One of the only things Dave Winer has ever said that I agree with is:
"Sometimes developers choose a niche that's either directly in the path of the vendor, or even worse, on the roadmap of the vendor. In those cases, they don't really deserve our sympathy."
The author built a site that really is a feature YouTube should just have, and he even did it on the YouTube platform. One that once they know about they can just build without much effort.
I won't say nothing good could come of that (small acquisitions happen that way frequently) but this is why pretty much the only thing I'll ever build on a platform is games. Facebook, YouTube, or Microsoft are never going to up and say "hey we need to make a football game because that's really lacking here". Any utility feature at all is going to either fail or get cloned.
The proper way to go about this (though I've no idea how) would have been to avoid that reliance on YouTube. Perhaps syndicating content from big YouTube competitors, licensing original, etc. I really don't know the niche well enough to be helpful, but I certainly would advise not being just a feature on someone else's site and going for some value add.
Granted none of that negates the fact that this looks like a dickish move on Google's part.
not true. Google is a platform provider and their path is to let niche and verticals work independently. And even if in the path, Google can handle it without pick-a-brain meetings with the micro startup in order to smush them
YouTube is first and foremost a destination with an ancillary platform. Something that lets people make and curate collections of videos on it is a lot like what Netscape was to Windows.
Comments
One of the only things Dave Winer has ever said that I agree with is:
"Sometimes developers choose a niche that's either directly in the path of the vendor, or even worse, on the roadmap of the vendor. In those cases, they don't really deserve our sympathy."
The author built a site that really is a feature YouTube should just have, and he even did it on the YouTube platform. One that once they know about they can just build without much effort.
I won't say nothing good could come of that (small acquisitions happen that way frequently) but this is why pretty much the only thing I'll ever build on a platform is games. Facebook, YouTube, or Microsoft are never going to up and say "hey we need to make a football game because that's really lacking here". Any utility feature at all is going to either fail or get cloned.
The proper way to go about this (though I've no idea how) would have been to avoid that reliance on YouTube. Perhaps syndicating content from big YouTube competitors, licensing original, etc. I really don't know the niche well enough to be helpful, but I certainly would advise not being just a feature on someone else's site and going for some value add.
Granted none of that negates the fact that this looks like a dickish move on Google's part.
not true. Google is a platform provider and their path is to let niche and verticals work independently. And even if in the path, Google can handle it without pick-a-brain meetings with the micro startup in order to smush them
YouTube is first and foremost a destination with an ancillary platform. Something that lets people make and curate collections of videos on it is a lot like what Netscape was to Windows.