WEBVTT - Pivot to Video 0:00:04.440 --> 0:00:12.840 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Heydarren, Welcome 0:00:12.880 --> 0:00:16.119 to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an 0:00:16.160 --> 0:00:21.760 executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the tech are you? Friends? 0:00:22.640 --> 0:00:26.040 Let me tell you a story. It's a sad story, 0:00:26.120 --> 0:00:29.240 and for folks like me, it's also a scary story. 0:00:30.120 --> 0:00:34.479 Anyone who was in online writing or online journalism found 0:00:34.479 --> 0:00:37.880 it to be a scary story. It's also a tale 0:00:37.920 --> 0:00:40.680 that gets us angry because at the heart of it 0:00:41.040 --> 0:00:45.640 were lies, or at least mistakes that a platform told 0:00:45.800 --> 0:00:49.159 to advertisers in an effort to get more money. But 0:00:49.240 --> 0:00:52.919 those lies or mistakes helped justify some really harmful decisions 0:00:52.960 --> 0:00:57.600 across multiple companies. So we're talking about the infamous pivot 0:00:58.120 --> 0:01:03.040 to video. Now, to understand pivot to video, we actually 0:01:03.120 --> 0:01:06.080 need to set the stage a little bit. So first up, 0:01:06.280 --> 0:01:11.440 let's talk about the business of online content. For most outlets, 0:01:12.000 --> 0:01:16.400 revenue comes from advertising. The online platform sets aside certain 0:01:16.520 --> 0:01:21.759 landscape upon which advertisers can place clients' ads, and these 0:01:21.800 --> 0:01:26.000 may be static or dynamic, meaning if it's static, you're 0:01:26.000 --> 0:01:27.800 going to see the same ad every single time you 0:01:27.840 --> 0:01:30.480 go to that piece of content. If it's dynamic, then 0:01:30.600 --> 0:01:34.200 it could change out right, and it'll change out depending 0:01:34.240 --> 0:01:37.320 upon an algorithm that's trying to make sure that each 0:01:37.680 --> 0:01:40.399 ad that's been sold is getting the number of eyeballs 0:01:40.440 --> 0:01:44.360 that were promised. The whole business of online advertising gets 0:01:44.400 --> 0:01:46.800 really complicated, and I've covered it elsewhere, so we're not 0:01:46.840 --> 0:01:48.960 going to dive into it too much. Just know that 0:01:49.240 --> 0:01:53.440 online ads were the big, big revenue source. You know, 0:01:53.520 --> 0:01:58.360 some platforms experimented with paywalls and subscriptions, but very few 0:01:58.360 --> 0:02:02.560 of those worked. All touch on that again later. Now. Ideally, 0:02:03.040 --> 0:02:05.840 the people who are actually behind making the content, you know, 0:02:05.880 --> 0:02:08.440 the writers and the editors, they don't need to be 0:02:08.480 --> 0:02:12.040 concerned with any of that. That's not their job. They 0:02:12.160 --> 0:02:16.440 go on writing and editing. The journalists do their investigative work, 0:02:16.600 --> 0:02:19.800 and they identify leads, and they follow up with those leads, 0:02:19.800 --> 0:02:22.880 and they check sources, and generally they do the very 0:02:22.919 --> 0:02:25.720 hard work the journalists do in order to get the 0:02:25.840 --> 0:02:29.080 truth out to the public. Folks who are like me, 0:02:29.840 --> 0:02:33.360 whom I would classify myself as a writer, not a journalist. 0:02:33.720 --> 0:02:36.000 I didn't have it nearly as tough as journalists do. 0:02:36.520 --> 0:02:39.160 Like I don't want to give anyone any feelings that 0:02:39.280 --> 0:02:42.600 somehow my job was as tough as being an investigative journalist. 0:02:42.680 --> 0:02:45.160 It certainly wasn't. But you know, we also have to 0:02:45.160 --> 0:02:46.760 do things like we have to research, and we have 0:02:46.800 --> 0:02:49.640 to check sources, and we have to make reasonably sure 0:02:49.720 --> 0:02:52.720 that the stuff that we're writing is accurate. You know, 0:02:53.560 --> 0:02:56.200 our reputations are on the line, and our jobs are 0:02:56.240 --> 0:02:58.600 often on the line. But I would say the lift 0:02:58.680 --> 0:03:02.040 is lighter to journalists, at least in my opinion, in 0:03:02.080 --> 0:03:05.360 my experience, based upon what I know now, good writers 0:03:05.639 --> 