No Cameras Allowed by Computer Clan #004 - Diving Deeper Into Quibi’s $2 Billion Flop

Show Notes: Special thanks to Brad for joining the episode Brad’s Instagram: @bradtastical The Men Who Would Be Kings Krazy Ken’s Quibi Episode: What the HECK is Quibi? (The $1.75 Billion Fail) � The iPhone Episode Brad Helped Film: Is the iPhone 12 Pro Camera Upgrade Good? (Dolby Vision, HDR, and Photos)

� The Aputure Lights Krazy Ken Uses � The Microphone Krazy Ken Uses FTC: Ken is an Amazon Associate and may receive a commission from the Amazon purchase links. Commissions directly support the Computer Clan! Thanks for purchasing through our links.

Patreon.com/KrazyKen

Transcription*: Hey guys, how are you all doing? If you're new here, welcome, my name is Krazy, Ken, and welcome to another episode of no cameras allowed the autobiographical podcast about the computer claimed YouTube channel. One of the longest running tech YouTube channels in history. And today we're actually going to the semis present. And we're going to be talking about a recent topic. The shutdown of Quibi the $1.75 billion venture that shut down in about eight months. I released an episode about it on YouTube a little while ago. So I wanted to dive into it a bit more on the podcast because we have more time than a 12 minute YouTube episode. We can dig into it a bit more and have more fun. But on top of that, I am here with my buddy, Brad, who you have seen in a couple other episodes. If you've watched those iPhone 12 camera comparisons, he is the cool guy with the beard. That's him. He helps make those he's in the office right now. Hello, Brad. Thanks for being on the show. Hey Ken, thanks for having me on. Absolutely. And yes, I did say in the office, not in the studio because guys listening, I'm not going to lie to you. I'm not in a studio. I'm in my office when I record these, at least as of right now. And, um, this is actually the first time I'm using a dual microphone setup. Um, if Brad looks to his right, he will see the boxes from the microphone equipment. I literally unboxed it 20 minutes before he gets and I ordered all the equipment. It's going to be great. It's so nice to have two identical Mike's it's so much easier to mix, but of course I forgot to buy the stupid thread adapter to attach the expensive microphone to the stand. So it is held on by two clamps and some scotch tape. But so yeah, I gave Brad the crappy mic rate, but I made up for it. I'm sitting in the little wooden guest chair and he's sitting in my like $450 work pro 9,000 quantum, whatever it's called ergonomic chair. How did that chair for you? Oh, it feels, it feels great. I can lean back and I can view this wonderful contraption that you MacGyvered. Um, I like it. I think it's, I think it's quaint. I think it should be. I already said it should be just a staple of the studio. Like I get, like, I just, uh, when I upgrade the podcast studio later, I just have that the exact way it is that old MacGyvered microphone sitting in the corner with like velvet ropes and stuff. It's like, no, it's a little Newseum museum piece. I think that it's, uh, it's cool that you have this because the reason that it is like that is that you move fast. I mean, we talked about you having a podcast. I mean, that feels like a week ago or something that was just jumped on it and all of a sudden, boom, you have a pod That was crazy. And for those who want to know a little bit of that story, if you check out episode zero, which is the trailer episode, I actually talk about that story just a little bit. It's called I accidentally made a podcast and I kinda did. I was talking with Brad actually. Yeah. This is like the origin story. Now this is the guy I was talking to in that episode, by the way. Um, this is who I was referring to. We were talking about something I don't even remember. But then like before I knew it, we were down a rabbit hole of podcasting for like 45 minutes. And then, you know, it hit me. I was like, I got to make it. Actually, I think what we were talking about is probably tied into what we're going to talk about here today. Quibi that, because I think I was talking to you about, we were just talking about maybe we watched an Apple event or something, and we were talking about like, you know, having yourself in every platform that you possibly could. And then I think I started talking about how Matthew Ball, who's this analyst who I really like on the film industry and technology and stuff, how he had written this article about audio being like the biggest potential market or the fastest growing and saying that. And he's also who turned me onto quippy. So that's how it's tied into Dude. This is a full circle episode. I did not plan it. That's crazy. Uh, so yeah, but you know, this is the nice thing about no cameras allowed. There was no cameras allowed. So, you know, we don't have to worry about making the set look nicer or anything like that. And I could not be wearing pants for all the listeners now, but in all reality, I love recording audio only stuff a lot, because I don't have to worry about wardrobe, hair, or makeup. Um, this, this conversation is based off of my quippy episode. I did on crazy Ken's tech talk, if you haven't seen it yet, I recommend watching that first, the link will be in the show notes, but if you don't want to watch it at first, that's okay. We're just going to have a conversation about it. And you know, I'm not thoroughly researching stuff here, full disclaimer while we're talking. So don't take everything we say as gospel, but if you want to watch the episode, go ahead and watch that because that's more research than everything. The main reason I have Brad here is because he was following it. What you were following it almost since like the initial, like new TV days, I would guess. Yeah. I definitely remember hearing that it was now called quiver. I don't think back when it was new TV, that I was really that it was just something in the ether. And then when they said, Oh, we got a name for this thing. From that point on, I was pretty kind of hooked into what was going on with it. And that was probably a year and a half before me, because I don't remember exactly when I started hearing about it, but it was probably around that spring time because it launched April 6th, 2020. And it was probably around that. I kept seeing ads for it and I had no idea what it was, the ads confused me. I never got the message. I kept seeing the logo. So brand awareness, I guess, but I was like, what did it ever confuse you? Or did you kind of just get it because you saw it differently before it was more of an advertising thing. I knew what it was and I was looking forward to it. I thought it was interesting, but I have to admit from the beginning, I never liked the name. Quibi I remember initially I kind of went and then I went screw it. Who knows what works these days. So I, I definitely didn't register, but as it came out, as it became a thing, I realized that, uh, that name seemed to be not doing it any favors. Yeah. The name did kind of confuse me at first too. But then I was like, Oh, all of these things have their own, you know, little funky name or whatever. I'm sure, you know, people who are like flicker, you know, back in the day, like what flicker, why spell it with an are not available before take TOK T I K T O K, whatever. It's a, but it's a portmanteau for a quick bite. So once you know that it kinda, yeah, I, I think, I mean, I must have read that or something back when it first got the name. I think that was like 2018 or something. I'm sure I read that somewhere, but I did not remember seeing it in your video, like jog Batman went. Oh, okay. Makes sense. Still not a great name, but yeah. So did you, I don't have cable. You don't have cable either. I'm guessing, but did you ever