Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - The Creator Economy and Being a YouTuber with Colin & Samir

Episode Date: November 5, 2021

Marques and Andrew aren't alone this week! As you can see from the title, Colin & Samir dropped by to talk about the business of being a YouTuber and everything to do with the creator economy. Whether you're making your first YouTube Shorts or producing full-length documentaries, everyone can learn something from this conversation. Enjoy! Links: Colin & Samir: https://www.youtube.com/c/ColinandSamir/about Interview with Mr. Beast: https://bit.ly/2ZWOwWR Interview with Nas Daily: https://bit.ly/31nxSAa Twitter: https://twitter.com/wvfrm https://twitter.com/mkbhd https://twitter.com/andymanganelli https://twitter.com/ColinandSamir https://twitter.com/AdamLukas17 Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/wvfrmpodcast/ Shop the merch:  shop.mkbhd.com Join the Discord:  https://discord.gg/mkbhd Music by 20syl:  https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And I'm Andrew. And today is a very special episode of the Wave podcast we're your hosts i'm marquez and i'm andrew and today is a very special episode of the waveform podcast i would say for a couple reasons but number one first in-person guests we've ever had in the new waveform studio colin and samir welcome to waveform thank you we're honored to be here so some of my favorite youtube creators and i my goal is to have all of my favorite creators come to the studio so we can talk about YouTube and talk about everything related to this job. But we share this job of making videos on the internet. And I have a lot of questions that are sort of generally in the like creator economy world. And we'll talk about a bunch of that stuff. But for the, for the uninitiated, do you have like a, like a spiel that you give for like describing your job? Many a spiel. We'll do it as quickly as possible. Um, we started on YouTube 10 years ago. Um, we started making extremely niche content on YouTube just cause there was no other place to make it.

And it was all content about the sport of lacrosse, which we played, uh, both of us played that. And that kind of helped us navigate through this, you know, this world of, of making content and aggregating a community of like-minded people that, that really couldn't exist anywhere else. And it was a network and, and content that we wish we had when we were younger. Like we wish we had a place to hang out and watch videos about athletes and, you know, what was going on in our community. And so we went through that process. We built a network. We turned it from one channel to 60 channels and we ended up selling the company in 2014. We stayed on with the sports company that bought us and we worked with all types of different

creators, most notably Dude Perfect. Found our way through working with brands, working with creators and fell in love with just the world of YouTube because it gave us a career and we felt like we wanted to help others get a career as well. And so today we make content about creators for creators where not only are we trying to tell the stories of creators, but also having creators like you on the show to help people who are just starting out or even other people in this career learn about what is this career of being a creator and how do we pull a community together of people who are taking this really seriously and want to do it as a profession yeah i've been watching you guys videos on creators and interviews on the youtube landscape for a while you've been also andrew you've been watching a couple of them

i've been telling everybody to watch them just because they're really good but also like let's find as many different ways to tie these experiences we've had together as we can. Um, but one of the common things I've noticed, so we've talked about like everything from like the Mr. Beast of the world to all the other tech YouTube creators. And one thing that I keep noticing that I always want to like explore is the advice that you can get from a creator about YouTube, about the platform, about how to make better videos, doesn't necessarily always apply. And so watching, so I'll just go ahead and plug right off the bat.

It'll be in the show notes. The video you did with Jimmy where you hung out with him, you were in his studio, get all kinds of this awesome information out of him and about YouTube and about the way he approaches making videos. And I want to listen to that whole thing and just take every little bit of advice I possibly can to make our videos better. But not all of it actually works and applies to tech. So I'll just give a quick example.

You might say something like, you really want to be introducing people to a storyline within the first 10 seconds of a video. But that bit of advice might not work if you're trying to review a product, for example, and you have to talk to the person considering buying the thing immediately. They would leave if you start telling a story, and it has nothing to do with the product. So I'm curious, when you guys talk to a bunch of different creators in different genres who have different pieces of advice that they give, creators and different genres who have different pieces of advice that they give, do you find that there's more overlap or almost no overlap between, let's say, a beauty creator or a tech creator or a vlogger and all the different types of YouTubers you've talked to? So I personally actually disagree

about what you just said about tech videos. Interesting. I actually think you can introduce multiple narratives, introduce new stories when it comes to the product. It's just not the same way. It's not you telling a story, but if you said like, there's two things I really like about this. And one thing I really don't, all of a sudden you've just introduced something that I'm waiting for. I see. That's a story. What's the thing Marquez doesn't like about this. And I'm waiting for that. And so I think actually a lot of the advice that he's giving is the way I take it is more of this just general storytelling advice. And if someone's, you know, you're introducing a product and there's no tension, there's no, nothing new that's going

to happen. Um, then I might not stick around. And I think, you know, I think Colin should explain also this advice from the creators of South Park when it comes to storytelling. And I think, you know, I think Colin should explain also this advice from the creators of South Park when it comes to storytelling. And I actually think storytelling advice applies to everyone who's telling a story. happened, then this happened, then this happened, then this happened. And you think like that's an extremely boring way to intake information. Yeah. And what you want is a story that goes, this happened, but then that happened. Therefore, this happened. So you want some causation between the beats in your story. And I think that's something that could exist completely in a tech video where you're saying, here's this new phone that was just launched history has shown us that it's been really incredible it's been an incredible line of products but this one is different therefore you should think differently right and if you can keep that going throughout you'll hook people and keep them longer i think

one of the interesting things about reviewing tech products is a large part of what we do is actually deciding which products to review, especially if I'm just like narrowing it down to reviewers. And so it usually turns out that the stuff we review is at the most extremes. It's either the best stuff and we want to highlight it and show you, or it's like the worst stuff worst stuff and it's like I got to warn you not to buy this and then there's a whole bunch of stuff in the middle that's like most tech which is like fine and sometimes it can be really hard to pull a story out of the stuff that's fine like you'll get to this whole line

of products has been fine this one's also fine stay tuned like so i find like a lot of channels are like trying to pull a story not even a story but just trying to like exaggerate things to create a better video which may actually shift the conclusion about the product yeah so i think there's two things one it's like the's like the way you reveal information to the audience is, you know, part of that kind of retention strategy that you can pull is like, okay, I'm going to save this piece of information for there, but I'm going to tell them I'm going to say it. There's a little bit of like, I can hook them. But I also think there's completely different tension and release points in different formats. So all good storytelling is going to build a ton of tension in the viewer and then release it, right? That's what it is. It's like, I'm curious about something and then you let me know. And so I think a tech review is inherently a bunch of tension because it's like,

I want to know Marquez's take on this. And so that's the tension, the release is watching it. So I agree with you that it's not apples to apples, but I also would say that I think that some of the storytelling advice that you can take from, you know, someone who's able to capture, you know, lot of Jimmy where he's just speaking more directly to us at least, like about our content and being more, you know, kind of understanding of what our goals are. And so I think the more time we spent together, the more he started giving us advice that was catered to our channel. And I think that's a pretty unique experience. Yeah. Um, but I think there's like general storytelling advice. And, and at the same time, I would say that, you know, he reaches an incredibly broad audience, the most broad, the most broad. And I think there's different tactics to building a niche community.

And I think the way I view the internet and how I like to interact with it is through niche communities. I mean, our first business was a network, a sports network dedicated to lacrosse. Yeah. That's a niche community that I'm a part of. And the creator community is another niche community I feel a part of. And so now I think we're creating content for that community. So I want to be a little bit more narrow and I don't actually want the most broad audience. Yeah. And we won't take his advice to the fullest extreme because if we did, our videos would be edited down

to six minutes for attention. They would take us forever and we would leave out valuable things. Sometimes letting someone speak for us for four to five minutes is valuable, right? And so we need to make that decision of, yeah, no, our audience, because we know them, because it is niche, wants to hear about that.

