The Floatplane Club - Introduction Letter (Nov 1, 2016)

[LinusTech]

Here's a video version of what you're about to read:

 

As of November 1, 2016, Vessel.com - the video platform that you've been using to get early access to videos from Linus Media Group and others - is gone.

There were many people who hated Vessel.com and everything it stood for.. so good for them, I guess.. 

BUT there has also been a surprisingly strong negative reaction to the site's acquisition and removal by Verizon Communications Inc with the main complaints being these:

- I'll be stuck with no new LTT content for a week. BOOO!
- I loved the exclusive member-only comments section. Don't make me go back to YouTube comments!
- I HATE ads, but don't mind a monthly subscription fee if it means I can view the content I enjoy without them.

So.. since we've already got a 1 week buffer of content built up.. without further ado, I present to you, the LTT Floatplane Club - so named because even if it doesn't fly, we'd like to think it won't sink.. We.. will probably have to rename it at some point..

Anyway, the goal of the Floatplane Club is pretty straightforward. We want to deliver everything that was great about the Vessel experience and, given the time constraints, we want to do it as quickly and easily as possible.

So here's what we're offering today:

- DRM-Free downloads for members at 360p and 720p
- Ad free service - No pre-roll ads to suck up your bandwidth
- Exclusive member-only comments section through the LinusTechTips.com forum
- Early access - For now it'll be similar to the Vessel experience (1 week), but the window COULD change, and I can almost guarantee there will be more simultaneous releases for time-sensitive projects than before.

Beyond the initial offering, though I can't promise ALL of these will be available at the same membership level (High bitrate 4K video downloads that would CRUSH our current hosting setup come to mind), here are some things we are considering implementing LOVE to implement in the future:

- A streaming video player
- A sexier watch page
- Realtime chat to make it fun to grab a bag of popcorn and chat with other Floatplane Club members while viewing the latest releases
- 1080p and 4k videos

Linus Tech Tips doesn't take advantage of many community funding initiatives like Patreon, so PART of this move is about replacing the Vessel revenue stream that was so abruptly cut off so we can continue to meet our growth goals for the future - including the new writers we want to hire - but a BIGGER part of it is that it will allow us to FINALLY take control of the communication channel to our audience, allowing us to tell our viewers directly when there's a new video instead of publishing to YouTube and simply hoping it'll land in a subscriber box or two..

So how do I join?

Great question! You join the club by buying a subscription for $3 USD per month at the link in the video description, which unlocks an early access sub-forum on linustechtips.com where we'll be posting download links to our videos at various resolutions until we come up with something more elegant.

We realize that this won't work as well for mobile users, and it doesn't have a slick UI like Vessel did.. but we wanted to get something together fast enough that none of our Vessel viewers would miss their daily fix, and this is what we've got for now.. with our promise to continue to improve it!

Thanks for Reading,
LINUS SEBASTIAN & THE LMG TEAM

 

 

[Flygenring]

Uhm. Isn't this the same thing that we read when Vessel closed?

[ThinkWithPortals]

Quick question: how did you come up with "Floatplane" as a name? How did that even occur to you?

[TAHIRMIA]

Is this the thing that was being designed by you lot?

[STRMfrmXMN]

2 minutes ago, LinusTech said:

Great question! You join the club by buying a subscription for $3 USD per month at the link in the video description, which unlocks an early access sub-forum on linustechtips.com where we'll be posting download links to our videos at various resolutions until we come up with something more elegant.

 

Sounds great and all but what's preventing people from posting those links elsewhere? I mean look at PKA. There are a few places on the internet, often posted in the comments of PKA videos, where you can watch them early (something only Patreon people should be able to do) in abundance.

[laquine]

1 minute ago, lass9391 said:

Uhm. Isn't this the same thing that we read when Vessel closed?

You have to remember that floatplane was only offered to those coming from the vessel platform initially and it has loosely kept as a secret until now.

[Sreno1]

1 minute ago, ThinkWithPortals said:

Quick question: how did you come up with "Floatplane" as a name? How did that even occur to you?