0:03:09.680 should command a decent salary, and good journalists definitely should 0:03:09.680 --> 0:03:13.480 command a good salary. They possess talents and skills that 0:03:13.520 --> 0:03:17.280 aren't necessarily universal. It's not like you could just fire 0:03:17.400 --> 0:03:20.600 somebody and hire some random person off the street and 0:03:20.639 --> 0:03:23.919 get the same result. Right, to be a good journalist 0:03:24.040 --> 0:03:26.720 or a good writer requires a lot of dedication. It 0:03:26.760 --> 0:03:30.760 requires skill and talent and practice, and without these things, 0:03:30.840 --> 0:03:34.720 the quality of the overall site would become garbage. Now, 0:03:35.240 --> 0:03:39.000 it wouldn't necessarily be worth advertising on either, right, Like, 0:03:39.080 --> 0:03:41.280 if the quality of the site goes down and that 0:03:41.320 --> 0:03:45.080 means fewer people go to it, then advertisers don't want 0:03:45.120 --> 0:03:47.320 to put ads on that site. It doesn't make sense 0:03:47.400 --> 0:03:50.840 that those ads aren't going to be seen, so why bother. However, 0:03:50.920 --> 0:03:54.600 we all know that sometimes garbage can have an appeal 0:03:54.640 --> 0:03:57.440 of its own that will continue to draw visitors. Just 0:03:57.480 --> 0:04:00.240 because something is low in quality doesn't mean it's unpoppulsler. 0:04:00.960 --> 0:04:04.040 And also just because something is high quality doesn't mean 0:04:04.280 --> 0:04:07.840 that it's sought after. This is just the nature of 0:04:07.880 --> 0:04:11.320 our world. So sometimes you can create garbage and do 0:04:11.440 --> 0:04:15.000 really well if it's garbage that people are interested in. Anyway, 0:04:15.360 --> 0:04:19.520 running a content site that's staffed by like salaried writers 0:04:19.520 --> 0:04:22.640 and editors gets to be really expensive because that's a 0:04:22.640 --> 0:04:26.839 lot of salaries, and the work can be slow, particularly 0:04:26.880 --> 0:04:30.240 for those who are working on in depth pieces in 0:04:30.240 --> 0:04:32.320 which journalists are you know, having to follow up on 0:04:32.360 --> 0:04:35.359 all those pesky leads and loose ends. That kind of 0:04:35.360 --> 0:04:39.120 thing takes time, and that might mean that you could 0:04:39.120 --> 0:04:41.120 be waiting a while for the next piece to be 0:04:41.160 --> 0:04:44.279 ready for publication. You're not churning out content, you're not 0:04:44.320 --> 0:04:48.080 a content farm. Meanwhile, you still have to keep paying 0:04:48.480 --> 0:04:51.839 this yutz who's working on this really in depth piece 0:04:52.120 --> 0:04:54.520 for all their work. It ain't hardly fair right, because 0:04:54.600 --> 0:04:58.080 you know they're still haven't actually published the thing. That's 0:04:58.080 --> 0:05:00.919 my guess as to how certain online content platform owners 0:05:01.000 --> 0:05:03.040 think that you know, it ain't hardly fair that we 0:05:03.080 --> 0:05:05.240 have to pay them even though they haven't published their 0:05:05.320 --> 0:05:09.400 article yet. Of course, maybe you can cut back on 0:05:09.480 --> 0:05:13.240 the costs by going with freelance writers, you know, because 0:05:13.240 --> 0:05:15.920 you only pay freelance writers when they turn in a 0:05:15.920 --> 0:05:19.720 finished piece. You'll still need an editorial staff, likely a 0:05:19.839 --> 0:05:22.839 salaried editorial staff, but you don't need to hold on 0:05:22.880 --> 0:05:25.440 to a staff of salaried writers if you're just dependent 0:05:25.520 --> 0:05:28.400 upon freelancers. Now you might find it challenging to reach 0:05:28.440 --> 0:05:32.080 a consistent level of quality. But there are some very good, 0:05:32.400 --> 0:05:35.440 very accomplished freelancers out there who are just as good 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:38.080 as any salaried writer, or even better in some cases. 