

Google announces YouTube now has more than 1,000 educational channels - Quekster
http://thenextweb.com/google/2012/10/05/on-world-teachers-day-google-announces-youtube-now-has-more-than-1000-educational-channels/

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citricsquid
Something relating to Youtube but not this specific article: there is always
talk of a _new_ Facebook, a _new_ Twitter, but has anyone ever seen someone
launch a "new Youtube"? I don't think I can ever recall any platform launching
and being declared the _killer_ of Youtube, the internet just accepts Youtube
as _the_ video platform and has done for a long time. With the focus on
enabling even more _good_ content to be produced (eg: Educational material) it
seems Youtube may just stay that way... forever.

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drats
It's a harder technical problem than people think, in terms of scaling and
encoding smoothly (and playing smoothly while the rest of the video loads,
which Vimeo can't seem to do). Google also has tons of fibre in addition to
server infrastructure.

It's also extremely hard to break even, as even a low resolution video in
bandwidth terms is many times larger than a news article. News articles often
manage to squeeze in more ads than YouTube did initially as well and news on
the web is fairly cut-throat and thin margin. With an article you can just
examine the plain text to put a relevant advert there, with video it's much
harder (although certainly possible). There is also a problem with discovery
and search related to this which needs high level machine learning and thus
your average "we took a regular service - taxis, maids, food - and make a
phone app which uses GPS and calls it to your house for a premium" type
startup guys probably don't have a clue about what would be necessary.

There was also a lot of speculation that Google has been running YouTube at a
loss since acquisition. If that's true it means that their partner program was
paying content producers for a long time out of Google's pocket rather than
out of real viability. So a competing site going for just technology needs to
understand that they are competing with a distributed stable of talent. The
same goes for paying money to music producers. A startup would get legally
slammed just as they were taking off (and running out of runway). Perhaps the
more aggressive advertising and long commercials at the start of videos is now
exploiting this subsidy-created monopoly, and perhaps in turn that will give
rise to a competitor.

edits: multiple, "steaming smoothly" to "playing smoothly"

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TillE
> and playing smoothly while the rest of the video loads, which Vimeo can't
> seem to do

I've always had at least sporadic problems with YouTube's buffering,
especially at 1080p. I have a very reliable 50Mbit connection, but often I
find that YouTube can't stream fast enough.

Usually it's only with certain videos; popular videos always buffer very
quickly, which makes me think it's something to do with how they tune their
CDN.

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jrockway
You have a 50Mbps connection to your ISP. Your ISP may not have a 50Mbps *
(number of subscribers) connection to the Internet.

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TazeTSchnitzel
Correction: 1000 educational channels they earn money from (i.e., part of
YouTube Partner Program). I'm fairly certain there are more 1000 educational
channels, far more than that.

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jackds
Why doesn't a cooking channel count? The definition of an educational channel
can be a little broader.

