this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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"TikTok copycat"
You know, way way back in the pre-Elon days, they had another one. I think it was called Vine?
I still don't understand why they killed it. Must've been a real money sink.
high costs server side, poor quality of the videos, poor-ish internet connections, not enough powerful cell phones, etc. They were ahead of time. They achieved a decent success in the US but not much outside of it because of much of the reasons listed above.
I know peertube already exists, but I wonder if a federated app specifically for short videos (to reduce data storage costs) could find some success?
would probably also need to use some intense video compression technology before upload to further reduce file sizes
There actually is one in development right now! It's called Goldfish. It's in pre-alpha right now, but it's getting somewhere
It might but when you get to critical mass (as in big enough to create or attract big names and their following) you wil still be stuck with a huge amount of data. Keep also in mind that big influencers make money out of the platforms they are in so they would not have any incentive to move to the Fediverse unless someone finds a way to monetize it. At that point you have the Meta Threads controversy.
To be perfectly honest an influencer, or a group of influencers, could run their own instance and charge a subscription to follow it or run ads but most people will join a free instance to see the same content; if they defederate to force users to join their instance then they are way less discoverable; if they run ads other admins would defederate for privacy (e.g. Meta Threads); etc.
In short, yes is feasible and someone will do it, on the other side it will need a creative approach to monetization to attract big names and build a consistent user base/fund raising strategy to justify the cost of the infrastructure especially if federated. I hope it will happen, though I am not bright enough to see how.
My major concern with the success of the Fediverse is that socials like Reddit are replaceable if you have enough people to create a stimulating community, socials like TikTok, Instagram and Twitter rely on having people you want to follow in their platform to lure you in and they are much more difficult to replace.
Yeah, and it closed because they weren't making money on it. Turns out all you needed was a few years for server costs to go down.