The entertainment value curve: Why TikTok is on fire and Quibi isn’t (2020) | Hacker News Reader

The entertainment value curve: Why TikTok is on fire and Quibi isn’t (2020)

reforge.com

A non-zero factor were those mysterious-ass commercials that gave you zero information. "Time for a Quibi" doesn't work if you have no idea what the fuck a Quibi is. I saw those ads dozens of times and still had no idea it was a short-form video service until I read an article talking about their bankruptcy.

Also they marketed it as a way to waste time. It was completely disrespectful to their audience and content makers, essentially saying, "do you have some time to kill?! Watch our videos which are not too long to be a commitment." Whereas with TikTok I will gladly sit down and prepare for a two hour session at a time when I'm not commuting or on the toilet. The content is worth it.

I think Quibi sounds terrible too. I don’t think TikTok is much better but you don’t have to be amazing when you’re the first one.

Wasn’t Vine first?

Yeah

but Twitter bought it and then shut it down because they couldn’t make any money from it

Too much focus on stars like Trevor Noah that gen Z / millennial didn't care about. Too "production"-y and "professional". Majority of content on TikTok feels more down to earth and relatable and actually interesting. It's the same reason why Vine was popular back in the day, it just felt more human instead of another entertainment product.

Authenticity does not scale. Neither does the kind of zany creativity that produces viral content.

Isn’t tiktok gaining ground against instagram?

I'm talking about scaling challenges around the studio system for generating content. Top-down creativity can not scale to meet the throughput of decentralized user-generated content.

The premise of article seems to be that quibi had good production value but bad social value.

I watched some quibi shows. Quality was poor. It didn't know what it wanted to be and it showed. The medium was utilized poorly and just felt annoying.

I dont think the problem was just poor social value. Quibi was shit all around.

Yes-I really tried to watch Quibi shows and they were really bad. Or better to say: nah… If they made something like Moon Knight or Peacemaker they will be fine: even with ackward implementation.

Well, Quibi was just doomed.

The more interesting question, to me, is why TikTok and not Vine? Was it just timing? I suspect it was the recommendation engine.

Vine also limited you to a very small video at 6 seconds. There's not a lot of breathing room for creativity in such a tiny window of time.

This was it IMHO. Vine was a bit too restrictive. While there is a case for very short video it makes production hard and you end up starved for content. I think Vine might still be around if they had set the limit at 30 seconds or a couple of minutes. Still tight, but not like a straitjacket.

Vine didn’t license music the way TikTok did IIRC. That gave TikTok a core use case tapping into kareoke-culture while Vine struggled to find a mainstream audience. Vine also had a slightly-shorter format with less creator tools, and altogether this meant the platform was much more constrained I think.

Also, from the outside at least, it felt like twitter just gave up with Vine (and periscope) after a single attempt at monetization. I suspect some of the other difference was the huge bankroll for user acquisition that TikTok had and the resulting patience around monetization? But I don’t know if that is true.

Still bummed about not being able to watch storm chasers on Periscope anymore. It was a great format specifically for that...that and the guy that fed raccoons dog food on his back porch at night. Youtube just isn't quite as easy to find all the storm chaser feeds during a hurricane.

Also didn't TikTok have some kind of creator's fund while Vine had "monetize somewhere else," which led to an exodus of serious creatives?

In any case, it seems weird that they completely gave up, and even weirder that they Twitter didn't start chasing once TikTok figured out the formula in this space. Network effects are a thing, but with the prospect of a TikTok ban flying around and general unhappiness around aspects of its algorithm, it feels like there is room for a challenger with the strategy of "wait for TikTok to stumble."

Is Tiktok even conventionally profitable? I wonder whether a significant portion of it's resources might be provided by state actors to support it's less 'conventional' uses.

This is a fascinating question for me, because the ads are well-marked and easily skipped.

Partly that Musical.ly had a much more replicable format (lip syncs.) Millions of kids could make a video without worrying they were saying the wrong thing, and good recording quality was guaranteed.

Wasn't Vine basically killed after the big names started talking a union?

I thought it was killed because twitter wanted to push video on twitter.

TikTok’s sound overlays are essentially audio meme templates.

Didn't something weird happen within the company, I thought most of the users were entirely shocked by it's disappearance.

It's generated iconic memes, and introduced me to some great artists who would only continue to grow

Part of it was likely media licensing, part of it was a lack of a liquid business model, and to that latter point, in some quarters it was said that after Twitter acquired it, it couldn't figure out how to monetize it, and it was expensive to maintain.

