[bogomipz]

>"Why? Simply put: the video streaming market is screwed up. While there's a lot of money spent on video, there are only really about 1,000 customers that do any meaningful level of streaming."

So the statement that "the video streaming market is screwed up" is based on the fact that Cloudflare themselves only have 1K customers doing a meaningful level of streaming?

You might want to talk to Akami, Amazon, Edgecast and Fastly. I'm sure they will tell you the video streaming market is quite healthy.

[eastdakota]

No, to be clear, if you add up all the companies using all the CDNs you mention you only get to about 1,000 that are doing so at any meaningful and interesting scale. That's a shame. There should be 100x that. That's what we want to enable.

[KGIII]

Why should there be 100x more? Video is not optimal for lots of information. It's not interactive or easy to cite and reference. It is bandwidth intense and typically has a lower information density per byte than text has.

There are plenty of places for video, but I am not so sure we need more of it. I'd say the tendency to put more content into video format is an overall negative trend.

[chii]

Whether some info is in video format is irrelevant.

The fact is, the only platform for video, right now, which can work is youtube. If you host your own video instead, it both has a high cost, and low rate of returns.

If cloudflare can make hosting your own video more cost effective, it is a plus for the internet. I don't want youtube to be so dominant that they can start doing things like censoring and curating.

[KGIII]

My comment was about them asserting there should be 100x the video content. Why should there be? It's a pretty horrible way to share information, in all but a few situations.

[always_good]

CloudFlare isn't saying there should be 100x more videos.

They're saying that they can make it easy / viable / cheap enough that 100x more self-hosted video providers could exist.

[KGIII]

> No, to be clear, if you add up all the companies using all the CDNs you mention you only get to about 1,000 that are doing so at any meaningful and interesting scale. That's a shame. There should be 100x that. That's what we want to enable.

Emphasis mine.

That's exactly what it looks like to me, more so when I look at it in context with the rest of the comment they made?

[oblio]

You're assuming that video is used primarily to share information.

How Edisonian of you: http://ethw.org/Phonograph (TL;DR: Edison meant it for business but it boomed for entertainment).

[KGIII]

That's what communication is. Even a movie is sharing information. Even a music video is sharing information. The whole Internet is sharing information. Some of it has less value than the rest, but it is still information.

[dx034]

If you have your own blog and want to provide a video, your best bet currently is to just use youtube. Many would probably prefer not using their service but providing your own streaming is just too complex.

[88]

Is the solution to video streaming being overly centralized really to centralize everything under one CDN?

[nulagrithom]

Well, currently we're centralizing it all under YouTube so...

While I'm not the biggest Cloudflare fan I definitely welcome this move.

[reggieband]

What do you define as "meaningful and interesting scale"?

I happen to work directly in this space and I want to know if you think my traffic numbers are meaningful.

[edoceo]

Increase supply to increase demand! Never fails.

[lytedev]

Is this sarcasm? There's already a big demand for competition for YouTube and this seems to be a move that makes this possible.

[dsacco]

Do you have a citation on hand for this? I’m not familiar with the industry or incumbents and don’t know one way or the other.

[chillydawg]

I think the CEO of cloudflare is a pretty decent authoritative source for such a statement.

[dsacco]

Okay, but (candidly) he's also selling something, so isn't an independent citation valuable? Is it wrong to ask for more information?

[bogomipz]

The same CEO that also happens to be marketing a new product?

Do you really believe that all statements made by CEOs should be accepted without question?

[chillydawg]

Obviously not, and I'm not saying that. I think believing this statement from this ceo at this time is reasonable. The research he did to come to his numbers is probably independent and you probably won't be able to find a citation as everyone on here is constantly crying for for every minor assumption.

What motivation does he have to lie about this particular number? His track record on honesty to date is good and the company is forthright in its dealings, from what I have seen. This isn't one of the google or microsoft boys trying to sell you on some shite AI in return for a high def feed from you eyes 24/7.

[bogomipz]

Could you please provide a citation for that figure of only 1K companies doing any meaningful and interesting scale. Also what does "meaningful and interesting scale" mean? What is the criteria? This all sounds like typical Cloudfalre marketing bullshit.

[dsacco]

To be fair, while he isn’t giving hard answers to a lot of questions in this thread, you’re being really antagonistic with that last line. I’d like more information too, but it doesn’t improve the odds he’ll answer to your satisfaction by publicly calling him out.

[bogomipz]

I didn't think it was antagonisti, it certainly wan't meant to antagonize anyone. I apologize if it comes off that way.

I've simply grown tired of the perpetual Cloudflare marketing machine and the lack of citation of the figures they throw around in these regular marketing posts.

[cortesoft]

Sure, that is easy - 'meaningful and interesting scale' is the amount of streaming that the 1000th largest video streamer does! So simple!