Speaker 1: From the heart where Innovation, money and power Collie in
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley, NBN. This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hide
Speaker 1: and Ed Ludlow.
Speaker 2: I'm Caroline Hyde at Bloomberg's Wheldo quarters in.
Speaker 3: New York, and I'm Ed Ludlow out here in San Francisco.
Speaker 3: This is Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 4: Coming up.
Speaker 2: We'll break down the battle between Twitter and Threads. Is
Speaker 2: the new platform hits seventeen million users like Elon Musk's
Speaker 2: company threatens legal action.
Speaker 3: Against Meta Plus, Ali Barber surges as China finds Ang
Speaker 3: Group and ten Cent, signaling the end of a regulatory
Speaker 3: crackdown could be near. We'll have more details.
Speaker 2: Ahead, and we'll get inside into Apple's vision pro plans
Speaker 2: as it read is a slow rollout of the three
Speaker 2: and a half thousand dollars headset. All that so much
Speaker 2: more to calm. Let's stick with threads and pieces, say
Speaker 2: Bloomg opinion columnists Davely has been writing all about it.
Speaker 2: It talks about how it was like run into a
Speaker 2: destination wedding with familiar faces but a pretty unfamiliar setting. Eventually,
Speaker 2: someone might be brave enough to quietly mutter, So do
Speaker 2: you think it'll last.
Speaker 4: That's Ring M.
Speaker 2: Blomberg, opinion tech columnist Daily. With all the analogies, it
Speaker 2: was a beautiful analogy of a destination wedding. Before I
Speaker 2: get into the wedding gifts that we're giving them of
Speaker 2: our privacy data and the money that they might be
Speaker 2: able to reap off the back of it, I want
Speaker 2: to ask just how this day too, of the destination
Speaker 2: wedding is going. Is the party still there is at
Speaker 2: hot people remaining dedicated?
Speaker 4: Well, I think day.
Speaker 5: Two may be the wedding itself. Right, everyone's here, The
Speaker 5: people who perhaps slow from other places have arrived.
Speaker 4: Soon.
Speaker 5: I guess we're going to start having questions about what
Speaker 5: exactly the staying power of this network is. And I
Speaker 5: think already you're starting to see people sort of pick
Speaker 5: apart what the future of Threads might be depending on
Speaker 5: what they're going to be allowed to do on the platform,
Speaker 5: allowed to say on the platform. There's been some unease
Speaker 5: about how tightly linked it is to Instagram, for example,
Speaker 5: and also people have been saying, well, where are all
Speaker 5: the feat If you go on Twitter, you can do spaces,
Speaker 5: you can do direct messages, you can do many other
Speaker 5: things that right now threads can't do. Adam Musseeri, the
Speaker 5: CEO of Instagram, he's there saying, don't worry, we're working
Speaker 5: on it.
Speaker 4: We're going to get to that.
Speaker 5: You just have to be patient, because what, of course
Speaker 5: they did was because Elon Musk was having such trouble
Speaker 5: with Twitter. They moved it forward so they could capitalize
Speaker 5: on that trouble. And so it's not perhaps quite as
Speaker 5: ready as they might have wanted it to be at
Speaker 5: the point that they brought it onto the market. But
Speaker 5: that initial reaction seventy million people, even though it's Facebook
Speaker 5: and they have this big head start with Instagram obviously,
Speaker 5: getting seventy million people to download a new app in
Speaker 5: the space of a couple of days, I mean, it's
Speaker 5: a remarkable feat of onboarding.
Speaker 4: Really.
Speaker 2: Now you're mentioning your musk in a wedding, there's always
Speaker 2: that moment where you can say, does anyone here perhaps speak
Speaker 2: against this nutal? And I feel like Elil Musk's that
Speaker 2: guy who's just walked into the church and saying, I
Speaker 2: protest you cannot get married.
Speaker 4: What is going on?
Speaker 2: What is and what is the realism of this legal letter?
Speaker 2: Because he sends a few around as the mistership prop.
