Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and how the tech? Are you all right? Friends? We're
Speaker 1: soldiering on in our extremely long series about the history
Speaker 1: of online social networks. I believe this is the fifth
Speaker 1: episode in that series at this point, and by my reckoning,
Speaker 1: we have gone from the mid ninety nineties up to
Speaker 1: or so and so far. If you've been following this series,
Speaker 1: you've probably noticed there have been some waves of similarities
Speaker 1: in networks as they have emerged. So early on, we
Speaker 1: had really simple networks designed to either connect or reconnect people,
Speaker 1: with the emphasis gradually shifting to the reconnect for most
Speaker 1: networks as people were finding their real life friends and
Speaker 1: family in this strange new world of the Internet. Following that,
Speaker 1: we learned about some journaling sites that let users keep
Speaker 1: an ongoing weblog or blog about their lives and hopes
Speaker 1: and dreams and thoughts. It was part personal diary, part
Speaker 1: showcase for your work. A lot of those sites are
Speaker 1: still around today. Many of them have gone through massive changes,
Speaker 1: including changes of ownership, over the years. I'm looking at you.
Speaker 1: Live Journal owned by a Russian company at this point.
Speaker 1: Then we had an age where profiles became a really
Speaker 1: big thing, you know, like Facebook and MySpace really grew
Speaker 1: in this era, where people would create a sort of
Speaker 1: home base online and then they would reach out from
Speaker 1: that home base. There was also a surge of niche
Speaker 1: oriented social networks around this time that appealed to specific demographics,
Speaker 1: like dog owners or people who knit. I didn't really
Speaker 1: talk about ravelry, but that's another example of a social
Speaker 1: network that was catering to a niche audience. Also a
Speaker 1: really exclusive social network for a while, like it was
Speaker 1: invitation only anyway. Then we get to a bunch of
Speaker 1: services that focus on microblogging, you know, ditching the long
Speaker 1: journal format for short, you know, sometimes witty or pithy messages.
Speaker 1: This would be your Twitters, your Plurics, your Jaikus, and
Speaker 1: to a lesser extent, your Tumblers, because Tumbler obviously is
Speaker 1: more than just short blogs. And that was the next entry,
Speaker 1: really and now we're coming up to the latest in
Speaker 1: this series. We're up to about twenty ten, and we
Speaker 1: get to Pinterest, the picture perfect social network, at least
Speaker 1: on the surface. But like many of the companies we've
Speaker 1: already talked about in this series, Pinterest has a dark
Speaker 1: side as l and we'll get to that. But first,
Speaker 1: where did Pinterist come from? Well, it all began with
Speaker 1: Ben Silberman. He had worked for Google before he set
Speaker 1: off to go into business for himself, and first he
Speaker 1: attempted to create an e commerce app for the iPhone
Speaker 1: that he called Tote t O t E. But apparently
Speaker 1: users found the design of Tote too complicated. And I
Speaker 1: can believe that it sounds like something that can happen
Speaker 1: when you consider that Silberman came from Google, because we
Speaker 1: all know Google's projects are driven by engineers, and sometimes
Speaker 1: that shows. Not to say that the products are bad,
Speaker 1: but they work the way an engineer would put it together,
Speaker 1: and for people who aren't engineers, it can sometimes come
Speaker 1: across as needlessly complicated. Anyway, Tote fumbled the bag, as
Speaker 1: it were, and Silverman teamed up with Evan Sharp and
Speaker 1: Paul Sciarra, who came out of Facebook and Radius Ventures
Speaker 1: l C. And together these three brainstormed and idea that
Speaker 1: would be around an image based social network like photograph based,
Speaker 1: not necessarily images that you took yourself. It could be,
Speaker 1: but didn't have to be, And it would be almost
Speaker 1: like a combination of scrap booking and social networks, where
Speaker 1: you could create image boards around themes. Maybe you create
Speaker 1: a board around the theme of Edwardian costuming. I can't
Speaker 1: tell you any of those I've visited, and I'm not
Speaker 1: being facetious. Maybe you create a different board for things
Speaker 1: like scenic overlook looks, places that just have a gorgeous view.
Speaker 1: Maybe you create a board that has interesting jewelry on
Speaker 1: it from various creators, or really anything else, if you
Speaker 1: if you like. So they worked on their idea throughout
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, and in March they launched the site
Speaker 1: with a closed beta, so just a small group of
Speaker 1: users who are testing and out making sure that everything
Speaker 1: marked the way it was intended. They opened this up
Speaker 1: slightly and then people in the beta program were allowed
Speaker 1: to send invites to others, but it was still otherwise
Speaker 1: a closed beta. And like we've seen with other entries
Speaker 1: in this series, that kind of exclusivity and controlled entry
Speaker 1: drove up interest. Like I said in previous episodes, everybody
Speaker 1: wants to get into the club that barely lets anyone
Speaker 1: in because you want to be one of the cool people.
Speaker 1: We'll hear that again before we're through with this series,
Speaker 1: because once upon a time I got to be a
Speaker 1: cool person. It um. It didn't stick, obviously, but we're
Speaker 1: still talking interest here. The team held back on opening
Speaker 1: up the floodgates, and growth was steady, but you know,
Speaker 1: fairly modest. You know, in three months they had three
Speaker 1: thousand users, and in nine months it was up to
Speaker 1: ten thousand, and by a year later, this little niche
Speaker 1: site was the talk of the social network industry, and
Speaker 1: Time magazine declared it one of the best sites in
Speaker 1: the world at that point. So the growth and users exploded,
Speaker 1: and over the years they grew tremendously. These days, the
Speaker 1: number of users are it's somewhere in the four hundred
Speaker 1: thirty million neighborhood, which is not bad. You know, it's
Speaker 1: not Facebook by a long shot, but four thirty million
Speaker 1: is a lot of people. From early on, Pinterest became
Speaker 1: a site that attracted brands to it because companies could
Speaker 1: create Pinterest accounts and boards and use these boards to
Speaker 1: showcase products in attractive ways. So it was kind of
Speaker 1: like getting access to a magazine and being able to
Speaker 1: turn every single page of that magazine into an ad.
