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Comment by rendall | Hacker News Reader

"TikTok has succeeded as Quibi — Hollywood’s premium alternative to user-generated content — struggles to find an audience."

I had never until this very moment even heard of Quibi

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That's because it's not only poorly marketed but also a completely awful idea. It's 8-minute shows, chunks so small that it's hard to get invested because a full season can be less than a feature-length movie but has the ambitions of one. Some episodes are actually less than 8 minutes, most show concepts are horrid (they relaunched Punk'd!) and the people at the helm are... unusual.

This interview gives great insight into the mess it is: https://www.vulture.com/2020/07/is-anyone-watching-quibi.htm...

My favorite quote from that: "When I ask Whitman what TV shows she watches, she responds, “I’m not sure I’d classify myself as an entertainment enthusiast.”"

Non-paywalled Vulture Quibi story: https://web.archive.org/web/20200818123029/https://www.vultu...

I wouldn’t call Whitman and Katzenberg “unusual”. Katzenberg, by all accounts, is stereotypical power-Hollywood. Whitman is an average tech ceo. Their coupling might be a bit unusual, but it makes sense in from an “opposites attract / complement” point of view.

I do agree that 8-minute video-chunks are silly, that’s youtube territory and people are not going to pay for that as long as YT is free.

I often find myself thinking, I have spare 8 minutes, I wonder what I would do with them.

As oppose to spare few mins.

Mobile phones provide distractions for spare few moments. 8mins is not a timeframe we randomly waste. Its a commitment, clearly a commitment nobody want to make.

The first time I heard of it was the wave of articles a couple weeks back about how it was failing and would probably shut down soon. Suddenly it was everywhere but it was all coverage of how it'd already failed.

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