[kzcqt]

A competitor would need to operate at youtube's scale for it to be considered a serious competitor. Otherwise, we wouldn't be having this conversation, given that websites like Dailymotion and Vimeo exist, but no "youtube stars" use them.

[krapp]

Not every competitor has to be "serious" to be successful.

And what about Twitch? Plenty of "personality" driven content there.

[kzcqt]

Twitch is not a competitor of youtube. Twitch is specialised in live shows. They don't let you upload videos, and they delete old videos of past broadcasts pretty often.

[krapp]

If user attention is split between Twitch and Youtube then they are a competitor. Same for Netflix. Same for Pornhub. Same for Vine when that was a thing.

[stcredzero]

If user attention is split between Twitch and Youtube then they are a competitor. Same for Netflix. Same for Pornhub. Same for Vine when that was a thing.

But if you focus attention to political commentary specifically, then YouTube is clearly the dominant giant. In that context, they are a defacto monopoly.

[rchaud]

It really wouldn't. YT makes a big deal about vanity metrics like "10,000 hours of video uploaded per hour" (or something like that), but the 80-20 rule still applies.

A giant chunk of uploaded content is never even watched.

[yorwba]

A site for YouTube videos that have never been watched before: http://www.petittube.com/

[Spivak]

I don't really think so. A turnkey "host your own video site" would pretty much qualify a competitor -- I'm far more loyal to the people I watch on YouTube/Twitch than the platforms themselves. If they moved to their own site it wouldn't matter too much to me assuming I still had a way to get it on my TV.

[stcredzero]

But in the long term, virality, discovery, and monetization matter a great deal. YouTube could simply wait for current creators to become stale, and absolutely control the future of discourse.