Did Quibi have a Killer Feature like the iPod?
As we all know by now, Quibi, the mobile first content service by Meg Whitman and Jeffery Katzenberg is now dead in the water. It’s over. I take no joy in seeing Quibi’s failure. As a digital product manager, you hope these product launches do well. There are lots of jobs, marketing, branding, engineering, financing attached to these expensive tech/media content ventures. With a $1.7bn price tag for Quibi, we all hoped it was successful. However, I’ve seen these media plays before and many of my work associates knew it was doomed from the beginning. There were already some “icebergs ahead” with people frustrated with just a mobile-only way to consume the content. And nothing is more clearer than the May 8th, 2019 Keynote for SXSW when Dylan Byers from NBC/MSNBC asked Meg Whitman and Jeffery Katzenberg the following question: What is Quibi and why should anyone or anyone in this room care?
Meg Whitman: We are trying to bring the best of Hollywood and the best of Silicon Valley. And we are creating the first entertainment platform that makes every moment of your day extraordinary. We are creating a platform that brings together quick bite content, so less than 10 minutes, created by Hollywood’s top talent and combining that with a technology platform that makes viewing short form content on your mobile extraordinary.
Jeff Katzenberg: Make no mistake about it, Meg and I understand the challenge that we’re taking on the uniqueness. It’s hard to ask people opinion about something that they’ve never experienced before.
Roughly 100 words have been said, and we still don’t know what this thing is. Do you think they really answered the question? Did they really tell us anything that was truly extraordinary? Based on what they said, do you care about this product? What’s the Unique Selling Position (USP), or as we PMs like to say—the killer feature? What problem is Quibi solving? Was there a surge in people wanting to watch quick bite content on their mobile device? If so, why? Why mobile vs the traditional TV screen like a Netflix or Hulu? If vertical video is the new killer feature, are you going to outdo TikTok or Instagram who are the masters of the universe for vertical video? Look, I’m not here to stomp on the grave of Quibi, but it’s a hard lesson learned, not to mention an expensive one.
At the end of the day, you have to keep asking why. Why me and not them?What problem am I trying to solve? When Quibi first came out, I downloaded the app. I watched as much content as I could but there wasn’t a lot of compelling content and this vertical perspective wasn’t as innovate as the owner’s claimed. Compare Quibi to how Steve Jobs explained the first iPod and there lies your answer as to why Quibi cratered. 1000 Songs in your pocket addresses everything that was truly wonderful about the iPod’s invention. It’s a damn shame that Quibi was such a short-lived concept but a lesson to all of us PMs that we have to do our best to interrogate the product’s value until there’s nothing left to chance.