Speaker 1: Companies loved this and they worked. Pinterest also became a
Speaker 1: social network that had far more women as members than men,
Speaker 1: which made it a real outlier. In fact, estimates say
Speaker 1: that women make up more than seventy percent of the
Speaker 1: user base on Pinterest, and it kind of tried to
Speaker 1: groom and cultivate a reputation for being a woman friendly
Speaker 1: and safe space. More on that in a moment too, now.
Speaker 1: An early obstacle for Pinterest came when folks actually did
Speaker 1: something no one ever does, and they read the terms
Speaker 1: of service because until the wording said that Pinterest would
Speaker 1: own all images uploaded to the website. Yeah, you might
Speaker 1: have taken the photo. If you upload it to Pinterest,
Speaker 1: Pinterest claims ownership of the image, not you, and in
Speaker 1: Pinterest committed to never selling those images. So you know,
Speaker 1: it was one of those complicated things. You think, well,
Speaker 1: I took the photo, I should have the copyright to
Speaker 1: that photo. But Pinterest was saying, we published the photos,
Speaker 1: so now we have the copyright and you agreed to
Speaker 1: it in the terms of service. So that that was
Speaker 1: a bit of a sticking point early in pinterest history.
Speaker 1: In twenty nineteen, skipping away ahead because I mean the
Speaker 1: company grows, the company gets lots more users, people begin
Speaker 1: to find really creative ways to use it. But there's
Speaker 1: no real point in in diving into all that because
Speaker 1: I've pretty much summed up what I would say. But
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen, the team decided to hold an initial
Speaker 1: public offering. So when you go from being a privately
Speaker 1: held company to a publicly traded company, and it was
Speaker 1: bringing in a lot of revenue, but it had not
Speaker 1: yet become profitable. So again pinterest launched in in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: it's going to become a publicly traded company. But throughout
Speaker 1: its history, at this point, it had not once turned
Speaker 1: a profit. It was operating at a loss. So it's
Speaker 1: bringing in lots and lots of money, but it cost
Speaker 1: more just to keep in business. So this is not
Speaker 1: a huge surprise. It's not like it's an outlier for pinterest.
Speaker 1: We have seen lots of social networks follow this route
Speaker 1: because the first phase of a social network typically is
Speaker 1: all about building value by attracting a large user base.
Speaker 1: You know, you want to get as many people on
Speaker 1: your service as possible and grow, grow, grow, grow, grow.
Speaker 1: That is your goal. Then once you have a pretty
Speaker 1: large user base, you try to figure out how to
Speaker 1: make money off of them or with them, because typically
Speaker 1: your user base becomes your product and advertisers become your customers. Now,
Speaker 1: Pinterest would not host its first profit until twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: which is last year when I'm recording this. Anyway, in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, the company went public. Now, at its height,
Speaker 1: the stock was valued at eighty five dollars per share. However,
Speaker 1: as of this recording, it's around twenty three dollars per share,
Speaker 1: which is a fairly drastic drop off. But we've got
Speaker 1: a bigger one later in this episode. Earlier this year,
Speaker 1: back in June two tho Ben Silberman stepped down as CEO.
Speaker 1: He had been in that position since and he stepped down.
Speaker 1: He is now the chairman of the board and a
Speaker 1: guy named Bill Ready has taken the helm of pinterest,
Speaker 1: And I guess you could say that Bill was prepared
Speaker 1: to do the job anyway. Ready comes from companies like
Speaker 1: PayPal and Google and has a long history and things
Speaker 1: like monetization. Silberman likely stepped down in part due to
Speaker 1: an issue with the company's stock price falling even as
Speaker 1: it was posting its first profits in company history. But
Speaker 1: then there's also this dark stuff that we need to
Speaker 1: talk about that came to light over the past couple
Speaker 1: of years. So in so two former pinterest employees came forward,
Speaker 1: two women who accused Pinterest of being a culture where
Speaker 1: things like racist and sexist behave ivir were running rampant
Speaker 1: within the company, and that there were issues with pay inequality,
Speaker 1: and that the company was known to take retaliatory actions
Speaker 1: against employees who spoke out about this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Then Francis Bower Brower, an executive with Pinterest, sued the
Speaker 1: company on the grounds of gender discrimination and retaliation. Shareholders
Speaker 1: began to sue the company as well. Because of these
Speaker 1: kind of issues, employees staged a digital walkout of pinterest.
Speaker 1: So my guess is like these actions collectively also contributed
Speaker 1: to Silberman's decision to step down. Now, Pinterest would settle
Speaker 1: Brower's lawsuit for twenty million dollars and had an additional
Speaker 1: two and a half million dollars earmarked for charities that
Speaker 1: help you know, women and people of color within the
Speaker 1: tech sector. Meanwhile, one of the women who stepped forward
Speaker 1: in twenty would end up working with California lawmakers to
Speaker 1: draft legislation that protects employees who speak out against their employers.
Speaker 1: So it's legislation that really comes down hard on things
Speaker 1: like retaliation. Then we have the matter of Christine Martinez.
Speaker 1: She claims she is the unacknowledged co founder of pinterest,
Speaker 1: that she worked as an unpaid consultant when Silverman and
Speaker 1: Skiera and Sharp were brainstorming on how pinterest would work.