0:05:38.440 --> 0:05:41.320 So hopefully you can attract some of those to write 0:05:41.320 --> 0:05:43.800 for you. If not, well, you can hope that the 0:05:43.800 --> 0:05:47.400 folks you do get are good enough, or that your 0:05:47.520 --> 0:05:51.200 editorial staff can maybe hush things up if the articles 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:54.640 are perhaps a little below standard. But at any rate, 0:05:54.800 --> 0:05:57.160 you can bring down some of the costs that way 0:05:57.279 --> 0:06:01.920 by not having salaried writing staff. Meanwhile, the other thing 0:06:01.960 --> 0:06:05.960 that you're concerned with, or perhaps obsessed with, is SEO, 0:06:06.279 --> 0:06:09.640 which stands for Search engine optimization. So why would you 0:06:09.680 --> 0:06:14.080 be obsessed with SEO. Well, for years, the primary source 0:06:14.120 --> 0:06:17.039 of traffic for many websites, not all of them, but 0:06:17.200 --> 0:06:20.320 many of them would be search engines. So of course 0:06:20.360 --> 0:06:23.760 when I say search engines, I really mean Google. Yes, 0:06:23.800 --> 0:06:27.440 there are other search engines out there. Some people exclusively 0:06:27.600 --> 0:06:31.960 use other search engines, but Google is by far the 0:06:32.080 --> 0:06:35.040 dominant search engine on the web. So ranking high in 0:06:35.080 --> 0:06:38.279 Google search engines is really important because if you're below 0:06:38.560 --> 0:06:41.919 say the first several results, or worse yet, if you 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:44.960 show up after page one, you're just not going to 0:06:44.960 --> 0:06:48.960 get very much traffic from those search engines. Folks tend 0:06:49.040 --> 0:06:52.479 to follow the top links that are listed. Most will 0:06:52.520 --> 0:06:54.719 not go beyond the first page, and quite a few 0:06:54.760 --> 0:06:58.280 won't go quote unquote below the fold, which means they'll 0:06:58.279 --> 0:07:02.159 click on something they can see upon getting their search 0:07:02.200 --> 0:07:05.040 results without having to scroll down the page at all. 0:07:05.400 --> 0:07:08.600 So part of your strategy is to identify stuff that 0:07:08.680 --> 0:07:11.960 people are searching for and then to create content that 0:07:12.080 --> 0:07:16.080 meets those needs. Or better yet, you figure out what 0:07:16.320 --> 0:07:19.360 folks are going to be searching for tomorrow and then 0:07:19.400 --> 0:07:22.080 you get the jump on everyone else. So you hire 0:07:22.160 --> 0:07:26.080 some SEO consultants to help you optimize your site. Maybe 0:07:26.120 --> 0:07:28.760 you're throwing in a bunch of meta data and such 0:07:28.840 --> 0:07:30.920 to give you the best chance to rank high on 0:07:31.000 --> 0:07:34.400 Google's search results. And you either don't think about or 0:07:34.440 --> 0:07:37.760 you push aside the concern that should Google adjust its 0:07:37.800 --> 0:07:40.800 approach to search results, you'll be back at square one, 0:07:41.280 --> 0:07:45.880 because that's a thing. Google changes its algorithm every so often. 0:07:46.200 --> 0:07:49.440 Those changes could mean that you go from having a 0:07:49.560 --> 0:07:52.560 healthy flow of visitors because you rank really high on 0:07:52.600 --> 0:07:56.480 the list, or you go down to a trickle because 0:07:56.520 --> 0:07:59.000 suddenly there's a change in the algorithm and now you're 0:07:59.040 --> 0:08:03.640 not appearing on page one anymore. And that's really scary, right. 0:08:03.720 --> 0:08:07.360 You could be spending tons of money to rank high 0:08:07.400 --> 0:08:10.240 on lists, only for Google to change things and you're 0:08:10.800 --> 0:08:14.040 worse off than you were before. Of course, your ideal 0:08:14.080 --> 0:08:17.360 situation is to convince folks to come to your site 0:08:17.720 --> 0:08:20.560 all on their own, just to go straight to your site, 0:08:20.600 --> 0:08:24.560 not to get there via search engine, and that means 0:08:24.600 --> 0:08:26.680 you have to create a site that is a destination 0:08:27.000 --> 0:08:29.800 in itself. So instead of going to Google and searching 0:08:29.800 --> 0:08:32.600 for some random topic and just so happens that you 0:08:32.880 --> 0:08:35.320 have covered that topic on your site and people come 0:08:35.320 --> 0:08:37.760 to you that way. These people are coming straight to 0:08:37.800 --> 0:08:41.160 your page just