see the super, the big game commercial with like the bank robbery? Did you ever see that? Yes, I did see it and I did like the ad. And in fact, I, I showed the ad. We were having like a marketing meeting at the place where I work and, um, uh, I showed it to the chief marketing officer and everything. Everybody he want to know everyone's favorite Superbowl commercial. And I can't say that it was necessarily my favorite, but I guess, because I had been following Cribby so long and I was so interested in following this thing that it's like this like little band, you know, it was almost like that you like this little band and they're indie. And then all of a sudden they have this hit song and they're exploding and you're like kind of happy for it, but also like, is it, you know, like, uh, so it was interesting to get out there. I thought the ad was effective and I liked it, but I knew they were in trouble when I showed it. And I got it. It made sense to me as someone who had been following it, I thought it was a clever ad. Nobody else in the room. Got it. Like everyone was like, no, when it, I mean, what is it? And what was it, what did they say? Like, they, they couldn't get the name even like Quip co. And I'm like, well, why did they complete? I had to explain it. It took five minutes of explanation for anybody to get it. And then they just kind of went, eh, okay, good choice. And then they showed some mountain Dew ad with like Bryan Cranston recreating the shining. And it was, Of course they got that. Yeah. So if people are just tuning into this now, and they haven't seen my episode and they haven't looked into Quibi before, you're probably a bit confused right now too. And I think, you know, everyone, yeah. The way Brad was describing it is how like everyone would have felt. They were like, what the heck is this thing? So in quick summary Quibi is a short form. Mobile only like a video service, like a Netflix, but it's only for your phone. And it's only like what, four to 10 minute, quick bites as they call them, no video would be longer than that. And if there was a movie, they would chop it up into shorter chapters and they use this thing called turnstile. That was the name of the technology. So you could watch a video in portrait mode where, you know, you hold your phone like that a lot, or you could rotate in the landscape, but it wasn't like a typical video rotating into portrait or landscape. It would actually like dynamically change, camera angles would change. Texts would change. It would fill the whole screen appropriately, depending on the aspect ratio you were watching it. And, uh, the show wireless, that was a quippy show. That was a unique experience with turnstile. You would watch the main, like cinematic experience in landscape. But when you, when you turn into portrait, you would see what's on the main characters phone screen, which I thought was kind of interesting. And that sounds like a pain in the butt to like film and sync and edit together. But I know they, they figured it out with movie magic. So that's what Quibi is in a nutshell. But, uh, the interesting thing is like the backstory. So Brad, who was the guy running the show? Uh, well, Jeffrey Katzenberg is, I mean, uh, I guess he was the F again, I'm not quite sure I came into it after it was already like a thing. And I know Jeffrey Katzenberg by name, I guess that's why it was a big deal is because Dreamworks guy. Yeah, There's a book I had read back in the day called there's the, the men who would be King. So if you're interested in going further back into the equivalency world, the men who would be King is about Spielberg, Katzenberg and Geffen starting Dreamworks. And it's really, I guess that's why I was interested in quibbling. Anyway, I read that book because in addition to just being interested in films, I'm really interested in the industry kind of like tech, you know, the industry of Hawk is interesting too. So the film business is really interesting. I love those, those stories, um, and hearing, you know, the, behind the scenes of art versus commerce, and what's going to take off on what works. Um, so I guess that's what happened is, uh, yeah, so Katzenberg, he was with Dreamworks. Dreamworks was like the first new actual movie studio in something like 80 years. And then, but then the one thing that stuck around was Dreamworks animation. So Jeffrey Katzenberg is like, I think behind track and like Prince of Egypt and stuff like that, um, in that reign of, um, Dreamworks animation. And then I can't remember, I don't really know what happens in between that. And Quibi, I think he maybe did another animation thing or something In my episode, that's kind of where I made the jump. Like I talked about, you know, he founded Quimby or back when it was new TV with Meg Whitman, I talked about Meg Whitman's backstory, like, you know, working at eBay and Hewlett Packard. But when I talked about Katzenberg, you know, I talked about like, uh, what was it, a paramount, he had a leadership role there, Walt Disney company. But then, then I moved to Dreamworks with Spielberg and Gavin is a Geffin Geffin and, um, yeah. Then I kind of just jumped to quippy. I don't really know. I didn't, I didn't bother researching. I didn't want to get like too stuck up in the, yeah, Yeah. I mean, I think, again, I don't know what was happening there either way. He was a big name. It was still a name that if he was involved in something, um, it could be big particularly with animation at the time, but then this was coming around. I mean, that's what a lot of the talk was is that this would have never worked without somebody of his rep, you know, cause people go, it's like working with a Steven Spielberg or something. That's going to say no to that. This is the guy behind the can point out all these famous things. And that's what they were going after was top tier talent. So I guess his name brought that kind of Hollywood prestige to the thing That totally makes sense because one thing they really focused on with a quippy, they would say, you know, quick bites, big stories. And they also said big stars a lot. And if anyone listening just looks at like the keynote, for example, at CES 2020, they have this one slide that shows like a bajillion headshots of all these big celebrities. And they talk about how these big celebrities are in these shows. Because even though the app is kind of like Tik TOK in a way, you know, quick videos, portrait landscape, or portrait orientation, most of the time, the big difference was, well, it was higher production value. This was like big, big production value in a kind of tick-tock ASCA package. And yeah. Uh, they had a lot of big names on there for sure. And someone like Katzenberg, you know, he has the connections, he has the name. People are willing to, you know, you know, perk up and go like, Oh, okay. Hey, all right. Well, if he says, this is a good idea, it's gotta be good. Cause in the end, like what they got 1.7, $5 billion of investment. Yeah. And it's, I always heard 2 billion, but you know, probably around there, I'm wondering, I, this just came to mind as you were speaking that out loud. I didn't really I'm wondering now, do you think that in your research, did you see anything? Is Quimby a, like essentially a technology that then they brought somebody like Katzenberg on to say, Hey, do something with this. We're going to give you free reign or did the creative part come first in search of the technology? So I don't know though, like order of how they did it, but every time I heard about the playback technology, which is called turnstile, by the way, play on words, it's S T Y L E not S T I L E turnstile. I've never heard of turnstile being a part of anything else. I've only heard it as a part of Quibi. And, um, don't quote me on this. I'm