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Comment by Traster | Hacker News Reader

It was mobile first, so I could see how you could argue that a pandemic was bad for a platform built around mobile. Having said that, the management seems to have been crap too and it seems crazy that they weren't able to acqui-quit.

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"Mobile first" implies that there's something second. Like a webpage that's optimized for a mobile experience but is also viewable on desktop. This could have been Quibi: they made vertical videos ("optimized for a mobile experience") but they could have also allowed users to view those videos on desktop. That would have been mobile first.

they did eventually enter TV streaming but way after their announced stance of Mobile-Only

"Eventually" being a day or two ago

Do you understand how the culture changed, though?

Do you realise people used to consume a lot of media on their phones vertically... but now they don't... for obvious reaons.

That can't be that hard to understand? Market changed. Previously valid opportunity vanished. They didn't do anything wrong but be around at the wrong time.

Almost every TikTok video I see is vertical. They're going gangbusters. The culture hasn't changed. There never was room for something like Quibi. They had a shit business model which (as far as I can tell) was "people who ride the subway or take the bus, who will pay $8 a month for 1/3-sized episodes".

Because all other viewing scenarios still exist even with the pandemic.

I know this is content sacrilege, but I actually think that TikTok nailed it on the head with vertical video. Vertical video means that you can actually fit a single person into the whole frame and have detail. Horizontal video is all about close ups and wide shots, and that takes a production team to think about it.

Vertical video means you just put the phone the same way it always is, and everyone can see everything from floor to ceiling.

Smells a little like "all the people I know in SF would love this" limited market validation.

I literally started watching TikToks because of the pandemic. One month of "shelter at home" encourages a ton of media consumption and it can easily be on your phone.

For me it simply comes down to the fact that nobody needs "bite sized content" when there is a pause button on every single streaming site there is. Watch 10 minutes, bus stop coming, hit pause. There's no need to pay for "quibi", and for me at least there was never any question that they would fail. At least they aren't beating a dead horse spending billions to try to make it happen, "fail fast" I guess.

Even if you (for some reason) wanted bite sized content that fits into the time you wait for the bus, you couldn't do that with Quibi, because your bus doesn't arrive in exactly 6 minutes 30 seconds (or whatever). You still have to pause.

Wait what? The GP said they were not mobile-first, they were mobile-only and that’s true.

And No, what you say is not how any of the video services work. Pandemic or not, the largest selection of videos are 16:9.

Quibi bet the house on a mobile-only portrait videos In 10 minute chapters. You claim there was a market for that - but give no evidence.

There isn’t a broad market for that niche offering!

Your defense of Quibi makes them sound hapless, to borrow a pg word. That's not a strong defense.

"Don't be hapless" is good advice, and at least one thing that Quibi did wrong is not follow that.

http://www.paulgraham.com/relres.html

TikTok is mobile-first, vertical video format that I can still watch on my desktop. Makes sharing it or watching funny ones with SO very easy

Portrait on TikTok makes sense because the videos shown in algorithm driven order and are usually around 1 minute long at most. People are also swiping to skip to the next video, and you can't swipe comfortably in landscape.

A 10 minute Quibi episode is already half the length of a standard sitcom with ads (20 mins). It's not meant to be skippable. There really wasn't a need to make it portrait mode.

It was likely never going to be compelling enough to compete with free a a purely-short-form mobile-focused offering.

Look at how much grief Hulu got from users for being "paid but still with ads" for so long before at least adding the option to remove the ads, and then question how smart these other companies who think "paid but still with ads" is a great plan. Sure, you can get users with that model, but you do it if you have content that's compelling enough in spite of it, it doesn't help.

Media consumption patterns haven't dramatically changed, people still sit with their phones and scroll. Sure, people have also been Netflix binging on their TVs, but they are also doom-scrolling on Twitter and FB, and kids are instagramming and tiktoking and snapchatting.

> It was mobile first, so I could see how you could argue that a pandemic was bad for a platform built around mobile

This argument would have to ignore the massive success of TikTok during the pandemic.

It’s kind of funny they got Meg Whitman to be the CEO of Quibi. Pretty sure Bella Poarch (or someone similar) would be a more appropriate choice for knowing how to get something viral.

She was for Ops. They had Jef Katzenberg for content. That said, maybe neither of them had their finger on the pulse, and they are too old and rich to be 'hands on' founders - so without some really competent lieutenants this was going to fail.

$1B is goddam lot of money to spend on something with $0 capex.

The mobile app is a tiny cost.

So you have paying for the content then distribution. The later should have been royalty based and also drive most of the distribution.

It almost smells fishy.

TikTok has been getting popular since summer 2019.

TikTok usage tripled in 2020 versus doubled in 2019 (according to the Verge)

I don't know anyone that has used their phone less during lockdown.

I haven't used it for watching video media, that's gone way down now that I'm not commuting. When I watch videos now it's almost always on the TV instead. I'm not even sure if my streaming device supports Quibi.

Isn't the whole pitch that they're bite-sized? So you'll watch a clip on the toilet or while waiting for your turn in the covid test line. Mobile games and most apps are doing better than ever. This whole thing had a very "fellow kids" vibe, so I think the content must have been the main sticking point.

Yes, but you have no idea how long that bite size will last. While scrolling your feeds or playing most games, you can stop at any time. You can't say ahead of time "I'm going to spend 6-8 min waiting in this line / at the toilet, enough for a byte-sized episode".

There is this thing called a pause button. Which basically invalidates the whole concept of “bite-sized” entertainment to begin with. My biggest deterrent from streaming video away from home is data usage, not the length of the content.

I don't know if other people feel the same way, but I definitely feel a downside whenever I get invested in something (even a small bite of something) and then have to pause halfway through and resume at a later date/time. Tension drops, references to earlier things lose some meaning, you're completely pulled out of whatever you were watching and it starts feeling more like a disjointed effort to watch instead of a singular experience to enjoy.

Yep, that’s the irony: as much as they promote bite sized entertainment, their ten minutes is still too long for the use case they’re looking at. For people on the go (in transit, waiting in line), users want content that you can drop immediately. Like Reddit of Facebook or instagram. At the point where they’re willing to focus attention ... they want much longer stuff anyway. Quibi fails on both fronts.

Edit: well, someone else said it more succinctly:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24856020

I thought everyone felt this way.

If you're just going to pause it midway anyway, why not watch an actual episode of a real show on a streaming service you already have?

There is no pause button on human emotion. Good content evokes emotions. There’s a reason we use violent phrases like “torn away” when describing being pulled from an emotional state that some content put us in.

I don't get this "mobile". What you're talking about is "phone" first. People mostly use laptops for school/work, they spend their personal time on their phone.

Saying that the pandemic has stopped people using their phones for this purpose is excuse-making bullshit.

meanwhile snapchat stock up 30% today

Hehehe - acquihire, acquiquit. La misma cosa

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