to gain an audience without the use of major social network promotion in the US -- and that puts you subject to Big Tech and The Algorithm.
The migration of bloggers back to individual platforms, and subscription services like Substack, is helpful, but it's hard to reset to a non-paid internet economy after the internet itself has obliterated so many once-paid positions and industries. And for folks who don't already have enough of a subscriber base to make a living, self-hosting without the use of advertising isn't an option -- and once again you get stuck at the mercy of Alphabet and the major ad-tech providers, which rely on consumer profiling to make ads a viable source of revenue.
While I applaud people trying to make self-hosting work, we're not going to re-create the independent and healthily heterogeneous Internet of the late '90s and early/mid 2000's without serious vertical antitrust action against Big Tech -- explicitly focused on separating and providing equal platform access to ad networks.
There is a HUGE demand for alternatives to YouTube -- the reasons they can't take off is that there's no way to get advertising to pay well enough on them to support content creators without targeted delivery. If the Google Advertising was divested from YouTube (eg, by a forced divestiture) then you would see competition again resume -- and you'd see creatives better able to create.
For more on the disastrous mental health issues Alphabet is creating with YouTube's arbitrary and capricious attitude regarding its algorithm, see a "shock jock"'s epiphany essay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmYc57RIeEE [youtube.com]
Re:Inevitable, but ad-tech still is a problem (Score:5, Informative)
YouTube AdSense is only 26% of Linus Media Group's revenue. The full breakdown for 2020 (from https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]) is:
27% In-video Sponsor Spots
26% YouTube AdSense
15% Merchandise
14% Sponsored Projects
9% Amazon Associates
6% Floatplane
2% Other Affiliates
1% Other
They've done a decent job diversifying their revenue to not be quite so directly dependent on Google advertising. The challenge is, if their YouTube channel for some reason was suddenly non-viable, such that they decided to add a free tier to their Floatplane channel to replace it, how much of their audience would follow? How would that affect sponsorship and affiliate rates?
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They've done a decent job diversifying their revenue
All they have done is is shuffled money around into different categories.
It is still 94% Youtube, 6% Floaty.
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In that it's driven by the audience, who is mostly viewing their content on YouTube, sure. But that requires diversification of platform, rather than revenue. They could get some of those if they had a free tier on Floatplane. I'm not sure why they don't. They could probably convince a decent number of viewers to watch their content on YouTube, especially if they provided some minor incentives. A week early for Floatplane subscribers, a day early on Floatplane for non-subscribers.
Right now, they'd take a bi
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For those who were wondering, YouTubers themselves can be extremely influential... some folks have livestream broadcasts that exceed typical ratings for low-end network television.
Some are getting similar numbers to MSM. The Young Turks or Steven Crowder for example both have over 5M subscribers. That is more coverage than most segments on CNN or Fox News.
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Leo Laporte seems to have made it work well enough with https://twit.tv/ [twit.tv]. Yes it is work and takes the varied talent of multiple people, but what successful business doesn't require some investment and expertise.
Expected evolution: (Score:1)
March: CatVideos.com
April: BetterCatVideos.com
May: BestCatVideos.com
June: CutestAndBestCatVideos.com
July: CatsRippingHumanFacesOff.com
Glad to hear it (Score:1)
Hope this trend continues.... on the way to OIP (Score:2)
The siloed model of content distribution needs to go. Content creators would be much better served creating content and having distribution platforms subscribe/license content from them, instead of the creator locking their content away in one company's silo. And it's only going to happen if people like like Linus Sebastian are willing to make the effort and publish off site. Maybe some day we'll have content published like the Open Index Protocol envisions [youtube.com], but it's going to require content creators to do
Ad-Blockers to blame (Score:2)
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After you and I installed our Ad-Blockers, these people set up shop on YouTube en masse as it was the only place left where they could make a buck. It's ironic that we drove them there in the first place.
Try using youtube without an ad blocker? WOW. There's some major suck.
See also Nebula (Score:2)
And perhaps others.
Nebula ( https://watchnebula.com/ [watchnebula.com] ) is run by Curiosity Stream ( https://curiositystream.com/ [curiositystream.com] ), a documentary-focused streaming service. Nebula itself is a push by science communicator YouTubers to move away from the adpocalyptic YouTube.
I've not actually checked out either myself as yet.
Elephant in the Room (Score:2)
When they made the decision to do this - and that was a very conscious decision - they became not a video search engine, but a censorship engine, to over half population, and as a consequence, to all users who care about freedom of speech.
The word "Politics" isn't even in this article, even though that's what is driving most of people leaving youtube.
Sadly, BBC commonly posts articles like this which are missing any discu
Sales channel redundancy (Score:2)
For any serious business, it absolutely makes sense to have redundant sales channels for their products. Tying yourself to a single sales channel owned and controlled by someone else would be considered a high risk business, especially considering the horror stories of accounts getting banned and locked out for no apparent reason by some algorithm and Google providing no recourse whatsoever.
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Correcting myself, if you have more than 30 million followers, Google might eventually (4-6 weeks later) reach out to unlock your account, but only if you throw a fit and make a big stink on the internet with your followers and threaten to pull your product from Google.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/... [theverge.com]
Of course, those with less than 30M followers are still stuck with support telling them to try to reset their password over and over, forever.
This is news? (Score:1)
Ha ha ha (Score:2)
Android TV (Score:2)
I watch Linus, and most youtube on my android TV. Watching videos on that TV on a website is excruciatingly annoying to the point of I may as well just watch it on a small screen computer.
Until a reasonable alternative to the youtube app for android tv is available and not prevented from installing by google, youtube will continue to dominate that space.
For some reason, youtubers think that everyone is watching them on their computers. Is there any statistical validity to that?
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But the funny thing is you think you're typical. Probably most people are on their phone. WTF is an android TV?
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