guessing they kind of were built around the same time. It wasn't like, Hey, we have this technology, what do we do with it? I think they're kind of built almost simultaneously, but that I haven't fully checked into. But what I do know is that multimedia company echo sued Quibi cause they were like, yo, this turnstile thing rips off our interactive multimedia thing. And you know, as of right now we're recording this on December 10th, 2020. And the last update I saw, it was particularly on variety.com. There was a late October update that echo is seeking like a 98 million something dollar payout for damages. But, uh, that lawsuit is still ongoing. I have not seen any conclusion there, but, uh, you know, maybe that was one of the things that hurt Quibi and white died so soon, but there's some bigger problems They kind of dropped that. I'll just say, when you were describing the turnstile experiences that you had, I was like, and actually, and then in the episode, when you're showing the clips from wireless, I was like, Oh, that's pretty cool. But everything that I watched on Quibi had like the, the, the effect was just a crop of a 16 by nine, except for one like Vox documentary series. Like the graphics would have different orientation when you switched. But that was the only thing that I saw. Right. And I saw them talking about turnstiles so much and my brain is just going, wow. There was so much like thought and research being put into this, not just in making the technology, but also in how things are filmed. Like sometimes you'd probably have to be filming with like two cameras, just for one angle. I don't know, especially for like wireless, you'd have to be filming with the phone, you know, like an attachment to the phone, to like pin point toward your face. And then in a roll camera over here, you'd have to be filming with like multiple things at once and then recording the screen. Maybe like everything they were describing sounded cool. But in my head, I'm like for what, what's the payout here. You can take your phone and then that's it, it just seemed like it wasn't really worth it. And uh, like you're saying a lot of times it was just like a little reframe, a crop, the cool stuff they were showing was, you know, probably select things. They just wanted to show for the demo. But for the most part, it wasn't really fancy like that. And if you weren't watching a show like wireless, you probably would just get, Oh, it's cropping and reframing would be, And it is cool in concept, but it, um, yeah, I'm just sitting there going, how active do I want to be when I'm usually when you're watching something you're resting. So how often are you going to switch it? And that's the same thing I thought when I heard about wireless, I was like, Oh, that's kind of cool. It's kind of like a semi choose your own adventure sort of thing, but it's an odd. Um, and I was like, but I don't know how much I want to be like rotating this when I'm just trying to chill. And you know, we'll talk about this a little bit more later, but, uh, initially since it was mobile only, you couldn't even airplay or Chromecast these videos to your TV. You could only watch on your phone, but even later when they did introduce the streaming, well, it killed the turnstile. So now if you watch on your TV, it totally just bypasses the thing that, you know, that's the big, unique thing about it, just Scripts. And that's what they told their investors. That's one of the big things that, that they're, you know, kind of blaming the failure on. And the thing that was, this was supposed to be in a pre pandemic world. This, this, you know, has been getting worked on for years was that they were really going for the market, that this was going to be such high quality, big star content. That's why they were spending so much money. You won't be to not want to check this out and you're going to check it out and all those down moments, not just like commutes, like when you're on the subway or the train or something, but they wanted you, they were thinking that this is what you're going to pull out when you're in line at the grocery store or waiting at the dentist office and stuff like that. And, uh, that, that, that was, that was what they were aiming for. See, here's my problem with that. I can watch a quick cat video on Instagram. If I'm in line, I can't really get invested into a story though, if I'm in line for two minutes, you know, that's, that's why I never saw myself using it. I dunno if that made any sense, but like with their high production value movie type stuff, I feel like I would need to be in the story a little bit more, not just a quick two minutes. Oh, okay. Hey, I got to move forward in line. Um, check out. I don't know. It just feels, it feels to start and stop you from me. Yeah. I really just that type of, I know they had a bunch of different types of contents, reality shows and they all animation and they had drama and the horror and all this stuff. But I mean, I think that's part of the problem with it, which is why, even though I had been following it for years when it finally came out, he used it a handful of times. I mean, I'm talking, I don't know that I watched an entire whole show on there. Um, and it that's the thing. It was just, there was too much, I had no identity, you know, there was no, like if it's got every type of show it's like, and in the interface, everything was so big at those like full screen when you opened up the app to scroll through shows and that just made it, like, it felt like it was really hard to find things. And it really, wasn't a great experience now. Yeah. I can't speak for my personal experience because the service actually shut down and like, I couldn't use it anymore when you try signing in, it just says app error. And I wanted to, you know, use it earlier and do this, um, do the YouTube episode a few days earlier, like a couple of weeks earlier, I just got really busy, but yeah, I couldn't really test it out for myself, which kind of sucks. But from what I hear, yeah, no, not a lot of people had a great experience, but it did have a lot of five star reviews in the app store though. Um, out of like, ER ratings out of like 55,000 ratings, like 97% of them were five stars. So maybe, maybe the app wasn't too bad for the people that did. It's not just a, that a Quimby's thing. I find that a lot of these streaming apps, um, I think YouTube has a pretty good layout, the YouTube app for finding things, how there's some bigger stuff and then little side scrolls with smaller things that makes it easier on mobile. It's just when you open it up and you can only see one big poster at a time, or just a couple. I think it makes it when you're trying to have a, because that's what YouTube is when I go to YouTube, it's this jackpot type thing. Oh, what I'm, there's always something to find. And it just made it hard to have that jackpot kind of find things with the Quibi. Yeah. I mean the HBO max app is just as bad. I mean, I love HBO has so many shows that I love yet. If I open up that app, I it's like hard to find something I want to watch. Oh yeah. I can't say I tried that, but, uh, yeah. I, I believe you though. It's funny because, um, HBO, max is all purple and so it was clearly it's weird. And from what I've researched, maybe there's more by now, but I talked about this in my episode, since quippy shut down, like, where are the shows going to go? I know that one show so far, at least got picked up and it was by HBO max. So in terms of its downfall, I think that's the thing that like, is peaking a lot of people's interests now. Cause it's like, Whoa, how does this thing with all these big celebrities and like this big wig, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and like almost $2 billion, how does this whole thing collapse in eight