š $330 million for a rating nobody has an incentive to fake
On Thursday, The New York Times broke the news itself: the company had entered exclusive negotiations to buy Letterboxd for around $330 million. A movie fansā website.
What it does is simple. Rate a movie after watching it, write a couple of sentences, make watchlists, follow other people. Itās free, with a subscription fee for premium features.
Look at the numbers. This year, itās expected to make just $15 million in profit, so the sale price is more than 20 times that. It had 3 million users in January 2021 and 28 million this April; more than half are under 35. That works out to $11.80 per user. According to The New York Timesā own reporting, A24 was also on the list, but couldnāt match the price.
Wind back three years. In September 2023, Canadaās Tiny acquired a majority stake of more than 60%, valuing the company at between $50 million and $60 million at the time. Three years, roughly sixfold.
Why pay that much?
Because nobody has an incentive to fake this data. Ratings donāt earn money, there are no rewards for ranking highly, they canāt be transferred, and thereās no public way to buy ratings. If a film wants a boost, it can only buy ad spaceānot a 4.2 rating.
People building on-chain should take a look at this. Airdrops can buy addresses, but they canāt buy a second visit. Paying people to rate, earn by reviewing, content miningāthese approaches have been tried for several rounds, but none has lasted. The sticking point is motivation, not cryptography. Once ratings can be exchanged for money, they become an extension of the marketing budget, and the data is worthless on the spot. Authenticity can be verified. Motivation canāt.
So what The New York Times is buying is a record of peopleās preferences. Last year, those 28 million people wrote 143 million reviews themselves, logging nearly 900 million films, without earning a cent. For A24ās 2024 film The Brutalist, nearly half of its opening-weekend audience said theyād heard about it here. The studio couldnāt buy ratings, so it turned around and bought the company.
Want to copy this model? First, you have to give up paying people to rate. If you canāt do that, the only option left is to pay for traffic.
BTC is between 75,772 and 75,876 across five quote sources, basically flat over 24 hours. ETH is between 2,240 and 2,244.
#äøę¬čŖå½é ē¤¾åŗBaoluoåøåčµę¬ #åŖä½å¹¶č“ #Letterboxd
On Thursday, The New York Times broke the news itself: the company had entered exclusive negotiations to buy Letterboxd for around $330 million. A movie fansā website.
What it does is simple. Rate a movie after watching it, write a couple of sentences, make watchlists, follow other people. Itās free, with a subscription fee for premium features.
Look at the numbers. This year, itās expected to make just $15 million in profit, so the sale price is more than 20 times that. It had 3 million users in January 2021 and 28 million this April; more than half are under 35. That works out to $11.80 per user. According to The New York Timesā own reporting, A24 was also on the list, but couldnāt match the price.
Wind back three years. In September 2023, Canadaās Tiny acquired a majority stake of more than 60%, valuing the company at between $50 million and $60 million at the time. Three years, roughly sixfold.
Why pay that much?
Because nobody has an incentive to fake this data. Ratings donāt earn money, there are no rewards for ranking highly, they canāt be transferred, and thereās no public way to buy ratings. If a film wants a boost, it can only buy ad spaceānot a 4.2 rating.
People building on-chain should take a look at this. Airdrops can buy addresses, but they canāt buy a second visit. Paying people to rate, earn by reviewing, content miningāthese approaches have been tried for several rounds, but none has lasted. The sticking point is motivation, not cryptography. Once ratings can be exchanged for money, they become an extension of the marketing budget, and the data is worthless on the spot. Authenticity can be verified. Motivation canāt.
So what The New York Times is buying is a record of peopleās preferences. Last year, those 28 million people wrote 143 million reviews themselves, logging nearly 900 million films, without earning a cent. For A24ās 2024 film The Brutalist, nearly half of its opening-weekend audience said theyād heard about it here. The studio couldnāt buy ratings, so it turned around and bought the company.
Want to copy this model? First, you have to give up paying people to rate. If you canāt do that, the only option left is to pay for traffic.
BTC is between 75,772 and 75,876 across five quote sources, basically flat over 24 hours. ETH is between 2,240 and 2,244.
#äøę¬čŖå½é ē¤¾åŗBaoluoåøåčµę¬ #åŖä½å¹¶č“ #Letterboxd
