Re:CNN Is Closing Down Beme, YouTube Star Casey Neistat’s Vi...
by alacritythief on Thursday January 25, 2018 @02:27PM
(#16233754)
So as a user of the Beme Panel app (the 2nd app, created after the CNN acquisition), I thought its core idea was fascinating. The ability to quickly panel and poll people on news topics directly via a phone app instead of invasive text or phone calls seems something worthwhile to invest in. Using it felt more like joining a group for a conversation rather than being prodded by pollsters.
What didn't make sense to me is why they didn't "step on the gas" and accelerate the speed of their app development and content. I overall enjoyed the Beme youtube vids and it seemed they were finally honing in on the right track, and as mentioned earlier the Beme Panels app showed promise.
However, the videos were a bit infrequent, not pumping out as much video content as competitors VICE or Vox, or even CNN's own previous acquisition "Great Big Story". The Panels app was still in closed beta and only brought in a trickle of users instead of trying to bring in even more to provide more data points and diversity of content/conversation.
Being a subscriber to Casey's YouTube channel, it seems to me that Casey is the kind of person that's a self-starter that likes to change things up a lot (which works for YouTube vids), but when it comes to consistently working on something that's more finite for long periods of time he doesn't have the knack for it.
Re:CNN Is Closing Down Beme, YouTube Star Casey Neistat’s Vi...
by throw7 on Thursday January 25, 2018 @01:52PM
(#16233412)
CNN is in its MTV transition phase. Remember when MTV played videos? We'll be saying: Remember when CNN did news? I don't blame CNN; the issue is their funding doesn't allow for complete independence. They need to shift programming to keep ad dollars coming in and they're looking for their "The Real World".
I've followed Bourdain through his many network changes, but his latest shows on CNN aren't the same. CNN is still relatively dry. Not for want of trying though... witness the number of times their newscasters shouted "shithole" with glee recently. :)
Personally, Neistat is not appealing to me, but he had an existing audience that I guess CNN execs were willing to give it a shot. That to me is desperation, not execution.
Re:CNN Is Closing Down Beme, YouTube Star Casey Neistat’s Vi...
by nugi on Thursday January 25, 2018 @02:23PM
(#16233702)
Wow, MTV is a perfect metaphor if you grew up in the 80s/90s. I may have to start using that. Its all 'talking heads' and filler now. I wonder if they still have independent coverage of anything outside dc or nyc.
Re:CNN Is Closing Down Beme, YouTube Star Casey Neistat’s Vi...
by code4tee on Thursday January 25, 2018 @12:15PM
(#16232490)
CNN bought a brand and not a product. In fact the only “product” the company had (beme) was shut down at acquisition. Seems like they simply never managed to translate some smart enthusiastic people into a viable product.
Sad, but seemed like a predictable outcome. Neistat is great, but never saw how his approach would succeed inside a large corporate operation or how he could monetize the “brand” beyond his very successful YouTube following.
Re:CNN Is Closing Down Beme, YouTube Star Casey Neistat’s Vi...
by blocked_again on Thursday January 25, 2018 @12:37PM
(#16232705)
hmm. He did sold the company for millions of dollars to CNN. Should have made more money than most "venture startup video platform CEO"s in their lifetime.
Re:CNN Is Closing Down Beme, YouTube Star Casey Neistat’s Vi...
by bspn on Thursday January 25, 2018 @05:08PM
(#16235155)
Not OP and I have no inside info, but if we take the $25m as given and assume that investors owned 20-30% on a $2m check with a vanilla preferred that brings the founders/team share down to somewhere in the the $17.5-20m range with the lion's share going to the founders.
Sounds nice, right?!
But, and this is admittedly a big assumption, this smelt like an acquihire at the time so I imagine the deal was structured in a way that allowed the financial investors to cash out with a respectable return while the founders committed to some form of earn-out to ensure their commitment and loyalty to making the platform a success for CNN. Given how quickly the shutdown occurred, you have to assume they didn't meet the metrics in the buy-out so will be leaving some (a lot?) of that purchase price on the table. If we assume a 50% discount that brings the net price down to under $10m split across a group of 10+ employees with the two founders presumably capturing about 80% of that. After tax ~ possibly at their prevailing income tax rate vs long-term capital gains ~ he may have realized a low-single digit million exit which is nothing to sneeze at for the vast majority of us especially given the quick turnaround. Now, if CNN negotiated hard on the earn-out or the investors had something other than 1x preferred it's possible that number is significantly lower, but none of us really know.
