YouTube has an unrivalled collection of videos. I used to listen to most of my music on YouTube, and built many hours of playlists.
But I don't use YouTube any more. The level of advertising got to beyond tolerable.
And that is the problem these sites have. I might spend four hours on the weekend with music videos on, but I just could not increase that, there is not enough hours in the day. To grow, the site has to increase the proportion of ads, and then it starts to lose users based on their level of tolerance for crappy, repetitive advertising.
So anyone buying Facebook and suchlike for growth potential should also consider that there really is a practical upper limit to the revenue it can pull in before it becomes annoying and starts losing users. IMHO, YouTube is beyond that limit now, Google is pretty close, Facebook has a little room, but not that much.
There is I think a very interesting idea here - that an excessive "greed" for growth, if unbalanced, actually pushes the service faster time-wise over the lifecycle than it'd go if it were exploited more carefully.
This can be excessive ads, but this could be as well things like excessive features which make the service more bloated and unsuitable for the original audience.
But I don't use YouTube any more. The level of advertising got to beyond tolerable.
And that is the problem these sites have. I might spend four hours on the weekend with music videos on, but I just could not increase that, there is not enough hours in the day. To grow, the site has to increase the proportion of ads, and then it starts to lose users based on their level of tolerance for crappy, repetitive advertising.
So anyone buying Facebook and suchlike for growth potential should also consider that there really is a practical upper limit to the revenue it can pull in before it becomes annoying and starts losing users. IMHO, YouTube is beyond that limit now, Google is pretty close, Facebook has a little room, but not that much.