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214 points minimaxir | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.441s | source
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kevingadd ◴[] No.43950569[source]
For those unfamiliar, Giant Bomb was one of the first video games press outlets to focus on premium video content. They offered monthly/yearly paid subscriptions for unlimited streaming/downloads: a mix of livestreams, review/criticism content, and Just Goofing Around pre-recorded content. They typically released a few hours worth of content a week at their peak, if I remember right, and the cost was something like $30-50 a year. This was before long form video was a big thing on YouTube; arguably sites like Giant Bomb were pioneers that showed a path forward (at least temporarily) for lots of creatives.

Their podcast has been running weekly for the entire time the site has operated alongside (intermittently) other podcasts, so they're approaching 890 episodes. Each episode was typically a few hours long as well.

When they were doing good they were a well-oiled content machine operating on a small budget with a small team. A lot of the stuff they put out was really special or unique in games press at the time - for example, one of their staff went to North Korea during a vacation so during one of their weekly live streams they devoted a time slot to him showing his photos and talking about his experiences there.

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IG_Semmelweiss ◴[] No.43951136[source]
Is it right to say that giant bomb is in social.media terms was equivalent of myspace, vimeo is something like a far smaller linkedin, twitch is the equivalent of twitter, and that YouTube is Facebook?
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1. duskwuff ◴[] No.43951217[source]
Not really. Giant Bomb is a content creator, not a social media network. They have some social features on their site, but it's all centered around GB and the content they produce.

As an aside, Vimeo isn't a meaningfully social site anymore. They pivoted to commercial video hosting long ago - there's still some commenting features on videos but it's not a significant part of what they do.