
Magazine publishers with video ambitions see YouTube as safer bet than Facebook - amerine
https://digiday.com/media/reliable-smaller-video-publishers-see-youtube-safe-harbor/
======
cheeze
I've always seen Youtube as much higher quality than facebook. More than being
accessible to everybody regardless of being logged in or not, their players
have always been top notch for me. I've always associated Facebook videos with
low quality content that I see scrolling through a newsfeed, and FB video has
always been _noticeably_ buggier than Youtube.

The focus of Youtube is video whereas video is just another feature of FB. If
I want to binge something in the background or watch AvE tear apart power
tools (seriously, he's awesome) I go to Youtube. I've never gone to Facebook
when I wanted to watch video content.

~~~
mistermann
> The focus of Youtube is video whereas video is just another feature of FB.

Today yes, but with FB's technical capabilities, I can't see why they couldn't
knock off a respectable (if not superior in most respects, considering
Google's apparent complete lack of skills or motivation in UI usability, and
discoverability/search of all things) clone of YouTube in _way_ under a year.
And, they have a massive engaged social network to go with it, something
Google can't bring to the table (they tried and failed). It could take them a
long time to assemble critical mass of videos, but unless YouTube forbid it in
their TOS (which I doubt, considering many people are openly advertising their
steemit channels) most producers would clone their content to FB very quickly,
especially smaller ones who are pissed off at demonetization.

FB's weak links in my estimation are the stubborn insistence to have
everything under Facebook.com (rather than a sibling site), and the trust
they've lost in the last year.

~~~
ambicapter
> clone of YouTube in way under a year.

Probably because some aspects of computer science/website engineering are not
entirely nailed down and years of experience still count for something.

~~~
mistermann
Do you think I'm overestimating or underestimating?

------
ggg9990
One thing is that various video domains have almost expected levels of
quality. I assume that any video link to Facebook.com is likely garbage, and I
almost always click a link to Vimeo.com, even though of course any file could
be uploaded to either domain.

~~~
facetube
Twitter consistently pulls an absurdly low bitrate for the first 3-5 seconds
of a video regardless of available bandwidth and it is maddening.

~~~
iagovar
The only adjective I'd put for Twitter video experience is shit. I really hate
it.

------
JackCh
Youtube seems to offer a better user experience than facebook for users who
don't have an account or aren't signed into an account. I have no data to back
this up, but I suspect users with no accounts or users who aren't signed in
account for a sizable portion of the youtube audience.

~~~
slackoverflower
I definitely would not say it is a sizable portion. I'd say it is infact a
minority of Youtube's audience. Their CEO revealed they have 1.8b logged in
users [1] every month watching videos.

[1]
[https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/3/17317274/youtube-1-8-billi...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/3/17317274/youtube-1-8-billion-
logged-in-monthly-users-brandcast-2018)

~~~
kgwgk
But do they log in consistently? I log in by mistake every now and then, but I
use it without being logged in 99.9% of the time.

~~~
cheeze
This isn't a _huge_ percentage of the time for me, but I often use a device
that isn't logged into anything because it's using the android builtin
browser, someone elses computer, etc. Not having to care about logging in is a
benefit.

------
kumarvvr
I really hate these news sites that overload their sites with graphics like
images and videos.

I long for simple websites that dont have auto playing videos that are always
on some corner even when scrolled down.

~~~
52-6F-62
If you're okay with more of a microfiche-style experience:

[https://www.pressreader.com/](https://www.pressreader.com/)

Not sure if you can kill photos— but they're pretty essential to journalism.

~~~
kumarvvr
My point is countless hours of dev time, resources and infrastructure is
wasted on what is obviously a very bad design.

Making a bad design, then overcoming the bad design with another piece of
software is pure wastage of valuable resources.

It's really sad. UX design does not get the authority it deserves.

~~~
52-6F-62
Some publishers do better than others in that department. I can agree (from
experience) that many run fast away from any dev work except for new plugins
that return more data to the marketing and sales departments who come back
with more requests for beating as blockers and direct ad insertion and the
rest of it. It was very frustrating being somebody who knew how to build a
better experience and see it rejected as bad business.

Edit: they have UX teams but they don’t leverage them because of a goofy
allotment of any sanctioned development work to CAPEX which they never want to
spend because they often have little of that but tons of OPEX. It drives the
“just get it done” part of my mind crazy.

------
monksy
Given YouTubes weird stances on content moderation, I'm not sure that's a wise
bet.