Right, got it. Do you think you would last in a mr beast challenge which challenge i'm trying to think i feel like i'd be pretty decent keeping your hand on something i mean keeping your hand on a phone that's his app i could definitely keep my hand on a phone no i'm pretty i'm pretty um i'm decently like mobile athletic, and I don't know. If you put me up against other creators and editors, I'd feel pretty confident because most creating and editing is like sitting down. Like endurance.

Yeah, I feel like I have a little bit of a physical advantage, but again, it depends on what the challenge is. You could sit in a seat with poor posture for probably the longest to win. I could hunt for hours. Hours. Um, all right.

So a lot of what we've talked about also in the YouTube world is YouTube as a platform has relationship with its creators in a way that not every platform does. Like not every platform sends plaques to its creators when they reach milestones and has like creator, you know, teams that work with us and things like that. Um,

I'm curious from you, what are like the biggest complaints that you've seen from creators to YouTube? Because I feel like here we're, I don't want to say isolated, but it seems like every gate or every like big problem that YouTube has seemingly doesn't really affect our channel very much, whether that's because we're a tech channel or we're a PG channel or we're a friendly channel to YouTube, whatever it is. It seems like we've been pretty safe from all of it, and I guess that's why.

But I'm curious what sort of things you guys see that ring true the most often among other creators. I think the number one complaint from creators that I hear is the inability to A-B test thumbnails. Because I think thumbnails are this like incredibly stressful part of our job. Do you remember when it was just like the middle frame of the video? Yeah, I do remember about this. You could game that system pretty easily. And then it became like you need to be a partner to upload a thumbnail.

And now everyone who is like, anyone can thumbnails now right i think yeah i think so yeah but like thumbnail designer is becoming it's great that it's becoming like a job in our world right it's like that's a difference between a million views and a hundred thousand views a lot of times is your thumbnail but i think that's the the most stressful part of creating is that you make this amazing video not only do you have to be like this amazing video. Not only do you have to be like, to be a YouTuber, not only do you have to be good on camera, you also have to be a good producer. You also have to be a good director, a good animator, a good editor. Like you have to be all these different things. And then on top of that, you have to be really good at packaging. And that's actually what you find out over time

is that's actually the most important part of the job then yeah and i think the importance of that is really positive because it increases like the the barrier to entry and makes the quality really good but i think thumbnails today are causing a lot of creators a lot of stress and are the biggest complaint is like can we just ab test yeah it seems like it's such a simple fix um but i would say that's the biggest complaint it would be nice we were just talking about this the other day but um would you be uh open to being able to change so when it kind of auto plays on your say your smart tv or like when you're hovering over something on the web and you don't get to choose what that auto plays like being able

to now change that similar to a thumbnail. Do you think that could increase click-through? Yeah, definitely. You can choose that on Instagram Reels and TikTok. Yeah, like being able to do that. Because we've had ones where we just released a studio video where we had the Rivian and it has this gear tunnel in the bottom and the clip it chose was Tim crawling through that gear tunnel. So like super fun. We've had other reviews where it chooses

like half of that one second is Marques in A-roll and the other half is switching to B-roll and looks terrible when it goes up on the smart TV. That happens sometimes where they'll choose B-roll or a graphic that doesn't really have to do exactly with the video. Yeah, and I've chosen stuff on my smart TV because I accidentally scrolled over it

and that one clip was like, that was kind of interesting I think I'm gonna watch the video now yeah I believe that's AI selected at this point

whether it's from retention or just from a random point I think they try and choose a face typically usually

I mean all of my videos have a face in them sometimes it doesn't pick a face and I find that odd but yeah I think so I see a lot of I agree with A-B testing thumbnails I think that odd but yeah I think so I see a lot of

I agree with A-B testing thumbnails I think that would be great I would use that for sure so I agree definitely that A-B testing thumbnails would be fun I would love to I would do that all the time but I also am probably among the YouTubers that I know and associate with in the tech world I'm probably

the one that changes my thumbnails the least I think I see a lot one that changes my thumbnails the least. I think I see a lot of people upload a video with a title and a thumbnail, and then an hour later change the title, and then an hour later change the thumbnail, and then change the title and the thumbnail. And I'll come across it a third time on my home feed or something.

I'm like, I think I've watched this already, but it has a different title and thumbnail, so maybe I haven't. Do you guys play with title and thumbnail at all? Do you find that that's a major major major part of how you package a video and and manipulating it and changing the way it performs or no we do play with them but from my perspective if we're frantically changing titles and thumbnails we made a mistake much earlier in the process if if we have good ideas make titles and thumbnails easy yeah so we try and make sure we have that figured out

before we even make the decision to start filming or scripting the video. It's kind of changed our process to just say, hey, let's start that way in the beginning and say, okay, we have this idea, but wait, before we take any other steps, how do you package this idea? Yeah, I think one of the conversations I had with Jimmy

was like, when do you pick the title and thumbnail? And for him, it's before the video even gets shot at all. And for us, we were like, well, that sounds like great advice. Let's see how early we can apply it. But if we're reviewing a piece of tech and we don't know how good it is

and we don't know if we're going to recommend it or not, I can't choose a title and thumbnail before testing the thing. So I got to test the thing. And then maybe at that point, when I'm starting to write the actual video, I can pick a title and thumbnail before testing the thing. So I got to test the thing. And then maybe at that point when I'm starting to write the actual video, I can pick a title and thumbnail, but that's much later in the process. And at that point, I don't know anymore if it's a good title and thumbnail. But that might be with new formats because you have a lot of formats too, where, you know,

first impressions, you're going to put that in the title. And so that's what we're in the process of finding or what are our formats where we, it'll make it easy for us and for our audience that does look at kind of annoying sometimes when we we know we have to put galaxy s21 ultra first impressions now the actual title we give it basically has to be three to four words like we're we have to limit ourselves from that so that's kind of a pain sometimes um but yeah it is nice to be able to just always say impressions or something like that half the time our titles are created in the uploading process yeah so i still done we're still brainstorming it yeah i have a i have this checklist of like the process of making a video and it's usually as i'm uploading the video that i am finishing what i think the title should be. I have my last two or

three options for a title and we're shooting the thumbnail at that moment. And I don't know if that's, I mean, there are lots of tech topics and other ways to come up with a title and thumbnail first and craft a video around it. But specifically for reviews, that's been a challenge of mine is like packaging the video in an earlier than as I upload way. That's like us for interviews. You know, we just filmed an interview with you. We don't know exactly what the title thumbnail is gonna be. We have like a loose idea going into the interview. Coolest guy ever.

Yes, that was it. That was it, yeah. Okay. That might work. I think the other complaint about, the other common complaint is like, I don't make enough money. You know, AdSense, you know, this, that, or the other common complaint is like, I don't make enough money, you know, AdSense, you know, this, that, or the other. And my perspective on that is for so many years,

cause we were in such a niche topic, AdSense was not a part of our business model at all. And I don't believe that YouTube owes us anything for uploading videos to YouTube. I just don't believe it. And, and I think my perspective is just that it's our job to make a business out of it. If we can find audience, that's on us. YouTube gives us the platform and it's a search engine and they give us the tech. AdSense, I always look at as like, it's a cherry on top of our business. Luckily, I think over the past year, our growth has been such that it's a nice's a nice cherry on top but i just don't view it i think any creator who's starting out and being like frustrated that youtube's not paying enough yeah it's like you you have to be doing this for a long time for that to be a significant

source of revenue yeah yeah that makes sense i feel like the uh i i again i find out different things about the industry at different times based on the arc of me making videos and it was kind of the opposite like it was just adsense for like the first eight years and i didn't spend that much that was fine but then i had to learn the building the business part afterwards right to just to structure it in a way that it was much more reliable and study and i didn't have to depend on whatever CPM it was that month. But it's valuable to learn that stuff like as early as you can. I feel like another complaint we hear sometimes is that YouTube is not serving my videos to my subscribers.

