Quibi reportedly lost 90 percent of early users after their free trials expired • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by cleansingfire » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 9:13 PM UTC

thiagocesar wrote: post #59

mikeryan wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's what I find striking. With all their experience & expertise, the major studios spend a tremendous amount of money and consistently produce a surprising number of failures. Personally, I like the wider seeding creatively in general (as you describe with Netflix.)

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

#132

Post by dageshi » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 9:17 PM UTC

webdestroya wrote: post #95

rockostrich wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really think Amazon should be included with the other 2. I can't think of anything they've made that was "planned to be a breakout show" and didn't succeed. Their pilot program that they used to run might've been the reason for that. They're also really quick to give up on series that don't do well (which is pretty similar to Netflix).

The Grand Tour?

I think it was pretty successful. I guarantee it got a lot of uk top gear fans subscribed to prime, it did for me.

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

#133

Post by throwaway43234 » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 9:23 PM UTC

cleansingfire wrote: post #131

thiagocesar wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's what I find striking. With all their experience & expertise, the major studios spend a tremendous amount of money and consistently produce a surprising number of failures. Personally, I like the wider seeding creatively in general (as you describe with Netflix.)

And those are just the failures you see! Friends in the industry tell me there are many more failures behind the scenes where shows can get arbitrarily far down the production pipeline only for studio execs to come in and scrap the whole thing.

We're not so different from those 1000 monkeys writing shakespeare :)

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

#134

Post by bonestamp2 » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 9:39 PM UTC

thiagocesar wrote: post #59

mikeryan wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Amazon already created a pretty perfect show in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (89% on Rotten Tomatoes). That is going to be really hard for them to top.

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

#135

Post by bonestamp2 » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 9:41 PM UTC

reedwolf wrote: post #119

thiagocesar wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Apple, Quibi, Amazon are trying to plan the perfect breakout show. Apple is making a series out of Isaac Asimov's Foundation books. [0] :-D [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgbPSA94Rqg

I'm sure a lot of us are looking forward to it -- it's good source material, but there's no guarantee that they will pull it off well, or that even if they do a great job, that it will be a hit.

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

#136

Post by notahacker » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 9:45 PM UTC

1123581321 wrote: post #107

baddox wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn’t work like that. A lot of the networks’s and Netflix’s breakout shows were not planned to be great. That might be true for a lot of breakout shows, but not all of them. House of Cards was arguably Netflix' first breakout show, and Netflix outbid other networks for House of Cards when they were just starting to focus on original programming. That was always painted in showbiz media as a very deliberate pla…

We know now that they didn’t really have that data at the time. They just heard Fincher was available and bought his idea unseen for a lot of money so no one else could get to propose to him.

Netflix pinning a lot on winning a bidding war for Fincher sound suspiciously like investors placing massively outsized bets on the Dreamworks/Disney guy with the startup savvy CEO being the Next Big Thing in digital media...

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

#137

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 9:55 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

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

#138

Post by bmarquez » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 9:56 PM UTC

x87678r wrote: post #92

Quibi should be ad-supported, I can't see how else it could get popular. I look at the website and I can't even see any videos. I'd actually like a good alternative to Youtube, this could have been it.

Quibi actually already has an ad-supported plan, you pay $4.99 a month and get a 4-15 second ad every time you watch a new episode.

It's incredibly annoying when you have to watch ads every time you queue an episode to download for offline viewing.

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

#139

Post by wolco » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 10:05 PM UTC

bonestamp2 wrote: post #134

thiagocesar wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Amazon already created a pretty perfect show in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (89% on Rotten Tomatoes). That is going to be really hard for them to top.

They should pack up because Amazon made a super hero show and got 89% on rotten tomatoes.

Wait till you see what Disney is offering... you are going to cancel Prime.

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

#140

Post by jgalt212 » Fri, Jul 10, 2020, 10:14 PM UTC

thiagocesar wrote: post #59

mikeryan wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not to be trite, but this was the whole biz plan of Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, et al. The algos will generate the hits. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work that way. Algos will identify the hits earlier, but they won't "make" them for you.