Speaker 1: It's Monday a. I'm Oscar Emiras from the Daily Dive
Speaker 1: podcast in Los Angeles, and this is your daily coronavirus update.
Speaker 1: The virus has changed the way we internet. While some
Speaker 1: things maybe obvious, people are starting to have more video
Speaker 1: chats with friends, family, and co workers, other aspects of
Speaker 1: the way we spend our time online can be surprising.
Speaker 1: People are moving away from their phones and using desktop computers.
Speaker 1: More people are consuming more news from local and established
Speaker 1: newspapers and less on partisan sites. And video games have
Speaker 1: seen an increase while sports have lost out. Nathaniel Popper,
Speaker 1: reporter at the New York Times, joins us for how
Speaker 1: we are spending our lives online during the pandemic. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us, Nathaniel, Thank you for having me. I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk a little bit about how our lives
Speaker 1: have changed because of coronavirus, all the social distancing that
Speaker 1: we're practicing. Obviously, Americans are spending a lot more time
Speaker 1: at home and increasingly are living their lives online. And
Speaker 1: these are things that we've been doing for a long time,
Speaker 1: but now we have this kind of moment you look
Speaker 1: and see how it's changing slightly. We're always looking for
Speaker 1: different ways to entertain ourselves, whether it's our Netflix or
Speaker 1: Facebook or YouTube's. But one thing that's changing is that
Speaker 1: we're turning away slightly from our phones. When the trend
Speaker 1: before that was everything was mobile. Everybody was working on
Speaker 1: mobile platforms, how to optimize videos and things for mobile.
Speaker 1: We're taking a turn back. We have our computers at
Speaker 1: home and we're working on those things a little bit more.
Speaker 1: That was a really interesting finding here. We put together
Speaker 1: a bunch of data that we pulled to look at
Speaker 1: how our behavior changed really in the course of just
Speaker 1: a few weeks, and you see these pretty dramatic changes
Speaker 1: in online behavior that is obviously very unusual, but these
Speaker 1: are unusual times. And one of the things that stuck
Speaker 1: out to us was that these sites that were seeking
Speaker 1: out for entertainment for social connections, so Facebook, Netflix, YouTube,
Speaker 1: all of those services have seeing the traffic on their
Speaker 1: apps declining at the same time that their websites have
Speaker 1: seen just skyrocketing traffic. So Facebook traffic to their website
Speaker 1: has gone up twenty basically the matter of a few days,
Speaker 1: and their app, which used to be what everybody was checking,
Speaker 1: has sort of been limping along. And I think it's
Speaker 1: almost as if we're sort of remembering the virtue of
Speaker 1: looking at a big computer screen rather than squinting down
Speaker 1: at our phone all day, right exactly, we have the
Speaker 1: luxury of using our desktops and our laptops more the
Speaker 1: other thing. Obviously, this is one that we know, video chats.
Speaker 1: It's definitely having a moment right now. People are connecting
Speaker 1: all sorts of ways on different apps. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: obviously FaceTime, there's Zoom is a huge one, but there's
Speaker 1: a few other ones that people are gravitating towards right
Speaker 1: now because they need something more than just the video chat.
Speaker 1: They want fun backgrounds, and they want other stuff to
Speaker 1: help kind of spruce that part of it up. It's
Speaker 1: really notable that it feels like just sort of connecting
Speaker 1: by text is not enough in this time where we
Speaker 1: can't see people because of social distancing. We're not allowed
Speaker 1: to get together with our friends and family, and so
Speaker 1: the only way we can see each other is through video.
Speaker 1: And that has helped a bunch of services that really
Speaker 1: were not big ones before this house party. I think
Speaker 1: it had some history of being popular, it had been
Speaker 1: training at some point, but it was really kind of
Speaker 1: limping along and over the last few weeks again it's
Speaker 1: seen a traffic shoot up. And it allows essentially, as
Speaker 1: the name would suggest, people to gather together in a
Speaker 1: video chat room, somewhat like Zoom does, but there's also
Speaker 1: games involved. It's fun, it's about socializing, it's about being together.
