I've been thinking about this for a while. I kind of want to make a video-based social media, not unlike Youtube. Youtube's increasing shittiness reminded me I wanted to do this again. I especially don't like how Youtube's become less and less social. I miss the days of groups and Youtube Live
I want to take cues from SomethingAwful. The site would be free to browse, albeit with ads, but for a one-time fee, you can set up an account and have access to a lot more than just browsing.
The question is: Should I bother? Would any of you even try to use it, or do you think it'll die out with no one using it or even checking it out?
Feedback and ideas also welcome.

Y'know, it might help if I explain my business model further:
For website features, I'm pretty much just taking everything from YouTube as it was in 2010. This means groups, playlists, captions, Streams, etcetera. Heavy emphasis on the SOCIAL aspect of SOCIAL MEDIA. I'm also going to be introducing a better system for audio-only uploads, in case you're interested in that kind of thing, but it is not my main focus.

I have an idea that will probably get me into a shit ton of hot water. If you do not log in for 8 years, your account gets "archived." You will no longer be allowed to log in, and after a period of time, your username becomes eligible for registration again. However, if you gave me any avenue to contact you, you will be contacted yearly to be reminded your account exists and that logging in will reset this timer. (If you are paying for a subscription, this count down will be put on pause until you stop paying.)
Your comments, videos, etcetera will remain on the site, provided you do not request deletion. You'll be provided a special login post-archive to access it, so that you can delete whatever you do not want to keep online.

Additional monetization will probably be required to keep paying server bills. I don't want investor money, and I do not plan to make the ads obnoxious.
Pre-roll ads are a maybe, but there'd be only one allowed. I REFUSE to do any more than that. Beyond that, margin/takeover ads are also a maybe, but they will not be allowed to take over the interior content. I refuse to do anything like Bitview, where every page is liable to a full-screen popup, and frankly the margin ads are a stretch.

I think that in terms of functionality, it’s pretty weak for a paid social platform.
It would have to be a fully capable service where you can post videos, audio files, images, and text, without turning into a microblogging site...or at least without likes or retweets.
It should also only show your friends, not your followers.
Followers should stay private, because that’s important to avoid becoming like modern social media.

However if you only want to make a video platform, my only suggestion would be to allow users to post comments without an account, but keep those comments clearly separated from the others.

It’s also important to maintain compatibility with older operating systems, so I would choose a layout based on tables.
But you can use whatever you want (as long as it’s not bloated JavaScrapt like react).

Personally, I had imagined a social platform where, instead of having a profile, you have a personal board that you can moderate, and the "TL" is just a general board.
Basically, the idea was to make a better version of Twitter (at least for me), but in the end I don’t think it’s really a good idea.

Anyway, I’ll be there to try your site.
The real problem is finding users who are willing to sign up for your platform, especially if it’s a paid service.

Okay, I see what you're saying. However, doing all of that moves away from what I want to achieve. Damn... Especially the "allow users to post without an account" deal. Part of the point of the paid account system is to ensure that money's on the line if they break the rules. The other part is that a video sharing platform is the most expensive type of social media, so I'd need to cover server and moderation costs SOMEHOW.
Bitview is profitable from what I know. However, the ads are absolutely obnoxious, and I'd rather not subject anyone else to that. I guess I could make a subscription model where you get benefits such as no ads, but I also want to avoid subscriptions if I can help it. Besides, I'm not sure what else I could offer with such a subscription model.

Nnh, this is so difficult. Maybe I'll launch it as free and then figure out how to make it actually viable as a model.
(Your idea reminds me of both Proboards and the Wiki talk page model. I'd say go for it as an experiment, honestly.)

I understand, I would have said it was a good idea if alt tubes didn't already exist.
Because, seeing the current state of the internet, I don't know if many people would be willing to pay to use it.
It's already really hard to make an active, free site, so a paid one... I don't know...
Currently, most alternative sites that actually work, beyond the major platforms (Reddit, Twitter, etc.), are mainly revivals of existing ones.

