Video Review: Death of the Follower - Jack Conte SXSW 2024 Keynote
Top Level: Great fucking video that has me jazzed about neopoligen. You know, that thing I'm making to help other folks make stuff on the web.
Notes
- Jack is the CEO of Patreon
- Talks about "Web 1.0" - read only - static that changed to "Web 2.0" where you could upload and post and stuff. YouTube's slogan: "Broadcast Yourself"
- Spent a bunch of time playing empty bars as a musician - was blown away with youtube videos shot on webcams where folks were getting hundreds of thousands of views
- Did a bunch of at home behind the scenes and started connecting
- Start in 2007, but 2009 had made 47 videos
- Thinks "subscribe" button is the major innovation in that it allowed folks to folow. ("The birth of the follower")
- "In my opinion, the follow is not some handy feature of a socail network. The follow is foundational architecture for human creativity and orginaztion"
- Had 18K subs and played a show in SF where 40 folks showed up and talks about that being magic after years of playing to empty rooms. (and yeah, playing for 40 is easily enough to make you feel like a rock star if you've never had that many folks in front of you before)
- Talks about putting music on a thumb drive instead of CDs. The signed them and ended up selling hundreds of them. (went through the pain of figuring out shipping)
- Asked fans for CD art and got hundreds of covers.
- Talks about the first viral video (that was the pomplamoose Single Ladies cover) that got half a million views overnight then playing a show the next day or so and having hundreds of folks show up.
- Pomplamoose didn't sign with a record company so when they sold 30K of one of their tracks in a month they got $22K striaght to them
- Went on a trajectory from 10s to 100s to 1,000s of folks showing up for their shows
- Can feel the genuine enthusiasm when talking about the subscribe button:
- "The subscribe button is not a silly feature. The concept of the follow changed my life. It made my dreams come true as an artist."
- "The follow is a piece of internet architecture that felt closer to magic than anything I had ever experience in my life."
- Talks about Kevin Kelly's "Thousand True Fans"
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Funnel of
- Reach - Folks who see it
- Following - Folks who want to see more
- True Fans - Folks who go to the shows, buy the merch, download the record, pay for the course, etc...
- Used "e-junkie" (need to look that up) to make an mp3 store.
- Used "stage-it" (need to look that up) software to do livestream shows. They could make like 3K per 45min session/show
- Did a thing where they cut an album but the only way to get it was to donate a book to a school and send in the receipt. The school district had to rent a shipping container to keep up with the packages.
- The idea of the True Fan is what was in his head when he started Patreon
- Patreon stats: 250K creators who've made $3.5 billion
- Talks about Facebook starting to experiment with Ranking (for engagement) in ~2010.
- The ranking were based on what was best for Facebook's business. Problem was that it meant that followers of an artist might not see their posts. The idea of a subscription started to break down.
- It also changes the criteria of a post because now you're trying to game the algorithm
- Creators have to switch from thinking "What do I want to make?" and "What will my fans love?" to "What will the ranking algorithm favor?"
- That changes the mindset to one that favors Facebook's (or whoever the distribution platform is) goal instead of the creator's goals.
- YouTube followed in 2011 with "Cosmic Panda Redesign". Twitter and Instagram followed in 2016 with ranked feeds.
- With the benefit of hindsight, describes the 2010s as the decade of Ranking. (And, the idea of the follow was broken because you would no longer get all the stuff you signed up for)
- Does an aside to quicky talk about not being a zelot on either the altorithm or chronological side of the debate for how feeds should be ordered.
- The quesiton becomes: when you desin a feed, what goal are you after? Are you trying to create a place where you can build strength or relationship with your community? Or, are you trying to (e.g.) maxaminze attention and watch time. Because one of those things has to win, and they are very different in their execution. The first one helps creators, the second one hurts them.
- ~2020 was tik tok. Goal: most engagement possible. Went with For You where everything was algo and effectively abandoned the follow. YouTube, Insta, Twitter, etc... followed. The idea of a creator led community started to fade into the past.
- Felt that shift personally. The past four years especially. Fans don't see as much of their stuff. Harder to sell tics. Harder to reach folks.
- Worried that 2020s will become the decade of The Death Of The Follower
- To the creators: If you're having trouble connecting with your audience right now, that doesn't necessarily mean there's something wrong with you.
- Belives that the weeking of creator lead community is the single biggest problem that faces creators today.
- Goes on to say he thinks the idea of the follow is to important and that it won't die. It's too good an idea. And too useful. Instead, thinks the next wave of internet companies are going to surge on the problem to figure it out.
- Talks about how the encumbents are going to have troulbe and will be pushed up the funnel to Reach while new compaines will get towards the true fans.
- Companies like these (that I've never heard of and need to look up):
- Kajabi
- Moment House
- fourth wall
- gumroad (okay, I have heard of gumroad and know a twitch streamer who works there)
- discord (okay, yeah, heard of that one too consider I'm on like two dozen of them)
- Doesn't explicty mention The Innovator's Delima/Soltion, but that's it exactly.
- Some folks are labeling them "the creator economy" but he sees it more as a change in the fundamental approach.