TikTok is pretty addictive even without an account and reccomendations. The content is funny and those fast dopamine hits are too much. I don’t trust myself to have it on my phone.

Wow,I’ve avoided TikTok and your comment made me want to try it. Kinda like when my dad tried to put me off cocaine and just piqued my, until that point, zero interest.

I’m not gonna though!

I actually did. And man, two hours later I looked up from TikTok and realized it is 3pm!

Holy shit, within about 5 mins the algorithm had me laughing like a baboon and swiping away.

Scarily effective.

>5 mins

All your life is in a shadow profile which TikTok has access to.

The shadow profile is not unique to TikTok, what is unique is that they use it to entertain you in addition to monetizing/hoarding your data.

Who could have thought a strong focus on entertaining would drive so much engagement?

I don't know if it's an age/generation thing but most of the comments here pointing implementations of the product for why it wasn't as big are just ... unusual. Vine was very much getting the heat and traction that TikTok now has. The "evidence" is that tons of later youtubers got their start and developed successful followings from being so hot on vine.

I'm sure it would have evolved to have a little bit longer content eventually. The reason it was killed was entirely unrelated to the quality and vitality of the product and the community around it. Businesses fumble.

What I love about this essay, and essays like it, is the ignorance of history (not the author's necessarily) that it points to.

Stage and cinema were social events. You could go alone but usually you would not. The amount of inventory was small so everybody ended up talking about it; word of mouth could make or break a show.

When TV was introduced critics mourned this. There was so much more content that it couldn't build community. And the stupid kids just watched TV...with their friends. Even if their friends weren't with them they talked on the phone and of course saw each other at school.

Eventually the number of channels exploded, and people started watching online. And now the media pundits mourned the "water cooler conversation" that would no longer happen because people were no longer watching from the small set of shows (which had previously been considered too big).

Both these critics and the essay author understand that social interactions are what people want, but the critics have always been stuck in the past.

TikTok has a catchy name that aligns with the fast action short content. This is the nth time I have googled Quibi to find out what it was, and been surprised that it was an American company. It sure doesn't sound like it.

Some entrepreneurs get too hung up on having a name that’s mostly unique in google searches. I’ve seen too many stupid names that you’ll forget before googling.

Quibi was a misguided venture from the start, and I think it was obvious to anybody existing in the "young" social media world. 10 minutes is way too long to get the same instant gratification as TikTok, Instagram, et al. It's also too long to mindlessly pickup during the short breaks during the day: Walking down the hallway, waiting in line at Starbucks, commercial break on Hulu, etc.

So it has none of the benefits of TikTok, but is artificially constrained to only ten minute episodes, hampering what story can be told in a single episode. It also means you can't license TV shows or movies to bolster the library. Even with a billion dollars, competing with the original content of streaming services like Netflix that have existed for a decade is a tall order.

I didn't think of Quibi as trying to be a "social" media. The goal seemed to be to create a new channel for commercial media.

There's a valid argument for "conventional media is not ideal for consumption on your phone." The content isn't really mixed or targeted for the device. You can make a strong case for developing media specifically for the format-- like how TV eventually begat the sitcom and 60-minute cop drama.

This, however, has to be an iterative process. They blew straight past MVP and went full "here's a finished complete product that we just know people will pay $10 per month for without adequately explaining it to them."

They could probably have survived if they had started a lot smaller, and probably went to a different monetization model. For something like this, you almost have to give the store away for a year or two, just to get real user feedback and develop buzz. Maybe when you instrument up users, you find out that 10 minutes is the wrong timeslice, and 6 or 16 flies better. Maybe some content proves to be more suited to the form. Once you have a base of people actually discussing your content, maybe a price plan akin to old Crunchyroll, where the back catalog was ad-supported, and you had to pay to see new content in a timely fashion. You can't expect to sell people on 10 bucks a month when you haven't established your content credentials.

I also suspect Covid did a number on some of their key target markets; the idea of "I have 10 minutes to kill and my phone is the only screen choice" dovetails very well with public transport and office lunch breaks, both of which were mysteriously flattened in the spring of 2020. If you're going to be locked down, you may as well be locked down around the 40-inch TV and watch full movies.

Didn’t mean to suggest they were trying to become social media, rather they were trying to capture the some of the short-form video screentime that’s mainly served by social media today. They advertised themselves as “quick bites” of video.

I’m sure their strategy could have been better and Covid certainly hurt them quite a bit. But in my view none of that matters because the concept was DOA.

The name Quibi sounds like a Chinese streaming site for movies. I think that might have an effect on a western audience.

Ironically it was backed by Jeff Katzenburg while TikTok, the actual Chinese platform became successful.

