RuTube is inferior to YouTube in everything – but will VK VIDEO be able to overcome it?

We continue to analyze Russian analogues of YouTube. Last time we found out that Rutube is losing badly in both the technological and content race. Will the famous VK be able to overcome the decaying Western service or will YouTube remain invincible? Today we will analyze the interface and convenience of VK Video.

Hello everyone, I'm in touch editor UXART. I recently reviewed Rutube and tried to understand whether the domestic video hosting service could beat its American brother.

For those who haven't read it, I suggest you read the material – I analyzed the main pages of the service and analyzed whether the site is worth your attention.

In the same article I promised to analyze 2 more domestic services:

1. Rebranded VK VIDEO

2. And a relic of Yandex called Zen

And I decided to continue with VK, since the service has become much better looking and feeling in recent years.

Was VK, under the leadership of the company's CEO, Vladimir Kiriyenko, able to become a direct and high-quality competitor to YouTube or will it repeat the history of Rutube? Today we will find out.

Home screen

Let's start with the classics – from the main screen. But before we analyze the service from a new account, I noticed a strange nuance. Look at two screenshots and tell me what the difference is:

If you thought about different recommendations or something else, then you are, alas, wrong. More precisely, you are right, but only partially. I was confused by another point, namely — url.

For some reason, VK has two different addresses that lead to the same service, namely: “https://vk.ru/video“, “https://vk.com/video“What are the differences between them, besides the domain – this is an open question, not exactly a nitpick, but there is clearly a misunderstanding.

But what about the main thing! And here everything is good, as it seems to me, comparing with the same Rutube, for example:

The service greets us with a classic set of videos on various topics. There are no accent videos, as was the case with Rutube. All content is evenly distributed across the page – 4 videos in a row.

Each video contains information about the author (his nickname), title, number of views and how much time has passed since publication, which is already a classic for hosting.

Below the search are categories, let's try clicking on “music”:

And although I don’t quite agree that VPISKA’s interview with Mellstroy fits the definition of music, the rest of the content is truly musical.

These are either podcasts with artists, or clips, or concerts. And what's most important, unlike Rutube, we are allowed to go to these categories without authorization.

By the way, yes, since in the last article I touched on the topic of “why are you displaying videos for a new user in the “for you” section”, I won’t keep quiet about it here either.

I think YouTube's approach is much better in this regard. The service doesn't know anything about you (or doesn't say anything about you directly), so it will form your feed after watching a specific video.

While VK Video immediately offers me to watch the semi-final of Handball between Sweden and France. I don't need that, thank you. Although the main page, I will note again, I like it here.

Do you know what I like even more – the endless feed. Is it on VK Video?

At first, it seemed to me that my fantasy had come true – an endless feed of content!

But in reality, no, sooner or later the page ends, even though it seems to you that in a few seconds it will load and everything will continue.

One of the advantages, which, by the way, were not on Rutube. VK adds a “top” button after scrolling to optimize the user's time. Convenient.

Now, a bit of history so you can better understand how the platform has evolved over the years.

Brief history

Since VK is primarily a social network, we will skip the development of the main product. We will only go through the development of video: what was before VK Video, how they came to a separate service and what difficulties arose along the way.

Despite the fact that the alpha version of VK was launched in the summer 2006users had to wait another 2 long years for video content.

In March 2008 The testing of the new video search service, VKadre.ru, is coming to an end. And at the time of the implementation of this service, VK already contained more than 20 million videos from users.

More in 2 years it becomes possible to add videos from other hosting sites to your video albums – YouTube, Rutube and others.

IN 2017 add live broadcasts through the main VK application. Previously, this function only worked on mobile devices through the VK Live application, and some “lucky ones” were able to try out streams as part of closed testing on the desktop.

In the same 2017, a new one is being developed service. Community administrators could register on the Ruform platform, after which they could gain access to the Pladform player. They could then select videos from the catalog and post them in their community, earning money for views.

In 2020 appears “TikTok killer”and in the first month the “clips” collected more than 3 billion views.