Speaker 5: He does, he does, and the particular lawyer that sent
Speaker 5: the letter has been Elon Musk's right hand man in
Speaker 5: all of his legal battles, and you know, I've been
Speaker 5: in the court room for many of them. I mean, look,
Speaker 5: until we see the substance of any complaint, I think
Speaker 5: it's really hard to note, right.
Speaker 4: I mean, because the.
Speaker 5: Letter made some claims that there was people at Meta
Speaker 5: that had been taken from Twitter purposely to build threads, even.
Speaker 2: Though Twitter have lost so many employing white.
Speaker 5: I mean, they let them go themselves and perhaps they've
Speaker 5: gone on to new jobs at Meta. They've said no
Speaker 5: form of Twitter employees were involved in the creation of threads,
Speaker 5: and so I think it's really up to Elon Musk
Speaker 5: and his lawyer to bring that evidence and say here's
Speaker 5: why we think we have a complaint. There's a big
Speaker 5: jump between threatening to take legal action and actually taking
Speaker 5: legal action, and so I think until we see that moment,
Speaker 5: that's when we really know how serious Elon Musk feels
Speaker 5: about being copied by Meta.
Speaker 3: Just a quick point, Karen Dave, I read that letter
Speaker 3: that was sent on must behalf to Zuckerberg and Meta's
Speaker 3: legal counsel.
Speaker 4: So what's funny.
Speaker 3: Linda Yakarino, the CEO of Twitter, is not one of
Speaker 3: the co signatories, and she's not in copy either. It
Speaker 3: is sent on Elon Musks behalf to Meta Dave.
Speaker 4: What do you make of that?
Speaker 5: Well, I think this is another question, isn't it of
Speaker 5: the degree to which Linda Yakarino is in charge of
Speaker 5: Twitter at all? I mean, when Twitter was having its
Speaker 5: issues last weekend with the big rape limiting problems where
Speaker 5: you could only see a certain number of tweets, the
Speaker 5: CEO of the company didn't say anything for several days,
Speaker 5: and her interactions were only to like the tweets that
Speaker 5: Elon Musk had been posting. And even when she was
Speaker 5: first put into that job, I wrote at the time,
Speaker 5: and many others did, that there's only ever really going
Speaker 5: to be one person in charge of Twitter, and that's
Speaker 5: Elon Musk. And we've just seen that yet again with
Speaker 5: like you say this letter. One of the things I
Speaker 5: think is striking about the lawyer in particular is that
Speaker 5: it wasn't that long ago that he was describing his
Speaker 5: role as no longer being at Twitter, and that he
Speaker 5: was still Elon Musk's personal lawyer, but his business with
Speaker 5: Twitter had taken a backseat and the company was dealing
Speaker 5: with itself.
Speaker 4: And so this may be an instance.
Speaker 5: And we've seen it from Elon Musk in the past,
Speaker 5: this maybe an instance where he's just incensed personally and
Speaker 5: wants to go after this. But again, until we see
Speaker 5: exactly what he thinks his case is, it's very hard
Speaker 5: to address.
Speaker 4: You know what the merits are of that.
Speaker 3: Let's get back to the technology and the platform, right
Speaker 3: You point out in the Bloomberg opinion column that the
Speaker 3: onboarding is a big part of this. You can just
Speaker 3: simply take your Instagram following convert it over to threads.
Speaker 3: And you know, Caroline's heard me say this a few
Speaker 3: times in the last few days. I went back and
Speaker 3: looked at Twitter's s one. It took them a year
Speaker 3: to get from thirty million users to seventy million between
Speaker 3: March or twenty ten and March twenty eleven. Met has
Speaker 3: done it in forty eight hours.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's clearly a huge competitive advantage to have
Speaker 5: Instagram in your back pocket to launch a new social network.
Speaker 5: I think one of the interesting comparisons that I've seen
Speaker 5: recently is Facebook Meta has only managed to get two
Speaker 5: hundred thousand people into the metaverse, right, so this has
Speaker 5: already been vastly more successful than what their big strategy
Speaker 5: was meant to have been. I mean, look, it's being
Speaker 5: able to bring those Instagram followers over is obviously a
Speaker 5: great benefit.
Speaker 4: What I do think would be an issue.