And right now, the state of this part of the web is like this:
- Revival projects (vidlii, bitvid, spacehey, etc.)
- Personal Sites (Neocities/Nekoweb, etc.)
- Imageboards (the only type of board that is still alive today)
- Textboards (never been very prominent outside Japan)
- Forums (almost dead, but fortunately some still persist)
- Alternative search engines (wiby, marginalia, etc.), which I find quite bad for discovering new sites...

Some new platforms are also emerging that seem really active (pikidiary and zdiskuss, which I discovered recently).
This may indicate that we are finally reaching a point where people are looking for new, original sites rather than just revivals of existing ones!

Or maybe not, LOL.

Anyway, you have to consider the current state of the web if you want to make a website that works and is appealing.
Because above all, you're doing it to build a community and have fun!
That's why in this context I don't think many people would be interested in a paid video social media.
On the other hand, it's a very good idea to start with.

But you're right, the advertising model we have today is bad and really annoying.
And my suggestion to allow anyone to post comments is definitely a shitty idea.
Actually, I wanted to find a way to let people enjoy it enough to make them want to create a paid account.

However, I still think that allowing people to post images, audio, and flash files in addition to videos is a good idea
(text isn’t necessary, since it’s primarily a video platform that you want to make)

There needs to be enough variety in content for people to really appreciate it and want to contribute by making an account.

But I don’t think it’s viable to launch it like this.
It would be a good idea to start by making it available for free.
That's more or less what Something Awful did, and I think you should do the same.

For my site idea, I dropped it because I came up with a better one: a linkboard that combines a web directory with a search engine.
It’s nothing revolutionary, but I was frustrated with what currently exists.

I have an old version on my Heliohost site that I could update and share here if people are interested.
I've added at least ~500 links, so it's technically already usable.

Apologies for the silence. I've been working on the layout for the last few days. Something that's always gone wrong is the design of the site itself, so my hope is that by creating a complete static layout first before I start programming the backend, I won't be worrying about making a frontend the entire time. Time will tell if this strategy works.

Part of the activity problem is definitely just how difficult it is to actually keep yourself in hte habit of checking multiple sites, especially when sites these days are specifically designed to be addicting and draw away as much attention as humanly possible. That's why I wanted to create an aggregate site that let you link multiple accounts together and freely browse several sites simultaneously, at your leisure. Do you think that would help, or do you think that's not going to help much?

>I wanted to find a way to let people enjoy it enough to make them want to create a paid account
I've considered a few options.
The easiest is just... "Don't bother?" People can still enjoy most of the features without paying money, it's just that you are a passive observer without a paid account.
Another option is restricted free accounts. These accounts can't upload anything(but a PFP,) but CAN interact. They'll probably be forced on a trust system where their initial couple hundred interactions need to be approved first before they become public. This still could be abused though.
A different vein in the restricted free accounts is free accounts that allow you to create playlists and subscribe, but nothing else. This is the hardest one to abuse, but I'm not sure that this would be enough.

I'll be honest, launching it as free and making it paid wasn't exactly a hard option for me to pick. An earlier incarnation of the idea was exactly like this. I also planned to just give everyone of world2ch and a couple of other places free accounts anyways.

>The state of the web
I wonder why image boards are the only ones that survived outside of Japan.
My planned site doesn't really fit into any of these. It's closest to a revival site, but it's a revival in concept only. I'm just trying to take a bunch of discarded features from classic YouTube, and use that as my starting point, while mixing in new features(the aforementioned audio. I'll also consider image posts but I think that I might make an art site instead for that.) I wonder how that will affect my site. Maybe I'll end up with something that is just unique enough to draw new people, just like the two sites you had mentioned.

>Share
You could do it. I'd be interested in checking it out, though unfortunately most social media doesn't appeal to me so I can't say I'd stick around.

