MrBeast 'spends millions reverse engineering the algorithms on each platform'

xvxvx

‘he has described tracking exactly where viewers stop watching and rebuilding videos around those drop-off points.’ I’ve seen only clips of his videos here and there, but assumed he was somewhat naturally gifted in creating content that interested people. Reading this, and his obsession with algorithms, his job seems like a hellish nightmare. I recently stumbled upon ‘book influencers’ on YouTube and same desperation is holding them hostage. There’s no way this is fun for anyone. Being so obsessed with clicks and likes and retention and whatever. Then trying to earn money from it all. I’d literally rather be a vagabond.

1245-a17z

Who watches the 10,000th iteration of "locking up 100 people in $place and who stays the longest gets $100,000", badly filmed and badly presented? The pioneers of this genre were Big Brother by RTL in the 1990s. It was at least professionally produced. It is hard not to think of viewbotting.

Ekaros

What I actually find interesting about him and Cocomelon is that they actually follow stats and metrics to generate content that garners most clicks or keeps most engagement... Somehow it almost feels like lot of other more traditional media doesn't even attempt that. Like they pay lip service to it by committees. But they don't actually make content like that.

gizajob

It’s weird - I use YouTube a lot and I’ve never ever been recommended one of his videos.

greuceanu42069

so "spends millions to make billions"? it makes sense tho. he has 400-500 ppl working for him, 200 the marketing side. if a quarter of that handles SEO/creative/engineering part for 4 major platforms + an extra team, that comes to 50 x 80k / yr = $5.2M. and this is on the low end of estimations.

LightBug1

He must have given up on me. I'm aware of him tangentially, but I've never consumed even one of his videos or whatever he does. I believe I should be studied.

raylad

There’s nothing surprising about this for people who have done casual mobile games (the genre including Candy crush). What we do for those is to instrument them such that we know what levels are more difficult, what levels cause more users to abandon the game temporarily, or permanently, etc. We then dynamically tune these levels until they at least no longer cause abandonment and ideally until they increase engagement.

zzzeek

Cuban is a total moron overall, mrbeast clearly a smart guy who is extremely driven, but this drive is all towards turning my 11 year old into a youtube watching vegetable so this guy can get lost

jimt1234

This is how I learned about MrBeast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eHpfF4H46I

rrr_oh_man

"How to Succeed in MrBeast Production" https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6623b7720b009050313e701c/... (Very interesting read!)

mehar_pro

If you realize it by now, he is an AI company. He evaluates every part of viewer retention and maximizes watch time hours. With all the data that he has internally, I bet he's hiring AI engineers just to decode it and run some useful A/B tests.