Have you ever heard of Quibi? I wouldn’t blame you if you hadn’t, despite over a billion dollars investment and being run by the former head of Dreamworks, almost no-one knows it existed all. It’s a platform that was built on a simple premise – high quality drama made to be watched in 10 minutes or less in a vertical format on your phone.

At the time it seemed to many (myself included) like a terrible idea, a fundamental misunderstanding of the mobile content ecosystem and what it is that hooked people in. However 5 years after its dissolution we are seeing renaissance of so-called ‘microdramas’. Popularised in China these are episodic dramatic content purpose built for vertical phone viewing and frequently put behind paywalls.

There are plenty of examples of massive companies being subsumed by a challenger that has found a better angle. Think Blackberry vs the iPhone, Blockbuster and Netflix, or Myspace and Facebook. It does feel unusual however for an offering to fail as completely as Quibi, only to be replaced by platforms years later doing essentially the exact same thing.

It reminds me of another now defunct social media platform, Vine. Vine was a video sharing app with a twist, videos could only be vertical with a max duration of 7 seconds. It was a format that necessitated innovation and creativity, and it was essentially Tiktok before Tiktok. Vine too was unable to maintain the usership and interest needed to sustain the platform.

So if the pattern continues, could the next big disruptor be a reinterpretation of an older failed project or idea? If so, what are the contenders? Frustratingly it’s the kind of thing that is obvious in hindsight but impossible to predict in the here and now. The best guess I can make is some iteration on the ‘Metaverse’ or VR/AR socialisation and computing. Meta has poured billions into this space (including changing their name from Facebook), with little to show for it beyond a failed demo to add legs. If this does become the Next Big Thing, I doubt they’ll be the ones to do it.

Regardless of what comes next, its worth keeping an open mind when evaluating what media is or isn’t likely to resonate with audiences. Afterall today’s dying Vine is tomorrow’s thriving Tiktok.