Rumble Targets Amazon’s Cloud Business, YouTube Rivalry Heats Up

Rumble has been described as a rapidly growing YouTube rival that's popular with conservative audiences. Former President Donald Trump got a verified Rumble account in June. Representative Devin Nunes and other conservative figures run popular channels on Rumble. Who owns Rumble? Is it better than YouTube? How can you make money on Rumble?

In November, Rumble announced that it would relocate its U.S. headquarters to Florida from New York. In 2019, Trump shifted his residency to Florida from New York. The startup has its primary headquarters in Canada.

Rumble has positioned itself as a YouTube alternative and its features mirror those of Google’s video platform in many ways. It allows people to upload videos and create channels to serve their regular audiences. In contrast to YouTube, Rumble has editors who can adjust video titles to improve views.

Rumble’s content regulations are more accommodative than YouTube’s rules. For example, you can post any video as long as it doesn’t promote racism or hate. Rumble also forbids pornography.

YouTube and other platforms owned by Big Tech companies have been criticized for censoring information and free speech. For example, YouTube deletes videos that it thinks are spreading medical misinformation. Many videos that were thought to be spreading falsehood about COVID-19 and vaccines and got kicked off of YouTube are now on Rumble.

People who aren't happy with the Big Tech practices view Rumble as an information freedom space. The platform added more than 30 million new users in less than one year starting in mid-2020.

Although Rumble mainly serves right-wing audiences, it aims to have a broad reach across the political divide. Prominent media organizations including Reuters, Newsmax, and Snopes also run channels on Rumble.

To break free from Big Tech monopolies, Rumble mainly runs its own servers. Parler was cut off from Amazon’s cloud platform after it allowed users to post some content related to the U.S. Capitol riot.

Rumble sells ads and splits the revenue with content providers. Also, the platform has video licensing arrangements with various media organizations, including Yahoo and Microsoft news divisions. You can license your videos to these media partners and earn some money.

Rumble has signed influencers and paid them thousands of dollars to produce high-quality content that remains exclusive to the platform for some time. The platform offers other extra features for creators to monetize their content.

The YouTube rival is backed by venture capitalists J.D. Vance, Peter Thiel, and Darren Blanton’s family office Colt Ventures. The platform planned to use the money from its investors to fuel its growth. For example, Rumble is interested in cloud solutions business to challenge market leaders Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. In 2021, it acquired the Locals Technology in an expansion drive.

Rumble investor Thiel was an early investor in Facebook. Thiel is also a Bitcoin bull. Senator Ted Cruz has joked that Thiel didn’t alert him early to a Bitcoin investment opportunity. Even someone who only invested $10 in Bitcoin in 2011 when its price first reached $1 is now a millionaire.

Chris Pavlovski is a Canadian technology entrepreneur. He attended the University of Toronto. Before founding Rumble in 2013, Pavlovski worked at Microsoft.

In addition to Rumble, Pavlovski founded the global IT company Cosmic Development. He also founded Jolted Media in the early 2000s. Pavlovski held an executive role at space exploration company Next Giant Leap for several years. In 2010, Pavlovski came close to winning a prestigious entrepreneur award by Ernst & Young.

In 2021, Rumble sued YouTube parent Google and accused it of anticompetitive practices. Rumble claimed that Google rigged its search results to favor YouTube, which caused it to lose revenue. Rumble sought more than $2 billion in damages in the Google lawsuit.