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MKBHD Shutting Down Controversial 'Panels' Wallpaper App
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The subscription revenue was just a greedy little extra. The real value, if a reasonable percentage of his supporters had downloaded the app, would have been the userdata which would have been a very lucrative product to sell on to marketing services.
What do you think YouTube is except a means of gaining marketing data? MB (or more likely his „team”) wanted their very own pie as well as getting a cut of the YouTube pie. Given the channel’s millions of subscribers, they probably thought it was a sure thing.
But it wasn’t. That’s hubris for you. The original Panels app was a way to get users to pay MB to let MB take their user data. I mean, being smug is his USP in the first place.
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They also assume people care what they think. When these people start to get paid for things their opinions and suggestions seem to be worth less.
Oh well. A subscription-based wallpaper app does have a market. Just that none of it was in his subscriber base.
He read the room wrong, that's all.
He read the room wrong, that's all.
I guess the millions he's getting from reviews and free products is not enough. He wants more $$.
I think his "Vision" was to make more money.
Every once in a while, MKHBD says something unique and thoughtful, but you need to watch 20 videos to see an occurrence of that. Everything else he says has been fabricated by his sponsors.
It was #1 in the both Apple and Google's app stores and had over 2 million wallpaper downloads
Not true. People are generały happy to pay for things that they consider are worth paying for.
People did not think it was worth paying 12 bucks a month for a relatively small collection of wallpapers and have their userdata mined in the process.
If anybody here is interested in a reasonably priced wallpaper-based app, consider Wallaroo.
apps.apple.com
$2 a month, or $20 a year. Zero tracking, and it's made by the same people behind Twitterific.
Wallaroo App - App Store
Download Wallaroo by The Iconfactory on the App Store. See screenshots, ratings and reviews, user tips and more games like Wallaroo.
apps.apple.com
$2 a month, or $20 a year. Zero tracking, and it's made by the same people behind Twitterific.
Presumably some percentage of his 20 million subscribers care what he thinks…
Let me tell you something about Youtubers...i used to be one for 13 long years. I busted my ass making videos on tech, movies, apple products, history, vlogs, etc and i ended up with only 6k followers...and i made MAYBE 200 bucks in ad revenue on a good year tops. I learned 2 very important things in those 13 years. Everyone who posts anything thinks they are going to be the next Marcus or Boogie2988 or Pewdipie or what ever, and almost none of them make it. Some put in the work and the talent, most dont and while i personally never made it that big to get product sent to me to review, youtubers want to monotize everything under the sun if they can make a buck off of it, and its just not worth it.
2nd thing i learned, most people don't really care about your opinion, they just want someone to mirror their own to validate theirs, (no matter wha the subject is, movies, game, tech, what ever) and if you don't do that, they will go after you in a heart beat.
I prided myself on being honest and genuine and never ever going with the popular opinion. I said what i honestly thought and felt, and man did i get attacked and trolled for that hard. The moment i said i diden't love this film or i diden't think this tv show was that bad...forget about it, people turned on me over the dumbest **** and i finally said ya know what, i dont need this ******** and deleted my channel after 13 years and havent looked back since. It was so liberating.
All that said to say this...MKBHD and other major youtubers will do anything to make a buck. YouTubes rules change day by day and no one bothers to tell you about it, and what was cool to say or do yesterday isnt ok the next day. Videos you made money off of for years all of a sudden are demonitized for the dumbest of reasons, so for them to want their own independent app to make money off of without depending on youtube, no matter how misguided it may ultimatly be, i cant fault them one bit.
2nd thing i learned, most people don't really care about your opinion, they just want someone to mirror their own to validate theirs, (no matter wha the subject is, movies, game, tech, what ever) and if you don't do that, they will go after you in a heart beat.
I prided myself on being honest and genuine and never ever going with the popular opinion. I said what i honestly thought and felt, and man did i get attacked and trolled for that hard. The moment i said i diden't love this film or i diden't think this tv show was that bad...forget about it, people turned on me over the dumbest **** and i finally said ya know what, i dont need this ******** and deleted my channel after 13 years and havent looked back since. It was so liberating.
All that said to say this...MKBHD and other major youtubers will do anything to make a buck. YouTubes rules change day by day and no one bothers to tell you about it, and what was cool to say or do yesterday isnt ok the next day. Videos you made money off of for years all of a sudden are demonitized for the dumbest of reasons, so for them to want their own independent app to make money off of without depending on youtube, no matter how misguided it may ultimatly be, i cant fault them one bit.
More than likely, he was sharing revenue with the advertisers in his app.
I don’t feel bad for that guy. He has like 8 different channels ranging from car reviews to phone reviews, somehow misleads people into subscribing so he has millions on each channel, and absolutely delivers nothing of value in his videos. Might hurt some feelings, but it’s the truth.
There's no evidence of that, and it's a baseless characterization.
A lot of YouTube is an echo chamber created and financed by advertisers. A small percentage of what is left is useful 'how to' videos with the largest leftover being nothing more than verbal diarrhea. And from what I can see, far too many people are walking around with a bad stink.