Has MTV-style "retention editing" run its course in social video?
Maybe YouTube deserves its Impressionist Period
Hey hey - welcome to Q2, folks! We made it! And no, it wasn’t an April Fool’s joke last week… I do have a new job. More on that when the time is right. Thanks for all the notes! What I can tell you so far: it’s been an intense brain week getting onboarded and learning all the new things. And creating so. many. passwords.
Speaking of passwords, given all the advancements in A.I. voice-cloning right now, if you haven't disabled voice authentication for your bank account and had a conversation with your family about AI voice impersonation yet, now would be a good time.
Okay, so that password stuff is kind of a downer, but if you read to the end this week I’m sharing a video of elementary school kids rocking Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” on marimba and vibraphone. So good! 🤘
Thanks as always for your readership and feedback. Y’all are the best.
🚀 -Greg
🤩 Is “Retention Editing” in Social Videos Coming to an End?
You’re watching a video and just when you feel like swiping to the next one it pulls you back in. And then that happens again. And again. The action, transitions, music and cut-scenes go by so quickly it can replicate the dopamine hit of swiping through a feed, but you end up watching the whole video as it captures your attention throughout.
That behavior is a result of “retention editing,” which is just what it sounds like — editing content to retain the viewer. The technique uses a mix of audio and visual effects that — thanks to A.I. and templatized apps — means increasingly a lot of content looks and acts the same.
Ahem… kind of like Platform Decay that we talked about last week, right? 🧐
So this week Taylor Lorenz wrote a piece in The Washington Post called The ‘Beastification of YouTube’ may be coming to an end that highlights Mr. Beast’s plea to fellow YouTubers to “get rid of the ultra fast paced/overstim era of content.”
He said that in the past year, he has slowed his videos, focused more on storytelling, “let scenes breathe, yelled less” and focused on longer videos, all of which has resulted in even more views.
Other creators, such as YouTuber Sam Sulek, have begun to gain millions of subscribers by posting videos with little to no editing, perhaps a sign that users are fatigued by the current dominant style…
…Such a change could have a ripple effect on the content creator industry, and significant business implications, experts said.
This isn’t the first time that creators have tried to shift the pace and timing toward longer-form content consumption. But I don’t think we’re entering a slow TV era of social video anytime soon.
You can imagine the pressure on YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels to compete with TikTok (and potentially pick up more app time if TikTok is forced to sell —> ahem… from March: The Social Video Shifts of 2024 are Afoot).
Although mega creators can absolutely have impact in editing trends, we also can count on creators of all sizes wanting to keep eyeballs on their content by maximizing the algorithms and human behavior.
My guess is retention editing will never truly go away. After all, we used to call it “MTV style editing,” of which I love this sentence in the Wikipedia article for it: “For some who did not grow up with MTV, VH1, and short commercials, the fast cuts that are characteristic of post-classical editing can be too overwhelming, to the point of making the film not enjoyable.”
With that said, it’s also my hope that some of this effort to slow things down a little will catch on. Engaging with content on social media shouldn’t be exhausting. Maybe if the guy who popularized using data science to bait you to click tries to popularize using human emotions to bait you to “stick around for a video not engineered to make you keep watching” it’ll catch on. I bet it’s both.
Until then: here’s a 10 hour video of a train in Norway. Let me know your favorite part.
☠️ RIP: Just Walk Out at Amazon Fresh
Sometimes the future is too good to be true. And sometimes the spiral of mediocrity is afoot when it comes to A.I. in practice.
Back in 2019 I wrote about my demo at the Amazon Go store on Park Avenue (reminder: paid subscribers can read the archives), where you simply pick up what you want and walk out of the store as your account is virtually charged for your items with technology called “Just Walk Out.”
At the time I wrote the following about the (potential!) longer-term effects of this technology reaching mainstream:
Theoretically, Amazon now has a full scan of my face, body, posture, and gait. They know what I looked at in the store, what I paused to look at, what I immediately skipped over, and of course, what I took off the shelf to buy. They can use that data to inform recommendations across the Amazon ecosystem to improve recommendations and better determine what triggers would compel me to buy certain products.
That’s great, if the targeting improves my shopping experience and lifestyle. That’s terrible if it’s used for more nefarious purposes.
The slippery slope of data in consumer marketing is wrought with “what-if’s,” but the Amazon Go experiment is extremely compelling.
Since then, I’ve shopped at Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores in Chicago, Las Vegas, Seattle and probably a couple airports. It was magic, right? Well, it turns out Amazon wasn’t learning anything about me, but maybe some humans were.