Speaker 5: And something that I've heard people sort of talking about,
Speaker 5: is you know, what does that say about the nature
Speaker 5: of what Threads is going to be Because Twitter was
Speaker 5: a very diverse grouping of people on the Internet, whereas
Speaker 5: Instagram was particularly popular with influencers and creators and some
Speaker 5: of the more sort of celebrity culture online. And I
Speaker 5: think one of the risks might be that while Threads
Speaker 5: may be a Twitter killer, so to speak, it may
Speaker 5: not eventually be a Twitter replacement. You know, there could
Speaker 5: be a shift of people going from one platform to
Speaker 5: the other, but we might still lose what made Twitter
Speaker 5: a worthwhile place to be on the Internet, which is why,
Speaker 5: you know, when you look at some of these new alternatives,
Speaker 5: the smaller alternatives like blue Sky and T two and
Speaker 5: spill and we don't have time to say them all,
Speaker 5: I suspect they might be feeling quite downheartened by the
Speaker 5: fact that Meta have done this, But actually I think
Speaker 5: in time there will still be space for these, for
Speaker 5: these smaller alternatives.
Speaker 2: And to that point you mentioned their Marsterden. There's also
Speaker 2: Blue Sky. These are decentralized. And what's been interesting is
Speaker 2: this talk of a fediverse and the fact that eventually
Speaker 2: Threads could be built upon, you know, one of these
Speaker 2: overall protocols where you could take your people, your followers
Speaker 2: with you and share them amongst all these sorts of
Speaker 2: social media platforms. When do you think that might happen?
Speaker 2: Because we got teased it and then it didn't go live,
Speaker 2: of course, because they sort of pushed forward the outlet.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, it's certainly something they've committed to. I'd
Speaker 5: like to see it quite soon. I think that would
Speaker 5: be one thing that could convince me that Meta is
Speaker 5: serious about being more open with the Internet.
Speaker 4: This is them.
Speaker 5: I think it depends what they see the value of
Speaker 5: threads being right, if Threads is a way to bring
Speaker 5: people into the Facebook family of apps as they call them,
Speaker 5: with the view of having more engagement on Instagram, more
Speaker 5: engagement on the Facebook Blue app, the main app, which
Speaker 5: is really not the place where things happen anymore, then
Speaker 5: it could potentially be useful.
Speaker 4: But yes, you're right, they could lose the ability.
Speaker 5: To own this entire community, put their ads in there,
Speaker 5: monetize it as much as possible. And that's where I
Speaker 5: think the most difficult thing for Threads is going to
Speaker 5: be almost fighting against the instincts of Meta the company.
Speaker 5: They want to have the control, they want to eventually
Speaker 5: monetize it. You'd think, if history is to go by,
Speaker 5: monetize it within an inch of its life, basically, and
Speaker 5: yet that might be the death knel for it. So
Speaker 5: the degree to which it will be open with these
Speaker 5: other with the rest of the fediverse, that feels like
Speaker 5: a very interesting experiment. Whether Metro is going to be
Speaker 5: corporately comfortable with that, I think that's a big test.
Speaker 3: What was it that Jack Dorsey said, Caro, we wanted
Speaker 3: flying cars and instead we got seven Twitter clones debate
Speaker 3: for another program, I think Dave Lee Bloomberg Opinion check
Speaker 3: out his latest opinion column on bloombog dot com. Thank
Speaker 3: you very much, all right, the show continues coming up.
Speaker 3: Today's June jobs report showed relatively strong gains in the
Speaker 3: labor market We're going to talk to Kara Brennan, Chief
Speaker 3: People OFFICO officer over at Lattice about the trends that
Speaker 3: she's seeing in the technology sector. This is Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 2: Looks some pretty mixed macro signals today from the US
Speaker 2: labor market.
Speaker 4: Let's go through them.
Speaker 2: Because jobs growth melling out a little bit, they're still
Speaker 2: increasing at a faster than expected pace. In the last month.
Speaker 2: US added two hundred and nine thousand non farm jobs
Speaker 2: in June, making it the smallest advance it's the end
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty, but those wage gains still show the
Speaker 2: inflationary pressure of this pretty resilient labor market, and of
Speaker 2: course unemployment rate coming in at three point six percent.
