Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech
Speaker 1: are you? So it is a wild time on the
Speaker 1: social network platform seen these days. If you're not active
Speaker 1: on social networks, I think you should count yourself fortunate,
Speaker 1: because frankly, I find it exhausting to be covering this
Speaker 1: and to be using any of these social platforms right now. Personally,
Speaker 1: I had scaled way back on my social network presence
Speaker 1: until fairly recently I kind of dipped my toe back
Speaker 1: in and then everything went banana. And that's why it
Speaker 1: has convinced me that maybe I should have just, you know,
Speaker 1: kept kind of at a distance. But anyway, today I
Speaker 1: thought I would give an overview about what's going on
Speaker 1: with the microblogging landscape, which for the longest time was
Speaker 1: dominated by Twitter, and then the various attempts of different
Speaker 1: social networks to compete with Twitter. So, first of let's
Speaker 1: just talk about Twitter. And I've done episodes about the
Speaker 1: company's history before, so instead of going through an exhaustive history,
Speaker 1: we're going to do a recap. So Once upon a
Speaker 1: time there was a company that was trying to launch
Speaker 1: a podcasting service, and this was called Odio. But then
Speaker 1: Apple's cannonball into podcasting would drink Odeo's milkshake to mix
Speaker 1: metaphors and references. A few folks at Odeo were also
Speaker 1: working on kind of a spinoff project, and it was
Speaker 1: a tool that would let one person post a text
Speaker 1: message to a whole audience of people all at the
Speaker 1: same time. And the idea was that through this service,
Speaker 1: people could connect with one another or follow other people,
Speaker 1: and then you could blast out quick messages. Maybe you
Speaker 1: would do something like I'm going to go see the
Speaker 1: Struts at Variety Playhouse. Who else is going now? The
Speaker 1: service originally depended upon SMS texting technology that had a
Speaker 1: real limit to the number of characters you could send
Speaker 1: in a message. So this new service, which would eventually
Speaker 1: be called Twitter, originally had a cap of one hundred
Speaker 1: and forty characters per message. It reserved some characters so
Speaker 1: that you could have a username for example, but one
Speaker 1: hundred and forty characters was as long as you could post.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and seven, Twitter would get a big boost,
Speaker 1: so they launch in like the summer of two thousand
Speaker 1: and six. But in two thousand and seven, that's where
Speaker 1: it landed on people's radars because they went to south
Speaker 1: By Southwest, the big conference that's a music conference, a
Speaker 1: movie conference, and you know interactive. So Twitter had this
Speaker 1: bright idea. The people there had this great idea really
Speaker 1: to set up television screens that would display posted Twitter
Speaker 1: messages to people who were just at the conference, so
Speaker 1: they could actually see these messages pop up. And y'all,
Speaker 1: folks love to see their stuff go up on a
Speaker 1: big screen. So suddenly you had a ton of people
Speaker 1: signing up for Twitter and tweeting all over the place
Speaker 1: and keeping an eye out to see if maybe they
Speaker 1: would pop up on screen. So the strategy drove enrollment
Speaker 1: and buzz. And because you had so many influential people
Speaker 1: at stuff By Southwest, including a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: tech journals and stuff, it really made Twitter's relevance climb significantly. Now,
Speaker 1: there were a couple of big draws to Twitter. Over
Speaker 1: the years, you could gather a fairly large following, and
Speaker 1: so celebrities and brands found Twitter useful. Some famous folks
Speaker 1: used it to promote their work or sometimes they were
Speaker 1: doing it so that they could land sponsorships and that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Others used it just to kind of
Speaker 1: goof around or to tackle causes that they believed in.
Speaker 1: Some did a combination of these things. It wasn't like
Speaker 1: you could do just one or the other. And the
Speaker 1: presence of these famous people on Twitter meant that it
Speaker 1: was possible that you could have an interaction with a
Speaker 1: famous person. That got a lot of regular old Twitter
Speaker 1: users like me really excited. I mean, I still think
Speaker 1: about the time when Neil Gaman retweeted one of my posts.
Speaker 1: It got me more visibility than anything else I'd ever
Speaker 1: done anyway. Another big draw was that news organizations and
Speaker 1: the folks staffing those organizations were flocking to Twitter. The
Speaker 1: platform became a way for journalists to rapidly disseminate big stories,
Speaker 1: and Twitter became associated with breaking news. Folks in the
Speaker 1: news business also built out their networks with each other.
Speaker 1: Peer's got a chance to communicate directly with their colleagues
Speaker 1: working for other publications, and Twitter also would serve as
Speaker 1: a way to gather leads to unfolding stories. You know,
Speaker 1: journalists would open up their dms and that way, if
Speaker 1: you happened to know of this firecracker of a story
Speaker 1: that wasn't in the public yet, you could send it
Speaker 1: to one of these journalists. So it was a really
Speaker 1: useful tool for writers and journalists and reporters and that school.
Speaker 1: Now other important uses of Twitter emerged as well. Agencies
Speaker 1: in charge of sending out emergency messages would use Twitter
Speaker 1: to help spread word about everything from traffic conditions to wildfires.
Speaker 1: Anyone who was on Twitter for any length of time
Speaker 1: also knows that Twitter would become something of an earthquake tracker,
Speaker 1: because you would see messages pop up that would say
Speaker 1: something like quake, and there'd be a ripple effect as
Speaker 1: the quake moved outward from its source, and you would
Speaker 1: actually be able to track that on Twitter in real time.
Speaker 1: If you were following people who were say in California,
Speaker 1: for example, you'd see it all the time. Twitter would
Speaker 1: also become a tool for activists and protesters around the world,
Speaker 1: which also meant that more authoritarian governments around the world
Speaker 1: started to try and block Twitter within their borders. In
Speaker 1: the spring of twenty twenty two, rumor first spread about
Speaker 1: Elon Musk setting his sights on buying Twitter, and that
Speaker 1: whole saga was filled with drama and theatrics, mostly coming
Speaker 1: from Elie Musk himself. There were times when he antagonistically
Speaker 1: pursued the purchase of Twitter, at other times when he
Speaker 1: tried to back out of it, which led to Twitter
Speaker 1: suing Elon Musk for trying to get out of a
Speaker 1: deal that was pretty clear on the no backseis clause. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: Musk did buy Twitter, and it happened just a short
Speaker 1: time before the matter was supposed to be decided in court.
