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[Music]
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what is good people of the internet welcome back to another episode of the way for podcast we're your host I'm
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Marquez and I'm Andrew and today we've got a pretty exciting episode because like we talked about we're going to have
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guests on and we have a guest this week it is a pretty exciting guest a fellow Creator um you'll hear my intro for him
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in a second but I think uh most of you will be familiar with his work it's Hank Green and we wanted to talk to him
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because we just talking about his recent video about Tik Tok which has a whole bunch of really interesting points it's
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linked in the show notes if you haven't already seen it watch it it's really good uh sort of explains the landscape
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of monetization for creators on YouTube versus Tik Tok and the things that are
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different between them um and we talk about that but we also talk about a lot of other things it's a really interesting conversation the one thing I
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should mention is at like halfway through we had some technical difficulties and did lose his video feed
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so if you're watching the video version that's what happens halfway through but I mean come on it's Han green you guys know what he looks like and plus you get
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to see his beautiful face in the first half anyway so without any further Ado let's get into it so we've got Hank
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Green joining us for waveform this week Hank Green if you're unfamiliar with Hank somehow then you've been actively
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avoiding the internet for the past 15 years in which case welcome appreciate you for joining us um Hank is an
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entrepreneur Creator YouTuber Tik tocker creator of VidCon and half of the Vlog
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brothers and someone who's been creating for long than I have which I don't get to say very often so Hank welcome to the
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podcast yeah well it helps to just be older than you um I really appreciate it I'm a I'm a big fan and we have just
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established we've never actually talked before which is weird uh and I'm very glad to be uh finally hanging out same I
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I want to talk to you about all the social media and this is one of the fun things about having a a podcast finally
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is I get to talk to people like you and having conversations about I don't know this whole world of social media which
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it seems like you're all over it like obviously YouTube for the longest time but we've got Instagram we've got Tik
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Tok now how do you first of all I just want to know what you say when you describe to people what you do what what
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do you say well I just I go to the easiest thing which is I make educational videos
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for Te teachers and students uh and then people are like oh tell me more and I'm like oh you know high school and early
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college and chemistry and all kinds of stuff I have a company that does that and that's like it's much easier that
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way it's just it's rather then and also I am kind of a personality and Community
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leader and organizer that does philanthropy and also I run a
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merchandise business that helps creators make money that has 50 employees and
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like you know I don't yeah my my wife when someone asked that question is like
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G here we go here we go I don't want I don't want to be go through this again so that's the easy thing to do and and
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like that is sort of the majority of what I spend my time on anyway is the educational content yeah I like it I
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think I I've I've watched your YouTube videos for a super long time but the Tik toks have started coming back up you
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know I spend a decent amount of time on Tik Tok probably more than I'd like to admit I think we all do and uh I I
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always see your videos pop up in my freie feed before I even followed you I would just be like oh Hank's on Tik Tok now great they're very educational he's
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got all these great ideas I love it um yeah so I want to start with YouTube
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because I feel like that's that's the The Hub at the center of this Creator
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economy of of these videos that we've been making for so long uh and when I tweeted your Tik Tok video um I I sort
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of quoted one of the the early Parts in the video which is that YouTube actually does treat creators really well like
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almost yeah abnormally well and I got some now that like we've had some some
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more data points on the field like when it was just YouTube it was like well that's normal but now that we have other platforms out there showing us how they
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might do it it it does change the perspective exactly yeah a lot of people push back just saying oh they you know
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they treat some creators well they treat a few creators you might know well but it's kind of like just in general uh
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there's obviously the they do a lot of things they don't have to uh the little the little plaques they send us when you
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hit a subscriber Milestone is a nice example or having a contact at YouTube and things like that but the the sort of
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biggest point of that being the the revenue sharing model um but just in general now that you've been on YouTube
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for I think I'm I'm going to say longer than anyone I've ever spoken to how would you review YouTube as a platform
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as exists in 2022 if you had to give him a rating if you have some pros and cons how do you how do you assess the state
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of this gigantic company yeah I mean that that is difficult to to like you I
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feel like I need categories you know like the video player is is like 10 out of ten and I think people often sort of
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don't think about the fact that the video player is 10 out of 10 but like that is actually and like upload
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experience is very good um and I think that but like I think a lot of the parts that I don't like about YouTube are just
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things that I that that are difficult parts of having done what
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YouTube did you know we're like all the Hoops that you have to jump through the moderation that is clunky and wrong