Speaker 2: We're lucky enough to be able to discuss all of this.
Speaker 2: The Cara Brennan, San Francisco based Chief People officer over
Speaker 2: atlettis great towsent time with your Caaren. What did you make?
Speaker 2: Are you glass half empty? Glass off full? We somewhere
Speaker 2: in the middle.
Speaker 6: I'd say I'm probably somewhere in the middle. What I
Speaker 6: can say is that among our five thousand customers who
Speaker 6: are chief people officers, heads of people, there's a lot
Speaker 6: of discussion about what the second half of this year
Speaker 6: looks like in preparation for next year. I do think
Speaker 6: that the medium term, people are optimistic from sitting in
Speaker 6: my seat, because we're seeing really great talent in the market,
Speaker 6: and we're seeing some softening in some of our businesses
Speaker 6: as it relates to software sales and others. Is softening
Speaker 6: of the of the really tough times that we've been
Speaker 6: through over the past six to twelve months. So we're
Speaker 6: seeing those glimmers, but I can tell you that right
Speaker 6: now we're still in a place where we're all very conservative.
Speaker 6: Headcount is really being thoughtful in terms of who we're
Speaker 6: going to hire, where we're going to hire, and we're
Speaker 6: keeping a very close eye on the compensation data because
Speaker 6: what we're seeing is reflecting what these broader trends are
Speaker 6: as well well.
Speaker 3: In the technology sector. What do wages look like? How
Speaker 3: competitive is it from it but using compensation as a proxy.
Speaker 6: Yeah, what's interesting is our data legs behind the real market.
Speaker 6: We know it does by about six months. So we're
Speaker 6: still seeing data that was from the end of last
Speaker 6: year that's still very high. And the hope is is
Speaker 6: that we will see some of those rates come down
Speaker 6: ultimately so that we can have better balance in terms
Speaker 6: of our salary spin, which, as everyone knows, is around
Speaker 6: a seventy percent of our total spin as businesses. We
Speaker 6: are starting to see that. We're starting to see that
Speaker 6: in some of those really spiky roles are top engineering roles,
Speaker 6: some of our roles on the sales side. We're seeing
Speaker 6: some of that come down, But it's not across the board.
Speaker 2: I mean, AI, I can imagine prompt engineers, you name
Speaker 2: it are going to be still pretty demanded for and
Speaker 2: recompensed in light of that car up. Do you feel though,
Speaker 2: the bracing that we had in the tech sector of
Speaker 2: yet more job losses, yet larger ten twenty percent cuts,
Speaker 2: is that a thing of the past Now people right
Speaker 2: size to a certain degree.
Speaker 4: In general.
Speaker 6: Yes, that's what I'm hearing from our customers, the folks
Speaker 6: that are now focused on the people that they have
Speaker 6: in seat, knowing that the growth is slowed for the
Speaker 6: second half of this year. But I do feel like
Speaker 6: people feel like their hands are on the wheel now
Speaker 6: and they're able to look forward to the next six
Speaker 6: months with the plan that's realistic. It's very different than
Speaker 6: this time last year when nobody knew what was happening,
Speaker 6: and we were all trying to manage to it.
Speaker 2: Well, said Ed. I mean when we look at the
Speaker 2: broader labor data and on FUM payrolls, it's very hard
Speaker 2: to really discern what's happening at a tech level, and
Speaker 2: indeed how broad the tech issues are the asyncratic to
Speaker 2: that particular sector or speak more broadly to for the
Speaker 2: overall environment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, let me jump in here Carol real quick,
Speaker 3: because I think Caroline's raised a really good point that
Speaker 3: what I hear from founders, public company executives and everyone
Speaker 3: in between doesn't match the data. Think about the challenger
Speaker 3: Christmas in Gray. We put so much emphasis on that
Speaker 3: and all the layoffs that were announced, but those were announced,
Speaker 3: not necessarily enacted. And there are loads of companies I
Speaker 3: know that are scrambling to find people they're desperate to hire.
Speaker 3: Why is there some inconsistency there?