Speaker 1: No big surprise there. He took possession of Twitter in
Speaker 1: early October twenty twenty two. Then Musk began to gut
Speaker 1: Twitter of employees, so as a company that once had
Speaker 1: around eight thousand staff and it ended up being closer
Speaker 1: to fifteen hundred. Entire departments were eliminated, and we started
Speaker 1: seeing lots of predictions about how Twitter's days were numbered
Speaker 1: unless things would change dramatically. Former Twitter developers warned that
Speaker 1: there weren't enough people at the company to continue developing
Speaker 1: the platform while also making sure that everything else just
Speaker 1: kept on running in the process, and the general consensus
Speaker 1: was that Twitter was on borrowed time barring a massive change,
Speaker 1: and by borrowed time. I mean that there would come
Speaker 1: a point where Twitter would no longer reliably be active,
Speaker 1: and that it would have lots of interruptions in service now.
Speaker 1: During the same time, Musk's behavior encouraged certain populations on
Speaker 1: Twitter and antagonized others. He claimed to be a proponent
Speaker 1: of free speech, but it quickly became clear that what
Speaker 1: he really meant was he favored his own speech being free.
Speaker 1: There were numerous cases in which people said things Musk
Speaker 1: didn't like and found themselves banned or their messages censored.
Speaker 1: Today Twitter is a weird and chaotic mess The company
Speaker 1: has eased off on bands and restrictions that previously cracked
Speaker 1: down on stuff like hate speech and misinformation, so a
Speaker 1: lot of those parties are back at Twitter now. Musk
Speaker 1: himself has tweeted out messages that some have said are
Speaker 1: anti Semitic. I should add that others debate whether or
Speaker 1: not the messages are actually anti Semitics, but that's in
Speaker 1: the conversation now. A lot of the reports about hate
Speaker 1: speech on Twitter end up being anecdotal, and that's not
Speaker 1: really evidence. You can't really rely on that, you know,
Speaker 1: just because one person may have seen something truly awful
Speaker 1: on Twitter doesn't mean that that's, you know, indicative of
Speaker 1: a bigger problem. However, some agencies have conducted various analyzes
Speaker 1: and surveys to kind of get a better handle on this.
Speaker 1: The Institute of Strategic Dialogue conducted such a survey and
Speaker 1: found or a study rather and found a quantifiable increase
Speaker 1: in the amount of hate speech, specifically anti Semitic hate
Speaker 1: speech on Twitter. Other studies have shown that the company
Speaker 1: has been slow to respond to this problem. The people
Speaker 1: who used to be in charge of that kind of
Speaker 1: content moderation stuff no longer with the company. Now coupled
Speaker 1: with this is something that Twitter really can't ignore. They
Speaker 1: might ignore the rise of hate speech, or it may
Speaker 1: not even be ignoring. It may just be that they
Speaker 1: literally don't have the manpower to do enough about it.
Speaker 1: But one thing they can ignore is how advertisers are
Speaker 1: viewing Twitter these days. According to The New York Times,
Speaker 1: ad dollars make up ninety percent of Twitter's overall revenue,
Speaker 1: so ninety percent of the money coming into Twitter depends
Speaker 1: upon advertising. Twitter literally cannot afford to lose advertisers, but
Speaker 1: the company has seen a sharp decline in advertising revenue
Speaker 1: over the last several months since Musk took control again.
Speaker 1: According to The New York Times, and this was in
Speaker 1: an article that posted back in June of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: revenues were down fifty nine percent year over year of
Speaker 1: the April to May period, so one month period, So
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three April to May, Twitter made fifty
Speaker 1: nine percent less revenue than it had April to May
Speaker 1: in twenty On top of that, the Times reported that
Speaker 1: Twitter was falling well short of its sales projections, up
Speaker 1: to thirty percent short in some cases. Meanwhile, shareholders of
Speaker 1: a different Musk owned company, Tesla, were or i should
Speaker 1: say Musk operated company, because while he is a majority
Speaker 1: owner of Tesla, he's not the only one. But shareholders
Speaker 1: were concerned that Elon was spending a bit too much
Speaker 1: time with his new company of Twitter, and not enough
Speaker 1: tending to matters of concern back at Tesla. So Musk
Speaker 1: faced pressure from Tesla's shareholders to name a new Twitter CEO,
Speaker 1: and at the same time, he recognized that advertisers were
Speaker 1: not eager to sign on to the new face of Twitter,
Speaker 1: so he needed to do something, and he named Linda Yakerino,
Speaker 1: a former executive with NBC Universal, as Twitter's new CEO. Now,
Speaker 1: she has led sales teams at big companies, and she's
Speaker 1: known for her relationships with advertisers, So this move made
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. A lot of people said, Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe we're going to see some stuff turn around here,
Speaker 1: because she clearly is going to mend fences between Twitter
Speaker 1: and advertisers. But Musk didn't actually walk away from Twitter.
Speaker 1: He's still very much a presence there, and based on
Speaker 1: recent moves, it's very hard to believe he's not, at
Speaker 1: least on some level, calling most of the shots. If
Speaker 1: he's not, then Yakarino really needs to rein him in
Speaker 1: because he's been doing more harm to the company recently.
Speaker 1: And then, on top of all of this other mess
Speaker 1: we've been talking about, we've got Twitter the company's financial woes.
Speaker 1: That drop in revenue has meant that Twitter has been
Speaker 1: in a real tough place financially, and a lot of
Speaker 1: reporting has been about how Twitter has failed to pay
Speaker 1: its bills, like all sorts of bills, bills ranging from
Speaker 1: promised payouts to current and former employees who were guaranteed
Speaker 1: a bonus payout that was at fifty percent of goal
Speaker 1: and then never got them. They have now created a
Speaker 1: class action lawsuit against Twitter to seek those payments. Then
Speaker 1: you have the former CEO and leaders of Twitter who
Speaker 1: are suing the company because they say they are owed
Speaker 1: fees to cover legal expenses that they incurred as a
Speaker 1: result of this whole process, and that Twitter owes them
Speaker 1: that money and hasn't paid them. Then you also have
Speaker 1: the owners of cloud services who have said that Twitter
Speaker 1: has failed to pay its bills for the hosting services
Speaker 1: these cloud companies give Twitter, not give sell to Twitter.
