HN Gopher Feed (2017-11-27) - page 1 of 10 ___________________________________________________________________
Video Startup Can't Outspend YouTube, So It Created New Currency to
Pay Creators
89 points by beriboy
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-27/video-startup...___________________________________________________________________
swlkr - 1 hours ago
How does younow compare to twitch?
clw8 - 1 hours ago
As other people in the thread have pointed out, "Creators" is not
the right term. I visited the site once awhile back and not only is
it just a livestreaming service, but it seems like 90% of the users
are high school kids, so it's not a pleasant thought to think about
who among their viewers has money to spend on "Props"...
[deleted]
yairhaimo - 1 hours ago
Automated TL;DR to save global hacking time (might not be
perfect):Adi Sideman, the chief executive officer of the live-
streaming startup YouNow, spends his days hawking a new form of
digital currency. The Props economy will exist within Rize, a new
live-streaming app that YouNow is releasing in January. Sideman
wants people who stream video online to accept them as a form of
payment, creating an economy based on Props. While YouNow can't
compete with the behemoths on their own terms, Props lets it offer
something unique: a kind of equity stake in this new economy.
YouNow, which Sideman started in 2011, consists of a website and
mobile app designed for people to stream live video of themselves.
YouNow has raised about $30 million from investors like Union
Square Ventures and the investment arm of Comcast Corp. YouNow
attracted a stable of young performers, but it began having trouble
luring new users several years ago when Facebook, Google, and
Twitter Inc. all began focusing on live-streaming. Andy Weissman, a
partner at Union Square Ventures who sits on YouNow's board, said
it hadn't been seeking new funding, but that any startup with
venture investors is reaching treacherous territory when its rate
of growth slows. A handful of YouNow creators were in attendance -
one hung out near the food table wearing a trench coat, pink boots
and a pink sweatshirt, his hood pulled down low.
otakucode - 2 hours ago
This is a pretty good idea. Google has been aggressively anti-
competitive in the video space and the US government has made it
abundantly clear that they don't care. Losing hundreds of millions
a year for a decade just so no competitor could ever even hope to
begin building infrastructure for a competitor has been very
effective at shutting out all competitors. When traditional means
are cut off through bad faith dealing like that, people have to get
creative. And after reading 'The New Digital Age' where Schmidt
makes his case for Google taking control of all of human culture
with no more justification than 'we are rich, therefore better', I
more than welcome anyone who stands even a faint chance of taking
them down a thousand notches or so.
kyrra - 1 hours ago
Is there any place that has said how much Youtube lost due to
operational costs?
Eridrus - 1 hours ago
Losing money to get to scale isn't anti-competitive, it's
basically how any business with economies of scale gets started.
ktta - 1 hours ago
It absolutely
ishttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)
uhhhhhhh - 57 minutes ago
Or maybe not?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leaderLoose
money to attract users/creators who put more money into the
system.I don't see how this would qualify as dumping in any
way.
ktta - 49 minutes ago
I don't think loss leader is the correct term
either.YouTube doesn't make money, nor intends to make
money in the near future[1]. The key here is to get
entrenched in the market, then assert their monopoly.On
surface this might seem okay, but it definitely is anti-
competitive. We've just gotten used to it. Dumping isn't
the proper term, but was the closest I could find. It comes
under predatory pricing, but the problem is, this business
practice is so different from what the current literature
consists of, I don't think there even is a proper term.[1]:
http://fortune.com/2016/10/18/youtube-profits-ceo-susan-
wojc...
vkou - 3 hours ago
> YouNow?s ICO is hardly huge by current standards; the largest
sales have brought in upwards of $200 million. But it?s notable for
other reasons. YouNow is already a profitable company with 40
employees, name-brand investors and 40 million registered users, a
rarity in a world dominated by brand-new projects. People who work
with cryptocurrencies say they?re fielding an increasing number of
calls from established companies and predict that?s where the next
wave of notable cryptocurrency projects will come from. The Props
project is an early illustration of what that process could look
like.How are they profitable? What's their revenue stream? Selling
coins to speculators? How on Earth does that definition of
'profitability' currently justify the value of the coins? "This is
not like those other ICOs, because we made 200 million dollars
selling coins!" is a huge stretch of reasoning for "So you should
buy coins!"I'm not saying the business sucks, or is a fraud, but
that is an incredibly sketchy line of reasoning. I expect better
from Bloomberg.
