• Tom Fulp to Youtube Animators: there IS an alternative to YouTube and you're looking at it
    49 replies, posted
[quote=Newgrounds] These past few days a number of prominent animators have come out about the bleak future of animation on YouTube. Commenters keep opining, "If only there was an alternative to YouTube!" I'm here to tell you, there IS an alternative to YouTube and you're looking at it. Newgrounds has given animators a platform since 1999 and the majority of established web animators got their start here. We had real-time publishing for five years before YouTube existed and even beat their Partner Program to the punch with our Flash Ads system. When YouTube first launched, animators weren't particularly interested. Its growth was largely based on television and other entertainment piracy. Over the years, animators started having their work stolen and posted to YouTube, at which point they began managing their own accounts as a defensive measure. The real tipping point came when YouTube introduced Networks. To limit their liability and outsource the effort of dealing with independent artists, YouTube allowed third party companies to establish networks and receive a premium CPM, so they could incentivize artists to join under their network umbrellas. Individual networks raised tens of millions of dollars in venture capital to fuel rapid expansion. This created a lot of "bubble" money in the YouTube ecosystem; guaranteed CPMs, acquisitions of exclusive content, etc. It works out when these companies get sold for multiples of what investors put into them. Maker sold for $500-950 million based on having a bunch of contracts with popular YouTube channels. In comparison, NG has no outside funding and CPMs have traditionally been shit, due to our lax censorship policy and a history of controversial content. As the YouTube money grew, priorities shifted. Instead of being THE platform, Newgrounds became a springboard to move people to YouTube. Our front page blog space became filled with artists promoting their YouTube pages and a lot of the movies (still SWF format at the time) had "Watch on YouTube" buttons that were larger than the "Play" buttons. Our front page was essentially a big redirect to YouTube. That wasn't the only thing working against NG though. Our CPMs declined as ad dollars moved into video and social advertising, not to mention the ubiquity of AdBlock. Game developers were losing confidence in Flash and jumping over to mobile and Steam. The last few years were a huge existential crisis for NG, as we shed staff and reduced other operating expenses, while also working to adapt. We added support for animation in video format and released Swivel, the best ever SWF to video conversion tool, used by most web animators today. We knew this would speed up the migration to YouTube but we thought people would at least keep posting to NG; sadly a lot of them took the free software and ran. I got it though; NG had failed them miserably. Web animators were growing up and they wanted to make a living; that wasn't happening with NG. I felt like this was a deserved punishment because NG hadn't lived up to its potential and I spent a few years beating myself up about it. Now, though, our potential is growing. NG is paying its bills and payouts to content producers are rising each month. In addition to video support, we accept games made with HTML5 and Unity. We're running video pre-roll ads on all of it and the fill-rate keeps improving. [/quote] You can read the whole thing [url=http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1372021]here[/url], and it is very interesting his take especially with the whole YouTube animator environment currently changing.
I would not mind a jump back to Newgrounds to see that shit, hell a lot of the top youtube animators all started there anyways, and it doesnt seem like animators hate newgrounds, its just been about making a living. Im sure most would rather be on newgrounds, less shit of a community, and no need to censor anything or worry about bullshit account copyright shit, im not talking about actual copyright infringement, I mean people who abuse that system to get channels they dont like taken down forever or for a time.
Is it news when it's mostly self-promotion? It's Newgrounds talking about Newgrounds being better than YouTube for animators. I'm not arguing with the contents of the post, but is this being discussed by gaming "journalism" blogs/sites? Or is the only source the post by Newgrounds about themselves?
I wasn't even aware newgrounds still existed. I remember first finding out furries existed through that website.
[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;45590980]Is it news when it's mostly self-promotion? It's Newgrounds talking about Newgrounds being better than YouTube for animators. I'm not arguing with the contents of the post, but is this being discussed by gaming "journalism" blogs/sites? Or is the only source the post by Newgrounds about themselves?[/QUOTE] It is a growing discussion on YouTube about how they are treating animators, with many personalities chiming in: [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr9PCOVdf9s[/media] [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi6FcI2wFrw[/media] [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8rxi9xvb_o[/media] It is why many people on YouTube have turned to Patreon to seek extra funding.
