YouTube, every mention
100 scenes, the whole family · ← back to YouTube
tap a year for its mentions
every year anyone Benedict Evans 169Toni Cowan-Brown 33Lillian Li 1
Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where YouTube comes up
Token pricing
- ▶ 7:48 Benedict Evans Um, and then there's a more relevant reason why it's interesting, which is that as smartphones took off, the networks collapsed because people bought iPhones and then the iPhones got three G and then people started watching YouTube and…
The AI presentation
- ▶ 6:38 Benedict Evans Um, and he put it on YouTube, and it's got, like, 300 comments underneath, because the first thing he asked me was, well, what's your most controversial opinion about AI?
- ▶ 14:55 Benedict Evans It took 10 years before you basically had enough speed that you could get viable consumer video, which is, you know, YouTube is, I forget the dates now, YouTube was getting on for a decade later, and Hulu launched in whatever it was. 2 times in the scene
A double episode: AI differentiation, and Apple does F1
- ▶ 12:12 Benedict Evans And they, you've got those low-level primitives of sharing a slug of text or share a slug of video or share a comment, but actually Instagram and Facebook and TikTok and YouTube work very differently and Pinterest and, and then go off and… 2 times in the scene
Looking for AI strategies
- ▶ 11:01 Benedict Evans Um, and yes, you can say at one level, you wouldn't really know the difference between iOS and Android, but there are pretty, pretty basic differences in how they work and what they do and what they're trying to do, and the very big…
Ai eats the world
- ▶ 18:04 Benedict Evans You might have said you would have correctly pointed out that it would take 10 to 15 years longer, 20 years before you could do TV on the internet, but you wouldn't have realized you would, you would have missed YouTube.
From SAAS software to Formula 1
- ▶ 39:43 Toni Cowan-Brown The amount of YouTube content around WWE right now is absolutely insane.
The AI summer
- ▶ 27:43 Toni Cowan-Brown Which ensued into a handful of great YouTube videos of people going, all right, let's give this a shot and see.
Tiktok, Apple and Temu
- ▶ 10:28 Benedict Evans If, and you can say, look, if YouTube was a separate company and Chinese company tried to buy it today, or Chinese company tried to buy Netflix, we would put our hands up and say, hang on a second.
- ▶ 12:31 Toni Cowan-Brown Facebook at the time, YouTube.
- ▶ 20:14 Benedict Evans YouTube, yes, YouTube could be a separate company to Alphabet. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 25:00 Toni Cowan-Brown Because to your point, I think TikTok is the second most popular platform with US teenagers right now after YouTube.
Breaking and remaking media
- ▶ 12:23 Benedict Evans And that's kind of what YouTube does. 4 times in the scene
Apple's Vision Pro
- ▶ 25:40 Benedict Evans It will not be a mass market consumer device that my company needs to know about unless I'm Hulu or YouTube or something.
LLMs, links, and the death of links
- ▶ 6:02 Benedict Evans Follow people, and you would like, and you would repost stuff, so that was a step, major step forward after WordPress, as WordPress theoretically had kind of trackbacks, but no one ever really used or understood that, and then of course… 4 times in the scene
- ▶ 8:40 Benedict Evans That dating apps have a lot in common with something like Instagram or YouTube with a recommendation and you like this, so you might like that kind of stuff, except that they generally don't have external links.
- ▶ 16:10 Toni Cowan-Brown And that is my bigger struggle is like I open a, I open YouTube and I've got all of these saved bookmarks in YouTube and it's the same in Instagram and it's the same with saved tweets on Twitter.
- ▶ 25:35 Toni Cowan-Brown And you'll, and we've also, I think that's where my head is going as well, and we've also got a myriad of places where we get to consume the content, which is why people who do newsletters like you works, because I can be in a, I can spend…
Bundling/Unbundling AI
- ▶ 23:24 Toni Cowan-Brown This is going to prompt you with some great titles that will do well on YouTube.
The magic customer
- ▶ 5:30 Toni Cowan-Brown Do you look at an athlete in a certain way, and a celebrity in another, and an actor in another way, and maybe an online content creator like Emma Chamberlain, who was a YouTuber, like, do they all have uniqueness to themselves of how you…
Unbundling ChatGPT
- ▶ 4:46 Toni Cowan-Brown Is this for YouTube?
Threads
- ▶ 18:22 Benedict Evans Instagram or YouTube or TikTok
- ▶ 37:40 Benedict Evans We should kind of wrap up because we're coming up to maybe five minutes, even though like the new standard for, um, YouTube podcast is three hours.