to see what you've posted and maybe 0:08:41.160 --> 0:08:43.319 see if there's something interesting that they want to look at. 0:08:43.320 --> 0:08:45.920 Maybe even scroll around and look through archives to see 0:08:45.920 --> 0:08:48.280 if there's old stuff that they want to read. That 0:08:48.440 --> 0:08:50.720 is the dream to create a site that is so 0:08:51.440 --> 0:08:55.600 inviting and so interesting that people go to it just 0:08:55.679 --> 0:08:58.120 on their own, but for an awful lot of sites 0:08:58.160 --> 0:09:01.200 out there, it remains a dream. Only a small percentage 0:09:01.200 --> 0:09:03.880 of your visitors may be coming to your site just 0:09:03.920 --> 0:09:07.520 to see what you've posted. Most are likely finding you 0:09:07.600 --> 0:09:10.520 by following a link from a search results page. Another 0:09:10.559 --> 0:09:13.280 thing that was changing at this time was online video. 0:09:13.679 --> 0:09:16.200 So YouTube had launched back in two thousand and five, 0:09:16.240 --> 0:09:20.160 and it wasn't the first online video platform, but obviously 0:09:20.480 --> 0:09:23.360 it's the one that has become the most famous, and 0:09:23.559 --> 0:09:26.360 it was in twenty eleven when things really started to 0:09:26.520 --> 0:09:30.360 change quite a bit with online video. So twenty eleven 0:09:30.400 --> 0:09:32.560 is the year when YouTube acquired a company that was 0:09:32.600 --> 0:09:36.200 called Next New Networks. One of the folks who co 0:09:36.280 --> 0:09:39.680 founded that company, Jed Simmons envisioned a new kind of 0:09:39.679 --> 0:09:43.000 business on YouTube that he called a multi channel network. 0:09:43.440 --> 0:09:46.359 This wasn't so much as new as it was newly defined. 0:09:46.720 --> 0:09:49.480 So a multi channel network describes a company that owns 0:09:49.480 --> 0:09:53.800 and operates multiple channels on YouTube. The company is in 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:56.760 charge of programming and content, meaning it's not just an 0:09:56.840 --> 0:10:00.719 organization that aggregates existing channels that each operate more or 0:10:00.760 --> 0:10:03.560 less independently of one another. So this is kind of 0:10:03.559 --> 0:10:06.600 similar to how cable television works. For example, back in 0:10:06.640 --> 0:10:10.240 the day, Discovery Incorporated, which is now part of Warner Brothers. 0:10:10.320 --> 0:10:16.040 Discovery owned and operated cable channels like Discovery, the Science Channel, TLC, 0:10:16.200 --> 0:10:19.160 the Food Network, Animal Planet, and you know, like around 0:10:19.200 --> 0:10:22.079 a dozen more channels. So on top of the multi 0:10:22.200 --> 0:10:26.200 channel network strategy, YouTube pushed for content creators to do 0:10:26.280 --> 0:10:30.400 their thing over on YouTube itself, to adopt YouTube as 0:10:30.520 --> 0:10:33.080 a home base, and the company set aside a cool 0:10:33.160 --> 0:10:37.120 one hundred million bucks to help new original channels get 0:10:37.160 --> 0:10:40.480 off the ground. These included original channels like Geek and Sundry, 0:10:40.840 --> 0:10:44.760 The Onion, and THENOC. The initiative would last about a 0:10:44.840 --> 0:10:47.360 year and a half or so, at which point YouTube 0:10:47.440 --> 0:10:50.560 quietly removed all references to this initiative and had reportedly 0:10:50.600 --> 0:10:53.560 cut funding for more than half of the launched channels 0:10:53.559 --> 0:10:57.040 because they just weren't performing to the level that was 0:10:57.120 --> 0:11:00.400 needed in order to recoup the cost of investment. So 0:11:00.440 --> 0:11:02.720 we see the dangers in relying upon a third party 0:11:02.720 --> 0:11:05.120 when it comes to making content, because if that third 0:11:05.120 --> 0:11:08.120 party suddenly decides to change something, suddenly you don't have 0:11:08.640 --> 0:11:12.680 a home anymore. Then in the mid twenty tens, things 0:11:12.679 --> 0:11:15.800 were really changing quite a bit. Search results were starting 0:11:15.800 --> 0:11:18.960 to matter less, which wasn't necessarily a good thing for 0:11:19.040 --> 0:11:23.120 those content platforms