~~~
tonypace
A brand publisher is in a much better position to roll with that than an indie
content maker. Having worn both hats, it's strange how much your perspective
changes.

------
52-6F-62
Working for a major Canadian multimedia company (including some reputable
magazines). Brightcove is pretty much at the core of it. Youtube is a
sometimes, or just another endpoint. Facebook Live was used a few times but I
haven't heard much from that lately.

~~~
stochastic_monk
It got a lot of press for live streaming literal murders, rapes, and child
molestation.

I haven’t heard anything about it since, but, then again, I don’t use
Facebook.

~~~
52-6F-62
Right. I forgot about all that already. Good lord.

------
katzgrau
I just don't see smaller magazine publishers sustaining the production of
video. It's extremely high cost relative to other content and they don't have
the traffic or niche audience required to gather the ad revenue to support it.

~~~
richsherwood
It’s getting cheaper and cheaper to produce videos these days though. We’re
kind of in the place that graphic design was in 10 years ago. As the equipment
gets better, software more powerful, and generations of younger folks with
substantial knowledge in the subject, the costs are going to go way down.

~~~
toasterlovin
I’d say we’re at the end of the cost reduction curve. Capital requirements for
video production have been minimal for a while. Costs are overwhelmingly
people. People don’t get cheaper.

~~~
mistermann
With the number of totally independent content producers on YouTube with
_extremely_ high production quality (often indistinguishable from professional
TV shows), I honestly don't think cost/people is a big factor anymore, _at
all_.

~~~
katzgrau
But a publisher is paying people to produce the content - so I'm saying after
the planning, shooting and producing, the cost at probably a few thousand for
a publisher. Supporting that with video ad Rev is really, really hard if
you're like the typical online magazine that doesn't have a look at T of
scale.

~~~
mistermann
> after the planning, shooting and producing, the cost at probably a few
> thousand for a publisher.

There are all sorts of YouTube content creators who do _everything_ for their
channel, had no noteworthy background in any of it, and turn out several
videos a week with broadcast TV levels of quality, _in addition to holding
down full time regular jobs.

You could spend several thousand per episode, but you no longer _have* to.

I agree though, covering these now minimal costs with ad revenue is something
else entirely.

~~~
toasterlovin
> You could spend several thousand per episode, but you no longer have* to.

You don’t have to if you know how to do the work. It’s like making apps. It’s
cheap to make an app and get it on the App Store if you’re an app developer.
But if you need to hire somebody, suddenly you’re looking at multiple tens of
thousands of dollars, at a bare minimum. The fact that there are all sorts of
content creators doing video work for themselves doesn’t mean that doing video
work is somehow cheap. They’re just working for themselves on spec.

~~~
mistermann
This doesn't make logical sense to me....a lot of these skilled people run
channels with next to no income, I would think only would many of them
_gladly_ take on some side work for multiple tens of thousands of dollars, at
a bare minimum, but would fight over it, bidding it down to way less than
that.

To me this seems like basic supply and demand in action, I'm curious which
aspects of this scenario we disagree on to come to such a wide disagreement?

------
mozumder
There's not enough open-source back-end tools that would allow a site to host
and publish videos on their own, without going through a third-party service.

Where is the video equivalent to WordPress?

~~~
pishpash
A site can't do that. You need a CDN and streaming transcoders, etc. Of course
if you only have a few viewers then HTML5 will play your self-hosted video
files but I don't you think that's what you mean.

~~~
codeinvain
setting the discovery issue aside, there are SaaS companies like
cloudinary.com that take care of all the transcoding / delivery / device
matching stuff

------
tomkinson
Wayyyyyyy safer, and yet still not.

------
chiefalchemist
"...the shows are weekly, focus on evergreen topics and run up to eight
minutes per episode..."

That's __obviously__ not a good fit for FB. Nothing more. Nothing less. To say
anything more means someone has an ax to grind.

Perhaps the title oft his article should be: "Full Disclosure; Google Paid Me
to Write This"?

~~~
jadedhacker
I don't think I understand. Is it the 8 min part that isn't a good fit for FB?

~~~
chiefalchemist
How many people go to FB looking for "long form" evergreen video content? If
you do, how easy it to search for?

One is a social network. The other a media platform. The expectations and
usage of each is different. Put another way...you host it on YT and market it
on FB, __not__ the other way around.

For a brand to pick the best platform for their __particular__ content is not
new and noteworthy. That is, it's not news. It's fluff. It's clickbait.