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often um the the you know demonetization and the algorithmic selection of this
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stuff and how it doesn't treat people fairly like all that stuff is I find very frustrating but I also recognize
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that it's a difficult problem that was created by virtue of the the existence
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of their platform like like you couldn't do what they did without running into those problems yeah and I don't know how
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else to solve them except for the way they solve them I had a a weird random little meeting a long time ago where I
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think someone at Google said something like you know they have this massive
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success and the scale of their platform means that every tiny problem they have
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is now a problem at scale just because the whole thing is so big it's like oh we have a tiny little spam problem it's
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like no that's actually a massive problem now across the internet's video Source um how' you feel about them
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getting rid of the dislike counter any strong thoughts on that oh you're getting me into my the
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most danger my most dangerous opinion on the platform that I don't think it's a big deal okay um like like I so so I
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recognize that it has like that there's like uh there are good parts and bad parts to getting rid of the dislike
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button like that's where I'm at uh and the the bad part for me like the the
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main thing that I don't like about it is that there are there are times when I would like to know instantly whether or
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not this video is going to contain useful information and that was a really good way to see that and you might think
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well then why get rid of it like if it's doing a good then why why get rid and but you a lot of the things you hear I'm
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gonna come man you ask me I'm Gonna Catch Flack for this a lot of what you hear from people is that they will say
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well how do we now tell a corporation that we didn't like their video and like
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and to me that's sort of like you took away my tool for masting and when it's
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when we're masting against YouTube or against EA or something I'm like I don't
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have a lot of uh like you know sympathy for those people like they can deal with
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it um but but like I also seen it happen over and over and over again to people
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whose content like just like ideologically doesn't align with other people and then you have these big
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groups of people who like organize themselves on discords or subreddits and then they come in and make that person's life miserable and then all of their
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videos have this like weird permanent stain on them that you never don't see
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it's it's there for the rest of the life of that video where you're just stuck with this like 70% dislike and people
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look at those videos and they're like why do people dislike this so much what's going on and it's a it's just it's a it became used as a a an abuse uh
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tool and YouTube didn't like that it was being used as an abuse tool and they were like how do we stop it and you know
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you and I can see our dislikes in the back end we know how many people are liking and disliking our content which is useful um and I I don't I certainly
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don't think that it's a it's something that didn't have negative consequences I just think it also had positive
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consequences like I think there was a reason that they did it I think they explained it fairly well why they did it
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uh and I think that like it's normal to disagree and we we also sort of exist on
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like we we you know the the more time you spend on and the more sort of like you base your your career and your uh
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business on a a platform the more you sort of like are actually having a relationship with that's more like a a
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citizen to a government and people don't like it when the government makes decisions that they don't like and
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that's a thing that happens and and and I also think that it's fine for people to Lodge their complaints uh because we
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don't get to vote for these people so we might as well uh we might as well yell about the thing that that matters to us
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and so I certainly don't hold it against anybody who's mad about it but my from my perspective like there's more
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worrying things yeah you know I I I made my video talking about why there are there are downsides obviously and and
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being a part of the Tech Community I see like okay I want to for example install you know this uh doorbell and I want to
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make sure I shut off power correctly and follow tutorial I know I no longer see that the tutorial has a bunch of
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dislikes because it's dangerous to me and like that quick thing um is just one of the negatives um my question was
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always just about like all of the downsides that they are solving for here
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aren't really actually being solved if the if the comment section doesn't also get better because all this asting and
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hatred that follows people around via the like to dislike ratio also follows them around in the comment section which
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needs a lot of work um so I I give the video players go yeah YouTube YouTube has
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given creators some pretty good tools for moderating comments um a lot better than other platforms um but that you
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know that took time for that to develop so there are ways to engage with that as a Creator uh it certainly but it doesn't
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like take away the reality that people are still going to be um happily uh in
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group mobbing people and like it's just like one of the ugliest things I think about the internet is mobs of people
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being jerks like I'm eventually I feel like maybe we'll get to the point where
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we realize it's actually really cringey and like embarrassing to be a member of one of those groups of people but uh
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that's that's going to take some time I think it does it does often feel good to be a part of one of those groups and not