Buzzfeed News, Reddit and OpenAI
- ▶ 6:42 Benedict Evans And that applied to Facebook, but it also applies to TikTok, or YouTube, or anything else, or Google.
GPT-4 is here, now what?
- ▶ 30:29 Toni Cowan-Brown Beast and, and how much he spends, I think how much time he spends and money he spends on just like the thumbnail on a YouTube.
The right questions to ask about TikTok
- ▶ 5:27 Benedict Evans It's that if instead of talking about this as a social network, think about this as YouTube.
- ▶ 17:05 Benedict Evans Um, and I wouldn't go so far as to say that about TikTok, but there is certainly this kind of sense of, like, everyone uses YouTube, and everyone sort of knows that TikTok is this big thing, but the sort of tech conversation in general… 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 19:21 Benedict Evans Yeah, I mean, I, I think there's a sort of, um, it's almost like an incorrect analysis, which was, I'm trying to think of the right word, which is like, we kind of went down the line of thinking that TikTok competed with Instagram and… 9 times in the scene
- ▶ 24:21 Benedict Evans No, what I, what I was thinking was like, and again, this is a very tentative statement, but what you, what you, I think, what we've all noticed in the last couple of years is if you google any kind of how-to-y kind of question, you'll get… 8 times in the scene
- ▶ 31:16 Benedict Evans And so if you're on Instagram or YouTube and they can decide to downrank you, then you don't get any traffic. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 38:03 Benedict Evans Um, as opposed to YouTube, which has created a network to get people to create content, which is a Silicon Valley kind of a conversation. 7 times in the scene
ChatGPT versus Google
- ▶ 10:48 Toni Cowan-Brown I had this conversation with a friend the other day when she was like, do you, because this is a later stat, and I don't know how true or false it is that they were saying that most people in American households turn on the TV to watch and… 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 18:48 Toni Cowan-Brown I guess the big question about this new way, I'm just gonna call it new way of searching, does this replace the existing models of search, or does this add to a new model, i.e. you go on Google, then you go on YouTube, then you go on, you…
Generative search
- ▶ 8:47 Benedict Evans Well, yeah, welcome to YouTube in 2006, but it's, but it's delivering it, which is, is a different thing to Snap, which is Snap is different to Instagram or was different to Instagram until Instagram copied it. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 14:21 Toni Cowan-Brown And he's part of that generation of, I'm not using YouTube as a stepping stone to go to traditional TV. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 23:01 Benedict Evans Um, but that also applies to YouTube search, and it applies to image search. 3 times in the scene
Generative AI
- ▶ 31:01 Benedict Evans Yes, and the same thing you see now, there's a whole category of, of, of queries, of how-to queries, where you'll just, you go to Google, and all you'll see is YouTube. 5 times in the scene
Why are chips interesting again?
- ▶ 1:27 Benedict Evans Um, everyone from Amazon to YouTube are designing their own chips instead of just buying them off the shelf.
- ▶ 9:21 Benedict Evans And the same if you're AWS or the same if you're YouTube, like you're big enough that even if making your own chip might be more expensive on one level, it makes more economic sense on another.
No Soup for You! Regulating tech M&A
- ▶ 32:43 Benedict Evans Is TikTok competing with YouTube or Instagram? 2 times in the scene
All the other things happening in tech part 1.
- ▶ 11:04 Toni Cowan-Brown I saw this, I saw this, um, this morning, which was according to Deloitte, 60% of Gen Z and 56% of millennials will do at least some of their holiday shopping live on TikTok or Instagram or YouTube, which I thought was really interesting…
- ▶ 11:31 Toni Cowan-Brown TikTok going to this, Instagram going to this, YouTube shorts going to this, Twitch taking over like in stream shopping experiences, and I just thought that was fascinating.
- ▶ 16:44 Benedict Evans Beast in a sense is more, and YouTube collectively is more 9 times in the scene
The FTX face-palm
- ▶ 14:07 Benedict Evans Or YouTube on this?
How many metaverses?
