I used to love watching daily vlogs. They had this manufactured chaos that TV shows couldn't fully replicate. Good creators knew how to capture a story in 10-20 minutes without stripping away too much realism.

Vloggers also probably created this idea of building in public — Casey Neistat with Beme or Roman Atwood with Smile More. Both were able to convert their audience into customers because they mentioned the product to their audience countless times before it launched.

But the truth is, life is boring. There are only so many daily adventures one can have without burning out. And nobody wants to watch a vlog of you buying groceries, filing taxes, and watching the Dodgers game alone because your plans fell through.

That's why the trend of daily vlogs slowly died; creators realized that doing something new every day and editing it was unsustainable.

However, I've seen a recent resurgence of vlogs on TikTok and Instagram. These are typically minute-long, hyper-edited daily updates on the creator's journey toward a goal. Each vlog has its own story and payoff, but is also just one installment of long series of updates. I've seen such a wild range of goals, from creators trying to become a varsity basketball player to trying to reach $10,000 MRR on an ad agency.

My personal favorite is Boys with the Bus. This group of boys grew an Instagram account to over 2 million followers by posting updates while traveling across America in a renovated school bus. They had just the right amount of teen movie spunk to go viral.

I think this format works because they're attention-grabbing enough to draw new viewers even if they have no context, while also short enough to encourage viewers to follow and binge. In the old days, you could only follow a few vloggers because each video was so long. Now, you could realistically follow 10 creators and only spend 10 minutes watching their daily upload.

Of course, goal-based vlogging could be applied to long-form content.

Ryan Trahan's famous Penny Series was the most viral vlog series in the last few years, likely because of its unique blend of rawness and the goal. But it seems like this format is much harder long-form, because the bingeing element is gone.

And lastly, it's hard to tell if these audiences have staying power. Short-form creators have notoriously suffered from low audience commitment, finding it difficult to convert their massive followings to customers or even long-form viewers. Maybe once their goal is fulfilled, other types of content won't have the same success.

Find more of my thoughts on Twitter (@ethanweii).