months? So that is really, really short. So, um, and we talked about it a bit, you know, there was like, um, we w we touched on the pandemic, let's actually talk about that. Cause that was one thing the Quibi people even said in their like publications about the shutdown, they did mention the pandemic. I'm not going to say they full on blamed it, but you know, people aren't going out as much. They're not, you know, waiting in line or on the subway, you know? So when are they going to watch Quibi they did blame the pandemic on that a bit. Um, personally I think if the pandemic didn't happen quickly would still perish and maybe would have lasted a few more months. But I think the other issues that we can dive into more later were more of the downfall. And what do you think of, I mean, I agree with you. I think it would have failed regardless at this point. Um, I actually think it might have, it's possible that it might have done better because of the pandemic than it would have. I think it was just, I think it's a problem with the style of content. I just don't think people necessarily want that. But, um, yeah, the pandemic, I, I think the only thing that might've happened, if life was going on like normal and it came out, it might've been around longer. Not because it was doing better, but because it would have been easier to convince, you know, investors to like, Hey, we just need to be around. We just need to take off. We just need one more super bowl commercial. And it would have just artificially been out there long. Yeah. Like that could be, I guess we really can't tell right now Had taken off. It could have taken off, it needed a big hit. That's the thing like there's, if you, in talking about being interested in the business and stuff like that, um, they talk about that one hit like game of Thrones for HBO is, is like worth 12. Medium-size totally. Yeah. It can, it can Sur it can float your whole, you know, boat. I, and I think that's what they were hoping for by spending so much money and doing so many shows and so much different type of content with so many proven people, they had their fingers crossed that one of these is going to hit. Cause that's really all they needed. I mean, the Mandalorian is like that show for Disney plus, right? Yeah. That's huge. So Quimby, that's what I'm saying. If there was no pandemic, they might've been able to convince people to keep giving them money until they had a hit. Yes. I, I th that makes total sense. The next issue we can touch on quickly here is like the lack of sharing. So like essentially you couldn't screenshot anything, which, you know, it doesn't surprise me. Cause a lot of streaming apps, you know, Hulu, Netflix, they block phone screenshots. You can't just take a screenshot of something and send it. But you know, this was still an issue that was brought up in later could be actually implemented a screenshot button. It was maybe too little too late, but without the ability to share, you know, maybe people wouldn't be able to see stuff as much. It wouldn't spread around on Twitter or whatever I find is so many things from people just tweeting about it. I just dropped a hundred dollars on something last night, impulse buy because someone I was following tweeted about it, it was bonkers. But, uh, um, for those who are curious, Apple, Apple, computer companies, third co-founder Ron Wayne is selling a bunch of cool stuff. So you can check out his website and go buy that. Um, he's he seems pretty cool. A lot of people talk about Steve jobs and Steve was, they forget the third founder, Ron wanes. Right? I saw you tweet that. I, I actually was thinking about getting one of those old Apple logo prints, the original one. Those are cool. One of those. But anyway, I like the dude made a hundred bucks because a guy who was not even paid to say anything, just tweeted about it. So I think this is just my idea. If they would have maybe promoted it with the sharing features more, maybe it would have them better. Now here's the thing. I get it. Digital rights management, DRM. It's crazy. People don't want their stuff being screenshotted, but if they could have found a way to make it work where it's like, Hey, we're a platform that lets you screenshot this stuff and share it. Maybe they could have found a way to encourage that. It would have spread around a lot more. I think about hit record or maybe it's pronounced hit record. I actually don't know. It's been a long time since I've seen it, but I remember at the beginning, this voice would come over. It was a live studio audience. And you know, the, the voice would say, um, you may now turn on your phones and start recording we're in. Normally it would be like, please turn off your phones. But it's like, they encourage the recording of a live thing. They encourage the sharing. And I think if they would have done something like that, you know, DRM issues would have to be worked out, but it would have encouraged that they would've gotten tons of organic advertising. Yeah. I think that, um, definitely being a mobile only service, they really shot themselves in the foot because it's one less, I mean, if it was easy to share clips or whatever, or, you know, if it was easy to share clips, you're just one step away from posting this on an Instagram story or whatever. Um, and then again, going back to the idea, I don't know if it would have made a difference because just none of their shows were hits really, or that memorable. Sure. That could have been, I don't know what makes a show me. Well. Okay. So if they had a hit, like, like again, it could have been, I think something along the lines of like, when I go on Instagram, I see all these nuts, there, there are pages upon pages of 90 day fiance, meme pages. And I think if Quibi would have had a show that was as memorable and as popular as like a 90 day fiance and it was easy to share Oh, and make memes, then the service could have really taken off. But then so yeah, that's what ended up happening. It would have been a trash show like that, that became popular. And then the whole, all the shows would have been, but it would have found an identity. At least It could have. Yeah. I don't really know the special sauce as to what makes something take off. I see some shows that get so popular and I'm like, what the hell? It's the same thing with music? Like, I'll see a, an artist get like a platinum. And I'm like, I listened to the song, they got a platinum four and I'm like, this is what got popular. But like, it's all a matter of opinion. And I don't, I don't know how stuff takes off. I don't know if you have any nuggets there to explain that it's a mystery. Uh, I, I, I don't know. I think it's even harder to know now. Um, with Theo, I think we're in a really weird spot. I mean, I think what I'm watching more of than anything, and I think this was part of [inaudible] failure in the end, it's kind of related is during this whole pandemic and with theaters being shut down and everything. What I have found myself watching more than anything is YouTube. I mean, I have a YouTube, uh, I don't know what they call it now. Premium subscription. I think it was YouTube or I do. And I, Um, I don't know where they were thinking what they were thinking about that, but there's another website that has the word tube and red in it. And that was, yeah, you don't want your kids go, But it's uh, to me, I think we talked about it. You're subscribing now that's one of the greatest hacks that like everyone's so used to not paying for YouTube, that they don't realize that by that $10 a month, not only do you get YouTube music, but that opens up YouTube and a whole different, all of a sudden becomes the world's best streaming service because there's no ads. You get everything you want at the speed of thought, you look it up. Boom