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to say that I've never been a part of them I I also am some times part of a mob of people who's mad about something
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yeah we we grow up out of the mob but then somebody else grows up into the mob so it's a it's a tough
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cycle um one of the other fascinating things that I just saw recently Twitter is testing down votes I think so you can
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like a tweet you can you can retweet a tweet but they're testing down votes specifically um yeah how do you feel
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about Twitter as a platform Twitter's Twitter's just sort of like all over the place at this point I actually really
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like Twitter and there's not that many pieces to review but I use it more than I think any other
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social platform other than Tik Tok right now yeah Twitter is such an interesting case because it is like far more
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influential than it is successful especially you know by like market cap um metrics like Google and uh and you
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know even Tik Tok and of course Facebook just dwarf the valuation of of Twitter
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but Twitter is extraordinarily influential and important and like the the people who use it are
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oftentimes um defining culture in really in in specific and uh powerful places um
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it's big in journalist circles and it's big in DC and so uh it's a it's a huge
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deal uh and and I like I like it as a platform and I hate it as a platform I like it when I when I can convince
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myself to use it the in the ways that I enjoy it and I hate it when I am subject to its whims and and get drawn into
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things that I you know know aren't my lane and I know um are just me being mad
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about something that I'm oversimplifying in my brain which is something that all social media are good at um and I like I
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just feel like you know there's a beauty in Twitter's uh long-term inability to
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innovate yeah because it just remains what it is but there's also like a just
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a huge uh you know missed opportunity there like Twitter owned Vine and like
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they had this extraordinarily interesting powerful short form video platform do you know how many employees
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Vine had when it closed that's a really good question I could guess I'm gonna guess Vine had a 100 employees had 50
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employees I had fewer employees than I do wow that's insane that is incredible
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just just try to just invest in it just figure it out but like they can't like they just can't you know Jack dorsy
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obviously is always been very drawn in many directions and not interested always in focusing on one thing and I
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think that that was not all the love to jack if you're listening but I think it's not it's a
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hard way to be a CEO and I know that because I'm the same way um and uh I
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think that there were there are a lot of missed opportunities at Twitter but at the same time I kind of like that it's like chugging along making zero dollars
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um having having not a lot of intrusive advertising and and not like launching
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shorts like the moment that that becomes interesting like all the other platforms have yeah yeah no they kept it simple
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for sure I mean that's kind of how it started it's it started with just like 140 characters or 160 or whatever it was
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text message platform basically exactly um but I think maybe the most interesting platform of the hour is Tik
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Tok I mean it's it's ever consuming what was the stat now it just
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passed it it passed something right it passed uh one of the other largest sites in the world to be like
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one of the top five biggest sites and I think by traffic they're probably one of the biggest period um Tik Tok is
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fascinating to me so we've got these top these couple top creators that are household names we've got the demilios
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Addison Rays all these at the everyone knows who these people are they're basically broken into mainstream and
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then you have the sort of upper tier of of the biggest Tik Tok creators and I I
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pay attention to a lot of them because the the for you page serves me videos from them all the time and it seems like
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they're all sort of itching to graduate from Tik Tok and it's kind of fascinating to see and a lot of them go
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to make a YouTube channel a lot of them graduate from social media in general and they go on to do TV stuff you talked
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about this in your video but I'm curious for your like quick take on like why are all the biggest ticktockers trying to
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just get out of Tik Tock even though Tik Tok is massive and gaining momentum the
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way it is I mean so there's two reasons one is you know the the story that you
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feel like you're a part of and this was a thing when when I was coming up on YouTube Every YouTuber wanted to be on
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TV and so like they wanted to be a part of the story that their Heroes were a part of rather than the story that they were inside of which is just how we are
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and that is a bad reason like like in my experience YouTubers who focused on YouTube did way better than YouTub
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YouTubers who were like how do I do TV now y not a lot of examples of YouTubers who made that transition well um but uh
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there are examples of certainly people who started on Vine and made the transition to YouTube really effectively
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and have become household names um and I think that that is also definitely an
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option for for ticktockers and the the other reason is a very good reason which is that uh you can it's it is more
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valuable to be a a YouTuber than to be a Tik tocker and that is both economically
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like you make more money per minute of time people spend on your content but also because you develop a deeper relationship with your audience because
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you have them for more than 15 seconds or a minute or three minutes at the outside yeah and that
