How My Brain Kept Me from Co-Founding YouTube(prog21.dadgum.com)
prog21.dadgum.com
How My Brain Kept Me from Co-Founding YouTube
http://prog21.dadgum.com/39.html
9 comments
What's funny is that I now have a similar fear of 1TB drives.. "If a lone drive fails, that is a lot of data to go at once"
Both the fears seem pretty reasonable to me, probably because I usually don't buy a main harddrive with more than 200gb usually no more than 120.
I started coding on a ZX81 with 16K RAM.
In 2 years, that will be 30 years ago. If RAM doubles every 1.5 years, then in 2 years a new machine should have 16G RAM (x1,000,000). At the moment they have about 4GB, so it's not far off.
In 2 years, that will be 30 years ago. If RAM doubles every 1.5 years, then in 2 years a new machine should have 16G RAM (x1,000,000). At the moment they have about 4GB, so it's not far off.
You can already buy MacPro's with 32GB of Ram. For about 8k$ unfortunately.
You could also buy 32KB RAM for a ZX81 - but it felt a little out of reach. It was expensive, unusual, non-standard.
The thing is, 16GB RAM will soon be ordinary. Every PC will have it. What things become possible that are unthinkable today? Maybe multiple virtualized OSes could become standard.
The thing is, 16GB RAM will soon be ordinary. Every PC will have it. What things become possible that are unthinkable today? Maybe multiple virtualized OSes could become standard.
i think this is something that's inherent in most techies, you know just enough to know that something like this would be unreliable, so you don't trust it when it comes out. While a regular user would go "OMG More Space!!!"
The point that the article makes is not a technical one.
It is a philosophical one instead. The ideas of tomorrow must look beyond what is possible today into anticipating what may be possible tomorrow.
The execution of such an idea would then hold the promise of innovation to break today's barriers.
It is a philosophical one instead. The ideas of tomorrow must look beyond what is possible today into anticipating what may be possible tomorrow.
The execution of such an idea would then hold the promise of innovation to break today's barriers.
It's Moore's Law: you're unconsciously calibrated to the past, and it doesn't make sense to your hindbrain that you'll be out by orders of magnitude: x1000 in 15 years. I mean, that increase is completely unreasonable. Isn't it?
On the flip side, it also opens opportunities that people in the industry simply didn't entertain, because they were literally unthinkable and therefore unseeable just a few years ago (and I literally mean literally). I spoke to the inventor of a new method (a few decades ago) of hardware multiplication that became the standard for a while; he said it was made possible by an increase in silicon. It was theoretically possible before then, but no one looked.
On the flip side, it also opens opportunities that people in the industry simply didn't entertain, because they were literally unthinkable and therefore unseeable just a few years ago (and I literally mean literally). I spoke to the inventor of a new method (a few decades ago) of hardware multiplication that became the standard for a while; he said it was made possible by an increase in silicon. It was theoretically possible before then, but no one looked.
Was he given the opportunity to co-found YouTube? That isn't clear from the article.
I don't think so. I believe he had similar thoughts (streaming video online would be great) but immediately dismissed them as requiring too much bandwidth.
Had he had the foresight to avoid those limiting beliefs, he could have invented something like YouTube.
Had he had the foresight to avoid those limiting beliefs, he could have invented something like YouTube.
Thing is, a lot of people could have invented something like YouTube, and a lot of people tried. But the YouTube people had the skills to grow and scale their site in a phenomenal way, which is why they're the ones that are remembered. YouTube exemplifies the notion that ideas are worthless, execution is everything.
Right, but the article isn't really about creating youtube, it is about realizing when you've mentally added an artificial constraint and not letting it stop you.
Yeah, but in reality the ideas in the article are really more boring then the headline suggests.
He wasn't in a position to co-found youtube, not to mention there were already plenty of video sites around before and during youtube's rise to prominence.
It's a classic case of "well I had that idea I could of done it" - doing it is 99.9999% of the exercise, having the idea is 0.0001%.
