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>Content creators don't want to leave the platform because of discoverability Discovery is still incredibly hard on YouTube. YouTube is a search engine, adding another one won't fix that. I'm also skeptical that anyone could do search better than Google. When creators say "they can't leave because of discovery", they mean "I spent 10 years telling people my address is youtube.com/creator, and if I lose that, most people won't know where to find me." Regardless, most Content Creators don't leave the platform because YouTube is/(was) the only platform paying people for content. While the type of content that is watched by tech professionals may do incredibly well with Patreon, that isn't true for several other types of content. This IMO, is why Facebook was unable to get people to create for FB Video (Unless you were a corporation that handled monetization already), it's a large reason why Vine creators complained about the platform and it's something Twitch and TikTok get right. This, to me, is the real issue with starting a YouTube competitor. It's far easier to innovate on the format (Twitch = livestreams, TikTok = clips+ML), then it is to offer "video hosting" but "better". If you want creators to create for your platform, then you have to pay them, which means you either have to get advertisers (and deal with the same content cleanup YouTube does) or have people pay (and deal with that chicken and egg). I believe Twitch was early enough to not have to go the "pay creators on day 1" route, bu Musical.ly (what eventually became TikTok), Mixxer, and Quibi all had to open their wallets and spend a ton on marketing and exclusives to get people on their platform (and two of them failed hard). |
Of course YouTube has gone a long way and is a well working compromise for most formats...