In 2021 year The VK Video section is being updated, which combines videos and streams from VK, OK and other platforms under the VK brand. It was this service that became the most popular among Russian competitors at the time of its release. The project's audience numbered 40+ million users.

In March 2022 the service shoots out — the number of views grows by 40%, the number of downloads of short vertical videos doubles. And on March 8, the service reached 1.75 billion views of full-length videos and 600 million views of clips per day.

Additionally, the daily audience grew by 300k users and the company launched “the largest creator support program in the company’s history.” Creators thus received 100% of the revenue from advertising on the platform.

After a few weeks the application for Smart TV is launched, after a few days new records are being set, April a new one appears technology instant video processing and automatic resolution and frame rate enhancement function.

And so it all sounds cool – unlike the same Rutube, we see that the owners of the site really care about their product. Constant news from the VK press service, new records for service views, new functionality, etc.

But all this is great only in words. In reality, users are constantly complain for the service. And it would seem that you can always find a lot of negative comments on review sites. But according to the author of the article, nothing happens for no reason.

Yes, they are great that they monitor their product and try to improve it, but my thesis from the previous article still holds true – it is one thing when users follow you of their own free will and quite another when there is simply no choice.

P.s. in the comments under the previous article there were many negative comments about the fact that the site's audience understands perfectly well how to bypass YouTube slowdowns. I understand that it is easier to do than it seems. However, the purpose of these articles is to look at the analogues that are so zealously popularized by domestic media. In addition, first of all, we consider UX/UI and the convenience of the site from the point of view of the user who first visited our YouTube analogue.

Now I suggest you go to the sections on the left. Trends – a classic display of the “most popular” videos, almost completely copied from YouTube.

Sections

If you hover over it with your mouse, the video will start playing without sound. But there is an interesting bug here – not all videos play automatically. I think it has to do with timing, although it is strange.

P.s. There is no such problem on YouTube.

The second strange moment of the “trends” is the distribution of videos by the width of the page. You can reasonably note that YouTube also does not take over the entire page with its videos. But it is clear that the video container on YouTube is much wider.

In fact, this is a subjective assessment, but it seems that VK Video is simply short of air. Or the author is very used to YouTube and it seems to him that everything is better there.

Children's section

In essence, it is just a collection of cartoons and films that can be watched by children. It is good that they have put this category in a separate tab. Unlike Rutube, where cartoons and films are shown right on the main page.

But the cartoons themselves are shown strangely. You are transferred to the basic VK player, and on the right side all the episodes that are posted on the service are shown.

There are 2 downsides here:

1. The player remembers timing within a series, but not a playlist (at least for unauthorized users), so you need to remember the series you stopped at

2. If the cartoon's intro is loud, you will be immediately deafened, since the videos load almost instantly and at full volume.

We'll talk about the player itself in a little more detail, but later. For now, let's move on to the remaining sections.

“Broadcasts”, “Sports” and “eSports and games” look identical. The only key difference is that for some reason the last section was left out and there is no internal filtering (which is under the search). Although, it seems to me, it would be possible to display a banal “popular” and several genres/themes.

The situation is similar with the last sections. They look identical to the “Children” section. Show/movie/series cards with the title, timings and number of episodes.

A strange decision is related to the search. Unlike other platforms, VK tries to give you results right during the request.

And so during the search the whole page starts to lag a lot, and the text is not entered right away. In addition, instead of the key request you may be offered something that you would rather not see)

For example, when searching for Baldurs Gate 3, I found some erotic video. I should probably set some filter to 18+. I'm far from 18, but it's unlikely that teenagers should be able to get such results)

Another minus, although it may be due to the small number of views. Our channel in VK Video is called “UXART | Interface Studio”, yes, yes, we created an account here for reposting.