Speaker 1: It's not just about doing business. Just specifically, some friends
Speaker 1: posting up how they were on the house party thing
Speaker 1: and I had to go look into because I hadn't
Speaker 1: heard about it before. But yeah, that's because the same
Speaker 1: thing they we're doing, playing the games, trying to have
Speaker 1: some fun other ways than just the traditional video chat.
Speaker 1: This is more than FaceTime, and so I think yes,
Speaker 1: so much of the changing patterns is in that direction
Speaker 1: of finding ways to connect more deeply when we're feeling
Speaker 1: cut off from each other. The other sort of interesting
Speaker 1: trend in that direction is with our neighbors and locally,
Speaker 1: because we're thinking so much more about the local businesses
Speaker 1: and our local community. Is coronavirus here, as it made
Speaker 1: it into the local hospital, What are the numbers around me?
Speaker 1: And so on that front, you have social media network
Speaker 1: next Door, which has been popular, but it's still a
Speaker 1: relatively small player in the social media world. But again
Speaker 1: it has just taken off over the last few weeks. Obviously,
Speaker 1: a lot of people are working from home, students that
Speaker 1: have had their schools closed, which is basically all of them,
Speaker 1: they're taking classes from home, so on that front, Zoom
Speaker 1: has definitely having a moment with a lot of students.
Speaker 1: Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams are company I heart media. We're
Speaker 1: using Microsoft Teams to connect and do a virtual meetings
Speaker 1: and all that. So these are also having a moment.
Speaker 1: But the thing that comes with that is privacy concerns.
Speaker 1: I know Zoom specifically had a lot of privacy concerns
Speaker 1: with Zoom bombing and a couple of other glass as well.
Speaker 1: It feels like Zoom more than any other company has
Speaker 1: benefited from this. I think there's no company that's emerged
Speaker 1: from this more strongly, seeing their stock overtake uber in
Speaker 1: terms of the size of the company the market capitalization.
Speaker 1: But along with that, as so often I think happens
Speaker 1: in the tech world when something takes off, as you
Speaker 1: realize that they're not actually ready for prime time yet,
Speaker 1: and there just been this litany of security concerns that
Speaker 1: have come up. People being able to log in snoop
Speaker 1: on other people's traffic. Of course, this issue of zoom bombing,
Speaker 1: where people basically intrude, often in offensive ways, into other
Speaker 1: people's zoom conference is and I think it's this inevitable
Speaker 1: tale of Silicon Valley where it's not quite ready for
Speaker 1: the success that it has. And that's why Zoom was
Speaker 1: so interesting to me on how it took off, especially
Speaker 1: with schools and online classrooms, because of that, it was
Speaker 1: still fairly new and as exactly as you said, when
Speaker 1: it's new and hot and everybody wants to use it,
Speaker 1: all the other little cracks starts showing after that. It
Speaker 1: was very surprising to me that Zoom took off so
Speaker 1: much because of that, especially for online classes when you
Speaker 1: want something to be a little more stable for the students,
Speaker 1: and obviously all the privacy concerns there. It sort of
Speaker 1: is a reminder of just how quickly behavior has changed. Obviously,
Speaker 1: video chat was something that existed before, but it was
Speaker 1: not something that all that many people were relying on before.
Speaker 1: It was not something people were thinking about so much before. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, I think in the business world, slack was
Speaker 1: the big sort of trend, the big growth pattern because
Speaker 1: you're chatting with people in between seeing them. Now you
Speaker 1: can't see them, and so you need a way to
Speaker 1: do that, and Zoom has obviously been the play to go.
Speaker 1: But it's going to be interesting to see as time
Speaker 1: goes on how much people move back towards things like
Speaker 1: Microsoft teams maybe hangouts from other places that have a
Speaker 1: bit more of a track record, especially with security. Now,
Speaker 1: this next angle of how coronavirus has changed the way
Speaker 1: we internet, I think it's a good one. So people
Speaker 1: have gone to their local newspaper sites and their local
Speaker 1: TV stations. They've turned to them more for news updates.
