Comment on PewDiePie: I'm DONE with Google
dmtalon@infosec.pub 13 hours agoAnd how do they get big? How do they get discovered? SEO ?
They’re getting huge because of the platform.
I’m not saying google is not evil but it literally gives them their audience.
I watch YT more than anything else by a mile, and if my top subscription moved to their website, and I had to jump through hoops to watch them on my TV device, by installing a browser or something I probably would stop watching them. Another TV friendly app sure that wouldn’t be a problem, but I don’t see many doing that.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 13 hours ago
I’m talking about those who have already gotten big, like PewDiePie. Not the dude who just started a channel last week and has nothing to do shit with.
non_burglar@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
The lift of running your own platform is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to creating your own video hosting platform.
rebelrbl@sh.itjust.works 10 hours ago
It’s not that challenging with a partner to help manage infrastructure which even at his scale is not going to cost an obscene amount of money.
meyotch@slrpnk.net 11 hours ago
Websites work very well and are scalable af. A plugged in person with a track record like that could go Web 2.0 and probably net more.
non_burglar@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
You are correct. Websites, the stack to supply video encoding, even scalability is a solved problem.
The hard work isn’t technical, it’s getting people onto your platform in the first place (marketing), getting people to continue using your platform (retention) and the perennial problems of SaaS evolving with other SaaS platforms (how many dev hours are you willing to eat trying to keep up with the Joneses?).
SaaS, and in this case, SaaS offering content, is a losing game. You will either lose your shirt, sell your business, or become entrenched in a position whose inertia is difficult to break. How much of any of those you are willing to take a firehose of is the question.
LandedGentry@lemmy.zip 11 hours ago
If they somehow even got 10% of their audience to go to another platform that would be a miracle
TORFdot0@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
YouTube still offers them a service in directing them new viewers. The big creators all lose viewers but YouTube funnels replacement views faster than they lose. They could host their own videos but they are gonna see very little growth without Google either in search or with YouTube as they start to lose the base that followed them.
They also won’t be able to negotiate as good as rates for pre-rolls or in video sponsorships as if they were on YouTube.
The only real alternative would be to band together like the creators that are a part of nebula are doing. Hosting on peertube really isn’t an option unless you are independently supported and you are doing it as a passion project and don’t care about audience growth or retention.
dmtalon@infosec.pub 13 hours ago
Still think building their own site with apps I can throw on my devices is pretty involved.