benashford - 1 hours ago
The tone taken by the financial press towards cryptocurrencies is
interesting. They give plenty of press to the sceptics, the
warnings from central bankers, etc. But they also give plenty of
positive press, arguably undeserved when compared to the size of
similar ventures funded by traditional means.It's almost as
though they're writing about it solely because they feel that
they should, to avoid the risk of being seen to be taking a
stand. As a result coverage of ICOs gets softer coverage than it
otherwise would.
mksreddy - 1 hours ago
They are top 5th grossing app on android in social category. I
think they have decent revenue from app.
vkou - 47 minutes ago
Okay, that's a bit more reasonable. Even then, though, the
token is not a share in the company. I suppose it is a signal
that the company is not some fly-by-night operation.
chillingeffect - 3 hours ago
Just as an aisde: One needs an account from G.I.F.T. (goog, Inst,
fb, twit) to use YouNow. No email option.
nwah1 - 2 hours ago
I can't pay you in real dollars, so here's some nwah1-bucks
ChuckMcM - 1 hours ago
This is something I expected to come from a company like Medium.
Basically a 'build your own content' portfolio using a block chain
type currency to make the market.User's pay $x per period (or
merely periodically) in exchange for some amount of currency, which
they 'spend' by consuming (viewing/reading/listening too) content
offered by people creating things for them to view/read/listen to.
Each month the artist can convert their accumulated currency in a
$y payment. The platform lives off the difference between the $x ->
C -> $y ratios.If you can reach critical mass it makes for a very
interesting twist on the existing model, sort of kickstarter meets
bitcoin meets ebay. One way to finesse it would be for users to
'bid' on creative projects as well so a creator could say "I can do
a video about kittens, free for anyone who contributes $.5C or more
to the campaign, it will cost $C for non-backers to view it once it
is complete."You set up a virtuous loop where people willing to
spend are advising the creators to the things they should work on,
reducing risk on the creators part, increasing satisfaction on the
users part, and overall creation/consumption overall.
xhrpost - 3 hours ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truck_system
jasonkostempski - 4 hours ago
Has any company in history taken "inspiration" from it's
competitors name and then supplanted them? "YouNow" just sounds
like a typical YouTube-Without-The-Google type of app.
empath75 - 3 hours ago
Lot of successful porn sites with variants of YouTube in the
title.
jasonkostempski - 2 hours ago
But YouTube will never be their competition unless the world
becomes a very different place.
aaron-lebo - 3 hours ago
It's so horribly uncreative. Why not WeTube?
handedness - 3 hours ago
It's enough to remind one of Captain
Slow:http://www.wheels24.co.za/News/Capn-Slow-slams-Twitbook-
Face...
Apocryphon - 1 hours ago
Video.us
egypturnash - 1 hours ago
They called it "Props".The back of my head kept on trying to read
that as "Beenz" instead.(beenz: "the web's currency", also "one of
the greatest dotcom disasters".)
jondubois - 3 hours ago
What people just don't seem to understand is that a cryptocurrency
has to be tightly intertwined with the service it offers in a
completely trustless manner. Merely having a company which has the
same name as a cryptocurrency or made by the same people just
doesn't cut the mustard. The service and the currency need to be
logically and inseparably intertwined.
cabaalis - 1 hours ago
I would put my content (development tutorials) on YouNow if it paid
less than YouTube but didn't engage in the crazy shenanigans YT
does. Meaning a real due process for DMCA including punishment for
false claims, and truly specific and regularly enforced content
restrictions for monetization.
uhhhhhhh - 1 hours ago
>including punishment for false claimsI don't see that happening
any time soon. The automated nature of the takedown system (which
is really required due to volume) is going to have a set false
positive rate. the very same companies/groups that will invest in
these media type things are the same groups that will never
accept that type of penalty.the question is does this actually
managed to side channel the investment around the major players
and allow it to actually go against the market without penalty,
or is this just another way to pump up an ICO on the promise of
an ecosystem that will ultimately fail, but leave a lot of money
out of investors hands and conveniently into those marketing it
right now... I'm leaning towards the latter, but I might be
wrong.
snacktaster - 16 minutes ago
younow is very creepy. a lot of it is middle school and high
school aged kids dancing around in their bedrooms or entertaining
teen talk for thousands of viewers. I just get a really bad creepy
vibe from the site in general
CryoLogic - 3 hours ago
YouNow is actually a live-streaming service so I wouldn't call it a
direct competitor to YouTube. It's more like a competitor to
Livestream.com or Justin.tv (previously)
icebraining - 8 minutes ago
YouTube is a live-streaming service.
nextstep - 14 minutes ago
Thought this would be about Viuly (https://viuly.com) but I guess
there?s a few cryptotokens trying to compete in this space.
stingraycharles - 4 hours ago
This is really just the same as saying they raised money to pay
creators, but that wouldn't sound so innovative. One way or the
other, it's people investing in this startup (or currency if that's
what you want to call it) that pay the content creators.What I
wonder what will happen as more content creators join the pool,
thus diluting the value of a "prop". Is the idea that this will
also draw more consumers, thus balancing out the value of the prop
? How is the total market cap determined ? How will it grow ?