Speaker 1: She filed a lawsuit that specifically named Silverman and Skiara,
Speaker 1: claiming that they they had listened to her advice. She
Speaker 1: had served as a mentor and the UH council for
Speaker 1: them when it came to designing a product that was
Speaker 1: really targeting women users. So she says, like they didn't
Speaker 1: know anything about appealing to women, so they turned to
Speaker 1: me and I gave them guidance. She claims to have
Speaker 1: been the person responsible for deciding that users would organize
Speaker 1: images on boards, and that she played a part in
Speaker 1: creating the terminology of connecting an image to a ward
Speaker 1: and calling it a an action of pen it like
Speaker 1: you pen it to your your bulletin board. Now, Unfortunately
Speaker 1: for Ms Martinez, she never had any sort of written
Speaker 1: contract with the creators. It's not like she was an
Speaker 1: official contractor or or uh consultant or anything like that.
Speaker 1: It was all more of a verbal agreement. She says.
Speaker 1: There was an understanding she would be compensated should the
Speaker 1: company ever become a success, and when pinterest went public
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen and there was no check in the mail,
Speaker 1: she says she realized that she was not going to
Speaker 1: be compensated and that the co founders, she says, were
Speaker 1: engaged in idea theft. Thus she files a lawsuit against
Speaker 1: the company. Now, the lack of documentation makes it seemed
Speaker 1: to me like miss Martinez has a pretty tough case
Speaker 1: to make, even assuming everything she says is accurate. For
Speaker 1: the record, I have no reason to doubt her. It's
Speaker 1: just that there seems to be little in the way
Speaker 1: of corroborating evidence at this stage. But again I have
Speaker 1: not involved in the trial. There could be tons of
Speaker 1: stuff and I'm just not aware of it. So maybe
Speaker 1: that's the case. But at any rate, as of this recording,
Speaker 1: that lawsuit is moving forward. So Martinez originally filed this
Speaker 1: lawsuit back in September one, and then pinterest moved to
Speaker 1: dismiss the case in December one, and then June of
Speaker 1: this year, by being a judge ruled that the case
Speaker 1: can move forward. Justice is ever so swift here in
Speaker 1: the United States. Anyway. We'll have to see where this
Speaker 1: goes and whether Pinterest will defend itself or settle out
Speaker 1: of court. Okay, that's just one more in our line
Speaker 1: of social networks. We've got lots more to come, but
Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break. We're back. So our
Speaker 1: next social network also relates to images, but this time
Speaker 1: we're talking about Instagram. So we've already mentioned Instagram because
Speaker 1: you know, we covered Facebook and Facebook now known as Meta,
Speaker 1: acquired Instagram in for at the time a staggering one
Speaker 1: billion dollars that would positively be overshadowed by Facebook's subsequent
Speaker 1: acquisition of WhatsApp for sixteen billion dollars two years later.
Speaker 1: So we're just gonna talk briefly about Instagram's early years
Speaker 1: and how things changed post acquisition, because a lot of
Speaker 1: the stuff we talked about kind of feeds right into
Speaker 1: the Facebook entrigue that we already did earlier in this series.
Speaker 1: So before Instagram, there was an app called Bourbon, a
Speaker 1: developer named Kevin's Systrom created Bourbon, which was not a
Speaker 1: type of whiskey, but rather an app that let you
Speaker 1: check into new places and gave your friends the chance
Speaker 1: to see where you were from place to place. It
Speaker 1: was spelled bu, r, b, N, and uh. In many ways,
Speaker 1: this was similar to four square, the original version of
Speaker 1: four square, which had launched in two thousand nine. So
Speaker 1: we did get a little brief period of location based
Speaker 1: check in services that relates to social networks. Some of
Speaker 1: them would interact with social networks so that you can
Speaker 1: post your check ins to say, your Facebook account, that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, and some of these would pivot to
Speaker 1: do other things. Four Square did this. Four Square pivoted
Speaker 1: away from the check in business, mostly because there were
Speaker 1: a lot of people who had safety and privacy concerns
Speaker 1: about these, and it became harder and harder to monetize
Speaker 1: those without falling into some potential traps when it comes
Speaker 1: to regulators, because I mean, obviously, anytime you're monetizing a
Speaker 1: person's location, that gets into some sticky situations. So a
Speaker 1: lot of those would end up moving away from the
Speaker 1: location based check in stuff. Anyway, System got some financial
Speaker 1: backing for Bourbon, and he brought on Mike Krieger to
Speaker 1: help build out the app, but over time they both
Speaker 1: realized that Bourbon was too similar to four Square and
Speaker 1: that their test users were actually sharing photos like crazy
Speaker 1: more than they were using the app to check into
Speaker 1: physical locations. So they decided they would switch rails and
Speaker 1: instead they would develop the app as a photo sharing
Speaker 1: social network. But they wanted to change the name as well,
Speaker 1: and they came up with the name Instagram because it's
Speaker 1: a play on the phrase instant camera and on the
Speaker 1: word telegram, which I'm guessing all of y'all already knew,
Speaker 1: but I thought I would just throw it in there for,
Speaker 1: you know, the sake of being complete now as Instagram.
Speaker 1: The app launched in October, initially just for iOS. Within
Speaker 1: three months, the app had more than a million users,
Speaker 1: so it was off to the races. A month and
Speaker 1: a half after that, they were up to two million users.