Speaker 1: And then you have landlords who are saying that Twitter
Speaker 1: has failed to pay rent on office spaces in various cities.
Speaker 1: And considering Elon Musk's push to have folks come back
Speaker 1: to the office, it does seem odd that he and
Speaker 1: wouldn't make sure that rent was paid up so that
Speaker 1: there would be an office to come into in the
Speaker 1: first place. The negligence has led to one landlord to
Speaker 1: actually evict Twitter from its office space. This would be
Speaker 1: in an office space in Boulder, Colorado. So there had
Speaker 1: been at one time around three hundred Twitter employees who
Speaker 1: worked out of that office, although around a third of
Speaker 1: them were either fired or left when Elon Musk took
Speaker 1: over Twitter. So I guess that means around two hundred
Speaker 1: of them don't have an office to go to considering
Speaker 1: this eviction. Other landlords have filed lawsuits against Twitter, also
Speaker 1: seeking out past rent because they say they haven't received
Speaker 1: payment from the company recently. Then there's this music trade
Speaker 1: group that has sued Twitter over copyright infringement issues. They're
Speaker 1: looking for like more than a quarter of a billion
Speaker 1: dollars in damages. The list of aggrieved people and entities
Speaker 1: seeking payment from Twitter is a long and exhaustive one.
Speaker 1: All this and more prompted a lot of folks to
Speaker 1: ask the question, is there anywhere else to go? Is
Speaker 1: there any alternative to Twitter? And I would say the
Speaker 1: answer to that is yeah, but you're probably not gonna
Speaker 1: like it. I'll explain more, but before we dive into
Speaker 1: the next chapter of the micro blogging drama Saga, let's
Speaker 1: take a break to thank our sponsors. We're back, and
Speaker 1: before I dive into this next section two, deeply, I
Speaker 1: do want to say there have been lots of alternatives
Speaker 1: to Twitter over the years. We are talking about a
Speaker 1: couple of recent examples in today's episode, but some of
Speaker 1: them have been around for ages. In fact, some of
Speaker 1: them date all the way back to when Twitter itself
Speaker 1: was first coalescing as part of odio. For example, there
Speaker 1: was jai Ku Jaiku that launched a full month before
Speaker 1: Twitter did. A pair of finish developed created Jaiku, and
Speaker 1: Google purchased Jaiku in the fall of two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: and well, you can probably guess Jaiku's fate from there.
Speaker 1: Like so many other Google projects and acquisitions, it languished
Speaker 1: without real direction or support for a while until Google
Speaker 1: ultimately shut it down. That has happened way too frequently.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and eight, a service called Plerk debuted.
Speaker 1: Also shared some similarities with Twitter, but with a different
Speaker 1: user interface and layout an approach to microblogging. Clerk kept
Speaker 1: a fairly low profile. It's still around today, but it
Speaker 1: never really got the traction of Twitter. And that's just
Speaker 1: two examples. There are many more, including a couple that
Speaker 1: I will talk about later in this episode that debuted
Speaker 1: a few years ago but really didn't get much attention
Speaker 1: until late last year after Musk purchased Twitter. The one
Speaker 1: that has the most buzz right now is clear. It
Speaker 1: is from a goliath of a company, and I'm talking
Speaker 1: about Meta, formerly known as Facebook and the service that
Speaker 1: some have called the Twitter killer that has the actual
Speaker 1: name of Threads. And while most of us became aware
Speaker 1: of Threads just last week when Meta surprisingly launched the
Speaker 1: service a little early, this wasn't the first Meta product
Speaker 1: to actually be called Threads. Meta had previously pushed out
Speaker 1: Threads in twenty nineteen, but at that time, Meta, which
Speaker 1: at that point was still just Facebook, wasn't really taking
Speaker 1: aim at Twitter. Now they had a different target and
Speaker 1: rival in mind. It was Snapchat. So the original Threads,
Speaker 1: which like the current version was also tied to Instagram,
Speaker 1: was an app that combined photo and video sharing capabilities
Speaker 1: with quick messaging. Just as Instagram's Reels product was trying
Speaker 1: to undermine TikTok, the Threads app, the original thread app
Speaker 1: was intended to take a big old bite out a Snapchat.
Speaker 1: And why Well, the big reason is that Meta slash
Speaker 1: Facebook has a pretty big challenge facing it, which is
Speaker 1: attracting new, younger users to its various platforms, or at
Speaker 1: least there's a perception problem there. So the perception is that,
Speaker 1: for example, Facebook is for old people. It's where your
Speaker 1: parents are. That's the narrative anyway, though the company Oberlough
Speaker 1: cites a study that suggests the largest age demographic on
Speaker 1: Facebook right now is the twenty five to thirty four crowd,
Speaker 1: followed closely by the eighteen to twenty four demographic. Now,
Speaker 1: since I'm closer to fifty than i am to forty five,
Speaker 1: those sound young to me. But I guess if you're
Speaker 1: looking long term and you want to make sure your
Speaker 1: company can continue to grow, which is a really big
Speaker 1: challenge when you hit the size of a company like Meta,
Speaker 1: then worrying about younger folks is a big deal. You
Speaker 1: want to make sure you have an avenue to bring
Speaker 1: new users into your ecosystem. Meanwhile, apps like Snapchat and
Speaker 1: to a greater extent, TikTok have had lots of engagement
Speaker 1: among young people, and so Meta, doing what Meta does,
Speaker 1: look to find ways to either acquire competitors, or, if
Speaker 1: that doesn't work, to replicate what they do in the
Speaker 1: hopes that this would move more young folks to their
Speaker 1: platforms and be able to kind of, you know, get
Speaker 1: the other competitors to go out of business just by
Speaker 1: virtue of the fact that you're already huge anyway, Meta
Speaker 1: pushed threads this other version of threads, the Snapchat version
Speaker 1: of threads, for a while, but not that many people
Speaker 1: actually jumped on board, And in twenty twenty one, Meta
Speaker 1: pulled the thread on threads and the whole thing unraveled.