I find that kind of a cop out. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Yeah. I hear a lot of like, and it's kind of comes back to what you said, like the title and if you're scrambling for the title and thumbnail and like why isn't it being served there's probably a reason before youtube makes that decision that has affected whether it's being served or not and also it's

probably being served it's just not being clicked on yes it is being served it's just not being clicked on yeah all right we'll be right back with more from colin and samir but first a quick word from our sponsors. This holiday season, the Center for Addiction and Mental Health is counting on your support. CAMH is on a mission to make better mental health care for all a reality, and they've made incredible strides forward, breaking down stigma, improving access to care, and pioneering research breakthroughs. But now is the time to aim even higher.

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how to best seize this new opportunity. So you can download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at netsuite.com slash waveform. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash waveform netsuite.com slash waveform. There is one thing that I think we would like to come back that would help us a lot. And that's, and I get why they took it away, but annotations coming back for us would be huge. I mean, ultimately being able to re-upload a video in the same position would be the best, but I also kind of understand why, you know, you don't put that in. But the amount of times we make these like very, very small mistakes that don't change the video at all. Like we say the newhone has titanium rails instead of aluminum rails and the amount of people that call us out for stuff like that we could just toss an annotation in there

like good for engagement though yeah that is true it just gets to this point where like i'd love to just put a little like asterisk like we meant the snapdragon 88 not the 887 or something like that yeah i think in the tech world that specifically it would be so useful like product names are eight long eight words long and you have to get every single one right and specs are very very long and very detailed numbers and you just want to be able to just add a little asterisk inside a video and when there is one the best i can do is pin a comment in the top of the description but there's no way to just or just tweet about it but that's not on youtube So it doesn't really help. I don't get why a partner,

like having partners, like getting annotations. I remember the days of, you know, like 12 annotations or a full screen clear one. So when you click on it, it brings you to a link. Get rid of that.

But yeah, partners with annotations feel like it would make sense. I do think that in, in a tech review, like purposefully sometimes not not not the tech itself but even like fumbling or saying a word that's completely off at times like would create a lot of like you know retention of like wait what did he just say yeah we did it one time in a short which was really fun yeah we said we had we said the head of Robert Kinsel YouTube.

Like we should have said the head of YouTube, Robert Kinsel, said this. And we said the head of Robert Kinsel. Comments tripled. Yes. That's funny. I think some people assume. We'll say that's why we're doing it. Yeah, I think people assume that that's what's happening when really it's like we just went from reviewing a phone

to reviewing a camera to reviewing a car to reviewing a tablet. It's like I forgot that it's the 888. My bad. So annotations, I'll put an anyway if anyone on youtube is watching this annotation we'll take it we'll test it for you yeah i also think we're gonna see video replies make a comeback really i liked video responses because now that they have youtube shorts oh yeah true interesting that so they could tie in so people would reply to videos with specific short form. With a short form. Yeah.

And that would create more creators because there's this whole ecosystem where even people like us, we talk about YouTube creators. So you could just go into the comments, drop a short video. Yeah. And start building an audience. That was a really big part. I mean, you see the way TikTok does it now

where videos are embedded in comments, but like that was a whole YouTube ecosystem thing. There were reply channels. Yeah. And and under any video you could either so if i was a creator i could enable anyone to submit a video reply and they'd all just show up but then people started spamming them or people would just like spam replies or whatever so you could only approve uh you could set it to approve only and then approve whichever ones you wanted and so you would often find that the biggest creators would always approve replies from the same creators. And then those creators who were just replying to people would have their own ecosystem because of the people they replied to,

which is fascinating. And I really like the idea of bringing shorts back as video reply or bringing video replies back as shorts. Because if we made a video about you and then we approved you to be able to make a video to apply, if we got something wrong or if you wanted to add something. And then it's on my channel so people link to what I just made a video about. Interesting. That's actually really good. It's honestly the best idea

I've heard for shorts. I'd love to talk to you guys about shorts. We've been pretty negative about them maybe. Or we've been vocal about them, I'll say, but we don't really do them. They're very against, not against, but they're not like our regular content.

They're very different. They're definitely not our original content. And that's like on the main channel, the number one thing we know is like we have a format and we're sticking with it and we love it. So obviously a 40 second video doesn't fit in that format. A vertical 40 second video in the same feed as our regular videos. Exactly.

Feels off. Yeah. But you guys have, you've done shorts on the main channel. You guys have experimented with shorts in the past. Do you, how would you summarize, first of all, your experience with YouTube shorts? Because I've had, I've heard a variety of versions of responses. Very positive. Yes.

Generally positive. Yes, generally positive. I would say that for us, you know, we had a creator on our show who goes by Nas Daily. And he said something to us about platforms, which is really interesting around like just the concept of supply and demand. There are some platforms that have enough supply of content and enough demand. They've reached equilibrium. There's 50,000 pieces of videos uploaded per day and 500 million viewers per day. Like that's average of 10 views per video or whatever. That's equilibrium platforms.

There are platforms that don't have equilibrium, right? Where they have incredible demand for views, not enough supply for content. That is the place you want to be in. And that's why creators have such big opportunity because the platform wants that content. They want to experiment with it. They want to try it.

Yeah. But on the other side of it, for us, what we notice is it takes us a really long time to make a video, but we have a lot of thoughts. Like we have quick takes that we want to get out. And yes, there's, you know, there's a vlog or like just pop open the camera and start talking, but then there's still editing and like, there's just so much. And I think vertical short form content lowered our barrier to entry to just

have like some forgiveness around it and be like, it's okay. It's just a vertical video. Yeah. And we shoot it straight through the phone and we do some editing, but it is this first opportunity for us in a long time to film something and get it out on our YouTube channel in the same day. So if something happens, we can react to it. And from our conversations with people at YouTube, the, you know, the, the shorts feed and the main channel feed, like short form videos and long form videos are kind of bifurcated in the backend. And so it's not, it's not one in the same. It's not like, you know, they know it's a different type of video. It's not going to bring your average view duration down or anything like that. So for us, we were like, okay, if there's

no real big risk to the channel, why not? Like why not try them? And from what we've seen is, you know, in the past 28 days, I think we've done around like 25 million views on the channel. And there's like, I think above 60% of that is coming from shorts. And that has just generally made our entire catalog of content generate more viewership because there's just more traffic to our channel.

And so if you think about it as like a retail shop, like our channel is like a retail shop, we've just increased our traffic significantly. And when that happens, then they're going to look at other stuff in our shop too, right? And so they're going to look at our back catalog. They're going to look at all of our, and our subscribers have grown, our just overall brand exposure has grown because of Shorts. I mean, one of our Shorts has 15 million views and that converted about 16 or 17,000 subscribers. Wow. Okay. And the value prop in the short is, you know, explaining things that are happening on YouTube and in media.

So if someone likes that and that's their first entrance to us. Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. I mean, I, so my experience has just been watching other people experiment with shorts. And so I've seen people try it on the main channel. I think I probably will eventually start a channel just to experiment with shorts because I have a lot of ideas that I think would be good shorts. That channel should be called MKB shorts. Just MKB. Oh, MKB because it's the shortened version. Short version. Yeah. But also like the studio to me feels like a space to experiment. Like why not experiment

with shorts on the studio channel? True. And especially for me, I look at it as like right now, again, like the demand is high and the supply is just catching up. Right, that's what I was gonna talk about. So like there's gonna be a moment where that swaps. Viewership's gonna change.

It's gonna, they're gonna test and iterate and test and iterate. And there's just a moment right now where. They're just serving everyone the same small amount of shorts. Yeah. Or they're just like, at least from what we've seen, we've seen creators who have just taken shorts and grown to 6 million subs.