- The focus of the companies is deeper connections. Not more of them. (i.e. the True Fan and not the Reach) - The 5% of the fans that drive 90% of the business
- Breaks the funnel down again with:
- Reach: about ad/brands, maxamizing attention, more fans
- True Fans: about: dirct-to-fan, depth of connection, deeper fans
- Belives that the next decade will focus on building direct to fan connection with community strength.
- Social networks will still be a thing, but they'll be just part of it.
- Feels a sense of responsibility because they remember what it feels like to be a creator on the outside of the platforms and the lack of control when the platforms made increasing number of moves in directions that weren't supportive.
- Feels responsibility as a CEO of a tech company to build the type of internet that they want to have as a creator. (gets legit emotional talking about it)
- "It's been 20 or 30 years, and the current version of how art and community exists on the internet today, I don't think is the right version."
- Wants patreon to contribute to a better version.
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Talks about all kinds of stuff they built to support it (which I need to dig into), then breaks down the things into three categories:
- Media: podcasting, video, media player
- Community: chats, posting, free (which is live a follow)
- Business: commerce, membership, live
- Thinking of patreon now as that whole set instead of just a membership platform (which is where they started)
- The idea is to organize around the concept of the True Follow in an effort to build a better way that art can exist on the web.
- Talks about how the fans on social networks tend to have a degraded relationship over time
- Goal is to build something where fans get more connected over time
- Built commerce for anything they can sell online. Found that a lot of fans don't want to pay a patreon subscription, but are still true fans and this give them a way to support the artists
- Follow allows fans to follow without paying in exchange for email
- Acquired "Moment" for a live streaming platform that folks can sell tickest to
- Describes the move as trying to become a "True Fan" company. Building a better way for art and community to exist on the internet.
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Goals:
- What's creators to have true Creative Freedom
- Want's creators to have control of their business and careers
- And wants it to feel like fire to be part of a creator's community
- Knows what it's like to be a part of an awesome community.
- Knows that it's possible to build an internet where fandoms thrive and professional creativity is possible for anyone.
- "I belive this in my bones. It's not a choice. It's not optimism. It's just deep down what I know to be available to humanity if that is the path that we choose"
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Creators don't have to wait for this. Advise is:
- Invest in your true fans (and the depth of interaction) - talks about how there's a bunch of ways to do this and lots which aren't even patreon. (I, of course, would bias towards having your own site)
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Make beautiful things - Discusses how there's so much effort being put in to make for the algorithm instead of for the fans. All the gravity is pulling away from the original reason why we set out to create in the first place. It's so important to remember to make beautiful things in the face of all that.
Goes into the metaphor of the hotdog stand under the eifl tower that gets constant new traffic vs the reastaurant in down that focuses on their experience and gets repeats because they've built trust and depth of connection
(mentions the youtube new wave which I need to look up. makers of longer form videos and documentaries. patient, slow, long. great stuff. that's a real community even though it's different than what we're incentivesd to do on the internet)
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Know what you want - Be true to it over time. Don't let someone else tell you what they want. Talks about how dashboards with metrics are built by other folks that show what the other folks see as success. Talks about how after a couple years we start to belive that and we start chasing metrics.
"If you want back in time, and you asked Ella Fitzgerald, or David Bowie, or Price: 'What do you want? What's your goal as an artist? What matters to you?' Do you think Bowie would have said 'My goal as an artist is to maxamize the amount of human hours spent comsuming my work'?"
"I don't know what Bowie wanted. I'm not going to pretend to. But, I can tell you what I want as an artist. I can tell you what matters to me, as a creative person. And, what I know will matter to me ten years ago, now, and ten years from now: I want to say something that matters to somebody. I want to say something that only I can say, because of whatever experince I've had and my lived experience. Something that is uniquely... pointed to me. I want to say that. I want to figure out how to say that. I want to find that core of human truth in my experinece and communicate it elloquently and clearly and have it be true and feel true and have someone else see that and have that person think... "yes. that feels true". and if feels true to them. and then I want that person to feel connected to me even though we've never met before in our lives. but I said a thing that resonated with them and made them feel a little bit less alone, cause they felt like there was another person who had that same experience. I want to make things that are timeless. I want to make things that feel true now. I want to make things that feel true in fifty years. I want to make things that _still_ fell true five-hundred years after I'm dead. - I want to figure out how to use my short years on this planet to find that kind of truth and say it. That's what I want, as an artist. And that's a very differnet goal than watch time."
- "We want there to be a yoda. We want there to be a leader or a manager or a voice of authority that can tell us what we want, cause it's a scary thing to ask. But, that does not exist. What we want comes intrinsicly. Not extrensicly. It comes from in here. That's where we find it."
- "So, as we navigate this next phase of the internet as creative people, as we go through these ups and downs of the web in its ever evolving state, do not foget what matters to you as an artist. Do not forget what fills you with pride to make. Do not forget your purpose for making things in the first place. Don't forget that you wake up in the morning and devote your time and energy to your craft... Don't forget what gives you a sense of meaning as a creative person. And lastly, don't forget to scream your fucking guts out."