Re:CNN Is Closing Down Beme, YouTube Star Casey Neistat’s Vi...
by blocked_again on Thursday January 25, 2018 @02:46PM
(#16233932)
There are plenty of startups started by celebrities which burned a lot of money and died. Of course, the popularity of Casey must be a factor for the CNN acquisition but you can't tell that as the only one.
Re:CNN Is Closing Down Beme, YouTube Star Casey Neistat’s Vi...
by joelrunyon on Thursday January 25, 2018 @11:39AM
(#16232123)
> “I couldn’t find answers. I would sort of disappear, and I would hide, and I would make YouTube videos for my channel because at least I would be able yield something,” Neistat said. “I don’t think I’m giving CNN what I want to give them, and I don’t think they’re getting value from me.”
Sounds like things went poorly. Anyone know if this affected his earn-out (if there was one) or if they're just calling this whole thing a bust?
Re:CNN Is Closing Down Beme, YouTube Star Casey Neistat’s Vi...
by arosier on Thursday January 25, 2018 @03:28PM
(#16234321)
After Casey's latest launch of Beme (pre CNN), he shed some additional insight into the money Beme had raised and how they spend it. To date, Beme has now raised $6,000,000+ (presumably $6,619,242 assuming a $4 Million Series A on top of the existing stated Seed round).
The first launch of Beme led to 400,000 downloads in the first 6 days. Users posted 1 million videos in that same time frame. While there were breakout areas or "10s of thousands of consistent users, "after the cool down from the initial launch, they saw user engagement fall and realized the product was not working. There was hope that there was still validity in the concept (posting unedited - authentic video footage); however, the app needed a redesign to thoroughly test the concept.
Beme has 11 full time employees (10 of which are technical, 1 of which runs their social media communities (Jack)). Casey does not collect a salary from Beme. With this being said, it sounds as if Casey does not include himself in this employee count as he would most likely fall into the non-technical category. Beme splits their employees into 3 teams. Most likely these are divided by platform: Android, iOS, and Web.
The burn rate for these 11 employees is $180,000/month or $2,160,000/ year. Beme has the option to monetize through in-app advertising, in-app purchases, and selling of user data. With no signs that any 3 of these revenue streams have been activated at this time these expenses are being paid for from the venture capital money raised.
The second release has seen a surge in downloads to over 1 million, with added engagement after the first 8 days of launch. Time will tell if the added interest is purely based off of Casey's current social clout, or if the concept has legs to become a standalone sharing platform.
Re:CNN Is Closing Down Beme, YouTube Star Casey Neistat’s Vi...
by joncrane on Thursday January 25, 2018 @02:03PM
(#16233511)
Wasn't there a post in the past few weeks that lampooned the "founder's farewell message for a failed startup" and catalogued the typical elements of such a message? This one seems to fit that mold perfectly.
Re:CNN Is Closing Down Beme, YouTube Star Casey Neistat’s Vi...
by ihuman on Thursday January 25, 2018 @01:17PM
(#16233082)
I found a couple of mirrors of the video. They have the same title, but they have slightly different content, so I'm not sure which was the one that was linked.
Re:CNN Is Closing Down Beme, YouTube Star Casey Neistat’s Vi...
by baldfat on Thursday January 25, 2018 @03:05PM
(#16234096)
OUTPUT: They didn't make enough videos. 41 Videos in 6 Months 7.7 million views. 10 of them were Casey and not the Beme crew.
The production was good and the stories were interesting in a Vice type of way BUT they didn't output enough content. On YouTube amount of content is more valuable than production quality.
Re:CNN Is Closing Down Beme, YouTube Star Casey Neistat’s Vi...
by sintaxi on Thursday January 25, 2018 @02:41PM
(#16233876)
I get the impression they bought the company expecting Neistat would allow them to tap into his vlogging audience to spread their political agenda so he would become something like a new-wave news anchor. I expect it went something like this...
Them: "Hey Casey, you should vlog the womans march"
Him: "Nah, I'm going to go surfing with my buddies".
