> I'd compare it to YouTube. People could theoretically host their own videos, but the main reason people use YouTube is because it is so much easier for others to discover your videos.
I appreciate the effort to create a comparison or analogy here, but hosting video is a far, far bigger problem than hosting some text. Bandwidth costs will reach into the thousands of dollars per month video that gets a few thousands views, which isn't hard to get on YouTube's platform.
Have you ever produced videos for mass consumption? I have. They don't weigh in at 100mb. Try 500mb. And the aim with sharing videos is to get as much global reach and viewership as possible -- 20,000 views? What? I want hundreds of thousands of views otherwise what's the point in putting the effort in?
If I can produce a blog post in three days that gets 100,000 hits and allows me to provide affiliate links, multiple, constantly visible adverts, and so on, all for $5/month, why would I spend five days writing scripts, filming video, doing post production, and uploading the video for potentially less impact at 10x the cost?
I appreciate the effort to create a comparison or analogy here, but hosting video is a far, far bigger problem than hosting some text. Bandwidth costs will reach into the thousands of dollars per month video that gets a few thousands views, which isn't hard to get on YouTube's platform.