starts playing YouTube premium. I haven't talked about it with my audience yet, so Hey, first time on the pocket, but it makes sense. Like, I love it. It's convenient. The weird thing is I started using it like right around the time I started doing the scam busting stuff. So now it's like, ah, crap. Now I can't see a crappy and look the bad timing, but viewers, you guys are awesome. I can count on you guys. I get so many cool like suggestions from you guys on Twitter about scam busting stuff. So you guys can take care of that for me. You guys are awesome. Cardio. I've found that from viewer submissions, but anyway, yeah, totally. A YouTube is freaking awesome. There's tons of people on it. That's maybe a reason why I produce for it because, But yeah, I mean, but that, I, it seems like people are just going even someone like me. I mean, I just see it's really hard to catch my attention to it, to have a TV. I don't know, just during this pandemic, I just, haven't been as interested in, uh, really narrative storytelling as much as I have been documentary. And I don't know what you would call YouTube content. It's like a, a fun encyclopedia for anything you're interested in. It kind of is. It's like an encyclopedia with an iPod shuffle mixed together. It's like a dull shuffle something interesting. And you'll find it somewhere And talk about quick bites. I mean, we don't need quippy quick bites because YouTube is already quick bites. Um, and it's to anything you want is on there again, Quimby you go up and they had all these shows, but it's still very limited where YouTube is like, you're guaranteed to find what you want to find. And I, I did talk about that a little bit in my episode, in the first cut. I cut it out. Dang. I should have left it in there cause that's a good point, Brad. But uh, me personally I'm like the opposite, but I also produce for YouTube. So maybe that's why I don't consume it as much as other people. Um, I'm like the total opposite. I find myself going through like my, my old shows and like re bingeing them because it's been like years since I've seen them. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, this is hilarious. So yeah, that totally makes sense. Um, so yeah, the sharing thing again, later, they did add in the screenshot, we talked about the airplane and the Chrome cast originally couldn't stream it to your TV, but they implemented that later, but you lose the turnstile. I think that heard it way more because the one show that I was actually truly interested in watching on Quibi, um, came out later, um, in its run, um, it was called the stranger, I think. And it had like, uh, Dean Delahaye, I think is the actor's name. And then the chick from like the guest and it follows. And that looked really interesting and really scary and really frightening. Um, and I didn't feel like watching that on my phone. I wanted to watch that on a TV. It just wasn't the mood for something I can't get immersed in a horror thing on your tiny, little phone with the speaker, the size of a thimble, like you just can't. Um, but then also later they introduced apps for fire TV, Google TV, Apple TV. So now you can just watch right on the device without having to Chrome cast or airplane. Right. But you said that was like the day before. Yeah, It was literally one day before the shutdown announcement came out and then they kept it open for like a month and a half or something like that. After that they closed it on December 1st. And so we covered the potential pandemic issues, the streaming and the lack thereof, the screenshotting, the lack of interest in the shows. Uh, we talked about the lawsuits, um, and there were some like other rumors and stuff. Like I don't want to get into these too much cause it feels too gossipy, but there was some talk about like there being issues at the top between Whitman and Katzenberg. I mean, I don't know if I was getting stressed out about a $2 billion thing going on the. I might get angry too. And you know, I don't know, maybe not be the nicest guy. There were some talk about that. We won't dive in. I encourage people not to gossip, but uh, what other issues were there? What do you think I'm going to scrub through my episode and remind myself, Well, I can tell you that at the time it was a big deal. They probably lost a ton of money. They were going to throw the pandemic where it really screwed them is they were going to host these elaborate huge parties. And I think they were like, uh, had paid a play deal. So I think they had paid people, even though they didn't have to show up. Um, they were going to have these big elaborate parties in Hollywood and stuff where all the stars from all the shows and stuff, where they were going to no expense spared, you know, to make that stuff happen. And the one thing, you know, that could break the contract or whatever, it would be something like this pandemic, you know? Um, so that all that stuff got scrapped. I did not know that was a plan of theirs. Yeah. I don't remember the specifics of it now, but I'm sure if you like Google Quimby party's canceled or something like that, they did try to promote it. Did you see a, they did a big thing on, um, fortnight. And so one of the shows that they had was punked this reboot of punk with chance, the rapper. And that was, I think something that they did in lieu of like getting to do the live stuff. One of the big events they had, you know, the verge wrote about it and stuff. They had, uh, the premier of punked on in fortnight. And like, I'm not claiming to be a marketing guru. I really don't know what else I could have done to make it work. Like it's so hard. Even like for me, like I do this YouTube channel and I do this stuff and sometimes I'll make a thing and I think it's great and nobody frigging watches it. Um, but so that's why a lot of times I have to just remind myself, Hey, stick to what you're good at. And then, then it just takes off. But, uh, it's hard when you don't have a baseline could be, was starting. I don't want to say from ground zero, they had a lot of people in money, but you know, they didn't really have user reviews because it's a, still a new thing. Well, don't you think it's pretty hard for it's a stream they were asking for your money. How many streaming services are there now? I mean, I think we all have streaming service fatigue. That, that reminds me. Yeah. That was the other issue I talked about in the episode. It's a very saturated market still, like I'm already paying for Disney plus YouTube premium Hulu, Netflix. So I'm already paying for, for the kind of reminds me of a thing. Like they were kind of, and again, not a marketing strategist, don't take this as gospel. They were kind of like split identity. They were trying to be the high production value, Netflix sort of thing. But they were also being like a Tik TOK, vine sort of thing. Right. So it's like, they were in two very competitive spaces at once in like the short form, mobile kind of thing. They were being suppressed by big things like Tik TOK, because everyone's already using like Tik TOK and YouTube, but then in the production value side of things, they're trying to be like Netflix, but they're already being suppressed by Netflix and Hulu and everyone who's subscribed to that stuff. So it's like, they were underneath two opposing forces where it's like, wow, you have to convince someone to use Quibi over. Not using something like tick- tock, but also over not using something like Netflix and then paying for it. That's hard. They're never gonna get hooks like on Tik TOK or something because there was not user, it was not user content. It was all, yeah. I just meant from the consumption and not The production end, but yeah. Yeah. And then, but I don't know that they had, you know, Tik TOK, it's all about then YouTube