Understanding platform dependence of Social media entertainment (SME)
How might a concept of platform dependency be applied to understanding a national media landscape
A media business is most likely fully platform-dependent if all parts in its value chain rely on external platforms: media creation, distribution, marketing, and monetization.
Consider this dialogue by Joe Rogan and the highest-earning YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson aka MrBeast on the topic of going indie vs. staying on YouTube1.
Rogan:
You’re so big at this point, You could have your own servers, your own website, your own deals with advertisers where you get a 100% of the revenue rather than You know---
MrBeast:
I love Youtube. You got to think about it like,YouTube comes preinstalled on Android you know and obviously Google owns YouTube or Alphabet so people go there to Google …
All roads point to YouTube. I love being the biggest creator on YouTube. Fuck doing my own thing that sounds stupid, like Hell no
I can have one of the largest audiences of the world
and I can -- Instead of thinking of building my own platform I’d rather think about of building businesses leveraging my audiences of of platform — That's the better use of my time instead of nuking my audience.
YouTuber MrBeast doesn’t seem to mind being dependent on YouTube by the sound of his whole-hearted endorsement of the platform’s affordances, especially the ongoing audience growth. There are cultural producers that are more concerned of the issue of platform dependence, though.
Platforms and cultural production scholars Thomas Poell, David Nieborg and Brooke Erin Duffy produced a theoretic framework for systematically considering platform dependency. In the table below, I’ve adapted their framework for my research purposes in understanding media industry.
All kinds of media companies are more or less platform-dependent in the platform-based social media entertainment industry. Contingent to their business model innovation capacity, however, they may be able to off-set that dependency by entering other industries or securing off-platform revenue streams.
In the next blog post, I will make use of Poell et al’s concept of platform dependency applying it comparatively to SME (social media entertainment) and VOD (video on demand) industries. Stay tuned and make sure to subscribe if you haven’t yet.