
Video is Coming to Reddit - Deimorz
https://redditblog.com/2017/08/17/video-is-coming-to-reddit/
======
koolba
> If you’ve spent any time on r/HighQualityGifs, r/mealtimevideos, or just
> about any other Reddit community, you know that videos and gifs represent a
> major proportion of the content shared on our site. But prior to this
> launch, content creators had to go through a time-consuming, circuitous
> process to post videos, using third-party hosting platforms, copying URLs,
> and sharing them as link posts. This inhibited many users, especially those
> who capture videos on their phones and want to share them quickly with their
> favorite subreddits.

I've never heard anyone complain that copying a URL is too onerous.

I don't get what they're plan is. How does a company that is currently losing
money plan to make more and be a sustainable enterprise by adding features
that only increase their costs? Video uses a lot of bandwidth. Especially
compared everything they've done so far (i.e. all text).

They had a good thing going with the mooching off free hosting on YouTube and
Imgur. Why kill that? All I see them gaining are a bit more details on how
many times someone played a video. And you could probably do that with some
custom JS wrapping the YouTube player (guessing here ... not sure how that
works in practice).

~~~
goeric
I think it's pretty simple and I always wondered why they didn't do it sooner.
Reddit is already one of the most popular sites on the Internet - but since it
was just an aggregator it constantly took users off their site. Now they're
owning more and more of the content and keeping users there longer. Sure,
video is expensive, but now they have a much bigger revenue opportunity. They
can't monetize videos they don't host.

~~~
digitalzombie
> Sure, video is expensive, but now they have a much bigger revenue
> opportunity. They can't monetize videos they don't host.

I totally see your point but shouldn't they monetize what they have now before
go on to tackle other revenue venture?

Or is it better to tackle all possible revenue venture at the same time?

I feel like it's stretches them thin no?

~~~
nerfhammer
They will be able to say they decreased their outbound user metric by X% and
can report that to their investors to prove growth.

~~~
digitalzombie
This is why I hate the business side of business.

Especially in startup, it seems like they're always looking for way to get
their investor to invest more. There are many cases where I thought it being
so shady.

I acknowledge business people and what they do but there are things in the
this industry where it's just not for me.

------
minimaxir
A couple months ago I found that Reddit submissions using Reddit's native
image hosting, a year after its implementation, surpassed those of its main
competitor, Imgur (HN discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14595212](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14595212))

I'm not entirely sure the same will happen with video. Not only are the videos
typically posted on Reddit's largest video subreddits are from the YouTube
community (and _intended_ for the YouTube community), the video player beta is
apparently a worse _user experience_ than YouTube. (in contrast with images,
where the competitor was the one with the worse user experience)

And that's not even getting into the logistical concerns. Hosting images is
much, much easier than video, as video has much higher bandwidth/storage
requirements AND Reddit will have to _frequently_ remove pirated/NSFW videos
for Safe Harbor protection/advertiser friendliness, which is a challenge even
Google has not been able to solve at scale.

~~~
mandie
Image hosting is easy, if you don't care about losing money. As long as you
provide direct links to images, you're better than everybody else.

Video hosting? You need a good player (nothing will ever top YouTube's) and a
good CDN. That's a tough nut to crack. Especially for a company with no money.

~~~
cheald
The proliferation of HTML5 video support in browsers has made the player
_massively_ less of a concern than it used to be. I recently led a move of my
employer's video hosting (many TBs worth of video) from a third-party platform
to an in-house solution and it was quite a lot simpler than one might expect.

Video is super expensive in terms of bandwidth, but the technical pipeline for
ingesting, transcoding, delivering, and presenting it is extremely simple now.

~~~
EpicEng
>extremely simple

Yet nearly every time I use a player that isn't YouTube's it stinks. Cursor
doesn't disappear. Inconsistent interaction model (does double click move
in/out of full screen? Do the arrow keys work? Does 'm' mute? Etc.)

It's not just about the ability to play a video, you have to get the UX right
as well, and most don't.