that depended upon traffic from Google, and instead, 0:11:23.679 --> 0:11:28.080 social networks were beginning to matter more. People were saying, oh, well, 0:11:28.760 --> 0:11:30.760 they go to their social networks and that's where they 0:11:30.760 --> 0:11:33.960 get their news. They'll see something posted on Facebook, for example, 0:11:34.080 --> 0:11:36.839 or Twitter, and then they'll follow up on it there 0:11:37.080 --> 0:11:39.800 rather than going to a search engine or to a 0:11:39.960 --> 0:11:44.640 content site directly. So friends would click on links and 0:11:44.800 --> 0:11:48.160 content would go viral through people sharing on places like 0:11:48.200 --> 0:11:51.640 Facebook or Twitter, and this meant that SEO would become 0:11:51.800 --> 0:11:55.240 less important, and now content providers had to figure out 0:11:55.280 --> 0:11:58.080 how could they create the kinds of content that would 0:11:58.080 --> 0:12:01.600 do well on social media, which is a totally different skill, 0:12:01.760 --> 0:12:03.960 Like you have to think in a different way for 0:12:04.040 --> 0:12:07.760 something to do well on a social platform versus to 0:12:08.000 --> 0:12:11.240 rank well in search. The writers and editors who just 0:12:11.320 --> 0:12:13.720 wanted to do you a good job, they just wanted 0:12:13.720 --> 0:12:16.240 to do work and to make a living off of 0:12:16.320 --> 0:12:19.200 doing work, they would get jerked around quite a bit. 0:12:19.600 --> 0:12:23.400 The types of content and the style of writing would change, 0:12:23.760 --> 0:12:28.439 sometimes drastically, in an effort to cater to what does 0:12:28.480 --> 0:12:30.840 well on social networks. This is where we started to 0:12:30.840 --> 0:12:37.160 see the real embrace of lists and listicles, because lists 0:12:37.320 --> 0:12:39.400 tend to do pretty well on social network or at 0:12:39.440 --> 0:12:42.400 least they did at the time, and it was the worst. 0:12:42.440 --> 0:12:45.480 Like if you were someone who was really dedicated to writing, 0:12:45.920 --> 0:12:49.920 getting an assignment to write a list could be really depressing. 0:12:50.000 --> 0:12:52.520 I mean, there were people who did amazing jobs at it. 0:12:52.559 --> 0:12:55.960 I know writers who did fantastic jobs at creating lists, 0:12:56.360 --> 0:13:00.960 but from my perspective, my experience, it was just far 0:13:01.080 --> 0:13:03.920 less satisfying to have to do a list as opposed 0:13:03.920 --> 0:13:08.000 to a quote unquote normal article. Some sites really excelled 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:11.160 at getting traction on social networks, like BuzzFeed was pretty 0:13:11.200 --> 0:13:14.640 darn good at it. And others rarely saw very much success. 0:13:14.679 --> 0:13:17.720 Like you would try, like you seem to be doing 0:13:17.760 --> 0:13:20.040 what everyone else was doing, but you just weren't necessarily 0:13:20.040 --> 0:13:24.199 getting much traction. And so by twenty fifteen, content sites 0:13:24.240 --> 0:13:26.240 were starting to put most of their eggs in the 0:13:26.280 --> 0:13:29.320 social network basket. And I'm reminded of a conversation I 0:13:29.360 --> 0:13:32.280 once had with Bernie Burns, one of the founders of 0:13:32.360 --> 0:13:36.120 the media company Rooster Teeth. So Bernie told me that 0:13:36.200 --> 0:13:38.520 he felt a key component to success on the Internet 0:13:38.720 --> 0:13:41.880 if you're a content company is that you always maintain 0:13:42.000 --> 0:13:45.800 your own platform, and you can show up on other platforms, right. 0:13:45.920 --> 0:13:47.920 You can show up on YouTube, you can show up 0:13:47.960 --> 0:13:51.559 on Facebook, but you always need to maintain your own 0:13:51.640 --> 0:13:56.240 home and never fully commit to someone else's site as 0:13:56.280 --> 0:14:00.480 being your base of operations, because if that other entity 0:14:00.559 --> 0:14:03.440 does change things, you're up the creek. Kind of like 0:14:03.559 --> 0:14:07.319 how content sites had optimized for one Google search algorithm 0:14:07.559 --> 0:14:10.000 and then had to scramble and Google changed things up, 0:14:10.280 --> 0:14:13.240 Or like how those original channels on YouTube had to 0:14:13.280 --> 0:14:16.760 shut down once YouTube pulled the plug on the experiment. Now, 0:14:16.800 --> 0:14:18.880 on the one hand, maybe those channels never would have 0:14:18.880 --> 0:14:21.600 had a shot without YouTube's help in the first place, 0:14:21.680 --> 0:14:24.560 so you could argue that they really didn't lose much 0:14:24.640 --> 0:14:27.520 because they never would have had the opportunity without it anyway. 