from Hacker News

A better business model for video folks

by messo on 7/8/21, 9:36 PM with 120 comments

  • by armchairhacker on 7/8/21, 11:08 PM

    We really need an alternative to YouTube. But

    > When you publish with Streambus, you create a website, on your own domain name. Reach your audience over RSS on the podcast apps they already have on their phone.

    This is the problem with most other current alternatives: no discoverability. YouTube has no serious competitors because it has significantly more viewers and creators. If I use Streambus, how will I get others to see my content? If I want to find new stuff on Streambus, where do I see others' streams?

    IMO any serious contender for YouTube would need:

    - People using it - Decent recommendation algorithm - for all the hate YouTube gets, I've seen worse - Decent moderation. YouTube is too severe, yes, but you really don't want hate speech and shady stuff on your site, and especially recommended. It will scare everyone away. And copyrighted stuff will get you into legal trouble

  • by banana_giraffe on 7/9/21, 12:19 AM

    I'm not sure how well known it is, but YouTube itself has an RSS feed for each channel (well, Atom feed, most feed readers treat them interchangeably).

    https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=XX

    Where XX is the channel ID (the last component in the URL when you go to a channel).

    It's actually how I consume YouTube these days. It's a slightly orthogonal problem to the solution posted here, since it doesn't follow the RSS "enclosure" spec. Though my feedreader knows enough to call youtube-dl on these URLs, which is fragile at best, but works for me.

  • by tacostakohashi on 7/8/21, 11:39 PM

    Yep, "vodcast" used to be a word in regular use, referring to RSS feeds of videos/eposides often provided by TV channels for episodes of their content.

    Now that RSS has been effectively killed, this word/concept has disappeared without trace.

  • by meetromb on 7/11/21, 1:45 PM

    > We only make money when you do

    Many of content creators are not getting revenue from donations/subscriptions. For example, influencers have a personal contracts with companies. Some of them deliberately ignore turning off YouTube monetization for their videos, against, because they have different revenue source.

    But there is also a case that confirms a part of the hypothesis: maybe you know guys who have a YouTube channel “Corridor Digital”. They have created their own mini-platform for their subscribers and are using youtube as a traffic source. I think you will be interested to know about their motivation and relevance of the idea.

    P.S where can I follow the development of your idea and product?

  • by rememberlenny on 7/8/21, 11:46 PM

    Feels like Substack, but for video.

    In the "creator economy" realm, this looks like the missing part of YouTube - where creators can actually make money without being forced to make content optimizing for clickbait advertisement catered content.

  • by dangoor on 7/9/21, 1:36 AM

    Aren't the economics of this off? I have a free newsletter on Substack and I can see how Substack can potentially make enough money on all of the paid newsletters for the whole thing to work out. But video hosting is a lot more expensive than sending email newsletters, I suspect.

    Edit to add: I actually really like this idea. I haven't tried a video podcast before, but if players start adapting to this format it could be great.

  • by Kye on 7/8/21, 11:11 PM

    There was a brief time before the rise of YouTube when all the independently-hosted web shows published RSS feeds. I had a player program that would download them for me during the day with RSS.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miro_(video_software)

  • by stevenicr on 7/11/21, 1:34 AM

    Interesting - I finally popped over to look - and I don't see a terms / acceptable use page...

    I always do those peeks and ctr-f -? porn, adult

    then look for what I call the anchor.fm/cancel culture language.. and if I see that then I move on.

    So now I wonder if playboy porn is okay like vimeo, or if it's choose-your-own bouncer like peertube, or what.

    popped over again for more info - clicked on pricing - saw something about "stripe" - so the content is to be beholden to the visa/mc/stripe censors?

    I think paypal is less prude at this point.

    sadly I think a thing like that that uses alt-coins is more needed - if you have to play within the terms/censors of youtube anyway, why bother doing something alternative? It's just gonna cost more time and money.

    Love the idea - prefer a version that can cater to non-cancel culture / adult or whatnot would have more staying power.

  • by Daegalus on 7/9/21, 1:59 AM

    I think this is a neat idea. I wonder if an old school webring style discoverability system could work. or something that can be added to the end of randomly selected podcasts on the service it ones the creator adds.

  • by Jaxkr on 7/9/21, 12:17 AM

    I remember watching video podcasts on my iPod Nano in 2010…

  • by hboon on 7/9/21, 3:11 AM

    Title reminds me of Odeo. https://web.archive.org/web/20051125043621/http://www.odeo.c.... They supported video at some point.

  • by throwawayswede on 7/9/21, 9:46 AM

    This is great. One thing I'd recommend is submission and integration with podcastindex.org.

  • by deregulateMed on 7/9/21, 1:27 AM

    We need to stop using marketing speak. Walled garden really means walled prison.

  • by victorbstan on 7/9/21, 3:03 AM

    How is YouTube a walled garden? There’s no review process for posting videos and your can post and go live as soon as the content is uploaded.

  • by jyriand on 7/9/21, 7:42 AM

    Do you have an example channel?

  • by stereoradonc on 7/9/21, 1:26 AM

    Seems like a substack model but for videos. I'd stay clear off this.

  • by jeffbee on 7/9/21, 1:34 AM

    The author of this headline has no idea what “walled garden” means. YouTube has none of the aspects of a walled garden, because it is and exists within an open platform.

  • by pyromaker on 7/9/21, 3:03 AM

    Tangent, but perhaps related, we've also released something related to a video platform tool called Pyro

    https://www.pyro.app

    Pyro lets you...

    - Create a site with your own domain name

    - Find, curate and display videos on your site from multiple sources (YouTube, Vimeo etc) based on keywords that you are interested in (e.g. AI, ML, startup)

    - Allow users to sign up and login as a member, submit videos, upload videos (admins can review + approve).

    - Build a community based around those videos and scale, members can comment, like, create watch list etc.