True. There's a creator called dental digest. Have you seen him? No. He's like a dental creator. And every short form videos is very similar. It's, it's like one format where he tests different brushes

and sees how well they brush his teeth. He's a dental student. He grew from zero to 6 million subs this year, all through shorts. And now he's making long form content. Right. And it's trending. And it's doing well. Yeah. One of his longer form videos was number one on trending. And so he basically used shorts to build a platform. I think the thing that's dangerous is if the shorts have a completely different function than the long form video, right? It has to all fall in the same value prop. And if it does, then why not? I think it's YouTube's play to get creators from TikTok over to YouTube.

As you saying it, it makes perfect sense because I've heard from multiple different people, you know, TikTok creators are getting huge huge but ultimately even the biggest tiktokers want to be youtubers but converting that from a whole different app is is hard so if you're in the app already and you can just be on the same channel and there's the long form contact that they now converted for that's perfect they just took away the barrier to entry which was really high now you can literally just repurpose a lot of your TikToks. Yeah.

Download them, take the logo off, upload them to YouTube Shorts. And you could have, if you've been on TikTok for the last three years, you could have years worth of valuable content ready to go. Also though, you don't have to upload a thumbnail for Shorts.

I mean, we just don't even do it. You don't have to, but you can. You can. Yeah. So if you go to our like videos tab, it's not very aesthetic anymore, right? It's like, it is just these like vertical shorts mixed in with like our edited thumbnail.

So that is not very aesthetic. But the fact that it's just playing in a, you know, autoplay. Yeah. So you're not really thinking about- You're not seeing the thumbnail and the shorts. You're not thinking about the packaging because actually the audience isn't even choosing to watch it. The app is choosing the audience.

And so it's like the inverse of the traditional YouTube video. And I think for that, it's really interesting. And then I think YouTube, the thing that YouTube has from an opportunity perspective is that TikTok, like you mentioned, a lot of TikTok creators are coming over to YouTube to graduate for their career, right? And we've heard the classic comparison on Twitter all the time of like,

would you rather have 50,000 YouTube subscribers or 5 million TikTok followers? And almost, it's like so amazing that it always trends towards 50,000 YouTube subscribers, just because you can make a career on YouTube. So I think this is the play to say, hey, we are YouTube, we are the better place to launch your career. So we'll have these short form videos too. And so if you were thinking about TikTok, just do it over here. Cause then you're already building that foundation like dental digest, where it's like, now you have 6 million subscribers. Now you have a career. It's YouTube. You're already there. You're already there.

Yeah. I think that one point you brought up about supply and demand is really interesting. The, the, when I see new features get launched, especially by YouTube, but kind of by any social network, I always really like diving into how much it looks like they've embraced this new feature. Does it look like they're just kind of trying it on the side? Or does it look like they are building part of their site around it? And to me, Shorts does look like YouTube is like committing really hard to making Shorts a big thing. Sometimes I see features where like, you know, for example, there's podcasts on Facebook or like there's a video podcast on Spotify and I don't really see that many of them. And I kind of wonder how committed they are because I see the feature ad, but I don't want to pivot my whole

business around something that might disappear in a year um so i am glad to see shorts get the attention that i think that it's rightly deserving and i'm i'm definitely going to want to experiment with a little bit you know those restaurants and strip malls that say like we have these in la i don't know if you guys have these here it says like chinese food and donuts that sounds amazing but i want one yeah i see where you're going. Okay. You see where I'm going. But basically like for me personally, I want to go to a Chinese restaurant for Chinese food and I want to go to a donut shop for donuts. Yeah.

So when I think about apps that are trying to do a lot, I think that like it overwhelms me. I'm like, are you a specialist in this? Is this a thing you make? Are you trying to serve me Chinese food and donuts at the same time? Yeah. Because you saw an opportunity. So I think for me as a consumer, I'm so specific. I listen to podcasts

on Spotify. I watch video on YouTube. I might also be the old guy who's just like, doesn't want to change my ways. I worry about that. But that's just who I am. And I think a lot of consumers are like that too, where it's simplicity wins a lot and singular focus wins a lot of the time. So YouTube was based in short form video. When we first started in 2011, we were uploading 20 second videos to YouTube because that's where short form video lived. There was no Instagram video.

There was no TikTok. There was no Vine at the time. So short form video lived on YouTube. So I think they actually do have an expertise in it where they can solve how to serve you videos. And then their video monetization is better than other platforms. so I think they actually do have an expertise in it where they can solve how to serve you videos and then their video monetization is better than other platforms so they will also solve down the line how those are monetized I think it's only a matter of time until you know you open up the Instagram app and you're just in reels and potentially even with YouTube as well because it's an extra step

that keeps you away from a view keeps keeps you away from creator discovery. Right. I could totally see YouTube doing that with the mobile app. Netflix is also doing it too. Have you noticed that? The doing what? The Netflix mobile app has a TikTok feature.

Oh, God. Where you're swiping through moments of shows. You can't upload yourself, honestly. No, but it's like funny moments from their shows

that are, it's the exact same UI. It's called Fast Laughs. It's just for the comedy. Yeah. That makes sense. I mean, Netflix is serving,

that's their job is to find stuff for you. Their like smart TV app is like, you can't accidentally just take your hand off the controller for a second because it starts playing the trailer the second you hover over everything, which is very annoying, but obviously extremely, extremely successful. That's a good point.

It's basically already autoplay. Yep. It's basically already autoplay. Yep, it's just starting to play already. I found that our videos have slowly gotten longer. Like you said, you started with shorter videos. Even on our channel, I think the first couple of years of videos I was making were all like three to five minutes long. And they were the same genre,

but they were all three to five minutes because that's all I needed to tell the story or to say how good the thing was. Today, a short video is like seven minutes long and I've uploaded 15, 25, 35 minute long videos. So part of that is definitely that I feel like it's taken me longer to finish all of my thoughts on a piece of tech. And I generally, I just want to make longer videos. I think that's valid. But the other half is that at a certain point, YouTube started favoring longer videos.

And so I felt like a little bit of it was leaning into the algorithm of like, hey, well, that's more watch time too. So longer videos is fine. How much do you find it to be problematic or maybe even beneficial to bend your content to the algorithm?

Because I know that's something some people just don't want to do ever. And that's something entire channels sometimes are based around. So I'm curious your thoughts on that. So we describe this term content market fit as a dance between three things. One is what you want to make. It still has to be what you want to make. You have to want to make this video and enjoy making the video. The second is there has to be an audience for that. You have to be plugging into an audience or you have to be aware that

you're going to create an audience, but there has to be an audience for what you're making. And then the third thing is the algorithm. So I think all three actually have to play together. What you want to make, what your audience wants to watch, and then what the algorithm wants to feed. And I think that you have to have all three check. A lot of times, you know, when we're thinking about packaging, like we are thinking about the algorithm, but there's some times where we have an idea

and we think about really good packaging for it. And then we're like, I don't want to make that video. Like that's not us. And so I think all three have to be clicked on for it to work and for you to enjoy it. Because I think audience, there's too much content now where if you're just doing it for the algorithm, I think an audience can feel that.

They can sniff that out. Pretty easily. Like you've probably, I've watched videos where I'm just like, oh, this is kind of like, you're almost watching like a game, like someone game the algorithm or like someone, you know, create like a. It's like when you watch someone like a, like the last three pages of an essay or just to reach the minimum threshold, you know, just spewing words, you know, like I can tell what you're trying to do here.

I get what's happening here. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, I mean, when I think about it, like, I don't think I personally watch content on YouTube. That's good for the algorithm. I like to watch really long form podcasts, which probably don't have amazing retention. I love to watch loose vlogs, like the type of content that I like to watch, you know? Yeah. When it comes to length though, there's also as a creator, an intangible question you have to ask yourself, which is, is this interesting? Would our audience find this interesting? And that determines the length of our video. If we have a two hour conversation with a creator, and if by chance only 15 minutes, we actually found interesting and we ask everyone in our office, did you find this interesting? That's going to be a 15 minute video. Yeah. Right. But if we went for two hours and it was all interesting and we ask everyone again in our, in our office, listen to this, watch it. Was it interesting? Then that's what goes up.