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uh that is how you um that is how you like you know Tik Tok is very
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intentionally a user first platform and and like to the extent that um it will
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sacrifice everything else for the user experience like ads are extremely easy to skip by the content is um like it's
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like I know that you I know that deep in your heart you feel like you would want to give that Creator who you like Vibe
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with you feel like you want to give them more of your time but you don't really you want to watch this guy hurt himself on a snowboard let's be honest with
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ourselves and they're they're maybe they're right so so like they are giving you what you not what you would choose
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but what you actually want and that's why wild and so that's uh that's why it's such a sticky platform but it makes
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it a a more a harder place to build a business as a Creator and to build an audience as a Creator it's harder to
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develop a deeper relationship with people um which is democratizing it gives it creates way more opportunity
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for people to constantly be breaking in and getting that first exposure to audience and to uh attention but it is
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because of that you know opportunity for breakthrough you're there's always somebody ready to take your place uh and
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so you have to figure out how to convert those people into something except for
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just a Tik Tok audience and you know YouTube is the best place for that yeah
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and with YouTube launching and and being successful about shorts it does seem a little bit like maybe there's it's
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amazing to think that that this is the way I'm thinking now but maybe there is a threat to to Tik Tok in YouTube's
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short strategy interesting um whereas you know a year ago I would have been
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thinking like you know is Tik Tok a threat to YouTube now I'm like I mean abs of course it's a huge threat to
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YouTube it is the it is the first threat to YouTube really like Facebook couldn't take them on but Tik Tok can and the you
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know that uh now I'm thinking like how do how does YouTube Take market share away from
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Tik Tok because yeah YouTube is much better at making money um I just say the
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platform I have a a stat just recently that YouTube had a larger quarter 4 last
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year than Netflix in Revenue I think it was like8 and a half billion dollars of Revenue YouTube is making a lot of money
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now it costs a lot of money to run but they're making a lot of money um and also one of the points you brought up
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earlier that I I've thought about a lot is like the the intrinsic value of an audience on one platform versus the
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other like would you rather have 10 million views on a Tik Tok or one million views on a YouTube video and
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it's kind of still waited for the YouTube video at that point yeah so that's always been really interesting
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and you look at the numbers actually the the the biggest piece of content I have ever created by views is a Tik Tok of
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course it is uh and it's like 33 million views on a 7c video or something crazy
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like that yeah um but yeah if you're if you find yourself like if you come up as a Tik tocker you've built your your
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brand but not your business necessarily you do as a smart person want to build a business around it on something stable
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um like a YouTube channel so it it does make a lot of sense what we see it being built are you you make Tik toks do you
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do you consider yourself a Tik tocker at this point you've made enough of them you have like a presence there at this
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point I it would be almost embarrassing to not call myself a Tik tocker like it be like I'm trying to pretend I'm not a
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Tik tocker yeah um and the other reason I kind of consider myself a Tik tocker is because I really admire a lot of the
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people I follow on Tik Tok and and we have you know in the same way as my colleagues on YouTube you know talked a
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bit on on Direct messages and stuff and I just think that they are so cool and interesting and smart in the way that
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they are approaching their their content and Their audience that like I feel like
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if I if I the the only reason I don't have to call myself a Tik tocker would be like that I don't think it's it's a
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uh that I would that I'm embarrassed by it and when I think about those people I'm like I'd be I'd be like almost um
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uh deriding their creativity and thoughtful content if I pretend like I'm
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not one of I mean it used to be embarrassing to say you're a YouTuber and now it's it's got a different
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connotation every other every month but now it's like oh nice like I understand what that is uh which is that's like
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kind of funny because I've said to people I don't know that like an Uber driver if you just say you're YouTuber
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they're like oh yeah I know I know some of those like they understand it already we're going to take a quick break when we come back Tik Tok versus YouTube and
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monetization but I think the the thing that that sort of ties all this stuff together is like YouTube has
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monetization built around sharing Revenue uh by on a percentage basis with
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its creators and Tik Tok in its attempt on its way up to stealing tons of market
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share from YouTube but wanting to keep creators on Tik Tok has decided they want to also give Revenue to their
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creators but they've done it with a different mechanic they've built a singular Creator fund and your video has
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done a better job of explaining it than I ever could so it's going to be linked in the show notes everyone should watch that at least before getting to this part but the the worst part about this
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Creator fund is that fundamentally the better Tik Tok does uh the less
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successful individual creators using that fund actually do um yeah is this a
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mistake by Tik Tok is this a greedy Thing by Tik Tok it's a it's a weird obvious thing that they should have all