"Even if it doesn't fly, it won't sink!" direct quote from Linus if you had even watched the video.

[kelvinhall05]

OMG that's so cheap! Is it available in Canada?

[Flygenring]

Just now, laquine said:

You have to remember that floatplane was only offered to those coming from the vessel platform initially and it has loosely kept as a secret until now.

Huh... i didn't realize that. Thanks for pointing that out.

[ThinkWithPortals]

10 minutes ago, Sreno1 said:

"Even if it doesn't fly, it won't sink!" direct quote from Linus if you had even watched the video.

No, I know that. I meant, how did he make the leap between "even if it doesn't succeed, I hope it won't fail" to "I'll call it floatplane!". Like, of all the things, why floatplane?

 

No need to be a total dick about it.

[LinusTech]

12 minutes ago, STRMfrmXMN said:

Sounds great and all but what's preventing people from posting those links elsewhere? I mean look at PKA. There are a few places on the internet, often posted in the comments of PKA videos, where you can watch them early (something only Patreon people should be able to do) in abundance.

It's very little effort to block keywords from video comments. If they're not blocking them, it's likely because they don't really care.

[LinusTech]

2 minutes ago, ThinkWithPortals said:

No, I know that. I meant, how did he make the leap between "even if it doesn't succeed, I hope it won't fail" to "I'll call it floatplane!". Like, of all the things, why floatplane?

 

No need to be a total dick about it.

@nicklmg and I were just joking around with different names "Canister", "Ship", etc. Nick threw out Floatplane and it stuck

 

With that said, we won't necessarily use it forever.

[Guest]

Wow that's pretty cheap, I might actually do that! 

[ThinkWithPortals]

3 minutes ago, LinusTech said:

@nicklmg and I were just joking around with different names "Canister", "Ship", etc. Nick threw out Floatplane and it stuck

 

With that said, we won't necessarily use it forever.

Cheers  I was wondering how you got to floatplane, it just seem like a very random and obscure thing to think of.

 

I actually had to google it, because I had never heard them called floatplanes. I've only ever heard them called sea-planes, or flying boats. Maybe floatplane is a North American thing

[STRMfrmXMN]

4 minutes ago, LinusTech said:

It's very little effort to block keywords from video comments. If they're not blocking them, it's likely because they don't really care.

Blocking "PKA" or "early" or "Reddit" in their comments doesn't really make sense though. I'm wondering what's stopping people from posting these elsewhere? I'd assume that, unless there's a login wall behind the link sharing (like the link is shared with you and a site requires you to login with a verified account in order to download) that it can be easily accessed by someone who simply has said link to the download. And even then, what's stopping a Google Drive upload + create shareable link?

 

With Vessel you had a platform you had to pay for to get on and watch stuff early. Simple enough. With download links I don't see how you guys can protect your content is what I'm getting at, I guess(?)

[LinusTech]

5 minutes ago, STRMfrmXMN said:

Blocking "PKA" or "early" or "Reddit" in their comments doesn't really make sense though. I'm wondering what's stopping people from posting these elsewhere? I'd assume that, unless there's a login wall behind the link sharing (like the link is shared with you and a site requires you to login with a verified account in order to download) that it can be easily accessed by someone who simply has said link to the download. And even then, what's stopping a Google Drive upload + create shareable link?

 

With Vessel you had a platform you had to pay for to get on and watch stuff early. Simple enough. With download links I don't see how you guys can protect your content is what I'm getting at, I guess(?)

Yeah, we're aware of the issues, but the goal at this point is to get things working and go from there

[jmonteiro]

That nice. I wasn't a fan of Vessel but i can see why creators would like it.

 

If you guys want any help developing the video streaming solution i can help. I have a decent amount of experience with video streaming (mostly with live events). Email or pm me.

[seabrookmx]

Saw your announcement of this on the WAN show.

