YouTube is Preparing for Big Battles in the User Generated Video Market
YouTube has enjoyed undisputed dominance in the user-generated video market since it was launched in 2005. However, in recent years, several players have emerged that may challenge YouTube in its own field, thus snatching its market share. In today’s newsletter, we explore the changing current in this industry.
YouTube — A Background
YouTube was launched in 2005 by three former Paypal employees, with “Me at the zoo” being the first video ever uploaded on the platform, by one of the founders, Jawed Karim himself. The very next year, Google acquired it for a whopping USD 1.57 billion, showing significant interest in the platform’s potential. Fast forward to 2020, YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world, meaning that it is still the go-to source for people searching for video-based content, and approximately 500 hours of content is uploaded on YouTube every minute, meaning it has successfully become the world’s largest repository of videos.
YouTube became a platform that empowered anyone to create a video and become famous, and soon, it became routine for several internet users to spend hours on the platform going through videos created by millions of creators across the world. In 2008, YouTube allowed creators to monetize content, thus inviting “YouTubers” to keep the platform lively by providing value to the users.
YouTube brought a paradigm shift to the society; professions such as “YouTubers” or game “streamers” emerged. YouTube became a platform for everything from teaching, to uploading music, to sharing news events. Gradually, big corporations and even movie celebrities launched their YouTube channels as a means to connect with their audiences better.
From Sony’s Playstation launch conferences to Will Smith’s own YouTube channel, the platform has it all.
While today YouTube’s position as the most prominent player in the user-generated video industry is well cemented, we cannot discount the prospects of other players emerging.
Who all is YouTube at War with?
Even though YouTube has successfully defeated players like Dailymotion, its prominence may be under threat.
Now answer these:
1. How much of your video consumption last week happened on YouTube, and how much on Facebook/Instagram/others?
2. When you need to search for a video, where do you go? YouTube, or elsewhere?
Today’s internet runs on social media, wherein you interact with your friends and popular pages (from celebrities to news to entertainment) and consume their content (including video) continuously. However, this aspect of social media seems missing on YouTube, which is largely seen as a repository that is a window to the whole world, and not your own network, unlike Facebook/Instagram.
This is why YouTube dominates your video searches, but other platforms dominate your video consumption. Social media comes with a superpower, that is scrolling. When you scroll endlessly, you consume more videos than you can fathom.
This phenomenon harms YouTube, as creators now upload content on all platforms, and often gain more views through Instagram and Facebook than they would through YouTube, with some videos being an exception.
YouTube is competing on several fronts, while game streaming has a new popular competitor in the town named Twitch, which itself is a huge community of gamers, Facebook (and its subsidiary Instagram) have captured the social aspect of the video market by launching “Stories”, “IGTV” and a dedicated video segment on Facebook’s own app. YouTube is also a repository of music videos, remixes and independent artists. However, since apps like Spotify allow background play and are more ear-friendly, they are gaining a quick share. Premium producers who could have gone to YouTube to ride the internet wave have rather leased their movies and series to Netflix, Prime and other platforms, who dominate that market.
This strangulates YouTube’s business as it seems slow to adapt to the changing market trends. YouTube’s own feature of paying to watch a movie on its platform went bust, while TikTok made it easy for the masses to create content, bypassing the hassle of having to edit the videos before uploading on YouTube. Even though TikTok has now been banned in one of its largest markets, India, and is under scrutiny in various others, it has created a new format of creating videos. Users worldwide are switching to easy-to-generate user video apps such as Byte, Roposo, Chingari and Mitron to name a few. Already, Instagram has launched its Reels feature, which broadens its video portfolio. In fact, the app and its parent Facebook are full of videos since years.
However,
YouTube Is Fighting Back
YouTube has an advantage over its competitors — its huge user base and repository of videos.
To counter music apps, YouTube launched its own. The benefit is that YouTube’s library is vast since all artists, record labels and creators upload their music on the platform.
For Gaming, YouTube already had a space known as YouTube Gaming, designed to provide all gamers and viewers with a luxury experience. How it competes with Twitch is still to be seen, however, its huge user base does give it an edge.
For premium content, YouTube cleverly launched an ad-free paid version of itself, on which it would produce its originals too. Its seen as Alphabet (Google’s) way of competing with Netflix and other streaming platforms; here, for the subscription fee, the users not only get the premium content but also get an ad-free access to all the millions of hours of content on YouTube. A Game-changing leverage.
Most significantly, YouTube recognises that Tiktok and Instagram are taking away its video market, and is hence developing an app called “YouTube Shorts”, which is seen as its answer to them. This highly anticipated app has the potential to make it simple for anyone to upload a video, in the same fashion as Tiktok or Instagram.
End Game
While YouTube is spending heavily on the development of new services as well as incentivising its creators through events such as YouTube fan-fest and other merchandise, it's still seen as a community less vibrant than its competitors. However, its size and rapid investment in changing its appeal ensure its commitment to stay in the game. Whether it succeeds, only time will tell.
