The Truth About Video Views on X (Twitter)

0:00We are going to talk about the truth behind Twitter video views, Twitter slash X. And so let me give some context here we can talk about this. So people have been talking about how you can't it's a lot of Twitter. Mr. Beast and Elon, because Mr. Beast will like to talk about his stats, his YouTube stats on X. And every single time, not every single time, but most of the time, Elon will be like, why don't you post it on X? You'll get more, way more views or whatever. And so it sparked this whole debate. So Neil, what do you think the difference is between a Twitter view or an X view versus like a YouTube view?

0:43YouTube view, they look at actual engagement. If someone just clicks, goes to a video and autoplays like for, I think a few, like one second, I don't think YouTube counts it as a view. I've got the exact rules that they have. Yeah. They're much more strict Twitter. It can just be scrolling and it starts playing. And if I'm not mistaken, it counts it as a view. Yeah. It can auto play for you instantly and it counts as a view. So even if you don't care about it, you scroll past it, it counts as a view. And so you got to think about again, a YouTube view is four seconds or so. So that's like hundreds or thousands of percent more, just depending on how you look at it compared to a Twitter view.

1:18And this is why when you look at the difference between a short form, like a TikTok, for example, versus a long form 15 to 20 minute YouTube video, who do you actually end up remembering more? You end up remembering the longer form because you're actually building a longer relationship. And I think they say in movies, Neil, that maybe to start to care about a story, maybe it takes like 15 minutes or something like that. Like you need to watch enough. But the problem with it, like a TikTok is like, you're just scrolling through it. And I don't know about you. I don't really use TikTok, but sometimes I watch YouTube shorts.

1:49I don't really remember a lot of the people. No, I don't remember a lot of the people either. Yeah. I mean, the thing is, like, you know, we can talk about that later, but that is the problem, I think, right now with X, because when Elon is going to Mr. Beast, Mr. Beast is like, well, hey, why don't you just tell me when I'm going to make good money from YouTube? And Elon's like, well, we probably can't pay you. And plus, you can get any sponsor that you want. And so I think the thing that's worth for us to talk about right now is, is it worth it to post a video like this, for example, to X? I do think it's worth it.

2:20You're not going to get as many views. The reach isn't going to be the same. But you know what? You already created the content. So what do you have to lose by just posting it again? That's the big thing is there's really no cost. The hardest part was actually creating the content. Posting it isn't as hard. Whether something gives you extra 100 views or a million views, it doesn't matter. Extra views or extra views as long as the audience is somewhat relevant. Yeah, I mean, the way I think about this is it's worth it because Elon hasn't even had X or Twitter for 12 months yet. And you look at the velocity of how quickly they're shipping and how they are trying to get into the creator game, they will get better.

2:57And when you look at the products that he has helped influence, like most people here probably haven't used Starlink. Neil, have you used Starlink on a plane before? Not on a plane, but I use Starlink many times. So Starlink, when you're flying on a plane, for example, it's like internet like this. It's super fast, right? My point of saying all this is when you look at the Tesla cars or like most of the products that he creates are good. I can't think of a product he's created that hasn't really worked out that he's like actually launched. So we're not counting the tunnels, like the boring company that he's made it yet.

3:25And we're not going to talk about Neuralink yet because it hasn't launched to public, but the things that he's launched to public has mostly worked. And so look, I think it's just one added thing to post to. You can have, if you have a team, you can have your social media managers add to it. And I think it'll get better and better over time because to Neil's point, the hard work has been done already. You thinking through the hook, you thinking through what you want to talk about all that hard work has been done so why not just post it to another channel it would totally end up agreeing with that right so it's like and there's no cost and if you look at a lot of the popular creators what they're doing is they're not saying hmm i don't know if i like twitter as much or threads as much or instagram or tiktok they're just like already created the content it only takes a few more seconds to upload them to all of it like yeah that's it you just don't know when you're gonna get distribution right because like i i got like I'll get DM sometimes on Twitter, not from these other channels saying, Oh, I really like the thing that you posted the other day.

4:18We actually need help with this. And sometimes even I can't help with it. I'll make an introduction. Right. And so I think Twitter is the best place for me personally to learn from the smartest people. And I think the other channels for myself personally is more for entertainment. Yeah. And you really don't have much to lose. Like sometimes we'll post on Instagram. Sometimes we'll post on TikTok and we're like, oh, we always do better views on Instagram, but sometimes we just post a video on TikTok and it hits and it goes viral and you got hundreds and hundreds of thousands of views or a million or whatever the number is.

4:49So even though Twitter or one of the other channels that you don't care for as much may not be driving you as much engagement, every once in a while, something that you post will hit and it'll be worth the effort. All right. So that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate if you subscribe and we'll see you tomorrow.