And here's what happens if we start looking for a channel through search:

Nothing. Videos from other channels that are not connected to us in any way. Except for “NEOCHPOP”, in which we took part. Strange, sad and offensive. VK, please start highlighting us in search)

Player

And now about the main thing, how is the VK player doing:

In essence, this is a basic VK player, which is almost 8 yearsThe functionality is incredibly simple, the user can:

1. Play/pause video

2. Change volume

3. Enable/disable subtitles (doesn't work everywhere, for example, TV series and movies don't support this function)

4. Change video quality and speed

5. At the top you can like, repost, move the video to “watch later” and “add to yourself” (create a playlist).

P.s. in fact it turned out that in 2023 The player was finally updated this year

And these functions are already so familiar that they do not cause any admiration. Right, Rutube? Exactly, the latter still does not have automatic subs 🙁

The functionality of the top menu has also been moved under the player. Here you will find the video title, views, likes and description. Below that are comments. Let's talk about them a little bit.

Attention, who answered whom and when?

Alexey wrote to Dmitry at 3:03, but where is Dmitry in this comment thread? That's right, you won't find him, since he stayed behind the scenes.

What I'm getting at is that VK has, if not the worst comment system, then definitely one of the worst. It doesn't have a basic thing that exists on almost all resources now – threads.

We don’t know why and what Dmitry was answered to, and we’re unlikely to find out unless we click on “answered Dmitry” or personally go to the first comment.

Why in 2024 does the redesigned service not have such a trivial function? Are comments here absolutely meaningless? Or was someone just too lazy? So many questions and not a single answer.

Moving on — on the right side, you may have noticed a recommendation system. It is divided into two parts — “For you” and “Other videos”.

The first section tries to find videos that you might like based on your activity. And with the second, it's more complicated. Initially, it seemed to me that these were “other videos by the author”. If I watch SG, then videos from SG, and so on. But after going down a little lower, I saw a “natal chart”. Whatever it is, how does it relate to SG?

And then it gets even more interesting. If you click on any video from this collection, the player will change.

Now it is wider, and the “For You” section disappears altogether.

User channel

To be honest, I was surprised that at a certain point, author channels appeared on VK. Maybe I don't remember this, but it felt like videos used to transfer users to a group, not a channel.

Here, it's classic – the channel cover is on top, the author's small logo and videos in the central part of the screen. Click on a video – you are transferred to the player. This is also not surprising.

Videos are added through a separate tab:

And the video editor, well, it’s both simple and strange.

First, you need to choose an account from which the video will be published. Sometimes the service breaks down and gives out your personal page, so it is worth monitoring this moment.

The editor itself also does not stand out for its abundance of functions. And this seems to me a bad decision. What we can configure in VK:

1. Name

2. Description

3. Cover

4. Add video to playlist

5. Set a publishing time

6. Additional functionality (improving quality, hiding subs and looping video)

Feel like something is missing? Yes, there are no sections that your video belongs to, nor tags. This makes me wonder how this video could possibly show up in the recommendation system (you mention it separately) to a person who is interested in the topic?

And this seems to me to be a global problem for new (zero) authors. You can talk as much as you like about how YouTube tags don't work the way they did a few years ago, but still. Small channels could fly into rivers and did so quite often. And what about our hostings?

But let's move away from the sad stuff and move on to the statistics. I hope it will show more useful data than Rutube. So, the first screen tells us about…

…the number of videos, playlists, subscribers and views, countries, popular videos and cities! Bite YouTube, here it is, the statistics you need!

Seriously, it's just a shame that we can't get normal statistics. What will this data give me as an author? Absolutely nothing…

Although popular videos can help you understand what the audience likes, it’s still not enough.

The “My Videos” section contains the same information, but we can scroll down and find out the gender/age, country and platform from which the video was watched.

And it would seem that the last point “Analytics” should answer all the questions. But no, in fact, this is the same information from the previous point, but calculated for all the content on the channel.

And some analytics decide not to load at all. What is there remains a mystery.

Instead of a thousand characters, here is some analytics information that can really help authors:

Since you copied the “trends” section, I suggest you take this functionality as well, calling it innovative.