I mean, two of the three things I mentioned though, are like from a distribution mindset. One is what does the audience want? And one is what is the, what does the platform want? Ah, okay. Right. And so those are like distribution mindset. So two thirds of your brain is distribution. The third is creation, which is what do I want to make? And when you look at, at least for me, when I look back at the last four years, we've had the Colin and Samir channel for four years and we made no money doing Colin and Samir for three years of that, right? Or maybe it's now five years and it was three years of not working and then two years of working. And a lot of that has been that shift. When I look back at the older videos, I'm like, oh, we were creators. We didn't want to cut out stuff that actually was uninteresting,

but we liked it because we were like, that was a cool shot or that was a good thing. That was a fun line we said, let's keep it in. And then today when we all watch cuts together, we're watching as a group and we are ruthless we're like that was boring cut it that was uninteresting cut it that was interesting but not interesting enough we're gonna make it a short cut it like we are constantly cutting because we're thinking about the two-thirds which is algorithm and audience yeah um this is this is why i like i struggle to apply it to a tech video because if I cut out genuinely useful information because it was boring,

I'm not left with a complete video anymore. Yeah. And a lot of what I want to deliver is the best, most informative thing. And I have to drag you from one exciting thing to the other, but also make sure I include all the other things in between about how all this band, this higher bandwidth memory is much better for performance while I get to sharing how much faster it was in final cut exports like the exciting thing

to me is surrounded by other necessary but less youtube exciting things so i think i i've never heard it described that way but i do feel like i am doing that balancing act in my head every time i'm editing is like making sure i include the things, but also making sure I quickly get you to the next like highlight while making sure I include all the things that need to be included. I want to be careful when I give you feedback here because what you're doing is working. So I'm not going to, and I'm, I have not reached the, you know, we have not, we've never really made a tech video. I'm not immune to feedback. Okay. But I think when you have the opportunities to, and when a tech video i'm not immune to feedback okay but i think when you have the opportunities to and when you've done it on your channel to show and not tell

that's when things get really interesting because it's a very visual medium so if it's about like the processing speed can you show me something can you shoot something in 8k and like bring it into the computer and show me how quick that happens while you're telling me about something else so like i'm gonna load this up and then I'm going to tell you about the next thing. But in the background of the video or in a second split screen, I'm tracking how quickly something's moving. Right. So then it's like two things are happening at once and you're showing me speed while you're saying something different. And I'm all of a sudden I'm tracking multiple narratives and that keeps me on the edge of my seat. And I think the times when

you do that, I think that's like the opportunity with tech is to show as much as possible. Yeah. I've played with that a little bit. I've definitely played with like how much people respond to what's being said versus what's being shown. And again, it depends on what the video is, but I keep coming back to reviews. People really linger on what's being said more so sometimes than what's being shown, unless they contradict. Yeah. So a lot of times I talk about smooth performance

and I talk about how this is zippy and fast and I'm showing that too. But sometimes I'll say something is smooth and I'll show a clip of it behaving perfectly normally and people are like, why do you say it's smooth? It looks totally normal. Well, I'm telling you it's smooth because I can't show this as well as I need to. I can show

a performance hiccup, but it's hard to show you the smoothness. So there's little bits of pieces of tech that are, I just have to say it to tell you what's happening. So I think it's a challenge. I mean, granted, this is for me, who's not like a lot of the stuff you say on your channel. I'm like, I don't know what you're saying exactly, but I like what I'm seeing not like if a lot of the stuff you say on your channel i'm like i i don't know what you're saying exactly but i like what i'm seeing uh so i'm more of the visual guy for your in your audience but i think also analogy is really helpful like analog like you're drawing something i don't know those those are the types of things that for me i need to be like tech explain to me like i'm probably not five because five-year-olds are pretty smart now so

i don't know it's like tech explained to me like i know nothing about tech we have done some small things like that um when hole punch cutouts for the front of uh cell phones were first coming out we there was a point where it gets it's hard to explain to someone who's never seen it that like it kind of you don't notice it after a while of using it so what you did was as you were speaking in the a-roll you put a black circle on the screen and then like 20 seconds later it was like by the way this has been here the whole time did you notice it didn't you that's great if you didn't look you probably aren't going to notice this stuff like that but i do think it's a it's an interesting thought of like performance or even like charging speeds or something like

that to maybe have some sort of a, a ticker on the side. I mean, we, we kind of did it with a thousand mile race where Michael did our whole map thing. So when we're talking about different things, the map is showing what's happening.

That's cool. And Michael's obviously a wizard. So being able to pull stuff like that off would be pretty easy. Yeah. That was something Jimmy said to us, actually, just to go back to what he was saying when he was explaining to us like multiple stories he was saying to us he was like well you know what you guys are saying is one story but your b-roll is another story

right and so it's actually not necessarily thinking like all about yeah one line of like what you're saying but like your animations are another story and so the the the viewer is tracking the different information they're receiving as all stories right and if they all tell the exact same story like in a very didactic way then it's it might not be as engaging but if they're doing it in very different ways then yeah that's interesting i feel like that's something i've played around with a little bit more because in a tech video, I keep going back to reviews. Yeah. But like, yeah, most of what I'm saying, it helps if you can see it too. So as I'm saying each thing, and this is how most reviews are, it'll cut to showing the thing.

Everything, every sentence has a five second clip to show what's being said. Show it being said, show it's being said, show it's being said. to show what's being said. Show it being said, show it's being said, show it's being said. And there are some parts of some tech videos where it's a little bit more storytelling and it's a little bit more, it's a little less show something

and a little bit more like telling a story of a gadget or maybe I've really enjoyed using this thing or things that you don't really have a direct clip for. And that's when in the edit, I'm starting to play a little more with visuals that show other things. But I'm starting to play a little more with visuals that show other things but I want to find more of those I think your guys' b-roll

is a story though like our office when you guys upload a new video like they'll go nuts over one shot or one animation they're waiting to see which shot is going to come I remember even like the studio intro animation was like a two hour conversation in our office of like,

so I think you guys do have that. That narrative is a lot of like your B-roll. Like you mentioned, you showed us the robot in here. It's like when you use that, those six seconds, that's a whole story that I'm waiting for. I'm waiting to see how that plays out or what's the next shot. What's the next shot? There was also one video where you had, and maybe it was multiple videos, but where there was a second angle and every once in a while you would turn and speak to that other

angle. And even that was a retention strategy as a audience member. I was waiting for you to do that next cut in. Was that Dogecoin? I think so. This is not financial advice. Yeah. And that reminds me a lot of like john stewart uh or some of those satire comedy shows where the information is really dense yeah and they break it with a joke right every 30 40 seconds they break up really dense information with a joke it kind of reminded me of that and that's what gets you through it yeah yeah that's sort of something i talked about in the skillshare class it was like I like to have a common thread that goes through the entire video if I can, but at least over multiple sections of the video.

But it's hard to keep somebody focused with all that information for a long time. So you do kind of need to find ways to have like beats or like bring people from point to point, and there's a bunch of different ways to do that, and that was a fun one. I did like the Dogecoin video for that reason, but yeah, that is a, that is a, that was a fun one. I want to ask you about YouTube comments because we briefly talked about this earlier about how maybe it's not the best place to hang out in the comment section on YouTube. But one of my notoriously, I think I've said this more often than any other piece of YouTube advice is the best comments I get are from people who have never seen any of the videos before. And those aren't on YouTube. Those

are on like Reddit or like a random website that embeds a video for the first time. And like the audience for that website will be like, Oh, this is a good video for this reason. Those are the most informative, interesting comments that, that inform how I can improve and how I can make videos better. Do you hang out in the YouTube comments section at all? Do you hang out on Reddit and Discord? What do you, how do you get feedback from your audience and what do you think is the most valuable? I'm pretty plugged into the comments, but I wouldn't, I would say there's like always four in a month that are like really good feedback.