Speaker 1: Meta kept trying to find ways to mimic its competitors
Speaker 1: in the meantime. Then we get to Musk acquiring Twitter
Speaker 1: in late twenty twenty two and how the shift on
Speaker 1: the platform upset a lot of users as well as advertisers. Plus,
Speaker 1: Twitter was shedding talent in waves of layoffs, and this
Speaker 1: situation spelled out an opportunity to Meta. There was a
Speaker 1: clear space for the services that Twitter provided. People recognized
Speaker 1: that what Twitter did was at least on some level valuable,
Speaker 1: which meant there was potential money to be made with
Speaker 1: advertisers who were concerned about associating their brand with Twitter
Speaker 1: itself because it was such a volatile platform. So a
Speaker 1: Twitter rival could help bring more folks into the meta
Speaker 1: landscape and also bring potentially more advertising money into the company.
Speaker 1: And as a bonus, it would allow one billionaire in
Speaker 1: the form of Mark Zuckerberg to splatter mud on another
Speaker 1: that of Elon Musk. By late twenty twenty two, Meta
Speaker 1: started work on this project, which was top secret at
Speaker 1: the time. Early rumors outside the company started to really
Speaker 1: get buzzing in the spring of twenty twenty three. Zuckerberg
Speaker 1: also played a on the negative reputation of Musk's Twitter,
Speaker 1: saying that there needed to be an alternative that was
Speaker 1: less hateful and chaotic and mercurial. I think he at
Speaker 1: one point used the phrase a sane platform. He also
Speaker 1: indicated that one thing he thought Twitter always needed was
Speaker 1: a billion users, which seemed to be shot spired at
Speaker 1: the fact that Meta has so many active users across
Speaker 1: its platforms. So earlier this year, word got out that
Speaker 1: Meta was in fact working on its own take on
Speaker 1: Twitter's approach, and Elon Musk responded to the news in
Speaker 1: his mature way by challenging Mark Zuckerberg to a cage match. Zuckerberg,
Speaker 1: who famously has been spending a lot of time working
Speaker 1: out and training in martial arts, eagerly accepted the challenge.
Speaker 1: At one point, Elon Musk's mom stepped in to say
Speaker 1: the whole fight had been called off, But even since
Speaker 1: then there have been more rumblings as Musk has grown
Speaker 1: increasingly upset about Meta's launch of Threads version two point zero.
Speaker 1: So in the first week of July this year, which
Speaker 1: is last week as a record, this Meta launched Threads,
Speaker 1: and like the previous incarnation, it's tied to Instagram, so
Speaker 1: users need to have an Instagram account in order to
Speaker 1: create a Threads account, and as of the recording of
Speaker 1: this podcast, that connection between the two is such that
Speaker 1: if you wanted to subsequently delete your Threads account, you
Speaker 1: would first have to also nuke your Instagram account, so
Speaker 1: you know you can't jump on threads, decide it's not
Speaker 1: for you, and then say I want to wipe all
Speaker 1: that off. I don't want it sitting there without also
Speaker 1: killing off your Instagram account, and if you're a big Instagram user,
Speaker 1: that's a non starter. I think. Now one of my
Speaker 1: friends said this isn't really that big of a deal
Speaker 1: because you could always just not use threads and just
Speaker 1: let it lie dormant, and that is true, you could
Speaker 1: do that. My concern is, let's say you've posted some
Speaker 1: stuff on threads in the past that could potentially bite
Speaker 1: you in the butt later on, because we've seen this
Speaker 1: happen with Twitter over and over again. Right, Maybe you
Speaker 1: criticized a company and now maybe you're interviewing with that company,
Speaker 1: and so they do a deep dive in your social
Speaker 1: and they're like, huh, we don't want to hire you
Speaker 1: because five years ago you said that we are stinky
Speaker 1: poop poopy pants and that we don't like that. Well,
Speaker 1: you don't want that sticking around, Right. Maybe you said
Speaker 1: some rude things about someone who now is an authoritarian
Speaker 1: dictator of a country and you'd rather they not notice you.
Speaker 1: Or maybe you have grown as a person, but perhaps
Speaker 1: in your younger days you posted stuff that at the
Speaker 1: time you were thinking was really edgy, but really it
Speaker 1: was just poorly thought out quote unquote jokes. We've seen
Speaker 1: that come back to haunt people. You might want to
Speaker 1: eliminate your thread's account, right. You might just say like, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't want to hunt through everything and take out
Speaker 1: anything that could potentially be harmful to me. I just
Speaker 1: want to get rid of the whole thing. But then
Speaker 1: you would have to kill your Instagram account too, and
Speaker 1: that could be a bridge too far, depending upon how
Speaker 1: active you are on Instagram. Anyway, Meta claims that it
Speaker 1: will change this further down the road, So that you
Speaker 1: can eliminate your Thread's account without touching Instagram. But for
Speaker 1: the moment, tying Threads to Instagram makes a whole lot
Speaker 1: of sense. And why is that, Well, it's because Instagram
Speaker 1: boasts more than a billion active users. In fact, depending
Speaker 1: upon who's doing the reporting, it can go all the
Speaker 1: way up to more than two billion users. By the way,
Speaker 1: that is a heck of a discrepancy. A discrepancy of
Speaker 1: a billion plus users is ridiculous. But you know, it's
Speaker 1: one thing to go with the official statement and another
Speaker 1: thing to go with the estimations that analts make. If
Speaker 1: I'm going with the official statement, we just say more
Speaker 1: than a billion, which is a whole bunch, right, So
Speaker 1: it makes sense to tap into that already existing user
Speaker 1: base of Instagram users rather than just build out a
Speaker 1: brand new user base from scratch. And it is working,
Speaker 1: as I record this, Threads as see more than one
Speaker 1: hundred million people establish a Threads account. It took Twitter
Speaker 1: five years to hit one hundred million users. Threads did
Speaker 1: it in five days. Now, you could argue that Threads
Speaker 1: is cheating because it's tied to an already insanely popular app,
Speaker 1: and that's you know, a fair point, but at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, it doesn't really matter how Meta
Speaker 1: got there, at least not to Twitter. It doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1: It's that here they are and they are getting wildly popular. Moreover,
Speaker 1: Instagram has one of the features that made Twitter so
Speaker 1: enticing to large numbers of people, and that is celebrities.