- ▶ 4:27 Benedict Evans So if you look at all the Facebook presentations, if you go and listen to Boz's podcast, you talk to listen to John Carmack's YouTube, two hour YouTube monologues,
- ▶ 23:50 Benedict Evans Because they all use IP and HTTP, and, you know, on the iPhone, they're already built on iOS, and they're all using Apple's frameworks, but like, what happens in the Amazon app doesn't, no one working at Amazon needs to care about how… 2 times in the scene
Wondering about generative AI
- ▶ 22:36 Toni Cowan-Brown Um, yeah, but how, and to your point when you've got something like YouTube, yeah, you go off and create this video, this interview that never happened, upload, upload it onto YouTube. 2 times in the scene
TV after software
- ▶ 11:57 Benedict Evans Um, and so, but, but, but the thing is, what they wanted to do is they wanted to do an iTunes to it, or Google wanted to do a YouTube to it. 2 times in the scene
A new wave of company creation
- ▶ 17:38 Toni Cowan-Brown In a completely different story this week, I also saw that Emma Chamberlain, who's a very well-known YouTuber, who's now, I think, beyond that realm, no longer is seen as just a YouTuber, but just closed, I think, what was it, a Series A…
- ▶ 22:40 Toni Cowan-Brown There's the DTC model that's picked up, and there's more and more of these, whether it's YouTubers, influencers, creators, whatever, creating these brands that already have a built-in audience, so it kind of makes sense, because it doesn't…
When the point of leverage changes
- ▶ 26:55 Benedict Evans And I can see a market definition that covers search engines in YouTube.
What's next for advertising?
- ▶ 16:49 Benedict Evans And so Amazon did thirty-one billion dollars of advertising last year, which makes it roughly the same size as YouTube.
Shein, TikTok and Netflix - thinking about limits
- ▶ 16:40 Benedict Evans More so than YouTube, I think. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 19:40 Benedict Evans Um, which is also what YouTube, also what YouTube is, and Instagram is the users of Mechanical Turks telling you what's good.
- ▶ 25:06 Benedict Evans I mean, it's the same thing with YouTube. 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 28:05 Benedict Evans You know, you're doing your, 10 years ago, you do your makeup haul on YouTube. 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 33:01 Benedict Evans It's sort of like your YouTube.
Metaverse - how to be wrong in the right way
- ▶ 21:38 Benedict Evans It's not at the level of what features does YouTube have? 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 24:54 Benedict Evans One of them is sort of content moderation, which is YouTube or Instagram can kick you off.
- ▶ 28:22 Benedict Evans You've bought that rare thing in the same way that you might buy rare shoes, rare vinyl, or something, and it has some sort of aspect of property and self-expression, and should your ownership of that be tied to Instagram or YouTube, or… 2 times in the scene
Netflix isn't a tech company
- ▶ 16:34 Benedict Evans Um, in the, like, what the tech industry always wanted to do was to turn TV into YouTube or Spotify. 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 21:20 Benedict Evans You know, is Disney, you know, if you watch it on your smartphone, if you watch YouTube on your smartphone, is that still TV? 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 38:19 Benedict Evans What I mentioned earlier, which is if you're at YouTube, if you're at Google, you're thinking, well, where does that all that TV ad money go?
The future of Twitter
- ▶ 8:04 Benedict Evans But if you contrast that with Instagram, and all the things that Instagram has worked out how to build in order to give creators revenue, or even more so, YouTube. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 16:59 Benedict Evans There's a lot of cultural things in there, but there's also, I think, this existential what are we, what is this, how does this work question, which, as we're saying, is a harder question to answer than it is if you're Instagram and you've… 2 times in the scene
Are you a seal?
- ▶ 5:06 Benedict Evans He's spending very much time thinking about machine learning on one hand and about converting TV advertising to YouTube on the other.
The Evolution of networks
- ▶ 30:00 Benedict Evans And it's actually much more of a YouTube sort of network where it really isn't people that you know. 5 times in the scene
- ▶ 34:51 Toni Cowan-Brown Uh, but also interesting to see the evolution of TikTok of clearly now it's trying to compete with, with YouTube because, and I'll, I'll maybe share this, which I found was interesting because the number of people that I see that have… 4 times in the scene
Ukraine
- ▶ 4:06 Benedict Evans I think YouTube is blocked, or if it isn't, it will be soon. 2 times in the scene
Asking the dumb questions
- ▶ 13:30 Benedict Evans This quarter, what had previously been sort of implicit in their results, so they, they have this line in the back of the account, it's called a breakdown of their revenue, and they had this line called other, which they say is…
- ▶ 29:45 Benedict Evans Um, and then you need to be in a magazine or a newspaper or a TV show, whereas with Instagram and TikTok and YouTube, you go direct, and so you have this whole wave of people who've, as a celebrity, has unbundled the media.
What we know about web 3 so far
- ▶ 1:50 Benedict Evans It was YouTube, and Twitter, and Facebook. 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 22:45 Benedict Evans Now, imagine you're running YouTube like that.
The Meta reality
- ▶ 33:13 Benedict Evans Twitter and Instagram and YouTube and all sorts of stuff.
Regulation - Who will notice?
