What is Quibi and how does it work? In the heat of explosion of the digital platforms, Quibi will look for a gap in the market with a new service that launched on April 6 internationally under a radically different proposal: exclusive format for mobile phones and short-term content.
Its catalog includes series, contests, documentaries and news programs, all with the premise of lasting less than ten minutes and with a commitment to top-tier stars such as Demi Lovato, Jennifer Lopez, Will Smith, Kristen Bell and Alex Rodriguez. In brief public transport journeys, waiting for the turn in a line or in a study break… Those are the moments that the application wants to occupy.
Quibi brings a new format: Vertical videos
Despite the fact that the market is beginning to show signs of saturation after giants like Apple, Disney and Amazon have joined the veterans Netflix and HBO, the new platform will try to differentiate itself by producing all its content thinking about the screens of our phones.
While its competitors broadcast in the horizontal form of televisions, Quibi has adapted its content to the vertical format to see the episode of a series in the same way that it is chatted on WhatsApp. In fact, although it also offers the classic option, the application is only available for mobile phones and at the moment it does not intend to make the leap to television.
Short videos for the age of short memory span
The brand itself indicates it: Quibi is the contraction of “quick bites”. With the immense amount of stimuli and notifications that appear on mobiles, it is no secret that, for the evil of many, our concentration capacity is decreasing. For this reason, the platform has opted for scattered monitoring, with formats between 6 and 9 minutes long, and the promise of not exceeding 10 minutes.
The price and trial length for Quibi
It costs $4.99 a month for an ad-supported version and $8.99 ad-free, all after a 90-day free trial.
The investment behind Quibi
Behind Quibi there is a calculated million-dollar investment that is close to $2 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. Its founder is producer Jeffrey Katzenberg, a Hollywood heavyweight who has worked on Disney classics like “The Lion King” (1994) and “Aladdin” (1992), in addition to collaborating with Paramount and DreamWorks studios. Katzdenberg hired former HP CEO Meg Whitman to take Quibi’s business reins.
With this beginning, the product has been able to sign Demi Lovato for a talk show, Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez to participate in a reality show and Will Smith, who will premiere his own comedy format. Also one of his first fictions is “Survive”, starring Sophie Turner, who rose to fame playing Sansa Stark in “Game of Thrones”.
How does Quibi work?
After a very quick registration process through e-mail, your 90 days free-trial period starts, after which 8.99 dollars per month will be paid. A generous offer, since the catalog is easily sold out in a couple of afternoons, but the strategy is clear: hook the viewer and trust to keep it with new programs (without going any further, the promising ’50 States of Fright ‘ produced by Sam Raimi, or the future ‘Spielberg’s After Dark’, which can only be seen at night).
At the moment, the platform, again thinking about its format, has a very simple handling. The main section, ‘ For you’ (at the moment the app is only in English), sends recommendations to the user based on what they have already seen or the most powerful content. The viewer can see these different suggestions one by one on a carousel of 22 programs, but cannot access a more global overview of content.
More useful is the search section, where the contents are organized into a few sections. Among them, new releases, daily news (with media as disparate as The Weather Channel, TMZ, BBC News, and divided in turn into current and social news …), most viewed series and half-hearted programs. Finally, a series of additional categories by genres: comedy, “adrenaline rush”, true stories , future content and others.
The sections are completed with access to the favorite series that the user can archive to have quick access to them, and a section for downloaded episodes that can be viewed offline, as is usually the case in any mobile streaming app. In summary, a complete and well-organized app, which can only be blamed for a flaw in its usability, since more than once, navigating through the menus, you will involuntarily start the reproduction of more than one episode.