Speaker 1: The trajectory of growth outpaced earlier social networks like Facebook
Speaker 1: and Twitter. They were just on a rocket ship, really,
Speaker 1: and I'm guessing that's why Facebook would ultimately come forward
Speaker 1: with an offer to buy out Instagram, because, as anyone
Speaker 1: who has paid any attention to Facebook, slash Meta knows
Speaker 1: the company typically tries to do two things. If any
Speaker 1: other service starts to gain some traction against Facebook's other products,
Speaker 1: first thing they will try to do is buy it,
Speaker 1: and if that fails, they will try to copy it
Speaker 1: in an effort to keep people on Meta slash Facebook platforms,
Speaker 1: because we all know if you're spending time on someone
Speaker 1: else's service, well, then you're spending less time on Meta's services,
Speaker 1: and that's bad for Meta's bottom line. But we're not
Speaker 1: quite up to the acquisition just yet. The early Instagram
Speaker 1: allowed users to post images, to leave comments on other
Speaker 1: people's images, and to follow other users, and that was
Speaker 1: about it. A little less than a year after launch,
Speaker 1: Instagram would introduce options that would really change things up
Speaker 1: make things more attractive for Instagram. They included some digital
Speaker 1: filters and some image editing features. At the same time,
Speaker 1: iPhones cameras were improving, so it was kind of a
Speaker 1: perfect convergence of the hardware improving and the software giving
Speaker 1: more options that attracted new users. And now users could
Speaker 1: tweak their photos, even adding camera effects before sharing them
Speaker 1: with their followers, and it really made Instagram pop in popularity.
Speaker 1: In two thousand twelve, Android users would finally get a
Speaker 1: chance to use Instagram as there was now an Android
Speaker 1: version of the app, And not too long after the
Speaker 1: android version came out, Facebook announced its intent to acquire Instagram. Now,
Speaker 1: when Facebook bought Instagram for a billion bucks, the startup
Speaker 1: app company was really small, like there was a Baker's
Speaker 1: dozen worth of employees. And for those of you who
Speaker 1: aren't familiar with one of Baker's dozen, is that means thirteen.
Speaker 1: So imagine being one of thirteen people when the company
Speaker 1: you work for has been bought by by another company
Speaker 1: for a billion dollars. That had to be a heck
Speaker 1: of a day. So Facebook buys Instagram probably because of
Speaker 1: a combination of factors like a desire to scoop up
Speaker 1: competition because they didn't want the fact that, you know,
Speaker 1: Instagram was attracting younger users. Facebook was kind of already
Speaker 1: having an issue in attracting young users like the users
Speaker 1: they had they had in droves, but it's it was
Speaker 1: getting harder and harder to convince younger people to come
Speaker 1: into the service, whereas Instagram that was really attractive to
Speaker 1: a lot of young people. So one thing Facebook was
Speaker 1: doing was buying audience, but another reason was that they
Speaker 1: did not want some company like Google or Twitter to
Speaker 1: get hold of Instagram and potentially get a leg up
Speaker 1: on Facebook. Now. At the time, the folks that Instagram
Speaker 1: were assured that they would remain in charge and they
Speaker 1: wouldn't really have to worry about Facebook interfering with Instagram's
Speaker 1: operations too much. But as time would go on, the
Speaker 1: team of Instagram would see Facebook both direct Instagram to
Speaker 1: incorporate specific features as well as it would lift some
Speaker 1: of Instagram's functionality for other Facebook products and thus kind
Speaker 1: of make Instagram less special as a result. So Kevin's
Speaker 1: Systrom and Mike Kreeger both chose to leave Instagram in
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen, which was coming in a tough time
Speaker 1: for Facebook, though you could argue not nearly as tough
Speaker 1: as this past year has been in many ways. So
Speaker 1: by two thousand eighteen, Facebook was already known as essentially
Speaker 1: celebrating the death of privacy, which it was getting flak four,
Speaker 1: but the company was also in the spotlight due to
Speaker 1: issues like Cambridge Analytica for an Intelligent scandals, concerns about
Speaker 1: misinformation campaigns, and more. Obviously, a lot of that has
Speaker 1: not changed in years since. In fact, some of it
Speaker 1: has just expanded to other types of misinformation, like when
Speaker 1: the pandemic broke out and COVID misinformation ran rampant on Facebook. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the initial word was that system and Krieger wanted to
Speaker 1: set out to make something new. And it was about
Speaker 1: a year after that, in two thousand nineteen, when publications
Speaker 1: like Wired and The Verge started to publish articles that
Speaker 1: gave more details into what may have driven the co
Speaker 1: founders to leave the company they created, and there were
Speaker 1: a lot of them. For one thing, apparently Instagram's popularity
Speaker 1: was a matter of resentment among certain Facebook staff because
Speaker 1: they were looking at Instagram as pulling traffic away from
Speaker 1: Facebook proper, and so it became kind of a territorial thing. Now,
Speaker 1: it is never good when you have this kind of
Speaker 1: animosity between different departments within the same company. I know
Speaker 1: there's some companies that try to foster a sense of
Speaker 1: competitiveness against each other in these departments. I personally find
Speaker 1: that to be uh counterproductive for the overall health of
Speaker 1: the company. But what do I know. I'm not a
Speaker 1: billionaire anyway, making matters worse, Zuckerberg would say in an
Speaker 1: earnings call that Instagram's success was largely due to the
Speaker 1: support it was getting from Facebook. But as we've already
Speaker 1: heard in this episode, Instagram was already on an adoption
Speaker 1: trajectory that was way more aggressive than Facebook's own history.
Speaker 1: So it was tough because for on one hand, Instagram
Speaker 1: staff were being hated on but because of their success,
Speaker 1: and on the other hand, they their success was being
Speaker 1: claimed by the same department that hated them for being successful.
Speaker 1: So it was kind of a double whammy in that sense.