Just like there's a few and then like I'll screenshot it and send it to Colin and we'll like talk about it. And there's, there's only YouTube comments. Yeah. There's only like a few. Yeah. And it'll be something about like,

Hey guys, that one part was unnecessary. I got bored during this part. And it kind of irks you. Cause you're like, cause you're like, I agree with you. Yeah.

Yeah. It's the worst one. It's true. But but yeah i think that type of stuff or like when someone's like why did you make this video like if there's some like more comments around like our entire brand like is this on brand for us so there's some that are from like people who are watching video to video the worst is where it's like hey guys i typically love your videos but you know and you're like oh god it's worse when you let down someone who's like a fan. And then there's also the people who come in, they're like, wow, I hate these guys. Or like these guys are terrible.

But at that point, it probably means we made a video that a lot of people are watching. If like the hate really starts pouring in, which doesn't happen to us that like in that like crazy to a crazy degree, but. Yeah, there's a bit of it where we talk a lot where if it gets beyond our audience and we start receiving some of those comments of like negativity then we know that the video was good enough to get beyond our audience right and so we're like and i think you know you're making something that is a value and that has its own perspective if people disagree with it or dislike it. If you're appealing to everyone,

you're very much like in your bubble. And so I think that the comments indicate to us not only like certain feedback from our community, but also when we do make something that allows us to grow the brand when there's negativity. And I will say that I want a more tight knit group where we can have more actual feedback from our audience. And that might play out over, over discord in the future. It might play out in other places, but I would say that like, we've also built a culture internally in our office of, of a lot of feedback. And I think that's been really beneficial because there's a lot of times where Colin and I have an idea and we're excited about

it and we tell the team and actually happened recently. And they were like, no, we don't think that should be a video that's made on this channel. And we think it should be this one. And we went with the team's advice and it was one of our most popular videos. And so we were like, oh, wow. Like it's so helpful to surround yourself with people who deeply care, but also really understand the brand that you're building so that the feedback is beyond just us two. Yeah. The diversity of thought. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do you ever look at like other random places outside of the comment section where you might find video feedback? Like if a video is embedded somewhere and you see like traffic from a new audience. I'm terrified by Reddit.

I just think I'm always there. Yeah. I think I'm always going to get like kicked off or like, I feel like an imposter on Reddit. Like I feel like I'm not cool enough on the internet to be there. So I do sometimes search our name on Reddit and look at some of the conversation. I find that to be really interesting because people who are on Reddit are the ones who are really engaged. The most. Positive, negative. Even if someone like says something like, oh yeah, like,

you know, Colin and Samir did this. And someone's like, who? I think that's interesting too, where it's like, oh wow. Okay. Like, I don't know. I just, I find Reddit to be interesting to search your name on. Yeah. Because I also think it's a validation point that if people are talking about you on Reddit, then there's, you're at, you're at least a part of the internet culture yeah you've contributed to something that people find useful and they're sharing it amongst themselves yeah which is a good start and then you get feedback from that i feel like reddit was a ahead of its time uh and it's it's still around but i feel like youtube could have made a reddit like comment section like that would have been really amazing if youtube had made reddit or even like a community chat that that could like the mkbhd community could live within a google or

youtube ecosystem it feels like reddit and discord and youtube need to have a meeting yeah yeah yeah no youtube reddit's been some of the best feedback we've ever seen because it's like you know you can post a really nice well thought out comment and then because of their organization you can have a really great conversation under that and very quickly pick what that is but man they also know how to leave some very negative hurtful stuff and yeah it's rough to go through sometimes um yeah if you had any feedback now this is for your audience members maybe they want to provide feedback you said you've seen maybe four good comments that you really thought was good feedback and there's somebody out there who's a fan of you and maybe wants to suggest something what would be the best way to get the attention because

it feels like there's a lot of comments that i've responded to that seems super negative and i've gotten like in a tizzy about it responded and then i realized they didn't mean any harm yeah they were actually just sometimes it's hard through text i think to get off so i think two things one the the absolute way to not get our attention i'm sure you experience this too is to write us like a essay of an email yep yeah just i can tell from the first sentence of an email. Yep. Yeah. Just. I can tell from the first sentence of the email what's going to happen. Yeah. And like, just imagine us opening it on our mobile device and then scrolling nine times. Like, there's no way we're going to read it.

Yeah. We get so many of those. On the contrary, like, there's very limited amounts, but people who make videos about our videos, I just consume information through video. That's just how I like to. Probably the fastest fastest but the hardest way to get our attention yeah the best way someone has ever gotten our attention is they venmoed me a dollar and then wrote their in their tip yeah like in the description of yeah yeah they wrote their message in the description of the payment because i was like why did i just get a dollar and then I looked and then I read and it was like, Hey, Samir, I found you on Venmo. And I was like, wow, that is, that's unique.

And it was like video feedback. No, it wasn't video feedback. It was actually like wanting to collaborate on a project and we ended up doing it. The guy wanted us on his podcast. I was going to say like, Hey, if you have video feedback for us, you can find our Venmo. We take feedback in the form of $10. We won't listen to your feedback unless you donate. Yeah, right. No, that's really interesting. Yeah, I think, I mean, I'm on Twitter all the time.

I see a lot of tweets. It's become also though, you have to be careful about what you address because if all you ever do is respond to negative feedback, then people see that and they figure the way to get your attention is here's some negative feedback. So it's a healthy mix of like reading, understanding.

Maybe if it's a genuine question, you can engage and go back and forth with people and you'll get some actually good advice and things like that. But you have to be careful. You have to be careful. Do you guys ever get feedback from fellow tech creators or creator friends?

Not enough. I think that's one thing also Jimmy was talking about. Like we should network better with fellow tech creators. I've been friends with some of these guys for literally a decade. And it's like, we grew up together and now these guys have kids.

And I'm like, oh my God, we've been making this stuff for so long and we've grown up. And yeah, no, we should have more

inner dialogue. We should have like, we made a Discord server a while ago and then it died and then we should bring it back. It's overwhelming. Like I think even right now,

the amount of chats that I'm a part of, I can't, I just can't, I can't stay on top of it all. Yeah. Yeah. I can't, but it's all, it's all useful. Like it's all a genuine, like there's, I'm in, I'm in several discords. I'm in like a couple of Slack groups and like random group chats on WhatsApp and stuff. And I'm like, all of this is great information.

I'm just like if i if i sit here processing it all i'll never make another video i'll just be reading and replying to everyone what's crazy is like i think the value of internet community is at least for me i find like 12 people to be my cap of anything beyond that i start to lose track of what's happening you know and like even discord too i think you have to the culture of what's happening. You know, and like in Discord too, I think you have to, the culture of Discord is like, you have to have it up to be able to catch up with what's happening.

Yeah, because otherwise- You just fall behind. Yeah, you just fall behind and then you feel like uncomfortable contributing. Yeah, that's good advice. I'm gonna try to find my like T-Mobile faith five. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's a good idea. I feel like we get good feedback generally when we see people in person. So CES is always like a great time where we, we love CES. Lately, the tech there is not that great anymore, but we get to see all the tech friends that we know. And like a lot of them are on the West Coast. We're obviously on the East Coast. It's the best part.

Being able to see everyone go out and have dinner. It just, it comes up in conversation and that's all great. But, you know know covet now and everything we've seen judner we've seen haven't seen austin we haven't seen linus like we haven't seen anyone forever and it's a lot harder i think too and maybe we should normalize it a bit but just text someone or send them a message you'll be like yeah maybe this could be done a little better because it probably comes off as rude if you're just sending a message out of the blue and offering advice. Jimmy's not shy about that.

