As followership wanes, TikTok resets relations between creators and fans
Patreon, a media and community-based platform for creators to connect directly with fans with free and paid membership, has produced a report looking at how creators and their fans are feeling these days. One finding: Fans say they’re seeing more short-form work on social media, even though they prefer long-form content.
And more than half of creators surveyed say it’s harder to reach their followers now than five years ago. This is part of what the report calls the “TikTokification of the internet.”
Brielle Villablanca, vice president of communications and creator advocacy at Patreon, discusses the trade-offs for creators in the current TikTok-driven environment with Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Brielle Villablanca: The internet used to be architected around the follow. If you followed someone, you saw everything that they posted. You saw everything that they shared. And then when TikTok started to really get big, the For You page changed everything for creators because as opposed to seeing who you follow, TikTok surfaced who they think that you want to see. That worked really well. It got people to spend a lot of time on the app, which benefited advertisers and benefited these platforms. So other platforms really followed. If we look at the For You page, it was intended for creators to be discovered, and what we realized is it’s actually not. For You is for the platform, it’s for their benefit and for advertisers. So we’ve seen really an erosion of creator-to-fan connection and creator control over what they make because they’re creating to optimize for fan engagement over what they actually value creating.
Stephanie Hughes: I mean, is that affecting what these creators make?
Villablanca: One hundred percent. We had some really interesting conversations with folks who were talking about [how] they don’t really love doing short-form, but it’s the best way for them to get discovered, so they have to. But they’re doing that, and it takes away time from doing the deep, nuanced things that actually build trust.
Hughes: Tell me more about that. So how short is short, and what does it mean for the content that we’re taking in?
Villablanca: I mean, I think anything under two minutes could be considered short form. I will say, though, I think short form is a bit of a red herring. People talk about the shift to short form as that’s what changed the internet. But I do think it really is the erosion of the follow that is more important to that because creators can create whatever they want, short, long, but having to create for a platform that’s optimizing for time spent means you don’t actually get to create what it is that you want, whether or not that’s short form. You have to create for what you think they’re going to surface to people.
Hughes: I mean, you could argue that the For You page, or the algorithm servicing other content, would expose people to things they wouldn’t have otherwise seen. Did creators ever see any benefit from that?
Villablanca: Yes, definitely. I mean, it’s not all bad. TikTok and the For You page has been really great for discovery, and that’s hugely valuable to creators. The issue, then, is translating that success from this viral moment or this big opportunity into long-term, sustainable business success.
Hughes: And one thing that’s interesting is you guys found that even though people were taking in more short-form content, they didn’t like it as much as they liked long-form content. Is that right?
Villablanca: Yes, and that’s really interesting because that’s where people are spending a lot of their time. But when they actually think about what they find valuable and what they’re willing to pay for, importantly, that’s more the longer-form work, whether that’s videos, whether that’s podcasts, whether that’s anything behind the scenes, the deeper look from the creator.
Hughes: For people who maybe don’t spend a ton of time on the internet — you know, all two of them — how does what work gets surfaced on these tech platforms ultimately affect the culture more broadly?
Villablanca: Oh, that’s a great question. I mean, I think we saw that certainly in the last election very clearly, when we saw the candidates going on podcasts, and that being the primary way a lot of Americans got their news and what influenced their voting decisions. One of the things that I have been thinking about for a long time is the value of the creator economy, and how much influence these people actually have in culture and in the world. And that has been consistently undervalued. And people still say, oh, it’s just people posting videos on the internet. And so we’re really trying to legitimize what it means to be a creator. And what we see is that their influence on culture is massive.
Hughes: So the rise of short form, the challenges with connecting with fans, what does this all mean for creators’ ability to make money?
Villablanca: I think the creator economy — there was a time where it was very exciting and everybody was talking about the creator economy, and then there was a time where everybody was talking about the creator economy is dying, and it kind of depended on the day how people were feeling about it. But when I think about the longevity of the creator economy, what we’re seeing is that more and more people actually do want to be creators. We have data supporting that. And when it comes to making sustainable businesses, what they’re all finding is the most important thing is building relationships with their fans. We talk about a pyramid [where] you have your followers, kind of casual followers, who like to see what it is that you’re doing. And then, you have your fans who kind of go one step further. And then, you have your core fans, is what we call them, which are the people who buy the merch, they go to the concerts, they’re showing up for you in all different kinds of ways, they’re talking about you on their social media. And those fans are the ones who really build your business as a creator. So investing in those fans is the most financially beneficial thing that you can do.
Hughes: Can you think of an example of a kind of creator that’s really nailed building relationships with their audience despite, or maybe because of, the algorithms?
Villablanca: Yeah, something that I think we see continue to explode right now is podcasts. It’s really ripe for these deep conversations, long conversations, where you get to know somebody and build trust. But also, there’s opportunities to then cut that into clips of things that you think are interesting and surface those on short form. And so you can build relationships with people and build trust with people while also getting discovered with these short-form clips that capture attention. So I think that’s something that we’ve seen people have a lot of success with. And I don’t think anybody would argue [against] that podcasting is just continuing to grow.
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