and everything. It's the algorithm that pumps it out to you. I mean, Quibi, I don't think I never heard talk of, I don't know if there was an algorithm with credit, the goal was these big, popular, big names, big shows, big money as what was going to get you. But again, that's probably another thing that heard it and it's hard to do an algorithm from nothing. So, you know, this only lasted eight months, so it's hard, but yeah, typically that's why the algorithm can be really good on things like YouTube, because it'll show you things you don't even know you want to watch, but it's like, Hey, you're probably going to like this, but I'm quippy yet. You're by yourself. And you're like, well, uh, I'm uh, scroll, scroll. I might like the scroll scroll. I might like that scroll, scroll. I gotta make dinner. I'm gonna go make dinner. Then I'm going to come back and be like, well, what was I doing? Oh, was I, nah, I'm just gonna go to YouTube or what, you know, it's going to be, I don't know. I picture some people being like, yeah, I think that's the biggest problem with a lot of, I think that's, what's keeping me from watching a lot of, I spend so much time trying to find something on Netflix. Whereas YouTube always just knows what to throw in front of me. It was pretty good. Netflix is pretty good. Like I got an email and they were like, Hey, you watched the toys that made us, you watched the movies that made us, Hey, here's this holiday version of movies that made us. And before I knew it, I, I watched both episodes already in the bathtub. Um, yeah. So, uh, yeah. I never thought about the algorithm perspective yet. That's not being able to put like the right thing in front of me. I've got a question for you. Do you think that, uh, do you think that Quibi is doing that much worse than I'll? I'll tell you what, I don't hear that much. Talk about Apple TV, plus My opinion. The reason why we don't hear much about like Apple TV plus maybe not doing so well is because, well, who cares if it doesn't do well, Apple's still a bajillion dollar company they're doing fine. And actually I think I don't have numbers in front of me, but I think Apple TV plus has more than Quimby's 500,000 subscribers, I think they're doing okay. Um, but also again, it's, even if it did flop, it's not that dramatic, you know, it's not like it took app. If it took Apple under, then people would be, Whoa, this is a story, but it's like, it's like, whatever. Um, yeah, I, I should actually look into the number, actually. Let's see if I can find this current Apple TV subscribers. I know, um, their services is actually making a lot of revenue for their company now. Um, but let's see the number of Apple TV plus users was estimated to rise to a projected value of by 2020, according to this, uh, Statista, whatever.com website, what do you think the projected number of subs for 2020 Apple TV pluses? Uh, what do we say? Quibi was 500,000. They died at about 500,500,000, Uh, Apple TV. Does that include the freedom? I was actually just wondering that. I don't know if that counts the trial. I would hope not. Let me look at paid subscribers. Okay. I know that Disney plus was like 30 million, like out the gate. So I'm going to say Apple TV is maybe, uh, I think it can't be bigger than HBO, so I'm going to say 5 million. Okay. Well, according to this website and I kind of want to crosscheck this it's 40,000,040. I don't know if that counts. Um, Oh, here's another website that said the same number. Yeah. So that needs to include the free, I mean, I'm sure they sell, I mean, you get it with any Apple product. I mean any, I mean, I think any iPhone iPad, Mac thing. Yeah. I'm not sure. Um, I have to look into them more am they probably includes the trial, but like still, that's still getting in front of a lot of people though. And you usually get a pretty generous free trial with AppleTV plus like there were some offers for 90 days. There were some offers for a year. I think they actually just extended some offers because of movie theater has been shut down. Don't quote me on that. But it was more than the two weeks that Quibi gave you. Yeah, they just need, I mean, I don't know if now we're talking Apple TV plus, but this is all kind of in the industry thing. Apparently with the pandemic shutting theaters and everything down, um, the people who own the bond franchise were in talks to sell no time to die. The last Daniel Craig bond movie and Apple was one of the places that was really seriously considered considering buying it. And, but the price was going to be like 800 million or, you know, even a billion or something. Cause that's how much the thing makes in the theater right there. So any, and apparently those prices were too astronomical for them, but they knew that that's the thing you're going to see eventually Apple buy a big movie like that. Um, speaking of Apple quick, um, Quibi when they were going under, you know, they're going to, um, I think they still have a lot of capital they can give back to their investors. Um, the shows are probably going to be salvaged to an extent. One of them got an HBO max, like we talked about earlier, but quippy did approach Apple. I believe they specifically talked to their senior vice president of internet services. AICCU looking to get bought out. And um, well they said no, but it doesn't surprise me. That would be a bad move. Um, plus, you know, w w I don't know if Quibi would really add a ton of value to Apple TV plus anyways, so yeah, we'll see where the show is. Ended up going. I had heard something and I didn't read deeply into it, but that Quimby, at least didn't own most of the rights to most of the shows that they put out. Yeah. I didn't really look into that, but Because people were talking about, well, you know, how are you going to recoup? You know, they've got to try to recoup as much money for the investors and stuff. And, uh, apparently I think I heard that most of their shows, they just, they don't have the ability to sell them, whatever studio made them and production company made them actually retain the rights. So I think that covers the wow. That was a lot, a lot of the reasons why it failed. But as I said in the episode, I won't be surprised that in five to 10 years we see something like this come back and there will be the people that go, Hey, Quibi was trying to do that. And I always think about the Zune and the Zune pass. Cause the Zune pass was a subscription service from music back in the Microsoft Zune days. And that didn't do so well, but nowadays every freakin person is subbing to, you know, Spotify, Apple music, which I recently did. And I love it by the way and Pandora and all that stuff. Everybody is doing this music subscription stuff. So, you know, if that could come back, I'm sure this will come back within five to 10. Well, I'm sure you're right. I wrote that was already telling you there's an already, there's a forgotten streaming service that you had never even heard of. The Verizon tried go 90, which was, um, was also like a mobile only that they dropped, I think over a billion dollars in, if you Google something like Verizon go 90. I think they wrote it off as a billion dollar plus loss. He should've mentioned that in the episode. I totally, I think you and I even talked and I was like, I should do a pickup line Because that's why it was called go 90 and what it didn't have the turnstile thing that Quibi had, but it was 16 by nine content and they wanted to get used to, you know, you turn your phone 90 degrees go 90 days, Go away scheme. Yeah. According to Wikipedia, you know, I'll check my source here. Source number one on a Digi date.com. Yeah. It was like $1.2 billion. Yeah. And so at least you heard of Quibi way more than go 90 go 90 did have a bunch of just like reality shown influencer type shows that