I’ve joined Facebook today as part of the Vidpresso team. The opportunity to build something that can reach a large group of users is attractive: basically everything I’ve worked on for the past 15 years has been very niche.
As long as the SV giants have that global scale and keep demonstrating that they value engineers, I don’t think they’ll have trouble hiring.
For live video, nobody really knows how to make selling ads even work. It’s actually an interesting challenge to try to come up with formats where ad monetization makes sense for the content producer — I’m convinced they’d have to be compelling formats for audiences first.
Go ask media companies what their viewership numbers in this medium are and how much they want to get paid to carry a 10% screenspace ad for the entire show’s duration. Then go ask Taco Bell how much they’d pay for that ad given the audience size. If the numbers align so that you’ll get a nice margin too, why not start a company?
You don’t know anything about me. I’ve spent years working on various products that were paid by users, not advertisers. Guess what? Selling software licenses is very hard. You can’t blame me for not trying though.
Video is traditionally ad supported — after all, nobody ever paid for broadcast TV. But preroll/midroll ads that interrupt content don’t work well in live online video. Interactivity offers potential new avenues to sell people stuff that they might actually want. I don’t know if it will work, but it’s worth exploring.
Why is it so hard to admit thay you sold out and are working for an evil company?
Yes, you're not killing baby seals or helping give people cancer.
You're just working for the company that surveils a large part of humanity, tries to get them addicted to tapping stuff, deceives them into buying stuff, "accidentally" gets involved into election manipulation, etc. They're also working hard at getting their hands on medical and banking information.
I sincerely hope everyone - particularly people working in surveillance and advertising - question both the meaning and impact of their work.
Yes I was brash and a bit sardonic, but I was not trying to put anyone down. I should have phrased that more encouragingly and less mockingly. Thanks for the feedback.
As long as the SV giants have that global scale and keep demonstrating that they value engineers, I don’t think they’ll have trouble hiring.