Speaker 6: Think consistency is that we had a period of time,
Speaker 6: the two years during the pandemic where we were just
Speaker 6: hiring to hire, honestly, and what we've done is gone
Speaker 6: back to what the foundation of good businesses and knowing
Speaker 6: that we have to build for the future state, and
Speaker 6: we have to have the right people in the right seats.
Speaker 6: So what has happened on the HR side is there
Speaker 6: been lots of meetups, lots of webinars, lots of discussion
Speaker 6: about org design and how to make sure that you're
Speaker 6: optimizing the performance and productivity of the people who are
Speaker 6: in the seat. We know that because that's what Lattis does.
Speaker 6: We're a talent management platform. We've seen the usage of
Speaker 6: our tool increase month over month and year every year
Speaker 6: from our customers. People want to do a better job
Speaker 6: of managing the talent they have. It's not a hiring
Speaker 6: spree anymore.
Speaker 4: Carr.
Speaker 3: You know this sector. You know Silicon Valley. Elon Musk
Speaker 3: and his lawyer have threatened to sue Meta claiming abusive
Speaker 3: trade secrets and through the employment of Twitter employees. Can
Speaker 3: you enforce an NDA in Silicon Valley? What do you
Speaker 3: make of that situation?
Speaker 6: I can't speak to Elon and Meta's particular situation. What
Speaker 6: I can tell you is, in my experience, we're very
Speaker 6: clear in Silicon Valley that the state of California does
Speaker 6: not allow non competes to be enforced. For the most part,
Speaker 6: depends on the specific situation. And I've seen lots of
Speaker 6: CEOs and lots of nasty letters in the course of
Speaker 6: my career. And know that sitting in the seat that
Speaker 6: you move on, you bring your talent in and you're
Speaker 6: not as concerned about non competees as you might be
Speaker 6: in other states.
Speaker 3: Car Brennan, Chief people of Sir laddis always on the
Speaker 3: heartbeat of the tech sector. What's going on in jobs?
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for your time time for talking tech.
Speaker 3: First up, Samsung reported a forty six billion dollar decline
Speaker 3: in sales, it's worst in quarterly revenue since two thousand
Speaker 3: and nine. The tech company's operating profit plus ninety six percent,
Speaker 3: but still ahead of market expectations. Is the demand for
Speaker 3: electronics and memory chips has slowed, and US audit officials
Speaker 3: have started a new round of inspections for New York
Speaker 3: listed Chinese companies. The inspection comes there's a trade walk
Speaker 3: on technology from AI to chip manufacturing continues to mount.
Speaker 3: Tensions between the world's two largest economies. Plus China imposed
Speaker 3: more than one billion dollars in fines on tech giants
Speaker 3: and and ten cents, signaling an end to a crackdown
Speaker 3: on a sector that wiped out billions in market value
Speaker 3: and derailed the world's biggest IPO.
Speaker 2: Carol, And let's dig in on that because some policy
Speaker 2: saving mag News is Isabelle Lee is with us to
Speaker 2: just break down why the shares have popped quite so
Speaker 2: much for the likes of Ali Baba for ten cent,
Speaker 2: it's a hefty fine. But is it just relief that
Speaker 2: this over it?
Speaker 7: Definitely is? It sounds kind of counterintuitive, But then many
Speaker 7: of the analysts are saying that, okay, maybe this will
Speaker 7: put a lid to the multi year crack that we've
Speaker 7: seen in the tech sector that costs some of the
Speaker 7: Wall Street's biggest firms to call China uninvestable, and we've
Speaker 7: seen some of the biggest companies shed billions of dollars.
Speaker 7: But then now if that's going to be over and
Speaker 7: they can move on, and there are some speculations that, oh,
Speaker 7: maybe this can pave the way for another renewed attempt
Speaker 7: for ant to have an IPO. Possibly, but more people
Speaker 7: are just relieved. Even the NaSTA China Golden Dragon indexes
Speaker 7: up around three percent.
Speaker 4: What is moving on look like? Then?
Speaker 3: You know, we talk about the breakup of Ali Baba
Speaker 3: as an example, and what might be spun off.
