Tom compares YouTube and its rival LiveVideo, noting that while YouTube has 25 million monthly users, frustrated power users are exploring alternatives due to technical problems and poor customer service. He worries LiveVideo tolerates more explicit content and questions how YouTube's terms of service will handle videos posted to both platforms simultaneously.
Hi, it's Tom. Well, this has been a pretty exciting 24 hours or so on YouTube, hasn't it? So a couple of things I wanted to do. First of all, I wanted to respond to Peter. Thanks so much for making your response video, Peter. It was really delightful to see you responding to my video, but I need to clarify not to you because you and I, of course, had a Skype conversation earlier this morning, but I need to clarify to the rest of anybody who thought that I had not accepted your invitation to be a Skype contact that I only use Skype when I have a prearranged meeting to take place on Skype. It's the only time I start up the program, so I hadn't seen your invitation to be a contact. Of course, I would never have not accepted it had I seen it. To your point about the standards that are operating on live video versus the standards here on YouTube, obviously it's a serious question. I haven't done enough exploration of the content on live video to really know how their standards compare with YouTube's. But certainly your experience seems to indicate that there's something to— that they leave something to be desired, the standards over there. And that's not anything that, you know, I'm gonna feel good about being part of a site that has more softcore porn than YouTube does. YouTube has its share, as we know. So I'll certainly want to check out some more and see what's going on in that regard. Excuse me. I'm also very interested in the, the YouTube's response to what's happening. Here's what I mean. Not that, you know, there's anything like a massive defection going on. Remember, it's If you believe the numbers that you see, there's about 25 million unique visitors a month who come to YouTube. And if you look at who's— those of us who have set up dual accounts, excuse me again, both on YouTube and on live video, there's not 25 million of us that have gone over there. We're a very small group. And probably a group that fits into Perry's rhino's toe characterization. People who are interested in having different kinds of conversations and having everything work. Which really is my third point and I think the most, for me, the most important, most interesting aspect of this whole defection, if you wanna call it that. It's not a defection, I don't think. I don't think any of us are leaving necessarily yet completely leaving YouTube. But the idea that for the past couple of months there's been a growing frustration among heavy YouTube users with the technical problems that the site has been having, I think has reached a point where people are seriously looking for alternatives that just simply work. I would add to that that I do think that YouTube has handled the communication aspect of all this very poorly. For example, I, in an earlier video, talked about my email to Maya— I'm sorry, Mia— and, um, you know, I never got a response to that email. Now, I don't care how many emails you get. If you're a business person, particularly if you're a business person who is to use the jargon, customer-facing. If you're a business person and you don't respond to customer emails, you know, it's a bad practice. It's just not a good practice, and it's not the kind of thing I would expect a company that is in the Google mold would be the way they'd be behaving. I expect from companies in this new way of doing business, I expect much more in the way of customer contact. And I think that— I'm sorry— YouTube's reluctance to communicate with the users more fully— it doesn't mean that they have to tell us every single thing that's going on. I think I've tried to make it clear that all we're looking for is the sort of communication that we got and that we saw earlier from Flickr on how they were handling their their problems, which every site has, uh, it's the way those problems are handled that I think is most crucial. And one more thing before I go, uh, it's going to be interesting to me to see how YouTube handles all this cross-posting of videos between videos that are posted both here on YouTube and also here on LiveVideo. I'm gonna post this video on both sites. Others I know already have. As Pastababy pointed out in highlighting one of the provisions of the terms of service, when you upload a video to YouTube, they own the video. You can take it down, but they own it as long as it's up. It's going to be intriguing to see how they, if they respond, and if so, how they respond to cross-posted videos now on both sites. So stay tuned, it's going to continue to be interesting, and Peter, thanks again for your response, and I'm gonna be here watching your videos as long as you're here making them, and I think I'll be making my own as well. I ain't going anywhere, but I'm gonna go play over in that other place too. So take care, bye-bye.
