Caption of above picture: Look at that dumb fucking guy looking at that dumb fucking Jeep.
What a fucking title that was. How do I follow up, well, the streaming service Quibi has decided to shudder operations in December, just when it was getting it’s……. start? Look in the age of mobility, speed, and the constant quest for quality, Quibi only was able to hit 2 of those marks and SPOILER ALERT, it was speed.
Quibi was a platform that had promise. It had backing, some top-tier talent, signing of contracts, and what seemed to be a great strategy; the in-between moments. Quibi wanted to hit those times that you were on the shitter avoiding work, the 10 minutes of freedom away from your kids, those few seconds that you can just tune out. Unfortunately, no one flocked to this trend. The in-between moments had already found homes in social media, games, meme pages, and everything else that makes us dumber. This is not to say Quibi could not have bought into that time, but their trajectory was too far and too fast. They couldn’t grow users; they couldn’t find that footing that their deep pocket competitors had found. They couldn’t scale what they had built and it led to the operations of Quibi announcing a shutdown.
I think Quibi could have worked, but no as a stand-alone product. Quibi was built as a platform when it functioned like a side project, albeit a fucking genius side project, but a side project none the less. Quibi in the eyes of Biz Bites N’ More was the Instagram to Facebook, the YouTube to Google. A fantastic product, but one that needs to be nestled into the warm arms of mama bear. There wasn’t anything to make Quibi last, besides a buyout. In the world of Disney+, Peacock, Netflix, Hulu, and every version of HBO known to man, Quibi just wasn’t going to be an empire. If I could think of a good enough reference to pull in Game of Thrones I would, but I can’t think of one so just kinda imagine it yourself. Look, Quibi had the formula for success but it just did not turn out that way. There’s plenty of good basketball players that make it to college but not the NBA. Quibi was fantastic idea, that had backing, but it just wasn’t meant to be in this business world. Fuck it, blame it on the pandemic, that’s easy enough.
Quibi is lesson learned that in many industries, sometimes what you have, the people aren’t ready for. I would bet my bottom dollar that Netflix makes an app like snapchat and Quibi put together, name it something utterly fucking dumb, and get 3 million subscribers in the first few months. 5 years from today, you heard it here first. All jokes aside, whether Quibi was ahead of it’s time or not strong enough to face the streaming environment alone, it has announced that it will shut it’s doors in the same year they opened. A tragic tale.
So Quibi is our first victim, but a better question is which streaming service will be next? Will another one fall? Will other services learn from the mistakes of Quibi? Fuck no! But that’s business babbbbyyy!
Anyway, that’s my take on it. Until next time. -GS
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