Speaker 1: Celebrities who are on Instagram now a lot of celebrities
Speaker 1: have established a threads account as well. They can achieve
Speaker 1: through threads what they were doing on Twitter, and they
Speaker 1: don't have to go to Twitter to do it, and
Speaker 1: so that's a huge blow to Twitter. Celebrities have an alternative,
Speaker 1: and because they are one of the big draws on
Speaker 1: any social networking platform, that's a big problem. If Twitter
Speaker 1: sees celebrities jump ship for threads, then that's also going
Speaker 1: to affect all the people who follow those celebrities. And
Speaker 1: you know, there might be people who are only there
Speaker 1: on Twitter to follow celebrities, so they'll also jump ship.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that news organizations are going to see
Speaker 1: the same sort of success on threads. Not to say
Speaker 1: that they won't be there. They will, I just don't
Speaker 1: know if it will work as well as it had
Speaker 1: on Twitter. We'll talk about a different Twitter alternative when
Speaker 1: I where I think news agencies are seeing a bit
Speaker 1: more comfort level with the way that the platform works.
Speaker 1: But I don't think it's going to be the solution
Speaker 1: to the issue of losing Twitter, So we'll talk about
Speaker 1: that later. Though Musk has hurled some accusations at Meta.
Speaker 1: He has said that that Meta is copying Twitter, and
Speaker 1: that in fact it's not just copying, but it's making
Speaker 1: use of Twitter's trade secrets. That He's also accused Meta
Speaker 1: of hiring up former Twitter employees, who in turn had
Speaker 1: possession of Twitter's devices and documents. So these traders who
Speaker 1: got fired by Elon Musk ran to Zuckerberg and gave
Speaker 1: them all the precious secrets. Meta, by the way, denies
Speaker 1: all these allegations. He then has said that no one
Speaker 1: at Twitter was part of the team that actually built Threads,
Speaker 1: that Threads was built entirely independently of the people who
Speaker 1: were let go from Twitter. We should also remember that
Speaker 1: during the same time, Meta was famously holding huge rounds
Speaker 1: of layoffs and firing thousands of employees, tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of employees, so it's not like Meta was in the
Speaker 1: mood to do a lot of hiring at the same time,
Speaker 1: So I'm inclined to at least believe Meta on this
Speaker 1: point that no one from Twitter was instrumental in the
Speaker 1: building of Threads. Now, according to Reuter's, if Twitter does
Speaker 1: in fact sue Meta for this kind of theft of
Speaker 1: trade secrets, the burden of proof on Twitter is going
Speaker 1: to be really high. Twitter would have to prove that
Speaker 1: Meta took information that was both important economically to Twitter
Speaker 1: and that Twitter had taken quote unquote reasonable efforts to
Speaker 1: keep that information secret. That bit can be very difficult
Speaker 1: to prove. Did Twitter actually use reasonable efforts to keep
Speaker 1: these alleged trade secrets really secret? Or did Musk fire
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of people who then subsequently helped Meta
Speaker 1: build a service that can do much of what Twitter does,
Speaker 1: or even did Meta just do this completely independently, And
Speaker 1: because Twitter's been around forever and Elon Musk made some
Speaker 1: of the code open source, they just built their own version. Now,
Speaker 1: before we go to break, I do want to say
Speaker 1: a few things about Threads that aren't positive right because
Speaker 1: threads is incredibly popular right now, it's growing dramatically, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that Threads is necessarily good. It doesn't
Speaker 1: even really mean that Threads is necessarily better than Twitter.
Speaker 1: It is different, but it's also not. It's got its
Speaker 1: own issues. So one of the big ones here is
Speaker 1: that meta wants as much of your data as it
Speaker 1: can possibly get. So if you look at the user
Speaker 1: permissions for an app like Instagram, which you obviously have
Speaker 1: to have if you want to have a Threads account,
Speaker 1: you will see that meta pretty much wants to know
Speaker 1: everything you do on that device. It wants to know
Speaker 1: how frequently you use the app, It wants to know
Speaker 1: how much time you spend there on average, what other
Speaker 1: services you use, what your online shopping habits are, you know,
Speaker 1: and more like. It can include things like location data.
Speaker 1: Like it's so much about you that that meta wants
Speaker 1: to scoop up whenever you're using these apps, or even
Speaker 1: if you just install them on your device. So if
Speaker 1: you are at all concerned with how large companies gather
Speaker 1: and exploit your personal information, you need to understand that
Speaker 1: Meta may well be the leader in gulping up user info,
Speaker 1: though I don't know because Google is really really good
Speaker 1: at doing that too. Also, Threads lacks some basic functionality
Speaker 1: that Twitter has. Plus users on Threads see a real
Speaker 1: fire hose of content, not just from the Instagram accounts
Speaker 1: they already follow or the Threads accounts that they have
Speaker 1: chosen to follow. I assume Meta chose to populate the
Speaker 1: Threads feed with as much stuff as possible to make
Speaker 1: Threads appear more like an active, vibrant community with early
Speaker 1: sign ons, and to get enthusiasm from users. But this
Speaker 1: also means that logging into Threads shows you tons of
Speaker 1: stuff from accounts you don't necessarily know or follow, and
Speaker 1: it makes it challenging to see the stuff from the
Speaker 1: people you actually are interested in. And I imagine that
Speaker 1: will change, and probably pretty quickly, because it feels like
Speaker 1: the original intent was just to try and convince more
Speaker 1: people to join the service, and now that there are
Speaker 1: more than one hundred million users on Threads, there's less
Speaker 1: of a need for that, so maybe they can pivot.
Speaker 1: We'll see. Threads is also somewhat limited in its rollout.
Speaker 1: It will need to meet some strict requirements before it
Speaker 1: can deploy in the European Union. The deep integration with
Speaker 1: Instagram and the data collection policies mean that Meta's going
Speaker 1: to need to make some significant operational changes before it
Speaker 1: can receive approval for use in the EU. So in
Speaker 1: some ways, Meta's Threads has a growth cap on it
Speaker 1: right because until it does meet the requirements of the EU,
Speaker 1: it can't launch there. So that does mean that there's
Speaker 1: a whole audience that will be untapped until Meda can
Speaker 1: figure out a way to present Threads so that it
Speaker 1: meets EU regulations. Threads also has some strict rules about
Speaker 1: what you can cannot post. That includes stuff like profanity,
Speaker 1: for example, or other elements like misinformation things like that. Also,
Speaker 1: some of those rules have rubbed certain populations the wrong way.