I bet this lead to a lot of frustration from both sides when Neistat didn't want to play along.
Re:CNN Is Closing Down Beme, YouTube Star Casey Neistat’s Vi...
by fortythirteen on Thursday January 25, 2018 @11:55AM
(#16232304)
Beyond the Beme platform itself, I'm greatly troubled by this SV notion that you can crowdsource objectivity, as if we have ever received a rational analysis from a mob.
Recent developments, like Facebook's decision to let its users determine what is and isn't factual (what is essentially Beme's advertised product), will lead to sanctioned groupthink.
Re:CNN Is Closing Down Beme, YouTube Star Casey Neistat’s Vi...
by Robotbeat on Thursday January 25, 2018 @12:35PM
(#16232692)
Not only that, but because Facebook is an online platform, they'll be fighting not only typical online security threats, but mass bot/troll campaigns to influence the result.
Re:CNN Is Closing Down Beme, YouTube Star Casey Neistat’s Vi...
by owenversteeg on Thursday January 25, 2018 @02:29PM
(#16233779)
Are there people that actually want to implement "Surprisingly Popular" for voting in political candidates? It seems useful for things like finding the correct answer to a factual question, but I have no idea how it would work in politics.
Re:CNN Is Closing Down Beme, YouTube Star Casey Neistat’s Vi...
by misterbowfinger on Thursday January 25, 2018 @02:53PM
(#16233997)
It's less about politics than it is about the "wisdom of the crowds". For example, it'd be really useful to get info from traders if they have special information about how the market will move.
Re:CNN Is Closing Down Beme, YouTube Star Casey Neistat’s Vi...
by root_axis on Thursday January 25, 2018 @01:56PM
(#16233458)
> Recent developments, like Facebook's decision to let its users determine what is and isn't factual (what is essentially Beme's advertised product), will lead to sanctioned groupthink.
It doesn't really matter. Groupthink is already "sanctioned" by the group. If something gets flagged as "non-factual" it will just embolden all the supporters of that thing.
Re:CNN Is Closing Down Beme, YouTube Star Casey Neistat’s Vi...
by ivanhoe on Thursday January 25, 2018 @03:13PM
(#16234165)
So people who at some point liked enough anti-vaxers posts to cross the threshold will never ever see any article presenting the facts that prove it's not true? And beside why would you want to serve users only the things that they agree with? It's not good for them, just makes them more stupid & easier targets for disinformation, but it's not good for Facebook neither because people love arguing online and cutting it down means also cutting the user interaction with the platform too.
Re:CNN Is Closing Down Beme, YouTube Star Casey Neistat’s Vi...
by dboreham on Thursday January 25, 2018 @05:53PM
(#16235508)
Failed acquisition: dog bites man story. Strange though that the acquired company principal is roaming around bad mouthing the acquirer rather than "focusing on strategic projects" or gardening.
What didn't make sense to me is why they didn't "step on the gas" and accelerate the speed of their app development and content. I overall enjoyed the Beme youtube vids and it seemed they were finally honing in on the right track, and as mentioned earlier the Beme Panels app showed promise.
However, the videos were a bit infrequent, not pumping out as much video content as competitors VICE or Vox, or even CNN's own previous acquisition "Great Big Story". The Panels app was still in closed beta and only brought in a trickle of users instead of trying to bring in even more to provide more data points and diversity of content/conversation.
Being a subscriber to Casey's YouTube channel, it seems to me that Casey is the kind of person that's a self-starter that likes to change things up a lot (which works for YouTube vids), but when it comes to consistently working on something that's more finite for long periods of time he doesn't have the knack for it.
I've followed Bourdain through his many network changes, but his latest shows on CNN aren't the same. CNN is still relatively dry. Not for want of trying though... witness the number of times their newscasters shouted "shithole" with glee recently. :)
Personally, Neistat is not appealing to me, but he had an existing audience that I guess CNN execs were willing to give it a shot. That to me is desperation, not execution.
It's always been that way, other than brief exceptions (the 1991 Gulf War was probably the longest).
Sad, but seemed like a predictable outcome. Neistat is great, but never saw how his approach would succeed inside a large corporate operation or how he could monetize the “brand” beyond his very successful YouTube following.