He wasn't in a position to co-found youtube, not to mention there were already plenty of video sites around before and during youtube's rise to prominence.
It's a classic case of "well I had that idea I could of done it" - doing it is 99.9999% of the exercise, having the idea is 0.0001%.
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They also had the connections to turn around and sell it to someone who could anchor it against the legal challenges that everyone involved knew it would have to face. Streaming video had been done before, but Youtube was the first place where you could upload your own video and show it to others without having it be manually approved by the site operator.
Given the current state of copyright law it was pretty much insane for them to expect to be anything other than a lawsuit magnet; unless they had a plan to deal with it.
Given the current state of copyright law it was pretty much insane for them to expect to be anything other than a lawsuit magnet; unless they had a plan to deal with it.
Or, just as likely, on the other side of the spectrum, they tried to create the best site they could and got multiple offers on a daily basis since inception.
In other words, just because they sold to Google, doesn't mean other companies didn't also offer money that would have made the founders millionaires multiple times over if they had accepted any buyout offer in the previous 6 months to a year before that. Most any startup that sells for millions or billions of dollars didn't just accept the first buyout offer they got and it happened to be for a lot of money; no, they had been negotiating and evaluating serious offers from day one, all the while improving their software for months or years.
In other words, just because they sold to Google, doesn't mean other companies didn't also offer money that would have made the founders millionaires multiple times over if they had accepted any buyout offer in the previous 6 months to a year before that. Most any startup that sells for millions or billions of dollars didn't just accept the first buyout offer they got and it happened to be for a lot of money; no, they had been negotiating and evaluating serious offers from day one, all the while improving their software for months or years.
yes, but the main thing was the timing, IMHO.
The main thing, IMHO, was the way it used flash/flv for video presentation and had a way to let users upload fairly arbitrary video formats and convert to flv on the back-end. I don't remember if I encountered flv video independently before I encountered youtube, but it was around the same time.
Remember the days before flash video? Remember having to use quicktime and realplayer? Those days sucked.
Remember the days before flash video? Remember having to use quicktime and realplayer? Those days sucked.
I'm pretty confident that before YouTube, the average non-geek did not have a way to embed videos on their personal websites. YouTube solved a simple but not easy problem: how can you let the mainstream share videos and search for videos. The server-side FLV encoding from what I've read - was groundbreaking - most previous video sharing websites either required a specific format/codec that required anyone who wanted to view it to install the codec and/or viewer.
YouTube democratized online video. The founders may have been at the right place at the right time with the right execution. However, do not discount the fact that YouTube's founders came from PayPal. I'll try to find the link later but in an interview one of the YouTube founders said being on the ground-floor at Paypal and watching them build the runway for the company to take-off inspired them because it made them believe it was possible.
YouTube democratized online video. The founders may have been at the right place at the right time with the right execution. However, do not discount the fact that YouTube's founders came from PayPal. I'll try to find the link later but in an interview one of the YouTube founders said being on the ground-floor at Paypal and watching them build the runway for the company to take-off inspired them because it made them believe it was possible.
I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were hundreds of video startups started with 6 months of YouTube's founding.
I'm still to be convinced that the bandwidth and storage costs of YouTube are economically viable. If he (and many others) had 'limiting beliefs', they were in overlooking that hugely popular businesses often attract buyers even when they're haemorraging red ink.
The only people who've made money off YouTube are the founders. I'm glad Google are kindly subsidising it for us, but then I'm not a shareholder or a recently laid-off employee. As a business it's a dog.
The only people who've made money off YouTube are the founders. I'm glad Google are kindly subsidising it for us, but then I'm not a shareholder or a recently laid-off employee. As a business it's a dog.
The author's argument is a total non-sequitur. The whole "mental block" about sites like YouTube and Flickr was that DEVELOPERS couldn't imagine having to pay for such outrageous bandwidth usage (or that they'd even be able to find a place to host the site, for that matter).
