Why Series Matter

Last week Flixxo premiered its Series platform, revealing a fundamental cornerstone of the vision behind the project.

Content is key for attracting users into a video platform. It is not Blockchain, nor peer to peer distribution. Final users only care about content. Quality content. We know that because our team is not only comprised by developers. Our CEO, Adrian Garelik, is a film producer who has been involved for more than 20 years in digital media distribution, and turned himself into a blockchain pioneer when founding RSK Labs back in 2014. Federico Abad already proved his UX/UI skills with digital video platforms when developing the incredibly popular — more than 100MM users — PopCorn Time app.

That’s why, since our inception, we have developed a content strategy.

Token and content strategies

User Generated Content (UGC) is what made YouTube the biggest player in digital video distribution. And most blockchain based video platforms are aiming on turning into the “Decentralized YouTube”. DTube, BitTube, PopChest, Viewly, LBRY claim a portion of Google’s video business by offering — each of them with different approaches — advertising and censorship free experiences, while earning tokens.

BitTube proved some days ago that some kind of censorship has to be centrally applied, when they decided to remove the complete video of the mosque shooting in New Zealand from their platform. There is a company behind these platforms, and they must avoid liabilities — ethically and legally — when tying themselves to a certain content. Only an ecosystem free of companies — such as an open source community — can bring up a censorship-free platform. Tron and BTT (BitTorrent Token) won’t be able to monetize the traffic of BitTorrent networks, because almost 100% of that traffic is made of unlicensed content. Would you tie your token and your company to illegal stuff?

When it comes to advertising, you should think on the economy of the ecosystem you are building. We all participants of this economy, consumers and producers, accept $token as a means of payment and we all agree on the value of such a token. Consumers receive the token as a reward for a certain role within the community and then spend the tokens for watching content. But who gives value to $token outside the community? Where is the demand for $token?

Demand should come from the consumers side — I buy the token instead of having an active role — But it would be easier to spend the money straight into the platform than exchanging your money for $tokens and then using them.

side — I buy the token instead of having an active role — But it would be easier to spend the money straight into the platform than exchanging your money for $tokens and then using them. Demand should come from the producers side, creating a producer oriented platform such as Vimeo. Producers need to pay $tokens in order to publish their work, but there should be a bigger economical incentive for doing so — e.g. testing their product, earning more than the original investment.

side, creating a producer oriented platform such as Vimeo. Producers need to pay $tokens in order to publish their work, but there should be a bigger economical incentive for doing so — e.g. testing their product, earning more than the original investment. Demand should come from outsiders wanting to be part of this ecosystem, such as advertisers who need $token in order to showcase their sponsored content. Since they cannot achieve an active role in the ecosystem, their way of participating is exchanging $token for FIAT money or another crypto.

It is mandatory to choose one model and we have chosen the latest. We feel that outsiders create value to $token passing through the boundaries of the ecosystem, creating organic exchange market for $token.

We’ve built an impressive and disruptive interface for uploading, managing and monetizing content, with tools for creators to gather data on how their product has been consumed. We’ve tested this tool with UGC and we have improved this tool for serialized, professional content. We have decided to curate part of our catalogue and to split it from UGC so that our videos attract consumers to our platform. We have proposed tools to avoid and unincentivize the uploading of unlicensed or inappropriate UGC, and, ultimately, we decided to act as moderators while these tools are being tested and applied. On the other hand, we attend and sponsor content markets and Web Series festivals all around the world, in order to teach producers and bring more professional and curated content to Flixxo. And we have chosen to lean on advertising to bring value to $flixx, the token that fuels the whole ecosystem.

Short Form Series Make Sense

In order to have a scalable catalogue of content, and to differentiate ourselves from other video platforms — not just blockchain based video platforms, but all the ecosystem of videos platforms — we have targeted web series, also known as short form series.

Born as digital content, short form series have been thriving during the last five years while not finding the right channels for distribution and monetization.

Some numbers:

Short form series are made out of a budget of ~$50k per season.

They are usually subsidized by governments, foundations or public TV stations, leaving the IP to the producers. On some scenarios, product placement would complete the production budget.

An average short form series gets 5,000 views on YouTube (which means no monetization at all) If an 8 episodes series hit 10,000 views per episode, with an USA/European audience, it would roughly make $480.

Platforms for web series such as Personal Play, pay ~$1,000 per season/year for a worldwide license. Movistar+ pays $1,400 per hour of content, regardless of its total duration or production values.

When selling the IP to a platform, content creators loose track of consumers’ behaviors on top of their content.

According to our vision, short form series are ideal for mobile watching. Digital consumption habits are changing and our attention span to media content is less than 8 minutes long. While the time we spend in front of our devices is growing, our attention span is decreasing.

Incentivized advertising has been proved on gaming platforms — have you run out of lives? Watch this ad and get three more — and now is taking over video. According to this study, millennials and GEN-Z are keen on watching ads if they get rewarded. The Flixxo model, with a token involved, makes a lot of sense and short form series fit on the most seamless way. Have you enjoyed the last episode? Watch this 30" ad and get rewarded with more credits for watching another episode. This model would be more difficult with longer content — like a movie — and the series storytelling structure makes it sticky for consumers who want to know what is going to happen next, bringing this sense of gaming to a video platform.

Content matters. A sustainable token model matters. And short form series fit the equation on the most reliable way. We are confident that short form series are that small thing that will make Flixxo a mainstream platform, and that’s the only thing that matters.

That’s why series matter :)