>Followers should stay private, because that’s important to avoid becoming like modern social media.
Now, I'm curious. Why do you think visible follower counts have caused such a degradation of modern social media? Every site I can think of had public followers, but the degradation only started happening around the time of Facebook(at least, from what I've seen.)

>Apologies for the silence. I've been working on the layout for the last few days.
No problem, I’m also slow to reply wwww

>Part of the activity problem is definitely just how difficult it is to actually keep yourself in hte habit of checking multiple sites
Yep, it's not easy to get back into the habit.
Not to mention that it's not easy to find them now.

>That's why I wanted to create an aggregate site that let you link multiple accounts together and freely browse several sites simultaneously, at your leisure.
Your idea reminds me of a kind of mega web portal, and I love it wwwwww
But in the long term, it could lock them into the same sites available

>A different vein in the restricted free accounts is free accounts that allow you to create playlists and subscribe, but nothing else.
That's a good idea, and I think that's what you should go with.

>I also planned to just give everyone of world2ch and a couple of other places free accounts anyways.
Great, I'll be there to try it out!

>I wonder why image boards are the only ones that survived outside of Japan.
Textboards have been overshadowed by 4chan and its popularity.
This was mostly helped by the visibility provided by SA and the Habbo raid.
As a result, few people are familiar with them.

>It's closest to a revival site, but it's a revival in concept only.
That's not a problem. It's just inspiration.

>I'll also consider image posts but I think that I might make an art site instead for that.)
I don't know, it's already a lot of work to make one.
Imo, you should try to make a website that combines the two. But it's up to you to decide how you feel about it.
Personally I have a lot of sites I want to make, so I can’t really say anything about it wwwwwww

>You could do it. I'd be interested in checking it out, though unfortunately most social media doesn't appeal to me so I can't say I'd stick around.
It's not a social media. I tried to find the best mix between a board where:
- you can post anonymously
- contribute effectively to the site with submitter accounts (which give more possibilities depending on the user's activity).
- And the directory that allows anyone to use it as an alternative to search engines.

>Now, I'm curious. Why do you think visible follower counts have caused such a degradation of modern social media?
I think it's one of the main reasons why people on the modern web are obsessed with being famous.
And for a social media that aims to encourage socialization, I think it's a terrible idea.
This has completely killed the whole point of this kind of sites, there's nothing social about them now.

Whoa, I guess this will be my first post on w2ch- hello! I come from textboard.org (RIP) and also zdiskuss; I spotted this thread on wiby while checking if zdiskuss was indexed yet. This thread turned out to be the only hit besides the site itself. I'll be using the post syntax from textboard- if that's wrong then oh well!

>>6
> I wonder why image boards are the only ones that survived outside of Japan.
I'll tack on a few reasons as a twenty-something y/o American: They're not easy (for a mouth-breather) to find, they _usually_ expect interesting posts over the span of weeks and months, and they don't have any pornography to keep "people" entertained.
These are obviously features to enjoy, but the cost of a nice, easygoing place is that it won't, by definition, have the hustle and bustle of a big platform and seem dead by comparison to other places online.

> Part of the activity problem is [...] how difficult it is to actually keep yourself in the habit of checking multiple sites, [...] That's why I wanted to create an aggregate site
You're on the right track, but I think a better answer is to look into RSS or Atom feeds, and teach your users how to use local newsreader programs to help them keep up. If you're not concerned with per-view advertisements, i.e. by requiring money to use the site, then there isn't the bemoaned downside of RSS reducing the amount of 'real' traffic (in actuality: traffic that loads adverts.)
It also addresses:

>>7
> But in the long term, it could lock them into the same sites available
Because RSS newsreader programs can consume any RSS feeds, you can add as many sites you want to the portal.

> Your idea reminds me of a kind of mega web portal, and I love it wwwwww
and onto this ^, at the same time you can also create a web page containing the feed content as well, as a service to people who cannot install a feed reader or who just want to peek from time to time. These sites are called Planets and many open source programming communities still maintain them, like KDE or the i2p project.