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OB thought of by now so I'm curious why you think they decided to go with a Creator fund rather than Revenue
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sharing it's super smart like it's it's um you know if and and like if they
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don't if they never experienced any push back about it like no like it would just be smart um and the so so the reason so
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basically the the situation is there's a static pool of money and so if the so if if currently there's like let's say 10
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billion views day on Tik Tok and they're Distributing that that fund among those people who earned those 10 billion views
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then if if like 6 months from now there's 20 billion views on Tik Tok a day because the platform grew you get
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half as much money per view um because there's more views and the same pot of money so that's the that's the problem
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it's it's amazing um and that is clearly the the uh the limitation of of the
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static pool of money but the Creator fund idea itself I think is quite smart actually
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we all together experienced that like it kind of was maybe bad like for YouTube
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to be tying um Revenue like people's Revenue directly to uh the
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advertisements running on their Channel um and and also like advertisements running on a video was a bit of a
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problem because then it meant that like how does YouTube police like where Coca-Cola's advertisements show up and
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they have this like preferred program where like we promis that the content is not terrible but sometimes even the
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people in the preferred content might make stuff that's a little edgy and and so you you you we ended up in the
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situation where like they have to have this tremendously complicated moderation system to decide whether or not something is worthy of certain kinds of
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advertisements it's a mess uh YouTu and Tik Tok doesn't have to worry about that um the other thing that is great about a
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Creator fund is that you can divide it up based on what you want to encourage
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so um so I get higher cpms than average because my audience is older and I make
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educational content and it's like really brand safe um but but on Tik Tok
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everybody basically makes the same CPM but you could make it so that uh a
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Creator gets more money for their first million views than for their second million views so that you're encouraging
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people to uh so that because it's easy it's easier to get your second million
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like your second million views than your first million views MH just like how how it is um and you could you could make it
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so that you reward people for creating content that has more engagement or you could or like is less controversial like
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you can measure like controversiality scores based on how like disliked
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something is or how much sort of yelling there is and negative sentiment there is in the comments so you can like you
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could do that you could just sort of as a platform decide what kind of content you want to be encouraging with dollars
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and you can't really do that the way that it YouTube that's just decided by advertisers and where they want to
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advertise so a a example of a huge problem of this is like if you tend to make content for a black audience in
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America advertisers are less interested in buying that con that content because the average black person in America has
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far less money than the average white person in America so like so you literally just because you make content
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for black people make less money um which is wild yeah yeah one of the we
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weirdest um uh questions that I've had literally about the like the the ad
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apocalypse that happened back in I guess we've had more than one of them on YouTube but about the the association
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directly between the advertiser and the content that they appear in front of I always thought it was pretty clear that
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uh a Coca-Cola ad appearing on a YouTube video didn't actually associate
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Coca-Cola with whatever is in that YouTube video at least I personally always felt that way yeah for sure but
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it somehow became this really strong like reaction from all of these Brands
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to pull out because they didn't want their brand Associated and I'm like I've seen a lot of ads before a lot of like
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when I see an ad on TV for example on in between like quarters in an NBA game a
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lot of times it's a product that's related to sports because that makes sense and that's where the audience is I don't remember the last ad I saw on
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YouTube and what video it was in front of I don't even know it's usually some reasonable product I don't remember
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remember do you not have YouTube premium I do but when I'm signed into like the shorts account which doesn't have
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premium then I see a bunch of ads and I forget to switch back so I'm like I I can't believe that that's that was such
00:27:09
a massive driver of the Apocalypse but it really was like the direct tie between the Deep the the do you want me
00:27:17
to Bor you with the Deep reality of why that happened I would love you to yes so
00:27:22
there's two two components of it the first is that the the um the last like
00:27:29
80 years of Television ads have been sold that way they they say you can reach this many people but uh but but
00:27:36
really what you're doing is you're aligning yourself with content and in this case the content is some stuff that
00:27:41
people feel really passionately about or that makes them feel good and so it was easier to monetize like sports for
00:27:47
example because people have very you know a lot of passion around Sports content so it's easy much easier to
00:27:53
monetize to to sell ads around Super Bowl than it is to sell ads around like CNN where you don't really know whether
00:27:59
like the vibe of that day is going to be um and so so that's how that is how ad
00:28:06
agencies have been selling uh brands on content on TV for decades and so that is
00:28:14
how Brands think about it because that's how brand advertising agencies have talked about it to them and it's also how the content uh providers have talked
00:28:22
about it to them how the the television stations talk about it to them so like that's that's been how you sort of like
00:28:28
