Octopus Overlords

Streaming service Quibi only managed to convert a little under 10 percent of its early wave of users into paying subscribers, says mobile analytics firm Sensor Tower. According to the firm’s new report on Quibi’s early growth, the short-form video platform signed up about 910,000 users in its first few days back in April. Of those users, only about 72,000 stuck around after the three-month free trial, indicating the app had about an 8 percent conversion rate.

That’s not too bad. But compare it to the streaming video industry’s most successful debut of the last few years, Disney Plus, and the resulting picture is a grim one for Quibi, which has struggled both to find a hit among its mobile-centric shows and gain traction with its desired younger, TikTok-loving demographic, despite the surge in screen time during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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These numbers are not to be confused with the number of current paying subscribers Quibi has. While the company has yet to disclose that all-important figure, it has said that more than 5.6 million people have downloaded the app since April. We don’t know how many people downloaded the app after its first few days and decided to then convert to a paid user after the free trial ended.
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Sensor Tower also estimates only 4.5 million have downloaded Quibi in total. The discrepancy between that figure and Quibi’s official one suggests Sensor Tower could also be far off in its estimates of how many users Quibi converted in its first three days. In a statement given to The Verge, a Quibi spokesperson said, “the number of paid subscribers is incorrect by an order of magnitude. To date, over 5.6 million people have downloaded the Quibi app. Our conversion from download to trial is above mobile app benchmarks, and we are seeing excellent conversion to paid subscribers — both among our 90-day free trial sign-ups from April, as well as our 14-day free trial sign-ups from May and June.”
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Regardless, it’s not exactly controversial to say Quibi is not having a very great launch — co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg outright blamed the coronavirus for the app’s early failures. Much has been written about the company’s shortcomings, from the app’s poor marketing and bad timing to the inability to share screenshots or captures on social media to Quibi’s lack of smart TV or casting support at launch.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Sun Mar 15, 2020 6:30 pm 50 States of [Fear|Fright]

Spoiler:

Quibi — the shortform mobile-focused streaming service — is shutting down after just over six months of operation, making it one of the shortest-lived streaming services to date, according to The Wall Street Journal.

There is any number of factors that can be pointed to in unpacking Quibi’s demise: the launch of a mobile-only streaming service at the height of a global pandemic when users were stuck at home; the lack of any real breakout content that was compelling enough to tempt subscribers; or the fact that shortform video content has a nearly infinite amount of free competition in the form of YouTube, TikTok, and other platforms.

It’s not clear what will happen to the company’s lineup of expensive, star-studded original shows and shortform films after the shutdown. Earlier reports indicated that co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg had courted Apple, WarnerMedia, and Facebook to try to acquire the beleaguered streaming company earlier this year. When those efforts failed, Katzenberg reportedly tried to get Facebook and NBCUniversal to at least pick up Quibi’s content, to no success.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Wed Oct 21, 2020 5:09 pm
There is any number of factors that can be pointed to in unpacking Quibi’s demise: the launch of a mobile-only streaming service at the height of a global pandemic when users were stuck at home; the lack of any real breakout content that was compelling enough to tempt subscribers; or the fact that shortform video content has a nearly infinite amount of free competition in the form of YouTube, TikTok, and other platforms.

El Guapo wrote: ↑Thu Oct 22, 2020 9:41 am

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Wed Oct 21, 2020 5:09 pm
There is any number of factors that can be pointed to in unpacking Quibi’s demise: the launch of a mobile-only streaming service at the height of a global pandemic when users were stuck at home; the lack of any real breakout content that was compelling enough to tempt subscribers; or the fact that shortform video content has a nearly infinite amount of free competition in the form of YouTube, TikTok, and other platforms.

Who could have foreseen this?? I guess even the best business plans aren't guaranteed success.

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Thu Oct 22, 2020 11:02 am Katzenberg and Whitman to go on CNBC in about 30 mins. Apparently they blew through $2B in capital financing.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Roku is nearing a deal to buy the content catalog of Quibi, the short-form mobile streaming platform launched by Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman that launched in April 2020 before shuttering in December.

Quibi, the curious "TV on your phone" service that lasted for roughly six months last year, will soon live on—as a free-with-ads channel on Roku.

After rumors began circulating earlier this week, Quibi and Roku confirmed on Friday that the two companies had reached terms for an acquisition, putting most of Quibi's hours of original programming into Roku's hands. Most of the Quibi service involved scripted series, along with documentary and reality-TV content, and Roku will host these series on a dedicated Roku "channel" later this year, while Quibi's previous "daily" news episodes will not be part of the deal.

Surprisingly, it's not just a deal for last year's content. Whatever had been previously cranking as part of the Quibi portfolio of talent and producers appears to be back on the table, with Roku telling users to expect "more than a dozen new programs" that hadn't previously debuted on the Quibi app in 2020. Roku didn't use today's announcements to clarify what the programming is, but Variety pegs many of the shows as documentary miniseries, along with a horror series written by Steven Spielberg that would have originally only been available for streaming during nighttime hours.

Since the deal revolves entirely around "content distribution rights," Roku will not be acquiring anything in Quibi's technology portfolio, including the "turnstile" system used to change video content and formatting based on how a viewer holds a smartphone screen—a pretty decent gimmick for portable video viewing, I found in my tests last year.