That's my go-en for any kind of new interactive social system. For the idea of a video platform desired by OP, several well-praised edutainment creators made their own distribution platform called Nebula where the creators own the company hosting their content. Maybe you could make something similar, but just slightly less gatekept? Who knows.

> I think it's one of the main reasons why people on the modern web are obsessed with being famous.
You are spot on. Fame gets to people, makes them chase the trends and debase what they want to say down to mass-market slop instead of making something concrete and real.

I haven't had internet all day, so I apologize for how this post will miss a few of the points touched on. I appreciate the responses though and I will want to do it later.

>>7
>But in the long term, it could lock them into the same sites available
Are you saying that the aggregate site would lock people into the same handful of sites it browses? That's a fair criticism.
I wanted to provide an open API standard to help prevent that, but that still relies on people being willing to coordinate on an API, which isn't always the most easiest task to succeed with out there.

>It's already a lot of work to make one
I like making websites and I'm a workaholic. Making 3 websites sounds like a fun time, provided I can actually FINISH them.

>obsessed with being famous
Hrmm... So, I kind of understand where you're going at with this, though my basis of Youtube used to be FAR worse(having a whole leaderboard system for you to compare yourself towards,) and yet there were less people interested in being famous.
Also, these statistics do serve an important service outside of fame, giving you general indications on what is good and what isn't.

So, let's say that I keep them private to the creator. Well... what exactly does that solve? The creator still knows how many millions of views they've gotten, and how many hundreds of thousands of subscribers they've got. They can make rough guestimates on what other people have, and... still lord over it. They can also just take their statistics public themselves anyways, defeating the purpose.
In theory, the only way to solve that behavior entirely is to just not give the creators these statistics, or provide alternate statistics that provide relativism to their own output.
Neither solution is particularly optimal, as important information is lost either way-and this also prevents the watchers from acquiring certain important information for consideration before watching. A video with a high rating:viewer ratio is probably not entirely honest with its own statistics and may be viewbotted, for example.

I suspect that the much larger motivator for fame chasing isn't actually public statistics. Though the statistics definitely play into it a bit, most videosharing sites make it easy to make money off of your videos-to the point that you can generally start off your career with the intent of making money. (This is even the case of
X, Reddit, and Facebook.) When your goal is money, your end point is fame. Couple that with algorithms that tend to promote addicting content to try to keep people on the site for as long as possible, creating unnatural trends, and I think you can see why I think this might play more into it than the raw statistics.

>>8
Welcome to Nameless' little corner of the web. Hope you enjoy it here.

>RSS and Atom feeds
This is a good idea, and I want to do this too, but XML-based feeds are read-only. The idea behind the aggregation site is to try to add as many of the basic features as possible, so things like searching, commenting, finding new profiles, etcetera.
I would say it's like Digg/Reddit, but that site's nothing like this idea, so I have no idea what to compare this to.

>>9
>This is a good idea, and I want to do this too, but XML-based feeds are read-only.
You can have all of those things, AND have RSS. Reddit does it (stick .rss or .atom at the end of any subreddit's URL and you'll get the index of the subreddit in RSS format.) RSS in the end is just a standard content-type to represent the site with. Just like how browsers speak HTTP, newsreaders speak RSS/Atom+XML. It's just one of many features to support.

You could also have the site automatically pull in RSS feeds from other places, solving your API problem (and this is what RSS Planets do!) People who want to make their site's content available on the aggregator can submit an upstream RSS feed that your platform then consumes and republishes for everyone to see- this is in fact the point of RSS but it is an underutilized case that never gained any traction, I think because copyright license nightmares.

Reddit originally was meant to serve this function- both RSS and Reddit were partly made by the same person; the late Aaron Swartz. The site went corporate and he quit, then died before he could realize any of it.