uh Beyond just the demographics and Beyond just the number of people you're going to reach that's how you try to likeed the extra icing on the cakes they
00:28:35
talk about this a ton and how important it is and then finally and you switch over to YouTube and it's like it's not important any anymore at all don't think
00:28:41
about that we're not advertising on the content we're advertising to the person it's just an algorithm you are choosing the person to advertise to not the
00:28:47
content you're advertising on right and uh which is more or less how it works though the content still matters and
00:28:54
then the other important piece of that pie is that during the ad apocalypse um and and before uh and also since though
00:29:03
it is getting a little less this way now advertising agencies really hated Google they hate
00:29:10
them so much because Google is putting them out of business because Google does their job Google says you don't have to
00:29:16
work with an advertising agency it's four clicks to figure out how to reach your audience you can reach your audience better than you ever could with
00:29:21
an ad agency and ad agencies were like that's wrong we're in New York we make $400,000 a year and we need to continue
00:29:28
making $400,000 a year because I have a mortgage and that and like so so ad
00:29:34
agencies were able to say to Brands look I told you YouTube St sucked I told you
00:29:39
Google sucked they're putting your logo next to terrorist recruitment videos next to people uh teaching other people
00:29:47
how to how to stab each other and now now look what you've done you've ruined your brand reputation and uh and also
00:29:55
the third piece is Brands wanted leverage against YouTube and like this was an opportunity to exert leverage
00:30:01
against them um and uh and it worked and it kept cpms low for years after that yeah this was one
00:30:09
of the things it was a very successful thing for it was very bad for YouTube it was it was like a chapter in Internet
00:30:14
history I I do remember going to one of the Creator Summits which by the way is another thing YouTube does that I don't know that any other platform does but
00:30:21
it's sort of a a gathering where uh YouTubers are talking directly to YouTube and uh something that kept
00:30:28
coming up was like well don't the advertisers need YouTube more than YouTube needs those advertisers that
00:30:33
dropped out been the case I make yeah they always need each other but it's like yeah if you if you pull all of your
00:30:39
all of your advertising off of YouTube for whatever this this reason you really believe in is eventually you're going to realize you got to get back to that
00:30:45
audience somehow and those people are borderline unreachable any other way so yeah come back well that's that seemed
00:30:52
to be what changed this year where YouTube's Revenue went from 2020 billion to $30 billion one year um and that's a
00:31:00
wild number that is it's bigger than Netflix and Netflix has like like
00:31:05
hundreds of millions of people who just give them $10 a month yeah and YouTube's just doing it through almost all through
00:31:12
advertising though please sign up for YouTube premium it's so much better I I second thaten out there I highly
00:31:17
recommend it the ad free experience is great it is yeah yeah no yeah there's a
00:31:22
and now so we're looking at shorts and like how they're trying to take a little bit of market share back from Tik Tok and it's kind of interesting because
00:31:27
I've made made videos actually we've done this sort of a fun game I'll make a short a 45 second video in vertical I'll
00:31:35
edit it and I'll publish the exact same short on Tik Tok Instagram reals Twitter
00:31:41
video YouTube shorts and we'll always guess like how we think they'll do our shorts channel is pretty new it doesn't
00:31:46
have as many subscribers but we'll sort of guess like I think the the real will do better for this one for this reason or I think this Tik Tok is going to take
00:31:53
like a 24hour slow burn and then sort of take off yeah um YouTube shorts hasn't
00:31:58
really taken off for my very young shorts Channel but we have noticed the
00:32:04
Tik toks fluctuate the most it'll go from like a 100,000 to 3 million to
00:32:10
200,000 to 12 million and it it is the most uh reliable unreliable the latest
00:32:16
one we did um the YouTube short brand new 10,000 views after 24 hours on Twitter 297,000 views Instagram real
00:32:24
1.95 million Tik Tok 1.7 million and the Tik Tok passed it just sort of
00:32:29
unpredictable do you make your Tik toks thinking about like which platform it
00:32:35
might be best for are you are you sculpting your videos for Tik Tok specifically um I make Tik toks for Tik
00:32:42
toks I like I like I'm I try not to think about you know there's to some extent because uh the one minute limit I
00:32:51
think about because I'd rather make a video that's one minute because then it it I don't think that you can do YouTube shorts that are over a minute right um
00:32:58
and and that will probably change but I don't think it has yet and the so the so
00:33:05
that's the thing I think about but other than that like I'm making Tik toks as a Tik tocker like I I feel engaged in the
00:33:12
culture of that world at the moment like I don't think that that will I will remain that way forever um but I'm
00:33:19
engaged enough in the culture that I feel like I can I can do it you know in
00:33:24
my own way as a 41-year-old uh science teacher um engage with it in in a way that uh
00:33:31
won't be seen as too embarrassing yes and the uh and then and then a lot of that
00:33:39
stuff just won't make sense off Tik Tok and so it will not be reuploaded as a real or as a short um but a lot of it
00:33:46
will and so it's just it sort of comes down to like the kinds of content I make on Tik Tok some of like if I'm answering
00:33:52
science questions or doing a video about science it's going to work anywhere whereas if I'm engaging with something
00:33:58
that like that is like inside of the current moment of Tik Tok it wouldn't even make sense if I uploaded on Tik Tok
00:34:04
two weeks from now let alone on YouTube that's exactly right yeah yeah I feel like I My Philosophy has always been to
00:34:11
upload content specifically for that platform and if there are things that plug into the cultural Nexus or
00:34:19
whatever's happening in that moment then that's even better um but yeah we're just sort of trying to come up with good
00:34:26
short ideas and good video ideas in the tech world there's lots of ideas out there and things to make but on how to
00:34:33
make them for Tik Tok is a question that I think about a lot yeah I mean you got
00:34:38
a it's a very different audience like that that's you know it's not just the it's got the culture of the platform
00:34:44
it's the the look of the platform but it's also just a it's younger it's more female um it's interesting my science
00:34:50
videos uh get like 70% female on Tik Tok and they're like 80% male on on YouTube
00:34:56
shorts so like exact same content that is really interesting I haven't I'm going to check right now actually
00:35:01
because I notoriously on a tech Channel um what would you guess that my male
00:35:07
female ratio is typically on a tech video I don't know 85 to 15 that would
00:35:14
be world class it's nowhere near that really nowhere yeah that I I've never
00:35:20
seen a double digit uh fale ratio on a tech Channel on YouTube specifically wow
00:35:25
but that's YouTube um mine's like 973 uh holy sh yeah and so I wonder if
00:35:34
Tik Tok is if anything an opportunity to reach a completely different audience
00:35:39
because of the different people using Tik Tok specifically with different ratios of male to female that's something I can't find the ratio right
00:35:44
now I got to look on a single video I guess it's in there you got that Tik Tok analy are not good garbage yeah they're
00:35:51
bad I'll find it someday I've got this weird page pulled up but I'll find it later but that's that's an interesting point um so okay Tik tok's got a Creator
00:35:59
fund now you've exposed Tik tok's Creator fund for being maybe a little
00:36:04
bit shortsighted or a little too smart do you think there's a world where they change it do you think there's a world
00:36:10
where Tik Tok continues to grow creators continue to start off on Tik Tok and