Speaker 1: There are some conservatives already accusing Threads of being anti
Speaker 1: conservative and that it is a quote unquote woke service.
Speaker 1: Now I'm not going to dive into that because y'all
Speaker 1: likely know how I feel about it already, and you
Speaker 1: probably have your own opinions one way or the other.
Speaker 1: So I'm just adding that in as another reason why
Speaker 1: Threads is somewhat controversial at the moment. Now we're overdue
Speaker 1: for another break. When we come back, I'm going to
Speaker 1: talk about a couple of other Twitter alternatives that have
Speaker 1: gained attention but not necessarily a ton of new users
Speaker 1: and explain why that is. But first let's take another
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsors. So when it comes to
Speaker 1: existing Twitter alternatives, there's more than just threads or even
Speaker 1: the aforementioned Clerk, which is still around. Of course, jaiqu
Speaker 1: is long gone. One of these alternatives is called blue Sky,
Speaker 1: but I should add blue Sky is currently in an
Speaker 1: invitation only beta. As I record this, it's a beta
Speaker 1: that I only just recently joined after another tech podcaster
Speaker 1: kindly extended one of the invites he had to me. Now,
Speaker 1: I was not given any invites on my own to
Speaker 1: hand out, So I think blue Sky is being very
Speaker 1: methodical with how it adds users. So people who were
Speaker 1: given a beta invitation when they applied for it, they
Speaker 1: must have had invites of their own they could have extended,
Speaker 1: Which makes sense, right. Your social network is not going
Speaker 1: to be useful if all the people who join it
Speaker 1: don't have any connections social connections with one another. Right,
Speaker 1: There's no connective tissue there. You can't really expect conversations
Speaker 1: to really bloom. So it makes sense to give the
Speaker 1: early invites their own invitation so they can help populate
Speaker 1: blue Sky with people who are likely to chat with
Speaker 1: one another, but they didn't extend that another degree of separation.
Speaker 1: I don't have any invites, I was never given any.
Speaker 1: Blue Sky shares something in common with another alternative to
Speaker 1: Twitter that we'll chat about that's called Mastodon, and that
Speaker 1: both of these take a decentralized approach to social networks,
Speaker 1: or a federated approach, is the way it's been described.
Speaker 1: So blue Sky actually traces its history back to Twitter.
Speaker 1: It is a Twitter offshoot. It started as a side
Speaker 1: project at Twitter, just as Twitter started as a side
Speaker 1: project of Odio, and it's spun off of Twitter a
Speaker 1: few years ago. Now, I think back in twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: and Twitter co founder Jack Dorsey is actually on Blue
Speaker 1: Sky's board of directors. The vision of blue Sky is
Speaker 1: to have a collection of social networks, each with its
Speaker 1: own policies and approaches to moderation and such. And you
Speaker 1: probably know that all the big social platforms out there
Speaker 1: rely on algorithms to serve content up to users, and
Speaker 1: they have their own content moderation policies. And maybe you
Speaker 1: want for a pure chronological approach where you only see
Speaker 1: the stuff you're interested in and it's presented in a
Speaker 1: timeline that's linear, so that way you can easily follow
Speaker 1: the people who you're interested in and the topics you're
Speaker 1: interested in. But the reality is most of the platforms
Speaker 1: out there serve up a collection of stuff to you
Speaker 1: that the platform has chosen via algorithm. Some of that's
Speaker 1: going to include the things that you're actively following, and
Speaker 1: some will be outside of that group, and it's all
Speaker 1: in an effort to drive engagement, which when you really
Speaker 1: really really boil it down, just means keeping you on
Speaker 1: the platform for as long as possible, typically to maximize
Speaker 1: revenue opportunities. Blue Sky is meant to allow for the
Speaker 1: growth of lots of different social platforms that all share
Speaker 1: the same basic bone structure but have different features, so
Speaker 1: users can opt to join whichever one of those communities
Speaker 1: they like, and these social network communities will be able
Speaker 1: to interconnect through a common set of standards, so that
Speaker 1: we don't end up with a bunch of social network
Speaker 1: silos or you know, sequestered islands where you can only
Speaker 1: chat with the people who are in your silo, or
Speaker 1: you know, on your island, you can actually chat with
Speaker 1: other users who are on other islands. It's just your
Speaker 1: island has its own culture and its own set of
Speaker 1: rules that it follows, and you've joined that island because
Speaker 1: you like that culture and you like those rules, and
Speaker 1: maybe the other island over you're like, those people are cool,
Speaker 1: but I don't like the way they run things, So
Speaker 1: I don't want to belong to that community, but I
Speaker 1: do want to still be able to chat with them.
Speaker 1: That's what blue Sky and Masadon both try to do
Speaker 1: by using this common set of standards but individual instances
Speaker 1: of these social platforms. So you have one smaller kind
Speaker 1: of local community, and then you have the larger global
Speaker 1: community of all the other communities that interconnect with each other.
Speaker 1: Now I've only been on blue Sky for a short while,
Speaker 1: and I don't really have a very strong opinion one
Speaker 1: way or the other about it. In some ways, it
Speaker 1: reminds me a little bit of the beta days of
Speaker 1: Google Plus, because I was fortunate in that I got
Speaker 1: an invite to participate in that beta. And a lot
Speaker 1: of the people I see on blue Sky are either
Speaker 1: in the tech sector, or more specifically, they're in the
Speaker 1: tech news sector. But there's a trend in the folks
Speaker 1: that I keep seeing on blue Sky that I do
Speaker 1: find tiresome. I'll talk about that at the very end
Speaker 1: of this episode, because it's a trend I'm seeing on
Speaker 1: numerous platforms and I'm just so tired of it. But
Speaker 1: that's some foreshadowing anyway. Blue Sky's features are very similar
Speaker 1: to what you would see on Twitter. Like you would
Speaker 1: look at Blue Sky and say, yes, I get this,
Speaker 1: because it is so similar to the way Twitter works.