He then goes on to equate this to developers not wanting to have their users download 64MB runtimes or 2GB IDEs. These two things are entirely different.
A developer knows that, while Joe User may have no problem waiting for a 500MB video of some chick topless to download, the same user isn't going to want to wait to download a 50MB installer for a program that makes Bingo cards.
He then goes on to equate this to developers not wanting to have their users download 64MB runtimes or 2GB IDEs. These two things are entirely different.
A developer knows that, while Joe User may have no problem waiting for a 500MB video of some chick topless to download, the same user isn't going to want to wait to download a 50MB installer for a program that makes Bingo cards.
the same user isn't going to want to wait to download a 50MB installer for a program that makes Bingo cards.
As something of the resident expert on this topic, let me tell you: users are certainly willing to wait for a 12MB installer for a program that makes bingo cards. It actually converts (very marginally) better than the 500kb installer which needs Java as a pre-req.
As something of the resident expert on this topic, let me tell you: users are certainly willing to wait for a 12MB installer for a program that makes bingo cards. It actually converts (very marginally) better than the 500kb installer which needs Java as a pre-req.
Hehe, I actually had you in mind when I wrote that :)
I created a deployment of a production Smalltalk application recently. (It's been around well over a decade.) 24 MB. I use the image compression utility. 8MB.
The default VisualWorks image is 12MB. And I also worked on one production app that was 110MB deployed. Most of that was data. We pre-cached all of the queries required to populate all of the drop-downs, so that after it got done loading, users found it to be "fast."
I thought of something like YouTube. "Flash video? No self-respecting techie would use Flash!"
The default VisualWorks image is 12MB. And I also worked on one production app that was 110MB deployed. Most of that was data. We pre-cached all of the queries required to populate all of the drop-downs, so that after it got done loading, users found it to be "fast."
I thought of something like YouTube. "Flash video? No self-respecting techie would use Flash!"
Hmm, maybe I'm too retro for this guy, but 16 bytes for an element in a linked list does sound excessive. :)
It's only two words! You need two 64 bit pointers on a 64-bit machine.
A fuckton of people have come up with the idea that "hey, since a 4gb address space is really plenty, why don't we try using an n/2 address space and have a whole cons fit in one word?" I'm sure the same thing has come up plenty of times before.
It turns out to be not so hot to avoid directly using the OS' VM and the hardware's MMU.
A fuckton of people have come up with the idea that "hey, since a 4gb address space is really plenty, why don't we try using an n/2 address space and have a whole cons fit in one word?" I'm sure the same thing has come up plenty of times before.
It turns out to be not so hot to avoid directly using the OS' VM and the hardware's MMU.
Flickr blew my mind when it appeared back in 2004.
A mind easily blown. Stand back anytime this guy is near a website that is anything more than an aggregate of img tags.
A mind easily blown. Stand back anytime this guy is near a website that is anything more than an aggregate of img tags.
Did you ever notice how flickr prevents you from seeing multiple high-res images at once? You can't even see links to other photos when viewing a higher res! The highest resolution you can see on a navigable page is 500px on a side.
Flickr is fucking atrocious for actually viewing someone's photos. It's about as shitty as they could possibly get away with.
On the other hand, it has absolutely terrific support for communities, with all sorts of little touches to encourage their formation. It also manages to simultaneously appeal to US Grandmas, Arab twentysomethings, and the requisite "self facilitating media nodes" that fuel WEB 2.0 hype.
Flickr is fucking atrocious for actually viewing someone's photos. It's about as shitty as they could possibly get away with.
On the other hand, it has absolutely terrific support for communities, with all sorts of little touches to encourage their formation. It also manages to simultaneously appeal to US Grandmas, Arab twentysomethings, and the requisite "self facilitating media nodes" that fuel WEB 2.0 hype.
Thankfully, like the writer, I eventually realized the stupidity of my ways, but I think many of us are susceptible to this bug at least once ;-)