"Successful mobile video apps aren’t just viewing experiences, they are social experiences."

"Upon joining, Meg Whitman described Quibi as “one of the most disruptive and timely ideas that I have come across in my career”."

"“The explosion of short-form video is obvious to all of us, but a lot of what we’ve seen is the production of amateurs — user-generated content. Taking a professional approach to this kind of content, we haven’t seen that yet in a concerted way, and I think that’s a smart thing to try.”"

"“The answer is obvious, and ageist. 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.”"

"But… Steve Jobs was in his fifties when Apple launched the iPhone. Reed Hastings was in his fifties when Netflix launched the first Netflix Originals. Innovation hasn’t been limited to the mythical college dropout."

"Since then, we’ve seen snackable content take many forms: Tweets, YouTube videos, GIFs, Vines, “Hyper Casual” games, and now TikToks."

"Snacks aren't fun because they're quick. Snacks are fun because they're shareable."

"The Entertainment Value Curve"

"On mobile, entertainment value is the byproduct of production value and social value. This formula generates an efficient frontier of product/market fit."

"Entertainment Value = Production Value + Social Value"

"Y-Axis = Social Value = The level of personal connection the viewer has with the content."

"X-Axis = Production Value = The quality of the content relative to highest quality in the genre."

"People Enjoy Content Differently Based On Who is Creating and Sharing"

"Successes Live Along The Entertainment Curve"

"Snapchat - Snapchat is at one end of the spectrum. Their AR lenses offer tools for anyone to be able to create fun content."

"The production value is low, but the social value is very high."

"Instagram - Instagram, like most other social platforms, takes a ""consume first"" approach by opening directly to the feed."

"However, unlike TikTok and YouTube, Instagram's home feed only features content from creators the user is following."

"IG Stories (and now Reels) effectively lowered the bar for what is ‘Instagram-worthy’ and making lower production value content readily accessible at the top of Feed."

"By doing so, IG dramatically increased the entertainment value of the product. The lower production bar enabled more people to post more frequently and similarly increased the the consumption rate of watching other people’s stories."

"Instagram's second tab, the ""Explore"" feed, plots a different point on the curve. The Explore feed uses a personalization algorithm that is informed, but not constrained, by follower relationships. As a result, the Explore feed is positioned similarly to TikTok's For You tab — higher production value content that still has some personal relevance."

"TikTok - TikTok moves a step further down the Entertainment Curve"

"TikTok reverses the emphasis of Instagram (topical content first, socially connected content second)."

"YouTube - YouTube is organized similarly to TikTok, but the content on YouTube is not subject to the same constraints."

"Netflix - Netflix is on the other end of the spectrum. The production value of Netflix shows is very high—so high that only a handful of elite Hollywood content creators are able to achieve Netflix's bar for production value."

"Social value is primarily a function of the social connection between the viewer of the content and the creator of the content. Accordingly, the best way to measure social value is to look at the share of people creating content — more people creating leads to a higher likelihood of connection between the creator and the viewer."

"Social Value and Production Value by the numbers"

"We can measure this by looking at ""creation participation rate."" The creation participation rate is defined as the percentage of users who create content (typically on a daily or weekly basis)."

"Creation participation was a large focus for the Instagram team. The IG Stories team had a goal metric of creation participation per DAU (ie, what % of DAU created a story) in addition to a team working on consumption participation rate / DAU"

"Content distribution is handled by a recommendation algorithm which ranks an inventory of content based on a user's likelihood of engaging with that content."

"Although Netflix offers a vast library of shows and movies, the amount of content on Netflix is vanishingly small compared to the content on other platforms (Netflix currently has about 36,000 hours of content in total."

"Contrast that with YouTube creators who upload 720,000 hours of content per day.)"

"The content distribution curve for Snapchat would look very different."

"the content distribution curve on Snapchat is a flat, long-tail distribution."

"high production value platforms have shorter tails, and low production value platforms have longer tails."

"The problem with Quibi is that the product is not optimized for the Entertainment Value Curve. Quibi added format, length, and viewing constraints that made it harder to compete with the production value of Netflix content, but did not supplement those constraints with increased social value."

"Quibi made the mistake of thinking that ""short"" was the feature that people want, whereas ""shareable and social"" is what people want."

"Vine arrived in a world where YouTube creators were beginning to shift from amateur to prosumer."

"Vine sought to level the playing field. Vine creators could only record in-app (eliminating expensive video equipment from the equation) and record up to six seconds of video (putting the emphasis on pithy content)."

"Two years after Vine’s shutdown, teens were still talking about Vine and sharing Vine compilations on YouTube. TikTok figured out why."

"Around the same time, TikTok was taking note of the same trend. They built a broader take on short-format video that expanded upon Musical.ly’s niche."

"TIKTOK’S 15-60 SECOND CLIPS LOOP INFINITELY."

"In real life, looping makes it easy to pass a phone around so everyone can see a great clip. Not around friends? Looping gives people time to figure out who they want to send a clip to. For Gen Z, sending a TikTok or a meme is like giving a gift. It’s the thought that counts."

"TikTok’s design takes a clear stance—snackable media is social media."

"TIKTOK BREAKS DOWN THE WALL BETWEEN THE AUDIENCE AND THE CREATOR."

"The Algorithm - The TikTok algorithm is designed to give new content a chance at virality, something increasingly hard with the main feeds on YouTube and Instagram which over-weight views/likes — giving creators with high following a major advantage vs. new creators."

"2. Reducing The Production Gap - TikTok initially started (but recently changed) with only being able to recording within the app (no uploading)."

"This gives new creators the ability to compete with A-list, celebs, and also encourages A-list celebs to share more authentically."

"Kids are spending 80 minutes a day on TikTok—parceled into 15 second snacks."

"The entertainment engagement loop has three parts, creation, consumption and conversation, all reinforcing each other"

"Creation drives consumption - TikTok has radically simplified the task of creating engaging video."

"Consumption drives conversation. TikTok makes it easy for people to talk about the videos they watch."

"Conversation drives creation. Creators are motivated by the positive feedback, and others want to create things that people talk about."

"Creating new products is not just about pulling from a lengthy menu of features as Quibi did (mobile + short + vertical video + Netflix), it is about finding a new, self-reinforcing formula for creating value in people's lives."