The software developer in me wants to warn you about the potential burden of expanding LMG into the software business. But the LinusTech (and streaming video fan in general) thinks we could really use a Vessel like platform driven by the needs of the creator(s).

I think a good example of this kind of thing is Steam. Valve built it because they needed a good way to update their games and nobody had a decent client. It expanded to other developers, then to a storefront.. now it's their primary business. Had that not happened though, it still would have solved their own need of an updater for their games. 

Really looking forward to hearing about the technical details. Like @jmonteiro said, please reach out if you could use a hand!

[AxelRantila]

I am still a bit hesitant to subscribe to this when a good solution to mobile isn't there. This was why I never subscribed to Vessel, because it had no Android app (for a long time) and that was where I consumed most of my Youtube content at the time.

 

I am also afraid that this will cause the same problem that I felt Vessel that, that you need to subscribe to it in order for any support through other means (CSF Patron, Merch etc.) to be worthwhile. For example, even if you contributed to the CSF Patron, you still had to pay for a Vessel subscription if you wanted to watch it early.

[alextulu]

On 11/23/2016 at 7:20 PM, LinusTech said:

Linus Tech Tips doesn't take advantage of many community funding initiatives like Patreon

Why not ?  Why does Channel SuperFun have a Patreon, but LTT doesn't ?

 

Also, why is the video unlisted on YouTube ?

[mmk]

@nicklmg    @LinusTech

 

Why do i have to create a Paypal account??  Trying to sign up for Float Plane Club and it requires a Paypal account.  I have made many purchases online via Paypal with just a credit card and not needing a Paypal account.

[Guest]

40 minutes ago, mmk said:

 I have made many purchases online via Paypal with just a credit card and not needing a Paypal account.

How?

[mmk]

1 hour ago, deXxterlab97 said:

How?

I think that Paypal was used as an intermediary to collect the money.  Do not have a paypal account but it went via paypal.  

 

I think that method was used also when I paid LMG for the First Blood and Office Builder donations. (could be wrong on this?)

[Yo_yoyo]

(Disclaimer This is my first post so please excuse all the mistakes i will probably make but i just had to write a comment to this topic)

 

I love your DIY approach of just saying screw Vessel we'll just build it ourselves the best we can. Yes it probably wont ever be as professional but we can build it exactly the way we like it and the Download option will be sooooo awesome for offline and on the go LTT consumption  

 

I've seen some ideas floating around in this thread of how this experiment could grow into a video sharing platform done right so i just want to add my probably crazy ideas and visions:
Since the failure of Vessel I have thought a lot about what they wanted to archive and why they ultimately failed. I think they saw some inherent problems and bad things in the way YouTube  works and wanted solve those Problems. In the end YouTube's success is measured by the amount of money they make and not by how happy and satisfied the content producers and consumers are with their experience and relationship with YouTube. Their goal is to make as much money as they can so thats what their decisions are ultimately based on and yes that kind of also makes them wanting to keep their users happy but i mean where else would i go to watch tech-related content? Vimeo? TV? and the Content Creators have even less choice (or none if were entirely honest) If they want to reach a reasonably big audience, they have to put it on YouTube. Thats why they get away with all the shit they're doing because we have no choice!

 

How can there be a Platform who's goal truly it is to provide the best experience for Everyone. I belive the only way to archive that is to create it ourselves! What if we would create a alternative to YouTube by the means of crowd-sourcing and crowd-funding which is run by an organization which can sustain itself but is not concerned with Maximizing the Bottom Line. (some kind of social entrepreneurship/non-profit organization structure)  We would build it exactly the way we want with our values of Privacy, Security and Transparency in Mind and the way it operates would be democratically decided by all, Creators and Consumers alike.  

welp I'm tired and English is not my first language so please excuse the overall roughness of this post and i hope i could still get my Utopian imagination of a perfect YouTube across. 
 

[alextulu]

On 11/23/2016 at 7:46 PM, STRMfrmXMN said:

I'm wondering what's stopping people from posting these elsewhere?

Maybe you can make it so, that the links periodically change.