Speaker 1: But another issue was that there was increased interference and
Speaker 1: restrictions coming from Mark Zuckerberg himself. In particular, there was
Speaker 1: a time when Kevin Sistram was giving interviews to the press,
Speaker 1: and Zuckerberg sequently passed an edict company wide saying no
Speaker 1: one would be allowed to talk to the press unless
Speaker 1: they first got permission from either Zuckerberg or from Cheryl Sandberg.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure that rubbed system the wrong way because
Speaker 1: it sends the message that he's not trustworthy, right, he
Speaker 1: can't represent the company well without permission. He's not towing
Speaker 1: the line. And y'all, I have been on that kind
Speaker 1: of situation in the past, not at iHeart, but in
Speaker 1: the past, I've been in that same situation, and I
Speaker 1: can definitely tell you it feels like an insult. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Like I mentioned before, Facebook was making demands on Instagram
Speaker 1: and lifting features for the core Facebook app, and all
Speaker 1: of that was just not what Systram and Krieger wanted,
Speaker 1: and so they split. Anyway, That's about all I have
Speaker 1: to say about Instagram as we did, as as I said,
Speaker 1: cover some of this stuff already in the Facebook entry. Obviously,
Speaker 1: we've seen Instagram change a great deal over time. There's
Speaker 1: been a greater emphasis on algorithms served content, so you're
Speaker 1: far less likely to see stuff that from your friends
Speaker 1: and family that you follow, and more likely to see
Speaker 1: stuff that Instagram thinks you want to see. So for
Speaker 1: some people that might be great because you're discovering stuff
Speaker 1: that you otherwise wouldn't know, but for others, it's very
Speaker 1: frustrating that you're not seeing the stuff you you joined
Speaker 1: Instagram to see. Right. Uh. Then, of course Instagram introduced
Speaker 1: reels back in twenty twenty. It was a pretty obvious
Speaker 1: attempt to copy TikTok and convince users not to jump
Speaker 1: ship to the younger social network, which had limited success,
Speaker 1: but it's another example. You know. Again, if Facebook can't
Speaker 1: buy it, they try to copy it. Uh. There's also
Speaker 1: the ongoing concern that Instagram's model is causing harm to
Speaker 1: younger users, particularly to young women. So back in late
Speaker 1: twenty one, Facebook whistleblower Francis Hogan shared internal documents from
Speaker 1: her former employer, and she shared them with journalists and lawmakers,
Speaker 1: and among those documents were discussions about how Instagram was
Speaker 1: potentially contributing to negative mental health conditions for young women
Speaker 1: in particular. Uh, that story is still unfolding. It prompted
Speaker 1: Facebook slash Meta to scrap, at least for the time being,
Speaker 1: their plans to launch a version of Instagram targeting younger users,
Speaker 1: which gets into some pretty dark stuff. But I'm going
Speaker 1: to save the rest for another time because I'm sure
Speaker 1: I'll do episodes about Instagram in the future where we'll
Speaker 1: really dive into all that. Now, the same year Instagram launched,
Speaker 1: there was a similar social network called Path that took
Speaker 1: the stage. So again we're seeing waves of similar networks
Speaker 1: hit at the same time. So this time we're talking
Speaker 1: about the centralized theme of a social network centered around
Speaker 1: sharing photos. Now, Path was founded by Dave Morin, a
Speaker 1: former product manager at Facebook and the Napster founder Sean Manning,
Speaker 1: and a former Napster engineer and future Slack designer named
Speaker 1: Dustin Moreau. In so, like Instagram, Path was a mobile
Speaker 1: based social network service. In fact, it remained mobile based
Speaker 1: throughout its history. It would never had a desktop site,
Speaker 1: and it let users share photos with their friends and family.
Speaker 1: But unlike Instagram, Path limited how far and wide users
Speaker 1: could connect. So originally the service would let users connect
Speaker 1: with up to fifty people max. And the implication was
Speaker 1: that Path is really something for users to rely upon
Speaker 1: with their close friends and family, but it's not trying
Speaker 1: to encourage you to share it with every casual acquaintance
Speaker 1: or friends of friends. This would eventually change over the
Speaker 1: course of the services life, which spoiler alert, would ultimately
Speaker 1: come to an end. Path is no longer a thing.
Speaker 1: A Path would later increase the cap to a hundred
Speaker 1: fifty connections, and then ultimately would remove the cap entirely
Speaker 1: because while their approach was meant to give people a
Speaker 1: sense that this is really for your actual community of
Speaker 1: friends and family, that limitation meant Path was inhibiting its
Speaker 1: own growth, and it ultimately meant the Path would not
Speaker 1: reach a level of success and would would fizzle out anyway.
Speaker 1: When it started off, Path had a similar feel to Instagram,
Speaker 1: which was the appeal for for many users um and
Speaker 1: yet it felt smaller than Instagram, and that also appealed
Speaker 1: to a certain group of users. They didn't have to
Speaker 1: worry about their photos being seen by total strangers because
Speaker 1: Path would limit sharing to just their own close contacts. Later,
Speaker 1: Path would incorporate other features that made it similar to
Speaker 1: some of its competitors. Users would be able to post
Speaker 1: updates that were kind of similar to tweets on Twitter.
Speaker 1: They could also use Path to check into locations, kind
Speaker 1: of like four Square or the aforementioned Bourbon But behind
Speaker 1: the scenes, things were not going particularly well. For one thing,
Speaker 1: in twelve, users became aware that Path was recording user
Speaker 1: phone contacts, So if you join Path, it really meant
Speaker 1: handing the company your network of contacts, and at no
Speaker 1: point to Path apparently alert users to this, let alone
Speaker 1: secure their permission, which you know that's a big no now,
Speaker 1: And so the US government got very interested in Path
Speaker 1: and what data the company was actually gathering from its
Speaker 1: users and how the company was using that data, so
Speaker 1: the US Federal Trade Commission or FTC, ultimately would find
Speaker 1: Path eight hundred thousand bucks due to the company storing
Speaker 1: data belonging to underage users in particular, and the US
Speaker 1: government ruled that Path would be subjected to review for
Speaker 1: every two years with regard to its privacy policies and practices.