really didn't have anything come from it. If there is anything from quippy, I think they legit had some probably good shows on there. And I do hope they find them, you know, find their way to some other networks. I would still like to watch the stranger. I liked the original punked. I'm sure I would like watching this one. Um, they had a lot of interesting stuff. I think it just didn't work in how it was Yeah. Delivered. And conceptually wireless kind of caught my attention, but I don't know how that would work without turnstile. Cause you got to turn it to see the person's phone screen. Um, uh, it's about like young love and parties and. I probably hate it, but the tech, the technological concept I liked, but Back, I wouldn't be surprised if it comes back in a big way and something like Netflix just adopts it. It's kind of like Apple, you know, Apple, isn't always first to a technology, but then they do it the best. I mean, Netflix implements that into a few of them and they have the they're like, they're this huge company that they can. It's kind of like when they did. I mean, they're already playing around with weird stuff. Like, uh, my, one of my favorite shows is black mirror and black mirror. Uh Balderdash I think it was called, was a choose your own adventure. That was the first experiment in that type of thing. So I totally see Netflix. Of course they didn't buy clubby because they can just do their own version of the technology. And they'll roll it out with maybe the black mirror again, as a experimental thing That does remind me, that was the other tricky thing. It's all originals. So you on quippy, so you don't have a backlog of already loved stuff like you would have on Netflix. If Netflix was newer, know they have a lot of the backlog, but you know, there's probably a million reasons why they didn't want to do that. But a big technical reason was if you put a backlog on there, how the hell would it work with the turnstile technology? What, so no backlog makes it tough to come in for, you know, Hey, I want to watch that thing. Oh, now I got sucked into another thing, but Nope, they don't have that thing. So I'm not going, I don't know. In the, in the end, I guess my summary of Quimby's failure, I don't think it's that much of a mystery. I just don't think they necessarily had enough of the right type of content to justify another subscription. Um, they might've needed what you're talking about. Like a good backlog. They might've needed like a show like Seinfeld or friends or something like that. The drew Carey show it could have been today To carry show. Day show is impossible to find. It makes me mad though, quippy exclusive, and then I would subscribe. See it, there you go. It goes, could be exclusive. I would subscribe yesterday. That's the thing. If they would have found a way to get that hit show, but also have the backlog. And I think encourage the sharing already have it on multiple platforms, encourage the screenshotting, like build that into the marketing and into the features. This thing could have taken off way more. If they would have been able to do something, There's a reason. There's a reason that HBO paid. I forget, you'd have to look it up. They pay it, you know, like maybe 500 million or a billion dollars for the friends rights and South park, 500 million for South park, I think. And then I think Hulu owns the Seinfeld rights and they pay a lot of money for that stuff. The office, I mean the whole peacock, uh, you know, NBC streaming service is that is the office is the thing that's going to float that boat. They're taking it away. They make billions of dollars licensing that to Netflix, but they know they can make more because they can float their entire streaming service off of that one show. I'm interested to see how much they make. Good. Yeah. I just Googled it for fun. HBO max bought the rights to South park, at least according to this business, insider article, June 24, 2020. Yeah. Uh, somewhere between 500,000,500 50 million. So that's uh, more than half of Katzenbergs is net worth right there. Yeah. It's hard, man. I think they just tried too many new things at once. And especially with this turnstile thing, I think they focus too much on that and it really hurt them because it hurt the, you know, the platform compatibility, it hurt the ability to have a backlog of content. It just manages, I think the problem was It should have been, it should have been a free service. Like, uh, that's, that's one of these, these, these things that are doing really well right now, if you're talking about like surprisingly under the radar, like have you ever even heard of Pluto TV? I love Bluto TV. Yes. TV Is like doing and that's owned like something like CBS owns Pluto or via con Pluto. Um, they got bought up by these big things and they're huge. There's like 35 million Pluto TVs and they generate a ton of revenue and it's all based on ads. And I think Quibi could have survived like that. And they actually were set up perfectly to do it because the ads were dynamic too. And so if the advertisers would've got board and you know, if it was free and you have to watch lots of ads and ads are dynamic and they're getting you engaged in this gimmicky turnstile thing, um, I think it could have been probably pretty success. Yeah. That's another good point that I did cut out of the episode. Uh, cause I wasn't really sure about it, but yes, price, some people thought it was like, why would I pay this much for ad stuff when I can just have add stuff on YouTube for free? Yeah. If they had a free tier, that would have been another thing that helped a lot. I would have kept the app on my phone. If they had a free tier, I absolutely would have kept it there and watch the shows that I was meaning to get to. Or Ben had it around in case a cool one came out. Yeah. Well it looks like we have our own salute bread. Hey, do you want to start a company? I got a couple dollars. Let's go to shark tank. Um, but speaking of that, like, you know, I just want to say, I do applaud them for trying something. I mean, any entrepreneurial Telia, you're going to fail a lot before you're successful. Even if you're a big guy like Katzenberg, he, Steve jobs was huge. He had failures, every entrepreneur has had failures, but people forget about that stuff. Cause you only see the successful stuff unless, you know, we make a big deal of the failures like we're doing now. Um, but you know, this happens a lot like tons and tons of startups flop. You just don't hear about them because they don't have the budget and dollars to market themselves. And you know, they're just gonna flop quietly. Uh, cause they're smaller. Um, maybe that's another thing that could be, should have done. Maybe they should have started smaller. Like Uber started with like four cabs in New York. Like maybe quippy should have like dialed in like a focus, not necessarily focused group. I don't know the technical definition there, but maybe they should have just started with, uh, you know, geographically a smaller focus. A few John was, I don't know, It's tough. It's, it's easy to armchair quarterback it and say, this is why it didn't work. And it's, it's easy for me to say that now, but the truth is is that, you know, following it in the news, nobody really knew up until the moment that it came out. Like you kind of were getting the hint like right before it launched. But up until that point, it could have been big. You just really don't know until it's just one of those things that gets tried and you go, Oh yeah, I it's one of those things back in the day, we'll remember quippy, like you would a, um, crystal Pepsi or something. Oh you, you, you talk about that. You never know which one of your videos is going to take. Right? And like there's certain like things I can study in my