Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/10/21/quibi-short-form-video-thing-that-made-no-sense-shuts-down.html
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Having one of the most-hated superbowl commercials this year certainly didn’t help them…
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Meanwhile, in failing up news:
Among the names being floated for possible Biden Cabinet posts are Meg Whitman, the CEO of Quibi and former CEO of eBay,
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A bad idea in the first place that came around at exactly the wrong time as well
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Has he heard of YouTube?
Might be hard getting people to pay monthly for something they get for free right now.
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The beatings will continue until market share improves.
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To be fair, what Quibi provided was actually scripted content, even if the bite-sized chunks were annoying. That’s different than the people vidcasting about video games or whatever on Youtube. Youtube did have something like Quibi – they had a Karate Kid sequel series called “Cobra Kai” but that wasn’t free (and has since moved to Netflix anyway).
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Aww, and T-Mobile Tuesdays was just giving away 6 month free trials that I never bothered signing up for.
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I wonder what it would take for me to raise $2 billion and fail this hard. I mean, I can produce nothing of value for half that amount! Madrone Capital Partners, give me a mere billion dollars and I promise I’ll flush it all down the toilet faster than Katzenberg could ever dream! You’ll never see your money again, and as a bonus you won’t have your hopes dashed!
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It was always a front to shuffle money
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This is a Politico story, so take it with at least a grain of salt.
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Sorry, Meg. You have to be super lucky only one, really good time, then you can go on to as many personal projects you want. HP, governor’s race, now Quibi. Luck plays more than skill.
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Well, that didn’t last long. Which I guess is fitting.
I wonder what will happen to the shows. I had heard some were being edited into proper episodes for streaming on other services.
Well, the idea was that it was going to be something like Netflix, except the shows would be short enough that you could watch a whole episode while waiting for something. Instead of watching a third or half of a regular tv show episode… because if you’re out and about watching tv while waiting, that’s unacceptable, I guess? I’m not sure why they thought they had a business model, though it really didn’t help that they launched at a time when everyone was home and hungry for full-length shows.
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Quibi? Sure, pick something that, upon hearing could be spelled a zillion ways. Kibbi, Quibbie, Kibby, …
Even with youtube, I remember visiting utube often enough and wondered how much the tube manufacturer had to bolster their web servers.
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“quibi” sounds like some kind of polymer.
Dude trying to fix a plumbing leak in his basement:
“HOLY HECK the water is just pouring out! This rubber seal is cracked. Shut the water off to the house until we can drain the pipe and replace this valve. Then we’ll turn the water back on.”
Dude looking over his shoulder:
“Nah, just use this caulk gun and squirt some quilbi around the base. It takes less than 10 min and it will be a-okay”.
Dude trying to fix a plumbing leak in his basement:
“What? That makes NO SENSE. There is literally water pouring into my basement. I need at least a two step process: immediate triage, then long-term remediation.”
Dude looking over his shoulder:
“Nah. Use quibi. Oh… hold on a sec…I have to check my twitter feed then post the related funny pictures of a flooded basement to my facebook.”
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I had only heard of it once. His face at the end says it all.
LOL.
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There’s a lot of scripted content on YoutTube, as well. For example, The Dust YouTube channel has quite a few rather good sci-fi shorts.
My resistance to Quibi was entirely based on the fact that I watch short material for entertainment (as opposed to research or other reasons) as an exception, not the rule. It simply wasn’t worth the 15-20 minutes I’d spend on it, each month.
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What do you mean by fail? They achieved every single one of their goals, in order of importance:
- Line their pockets with money
- Ensure that no “serious” studio will ever attempt to be involved in something similar, (ie: competition) possibly run by people who are not idiots and want it to work, because they got stung so badly last time, because they managed to:
- “Prove” that this whole internet streaming thing is a bad idea, and
- “Prove” that small bite-sized chunks of story are a bad idea.
This was an idea that was designed to fail from the start, and if it had somehow succeeded despite everything they did to deliberately tank it ahead of time, they’d have had to come up with even more ways to force people to hate it.
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Cody at Some More News had some relevant insights on Quibi, I thought: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihFePUknSIc
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