0:14:27.720 --> 0:14:29.920 But on the other hand, once the third party shuts 0:14:29.920 --> 0:14:32.160 off the support, the media company more often than not 0:14:32.360 --> 0:14:35.120 had to fold. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. 0:14:35.120 --> 0:14:38.320 When we come back, i'll talk more about the dreaded 0:14:38.480 --> 0:14:51.240 pivot to video, but first a word from our sponsors. Okay, 0:14:51.240 --> 0:14:54.160 we're back, and we've got a bunch of content sites 0:14:54.200 --> 0:14:57.080 out there that are hanging on social networks to a 0:14:57.240 --> 0:15:00.800 dangerous degree. The revenue models are such that the owners 0:15:00.800 --> 0:15:03.720 of these sites are always looking for ways to reduce costs. 0:15:03.960 --> 0:15:07.120 And then we finally get to the disastrous pivot to 0:15:07.240 --> 0:15:10.560 video moment. And a few things would feed into this. 0:15:11.200 --> 0:15:14.800 One is the perception that video is more nimble than 0:15:15.280 --> 0:15:19.480 having to depend on written content. You can be more 0:15:19.640 --> 0:15:22.600 fast and loose with video than you can with articles. 0:15:23.000 --> 0:15:25.640 You can write and shoot a whole bunch of episodes 0:15:25.640 --> 0:15:27.920 in a day, you can bank a bunch of content, 0:15:28.040 --> 0:15:30.440 or more likely, you can release the content at a 0:15:30.480 --> 0:15:34.240 regular pace, only to do it all again the next day. 0:15:34.480 --> 0:15:38.520 And starting from scratch and making video is tough. You 0:15:38.880 --> 0:15:41.760 could have a very small team doing it, but you know, 0:15:41.880 --> 0:15:44.040 hats off to everyone on that team. I have worked 0:15:44.040 --> 0:15:45.760 in this space a bit, and I can tell you that, 0:15:45.800 --> 0:15:49.120 in my opinion, the talent on screen, the person you're 0:15:49.160 --> 0:15:52.920 seeing in the video, typically has the easiest job, particularly 0:15:52.960 --> 0:15:54.720 if they're not the one who had to write the 0:15:54.760 --> 0:15:57.200 copy in the first place, like some people who appear 0:15:57.200 --> 0:15:59.440 on the video. They're the ones who did all the 0:15:59.480 --> 0:16:02.520 research and and that's a ton of work, but not 0:16:02.640 --> 0:16:05.440 all the time. So back when I worked at houstuffworks 0:16:05.480 --> 0:16:08.760 dot com, I would occasionally get pulled in to shoot 0:16:08.840 --> 0:16:11.200 videos that were written by other people because we were 0:16:11.240 --> 0:16:13.760 just as much affected by this pivot to video as 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:16.600 a lot of other sites. So a great example of 0:16:16.640 --> 0:16:20.640 this is one of the most popular videos that featured yours. Truly, 0:16:21.160 --> 0:16:23.600 I've been in some videos that went pretty viral, but 0:16:23.680 --> 0:16:25.800 I think this one might be one of the top ones. 0:16:25.920 --> 0:16:29.000 And it's a video that's titled why do People in 0:16:29.120 --> 0:16:32.440 Old Movies Talk Weird? It's still up on YouTube if 0:16:32.480 --> 0:16:33.840 you want to check it out. It has more than 0:16:33.880 --> 0:16:37.680 five million views, which isn't too shabby. Now, obviously, that's 0:16:37.720 --> 0:16:41.920 nowhere close to being even remotely one of the more 0:16:41.960 --> 0:16:45.320 popular videos on the platform. Right, five million is big 0:16:45.320 --> 0:16:48.240 for me, it's not big for like the truly huge 0:16:48.480 --> 0:16:53.280 creators out there anyway. Ben Bolin, my arch nemesis, actually 0:16:53.320 --> 0:16:57.520 wrote that episode. I did not. I threw in an 0:16:57.520 --> 0:16:59.800 improvised line at the very end of the video about 0:17:00.080 --> 0:17:02.640 Rigi races, but that was about it anyway. All I 0:17:02.680 --> 0:17:04.960 really had to do was I had to show up, 0:17:05.080 --> 0:17:07.520 and I had to read my lines off of a teleprompter. 