Branding is important

People had no qualms with the name when millions installed Quibi for free trials during the start of Covid, the problem is they didn't want to pay for it.

> The name Quibi sounds like a Chinese streaming site for movies.

Not even a little bit. The legal syllables in which a Q is followed by a U are qu and que. If you asked me "which language was the name 'Quibi' made up in?"[1], my first guess would be English, followed by maybe French or Spanish.

[1] Actually, this sounds like a fun game.

I should note that I forgot quan and qun.

I guessed it was because you needed to essentially be a studio to produce Quibis and you could create a TikTok from the app. And yep. That's a large part of it.

If you want to succeed socially, you have to allow the masses to be generators of content. YouTube and Twitch were grown along these principles. Now they're more on the produced side of things, but in the early days, it was grab a camera and go.

And you can still get a lot of mileage out of that setup on those platforms.

Quibi failed because it misunderstood the "Waiting in line for a few minutes, let me watch something quick model". In a 5 minute lineup waiting for a sandwich, these users want to scroll through 100 TikTok videos, pause on 10, and give each one 20 seconds. Not watch one (or maybe even HALF of one) Quibi episode that requires full attention to the plot, "appreciation" of the "high production" values, and constant phone adjustment to make the most of the show filmed for multiple orientations.

10 minute Quibi episodes felt groundbreaking to the old hollywood guard that thought they were being innovative against 2 hour movies, but it was hopelessly conservative against the actual competition from TikTok and Instagram Reels.

This is not the indictment of our attention-deficit culture that many would claim that it is. Films continue to be popular - in theaters and at home. People continue to binge watch dozens of hours of Television. Books are as popular as ever - even in their legacy dead tree format.

But the "short video" genre is a completely different concept, and the old guard missed it. (Just as Ballmer & co missed what was special about iPhone and iPad)

Related: The Foundering podcast did a great series on the origins of TikTok and how it evolved from a Silicon Valley startup into the juggernaut it is today.

https://open.spotify.com/show/6hETi9oBd26vc0bRgXYN5W?si=d87d...

See season 2.

Slightly unrelated but it's crazy to see how fast the sentiment towards Netflix has changed. This article from 2 years ago refers to Netflix as the platform everybody loves who can't do no wrong. I don't think I have read any positive articles about Netflix written in the last 6 months or so.

>to my knowledge, there’s never been a successful media-tech firm founded by people in their sixties. The young brain is crazy, creative, and willing to work 80 hours a week, as young people think they’ll live forever. People in their sixties are not blessed/cursed with any of these things, which makes them decent leaders, great mentors, and shitty entrepreneurs.

Maybe you do not see us because we work smarter, not harder. Maybe, we no longer need to be in the limelight like a "young brain". We can just sit back, hire "young people" to be gung-ho, and enjoy providing guidance, and the fruits of our labour.

(edit: love to hear the elucidation why the down-vote.)

Its the recommendation engine. TikTok is exposing both Instagram and Youtube as pure garbage. They clearly tuned their content machines to make the most money and censor the most content. The gap was wide open for someone to actually create a recommendation engine that rewards real grass roots content creators and gives users the content they want to see. This is a classic example of capitalism, the monopolistic technical choices of Google/FB/other media are getting torched

As someone interests in recommendation systems I really need to spend some time with Tiktok fans and understand this. I spent about three weeks with the app and did not find almost any engaging content. The first week was just quickly scrolling past what looked like highschool girls dancing, then eventually I found some political content I was interested in watching to get a sense of the zeitgeist and tried engaging with that but it was buried again by reaction videos and more dances.

I’ve seen TikTok content I am interested in show up recycled as YouTube shorts so I know it exists, but I was never able to find it on the platform. Universally I hear this recommendation engine is the best in the business. Is there some social signal they aren’t getting from my setup, is a few weeks just too short of a time to build up what they need, or am I just a weirdo?

when did you try ? i had the feeling the number of "serious" videos has increased a lot in the past months.

Or, maybe i just got bored watching pretty women dance after a while, and the algorithm detected it and adjusted.

> Is there some social signal they aren’t getting from my setup

Honestly from the description you wrote it just does not seem like TikTok is the right platform for you.

What I like about it is the light-heartedness of it, I don't see political content at all and I wouldn't really be interested if I got any as it's a pretty terrible platform for news and hot takes. Instead, I get cooking/funny/cute/surreal meme videos that match the Gen Z humor. It distracts me from gloomy Twitter/Facebook feeds.

It's not an app for serious content, it's a dopamine treadmill.