Speaker 1: On top of that, Path was struggling to compete with
Speaker 1: other social networks like Instagram. It eventually hit a peak
Speaker 1: of around fifteen million users, which is decent, but the
Speaker 1: company still had a fraction of the users that were
Speaker 1: found on bigger social networks. A company called Cacao out
Speaker 1: of South Korea would acquire Path, and while past the
Speaker 1: usage continued to decline in America, it did enjoy a
Speaker 1: modest amount of popula already in Indonesia. However, even that
Speaker 1: would not be enough to keep Path going, and in
Speaker 1: the fall of Kal announced that Path would shut down,
Speaker 1: which it almost immediately did. Okay, we've got some more
Speaker 1: to get through before the end of this episode, but
Speaker 1: first let's take another quick break. Okay, we're back. We're
Speaker 1: up to eleven, and that's when we get a flagship
Speaker 1: product that would mark another concept in social networking, and
Speaker 1: this time it's the concept of disappearing content, as in,
Speaker 1: this product adopted the idea that people should be able
Speaker 1: to share information, and that information should have a limited
Speaker 1: lifespan and after a given amount of time, it disappears forever.
Speaker 1: And I am, of course talking about Snapchat now. Snapchat
Speaker 1: started off as a different named app. It was called
Speaker 1: Peekaboo p I c A b ooh. It was founded
Speaker 1: by three Stanford students, Avan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown.
Speaker 1: And in case you're wondering if the idea was always
Speaker 1: about trying to find ways to convince people to post
Speaker 1: nude and explicit photos and videos, the answers, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: that was the idea the whole time. So just as
Speaker 1: Facebook got its start as a way for Harvard students
Speaker 1: to score how hot their classmates were, Snapchat was all
Speaker 1: about how can we convince people to post risque photos
Speaker 1: of themselves. A lot of startup founders are happy to
Speaker 1: be privileged young men, white men in particular, and they
Speaker 1: are like the worst. And yes, I know I'm editorializing,
Speaker 1: but it's my show and I don't care anyway. The
Speaker 1: story goes that Reggie Brown thought up this idea. He thought,
Speaker 1: if you could make a site that would allow photos
Speaker 1: to only stay up for a given amount of time, uh,
Speaker 1: and then it would disappear forever, you could probably convince
Speaker 1: a lot more young women to post sexy photos of themselves.
Speaker 1: And so then he goes down the hall and he
Speaker 1: tells his buddy and his party partner, Evan Spiegel about it,
Speaker 1: because these guys were total party boys at Stanford, and
Speaker 1: they decided they would pursue this idea. They were like,
Speaker 1: this is a million dollar idea. By the way, my
Speaker 1: guess is Reggie was such a party bro that the
Speaker 1: other two co founders spotted how he might not quite
Speaker 1: fit in with their plans. So in eleven they pushed
Speaker 1: him out of the company. So the guy who allegedly
Speaker 1: came up with the idea of in the first place
Speaker 1: gets kicked out. He would later sue the two co founders.
Speaker 1: He successfully would be awarded more than a hundred fifty
Speaker 1: million dollars. But importantly that was in cash, not in
Speaker 1: a stake in the company, which really important because when
Speaker 1: the company would go public eventually in it turned the
Speaker 1: other co founders into billionaires. So he got a hundred
Speaker 1: fifty million, but the other two became billionaires. Uh that
Speaker 1: same Reggie Brown would later get into trouble with the
Speaker 1: law a couple of times for doing stuff like allegedly
Speaker 1: driving recklessly in luxury cars in South Carolina and also
Speaker 1: allegedly harassing neighbors. He even had a warrant out for
Speaker 1: his arrest at one point, but apparently had left South
Speaker 1: Carolina at the time. But I don't know much else
Speaker 1: about what's happened to him in the years since. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that's all gossipy stuff. Let's focus on the app itself.
Speaker 1: So Peekaboo launched for iOS in two thousand and eleven.
Speaker 1: Brown gets pushed out of the company not long after that.
Speaker 1: By September two thousand eleven, Peekaboo changed his names to Snapchat.
Speaker 1: A year later, Spiegel would write in the first blog
Speaker 1: post for the company, so this is two thousand and
Speaker 1: twelve a sort of pitch for the app, which has
Speaker 1: already been out for a while. And surprise, surprise, he
Speaker 1: left out the bit where the guys developed it in
Speaker 1: the hopes of seeing women take off their clothing. Instead,
Speaker 1: Spiegel said that quote, we're building a photo app that
Speaker 1: doesn't conform to unrealistic notions of beauty or perfection, but
Speaker 1: rather creates a space to be funny, honest, or whatever
Speaker 1: else you might feel like at the moment you take
Speaker 1: and share a snap end quote. So now the emphasis
Speaker 1: was really just on real time ephemeral photo sharing. A
Speaker 1: snap a photo, in other words, would stay open for
Speaker 1: one to ten seconds, depending on what the user had
Speaker 1: set for that photo, and then it would disappear, so
Speaker 1: you get a chance to see it and then it
Speaker 1: was gone. Snapchat launched for Android in two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: and once again Facebook started to take notice of a
Speaker 1: startup that was one pulling focus away from Facebook properties
Speaker 1: and to attracting younger users, something that Facebook is always
Speaker 1: struggling with. Instagram had given Facebook access to a younger
Speaker 1: audience than what had been on Facebook, and Snapchat was
Speaker 1: giving access to an even younger crowd in the form
Speaker 1: of teenagers. So stories kind of conflict of this next bit.