Speaker 7: Yes, exactly. So we know that China has been really
Speaker 7: cracking down on the tech firms and this may look
Speaker 7: like the end of it. Like Ali Baba CEO Jack
Speaker 7: Ma came in March, there's a renewed appetite to kind
Speaker 7: of reinvigorate the tech sector and that's how many people
Speaker 7: are seeing. But this thing is an ANTIPO isn't looking
Speaker 7: like it's going to happen anytime soon because their bottom
Speaker 7: line is really not looking good. Their December earnings quarter
Speaker 7: was down fifty six percent. And if you go technically,
Speaker 7: if you want a list in China so called a
Speaker 7: share market, you shouldn't have had a change in corporate
Speaker 7: leadership in the past three years two years for the
Speaker 7: Shanghai Star market and one year for Hong Kong. But
Speaker 7: still at least hopes are there and that's probably what's
Speaker 7: buoying the market.
Speaker 2: Just take us back a little bit as well as
Speaker 2: to what's shifted in China's mindsot why have we sort
Speaker 2: of come to the end of the scrutiny we have.
Speaker 7: At least people are saying it's because when China locked
Speaker 7: down during the pandemic it really wasn't good for their economy,
Speaker 7: and when they were going to reopen, even strategists here
Speaker 7: in Wall Street thought that there would be a boom
Speaker 7: and that global growth will write on that, but that
Speaker 7: so called boom didn't quite happen. So I think they're
Speaker 7: just really trying to revive their sector, and tech is
Speaker 7: the biggest so why not try to do that? And
Speaker 7: if it will be good for China, it'll also be
Speaker 7: good for the world, like even for here in the US.
Speaker 7: So it's really just that shift in mentality and who
Speaker 7: wants to be called uninvestable?
Speaker 4: I think, so that's one.
Speaker 3: All right, Bloombergs Isabelle Lee. Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 3: Ed Ludlow here in San Francisco, and.
Speaker 2: I'm Caroline heid in New York. Let's just check in
Speaker 2: on the new favorite platform for everyone to be getting
Speaker 2: to know each other a slightly different destination.
Speaker 4: We're all talking about.
Speaker 3: Threads flat on a Friday talking Threads up almost four
Speaker 3: percent over five sessions, excluding July the fourth. Let's talk
Speaker 3: more on Threads and bring in Stephen Wolf Perera, Three
Speaker 3: Parts Studios, Chief business officer. You are a multi platform
Speaker 3: entertainment company. I know you you're close to Threads and
Speaker 3: how it came about. Did what you saw on launch
Speaker 3: with Threads match what Meta told you it was going
Speaker 3: to be?
Speaker 4: Absolutely?
Speaker 8: I mean it's just been I think, exceeding everyone's expectations
Speaker 8: for it to launch and for literally the onboarding to
Speaker 8: be less than four seconds. Cause if you have an
Speaker 8: Instagram account, you effectively just poured over all that information
Speaker 8: data and now you're able to kind of bring that over.
Speaker 8: It's just been wildly successful, I think, beyond everyone's expectations.
Speaker 8: I read a stat today that was over fifty million
Speaker 8: subscribers already on the platform. So when you have three
Speaker 8: billion users across all of metas you know apps, you
Speaker 8: know being used every single day, uh, three billion people
Speaker 8: being able to kind of solve that cold star problem
Speaker 8: of getting audience, you know, finding how to bring your
Speaker 8: followers over onto a new platform.
Speaker 4: I think they've really done well.
Speaker 2: H You are someone who helps tell stories. How are
Speaker 2: brands telling stories on this new platform? How playful? How
Speaker 2: how different are we seeing things evolve over that?
Speaker 4: I I think that's a great point, Caroline.
Speaker 8: I mean to see some of the brands really understand
Speaker 8: that this is a different medium and it's not images, right,
Speaker 8: it's not video, it's text, and so being very witty
Speaker 8: understanding how do you have your brand voice come through?
Speaker 8: I think that something got a lot of brands are
Speaker 8: excited about because right.
Speaker 4: Now it's fun. It is positive.
