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Quibi reportedly lost 90 percent of early users after their free trials expired

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Re: Quibi reportedly lost 90 percent of early users after their free trials expired

#51

Post by wutbrodo »

kgermino wrote: post #40
CedarMills wrote: post #22

Quibi has the problem that other platforms like it have: thinking celebrities are the right way to entice people. Luminary Podcasts has the same issue. Majority of gen Z / millennial folks that I know, don't care about Trevor Noah or any of the late night comedians. They care more about famous YouTubers and TikTok stars.

> They care more about famous YouTubers and TikTok stars. It sounds like they’re still interested in celebrities, it’s just a different set of people than older generations expect. I wonder, is that gap new or just part of the cycles of life?

I'd think that the jump in breadth would qualify as a categorical difference instead of just one in degree. Distribution has gotten more efficient before, as with cable TV or the birth of the modern music industry, but the low stakes and nonexistent barrier to entry of being a YouTuber is a whole new kind of flux in celebrities.

This doesn't suggest that no youtubers have staying power: Pewdiepie has been around for a while and has a massive subscriber count. But he is literally the best of the best, and my point is just that the staying power of a celeb is now more fluid all up and down the distribution of popularity.

Re: Quibi reportedly lost 90 percent of early users after their free trials expired

#52

Post by mikeryan »

ObsoleteNerd wrote: post #14

8% is not a terrible conversion rate at all, and they’ve only just started. I’m not a Quibi user and have no vested interest in them either way but this is the third different article I’ve seen in the last week or 2 talking about how terrible they’re doing and now they’re about to crash and burn, because of an 8% conversion? Comparing them to Disney is ridiculous too, it’s Disney! With multiple generations obsessed w…

I work in this industry and generally agree with your assessment.

However a few things, the general industry perspective went like this:

1. David Katzenberg and Meg Whitman were creating a consumer service targeting a demographic they don't fit in a field they've not worked in. (Consumer apps for a younger demographic)

2. They got 1.8 Billion in funding. For fuck's sake you should get one breakout hit piece of content from that. (Note Apple is struggling a bit with this one too). With the funding, hype and content they've spent on the expectations are going to be pretty damn astronomical, they brought high expectations on themselves.

3. Their entire premise was based on this concept of quick bites of content. With an almost 2 billion dollar war chest the right thing to do would have been to test this theory maybe? Roll out a single show first, backfilled with some news? Get some feedback maybe?

Quibi is led by some serious heavy hitters, so its not spoken much out loud but I think a lot of folks in the industry felt this play was based mostly on hubris and now there's a certain sense of schadenfreude as they start to flail.

Re: Quibi reportedly lost 90 percent of early users after their free trials expired

#53

Post by lnanek2 »

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #32
hello_friendos wrote: post #9

I loved Quibi's short form dramatic and comedic content. Shape of Pasta is a cooking show about rare pasta types -- sometimes being made by only a single person in a village! Run This City - A documentary about Jasiel Correia, the youngest mayor in Massachusetts who get's caught in numerous controversies. Nightgowns follows Drag Queen Sasha Velour's Nightgowns tour, this program worked particularly well on the servic…

I mean, I like pasta as much as the next guy, but if their best show is "a cooking show about rare pasta types", I'm not in the least surprised they're having trouble getting people to pay for this.

I actually know a lot of asian women who like watching what's essentially food tourism TV series and even recommend them to me. Food is definitely a genre that has fans. Besides big fancy ones that go to new cities and regions every episode, there's also smaller fun ones like how the Japanese have a live action and cartoon version of a guy who goes to a different food shop every episode.

Re: Quibi reportedly lost 90 percent of early users after their free trials expired

#55

Post by xemdetia »

kgermino wrote: post #40
CedarMills wrote: post #22

Quibi has the problem that other platforms like it have: thinking celebrities are the right way to entice people. Luminary Podcasts has the same issue. Majority of gen Z / millennial folks that I know, don't care about Trevor Noah or any of the late night comedians. They care more about famous YouTubers and TikTok stars.

> They care more about famous YouTubers and TikTok stars. It sounds like they’re still interested in celebrities, it’s just a different set of people than older generations expect. I wonder, is that gap new or just part of the cycles of life?