~~~
FridgeSeal
Not just the UX, the performance as well: there are few things more
infuriating than going to pause an autoplaying video, but you can't, because
it slows down scrolling on the whole web page. Then you finally get your mouse
over it and if you're unlucky enough that the controls have disappeared you've
got to wait for whatever 1 sec+ latency for them to re-appear. Then you've got
to click them - an action once again, slave to huge amounts of latency
provided it even works the first time. Then once it's paused (if it had
started playing), you've just got to hope that it won't just continue loading
the rest of the video in the background.

~~~
EpicEng
Definitely. Performance at scale is tough to get right here.

~~~
thomastjeffery
At scale? You only have one player.

~~~
EpicEng
Yeah, fair enough. Forgot we were talking specifically about the player here.

------
pgrote
What is the end game for Reddit? Control of the videos so they can sell ads,
right?

Does the benefit redditors? No.

Based on the testing so far the mobile player is not ready for prime time nor
is the backend video infrastructure. Videos lag horribly and spin sometimes
forever .. as if the connection was broken.

~~~
mulmen
Video playback is _hard_. Does Reddit have the technical resources to make
this work? Only a handful of companies have pulled it off.

Other than YouTube are there any web video players that are ready for prime
time? Facebook's player is as much of a nightmare of usability as would be
expected from the rest of their site, it's unusable for me on both an iPhone
6s in their native app and on the web. Netflix does a good job in their apps
but I haven't used their web player in years, is it any good?

News sites seem to love auto-playing videos that don't actually play but still
follow the visitor through the page. If the videos do play I can look forward
to my laptop fans ('14 RMBP) immediately kicking into high gear. Is this the
experience I can look forward to on Reddit?

~~~
aeorgnoieang
The Netflix web player is good. I use it regularly.

Some other good web video players:

\- Vimeo \- Hulu

HBO Now's web player is _pretty_ good, tho not great. They definitely seem to
have a hard time with their backend some times (e.g. around season premieres
of Game of Thrones).

In general tho, video playback is just the latest spiritual incarnation of
popup ads.

~~~
mulmen
Fair enough, I don't consume Hulu, Netflix or HBO through their web players so
I am not familiar with them. Their apps are serviceable although I wish the
player was determined by my platform rather than the app. I never really know
what will happen when I push the "back" button on my streaming box.

------
Sir_Cmpwn
I've only encountered it a few times but it seems everyone dislikes it. The
player is pretty bad. Then again, Reddit jumped the shark some time ago.

~~~
jdubs
Like most new ventures, iterating is key to improving the product.

~~~
cyphar
There's a difference between iterating based on community feedback, and
"iterating" based on artificial requirements not defined by the community.

------
vit05
I think Reddit should focus on short videos first. A middle term between a gif
and a youtube video that would be perfect on any smartphone. Video is very
expensive and there are very few examples of companies that profit by hosting
without having a pay subscription system. In fact, every big video platform is
trying to make easier for content creators profit from their creations. Reddit
doesn't have any idea how to make money now, and will not be able to help
others. Make great content with regularity is expensive.

They should only give the option to people who wish to host sporadic content
in a simpler way, especially using smatphone. But without focusing on being
the first choice for content creators until they have a great strategy to help
them make money.

------
mmanfrin
Youtube does not yet make money. This is such a windmillfight, I just don't
understand why Reddit thinks adding a cost-sink will help.

With images, it made sense -- Imgur was trying to become Reddit and hosting
was a means of shoring up defense against that.