CPLX - 2 hours ago
> This is really just the same as saying they raised money to pay
creators, but that wouldn't sound so innovative.Well the
innovation, likely, is in the fact that they raised the money via
an almost certainly illegal pyramid-style "investment" medium.
ojr - 1 hours ago
they added an asset to the market that has no intrinsic value
other than to help the company that created it and to fuel the
market making bots that run rampant on exchanges. There is some
social utility to this
TylerE - 3 hours ago
Oh no! They're creating "money" out of thin air to "pay"
creators.
kfriede - 3 hours ago
Instead of using money that a government created out of thin
air?
megy - 2 minutes ago
Ha, ok then. I will happily swap my mega coins for your
crappy government currency.
TylerE - 2 hours ago
I can pay taxes, rent, buy groceries, etc with government
money.
recursive - 2 hours ago
Which one is more likely to be around in 10 years?
alexbeloi - 2 hours ago
The source of the currency is not the issue, it's the
longevity/stability of it as a medium of exchange. This
startup has very little power (compared to the government) to
ensure that the currency will continue to hold value to
someone you want to trade with. If faith plummets, they can
only guarantee as many assets as they hold themselves.
deelowe - 2 hours ago
General acceptance is inherent to the definition of currency.
Unless we're going to move back to a pure barter system, all
forms of currency are created out of "thin air" as the very
definition of value is wholly dependent on perception. The
more universally shared the perception of value is, the
stronger the currency.
colejohnson66 - 1 hours ago
I think OP was referencing how US currency is fiat
celim307 - 1 hours ago
Except government money has nuclear aircraft carriers
ensuring it's value. But yeah same exact thing!
huac - 3 hours ago
There's always room for Props 2.0!(I don't think this is that bad
of an idea. Is there a lot of packaging and marketing on top?
Sure, but the fundamental idea is fine.)
ringaroundthetx - 1 hours ago
typically there is no dilution, which is what makes this asset
class so attractive, but it depends on the individual token's
mechanics.although there are some investors, which primarily help
for funding and price discovery, only a small portion of the
float is distributed to them. the other portion of the float is
doled out to contributors, which would be the video creators in
this case.a way to avoid dilution of the pool would be to price
the rewards in USD and give the associated amount of currencythey
have to create a demand model to support this, many
cryptocurrencies have no demand model whatsoever and just think
they can reward people in it
dclowd9901 - 2 hours ago
Yeah, I was going to say: this sounds like a bond issuance lol.
How boring is that!That said, how cool would it be for companies
that make products to issue you a portion of the company with
every purchase, so that you could actually support them and be
supported by them?
s73ver_ - 1 hours ago
Except bonds are regulated by the SEC, and are largely
understood and able to be traded on open markets. The same
cannot be said of this.
mycall - 1 hours ago
CoopCoin
sly010 - 23 minutes ago
I am not sure about the exact structure but REI is set up as a
coop.
coding123 - 4 hours ago
I have been burned too much in trying to get into ALTs because
Bitcoin is still rocketing. As long as bitcoin is rocketing, you
lose money by trading BTC in for anything else.
anonyx69 - 3 hours ago
Most alts in the top 10 market caps just follow the swings of
bitcoin anyway
josu - 3 hours ago
https://d.tube/ already did this and so far it seems to be working.
Although they based it on Steem, an exisiting crytptocurrency.You
can read more about dTube here: https://steemit.com/science/@ms007
/dtube-all-about-it
aaron-lebo - 3 hours ago
Everything that originates out of steem seems to be a lame
attempt at making money and then pyramid scheming that through
the rest of the steem community.
uhhhhhhh - 59 minutes ago
I'm not sure if props is any different yet TBH. Give us money
for tokens we promise you will give you access to content you
want at a later date? Depending on how much of that money goes
towards content creation or attracting content creators really
determines if this is some sort of pump and dump or something
more complex.
Cyberdog - 3 hours ago
See also LBRY (https://lbry.io), which is basically blockchain-
powered video hosting (though technically it can host other types
of files too) with cryptocurrency functionality. It is to YouTube
as Steemit (https://steemit.com) is to WordPress.
username223 - 3 hours ago
This whole comment (https://cmt.io) sounds like air leaking out
of the current tech bubble (https://tech.bbl) on its last days.