In my personal observations of the matter it is more that it's just a different kind of celebrity than their original draw. Nobody earnestly cares if some hollywood star becomes a professional golfer, singer, or race car driver. They have to build themselves up anew to this new audience who is selecting 'celebrity status' by a different set of rules and criteria. Now if someone in hollywood moves to another position within hollywood like actor to director hey are still closely related to the same rules of selection so they get a boost just from qualifying to what the audience is looking at.

Given that this is where there is just a separate group of people that understands or learns the selection criteria for YouTube/Twitter/TikTok/Twitch whatever and can have more synergy transferring between these outlets. It makes sense that someone who in another setting is popular just seems to land flat when they are having to relearn a new way of presenting themselves and the old tools don't work. Even celebrities that start a YouTube channel that I at least followed in passing end up feeling terrible, and I don't think I've seen a hollywood grade external star stick with their YouTube content long enough to actually start learning what needs to change.

Re: Quibi reportedly lost 90 percent of early users after their free trials expired

#56

Post by rm445 »

whoisjuan wrote: post #42

The problem with Quibi is thinking that they can charge for this content. People are not gonna pay for quick bite videos, even if they have a high production value. Why would anyone do that with such limited time? The problem of all these platforms is that they think they are creating a new market or expanding an existing one and they forget that people only have 24 hours a day to do things. If you create something l…

There are difficulties in overcoming users' expectations and actually monetising, but it shouldn't be ruled out completely. Once people are using something as a major source of entertainment, some proportion of them are usually willing to pay for even mild improvements. An analogy might be free radio broadcasts (and web radio, and piracy) versus modern music streaming services.

Make no mistake, short-form content can be a major entertainment source. Personally, I recently deleted Tiktok from my phone, more because of its power to eat up time when I ought to be sleeping than because of the recent privacy furore.

Re: Quibi reportedly lost 90 percent of early users after their free trials expired

#57

Post by joezydeco »

Hamuko wrote: post #34

I can't imagine Apple TV+ having any better conversion rate unless people just forget to cancel their subscriptions at the end of the trial. There's just so little content there and basically nothing that people talk about.

When you mention it that way, a one year trial seems like a really good way to smooth out that drop rate. It takes a while before people notice that recurring charge.

Re: Quibi reportedly lost 90 percent of early users after their free trials expired

#58

Post by pjc50 »

whoisjuan wrote: post #42

The problem with Quibi is thinking that they can charge for this content. People are not gonna pay for quick bite videos, even if they have a high production value. Why would anyone do that with such limited time? The problem of all these platforms is that they think they are creating a new market or expanding an existing one and they forget that people only have 24 hours a day to do things. If you create something l…

I dunno, doing short vertical videos with low production value was the huge innovation of TikTok? (Not counting its predecessor, Vine)

But I accept that launching it as a paid service was extremely risky. Better to start with something free and attention-getting.

Re: Quibi reportedly lost 90 percent of early users after their free trials expired

#59

Post by thiagocesar »

mikeryan wrote: post #52
ObsoleteNerd wrote: post #14

8% is not a terrible conversion rate at all, and they’ve only just started. I’m not a Quibi user and have no vested interest in them either way but this is the third different article I’ve seen in the last week or 2 talking about how terrible they’re doing and now they’re about to crash and burn, because of an 8% conversion? Comparing them to Disney is ridiculous too, it’s Disney! With multiple generations obsessed w…

I work in this industry and generally agree with your assessment. However a few things, the general industry perspective went like this: 1. David Katzenberg and Meg Whitman were creating a consumer service targeting a demographic they don't fit in a field they've not worked in. (Consumer apps for a younger demographic) 2. They got 1.8 Billion in funding. For fuck's sake you should get one breakout hit piece of conten…

Apple, Quibi, Amazon are trying to plan the perfect breakout show.

It doesn’t work like that. A lot of the networks’s and Netflix’s breakout shows were not planned to be great. That’s why they just greenlight a bunch of random pilots and see what sticks to the wall.

It’s extremely hard to create hits.

Re: Quibi reportedly lost 90 percent of early users after their free trials expired

#60

Post by vernie »

CedarMills wrote: post #22

Quibi has the problem that other platforms like it have: thinking celebrities are the right way to entice people. Luminary Podcasts has the same issue. Majority of gen Z / millennial folks that I know, don't care about Trevor Noah or any of the late night comedians. They care more about famous YouTubers and TikTok stars.

Relying on the star power of the voice talent roster was also a significant part of Katzenberg's animated feature film strategy.
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