Speaker 1: But the general sinse I get is that at some
Speaker 1: point early in Snapchat's history, probably around or so, Mark
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg made an offer to Evan Spiegel to acquire Snapchat,
Speaker 1: and Spiegel refused. So then Facebook goes and develops an
Speaker 1: app called Poke, which was named after the first in
Speaker 1: Facebook app. That app let users send a little poke
Speaker 1: message back and forth to each other. You would trade
Speaker 1: it off. If you received it, then you could send
Speaker 1: it back and Poke the app was a little different.
Speaker 1: It let users send images to each other, images that
Speaker 1: would automatically delete after viewing or after going unviewed after
Speaker 1: a certain amount of time. Essentially, it was copying what
Speaker 1: Snapchat was already doing. And again, if Facebook can't buy
Speaker 1: its competition, it tries to run them out of business
Speaker 1: by emulating them. Poke briefly got a lot of attention,
Speaker 1: but it was not long before folks kind of bailed
Speaker 1: on Poke and went to Snapchat. So while Zuckerberg I
Speaker 1: had to use the power of Facebook to squash Snapchat,
Speaker 1: at least according to some accounts, that effort failed. Allegedly,
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg then offered to purchase Snapchat for three billion with
Speaker 1: a B dollars, but Spiegel turned that offer down too,
Speaker 1: and then supposedly Google made a couple of offers to
Speaker 1: purchase Snapchat, with one in being for thirty billion dollars
Speaker 1: that's ten times what Zuckerberg had offered, and they still
Speaker 1: got a no thanks. Snapchat, the company which would later
Speaker 1: become Snap Incorporated, would introduce other features over time. Tons
Speaker 1: of camera effects would increase snapchats appeal among young users,
Speaker 1: who could make themselves look like, you know, puppies or
Speaker 1: monsters or I don't know, kids, I don't know what's
Speaker 1: wrong with these kids today? Kids who can understand anything
Speaker 1: they say that takes me back anyway. Users would eventually
Speaker 1: be able to send short videos to one another in
Speaker 1: addition to photos, also with the feature that the videos
Speaker 1: would disappear after viewing. Spiegel and team were aiming at teenagers, primarily,
Speaker 1: you know, kids who didn't want to be on Facebook
Speaker 1: because that's where their parents were, um, nor did they
Speaker 1: necessarily want the restrictions in place on Instagram. The immediacy
Speaker 1: and the temporary nature of snaps was what was attractive
Speaker 1: to its users. Snap would also introduce stories that let
Speaker 1: Snapchat users post a series of photos and videos to make,
Speaker 1: you know, a story. But the big difference here is
Speaker 1: that a Snap is something that a user could send
Speaker 1: to a specific person or group of people. So let's
Speaker 1: say you took a funny pick of your dog and
Speaker 1: you send it as a Snap to your friend who
Speaker 1: happens to love your dog, but you don't, you know,
Speaker 1: blasted to everybody else who couldn't give a crap about
Speaker 1: your dog. I like your dog, Don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: I love dogs. Some of your friends are real jerks.
Speaker 1: But the story, on the other hand, becomes a series
Speaker 1: that anyone following your account can view. So a snap
Speaker 1: is kind of a one to one and a story
Speaker 1: is kind of a one too many. Snapchat also introduced
Speaker 1: a chat feature that doesn't keep an ongoing log for
Speaker 1: that chat, So when you do open up a chat,
Speaker 1: you can read the most recent messages, but nothing before that,
Speaker 1: and anything you post will go to the other person,
Speaker 1: but they also won't see the full history of the
Speaker 1: chat log. It provides a bit more privacy between the
Speaker 1: two communicators. Now, the US Federal Trade Commission, or FTC,
Speaker 1: looked a little bit closer at Snapchat. It was suspicious
Speaker 1: that perhaps the site wasn't quite as diligent or as
Speaker 1: forthcoming about the disappearing nature of material on the service
Speaker 1: as it claimed to users. So the fear was that
Speaker 1: people were posting images and believing them to only be
Speaker 1: around temporarily, and thus there was no real risk to
Speaker 1: privacy when in fact those images might be sitting on
Speaker 1: servers somewhere, or there were third party tools that would
Speaker 1: allow people to record things that were posted to Snapchat,
Speaker 1: and Snapchat was not alerting users to this like it's
Speaker 1: You could argue, it's not Snapchat's responsibility to uh to
Speaker 1: to look after all these third party things, but you
Speaker 1: could argue it is that's responsibility to let users know, hey,
Speaker 1: this is an issue, and they weren't doing that. So
Speaker 1: the FTC argued Snapchat had deceived users with regard to
Speaker 1: the disappearing nature of the media that was shared on
Speaker 1: the service. So the FTC pointed out a few ways
Speaker 1: that snaps could outlast what Snapchat had claimed, and in
Speaker 1: the end, Snapchat agreed to pay a settlement to the
Speaker 1: FTC over these and other issues. Is including the fact
Speaker 1: that Snapchat was apparently harvesting location data from Android users
Speaker 1: while not disclosing that in terms of service. Snap would
Speaker 1: also introduce a tool called Discovery, which allowed brands to
Speaker 1: post content on Snapchat. I'm not gonna go further into
Speaker 1: that because I feel like that's really more of something
Speaker 1: I can chat about in a full episode about the company,
Speaker 1: and in Snapchat introduced spectacles. These are physical glasses that
Speaker 1: have built in cameras. In the frames, they the camera's
Speaker 1: face outward, obviously because who wants to just see, you know,
Speaker 1: the skin on the temple of the person wearing it,
Speaker 1: and they compare with a smartphone and thus record very
Speaker 1: short snippets of video. They were initially sold through a
Speaker 1: proprietary vending machine called snap Butt, but you could later
Speaker 1: pick them up online. When Snapchat, now known as Snap Incorporated,
Speaker 1: went public, the stock was to be priced at seventeen
Speaker 1: dollars per share. It would end up selling for more
Speaker 1: than that. Kind of had an up and down first
Speaker 1: day throughout the day, and it ended on twenty four
Speaker 1: dollars and forty cents per share, so above what they
Speaker 1: had planned. That's good news for a company at its
Speaker 1: peak in one shares traded at more than eighty dollars
Speaker 1: per share. Really good right. However, today, as I record
Speaker 1: this episode, they're selling closer to nine dollars forty cents
Speaker 1: per share, which is big, old youch Now, this is
Speaker 1: not the lowest that Snap has ever traded, I should add,
Speaker 1: but it ain't great. This past year, Spiegel sent on
Speaker 1: a memo to all employees, indicating that the company would
Speaker 1: be laying off around of the workforce and that it
Speaker 1: would also refocus on the three main areas of development,
Speaker 1: which are community growth, revenue growth, and augmented reality, with
Speaker 1: other areas receiving a reduced budget or being eliminated entirely. Recently,
Speaker 1: Evan Spiegel another message, letting employees know that he wants
Speaker 1: them back in the office for eight percent of the week,
Speaker 1: so four days out of the week for most folks.