- ▶ 6:06 Benedict Evans I think the second point is you have these really dramatic things that people propose, like, let's break up Instagram, let's break up Facebook, let's make YouTube a separate company. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 17:52 Benedict Evans Um, and then you've got the sort of, as I said, the third category where you have these sort of big dramatic, like break up Instagram, break up, break up YouTube, which looks dramatic, but actually doesn't make it easier to compete with…
Games and Roblox
- ▶ 5:31 Toni Cowan-Brown The other one that I, that is sort of stuck in my head was this idea that it's Roblox being compared to YouTube, basically this huge library of user-generated content. 4 times in the scene
Creativity and Optimism
- ▶ 13:10 unnamed speaker Did you, have you seen the, um, uh, AlphaGo, uh, documentary on, uh, YouTube?
- ▶ 51:07 unnamed speaker Saw, saw Prince collect, you know, and, and Bowie, but also the YouTube guys, and, you know, I met Craig from Craigslist, and all these kind of phenomenal, you know, phenomenal people, and Biz, Biz Stone was sitting on it, you know, so all…
Tech in china, from inside and outside
- ▶ 4:51 Lillian Li China's version of YouTube, but when you look at it, it's actually very multifaceted.
The Business of publishing
- ▶ 10:27 Benedict Evans And one of the things that it kind of occurs to me is like the whole cookie apocalypse thing and the privacy thing and all of this stuff is actually only about sort of a quarter to a third of online advertising because there's YouTube. 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 45:12 Toni Cowan-Brown What do you want to be when you grow up and they're all saying YouTubers or Instagram, you know, and then now actually that's just changed to content creators.
Paying attention to Apple again
- ▶ 12:15 Benedict Evans Um, I mean, bear in mind that when the iPhone launched, it shipped with Google Maps on it, or an Apple app that connected to Google Maps, and an Apple app that connected to YouTube.
Trying to understand Ad Tech
- ▶ 4:09 Benedict Evans Um, then there is a whole other chunk of YouTube.
Who's in the office? Notes on a year of remote work.
- ▶ 14:01 Benedict Evans Something I've said several times before was conferences are like a bundle of, there's presentations, there's panels, there's talking in the hallways, there's the side meetings that you've arranged, there's networking, there's probably…
- ▶ 19:56 Benedict Evans In parallel with the fact that the presentation might be on YouTube, and how many other presentations might be on YouTube, and do I need to pay to go and hear that panel conversation when I could have heard Martin Sorrell speaking at this… 2 times in the scene
Shopify and digital transformation
- ▶ 15:20 Toni Cowan-Brown I've realized that I've been starting only recently to, to use Amazon like I would use YouTube or Google. 2 times in the scene
Clubhouse and the endless cycle of social apps
- ▶ 3:27 Benedict Evans There's this great quote when Google bought YouTube.
- ▶ 15:52 Benedict Evans As opposed to YouTube, which is a basically a very desktop, very like 2005 of course, of course, because it's owned by Google.
- ▶ 23:20 Benedict Evans Um, the same thing is TikTok competing with Instagram or YouTube. 2 times in the scene
Telling stories with charts
- ▶ 1:27 Benedict Evans So thanks for like, so that's an old Milton, but that's an old Milton Byrne joke I saw last night on YouTube.
Why do we care about games?
- ▶ 7:11 Benedict Evans And so that's what you see with TikTok, and I thought it was, I just written a piece for my weekly newsletter for subscribers, um, I read a column about games, and I said, look, you know, YouTube is a utility that distributes video.
The history of doom-scrolling
- ▶ 23:10 Benedict Evans He is a top YouTuber. 3 times in the scene
The FTC and Facebook
- ▶ 7:53 Benedict Evans And so I would suggest that TikTok actually competes with YouTube. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 17:29 Benedict Evans Clearly, if YouTube was a separate company, then advertisers would have more leverage. 8 times in the scene
- ▶ 27:13 Benedict Evans They're going to, you know, there's going to be a whole wave of privacy proposals on privacy rules for Facebook that don't touch YouTube, don't touch Google.
Is content moderation a dead end?
- ▶ 27:19 Benedict Evans And this is sort of my, my thinking, my, my sort of half-formed thesis as I think about content moderation on Google and Facebook and YouTube and so on, which is, 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 34:54 Benedict Evans The same as Instagram, same as YouTube by extension. 5 times in the scene
How do you destroy a tech monopoly?
- ▶ 13:41 Benedict Evans The reason why YouTube has such a strong market position is not that it's part of the same company as Google search. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 23:25 Benedict Evans Well, TikTok is like YouTube. 3 times in the scene