Every app is turning into YouTube
Samarth Every social media app is starting to look the same, and they’re all turning into YouTube.
In July, YouTube was fourteen point two percent of everything that Americans watched on TV. Netflix was at seven point eight percent. That means that people are watching almost twice as much YouTube on their TVs than Netflix, and every other social media app wants the same part of that pie.
Instagram went from ninety-second Reels to twenty minutes. They also made a TV app. Spotify has gone all in on video podcasts. They’re even letting you upload YouTube-like thumbnails onto the Spotify feed. If you open X right now, the timeline is littered with video. Even LinkedIn is pushing video, albeit to a smaller extent.
These platforms know that short-form video is great for getting attention, but when somebody sees your thirty-second Reel, maybe they like it, they probably keep scrolling, and then like two minutes later, they forgot the video that they just watched.
To keep you for twenty minutes, Instagram, at minimum, has to serve you twenty Reels. In reality, because everyone’s just skipping the videos that they’re watching, it’s more like seventy-some Reels that the Instagram algorithm is feeding you in that twenty-minute time span.
But YouTube only needs one video, and when you spend those twenty minutes with one person, you actually remember who they are.
It’s also not just that. The money aspect has a lot to do with it. If you’re spending twenty minutes doomscrolling on a short form platform, how many ads could they possibly fit in there? Maybe three, four. On top of that, all the other ads that the regular creators are doing as well. How many ads could you realistically see without getting upset?
YouTube, just a single twenty-minute video would have an ad before. Probably, you could run a midroll ad, maybe even an ad after that.
This is so much more lucrative, especially if Instagram can get both short form and long form working on top with their regular ads platform that they already have. That’s why every app feels like YouTube right now.
