Talk:Video hosting service/Archives/2018

Proposed (Feb 2016) merger of Online Video Platform (OVP) and video hosting service
(copied from talk page for 'Online Video Platform') newbie here...Both of the above articles have the "proposed merger" banner but don't see any reasons or discussions. Hopefully I'm doing this right.

IMHO these are not candidates for merging but should remain linked. The two are way different. OVP's/OVP companies tend to be huge, if not global entities, while a single individual, given the right equipment, can host videos. OVP customer base, in the entertainment industry for example, include Showtime Networks, Acorn TV, and others. Video hosting services such as YouTube (before YouTube Red) are (or at least at the beginning of this ever-changing landscape, were) geared towards hosting UGC - user generated content for sharing etc. There is some cross-over of users/customers but from the OVP customer side...large companies use an OVP for their primary ($) content but also use video hosting services for clips and promotions, etc. Sometimes this is an add-on with OVP contracts but may also be independent of OVP contracts.

The articles need work...to catch up with the changing times...and ongoing maintenance. I'm still in the learning/research phase but will do what I can. Comments anyone? Cheers! Suemactal (talk) 12:45, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

I vote that the two articles need to be merged. “OVP” is the technical term but “video hosting service” seems to be more common. Presumably, “OVP” should redirect to “video hosting service”. There’s also a number of ancillary pages that need to be cleaned up, merged with the main page, or discarded. I’m talking about list of video hosting services and comparison of video hosting services (the latter of which is a list, but with more details). I don’t think a comprehensive list is necessary, any more than a page about NBC should list all the programs on NBC, or a page about retail internet sites should list all retail internet sites.

As no one else has contributed to this discussion since it was first proposed in 2016, I don’t think there would be much resistance to the merger. I’ll get to work on this project in the next couple of days. Rburriel (talk) 04:18, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

More notes regarding merger: I think the correct page is "Online Video Platform" as that's the industry term, while "video hosting service" is a generic term. OVP's include platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo, but also ThePlatform, Ooyala, Brightcove, Kaltura, BANTech, Microsoft Stream, and other more user facing platforms like Instagram and even Facebook. At this point, almost any file upload portal can be considered a "video hosting service" (including historically image sharing services like Imgur and Flickr). To list them all would be futile. To differentiate them because of who the customer is would also be futile. Commercial entities use YouTube (Vevo), ThePlatform (Hulu), BAMTech (Disney, MLB and WWE), and others simply build their infrastructure. Bottle line: They're all Online Video Platforms regardless of who uses them (whether a commercial entity or an individual). Should we make a list of commercial streaming services (like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Vudu, YouTube Red, YouTube TV, and others?) Maybe. That's worth discussing. But that's outside the domain of this merger discussion. Rburriel (talk) 18:02, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

There seems to be a distinction between OVP which refers to the whole platform, or the platform as a service. Where as 'video hosting service' seems more to be about organisations offering the service to the public. However, there may be so much overlap that it makes sense to merge. The list articles (list of video hosting services and comparison of video hosting services) should be kept separate from the main article/s, but themselves merged together. Jonpatterns (talk) 07:55, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
 * There should be made at least one fundamental difference: open access by default or lack thereof. By that I mean there is a difference between youtube and google drive for example, once is public by default (unless the uploading explicitly makes it private) and vice versa when it comes to something put on drive. The video is not available to public by default if it is loaded on, say, Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive but it can be. So some platforms are "by default" for personal use while other platforms are by default public. --Loginnigol 09:21, 18 June 2018 (UTC)