>Welcome to Nameless' little corner of the web. Hope you enjoy it here.
Thanks! I'm used to Kareha, so I'm right at home.

>>10
Oh, I see what you're saying. I misinterpreted your post to mean to only focus on an RSS/Atom portal. Okay, that makes way more sense.
RSS doesn't really solve the write-API problem though, only the read-only. That's the major hurtle that the rest of the site would have to overcome.

>>11
>RSS doesn't really solve the write-API problem though
My post (>>10) I describe that it is possible for you to *pull* content automatically from other websites by requesting RSS feeds from them, and then writing the content of the feed to your site. Its an alternative to having a write API where other sites *push* content.

I think pull is better than push, it minimizes traffic (you're not being hit for every update on every website) and gives time for the upstream content provider to delete any illegal content before your aggregator dials in to fetch it.

Hey everyone! I finally finished my website www

>>8
Welcome to world2ch! I hope you enjoy your time here (´ー｀)

>They're not easy (for a mouth-breather) to find
It's also because nobody gives a shit about textboards in general.
For example, I saw on /jp/ that world2ch had been shared, and quite a few posts were saying that textboards are pointless in 2025..

They really have no taste.

>and they don't have any pornography
We can have pr0n!!! It's just that it's very... ASCIIfied wwww

>>9
>When your goal is money, your end point is fame
Yeah, the real problem is being able to make money on these platforms.
However if you want to make a social media, I think just seeing your friends would be much better!

>viewer ratio is probably not entirely honest
True... Actually, maybe just keeping the rating system wouldn’t be a bad idea?

Concerning RSS feeds, I agree that it could be a good idea.
But I don't know, I've never been interested in them. So I can't say anything more about it.
Going to the sites myself works better for me wwwww ( ´ー｀)y-~~

>>12
You aren't understanding what I mean by "write API". It's not MY site they're writing to, it's THEIR site I want to write to.
Again, the aggregate site is supposed to let people connect their accounts from various sites together to get their subscriptions, subscribe to people, mess with playlists-to the site, and not leave that client-side to the aggregate.

Okay, imagine Invidious if it didn't observe JUST Youtube. That's the best I can get you. It's a frontend meant to combine several websites together into a semi-cohesive experience.

>>14
Ah, I didn't get that. Whoops. Well, that's just the Fediverse at that point? See protocols like ActivityPub (basically SMTP over HTTP but JSON and New.) It's the shit that lets the federated reddit clone also vomit things onto the federated twitter clone.
Honestly just write your own API, the standardized ones are very shit.

>>15
Hmm... Alright. I'll still make a couple of custom built adapters for certain sites so that I still have like 4-5 sites that have built in support without them adopting my API(YouTube is the obvious first one.)

Man, I hate pointing out that the chasing of money caused the problem. It's so blindingly obvious, but also I want to run my own partnership program too, which kind of goes against what I just said.
I think what I want is incredibly contradictory. A SOCIAL media platform that also has a couple of handpicked people who are making cool shit that get paid for it because they're original.
Maybe I should just do the art website first instead. That's more straightforward...

>>15
Honestly, I don't know if it's worth building an API from scratch for a site like this.

The real solution to checking multiple sites regularly is just getting into the habit.
And the only way to do that is to rethink how you use the web.

>>16
I understand what you mean, but for a social media platform, I don’t think a partnership system is a good idea..

In fact, I don’t think any of the sites we call social media are actually social media.
Most of them aren’t really usable for socializing, which is supposed to be their basic purpose.
They feel more like message boards or community sites that have been "improved" in the wrong way.

>>18
Whilst I do agree that social media isn't really social media anymore, we're talking the big sites and the big players here such as facebook. I don't agree that it isn't useable for socializing completely. If you're ballsy enough to just add random people within your area and start messaging people out of the blue I suppose something could come out of that, or I suppose you could also join a group of some sort , something local. With this mindset though something could come out of anything, even here