Amazon had more than 1,000 people in India working on Just Walk Out as of mid-2022 whose jobs included manually reviewing transactions and labeling images from videos to train Just Walk Out’s machine learning model.
And this week we learned the company is folding that aspect of Just Walk Out at Amazon Fresh stores. Unfortunately the news cycle got away from Amazon and neglected to note that Just Walk Out will still be offered at Amazon Go stores, smaller format Amazon Fresh stores located in the U.K., and third-party retailers. But they’re definitely discontinuing it at Amazon Fresh. For now.
Meanwhile, I have to say I’m still kind of hung up on the 1,000 person team whose job is manually reviewing footage of people like me picking up a pack of gum and putting it back. Even though I know we need to train the machines and Just Walk Out is does things like:
Enabling increased throughput (e.g. getting concessions at a football stadium)
Reducing shrink
Extending operating hours (e.g. overnight hospital settings that are hard to staff)
Countering extreme traffic fluctuations (e.g. stores with a big lunch rush)
For now, I’ll still Just Walk Out next time I see an Amazon Go store. But I may look up at the cameras and smile. It’s the human thing to do.
🗳️ Vote for 🆒 Webby Nominees
Super psyched for my former team and clients on their Webby Awards Honoree Win for Chex Mix in Integrated Campaigns (!!!) and Nominee for Fruit Roll-Ups x Ice Cream in PR Campaigns: Real-Time Response. YES!
It’s always highly recommended to spend time perusing the Webby nominees, with lots of great creativity on display each year. Voting is open now and if you think Fruit Roll-Ups wrapped in ice cream would be pretty delicious you can quickly register an account to vote here.
📊 Chart of the Week
🪡 Thread of the Week
It’s so incredibly “Meta” to say follower counts don’t matter and to focus on reach and engagement via the algorithm. I remember sitting at Facebook HQ in Menlo Park back in 2012 listening to their own Global Brand Experience Manager Paul Adams talk about the philosophy behind the “Like” and how much small groups of friends and followers mattered to Facebook’s success. He even wrote a book about it that’s still on my bookshelf — Grouped (note: affiliate link).
Clearly, Meta has moved far from that philosophy (and Adams left for his role at Intercom shortly after). But I still personally think some brands should still give weight to the value of a follower — and most importantly, give them a reason — even if the short-termism mindset of the platforms doesn’t value or reward it.
It changed before, and it will change again. Don’t forget to keep building those email and known customer databases. They’re the only things that you get to take with you.
🎶 New Tunes of the Week
Cassettes Won’t Listen has been stuck toward the top of my annual Spotify Wrapped favorite bands for 15 years, but Jason Drake hasn’t released new music under that moniker for over a decade. So I was shocked to get a push notification from Spotify that Daylight Curfew pushed out a new single, “The Flowers.” Let’s hope there’s more coming. If you are digging this, the unfortunately named EVINSPACEY is a good place to start if you’re looking to get a sense of the CWL vibe.
⚡️ Quick Hits
You can now edit DALL·E images in ChatGPT across web, iOS, and Android. I used it to make this image! Here’s a video showing you how.
Apple may have ditched cars but they are still working on a robot that would follow us around our houses. Finally. Talk about iRobot.
Apple Vision Pro just become SOCIAL! This week they announced Spatial Personas where up to five people can watch movies and TV shows, play games, collaborate and hang out together. Watch it here.
Long Read of the Week: Caitlin Clark and Iowa find peace in the process.
Comic of the Week: A Graph of Solar Eclipse Coolness: Totality or GTFO.
Reddit of the Week: Kiddos absolutely crush Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train" xylophone-style.
ChatGPT of the Week: I asked gpt to count to a million.
Tool of the Week: IsMyComputerOn.com will tell you if you’re computer is on.
X of the Week: The show King of Queens went off the air 12 years ago which means it was off the air before the first Iron Man movie was made. Despite that the show still has an active X account (via Reddit).
YouTube of the Week: I want this snow blower attachment for remote control car. My neighbors and I want to each get our own and do the sidewalks next winter.
Thread of the Week: i’m just a girl, standing in front of instagram, asking it to bring back the post i saw before the feed automatically refreshed.
Podcast of the Week: #RoastMe: The Story of the Wendy’s Twitter Account debuted its first episode this week.
Gross TikTok of the Week: Not Mayo.
Earnest TikTok of the Week: Steve from Blue’s Clues can still make you cry just by listening.
See you in the future! 🚀
-Greg