No one wants reddit video. Reddit is an aggregator whose core strength is
discovery; Youtube cannot so easily become Reddit like Imgur could.

~~~
aeorgnoieang
> Reddit is an aggregator whose core strength is discovery

Yeah, at some point they should reconsider their slogan "the front page of the
internet" given their seeming desire to become an isolated walled garden.

------
gallerdude
I think it's obvious why they're doing this - accessibility. In moving r/all
to r/popular, image hosting, removing default subs, and now this, they're
trying to cater to more people.

Four years ago I joined reddit, tried it out for about 2 hours, and quit. I
couldn't get past the (admittedly small) learning curve (especially acronyms:
ITT, OP, TIL, etc). Two years ago I joined it for real after putting in an
hour to learn what everything was.

Reddit is an amazing site, it's just kind of hard to get into it. By hosting
their own video, they make it easier for new users.

~~~
chatmasta
How does an embedded YouTube video (the status quo) make the Reddit experience
less accessible for new users? Chances are, reddit's implementation will be
significantly worse than embedded YouTube videos. If anything will create
confusion for new users, it's having both YouTube embeds _and_ Reddit videos
on the same page. Nobody who is new to Reddit is unfamiliar with the YouTube
player, but is definitely unfamiliar with any custom Reddit player.

EDIT: Point taken, I can see how this makes it easier for users to _upload_
content to Reddit (especially original content, e.g. from a phone camera roll)
without jumping through YouTube hoops.

~~~
MBCook
You know I didn't even consider upload. A few years ago I remember going
trough tons of hoops getting integrations setup so I could post to YouTube
from my WiiU and PS4. It was a huge pain.

If Reddit can make video uploading easier for people without a YouTube account
or who forgot their password or don't want to visit 3 sites to get it done.

------
zubspace
Content uploaded to youtube/imgur and embedded in reddit has the avantage,
that you actually serve two communities at once with the (tiny) possibility of
going viral in both. As a content creator I'd prefer that. Moreover users can
discover older content easier in youtube with the stream of recommendations of
similar content.

If your goal is to reach the largest audience it doesn't make sense to me to
only hide it in reddit.

------
falcolas
Just trying to look at images with their built-in image hosting is not the
greatest experience - two clicks to view the original image, compared to one
with other image hosts (yeah, I know, RES; but I browse on mobile too).
Combine this with the highly frequent "we're overloaded" messages, and I'm not
really looking forward to their attempt at hosting videos as well.

~~~
FridgeSeal
Plus the fact that on desktop, you can't pull to scale the i.reddit.com hosted
images like you can with the imgur hosted ones, or if you can, you can do it
on the front page, but not the comments for whatever silly reason.

------
Grue3
Ctrl-F "porn"... nothing. Seems like the most obvious application and they
completely ignore it.

------
agumonkey
I still prefer clicking on an embedded imgur link rather than their own reddit
image hosting version.

~~~
matty22
Especially on mobile. Every imgur image displays properly on my phone. Every
time I click on an i.reddit image, it's 1000px wide so to see the entire thing
I have to scroll vertically and horizontally.

I've just stopped clicking on any image links from i.reddit.

------
bluthru
I'm just happy to see youtube and facebook get some video competition.

------
propogandist
this will only lead people to steal content from other websites so they can
get "karma"

also, reddit tracks every outbound click with a unique identifier -- be sure
to block all reddit tracking

~~~
corobo
You can turn that off in prefs -> privacy options

~~~
propogandist
which means you're logged in and they're tracking your browsing activity
anyway

------
eneve
why did i land on the fullscreen background pattern?

------
jimjimjim
pivot to video without knowing why.

because what you really want is a 4k view of the dumpster fire rather than
just reading about it.

------
thrillgore
Is the exit plan now to tack reddit with so much bullshit they can sell it to
anyone who wants a social bookmarking site?

------
thinbeige
Slightly OT: I started to blocked HN at daytime recently. Great impact on my
productivity and a side effect was...

\- I visit Reddit more often (which is unblocked)

\- Reddit is surprisngly not that addictive; you skim it for few minutes and
leave again

\- AND this is the most important thing: Reddit is sometimes so funny, the
posts and especially the top voted comments that I am cracking up every time,
almost at the point of crying. After Reddit I am always in a very good mood.