Speaker 1: Spiegel has indicated that he thinks that the company isn't
Speaker 1: seeing as much collaboration as it needs to succeed. This
Speaker 1: is in line with what we've seen with a lot
Speaker 1: of other criticisms that we've heard about working remotely over
Speaker 1: the last year or so. Honestly, I'm not sure how
Speaker 1: realistic that is, Like, does that actually have the big
Speaker 1: impact that business owners think or are these other factors
Speaker 1: in the economy having a much larger impact on companies.
Speaker 1: And one of the places that business leaders look to
Speaker 1: blame a thing that they actually have control over is
Speaker 1: whether or not their employees have to come into the office.
Speaker 1: I again, this is me editorializing, but I feel like
Speaker 1: some business leaders fret if they don't have more control
Speaker 1: over their workforce, if they feel like their workers are
Speaker 1: not there for them to look in on and make
Speaker 1: sure that they're actually doing their job as opposed to,
Speaker 1: you know, slacking off or something. They just suspect that
Speaker 1: people won't do their jobs if they're not under the
Speaker 1: thumb of the boss at the office, which speaks very
Speaker 1: lowly of their opinion of their employees and my own estimation. Um,
Speaker 1: and I don't think that's necessarily the case. I do
Speaker 1: think because it's something they can have control over, they
Speaker 1: jump on it. Because even executives, even billionaires, realize there's
Speaker 1: stuff they have no control over and that is terrifying
Speaker 1: to them. For the rest of us, we deal with
Speaker 1: it every day because we're not billionaires, so we have
Speaker 1: less control over lots of stuff in our lives and
Speaker 1: we just cope. But billionaire's they're a delicate punch anyway. Um,
Speaker 1: they won't have to go back into the office until
Speaker 1: February of three, and then at that point they're expected
Speaker 1: to spend of the week they're I'm not sure what
Speaker 1: the reaction has been among Snapchat employees, because this is
Speaker 1: fairly recent news. As a record this episode, but I
Speaker 1: would imagine that a lot of people are not terribly
Speaker 1: happy about it anyway. UM, I should likely do a
Speaker 1: full episode about Snap and Snapchat really to dive into
Speaker 1: the whole thing. That's a quick overview of this odd
Speaker 1: social network. There's a lot more to say. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a ton of of various criticisms have been directed
Speaker 1: at Snapchat, some in good faith, some not. Uh, there
Speaker 1: are lots of controversies around the service. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: targeting teenagers. But the nature of the app, and when
Speaker 1: you know that the creators, at least at some level,
Speaker 1: we're thinking about a way of encouraging women to take
Speaker 1: naked photos of themselves. That doesn't speak super well, right, Like,
Speaker 1: that's really problematic to put it lightly. But yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: leave all that for a future episode because there's multiple
Speaker 1: sides to the story. I don't want to oversimplify it
Speaker 1: and say that this is all a lest civy, this
Speaker 1: attempt to encourage people to take risk a photos. Uh.
Speaker 1: Snap has pointed out multiple times they actually have no
Speaker 1: way of seeing the content that's sent across their network,
Speaker 1: which is both important for user security and it's also
Speaker 1: important for the company's security because if anything ever is
Speaker 1: sent through Snapchat that ends up being dangerous. For example,
Speaker 1: let's say that you know, uh, bad actors, some terrorists,
Speaker 1: whether international or domestic, are using Snapchat to send information
Speaker 1: back and forth. Then the company has deniability right if
Speaker 1: they're not able to see what is being sent across
Speaker 1: the network, they cannot be held culpable for facilitating any
Speaker 1: of those communications. So you know, there's that too. It
Speaker 1: means that you know, if you if you want to
Speaker 1: be able to have that immunity from culpability, then you
Speaker 1: also can't have access to all the you know, risk
Speaker 1: a photos being sent back and forth. Okay, that's it,
Speaker 1: I'm done being a prude. Well, we'll sign off on
Speaker 1: this episode. We'll be back with more. We're coming up
Speaker 1: on a couple of other interesting entries and hopefully wrapping
Speaker 1: up this series. I hope in the next episode we'll
Speaker 1: see um and then the mean time, I'm still working
Speaker 1: on the end of the year episode as well, where
Speaker 1: I'm looking at some of the big stories that have
Speaker 1: broken across two in the text space. If there are
Speaker 1: any that you think I should definitively include that don't
Speaker 1: involve Twitter and elon Musk because obviously those are going
Speaker 1: to go in. Then reach out and let me know.
Speaker 1: There are a couple of ways you can do that.
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Speaker 1: me know to use it in a future episode. Um,
Speaker 1: I won't do it unless you tell me too, or
Speaker 1: if you prefer, you can reach out to me via Twitter.
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