[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;45590980]Is it news when it's mostly self-promotion? It's Newgrounds talking about Newgrounds being better than YouTube for animators. I'm not arguing with the contents of the post, but is this being discussed by gaming "journalism" blogs/sites? Or is the only source the post by Newgrounds about themselves?[/QUOTE] facepunch.com seems to have picked up on the story, for one seriously the points he's addressing are valid, and the complaints of youtube animators having audio blocked on copyright grounds or being taken down because some dips decided to pull a mass-report have been an issue for a long time now. I'd love to see modern content in swf format (or whatever current equivalent live formats there are), there's a unique feel to the crispness of live vector lines and fast-as-your-computer-can-handle FPS
Newgrounds still feels ugly and childish though, nothing about their frontpage makes me want to stay there.
I'm posting the stuff I draw on dA, tumblr and NG and I get the most useful comments from NG by far, partially because there's a hurdle before your submissions can enter the mainstream of the site mainly. Wouldn't mind seeing people jumping ship there.
Seriously, NG's slogan ends with an all-your-base reference. The whole site looks like it's designed with teenagers in mind (a.k.a. hasn't changed since I stopped going there back in junior high). On top of that, their pre-roll ad delivery system seriously looks like it has a mosaic effect, and locks up your browser if you have Adblock on. If you turn it off, though, awful giant ads are placed everywhere. They need to rethink their revenue model. It seems like they rely entirely on ads. I don't think Newgrounds is going to experience any sort of massive resurgence anytime soon.
thank you tom for your opinion but what does cubeman suggest? [highlight](User was banned for this post ("dumb meme" - dai))[/highlight]
I just submitted my first flash animation to Newgrounds. I can't believe I forgot to do that considering that I spent probably my entire elementary school days on that site.
Just went to check out newgrounds art section and it looks like and half cousin of deviantart
[QUOTE=ZombieDawgs;45591216]Newgrounds still feels ugly and childish though, nothing about their frontpage makes me want to stay there.[/QUOTE] I do think they could use a good redesign, but the whole idea of Newgrounds is better for animators than YouTube. [QUOTE=Snowmew;45591450]On top of that, their pre-roll ad delivery system seriously looks like it has a mosaic effect, and locks up your browser if you have Adblock on. If you turn it off, though, awful giant ads are placed everywhere.[/QUOTE] I'm running AdblockPlus on firefox, and my browser doesn't "lock up" and movies/videos load fine for me.
I always thought their previous design was a lot better, and one of the few times I didn't have any problems when a website gets redesigned. [img]http://justforbookmarks.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/newgrounds.jpg[/img]
Food for thought, a forum created for a decade old Half Life 2 mod has over 22 times the amount of registered users viewing its forums than the number of registered users viewing NG's forums. I don't wish Tom Fulp to fail, but his site has a snowball's chance in hell in being relevant again.
Tom Fulp is a saint and I feel really bad for him.
It's crazy to think that in 2011, people thought it was hard to make a living on the CPM numbers. And now with YT continuing to explode in monetized content, it simply isn't keeping up with getting more ad deals or variety. I've had the same 4 ads for like the last 2 months. That's not good.
Yeah people stopped using Newgrounds as much because of the horrendously long loading times that come with raw flash animations (which has been fixed with the new player they've had for quite some time now) and because you simply couldn't get any money out of it - not to mention how easy it is to take the content and just host it somewhere else.
from what ive gotten from watching some of the animators talk about it youtube uses a #of vids + length + someother things such as views and subs = how much ad money you get aka pewdiepie.
[QUOTE=k2.;45591996]from what ive gotten from watching some of the animators talk about it youtube uses a #of vids + length + someother things such as views and subs = how much ad money you get aka pewdiepie.[/QUOTE] The big thing is watch time. YT ranks content based on the amount of time people watched it. But also if that video was watched in a session with a lot of other content. So if someone watches a playlist of videos or goes clicking on related content, YT ties that together and understands that this content is good because people keep going through a lot of the related content. Animations take a lot of time so often they put out one video a month, maybe a few videos per year and they are often short, so they don't gain much watch minutes from that. Along with that though, YT will decide the ad based on the watch time and length of the video, I believe. With heavier ads for longer content with more watch time. The issue is a lot of this stuff is still just pieced together from lots of random forum discussions and person to person info. YT gives little info about their algorithms outside of "Post regularly and often"
[QUOTE=LaughingStock;45591569]I always thought their previous design was a lot better, and one of the few times I didn't have any problems when a website gets redesigned. [img]http://justforbookmarks.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/newgrounds.jpg[/img][/QUOTE] [img]http://i.imgur.com/RmQtvs3.jpg[/img] I kinda miss these days. All those times of me being an upset kid because my shitty flashes were being blam'd
Anyone remember the porn ads? I had this site bookmarked for a long time and my little brother will poke around in my bookmarks, click Newgrounds, then the porn ads giving me massive malware and viruses.