0:17:07.720 --> 0:17:10.040 And I'm pretty good at that. I'm pretty good at 0:17:10.040 --> 0:17:13.280 reading off a teleprompter, and I can do it well 0:17:13.400 --> 0:17:16.560 enough where it can come across naturally, like it doesn't 0:17:16.600 --> 0:17:20.040 necessarily sound like I'm reading off a teleprompter, and I 0:17:20.040 --> 0:17:22.560 can typically get through a video in just one or 0:17:22.600 --> 0:17:25.760 sometimes two takes. They called me one take Strickland back 0:17:25.760 --> 0:17:28.280 in the day, but for everyone else who was working 0:17:28.320 --> 0:17:31.119 on that team, it was a lot more work. Like again, 0:17:31.280 --> 0:17:34.200 I had the easiest job, but you got the writer Ben. 0:17:34.280 --> 0:17:36.760 In this case, Ben had to research and write the 0:17:36.760 --> 0:17:39.280 piece and then cut it down so that it could 0:17:39.280 --> 0:17:41.760 fit a particular format. It didn't need to go too long, 0:17:41.800 --> 0:17:44.960 but it needed to be informative enough to justify its existence. 0:17:45.720 --> 0:17:47.840 You've got the tech crew. They have to make sure 0:17:47.880 --> 0:17:49.679 that the sound and the video and the lights and 0:17:49.720 --> 0:17:52.960 all of that are working properly, and that I look 0:17:53.000 --> 0:17:55.320 as good as I possibly can on a camera. There's 0:17:55.320 --> 0:17:57.639 only so much you can do, but you get the idea. 0:17:57.760 --> 0:17:59.920 And then you've got the poor editor whose job is 0:18:00.200 --> 0:18:02.439 to take all this footage and then combine it with 0:18:02.520 --> 0:18:05.040 you know, other stuff like stock footage, and to get 0:18:05.080 --> 0:18:07.560 it ready for publication. So my heart really goes out 0:18:07.560 --> 0:18:10.639 to the editors. They often were be absolutely slammed with work. 0:18:10.800 --> 0:18:12.479 You know, as soon as they finished one piece they 0:18:12.480 --> 0:18:14.960 had to jump on another one. I don't know how 0:18:14.960 --> 0:18:18.240 they did it and kept their sanity. Anyway, with a 0:18:18.280 --> 0:18:22.080 relatively small team, you could churn out a whole lot 0:18:22.119 --> 0:18:24.960 of content. Now let's get back to another big component, 0:18:25.280 --> 0:18:28.320 the perception that video brings in more ad revenue. I 0:18:28.359 --> 0:18:31.280 think you could reasonably argue this perception is what led 0:18:31.320 --> 0:18:34.560 to a whole lot of great writers and editors losing 0:18:34.600 --> 0:18:37.800 their jobs. And it all starts with a lie, or 0:18:37.800 --> 0:18:42.200 at the very least, a huge mistake. So the year 0:18:42.359 --> 0:18:45.280 is twenty fifteen, and here in the United States we 0:18:45.280 --> 0:18:47.680 were heading into an election year. It seems like we're 0:18:47.680 --> 0:18:50.320 always doing that, but you know, twenty fifteen, we're getting 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:52.920 ready for the twenty sixteen election year. That was a 0:18:53.000 --> 0:18:55.080 year that promised to be a real doozy, and it 0:18:55.240 --> 0:18:58.120 sure as heck was. And there was obviously a glut 0:18:58.160 --> 0:19:01.760 of content coming in from new use pieces, to opinion pieces, 0:19:02.160 --> 0:19:05.879 to misinformation campaigns, to all the types of stuff that 0:19:06.040 --> 0:19:08.560 folks produce whether it's an election year or not. And 0:19:08.600 --> 0:19:14.040 Mark Zuckerberg was going around evangelizing the future was video, 0:19:14.400 --> 0:19:16.119 So he was making the rounds kind of lack a 0:19:16.320 --> 0:19:20.120 Bible thump and travel and revival. Sorry that's my rural 0:19:20.280 --> 0:19:23.280 Georgian coming out of me. Anyway. He was telling various 0:19:23.359 --> 0:19:26.880 organizations that, based on Facebook's research, online video was where 0:19:26.880 --> 0:19:30.040 it was at. Engagement with your plain old