analytics to know what those better, but there will be that one time where it's like, what the hell, this didn't work. And I mentioned this in the episode too, like good marketing will carry a bad product, bad marketing will kill a good product. And the marketing is going to be the determining factor. But yeah, there are some bright sides to this. Cause like again, we still have the shows, the shows can find life on other platforms and you know, maybe this technology can be licensed. Like the, they still had some capital, they can get back to their investors and it's also, Hey, what do you know a learning experience? So, you know, there's some bright sides to them. [inaudible] is going to be one of those things that, uh, in 10 years from now, it's going to be like ironic and cool to have in the background of a cool movie, be like a quippy poster or something. I mean, it might be one of those things. That's ironic. You could start wearing Quimby Merck. So hipstery, well you're watching Netflix. Well you never watched Quip what the hell I'm going on vacation to Quip town. Yeah. Big, big, big idea. Probably too ambitious of an idea helped. It was spearheaded by big names in the industry, almost $2 billion. And just a combination of those issues we talked about earlier, the shows is not getting the attention, the lack of sharing, maybe the pandemic, there was also the lawsuit, the turnstile thing kind of caused more problems than it solved, I think. And just, it just ended up being a big mess where it ended up flopping in only eight months. And part of me is like, Oh my gosh, that money could have like, I don't know, fed children in Africa or something, but here it is just flopping over like crazy. So this is normally part of the show now where I like to dive into the user submitted questions. And if you guys want to submit your own questions to have read on the show and answered on the show, feel free to tweet me or just DME on Twitter at the computer clan. If you want to send them anonymously, you can do. That's totally cool. In fact, today's question was submitted anonymously and I just got to pull it up here. Here it is, it was from Twitter anonymously and they asked what was the best investment equipment, et cetera. You've made into your YouTube channel. Thank you for your time. And you know, I didn't, I kind of put myself on the spot when I opened up this list and I didn't put a ton of time thinking into this. Um, I probably, I'm just going to say I have a few favorite things that I really liked investing into, but what I will say for sure was those aperture lights that I bought when you watch crazy Ken's tech talk. Most of that lighting, you know, the back round effect, lighting that's done by different stuff, but the key light, the fill light, like all that stuff is done by these amazing super color, accurate aperture led light fixtures. And I say this to people all the time. If you're getting into video equipment and stuff like that, you know, like drop money on lights, first lights are good in a good investment because they're going to last you a longer, um, because lights don't really change. Much. Cameras will change every fricking year. You go to studios and stuff. You still see old, like mole Richardson, hot lights up in the grid because they work, they turn on and they make a light. You know, you don't need to buy new ones all the time. So it's good to invest in good lights upfront. And um, I prefer the aperture lights storms. They're awesome. I will have links in the show notes if you want to get your own lights and other equipment that I use to record and shoot, including the mix that we're using tonight. And, uh, you know, Hey FTC, you're probably not watching this, but just in case you are, this is my disclaimer that yes, I am an Amazon associate and I may collect commission on those links. Okay. You can stop bugging my phone calls now. Okay. Just kidding. FTC. I love you. I hope you got the box of chocolates. I sent you anyway. Brad, what would you say was like your best or your favorite like investment into your tech gear Or whichever? Oh, my favorite student investment into tech year. I, well, I guess this fits into, we've been talking a lot about this as a, you know, I don't know when this will air, but they just came out with the AirPods max. Um, and we were just talking about, I mean, to me, I'll be interested if when spatial audio is more of a common thing or available on more things, but, um, headphones and Bluetooth speakers. I mean, I listened to, uh, it's great being on a podcast cause I listen to podcasts all day long. I love podcasts and I love music. The $550 AirPods. Max I'd have to really try out. I will say that I get so much joy out of audio equipment like that, that it's generally worth it. So if they are magical, I would say it was worth it. Awesome. Yeah. And on the point of audio, you know, you, and I say the same thing, you know, sound is 60% of the production. It's more important than the picture. So yeah, when it comes to audio, don't skimp on your audio. If you're looking to shoot stuff like these mikes, we're using these Sennheiser, [inaudible] so many people ask me on YouTube. Like, dude, your audio sounds so good. Like what are you using to shoot? So yeah, it's the magic of Sennheiser and I'll put those links in the show notes as well. So Brad, thanks for helping me out on the show tonight. Thanks for being here. Really appreciate it. And um, also thanks for helping with those iPhone episodes. If you guys haven't seen them yet, Brad helped shoot those camera comparisons. Those were really fun. Um, one of them, you know, did more well with that YouTube algorithms, some of them, but the other one, not as much, but it was still fun to shoot both. Especially when the tie got higher and almost like drowning, my black magic got legs wet, but Brad, where can everybody else find you? Uh, you can find me on a really, the only thing I use very much of is Instagram. It's at Brad task tickle. If you're interested in, um, you know, I love shooting on iPhone stuff. I've been interested in iPhone photography and videography since the very first iPhone. Although it sucked on that one, they got good. The, since the first one that had video, the iPhone 3G then various, Oh yeah. The 3Gs. Yes. And then the four out again. Cause it was 480p, but yeah. So if you could follow my Instagram, that's all everything on there. A iPhone photography and videography and stuff like that in three 60 stuff too. Cool. Cool. Yeah. Well thanks Brad. And everyone tuning in, I will put his stuff down in the show notes, go ahead and click through to that. And if you want to help fund the future of the computer clan, which means the YouTube channel and no cameras allowed this podcast right here, feel free to pledge to my patron. The link is also in the show notes. It is Patreon.com/KrazyKen “Krazy” with a “K" and I thank you guys in advance for your support. So everyone, thanks for listening. And if you're not subscribed, go ahead and subscribe right now because I plan to release more episodes in, I don't really have a dedicated schedule yet. I'm still kind of early, but I'm aiming for once a week and this is going to be a lot of fun because we're just started again. We'll talk about more recent projects that I did for YouTube, but of course this is also about the history of the computer clan, dating back all the way to the beginning. And even before that in 2007. So I will still do plenty of stuff from the past as well as the kind of recent presence. So stay tuned for more. We're just getting started. This is going to be a lot of fun until then catch the crazy and pass it on.

*Transcriptions are auto-generated by a transcribing software. Sometimes, small edits are made by carbon-based lifeforms, but please excuse any inaccuracies.