Well, as the icing on the cake:

Of course, this does not apply to the platform from the point of view of UX/UI design, but the fact remains. Bots were, are and will be. Personally, I don’t care how many bots come to the comments, but some people are confused by this.

Sudden new redesign

As it usually happens, during the writing of the article there was redesign VK Video. These are mostly small innovations, but they are also worth talking about.

Let's start with the “continue watching” feature. It was a big revelation to me that this wasn't there until August 14, 2024. It seems like such a basic and necessary feature for any video service that its absence negatively impacts the platform.

But yes, hooray, now users can continue watching videos that were closed for one reason or another.

The funniest thing about all this is the path that the user previously had to take to continue browsing:

1. I needed to find the “browsing history” section, but it's not on the main screen

2. To find it, you need to open “My Videos”

3. Scroll to the very bottom

4. Go to the relevant section

5. Find videos you watched by date

6. And only after that continue watching

There is now an option to add a video to the “watch later” category, also a base, and before this redesign I already had this feature on the desktop. Maybe this is an A/B test, or maybe it was already there on the PC.

But the next feature interested me the most. The redesign of the “Subscriptions” section. But first, I suggest going back to YouTube:

Although not emphasized, the “subscription” block is visible right away. It is located in the upper left part of the screen. Everything is convenient and clear. And what about VK?

If you thought that the little people or the bottom icon are responsible for subscriptions, you are wrong. Subscriptions on VK are a mirrored Wi-Fi connection icon. Why, and most importantly, why was it necessary to reinvent the wheel? I cannot give an adequate answer to this question, as well as to many others in this article.

Besides the strange icon, the question is about the icon's location. I rarely go to the “subscriptions” section even on YouTube, but it seems to me that placing it at the bottom of the screen is an extremely strange decision.

In the section itself from a new account, there is a classic situation – it will be empty until you pass authorization

But when you enter, you may be surprised. Even if only for a short time.

The thing is that VK Video is part of the overall VK ecosystem. That's why the service will automatically subscribe you to all the channels whose communities have posted videos. I personally forgot that I subscribed to most of these groups, but so be it.

And it seems to me that this is a strange, but very interesting solution.

It's strange because most of these channels may not be interesting to you in terms of video.

Interesting because you don't have to search for channels that in theory might be interesting to you.

But there is a problem right away – if you unsubscribe from the channel on this screen, you will be automatically unsubscribed from the community. As a user, I may be interested in Stopgame videos, but not in the posts. So why can't I watch videos without a mandatory subscription to the community?

The redesign is finished, thank you for your attention.

P.s. VK Play Live could be analyzed separately as a domestic analogue of Twitch. But the latter is not being slowed down yet, so let's leave these comparisons for better (worst) times.

And here we smoothly return to the problem that Rutube had, VK has and Zen and other YouTube analogues will have – content. No matter how many people upload videos, we will never reach the number that YouTube users have uploaded over many years.

Not only does it contain content from foreign authors who are unlikely to want to be published on our services, but the content itself is also diverse. Surely you have found those same guides from schoolchildren from different countries that explain the solution to your problem on their fingers.

YouTube is not just a platform with videos about games, education, travel, etc. It is a huge resource with almost everything you might need at any given moment in your life. Is your refrigerator broken? Watch the guide and fix it. Can't open Warcraft 3 from 2002? See how to enable it on modern devices. And so on.

On our platforms, it's as if there's no point in it. It's all either about politics or shows from “famous” stars that you “really” want to watch. You're all fans of the “natal chart,” aren't you?

Thank you all for reading this article. This was the editor UXART and I suggest discussing our domestic service in the comments.

It is worth noting that VK is ahead of Rutube in many aspects. However, this is still not enough to become killer YouTube. Is VK Video a good service? More likely yes than no. Many problems are not as serious as with Rutube, and although the bots are unpleasant, this is not the main disadvantage of the platform.

The main disadvantage, besides the lack of such a large amount of content, is that when choosing between YouTube and VK Video, few people turn to the domestic resource. Such is life, we are accustomed to the convenience of YouTube and there is simply no point in leaving it.