I love that. I've had a couple of phone calls with Jimmy. I love that about it. It's so useful. He's not shy about it. I will say that our designer and editor, Chris, is in a thumbnail discord for people who work with creators and design their thumbnails. And it's like a very niche and very small group of people.

Let's get Tim in there. And yeah, I find it like when I look, when he tells us about it and sometimes he'll hit our Slack because we'll post a video and then the other designers in there will be like, hey, maybe you guys should tweak it like this. And then he'll send us the chat.

And I'm like, yeah. They discuss our thumbnail every Monday morning. Yeah. And it's far better. We used to just put out thumbnails on Twitter and ask twitter what they thought like was this one i did enjoy that to be which was yeah that was very fun it was fun but the feedback was all over the place from some people who like we were like all right that's that's pretty good feedback but you i don't think i've ever made a thumbnail before and yeah we also found one time we did it

yeah one time we did it and we were gonna put the video out like a week later and then another organization did that thumbnail that everyone put the video out soon before we did before us with the same title and we were like oh okay we i don't know if we can do that publicly because again like titles and thumbnails are that valuable yeah yeah especially for complex topics like we're covering sometimes that's interesting so we stopped doing it after that yeah because you don't want to share too early do you find that you see uh other channels like copying things that you do and do you do anything about it um at times yes but we've also been inspired by others you know and like there's a there's a difference yeah for sure we've we've

seen it more across other projects now now that we you know we have our newsletter the published press we have um you know we have what we're doing on shorts we have you know what we're doing in the in the on on the main channels sometimes we see like a concept that we say in the main channel and then we see a tiktok that has 5 million views with the same concept, but someone just, someone just, yeah. Yeah.

So we, we don't know. The newsletter is more obvious when it happens, but there's only so much information. And I also think that what I've learned, especially in media is oftentimes like you are as a media organization, you think of yourself as like a, I think of us as like sprinters, like we're sprinting. And there's a lot of people who

are going to start taking off right behind you as you start going. And that's natural because they see something that's working and they're like, Ooh, let's do that version or our version of that. And if you ever start running, it's possible they'll sprint past you. And so my visual, once people start, you know, taking some of our concepts or anything that's potentially inspired by us is like, oh, okay. So there's something's working that we're doing because people are thinking they could, they want to do something similar. And so we just have to keep on a sprint or we have to go in a direction that they can't even predict. Or just get a robot. Yeah. That's basically, we just need a robot. Yeah. That's, yeah.

Basically, we just need a robot. And just like, don't, don't look behind you. Just be like, all right, I just have to.

Get a bigger robot. Keep going forward. Yeah. I like that. I like that. All right. So I promised I would ask you guys this. Okay.

Okay. You've talked to so many creators and you've, you've sort of analyzed the behavior of so many creators that I'm curious if you were to roast me, create, critique my channel and don't be shy about it. Cause like you're saying like, oh, it's something must be working. Yeah. Things are working, but like, we're all pretty much experimenting with a large majority of the things we're doing. And we're willing to take that feedback. I would love to, like, when you guys watch our our videos what do you like pausing the video and saying you know what they could have done better here or are you saying like their thumbnails should be better or something

like that what do you guys talk about with our channel and could do all channels to waveform waveform clips studio like the whole shebang because i mean three of those are fairly new to us and they're obviously could use more work those ones aren't at the level the main channel is so everything could use work and the most people we talk to are tech youtubers so it's nice to have an outside perspective on things who you've seen everything you could imagine yeah so a couple questions before we get into this yes first of all how do you define the audience for the mkbhd channel like because i fit into a certain audience category, but I'm curious, how do you define the lion's share of the audience there? Ooh, well I do, I have two buckets. I have

one, which is the, the subscriber who is watching the videos for entertainment value and is somewhat into tech. And I have two, which is the person who is searching for the device and is making a purchase decision. And usually the lion's share at the beginning is type one. And then over time, SEO takes over and a lot more people watch the video making a purchase decision. And that's type two later. And it depends on what the video is. A lot of times if it's not about a gadget, it's more type one here for entertainment tech related. But a lot of times it's a video that is just about a gadget not many people care about and the type one audience is very small and it's a nine or ten out

of ten and then over time seo takes over and it does much better because it's an interesting or popular device for headphones or something like that but it's generally those two buckets for me so here's what i would say i'm i'm watching for more like edutainment, right? Like I'm looking to get educated. I like to be, I'm not necessarily like an early adopter. I'm not watching to potentially purchase tech. Yeah. I'm watching because I'm getting educated on what's happening. So I don't get left behind in the world of, of innovation. And then also for entertainment purposes, one of my favorite videos, and I think both of us, why we were able to cite like even your head turn in it

was when you started talking about Dogecoin or when you talked about Dogecoin. And I think it was something that was like tech adjacent that was in the zeitgeist that was really interesting. So what I would say is like getting a little bit more comfortable

outside of your typical topics and thinking about starting to step into what's tech adjacent, I think is, would be really interesting to me. I thought Tesla bot explained was great. Basically the majority of your explained series. And thinking about like, how can I apply the MKBHD format and style to things that, you know, more people are, are interested in? Is it like the tech behind certain, you know, movies or shows? Is it like the tech behind certain movies or shows? Is it like Squid Game, for example? Squid Game is a massive topic. What's the MKBHD video on Squid Game? Is there one?

Right. Or is that really out of line? And so that's what I would say is that I think there's an opportunity to not necessarily cut out, like broaden the niche too much but to step into more zeitgeisty topics that are you know taking over is it like you know the audio waveforms behind old town road like why does that sound you know hit us in a certain way why are we receiving this audio waveform in a way that's taking over the world i think that's the type of stuff that i would want to start to turn to you for and be really interested in. And maybe that starts as shorts on the studio channel or something. Right. I'm, I'm really glad you said that because

part of my struggle every year, and I sort of explained to you like the way I divide up the year of like first half is trying new things. Second half is like gadget, gadget, gadget. Every time I try a new topic or like stepping a little outside of what's typically like a gadget video, I'm always, the back of my head is always nervous about like, no one's gonna want my opinion on this or no one's gonna really care. Like people are here for,

like I can very quickly associate the best performing videos typically with the most interesting gadgets. And so if it's not one of those interesting gadgets why would anyone care about my video and then i make the video and inevitably it does really well right and it it it always hits me as a surprise every time but like that video you mentioned or even like the youtube rewind video i did or random videos about like the tesla bot or things are adjacent. I always have that concern.

And I, I wonder where the line is about like how far out is out of bounds. Cause I have interests that are all over the place. But I like that. I'd also, I would be really interested to see you react to certain things, like how other people are, maybe it's like Hollywood VFX.

Maybe it's like, you know vfx maybe it's like you know this other like you're really into video making as well yeah and so i would be really interested like peter mckinnon does a series like that i love this right that series really fun to watch where he reacts to like hollywood vfx um i'd be really interested to see you do some of that like and and you can dial it into like tech related so is it like you know and this could be on the studio channel but like reacting to robotic camera movements yeah i would be really interested in watching you do that because i like content and this is across everything i like content that has those like double narratives where instead of finding those

robotic camera movement videos on instagram myself I'd rather watch them through your perspective where I'm watching them and discovering that content for the first time. Plus I'm hearing your thoughts on it. are feeding us content. I think we want our favorite personality or a trusted source to curate the internet for us. And so I think finding like what's happening on the internet that's adjacent to what I talk about and how do I put my spin on it? And Dogecoin was one of those things. It was just one of those things.

