Zoopy moves its hosting overseas

Come home Zoopy!

If you want to be a global player, there's nothing wrong with distributing your content globally (If you're any good at what you do, you should already be using a proper global Content Delivery Network. If you don't, be aware that the guys you're taking on globally all do.).

However, not having a content platform in place in your home market is just obscene. Do you think your loyal supporters are just going to fork out on international bandwidth costs to subsidise your business? You're just as bad as the expensive ISPs you're trying to avoid.

Same goes for everyone else who thinks hosting South African content in Outer Mongolia is smart. Join the Homecoming Hosting Revolution ;)
 
Thanks for the comments guys. Believe me when I say that this was a frustrating move, but one that we made in the best interests of growing Zoopy.

As a user, a local account may only cost a fraction of international bandwidth accounts out there but as a publisher, bandwidth costs come in at an average of R50/GB, meaning that it costs R50 000 per TB. Multiply that out across thousands of users per month and you're looking at 8-10 TB/month for a busy site (costing R400k - R500k per month), and much much more for a large publisher with millions of views.

This is the reason many companies still need to host internationally and until R50 000 / TB can compete with an average of $100 / TB offshore, it doesn't make sense for any business with large media files and thousands of users to host here. We look forward to the day that this changes and we can all afford to bring our servers back home and we are constantly looking at ways to make this happen.

In the meantime, Zoopy's loading of videos, photos and audio is just as quick (in fact it's even quicker most of the time) as any of the other social media sites that South Africans love to visit that are all hosted internationally, including Flickr, YouTube and Facebook.
 
The freedom of the Internet. I would wager most end users are none the wiser when it comes to server location, just the geeks.
 
maybe i must leave my contact details on my zoopy videos you know just in case.........
 
Who is Zoopy's target market? Why not carve out a local niche and become the local market leader than to swin in the same sea with YouTube and Metacafe.

Read MyBB, people like their local hosted companies as they have excess local bandwidth, you'll get more local eyeballs with those people looking for online video when their international cap is gone. With the crap on TV (even DSTV) you should be able to build a viable business.

If you are paying R50 000 TB of local data you are being ripped off. What metric are you using to come to that total? You can't say oh, 1GB = R50 therefore 1TB is roughly R50 000, when you buy in bulk. Don't Vodacom own or have a stake in Zoopy, can't they negotiate a better rate for your guys?

But go international just don't come crying when a new local hosted player emerges.
 
RavenServers said:
It's when the video preloads so that it does not need to be choppy if it were to load in realtime. Buffering online media can be thought of as loading :)
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thats what i thought but i see that sometimes a video, be it on any site, sometimes just plays and others buffer until it plays.

on my 2 zoopy videos it takes long and when when finished and you want to play in again it does the same. I think its my junk pc most of the time anyway.
 
jasonzoopy said:
This is the reason many companies still need to host internationally and until R50 000 / TB can compete with an average of $100 / TB offshore, it doesn't make sense for any business with large media files and thousands of users to host here. We look forward to the day that this changes and we can all afford to bring our servers back home and we are constantly looking at ways to make this happen.
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+1
 
Rate My ISP said:
Who is Zoopy's target market? Why not carve out a local niche and become the local market leader than to swin in the same sea with YouTube and Metacafe.
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We've never been a video-only site, and we have thousands of users who only upload photos or audio. We also have Zoopy TV, a self-produced side of our site with video content completely unique to Zoopy and made especially for the web and mobile, ranging from movie and game reviews to news and opinions. We believe Zoopy offers a unique range of content, but I don't think anyone these days only goes to one social media destination. So it's not about Zoopy VS YouTube VS Flickr, it's about using and enjoying a variety of services that suit you.

Rate My ISP said:
If you are paying R50 000 TB of local data you are being ripped off. What metric are you using to come to that total? You can't say oh, 1GB = R50 therefore 1TB is roughly R50 000, when you buy in bulk. Don't Vodacom own or have a stake in Zoopy, can't they negotiate a better rate for your guys?
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This is why I said 'average' in my original post. Yes we were paying lower than average but as Zoopy has grown and continues to grow at a rapid pace, there's no business model in the world that can sustain a bandwidth price that's exponentially higher than international alternatives.

Rate My ISP said:
But go international just don't come crying when a new local hosted player emerges.
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We made this move in November and we've had exactly three negative comments back from our users since then. Our traffic and userbase has continued to increase, so we think our users still enjoy the site as much as they did before, but that's not to say that we don't care. In fact, just the opposite, which is why I mentioned in my original post above that we're constantly working on ways to come back home. But right now, and until South African bandwidth prices catch up with the rest of the world, it's not feasible for anyone to host a large media business in SA over the long-term.
 
jasonzoopy said:
We made this move in November and we've had exactly three negative comments back from our users since then. Our traffic and userbase has continued to increase, so we think our users still enjoy the site as much as they did before, but that's not to say that we don't care. In fact, just the opposite, which is why I mentioned in my original post above that we're constantly working on ways to come back home. But right now, and until South African bandwidth prices catch up with the rest of the world, it's not feasible for anyone to host a large media business in SA over the long-term.
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SO THAT'S WHERE MY INTERNATIONAL CAP WAS GOING WHEN I VISITED ZOOPY! I DID NOT KNOW! Only joking :D

Is Zoopy doing anything in the background to compress and optimise the submitted video to lower bandwidth costs? I've heard about emerging players that are basing their competitive advantage on this technology. I may have to troll Crunch Base to find out who they are.

Are there any other locally hosted video websites?
 
has zoopy changed the setup cause last night hwen i logged on you had videos in different formats or something?
 
bokka1 said:
This sucks.

Why can I watch videos on IGN like this http://xbox360.ign.com/dor/objects/14235013/mass-effect-2/videos/masseffect2_vdr_012210.html and it comes off my local account?
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IGN uses Akamai to deliver their media. Akamai has servers distributed globally, including South Africa. We were in talks with Akamai for months but the bottom line is that in 2005, Akamai decided to comply with South African regulatory restrictions, which means that since 2005 Akamai has not been allowed to take on any new clients (us, for example) that are headquarted in South Africa or have the majority of their traffic coming from South Africa. Like I said, we are constantly looking at ways to come back home, so we pursued all alternatives before going back offshore.
 
waynegohl said:
has zoopy changed the setup cause last night hwen i logged on you had videos in different formats or something?
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Nothing's changed in our video formats. What are you seeing that's different or not working?
 
Rate My ISP said:
SO THAT'S WHERE MY INTERNATIONAL CAP WAS GOING WHEN I VISITED ZOOPY! I DID NOT KNOW! Only joking :D
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:whistle: :)

Rate My ISP said:
Is Zoopy doing anything in the background to compress and optimise the submitted video to lower bandwidth costs? I've heard about emerging players that are basing their competitive advantage on this technology. I may have to troll Crunch Base to find out who they are.
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Yeah, compression is just one of the areas of our business in which we consistently strive to stay at the top of our game, and the solutions we've implemented are the best available that can deliver optimal 'video quality:file size' ratios.

Rate My ISP said:
Are there any other locally hosted video websites?
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One or two have tried in the past, but haven't lasted.
 
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