Speaker 1: They obviously want to know what's going on in their
Speaker 1: communities a lot, and partisan sites those have maybe not
Speaker 1: had huge decreases, but at least stagnated at least with traffic.
Speaker 1: And people are turning to a lot more large media
Speaker 1: organizations sites that they trust, especially things like New York
Speaker 1: Times and the Washington Post. You know, when the President
Speaker 1: says a lot of things like oh, fake news and whatnot,
Speaker 1: and you know it has its place when things start
Speaker 1: getting heavily politicized. But it's good to see that people
Speaker 1: are turning to these local sites more now there's definitely
Speaker 1: a sense of the last few years have been all
Speaker 1: about skepticism towards the media. Obviously, partisan news sites have
Speaker 1: fed that skepticism of corporate media. But you come to
Speaker 1: a time where you just want the facts, and I
Speaker 1: think people are turning back to those traditional sources and saying,
Speaker 1: if I just want the facts, this is still the
Speaker 1: place I'm going to go. I don't necessarily want the opinions.
Speaker 1: I want to know what the numbers are in my community,
Speaker 1: what restaurants are shut down. I want to know how
Speaker 1: much things are spreading. And so you're seeing more mainstream
Speaker 1: sites which have in many ways struggled in recent years.
Speaker 1: Those have been the places where people have been going.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately this is not necessarily meant a great sort
Speaker 1: of business boom for these companies because a lot of
Speaker 1: these companies make most of their money from advertisers. And
Speaker 1: so even if you have a lot of viewers, if
Speaker 1: advertisers are sort of dropping out, which is what's happening
Speaker 1: now with the economy, the sites are continuing to struggle.
Speaker 1: Local newspapers are continuing to struggle economically even as their readership,
Speaker 1: you know, is skyrocketing. Two sites that some big increases.
Speaker 1: C NBC, the business news website, has seen a huge increase,
Speaker 1: and the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Speaker 1: Obviously people are pointing to them a lot of hard
Speaker 1: numbers and guidance on social distancing and whatnot, so they've
Speaker 1: seen big numbers. And the last section we want to
Speaker 1: talk about video games. Obviously, sports have dropped off a
Speaker 1: huge bit. Uh. ESPN website has gone down. Things like
Speaker 1: Twitch and TikTok. People watching other people play video games
Speaker 1: and interact on that scene has increased. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: Twitch is the largest service to watch other people play
Speaker 1: video games, and they were already that before this. But
Speaker 1: when you look at the chart in their daily numbers,
Speaker 1: you just see right as social distancing sets in, you
Speaker 1: just see their numbers take off explode. And it's one
Speaker 1: of the only forms of entertainment, at least live entertainment
Speaker 1: that's left to us out there. And you know, I
Speaker 1: think TikTok is an interesting one. I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: an app that's only on the phone. You might think
Speaker 1: that this might hurt them somewhat, but I think silly
Speaker 1: entertainment sort of a distraction from all of this waitiness
Speaker 1: is something that people still want, and so I was
Speaker 1: struck by the fact that TikTok was one of the
Speaker 1: apps where things actually haven't changed that much for them.
Speaker 1: They just keep getting more and more popular. That that
Speaker 1: idea of watching somebody get hit in the back of
Speaker 1: the head with a sponge by their wife is like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's something we we need just as
Speaker 1: much now as we did two months ago. Nathaniel Popper,
Speaker 1: reporter at the New York Times, thank you very much
Speaker 1: for joining us. Thanks again for having me. I'm Oscar
Speaker 1: Ramirez and this has been your daily coronavirus update. Don't
Speaker 1: forget that. For today's big news stories, you can check
Speaker 1: me out on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday.
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Speaker 1: your podcast.