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Netflix's Biggest Competition Isn't Sleep -- It's YouTube (venturebeat.com)
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings loves to identify sleep as the biggest competition of its service. "Sometimes employees at Netflix think, 'Oh my god, we're competing with FX, HBO, or Amazon, but think about it. If you didn't watch Netflix last night: What did you do? There's such a broad range of things that you did to relax and unwind, hang out, and connect -- and we compete with all of that," he once said. "You get a show or a movie you're really dying to watch, and you end up staying up late at night, so we actually compete with sleep," he added. Turns out, Hastings does not need to look that far for competition.
From a report: Despite Netflix and Amazon investing billions of dollars in producing original content, they are struggling to make inroads in emerging markets. YouTube, on the other hand, is growing rapidly, becoming a daily habit for even new internet users. In India, for instance, YouTube reaches 245 million unique users each month, or 85 percent of all internet users in the country, the company told VentureBeat. About 60 percent of all YouTube traffic in India comes from outside of its six major cities. [Globally, YouTube has 1.9 billion monthly active users.]
As consumption on YouTube grows, creators are also finding loyal audiences. In India alone, YouTube now has more than 600 channels with more than 1 million subscribers, up from 20 channels in 2016. Record label T-Series, which is fighting with PewDiePie for the title of most-subscribed YouTube channel, took 10 years to get to its first 10 million subscribers. In the last two years, it has grown to 60 million subscribers. Globally, YouTube says the number of channels with more than 1 million subscribers has grown by 75 percent this year.
Globally, YouTube told VentureBeat that 75 percent of the platform's watch time occurs on a mobile device. The average watch time for a mobile user is 60 minutes per day. Or in other words, this is the time a user could have spent watching Netflix. According to eMarketer's estimates, an average user would spend about 86 minutes per day watching digital videos on streaming services this year.
From a report: Despite Netflix and Amazon investing billions of dollars in producing original content, they are struggling to make inroads in emerging markets. YouTube, on the other hand, is growing rapidly, becoming a daily habit for even new internet users. In India, for instance, YouTube reaches 245 million unique users each month, or 85 percent of all internet users in the country, the company told VentureBeat. About 60 percent of all YouTube traffic in India comes from outside of its six major cities. [Globally, YouTube has 1.9 billion monthly active users.]
As consumption on YouTube grows, creators are also finding loyal audiences. In India alone, YouTube now has more than 600 channels with more than 1 million subscribers, up from 20 channels in 2016. Record label T-Series, which is fighting with PewDiePie for the title of most-subscribed YouTube channel, took 10 years to get to its first 10 million subscribers. In the last two years, it has grown to 60 million subscribers. Globally, YouTube says the number of channels with more than 1 million subscribers has grown by 75 percent this year.
Globally, YouTube told VentureBeat that 75 percent of the platform's watch time occurs on a mobile device. The average watch time for a mobile user is 60 minutes per day. Or in other words, this is the time a user could have spent watching Netflix. According to eMarketer's estimates, an average user would spend about 86 minutes per day watching digital videos on streaming services this year.
Watching for 3-4 hours straight isn't the only way to do "Binge". What I usually do is watch Netflix about 30 minutes each night (I don't have time for more...), finishing an entire season of a series in a couple of weeks. It's still a "binge" in the sense that I watch the series as one very long movie, and rarely watch other things in the middle. I actually feel that series-watching on Netflix have become the new "book": it takes a long time to finish, every night you continue from where you left off last night, you don't usually do it for 4 hours straight but perhaps more like 30 minutes, and it has a lot of depth and breadth (unlike a short movie).
Netflix still has a lot of series I want to watch, but I wish they had a lot more of the older TV series (there are *decades* worth of excellent series out there). Star Trek is an excellent example of older content they do have, and I watched.
I prefer learning stuff over watching yet another cop drama or soap opera
I can attend graduate-level physics lectures by top professors, with great graphics and sound
I can learn glassblowing, welding, knifemaking, machining, woodworking, and more
Currently, I'm watching card magic tutorials
Even some promotional materials are educational. By watching an ad, I learned about longwall coal mining
And then, for fun, there's dead malls and Uncle Bumblefuck (AvE)
So because YOU don't like it, Netflix and Youtube is for dummies? Not all of us are in school and/or like to read. Some of us have stressful jobs and kids, and very much enjoy those few precious moments when we get to turn off our brains for a bit and relax in front of the TV. But I guess raising children and being successful makes me a dummy, eh?