What differentiates floatplane from Vessel? How does LMG expect floatplane to be successful?

[ThighsSavesLives]

As the title says, what differentiates floatplane from Vessel? Other than the company being run by LMG, which admittedly gives them a better understanding of YouTube versus the CEO of Vessel, who was the Founding CEO of Hulu, I don't see enough of a difference from floatplane and Vessel to see floatplane succeed. Now, I'm not doubting the management skills of Linus and Luke, but I don't think it was a management issue with Vessel, as the CEO previously managed Hulu and then moved onto be apart of the board of directors for Dreamworks Animation. It could be argued that Vessel didn't fail, and their assets were just bought out by Verizon, but Vessel wouldn't have had any incentive to sell if they didn't believe the future of the company was profitable, unless if it it was promised that the acquisition would be used to grow Vessel, which I strongly doubt was the reason they sold (looking at Verizon's acquisition history it's easy to see why; they mainly buy companies for their assets.) I'm sure LMG has thought of this, and I'm sure they know much more about what happened behind closed doors at Vessel, but I honestly don't think the demand is there.

 

Vessel had a huge network of creators behind it, and many of those wanted to do what floatplane is promising: diversify revenue for creators and allow benefits for viewers who pay. Yet that failed. Many of the largest creators stopped using or barely used the platform-including GloZell Green, MinutePhysics, FailArmy, Brittani Louise Taylor and Shane Dawson-whether that be for personal reasons, financial reasons, or whatever other reason (I'd guess they didn't get as much revenue as promised.) Again, it could be different as someone who understands the platform, but from my (admittedly limited) understanding, LMG's networking with other YouTubers is mainly technology channels, in which he's already one of the top in that category. I feel like to really breakthrough, floatplane needs some extraordinarily large YouTubers backing it, with a minimum of double the subscribers of LTT, probably more, or channels whose audience actively understands YouTube and that it's not a sustainable platform and/or an audience that already supports the creators on Patreon, or ones that blindly buy whatever the creators promote. What comes to mind are the newer large animation channels such as TheOdds1Out, let's play channels such as Game Grumps (although being a smaller channel than Linus Tech Tips, it could be argued the Grumps have a much farther reach in terms of other creators, along with being run by someone who has been an online creator for just as long as Linus, and creating content for a much bigger genre, therefore possibly influencing more creators in that genre), Team Four Star, and all the podcasts that rely heavily on Patreon (e.g. Your Kickstarter Sucks.) As for much larger channels, Jake Paul, PewDiePie, and Mr. Beast come to mind. All of these share audiences who are either tech savvy enough to understand YouTube, supporting the creators on Patreon, or blindly buys whatever the creator is selling.

 

Problem is, most of the larger YouTubers don't see a need to join floatplane, as they've already diversified their income by quite a bit (Jake Paul is a business mogul and monetizes his skill set of marketing to children to large companies, PewDiePie sells a bunch of merch, etc.) The smaller channels, as shown by Vessel, don't have enough of an incentive to put in the work, as the nature of the platform doesn't allow easy discovery of new audiences, and I imagine the algorithm is entirely different then the YouTube algorithm, so extra effort would possibly need to put in to market to a new audience, which floatplane doesn't have a huge userbase. It's a paradox, you need a large amount of creators to put floatplane on the map and floatplane needs to have a large userbase to give creators a reason to put in the effort to incentivize their current audience to pay that $3 a month to floatplane. Also, there seems to be a lot of confusion with floatplane, as many of the LTT audience didn't grasp the concept for months.

 

Now, I could be wrong and floatplane could have a lot more potential then Vessel due to a wildly different marketing strategy, and maybe floatplane doesn't plan to scale like Vessel was trying to accomplish and it's only purpose is to give tech channels a chance to diversify their income, but as it stands, I can't see floatplane succeeding. Honestly, I'm very much hoping I'm wrong, as there is a need for an alternative to YouTube in case if YouTube fails, and competition is always good, but I just don't see how copying Vessel is a viable business venture, as that failed so hard.

 

[dstarfire]

Think they talked about this in one of the WAN show tangents. Vessel was a single, low subscription for all the content. This resulted in most creators getting only a small slice of a small amount of revenue, which just wasn't worth the added hassle of managing a second platform. This also eliminated the fan benefit of supporting content you enjoy. Why pay for something when you can wait a few days and get it for free?

 

It's also possible I'm misremembering that episode and they were talking about some other video platform.

[Mihle]

Floatplane is more of a Vessel and Patreon mix sort of rather than just being like vessel, because you have one subscription per channel and not one subscription for everything.

[lewdicrous]

Vessel = pay a sum for access to all the creators in the platform.

Floatplane = pay per creator. (only pay for those you want to watch)

[dalekphalm]

People need to think of Floatplane as more like Patreon than Vessel. Vessel was the "Netflix" of YouTube videos. Floatplane is the "Patreon" of YouTube videos.

 

You sub to a single creator for a single price. The creator takes home a large chunk of that sub. So even small amounts of subs on Floatplane can amount to a large increase in revenue for creators.

 

Once they can get a good selection of creators on the platform, it should be fairly sustainable. Bonus points if they can manage to sustainably add in "combo packs" (pick 5 creators, pay for the price of 3 kind of deal), etc.

[Sir Asvald]

7 hours ago, lewdicrous said:

Vessel = pay a sum for access to all the creators in the platform.

Floatplane = pay per creator. (only pay for those you want to watch)

I think that is incorrect. I only pay for LTT and i can't watch others.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Abdul201588 said:

I think that is incorrect. I only pay for LTT and i can't watch others.

That's what he said.

[lewdicrous]

47 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

People need to think of Floatplane as more like Patreon than Vessel. Vessel was the "Netflix" of YouTube videos. Floatplane is the "Patreon" of YouTube videos.

 

You sub to a single creator for a single price. The creator takes home a large chunk of that sub. So even small amounts of subs on Floatplane can amount to a large increase in revenue for creators.

To add to this, Vessel was only $3/month ($20/year I think) for site wide access, while on Floatplane, the creators get to choose their price/tier. (Or at least that's the plan)

5 minutes ago, Abdul201588 said:

I think that is incorrect. I only pay for LTT and i can't watch others.

You only get access to the creators you paid for; if you paid for creator x only, then you'll only be able to watch videos from creator x. If you want to watch creator y's videos too, then you'll need to pay for that as well.