Blog - General Web Overview 2022

This is really just a blog entry to look at some general points of interest as of November 2022.

I was prompted to write this primarily by reading that YouTube is the second most visited website on the internet, second only to Google.

I personally only ever used YouTube to watch films whilst exercising but however have recently over the last few years created a couple of channels, nothing special, and so I do qualify as a creator.

However, my real thoughts are on what does it mean for YouTube to be the second most visited website on the internet? I think in a nutshell, opportunity.

But further, I think its opportunity that came a decade ago, that is the easy opportunity. But it still represents opportunity today. And risk.

However, this post also ties into the recent FTX crash. TWS has no cryptocurrency holdings and so I look at this with a sense of bewilderment. To start off with I had to first figure out that FTX was an exchange, that is a place where people go to buy and sell cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin. It was not a currency in itself. In short they lost $8bn and have over 1mn creditors.

I was tempted to invest in Bitcoin in 2016, which even then was late in the day but never have, mainly because it looked complex. Instead I angled on buying some when my bank offered it as a service. I noticed yesterday that PayPal actually integrates that with their system now, but I have still not invested. When Bitcoin crashed I figured I would buy when it was less than £15,000 and now I see it might well crash to £10,000 or lower.

My strategy was to invest £50, but to make anything serious that value would have to double, and for what? £50 profit? As such, to work it you would have to invest a lot of money, and that is a risk. Not one that I would want to take. So as it stands, I am still watching, my £50 feverishly in my hands.

The point is, in November 2022 we have opportunity in the internet, here being cryptocurrency and YouTube.

But what is the connection? None really.

However, there is a connected analogy. Investing time and effort into YouTube is similar. It cannot be ignored that YouTube is not just about cat videos. There are people there clearly putting in all their time and effort into making it big on YouTube. But is it worth it?

Historically people would create a web site and people would find it and go there. Even today that model works. But more of the people that might have created a website are actually now creating YouTube accounts first and creating content there and if they have a web site it’s a secondary supporting consideration.

So you could envisage YouTube now being the internet. It’s not, but as the second largest site on the internet and small websites essentially not existing in rankings by comparison, you could envisage it being that way.

To maintain the connection with FTX, the failed exchange and YouTube, I think you have to consider the downside, that is channels that die.

My only personal analogy to cover that comes from the film Aliens, 'In space no one can hear you scream', or in another light the vision of a mass grave in some desolate lost wood full of the corpses of dead YouTube channels. No one knows. You only see the living channels.

Maybe the second analogy is a bit grim, but you can see these channels from time to time. They have a few hundred videos, and often hundreds or thousands of subscribers and a respective amount of views and comments. But then they suddenly die. Nothing. A bit like FTX.

This is something we dont hear anything about and it’s difficult to find. If you search in YouTube you only find the winners. Channels with 1,000s of subscribers and videos with millions of views. Personally I look out for channels with less than 100 subscribers and videos with a similar number of views or even less than 10. Why? Because you get an insight into people that are starting out. Many will not be seeking wealth, but I dont think that there are many people that are not seeking growth. I can't imagine many people keeping on producing videos whilst only getting 5 views a go.

However, there is opportunity and these people are not too dissimilar to crypto miners, digging ever further for less and less of total share.

Combine that with the fact that YouTube apparently uses a lot of electricity. When I googled that question I found that YouTube uses anything from half to the same amount of electricity as Argentina a year. That’s a lot, and that’s growing. How long can that go on? It seems to me that it’s inevitable that something will have to break, something like older videos being deleted or high volume users being charged, or even YouTube being wound down?

Consider Twitter. The company was bought by Elon Musk in late 2022 for about $44bn. It had 7500 staff. How does that relate to other companies? Like Slough council? That meant that each employee was worth about $6mn. Since Elon Musk has halved the workforce, each employee is worth twice that amount. I have never understood how Twitter made money, nor YouTube, as I have never seen any ads and I only have a standard ad-blocker on Firefox.

In short, Twitter, an entity that has been present everywhere, but which no one really seemed to use or know anything about other than those with a vested interest, such as marketers, could well be being shut down or changed in a way that amounts to the same thing, a bit like MySpace.

So you had an interest in Twitter? Who used it every day? It’s not quite like FTX, but the changing environment is similar or at least possesses a similar risk.

Suffice to say, I thought it was interesting that YouTube was the second most visited site on the internet, and I am pondering on the significance of it as a worthwhile opportunity. For most people that means making money.

Would I advise it? Maybe if you like screaming in space? I just looked for 'woodworking how to' in YouTube, the first video has 10mn views, and the channel it’s from has 3mn subscribers. But behind that, there are thousands of channels and videos with nothing at all.

I often consider the analogy of both Richard Branson with Virgin and Jeff Bezo with Amazon. Richard Branson ran a record shop and expanded from there. But how many other people had record shops? Well, at the time there were thousands across the country and many of them did nothing more than pay the rent or the mortgage. The same with Amazon. Even I have a bookshop online. It only sells 10 books a year.

Point is, starting a YouTube channel is more likely than not going to be a waste of time, or worse, a waste of your life, especially if you are investing heavily or compromising, ie being overtly cheerful because that’s how all the big guys appear.

Behind all these easy going YouTube personalities are people that are sitting on top of all the juice that comes from people subscribing, viewing and commenting. Of course they are going to be motivated, of course they are going to improve and get better if they get 1000 people commenting on every video. But at the bottom end of the pyramid, there has to be a tipping point, maybe 2-5 years in when people give up.

I personally have always said that YouTube should have a health warning on it, 'You Are Wasting Your Life'. Like FTX, it doesn't exist and YouTube cannot continue hosting videos for free, costing the annual cost of Argentina’s electricity bill, forever.

However, that doesn’t mean that there is not tremendous opportunity.

I will say that I think the algorithm is rigged, but that’s another issue, but it ties into FTX and the way they invested in anything marginal and I suspect were behind many significant Patreon account sponsorships.

If you don't know, Patreon is a platform that allows people to give other people money, on a subscription basis, for nothing at all. That makes no sense to me. I can see maybe some validity, but when you see YouTube channels focussed on walking about in the streets getting £2000 a month for nothing via Patron I simply don't believe it. There is money laundering there. But that’s another issue.

At the end of the day, there is opportunity and there is risk.

I would recommend everyone has videos on YouTube, in fact I am thinking about creating some myself now, for TWS, which is odd, as I had not considered that before.

However, whilst YouTube offers various routes to monetisation, any significant YouTuber will have a website and if you need a website, TWS can help.