Casey Neistat is a talented daily lifestyle vlogger, and apparently not a talented venture startup video platform CEO.
Somewhat irrelevant though, as he takes home annual-salary-sized checks for every video that he puts on youtube.
I thought Beme was dumb, just curious to learn more about the mechanics of this kind of deal.
Sounds nice, right?!
But, and this is admittedly a big assumption, this smelt like an acquihire at the time so I imagine the deal was structured in a way that allowed the financial investors to cash out with a respectable return while the founders committed to some form of earn-out to ensure their commitment and loyalty to making the platform a success for CNN. Given how quickly the shutdown occurred, you have to assume they didn't meet the metrics in the buy-out so will be leaving some (a lot?) of that purchase price on the table. If we assume a 50% discount that brings the net price down to under $10m split across a group of 10+ employees with the two founders presumably capturing about 80% of that. After tax ~ possibly at their prevailing income tax rate vs long-term capital gains ~ he may have realized a low-single digit million exit which is nothing to sneeze at for the vast majority of us especially given the quick turnaround. Now, if CNN negotiated hard on the earn-out or the investors had something other than 1x preferred it's possible that number is significantly lower, but none of us really know.
Sounds like things went poorly. Anyone know if this affected his earn-out (if there was one) or if they're just calling this whole thing a bust?
The first launch of Beme led to 400,000 downloads in the first 6 days. Users posted 1 million videos in that same time frame. While there were breakout areas or "10s of thousands of consistent users, "after the cool down from the initial launch, they saw user engagement fall and realized the product was not working. There was hope that there was still validity in the concept (posting unedited - authentic video footage); however, the app needed a redesign to thoroughly test the concept.
Beme has 11 full time employees (10 of which are technical, 1 of which runs their social media communities (Jack)). Casey does not collect a salary from Beme. With this being said, it sounds as if Casey does not include himself in this employee count as he would most likely fall into the non-technical category. Beme splits their employees into 3 teams. Most likely these are divided by platform: Android, iOS, and Web.
The burn rate for these 11 employees is $180,000/month or $2,160,000/ year. Beme has the option to monetize through in-app advertising, in-app purchases, and selling of user data. With no signs that any 3 of these revenue streams have been activated at this time these expenses are being paid for from the venture capital money raised.
The second release has seen a surge in downloads to over 1 million, with added engagement after the first 8 days of launch. Time will tell if the added interest is purely based off of Casey's current social clout, or if the concept has legs to become a standalone sharing platform.
https://techcrunch.com/video/casey-neistats-youtube-life/519...
> Look at this fucking cheetah.
> He doesn't slow down, he doesn't get distracted.
> If you slow down he will catch you and he will tear your FUCKING HEART OUT.
> Work Harder
> Work Faster
US startup culture is weird, man. Who, in good conscience, says something like that to their employees?
https://youtu.be/8dVbO9BJa80
https://youtu.be/46RDiwfknu4
The production was good and the stories were interesting in a Vice type of way BUT they didn't output enough content. On YouTube amount of content is more valuable than production quality.
PS Casey states that Beme is moving into CNN and will still actually produce content. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfIhBu0TZBs
Them: "Hey Casey, you should vlog the womans march" Him: "Nah, I'm going to go surfing with my buddies".
I bet this lead to a lot of frustration from both sides when Neistat didn't want to play along.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ob4hS6ymCJZOVA_F7KTvMcFJc5z...
Recent developments, like Facebook's decision to let its users determine what is and isn't factual (what is essentially Beme's advertised product), will lead to sanctioned groupthink.
Taking a small subsection of a group and painting it as the majority is one of the oldest disinformation tactics.
AKA stereotype
- http://news.mit.edu/2017/algorithm-better-wisdom-crowds-0125
- https://www.princeton.edu/news/2017/02/06/crowd-wisdom-surpr...
Although it seems like there needs to be more research on the boundary cases
It doesn't really matter. Groupthink is already "sanctioned" by the group. If something gets flagged as "non-factual" it will just embolden all the supporters of that thing.
By the standard of the person you are showing the news to.
C.f.: collaborative filtering. Or how Netflix recommends movies.
Then again, good on Casey Neistat for squeezing out hopefully a cool few million from CNN.