I wouldn't mind a return to Newgrounds, i still go there to watch old school flashes like There She Is. I loath the current design however.
"pls use my website, it's going to go out of business unless you use it"
Newgrounds is a pretty impressive archive at this point, it would be bad if it went offline.
[QUOTE=LaughingStock;45591569]I always thought their previous design was a lot better, and one of the few times I didn't have any problems when a website gets redesigned. [img]http://justforbookmarks.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/newgrounds.jpg[/img][/QUOTE] I'd much rather if they reverted back to this design But Newgrounds needs to redesign if they want to adapt as a fair competitor to YouTube [editline]4th August 2014[/editline] When I used to do shitty animations, newgrounds never felt like I had any hope because of its harsh selection. I eventually saw that for the better and I found YouTube a simplier platform to broadcast myself on I mean NG used to my place to go to just to watch all sorts of brain numbing shit and it was simply an amazing platform but I rarely go on it because I grew out of it Maybe because it needs another big hit, another controversial animation, another controversial game. That's the NG I remember, taking huge fucking risk and getting shit on by the media, that's what brought its playbase to them. They need to do something to set people off
[QUOTE=Brt5470;45592092]The big thing is watch time. YT ranks content based on the amount of time people watched it. But also if that video was watched in a session with a lot of other content. So if someone watches a playlist of videos or goes clicking on related content, YT ties that together and understands that this content is good because people keep going through a lot of the related content. Animations take a lot of time so often they put out one video a month, maybe a few videos per year and they are often short, so they don't gain much watch minutes from that. Along with that though, YT will decide the ad based on the watch time and length of the video, I believe. With heavier ads for longer content with more watch time. The issue is a lot of this stuff is still just pieced together from lots of random forum discussions and person to person info. YT gives little info about their algorithms outside of "Post regularly and often"[/QUOTE] If I remember, let's play were essentially the holy grail of youtube for a a simple reason. They hit the sweetspot of roughly 10-15 minutes and they tend to be in relatively long series. Which often means that a person watching one will go see at least 3-4 from the same one. Which tends to give a boost to the rankings.
[QUOTE=dai;45591116]the complaints of youtube animators having audio blocked on copyright grounds or being taken down because some dips decided to pull a mass-report have been an issue for a long time now.[/QUOTE] The only reason NG doesn't have this problem is because they simultaneously don't give a shit about and don't understand copyright law, which isn't exactly a great incentive to get content creators to switch over. I don't know how much trust I'd put in an NG that [I]did[/I] care about copyright to not screw the pooch just as hard in the exact same way, considering how poorly their moderation understands audio and audio copyright.
[QUOTE=wraithcat;45593302]If I remember, let's play were essentially the holy grail of youtube for a a simple reason. They hit the sweetspot of roughly 10-15 minutes and they tend to be in relatively long series. Which often means that a person watching one will go see at least 3-4 from the same one. Which tends to give a boost to the rankings.[/QUOTE] Yea, GameTheory was one of the groups to make this point and it makes sense. They are designed to be watched all the way through and also to be watched in a big playlist. And they are relatively easy to make if you do almost no editing or work on them. I do a fair bit of editing on my LP's. If it's boring I do tons of cuts to compress the game.
The green areas are third party ads, which don't benefit content creators (presumably) - only the site owners. Both snapshots taken with Adblock off. (Using Chrome, Adblock causes the video ads to crash, I don't know if that's a common bug but it still is annoying.) So Tom's happy to advertise better revenue streams for animators... while bombarding users with ads that don't benefit animators. Sounds like NG is just taking advantage of this whole thing for their own benefit. [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/5Rqv9tt.png[/IMG]
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.