Why Creator Clones Fail [MKBHD]

Audio source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jl2ciIU4Qm4 (30 mins in)

Blog version with better writeup: https://www.swyx.io/clones-fail

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Transcript:

Why Clones Fail

swyx: [00:00:00] Something I love collecting examples of is the Innovator's Dilemma, which was coined by Clayton Christensen in his book on the Innovator's Dilemma. He really demonstrates how successful outstanding companies can do everything right, and still lose their market leadership, or even fail as new unexpected competitors rise and take over the market. 

And part of this thesis is basically that the incumbents company cannot clone the upstart for whatever reason.

And it's really amazing when you see someone that's so giant, that's so well-known, that has such great distribution, that has so much resources, be constitutionally unable to clone the small startup. 

This is known as counter positioning, as promoted by Hamilton Helmer in his book on the seven powers. And you can hear it in this clip from the MKBHD podcast talking about the failure of YouTube Shorts.

Andrew Manganelli: [00:00:53] Shorts in general that are just a really great way of explaining how like YouTube launches, these new features, they fall flat. And then they're trying to find ways to get people to do them. And I think that all because of that, it boils down to like, why are these not working? People love YouTube, like, people made their whole lives on YouTube. I literally have a job because you have, but like, why are these main creators not doing these other things.

Marques Brownlee: [00:01:20] I think I can speak to that. I, so first of all, the, the creator funds though, he keeps seeing, it's like my favorite new trend. Yeah. 

Andrew Manganelli: [00:01:27] Tick-tock one this week for tick docs.

Marques Brownlee: [00:01:29] Exactly the same thing. Yeah. It's because the platforms realize they not just want, but need creators on their platforms and making stuff to make them work that realization. Great. 

Now YouTube shorts. And so the hesitation by a lot of YouTubers to dive into shorts is really interesting. I think a lot of the longer-term creators like me have a bit of an aversion to YouTube releasing new untested unproven features because they could possibly have adverse algorithmic effects, they could possibly get killed in six months and you will have just poured a bunch of resources and pivoted your channel down a path that ends up being a dead end road.

Yup. So the other end of that is. If the feature works, I think there are a lot of younger creators or more nimble creators who will just jump right in and do a bunch of shorts or do a bunch of those lasting YouTube stories. I think that's, might've been dead already, but I 

Andrew Manganelli: [00:02:30] don't see anyone posts stories, 

Marques Brownlee: [00:02:31] but they'll they'll once they mirrors.

The thing is they launch a feature like that and they have a whole plan behind it, backing it as if it's going to be the future of the platform. So when creators see that they'll go, oh, okay. I see that story is going to be a really big deal for YouTube, for the foreseeable future. Let me pivot hard and make sure that's a big part of my content strategy.

And then when it's dead in a year, you feel like you wasted a lot of time resources. You might've hired for it. Like that's a. That's a big loss. Like that's a big risk to take, but if it does explode and let's say shorts is, you know, this huge future category on YouTube, a lot of younger creators who got in early and focused really hard on that are going to be really happy about it.

So shorts is clearly a response to tick-tock. It's literally almost the same thing. Like you go into hit shorts on the YouTube app and it's this endless scrolling carousel of vertical videos. That's what you'd expect. The algorithm tries to learn you. But YouTube knows that it needs youTube shorts creators instead of just people uploading to Tik TOK, and then copying that file and also putting it on shorts.

Andrew Manganelli: [00:03:37] That's what they're doing. That's what they did on reels. Like that's most real is 

Marques Brownlee: [00:03:41] literally like watermarked, tick tock. Like literally 

Andrew Manganelli: [00:03:43] all of reels has the Tik TOK, like watermark and the name on it. And probably just using reels to find more people to go follow 

Marques Brownlee: [00:03:50] it and tick tock. And they, they literally show up on my explore page.

Like, what is that? The gram is suggesting to me on my explore page, have tick tock, tick tock logos on it. That's 

Andrew Manganelli: [00:03:59] really funny. And if anyone was going to do though a tick-tock competitor, it would be Instagram. It just makes the more sense. The demographic that is on Tik TOK is very, very active on Instagram.

And it's just that social media platform, that short form social media platform that it makes way more sense on. Yeah. And it's Tik TOK still blowing reels out of the water. 

Marques Brownlee: [00:04:18] Yeah. Yeah. So YouTube, I mean, This is a smart move from YouTube. No doubt. Like they are the video home on the internet. And if you on YouTube and you see Tech-Talk a, another version of videos blowing up, of course you need to make a competitor for it to offer people on alternative and possibly they'll come to YouTube later.

The question is how do you get those creators to come to YouTube? Okay, well, we have a creator fund. We're going to start making it easy to monetize. Tik TOK is. Also still not easy to monetize. And they're also doing a creator fun thing, which is smart. But I think generally at the end of the day, the creators looking to make a job out of it are thinking about ease of monetization first.

Discoverability or right behind that. And YouTube is trying to lock both those things up and they all, they obviously have discoverability, but the tick-tock algorithm is something special. It just, just surfaces things you want to see. It's really good. So they have that to compete again. 

Andrew Manganelli: [00:05:11] I do think though, there's the aspect that we touched on really at the beginning of that you touched on it really quickly.

It's just like you're talking about bringing new creators in. YouTube. Definitely also already houses some of the biggest creators in the world. And they definitely want those creators to use their new features because if those creators use their new features, that's still bringing more people in. And I think that's where you talk about the unknowingness of the algorithm really starts making those big creators weary of jumping into some of these new features.

We still don't use premieres. They've been around for a long time, because from what we found, have I explained this. I don't know if we have, we may have it just might as 

Marques Brownlee: [00:05:51] well do a refresher. Yeah. So premiere is what happens with it. Premier is if you think of like a movie or like say a TV show where it premieres on TV, everyone watches it ...