It was one of those things. And I think there's more of those things. Yeah. And then the overarching, I think like to keep someone's attention, again, it's what I said earlier. I think it's like the opportunities to show not tell to say like you know when you're if you're reviewing the rivian uh during the process are you trying to make it to the other side of the city while

someone else is trying to make it there in a tesla during the same while you're reviewing the car right so two things are happening at once i'm tracking a map and oh yeah you know that stuff i love those ideas and then the logistics of actually shooting them i get it yeah so i mean we had the car for 24 hours that's an extreme example but i i do think like the dual narrative type thing yeah would it be fun to play with more especially in like the classic gadget review because it's there's there's lots of opportunities for it lots of gadget reviews are pretty straightforward you know what's coming you know i'm gonna get to the specs you know i'm gonna get to the design you don't want to get to the battery life i'm gonna get to the camera and then we're gonna close it out like let's let's have a little more fun with it you also mentioned

fitness tech with chris paul as like a dream collab when we talked yeah i think fitness tech though just with you, would be interesting. Like I would be interested in other versions of tech. I'm terrified of crossing those lines, but I might have to eventually. I mean, the tech in the fitness world is cut with tempo and tonal and peloton and everything. Now it's really blowing up and it does make a lot of sense. But you also have this studio channel to like test these formats, which is amazing. I think we also have a little more of that flexibility to play with new formats and ideas and things like that on the studio channel. And I think that's what we will be doing in the next

year or so is just like, yeah, I wonder how well shorts will work. Or I wonder if we can do a storytelling type of thing. I mean, we did a thousand mile road trip, but we'll have more things like that coming up. That'll be fun to play with. Um, I was saying I was, I'm afraid of crossing I, I know that the second I connect those, I can never unconnect them again. And I'm like, all right, do I really want to start doing fitness tech videos? Cause then that's unplugged in forever. I can't unplug. I don't know. Maybe that's just me. Yeah, I get it. I mean, it's interesting how much I think fear is attached to YouTube, like as a creator, like so much, so much of your decision-making is based on like this, YouTube, like as a creator, like so much, so much of your decision-making is based on like this,

this fear of, you know, is that it's because it's that part of my identity or am I stretching? But I think it's because those, that two thirds of what we talked about with the, with your content market fit, where it's like the algorithm and the audience are two thirds of your decision-making. So, you know, it's not necessarily, it's only a third of what you want to make. Yeah. All right. Well, I have a have uh i have one more question how fast can you type the alphabet do you happen to know off the top of your head i do not know okay well actually we can find out real quick okay let's do it do you have the uh the keyboard please all right here we go so we have a little game here do you guys watch top gear at all or have you ever seen it you know the the, the reasonably priced car? They kind of, all the guests,

they come on, they put them in this car and they race them around the track and they keep a leaderboard. Oh my God, this is terrifying. So we kind of wanted

a version of that for the podcast where all our guests were doing it. We have a leaderboard and we have a little- I could type sentences faster than I could type.

It is so much harder. It's very stressful. By the way, my palms are sweating right now. I am terrified. We also, because we're prepared in a tech, that keyboard's terrible because it's very stressful. By the way, my palms are sweating right now. I'm terrified. Because we're prepared in a tech, that keyboard's terrible because it's a MacBook. We have a chiclet-style keyboard or a mechanical one

if you'd rather. Dealer's choice. I don't know what you're more comfortable with, but we want to give everyone a fair shot to do their best. We also give three tries. Why don't we both use this this yeah that's more attention that's more interesting because we've never used visually interesting we

both are in the same playing field because we've never used a keyboard like this wow i have like seventh grade you forgot to do the reading yeah and they just called on you nerves the only thing we're a little worried about is how easy it is to if someone's a regular watcher all the time and starts learning that this is what we do to guess they'll practice but so far everyone has been equally as nervous i mean this is terrible so if i mess up do i so just if you mess up it's not delete just get to the next one um yeah we'll give three tries it basically starts you hit A, and then we'll reset it. No pressure. And then at

the end, we can... We'll pull up the leaderboard after we're done, and we can see where everyone... Alright. Here we go. Do you guys do it like this? No, I did home row, but you can... What's home row? Like just resting your hands on the keyboard.

You know the two red dots? What is it on H and J? Yeah, that's your home row. The lingo that you just used made me more nervous. All right, here we go. ASMR. ASMR mechanical keyboard. Super accurate.

That was it? Yeah. What was your time? 13. 13. Do I do it again? 13.11. I got one more.

You can go one more. Yeah. Okay. I don't know why I'm nervous right now. I'm not even doing it. It's like being worried you're going to get called on next, except you know you're getting called on next. I know I'm going to get called on, yeah.

It's like having to do a presentation. Hoping they go too long so the bell rings and you don't have to do it. 10. 10. Shave three seconds off. Shave three seconds. That's a huge improvement. You want to try again? 10.8

it's a good sounding keyboard too this is a great sounding keyboard screen recording is going wow do you want to know your place now or do you want to wait no I want to wait. I want to wait. So should I reset this? Yeah, just don't mess up.

Oh my gosh. Oh my god. There we go. What is this pace? But he got to watch me. Oh my god. How'd he do? 8.177.

That's a pretty good first round. That's a wild first round. I was going through it in my head. It's, there's a couple that are, you're on the keyboard, right? Yeah, it's on the ceiling. Yeah, the mechanical keyboard. He was going through it. You can do two more.

He was watching my pack. I'll do one more. All right. Oh please. Oh man, this one I'm messing this one i'm getting a groove six seconds nice yeah but i think it maybe it won't accidentally count one if like you miss it'll just wait till you finally get it right so 6.677 i mean you shaved two seconds off you want to go for your third try yeah yeah at this rate at this rate this is frustrating for me do i get a rebuttal or no uh no well look all right i should have gone second

oh you missed c by the way all right that's over then yeah there it is okay so it's my second one so that's pretty good do you want to take his third try? You can take my third try. Then you'll go. No, you've seen him do it. In the rules. In the rules. Okay. If you get first place off of this one,

there'll be an asterisk. Okay. Fair. I don't think. Yeah, okay. I think I've had too much coffee for this. Yeah, this is already a mess. Yeah, this is already a mess.

Oh, I missed it. Yes. Okay, I didn't even guess. I was going to say, if you're not looking, you can just totally miss. It was going to be nine seconds. It's good. It's good. All right. All right.

We'll get that. We'll get, how about we'll have the best number represent Colin and Samir. Okay. Oh, best number. We'll team. Yeah. Team score. Best number on the leaderboard team score

Colin's not happy about that no no I'm fine okay okay let's see that's pretty good team score would be what was it 6.8

we're looking at 7th place out of oh my god what is first place 14 4.432 4.4

yeah Quinn from Snazzy Labs the tech channel I'm not sure if you guys are too Doug DeMuro's on here at 5.9 wow 4.432 4.4 yeah Quinn from Snazzy Labs the tech channel I'm not sure if you guys are too Doug DeMuro's on here at 5.9

wow he did pretty good he also did it on his lap like laying down on a couch so that was pretty impressive that's pretty impressive we'll say that you know you're not used to

the keyboard this is a new keyboard for y'all yeah that's what it was if this was in a Gmail and on your laptop you'd be flying too much coffee

yeah wow nerve wracking Samir we appreciate the time If this was in Gmail and on your laptop, you'd be flying through that. Too much coffee. Wow. Nerve-wracking. Samir, we appreciate the time. Thank you. I'm glad we got to have you guys in the studio in person. We're going to probably do these more often.

But thank you for coming out here. Thanks for having us. And for spending the time. If you guys want to watch the video that they've done on their channel, visiting the studio, a little mini tour, a little Rapid Fire 20 questions, stuff like that definitely check out their channel we'll link it below but obviously you want to watch their other videos too so if that's not up by the time this is up watch those and i think that's pretty much it for waveform this week thanks for watching catch you guys next time see ya peace Take care.