Speaker 1: There's a web based version of blue Sky. There are
Speaker 1: also apps for Android and iOS. You can follow folks,
Speaker 1: can post public messages to your followers. You can do
Speaker 1: most of the stuff you can do on Twitter. But
Speaker 1: because we're talking about a beta program here, the population
Speaker 1: at blue Sky is pretty darn small. Reportedly, around April
Speaker 1: of this year, it had hit around fifty thousand users.
Speaker 1: That is a drop in the bucket compared to the
Speaker 1: one hundred million people who joined Threads as of the
Speaker 1: day I'm recording and publishing this episode. The current Blue
Speaker 1: Sky social app is really just a preview of what
Speaker 1: Blue Sky is meant to become. Now, whether it actually
Speaker 1: becomes anything at all remains to be seen. It has
Speaker 1: received a lot of funding, but Threads could serve as
Speaker 1: a fairly significant threat to blue Sky because it could
Speaker 1: discourage people from adopting yet another social network. Once blue
Speaker 1: Sky is finally ready to come out of beta, we'll
Speaker 1: have to see because maybe by that time people will say, no,
Speaker 1: I'm good, I'm on threads already, why would I join
Speaker 1: another one. Another alternative to Twitter is Masedon. Like I
Speaker 1: just mentioned this, this is another approach to decentralized social networking.
Speaker 1: It actually predates blue Sky by several years. I think
Speaker 1: it launched in twenty sixteen. Twitter is a centralized service, right,
Speaker 1: so you log into Twitter. Everybody logs into Twitter. It's
Speaker 1: all on this collection of servers that are centralized, but
Speaker 1: Mastedon consists of different instances or servers of social networks.
Speaker 1: And you choose a home server to belong to that's
Speaker 1: kind of your home base, and you still, just like
Speaker 1: with blue Sky, you can still communicate with users who
Speaker 1: have chosen a different home base. But this way, users
Speaker 1: can select a server that aligns with their own personal
Speaker 1: values or preferences while still interacting with people who are
Speaker 1: from the larger Mastdon community. And again, think of it
Speaker 1: as like a series of islands. You join the island
Speaker 1: that is run the way you like but you can
Speaker 1: still send messages to people who are on different islands.
Speaker 1: It does take a little bit more work to talk
Speaker 1: to the larger community and follow people from the larger
Speaker 1: community who are not on your server. That's really the
Speaker 1: tricky part is if you're on one server and your
Speaker 1: friend is on a different server, finding them takes a
Speaker 1: little bit more work so that you can follow their messages.
Speaker 1: It is built into the system, but it's a bit
Speaker 1: of a barrier to entry. So one challenge with mastdon
Speaker 1: is that it's just not as intuitive as something like Twitter.
Speaker 1: The concept of a federated social network is also a
Speaker 1: little tricky to explain to someone who's more of a
Speaker 1: casual user. It's not as slick or as user friendly
Speaker 1: as the corporate offerings that you'll find with Twitter or
Speaker 1: with Threads. But on the other hand, it's also crowdfunded,
Speaker 1: which means there's no advertising over at Masdon. It's more
Speaker 1: about creating the means of communication, and you could argue
Speaker 1: that Threads, for example, doesn't exist to give users the
Speaker 1: chance to express themselves or to follow others. Instead, Threads
Speaker 1: exists as another means to gather information about users, which
Speaker 1: then can be sold in ad deals. That's the reason
Speaker 1: threads exist, and the way exists is because Twitter is
Speaker 1: failing so spectacularly. Without the failure of Twitter, there probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been as big of a push for threads,
Speaker 1: just because there would have been less of an opportunity there.
Speaker 1: But with Twitter kind of going up in flames, at
Speaker 1: least from the perspective of advertisers, there is an opportunity there.
Speaker 1: If you can lure the advertisers who would have spent
Speaker 1: money on Twitter to spend money with you instead, that's
Speaker 1: a huge win for Meta. Macedon doesn't deal with that.
Speaker 1: It leans on crowdfunding. Now, Macedon did experience growth as
Speaker 1: a result of Musk taking ownership of Twitter. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of people who jumped ship and decided they
Speaker 1: would make an account over at Mastadon instead. This was
Speaker 1: a big enough concern that briefly Twitter actually censored tweets
Speaker 1: that included Mastodon links in them, because, as I mentioned before,
Speaker 1: free speech means something quite peculiar to Elon Musk, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily include you in that definition. I think
Speaker 1: Mastodon is a noble cause. I think it's also a
Speaker 1: bit clunky to use, and as such may discourage a
Speaker 1: lot of casual users. I have to admit I haven't
Speaker 1: actually really checked on my own mastadon account in more
Speaker 1: than a month, so I'm part of the problem here.
Speaker 1: Then we've got another alternative. This one's hive Social. Now
Speaker 1: I have to tell y'all, I have never used hive Social.
Speaker 1: I do not have a hive Social account. I've never
Speaker 1: downloaded the app. I'm only tangentially aware of this one.
Speaker 1: I heard about it when everyone was talking about jumping
Speaker 1: ship off Twitter back at the end of twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: This app was initially released in twenty nineteen for iOS.
Speaker 1: The Android version would wait until late twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: when again Musk had taken over Twitter and hive Social
Speaker 1: is another micro blogging service, so it does make it
Speaker 1: an alternative to Twitter. Like Mastadon, they saw a growth
Speaker 1: spurt as a result of elon musk take over. Unlike Macedon,
Speaker 1: it is not a federated social network, so it is
Speaker 1: not taking that decentralized approach. It is more similar to
Speaker 1: Twitter in that way, and that's a centralized social network.
Speaker 1: From what I've read, Hivesocial allows stuff on the platform
Speaker 1: that is against the policies at other places, like you
Speaker 1: can post images of an explicit nature on Hive Social.