00:36:15
they want to stay on Tik Tok and they find a reason to switch to maybe a percentage based system to incentivize
00:36:22
people to stay with Tik Tok long term yeah I I think I don't think there's a world in which they don't change it
00:36:28
somehow and like maybe I'm just being really optimistic um but I think
00:36:34
that that change might be we hear you we're going from 200 million a year to
00:36:41
300 million a year and uh and like that that to me will does not solve the problem it still and like there's all
00:36:49
there's so I I didn't even get to the end of the list of advantages to this but one of the big ones is that you get to control that line item and so like
00:36:56
like as a business you want to be in you don't you hate percentages you you want
00:37:02
flat fees so so being at being control of that of that line item and and like I
00:37:08
think that they would rather like increase that number without making it a percentage but it doesn't really solve
00:37:14
the problem until it is a percentage um and the other you know the question that
00:37:20
I think that Tik Tok is trying to answer
00:37:25
is is the money is our money that we would like to keep important to the
00:37:33
long-term sustainability of the economic ecosystems of the Creator economy on our
00:37:40
platform um and and I don't know I don't know the answer to that question like as a Creator as a person who likes creators
00:37:47
I hope that the answer is that like in order to become as powerful as YouTube
00:37:53
you need to build the same moat that YouTube Built which is I believe be true are the best place to be a Creator on
00:38:00
the internet yeah um and like twitch is also good but it's it's it's still not
00:38:06
as good as I don't think it's as good as YouTube uh because I think twitch is more work for the the the money twitch I
00:38:14
had I saw an interesting analogy and it's it's similar to what I would describe YouTube as but it's kind of like driving for Uber you'll make Oney
00:38:20
you'll make money while you're doing it and then when it's over when you stop driving it stops yeah and it's wild the
00:38:28
the the amount of money that I make from videos I made 10 years ago is like really that's still that's still
00:38:34
throwing off $50 a month all right yeah exactly um that that one
00:38:40
video there's several I mean we we all know what the the ones that show up and recommended over and over and over again
00:38:46
we all have a couple of those we'll take another quick break and when we come back we're going to talk about YouTube adding more
00:38:52
features there's some funny things about being on YouTube a long time though that you you would have just the same
00:38:57
perspective is me if not more so where you continue to run your YouTube channel and then YouTube quietly changes
00:39:04
something or adds a new feature and it looks like this is always a question with YouTube and Google it looks like
00:39:10
this is something they're going to lean into pretty hard but we're not we're not sure if we want to jump in and maybe
00:39:17
sacrifice analytics or what's what's going to change about our Channel if we start doing the thing it seems like the algorithm or a new feature is pushing um
00:39:24
shorts was one of those things where it's like do I want to post shorts on my main channel is that going to will those
00:39:31
be separated like do you think about that at all do you you do shorts on your on one of your channels
00:39:37
right yeah we do shorts on S Show and we do shorts I I have my own like I basically repost my Tik toks on my
00:39:44
personal Channel um yeah I mean it there are
00:39:49
there are lots of uh times when YouTube has launched an exciting new feature and it's like should I go all in on this uh
00:39:56
because I've seen these things flop you know and uh and I felt like that
00:40:03
initially about shorts honestly I was like is this a good idea for YouTube to be doing like how all and not in this
00:40:09
really are they how big of a threat is Tik Tok to them now I'm in the place of like YouTube not having shorts would is
00:40:17
like Blockbuster not having streaming you're like all right maybe it's GNA hurt their bottom line a little bit but
00:40:22
like they'll still exist yeah you know they will continue to compete in the new future because I like I'm Terri I like a
00:40:31
lot of you know I don't know I don't ever get fear from any Executives at YouTube who I talk to they never exude
00:40:37
anything except like collected in charge confident yeah um but like I think
00:40:43
people are pretty freaked out by Tik Tok I think that people like I think investors are I think that people in the
00:40:48
Creator economy are I think that YouTube people at YouTube are like you know I
00:40:54
this is a complete guess but I would guess that 2021 despite being a year where YouTube's Revenue went up a lot
00:41:00
it's probably the first year ever that YouTube's traffic in the US might have
00:41:05
gone down it certainly did not grow right like the way that it has in the past and like because Tik Tok had to eat
00:41:13
away from somewhere you know it can't all come from TV can't all come from socializing which is probably where a
00:41:19
lot of it came from um so yeah the uh I I I think YouTube's legitimate like
00:41:26
should be freaked out by T to and and like I think that they have no choice but to be inside of shorts which I'm
00:41:31
ambivalent about like part of me is like I don't want this on the platform because I want this to be a pure exper
00:41:36
like I want it to be like Twitter it's just like words and that's let's just be that it's the way I always liked it but
00:41:43
I uh I I if I were in charge of YouTube it would be a significantly smaller company that's for sure that's fair yeah
00:41:50
it's it is definitely like um like the more we we've looked at Vine like Vine
00:41:56
had this huge come up huge platform huge creators gone today
00:42:02
and you know those creators are no longer obviously on Vine it makes me think like no matter how big of a
00:42:07
Creator or sorry no no matter how big of a platform comes up to challenge YouTube YouTube will always just have to find a
00:42:14
way to absorb its features or its creators one of those two things and I
00:42:19
don't know I you know let's say YouTube makes a perfect clone an incredible solution to the Tik Tok problem and
00:42:26
suddenly Tik Tok starts to shrink it's like well that's about as good of a competitor as we've ever had to YouTube
00:42:32
and there is theoretically a danger to only having one video platform be
00:42:37
successful you want some competition uh yeah do you ever think about YouTube as a monopoly or is that just it's just
00:42:44
like the the the internet's video archive yeah I mean absolutely I think
00:42:49
like I think of YouTube as as a monopoly um in its space you know but but like it
00:42:55
it it be it sort of begs question like where is the like where is the line you draw between these things like is is it
00:43:02
is YouTube like competing with Netflix is it competing with Facebook is it competing with uh with it like you know
00:43:08
like so so all of these things in the attention economy are basically um competing for your time and so they're
00:43:15
just they're competing with with everyone in media so in in that way they are not a monopoly but in as in as far
00:43:21
as in as much as like the kind of content that I love to create know how to create have experimented with the
00:43:28
craft of and and them like um deeply familiar with you're like yeah like I can't move my audience to another
00:43:35
platform I kind of don't want to um and you know and like but I think that
00:43:40
you've also see people diversifying like obviously this podcast is on YouTube but
00:43:46
it is also wherever you can get a spot a podcast and uh and that's one of the reasons why YouTubers make podcasts is
00:43:53
because it's a a way to have a deeper you know connection because you get to like hang out for more than for for a
00:43:59
longer period of time um and also it's like it's a piece of content that gets to exist outside of that ecosystem
00:44:06
diversify your your sort of like uh content that you're making um and I
00:44:12
