Video hosting development

The popularity of video content is growing every year. YouTube alone has over 2 billion active users who watch 6 billion hours of videos every month. Thanks to this, Google LLC, the owner of YouTube, earns $10 billion a year, and this figure is constantly growing.

Today we will look at how to launch and monetize your own successful video hosting, and we will dwell in detail on how the process of developing such a project is organized from a technical point of view.

Video hosting is a storage of video content. Its main difference from online cinemas and streaming services is that here users can not only watch videos, but also upload their own videos for popularization on the Internet. This makes video hosting a popular tool for video blogging, promoting products and brands, and many other purposes.

Most video hosting sites are positioned as free platforms that provide the opportunity to view videos in high quality – up to 4K. And it’s better not to leave such a model, otherwise users will simply have no reason to abandon the usual YouTube.

Therefore, when choosing how the platform will generate money, it is better to give priority to unobtrusive monetization, which combines three approaches to making a profit:

• Advertising. Before watching the main video, the user is offered to watch a short advertising insert lasting 5-15 seconds. Most people consider this approach acceptable and are loyal to it. But “behind the scenes” advertising, when the sound of an audio ad is played in the background of the main video, is best avoided.
• Premium subscription. As part of such a subscription, you can offer complete disabling of advertising, increased video loading speed and other benefits that will make watching videos as comfortable as possible.
• Selling content. Give users the option to purchase or “rent” viewing premium content. Most often, this category includes full-length films in good quality, television series, documentaries and various television shows.

The external simplicity and minimalism of most video hosting sites is the merit of cool UX/UI designers. In fact, hidden under the hood of such services is an impressive functionality that ensures comfortable work for three categories of users: content authors, viewers and platform administrators.

More specifically, when developing video hosting you will need to implement the following minimum set of functions:

• Registration and authorization.
• Video player.
• Tools for uploading and managing videos: delayed publishing, internal editor, etc.

• Analytical tools to help content creators track video performance, demographics, and location of their audience.
• Convenient filtering and navigation systems.
• A recommendation system based on artificial intelligence and neural networks.
• Social tools: posting comments, subscribing to channels, the ability to rate videos and share the video.
• Push notifications.
• Integration of payment gateways to pay for premium subscriptions and premium content.

Video hosting, by definition, requires high network loads and high visitor traffic, so the technology stack of such a project must be as productive as possible. The best choice would be the Python framework Flask, which runs YouTube and Netflix. It provides the opportunity to experiment with modules and platform architecture and implement unique technical solutions. Django, Yii, Laravel and Java frameworks are also good options. The latter is suitable when using a microservice architecture – that is, if your video hosting at the technical level will consist of many related but independently working modules.

On the client side, it is best to use the React.js and Vue.js JavaScript frameworks. Standard HTML, CSS and JS will of course be fine, but in this case there may be performance issues.

Our team always tries to select the optimal stack aimed at solving the client’s business problems. Therefore, depending on your goals and priorities, the selected technology set may differ.

The technical development process for video hosting is often organized using the iterative Scrum methodology and consists of six main stages:

• Collection of information. First of all, the development team studies the client’s request and conducts market research.
• Design. Based on the data obtained, a project prototype is created, which consists of four main components: interface warframes, tables describing the functionality, block diagrams of modules and project mathematics – a set of formulas that will be used to implement business logic. Based on the results of this stage, an assessment is made of the viability of the project, cost and implementation time.
• Design development. The visual environment of the video hosting is drawn from scratch, taking into account the functionality and target audience of the UI rules.

• Technical development. At this stage, the client and server parts of the project are implemented. The frontend is responsible for the correct display of content in the browser interface, the operation of visual effects and interaction with users. At the same time, the backend ensures reliable and secure data storage, functionality, processing of user requests and integration of the platform with external services.
• Testing. The video hosting functionality is thoroughly tested and checked for bugs.
• Technical support and development. User requirements for the quality of content and functionality are constantly growing, so after the platform is released, it is important to focus on its further development and improvement.

According to a study by Sandvine Incorporated, video content consumption accounts for about 60% of all Internet traffic, which indicates the attractiveness of investing in the development of your own video hosting. Yes, in this case you will have to compete with YouTube, which at first glance may seem unrealistic. But in practice, even such a giant has many disadvantages – the lack of a specific niche, the presence of unethical content, Fake News and plagiarism, which can be taken advantage of when launching a new platform.

If you have an interesting idea and a competent approach to development, such a project can easily break into the top popularity, and the social network TikTok is a prime example of this. For its part, AVADA MEDIA can take on the full technical implementation of video hosting and will help you bring to market a high-quality product equipped with unique functionality and capable of withstanding high network loads. Contact us through the form on the website and let’s make your project a reality together!