Why media formats (like Snapchat Stories and TikTok music videos) become hits?

For a media format to be widely adopted, it’s important for it to be easy to create content with. Similarly, it helps if that format can be used to tell rich, complex narratives. So more simplicity and more storytelling leads to a more valuable and popular media format. But here’s the rub: simplicity and storytelling are inversely correlated. The m... See more

Every single one of the Top 8 most popular social platforms in the US now offer their own version of Stories. That would be YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Twitter, and WhatsApp all providing their users a similar vertical media format for telling a narrative using a collection of images, videos, and overlay text optimi... See more

While there may not be a single social platform that’s won over all users, there’s apparently a single media format that’s won over all social platforms.

Stories are a perfect compromise of ease of creation and richness of resulting media narrative.

Media formats end up trading off simplicity for storytelling and vice versa as more storytelling requires more complexity, and more simplicity limits storytelling abilities.

From deepfakes to synthetic videos, the next media format may be one where it’s not just inspiration that’s optional, but the creator may be optional because the format is capable of creating itself.