text and 0:19:30.119 --> 0:19:34.080 image content was on the decline. Reach was diminishing for 0:19:34.200 --> 0:19:38.199 these content companies, but video was a different story. So, 0:19:38.680 --> 0:19:42.600 according to Facebook's analysis, users were far more likely to 0:19:42.960 --> 0:19:46.360 watch and engage with video than other types of content 0:19:46.600 --> 0:19:49.880 while on Facebook. In fact, they were likely to pause 0:19:49.960 --> 0:19:52.280 a video so that they could watch the whole thing 0:19:52.400 --> 0:19:54.879 rather than just nope out of it. If you know, 0:19:54.960 --> 0:19:57.320 something came up like, you know, if they got a 0:19:57.320 --> 0:20:01.919 notification or something. This was music to advertisers' ears. After all, 0:20:02.000 --> 0:20:05.680 advertisers spend an awful lot of money to get their 0:20:05.680 --> 0:20:09.000 ads placed so that users can potentially see them, but 0:20:09.040 --> 0:20:12.119 the advertisers never get any assurance that the user will 0:20:12.720 --> 0:20:16.200 you know, actually see the ads or pay attention to them. 0:20:16.520 --> 0:20:18.840 So a lot of us have developed ad blindness over 0:20:18.880 --> 0:20:21.280 the years. And then quite a few folks have ad 0:20:21.280 --> 0:20:24.480 blockers installed on their browsers so that they don't have 0:20:24.600 --> 0:20:28.560 to even develop ad blindness because the app does it 0:20:28.600 --> 0:20:32.560 for them. But if people are watching videos, well that's 0:20:32.600 --> 0:20:35.879 potentially a great place to put ads. And according to Facebook, 0:20:36.040 --> 0:20:38.520 you know, people were watching an awful lot of videos, 0:20:38.600 --> 0:20:41.399 that this was the way of the future, that soon 0:20:41.800 --> 0:20:46.000 the majority of content on Facebook would be in video format. Meanwhile, 0:20:46.080 --> 0:20:49.879 content companies started to say, oh, that's where all the 0:20:49.880 --> 0:20:52.399 money's going to go. That's where all the advertising money 0:20:52.440 --> 0:20:54.800 is going to go, is to video, because advertisers are 0:20:54.840 --> 0:20:58.479 being told this is what is the important content. So 0:20:58.960 --> 0:21:00.919 if we want to get adverts tizing money, which is 0:21:00.920 --> 0:21:02.880 the source of our revenue, we need to make sure 0:21:02.920 --> 0:21:05.160 that we're in the business of creating video, which also 0:21:05.240 --> 0:21:09.080 means we can downsize our editorial department and instead of 0:21:09.119 --> 0:21:12.240 having this big editorial staff with editors and writers, we 0:21:12.280 --> 0:21:14.919 can have a small video team that generates just a 0:21:15.000 --> 0:21:18.960 ton of videos. We'll reduce costs and will generate more revenue. 0:21:19.200 --> 0:21:22.919 So that seems like an ideal situation. And then we 0:21:22.960 --> 0:21:27.240 started to see layoffs across the web in various editorial departments. 0:21:27.600 --> 0:21:31.320 I mean it was brutal. You know, company after company 0:21:31.800 --> 0:21:34.719 was laying off writers and editors. It was just a 0:21:34.840 --> 0:21:37.600 terrible thing to see. The message seemed to be that 0:21:37.800 --> 0:21:40.840 search engine traffic was a dying source of visitors and 0:21:40.880 --> 0:21:43.119 that social networks were in fact the future and you 0:21:43.160 --> 0:21:45.720 had to get on that train. And further that you 0:21:45.800 --> 0:21:49.920 really wanted to host stuff on those social networks natively 0:21:50.200 --> 0:21:52.280 in order to get the most out of it. So 0:21:52.320 --> 0:21:55.360 the perception was if you hosted a video on your 0:21:55.359 --> 0:21:57.640 own site. So let's say it's house stuff Works. Let's 0:21:57.640 --> 0:22:00.000 say we post a video to how stuff works done, 0:22:00.880 --> 0:22:04.600 and then we link to that video on housetuffworks dot 0:22:04.600 --> 0:22:07.360 com through a Facebook page. Right, we have the house 0:22:07.359 --> 0:22:10.199 Stuffworks Facebook page. Well, the perception was you would not 0:22:10.400 --> 0:22:13.560 get very much help from Facebook, you wouldn't get much 0:22:13.560 --> 0:22:16.679