Zoopy moves its hosting overseas

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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Well that's a nice high-and-mighty handed response :rolleyes: Just because you've only had 3 (ja right) negative comments doesn't mean a whole lot of people aren't p1ssed off at the idiocy of your move.
 
jasonzoopy said:
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.
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As a business I understand your dilemma, I was going to suggest you get the Estonian Peer-to-Peer specialists on the phone (Bluemoon Interactive) that developed Kazaa, Skype and Joost.

But seeing that Joost's peer-to-peer download client failed, P2P is probably not the best idea to slash bandwidth costs in S.A.
 
jasonzoopy said:
Nothing's changed in our video formats. What are you seeing that's different or not working?
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last night when i was on the site i noticed that under the video i was looking at they had about 4 or 5 options of different video sizes to download and this was not on there a week ago unless i was in another section of zoopy.
 
waynegohl said:
last night when i was on the site i noticed that under the video i was looking at they had about 4 or 5 options of different video sizes to download and this was not on there a week ago unless i was in another section of zoopy.
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Ah, you must've been visiting our mobile WAP site at http://m.zoopy.com :)
 
aaah ok. how does the sms thing work on the videos. i want to download my 2 videos and it says i must put my cell number in and you will send it by sms but nothing happened do i use international numbers for my cellphone?
 
Mephisto_Helix said:
Well that's a nice high-and-mighty handed response :rolleyes: Just because you've only had 3 (ja right) negative comments doesn't mean a whole lot of people aren't p1ssed off at the idiocy of your move.
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From a business point of view; surely the idiotic move would have been to continue paying exorbitant prices for hosting when they could reduce those fees exponentially without (according to zoopy) reducing their user base.

Seems like it was a sound business decision to me... reduce costs and continue providing a service and making a profit or continue with the previous costs and go under.

Reckon if push came to shove and I were faced with that decision I would do exactly the same thing and I am willing to put my "hen" on the block and bet you would too.

....idiocy :confused: I think not.
 
what was the point of even starting it, if it's not sustainable anyhow?

If I was you i'd make a deal with some local ISP, like Cybersmart, and enable only Cybersmart customers to use the service then - on their servers.


WIN-WIN Situation:

Cybersmart gets more subscribers, as they are the only ones to have a "you-tube-like" service in SA, to watch videos, etc on their local bandwidth.

Zoopy doesn't need to pay that much money for hosting, as it is hosted on the ISP's servers itself. make money from advertising, like youtube.

SA Users get keep zoopy local, even if it is only for users of Cybersmart, at least not all of us lose it.
 
rtzouves said:
From a business point of view; surely the idiotic move would have been to continue paying exorbitant prices for hosting when they could reduce those fees exponentially without (according to zoopy) reducing their user base.

Seems like it was a sound business decision to me... reduce costs and continue providing a service and making a profit or continue with the previous costs and go under.

Reckon if push came to shove and I were faced with that decision I would do exactly the same thing and I am willing to put my "hen" on the block and bet you would too.

....idiocy :confused: I think not.
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That sums it up pretty well. But again, when the situation changes in SA, we'll be the first to come back home with balloons, streamers and vuvuzelas!
 
Keeper said:
what was the point of even starting it, if it's not sustainable anyhow?
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It's sustainable to run any SMALL site locally, and we started off small. As we've grown, the local hosting costs have multiplied very quickly to a point where snowballing growth would eventually lead to a snowballing loss. It's perfectly sustainable when advertising revenue remains ahead of the costs regardless of growth, which is the case when looking at international hosting costs.
 
jasonzoopy said:
It's perfectly sustainable when advertising revenue remains ahead of the costs regardless of growth, which is the case when looking at international hosting costs.
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That would mean people actually clicking on ads, yes?

Both of us know that not nearly enough people in SA click on ads.
 
rpm said:
Local video hosting website recently moved it’s servers internationally, and the reason is no surprise
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Not so local anymore. I thought that was the entire point of Zoopy. This was the only reason I went there when capped.
 
Video hosting websites certainly have a tough task of creating a sustainable business model – even Youtube is struggling despite the fact that the biggest online advertising company, Google, is behind it. Add local hosting costs into the mix and Zoopy did not really have much of a chance. To monetize a video, which can be tens of MB in size, at around 5c per MB is definitely not easy (not certain what they paid - but this is currently what others pay).
 
You know Zoopy had an advantage over Youtube. Funny that in the week where that advantage would have been evident (undersea cable broken and getting fixed) te announcement comes that they are moving.

South Africans will continue using Zoopy if
1. they continue to find relevant content
2. you keep video file sizes down

I was trying to watch something on Vimeo the other day and the lowest resolution took an insane amount of time to download.

BTW: When Google launched in ZA they said they were planning on basically buying their own traffic funnel to guarentee high speeds for all Google traffic (this was to include Youtube eventually too). Did this happen, do they do this? Cos if they do that puts Zoopy down another notch.
 
ldmelsa said:
Not so local anymore. I thought that was the entire point of Zoopy. This was the only reason I went there when capped.
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That's the problem we face when we try and do something unique.

We are only supported when there's no other option. As you just admitted "I went there when capped".

Maybe if more people went there when they weren't capped and bothered to click on the adverts, Zoopy wouldn't have had to move overseas.

I have a site that gets 21,000 page views a day. My option was several grand in bandwidth to keep it local, or £30 a month to host it in the UK.

Then there's the advertisers. 21,000 page views a day and Offerforge's stats show an average three or four clicks a day.

Four out of 21,000. Good on you South African Browsing Public.

Has anybody bothered to click on the banner ad on top of this page? If not, keep it up and see how long before rpm has to move the site overseas too.
 
hostinghelp said:
BTW: When Google launched in ZA they said they were planning on basically buying their own traffic funnel to guarentee high speeds for all Google traffic (this was to include Youtube eventually too). Did this happen, do they do this? Cos if they do that puts Zoopy down another notch.
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I understand Google are plugged in direct to the Cape Town Internet Exchange.
 
Hey JasonZoopy,

Ja, it is quite a sad reality when you're not even able to host in your own country anymore. Gosh, you get so much more value in terms of hosting overseas that I sometimes wonder how the local hosting guys can even compete! I paid GoDaddy R600 for the year for 150GB space and 1500 GB data per month. Companies all around SA will save thousands just by hosting overseas.

Sad, but true.

Good move JasonZoopy!
 
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