ReelShorts: The Wattpad of Netflix?
Minute long soap operas for the shrinking attention spans; The future of entertainment is Vertical
I remember being a young adult, flying through books trending on Goodreads that spanned vampire romance, dystopia, and urban fantasy. I recall the book hangovers, where I wasn’t completely ready to start a new book but not completely over the last one either.
Fan-fictions were the salvation in those days. Wattpad and AOT ruled the fandoms with familiar characters, popular tropes, and no requirement for world-building. These novellas provided the ultimate respite.
Today, while having dinner, when deciding which Netflix series or movie to watch has become such a chore, we prefer mindlessly scrolling through IG reels. But does that leave us feeling giddy or satisfied? Not really. It's just something to do to pass the time.
And just like Wattpad filled the void left by books and movies, ReelShorts is filling the gap between Reels/TikTok and Netflix.
ReelShort is an entertainment app created by Crazy Maple Studio, where one-minute episodes burgeon into approximately one-hour-long videos.
You must have seen those ads with Sebastian Klein and his gorgeous fake bride. In the first episode itself, you dive right into the action. Or romance. There’s no small talk, the characters straight up set the premise for the scandalous contract marriage.
Almost all of these shows comprise a billionaire-meets-poor-girl or forbidden alpha romance, and it couldn’t get more cringe—or cute, depending on the audience. The shows are primarily targeted at middle-aged women wanting to live vicariously through these fantasies.
It reminds me of the book “A Billion Wicked Thoughts” where Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam attempt to deconstruct what women desire.
The top five archetypes for desirable men are Vampire, Werewolf, Billionaire, Surgeon, and Pirate.
And guess what? It checks out.
Whether they enjoy the cutesy, mindless stories or they just hate-watch the cringe, the market segment comprising middle-aged women cannot be underestimated.
With over 30 million downloads globally, ReelShort has dethroned TikTok in the entertainment category of Apple’s App Store by churning the most popular tropes and churning them into bite-sized reels.
Entertainment is entertainment. And that’s what ReelShort is here to capitalize on.
With a whopping $22 million in revenue just from August to December 2023, and production costs of $300,000 or less per series, ReelShort has been highly profitable with the “Candy Crush” Strategy: It operates on micro-transactions, allowing users to unlock episodes through in-app currency or by watching ads.
Yes, it's making us dumber by offering a convenient replacement for our mindless scrolling activities, but it's also filling a void. A void of trashy, consumable quick fixes without the pressure of political correctness.
The road to expansion is bound to be rocky, especially considering that the Col Group behind the app is Chinese. The threat to privacy and security is already a concern, and the ad model is a significant turn-off for many viewers. Privacy breaches are prevalent, and streaming content for free on the internet is not too difficult.
Moreover, the media giants won’t be sleeping on emerging trends. Netflix, for instance, has not ruled out the possibility of incorporating vertical videos into its platform, and with the growing popularity of ReelShort, competition is likely to catch up soon enough.
However, there's no denying that the landscape of content is changing, and those who capitalize on these changes will gain a first-mover advantage.
And right now, ReelShort is winning this race by a wide berth, as demonstrated by its impressive 24 million downloads in the last quarter of 2023 alone.
Plus, short dramas on smartphone streaming have already become a multibillion-dollar industry in China. And if the digital boom is anything to go by, we've barely tapped the market in this sector. Extremely bullish.
Hope you found this enjoyable! Be sure to subscribe for more content, and I promise, I'll be more consistent this time around.
By the way, I've been experimenting with GPT-4, and trust me, you don’t wanna miss out on what's in the pipeline.
See you soon! 😄