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This question may sound ridiculous, but it’s not: is YouTube successful?

Please don’t boo. It’s hard to imagine the internet without YouTube. Buying the video site in its relatively infancy was one of the smartest things Google has ever done. But despite being part of Google, the most successful money machine in internet history, for nearly 15 years, it’s still unclear whether YouTube fulfills its financial potential, both for itself and for everyone involved in its vast digital economy.

Two data points: YouTube’s revenue from advertising sales – its main source of revenue – was about $11.2 billion last year, not much more than the ad revenue of ViacomCBS, a mid-range American TV company that owns CBS television. network. Twitter, whose money isn’t that hot, attracts, on average, nearly twice as many ad sales from each of its users as YouTube.

No one should feel bad about YouTube. Yes, no problem. But it does say something about the viability of the internet, where YouTube is probably the most vibrant economy online, and it’s still hard to call it an unqualified financial winner. If YouTube doesn’t win, video creators won’t either.

The great promise of the internet was to give everyone a chance to make a living doing what they love, but YouTube shows how hard that dream is. If YouTube isn’t exactly living with high hopes, that means the internet doesn’t exist either.

Let me dig a little deeper into how weird YouTube is in one important aspect: It pays some individuals and companies that stock their virtual shelves with products.

On Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and Twitter, we make their products for free in the form of silly memes, photos from engagement parties, and beauty tutorials we post, with some exceptions. For video makers meets YouTube standards, the site usually transfers about 55 percent of the money from the ads that appear on or around its videos to these individuals and organizations.

YouTube’s revenue sharing and other ways For creators to monetize videos, it has likely given more income to online people than any website ever. (This is impossible to prove. People do earn money With less direct ways to build an audience on places like Instagram and TikTok, but YouTube remains a starting point for people to generate income online.)

Maybe YouTube, especially after disclosures ads of companies a few years ago visible Videos promoting anti-Semitism and other egregious views are less aggressive than companies like Facebook and Twitter when it comes to sending commercial messages everywhere. That’s a good thing, even if there are missed opportunities for YouTube and video makers to make more money.

As a result, YouTube makes a lot of money for itself and its video makers, and its revenue is growing very quickly, but the numbers are a little meh for its size and impact.

Not even mentioning YouTube in the same paragraph as middling TV company ViacomCBS and Twitter… overwhelmed for a certain period of time. YouTube’s cut in ad revenue is also less than half of Netflix’s annual revenue. (These figures do not account for YouTube’s revenue from other sources, including subscriptions, which the company does not regularly disclose.)

If YouTube has lagged far behind its financial potential, what does that say about the rest of the digital world? If you read the work of people like my colleague taylor lorenzIt’s easy to see that there may be a mismatch between the promise of the internet economy and reality, which keeps track of the internet’s workforce.

Some people make a good living from their creations on YouTube or other apps, but others are constantly rushing for peanuts and on fire.

It’s tough to stand out in a sea of ​​people who shoot dance videos on TikTok, stream live video games on Twitch, or host YouTube talk shows, and it’s always been that way for the creative professions. Except for digital optimists, they wanted to believe that the internet would make it easier and more democratic for everyone to find their fans and calls.

That’s why YouTube’s finances are important to the rest of us. If YouTube isn’t exactly working, the promise of the internet isn’t working either.

Tip of the Week

It’s still hard to watch the Olympics

Watching TV should be easy, but GOOD VICTORY is not easy to watch the Olympic events we want to see in the USA. Brian X ChenA consumer technology columnist for The New York Times guides us through their efforts.

I learned the hard way that people who quit cable TV still get the short end of it.

I was trying to watch a rerun of the rock climbing events at the Olympics this week. I was particularly interested to see World’s best climber Adam Ondra.

But the recording of the semi-finals that NBC presented on YouTube TV, the package of online TV channels I paid for, slashed the climb broadcast to just one hour. To my disappointment, the episode skipped most of Ondra’s airtime. (read this If you want to know how Ondra is doing in Thursday’s competition.)

I sent disgusting complaint from Twitter. I soon learned from my followers that the coverage of the Olympics that Americans watch most often on television or on services like YouTube TV is much lower than the coverage of the more complete Olympic events in the United States. NBC Sports app.

I downloaded the NBC Sports app and there it was: full view of every event! But I ran into another problem. To use the service, I had to log into the app with account information for a cable TV subscription I didn’t have.

(There’s also this Olympic scope It’s on the video streaming service Peacock, which is part of the same company as NBC. Confusing.)

Long story short, the cord cut is great. It’s much easier than before for sports addicts to watch live matches and events online. But still it is most convenient to have cable TV. who can afford all these subscriptions?

Before you go …

• We still haven’t figured out the health apps: New York is the first major jurisdiction in the United States to require restaurants, gyms, and other public places to require customers to provide proof of vaccination against coronavirus. My colleagues Erin Woo and Kellen Browning see privacy implications Electronic systems for tracking vaccinated persons (Other countries have also introduced digital vaccine verification systems.)

• Facebook and academics: The company said researchers who requested volunteers to help investigate Facebook’s opaque ad targeting system threatened people’s privacy. Facebook has a valid argument, Bloomberg News saysAnd so do academics.

• Do you remember Segway? Number? Exactly. A former book agent writes about his role on Slate. overdo the SegwayIntroduced in 2001, it is a new but ultimately unpopular scooter that promises to change the world and does not change it. A useful lesson in how the pressure of impossible dreams can ruin a new product’s chances.

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The crowd at the 1996 Democratic National Convention She danced with “Macarena”. Painfully stale and wonderful.

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