think that a lot of people like creators talk about that all the time like how do you how do you make sure you're not like a single platform Creator because it
00:44:18
it's hard but like it's something people spend a lot of time working on and thinking about so technically YouTube is
00:44:25
certainly not a monopoly no one could actually that in court um as a person who makes YouTube videos it does feel like they are because like there's no
00:44:31
really other place where I feel like I would could successfully post YouTube videos but I think that Tik Tok
00:44:37
innovates very quickly and um and if if the big
00:44:44
advantage that YouTube has over Tik Tok is the is the ability and like the
00:44:49
desire to share 55% of Revenue it wouldn't be hard for Tik Tok to just do
00:44:55
that you know it's not like I don't I'm pretty sure I'm pretty sure they're not hurting for money like they it it may be
00:45:02
that they have under monetized up to now but regardless like anyone would give them money like it's yeah the most
00:45:09
successful thing that's happened in media the fastest rising thing that's happened in media ever so yeah um yeah I
00:45:17
I think that they're going to continue to evolve and like that that might be different forms of video but I hope that
00:45:23
it is also um more opportunities for monetization same it is it is kind of
00:45:28
interesting to think about framing YouTube as a monopoly or not like if if YouTube were to argue in court they
00:45:34
would say oh no yeah we're competing with Facebook and Netflix and TV and all
00:45:40
these podcast things like we're just another Media company but also in the
00:45:46
just like you described like in this world of like Creator made videos in this certain way it's like there is no
00:45:52
other place which is really interesting and like podcast for example we make our podcast here not just because we want to
00:45:58
connect to our audience in like a new way but also discoverability in the podcast world is awful unless you have a
00:46:06
discoverability engine and YouTube is just the best one so here we are so yeah
00:46:11
they have a lot of a lot of opportunities to Branch out into new things and compete in new ways and so
00:46:17
anytime another competitor pops up and they feel like they want to be involved in that space Boom YouTube shorts now
00:46:25
they're in there yeah yeah and like the thing that YouTube did and the thing that Tik Tok should be wanting to do um
00:46:32
is is to sort of like they're not just a uh like an application they're like the
00:46:37
operating system for the online video creator Community you know and uh and
00:46:43
you know there are Computing operating systems like you can watch VOD videos on uh on Twitch and like you can also watch
00:46:50
live streams on YouTube but like the they are the one they are the sort of I
00:46:57
of of video of uploadable video rather than a sort of Wal garden video love it that's
00:47:04
a great analogy uh I have one more question for you Hank and it's a little bit off the
00:47:10
beaten path it's a little bit of a Twist um I'm very curious how fast can you
00:47:15
type the alphabet yeah is is this is this is a Tik Tok
00:47:23
friend recently is that what you're referencing no even better even better this is a this is a classic end of the
00:47:30
waveform podcast uh bit that we're doing now which is every guest I'm going to send you in the studio here a link
00:47:37
actually uh to an alphabet type test and if you can uh open this site and screen
00:47:45
record your attempt at telling the alphabet we actually have a leaderboard of previous guests on the podcast and I
00:47:53
we have we might we may have bet on how well you do on this leaderboard but I won't tell you what we've bet yet so uh
00:47:59
if you could give are we doing three attempts three attempts if you could give your three attempts at typing a
00:48:06
through z that would be pretty sick I gotta open a screen record yeah
00:48:13
I'm glad that you just assume I know how to I can do a screen record which is of course true because I'm a YouTuber but like I can are you on a Mac or Windows
00:48:20
uh I'm on Mac I got it you got quick time yeah that's perfect yeah all right try and
00:48:29
close make sure that there's no confidential information on my screen right now right it's like they got a sexy Garfield
00:48:36
in the corner there are you are you on a uh like a mechanical keyboard or a
00:48:42
normal keyboard I'm on a normal keyboard the one that comes with the Mac okay
00:48:49
sick same okay and I should just go yep as
00:48:55
soon as it literally will just start as soon as you hit the letter a and it'll time you out three two
00:49:08
one I don't feel like that was particularly fast that sound that sounded pretty good does it give you a
00:49:14
time I don't know I pushed enter and it went away oh okay okay if you I think as
00:49:22
soon as you get to Z it spits out a time and then I pushed enter and I shouldn't have done that oh yeah yeah or maybe I
00:49:28
missed a letter oh if you miss a letter it won't get to Z okay
00:49:37
yeah what the hell did I do wrong oh I didn't hit G okay well let's start over
00:49:43
again it's harder than it sounds it sounds really easy and then you get to like WXYZ and it's really tough yeah my
00:49:49
my pinky gets tired okay
00:50:01
okay 8.8 8.8 8.8 would you like to give it one more try we've got we've got a a
00:50:08
leaderboard here but I won't tell you where it is Until the End okay okay I'll give you one more try all right I'm
00:50:16
going oh man well that's not GNA do it I'm doing again okay
00:50:28
7.2 oh that's a big jump that's a big jump that move that vaults you up the leaderboard 7.2 puts you right behind
00:50:36
Colin and Samir for number nine do they do it together because they just love each
00:50:41
other so much they took their their best time of their combined attempts um that is
00:50:48
incredible if you can send me that screen recording that would be amazing but anyway okay thank you Hank for
00:50:55
joining us this has been an adventure I like I like talking to creators about creating and the Creator Universe feels
00:51:02
like a feels like being in a like a superhero talking to other a superhero movie talking to other superhero
00:51:08
characters it's kind of fun it's kind of fun thank you it's yeah it's super interesting I really appreciate uh all
00:51:14
the questions it's cool it's nice to finally meet you for sure hopefully we do it again sometime I know you're super busy but until then I'll be watching
00:51:21
more Tik toks all right just keep scrolling for sure all right right take
00:51:27
care see you L bye all right that's it with Hank Green I I again want to just take a second to vanim he's obviously
00:51:33
super busy and we are super happy to have him and have that chat I thought it was really fun I think it was really good we've talked about Tik Tok so much
00:51:40
here and just like he's really deep into that and then along with the fact that
00:51:45
it's really fun from a an outsider watching you who's been on YouTube for so long talk to someone who's been on
00:51:51
even longer I mean like I have some some knowledge but watching two people like that just talk is is just fascinating to
00:51:57
me um I hope he can come on the show again he knows so much about social media so like if he wants to be our
00:52:04
resident expert I love that kind of like how Neil degrass Tyson's our resident astrophysicist we should have Hank our
00:52:09
resident social media expert I mean he'd basically be a third co-host at that point but I'm all for it um hopefully
00:52:16
Hank if you're ever in the New York City area come over come visit us we'd love to have you actually sit down I'd love
00:52:21
to be part of it too like we real question if he comes into the studio and does another episode in person does he
00:52:26
get to do the typing test again on a new keyboard or does he have to stick with his old result I don't know we'll have
00:52:32
to we'll cross that bridge yeah yeah we'll just okay we'll figure that one out copy Hank or
00:52:39
hank1 final final.mov um yeah that was great really fun conversation we will see you all
00:52:46
next week peace I've never done the outro before that was weird that's perfect
00:52:52
that's how it's done W for is produced by Adam Elina we are partnered with VOX media and our Ina music was created by
00:52:57
vain s [Music]