Oh don’t get me wrong, I like surreal gen z humor videos I’ve seen recycled as YouTube shorts. I just can’t get the TikTok algorithm to match me with them? It basically just shows an endless stream of young women lip syncing (not that there is anything wrong with that in the abstract, just definitely not personalized to me)

Hmmm interesting, make sure to like more than once when some content is interesting to you. Additionally, follow and bookmark stuff that you enjoyed (that seems to play some role in the recommendation).

TikTok also seems to do on-the-fly recommendation to match your mood, so for example if I take my girlfriend's account to browse it, I will usually have to spend 5 minutes skipping dance/hair tutorials before getting to the content I like. It seems similar to Spotify's random mode, where it is random but only to some extent within a genre and will "find" the genre that matches your current mood.

Try using the app’s search feature to seed it with content you do like.

Try scrolling past the political content?

The engine can only do so much. Obviously dances and reactions are going to be more voluminous, and the # of unique political content is going to be less.

Also, unlike YouTube where once it decides it learns what you like, it will recommend ONLY content it thinks you will like, the TikTok Recommendation engine tries to be more egalitarian:

* It will highlight random new creators with very few likes or comments or engagement - arbitrarily. A lot of these will be misses, but you're helping train it and get in on the virality early on. The key with those is either to have an open mind and try them or a closed mind and scroll away immediately from anything that has a single digit like/comment count, but not be surprised or disappointed by it.

* It will highlight random viral content even ones that you expressly do not have signals for liking just so you can stay on top of trends and popular memes. In that sense, TikTOk is the absolute best way to stay connected to latest musical and internet trends of the youths, because it's not hidden to their circles but exposed to everyone.

To me, these are both features. Even though I am an aging techie, who primarily likes more engaging content (politics, philosophy, film analysis). I get those TOO and when I want ONLY that content, I switch to my "Following" page to see only the stuff I explicitly signed up for. But I toggle back and forth because I like seeing what "the kids" are into. It doesn't matter if I agree. I think it's helpful to be aware of generational trends. The kids will grow up and will shape the culture. Since I exist in society, I want to know what that's going to look like, even if I plan to stick to my 90's rock musical taste into my own 90's.

(Plus you get to discover that The Kids Are Alright, and are themselves influenced by my own musical genre preferences even today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGUy2UmRxJ0)

> It will highlight random viral content even ones that you expressly do not have signals for liking just so you can stay on top of trends

I am not so sure it really accomplishes this. There are trend bubbles that I’ve never seen organically via the app, but have seen via friends or link aggregators.

Tiktok falls into the same censorship problem. From what I've seen, creators are constantly using code words to talk about sensitive subjects to avoid the censors. Often videos are arbitrarily deleted with little transparency. It is very much in the same camp as Youtube.

The Chinese side of TikTok or the intl one?

Both of them.

The Chinese side of TikTok is called Douyin and is, externally, a separate user database.

You glossed over the implication of your logic. Insta, FB, etc are incentivized to make money. Whether that is good or bad is a fair debate. But TikTok is incentivized by the CCP to spy on dumb Americans and to make them even less intelligent. Easy to create the “perfect” viral product when you don’t care about making money.

I bet downgrading "undesirables" (ugly, handicapped) and forcing beauty filters doesnt hurt tiktok either.

It is no different to platforms like Instagram, YouTube, etc but with a different name. Their over-worshipped algorithm is nothing new but is in fact worse than Instagram which no-one has seen anything like the reality distortion in real time like this: [0]

> The gap was wide open for someone to actually create a recommendation engine that rewards real grass roots content creators and gives users the content they want to see.

The algorithm has already been gamed by large creators and corporations to make other creators lose out and to let the corporations and marketers ruin the platform.

Every single platform that does this and allows ads, marketers and large companies will always negotiate via backroom deals for a spot on the platform to ruin it afterwards. The result is the same and the small grass roots creators lose all the time and get screwed first by the existing larger and early creators, even from other platforms.

It is the same old power law being applied. Rinse and repeat.

[0] https://www.nrk.no/osloogviken/xl/tiktok-doesn_t-show-the-wa...

TikTok is on fire because it shows young girls dancing in their underpants. That's it.

Guess you didn't watch the viral video of the guy on skates with a drink in his hand, listening to Fleetwood Mac...

Haha, if that was true snapchat's discover stories would be more popular. Hit: it's not.

Tiktok is full of cringy sing along by 18 year olds trying to be hot.

quibi was marketed as short adult programming. They had Bill Burr.

Bill Burr can't compete with dancing teenagers and I think he'd admit that.

TikTok also has Bill Burr…

now

Reply on news.ycombinator.com