Speaker 1: To put it delicately, it is meant for users who
Speaker 1: are above the age of seventeen. I think there is
Speaker 1: a filter you can select about whether you want in
Speaker 1: SFW material to show up or not. Also, I mean
Speaker 1: it all depends on the accounts you're following. It is
Speaker 1: also taking a strict chronological order to displaying messages, so
Speaker 1: you see the most recent posts and then you can
Speaker 1: go back in time, but it's not like served up
Speaker 1: by an algorithm, which is a huge departure from the
Speaker 1: way Twitter does things. So you know, you would be
Speaker 1: able to more quickly catch with the accounts you follow
Speaker 1: just by scrolling down a bit and reading on the
Speaker 1: last one that you had not read and then working
Speaker 1: your way up to the most recent, which I think
Speaker 1: is a huge thing. It's something that a lot of
Speaker 1: people have been asking about. You hear about all the
Speaker 1: time with Facebook as well, where you try to sort
Speaker 1: things by most recent, but even that is algorithmically driven,
Speaker 1: so it's not really most recent, it's just slightly more
Speaker 1: than the other alternative view, and this is really frustrating
Speaker 1: for a lot of people, so Hive Social took that
Speaker 1: to heart and they went with the strict chronological approach
Speaker 1: to displaying messages. Hive Social did run into a massive
Speaker 1: security issue just a couple of months ago, when security
Speaker 1: researchers found that flaws would make it possible for a
Speaker 1: bad actor to potentially access a person's Hive information, which
Speaker 1: would include being able to read any private messages they
Speaker 1: had and even potentially overwrite messages that they had written,
Speaker 1: which is kind of crazy. So Hive Social shut down
Speaker 1: temporarily in order to address these security problems. It did relaunch,
Speaker 1: but now some of the features that had been present
Speaker 1: in the earlier version of Hive Social are no longer
Speaker 1: on the current Hive Social, and probably that has to
Speaker 1: do with the issues with security. Whether those will come
Speaker 1: back or not, I don't know. I think Threads remains
Speaker 1: a huge threat to these smaller social networks which don't
Speaker 1: have the benefit of this enormous established user base in
Speaker 1: the form of Instagram users to give them a leg up.
Speaker 1: I would actually love to see mast On and probably
Speaker 1: blue Sky in particular, evolve, but at the moment, I
Speaker 1: don't know how much they'll grow due to Threads dominating
Speaker 1: this conversation. Twitter is likely very concerned about threads, but
Speaker 1: I think these smaller social networks also are in that camp. Now,
Speaker 1: speaking of all that, I you want to finally address
Speaker 1: what my biggest pet peeve on these platforms is right now,
Speaker 1: and that's most of the posts I'm seeing are complaining
Speaker 1: about micro blogging services in general. Sometimes it's a complaint
Speaker 1: that's about the platform I'm currently on, Like if I'm
Speaker 1: on Twitter, people are complaining about Twitter, which I mean,
Speaker 1: I get it, But more often than not, I see
Speaker 1: people complaining about one of the other micro blogging platforms.
Speaker 1: So it's usually either Twitter or Threads. That's usually the
Speaker 1: two that are really being called out. But even on
Speaker 1: blue Sky people will complain about blue Sky occasionally, and
Speaker 1: it all feels really insular and self referential and ridiculous
Speaker 1: that really it starts to feel like the only thing
Speaker 1: people are talking about on these micro blogging sites is
Speaker 1: about how terrible micro blogging sites are, which makes you
Speaker 1: wonder why are you even on them? Then, But on Threads,
Speaker 1: I would say there is a difference. About half of
Speaker 1: the posts I see are not complaining about Twitter or
Speaker 1: even complaining about Threads. There instead a blatant grab for engagement.
Speaker 1: You might see something like I always thought cartoon hot
Speaker 1: dogs looked amazing. What cartoon food would you most want
Speaker 1: to eat? Which is not saying anything interesting. It's obviously
Speaker 1: just trying to get a lot of folks to chime
Speaker 1: in on the topic and to quote unquote engage with it,
Speaker 1: which boosts the visibility of that post and potentially brings
Speaker 1: more people in to become followers. It's just a very
Speaker 1: strategic approach to getting more clout by getting that follower
Speaker 1: count to grow. I mean, on the very first day
Speaker 1: of Threads, I saw people talking about they wanted to
Speaker 1: become the first person to hit a million followers, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, that didn't take long at all for
Speaker 1: that record to get broken. And it just made me tired, y'all, Like,
Speaker 1: once upon a time, I was really eager to see
Speaker 1: my numbers grow for my Twitter audience, for example, and
Speaker 1: now I just find it exhausting and kind of discouraging,
Speaker 1: like there's more to life than just building your following
Speaker 1: and trading upon clout is so exhausting and it's discouraging,
Speaker 1: I think, because I think it discourages actual good material,
Speaker 1: whether you want to call it content or writing or
Speaker 1: videos or whatever. When you're spending so much time just
Speaker 1: trying to get that number to go up, you're not
Speaker 1: spending as much time working on the actual quality or
Speaker 1: art of the thing you're doing. And I've been just
Speaker 1: as guilty about that as anyone else. I'm not here
Speaker 1: to say that I'm better than anyone at that regard.
Speaker 1: I'm just tired of it. Anyway. That's kind of the
Speaker 1: current state of microblogging. It will be interesting to see
Speaker 1: what the long term effects of threads is on this sector,
Speaker 1: whether it will be like the doom of Twitter or
Speaker 1: of any of these other smaller platforms, or if it
Speaker 1: will just bring more issues to Meta itself. Like I
Speaker 1: still think a lot of ugly stuff is gonna unfold
Speaker 1: as a result of Meta getting into this space, and
Speaker 1: a lot of that's gonna reflect poorly on Meta. But
Speaker 1: then like that, that's not a really dramatic prediction. Meta
Speaker 1: has a very long history of digging a hole for itself,
Speaker 1: so if threads were any different, it would shock me.
Speaker 1: That is it for this episode. I hope you are
Speaker 1: all well. If for some reason you want to follow
Speaker 1: me and you're on Threads or Blue Sky. Just look
Speaker 1: for John Strickland. That's Joen Strickland, and you'll find me there.
Speaker 1: I don't post very much, but I do check the platforms,
Speaker 1: you know, at least once a day, so that is
Speaker 1: a possible way to get in touch with me, and
Speaker 1: I will talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff
Speaker 1: is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.