Speaker 8: You don't have all the trolls and all the cesspool
Speaker 8: of so many different other platforms. So the fact that
Speaker 8: you have brands like American Eagle, Wendy's, you know, just
Speaker 8: you know, follow some of their threads and you know,
Speaker 8: it's it's funny. And I feel like that's kind of
Speaker 8: this gone by era of the early days of social
Speaker 8: where people were really excited to kind of open up
Speaker 8: the app and see what people were saying, what brands
Speaker 8: were saying, and of course what creators are going to
Speaker 8: be saying, including celebrities.
Speaker 3: Stephen, just an update for you and our Bloomberg Technology
Speaker 3: audience when you were racing over to our La studio,
Speaker 3: Mark Zuckerberg updated, it's seventy seven zero million now on
Speaker 3: board onto threads. So there you go.
Speaker 4: But it's interesting.
Speaker 8: I think he said something actually in the thread talking
Speaker 8: about he wasn't really thinking about monetization until they hit
Speaker 8: a billions describers and so obviously this is one of
Speaker 8: the fastest app launches in history. Certainly very exciting to
Speaker 8: see this trajectory. But let's see that billion dollar or
Speaker 8: that billion subscriber threshold and see what's going to happen
Speaker 8: when they hit that.
Speaker 2: Soon that billion, I think it was like on clear
Speaker 2: path to a billion. What do you think about the
Speaker 2: monetization options here and how they do that while also
Speaker 2: pretending well eventually to be within the federverse to be decentralized.
Speaker 2: Is it that the advertising remains in the app and
Speaker 2: then if it's moving across to different use cases and
Speaker 2: masterden you wouldn't be advertised against like what wore the
Speaker 2: discussions like and can.
Speaker 8: Yeah, So I just got back from ken Lyons the
Speaker 8: International Festival of Advertising Creativity Alvin Bowles, who's met as
Speaker 8: new Global VP of their Global Business group. Alvin is
Speaker 8: now kind of overseeing what brands are going to be
Speaker 8: doing on their platform across all the different apps you know,
Speaker 8: from obviously Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook Blue.
Speaker 4: But the reality is this was.
Speaker 8: Something that was really being you know, I think on
Speaker 8: everyone's lips trying to understand how are we going to
Speaker 8: really integrate how we're going to use this and certainly
Speaker 8: when can we actually buy ads across you know, the threads,
Speaker 8: you know, kind of engagement and users and targeting advertising.
Speaker 8: I think all that is going to be in a
Speaker 8: wait and see because again, I think they want to
Speaker 8: really build the engagement, build the audience. And when you
Speaker 8: think about celebrities, you know, certainly I work with al
Speaker 8: Hindu the best. He's the biggest Latino actor.
Speaker 4: In the world.
Speaker 8: You know, he is a comedian, so you know, he's
Speaker 8: excited about getting onto threads to kind of talk about
Speaker 8: ways to engage his audience in you know, certainly lots
Speaker 8: of different languages. So when you see brands really trying
Speaker 8: to figure out when can we engage, I think there's
Speaker 8: going to be a little bit of a weight and
Speaker 8: see from metap because they really want to make sure
Speaker 8: that it's a safe place that they want the positivity
Speaker 8: and the fun.
Speaker 3: So how do you now think about Twitter and what
Speaker 3: was the talk about Twitter can lyon? You know, is
Speaker 3: this to kind of eat Twitter's lunch scenario to your mind?
Speaker 8: So well, it's at a little bit of an inflection point.
Speaker 8: I know, lots of people like to dunk on Twitter.
Speaker 8: And again, Linda's been there for you know, eleven seconds, right,
Speaker 8: so certainly she is going to uh have her work
Speaker 8: out out for her. But the reality is, you know,
Speaker 8: Twitter wasn't uh represented at camlines the way they used
Speaker 8: to be. Uh, you know, there used to be a
Speaker 8: big Twitter beach that was no longer there. They didn't
Speaker 8: uh have that space. But obviously they're focused on a
Speaker 8: really big vision and a big plan around X, and
Speaker 8: so I would say don't count them out. They obviously
Speaker 8: are trying to do something different. They want to take
Speaker 8: it into a different direction. Elon obviously is thinking about
Speaker 8: taking this into that super app of X.
Speaker 4: So I feel that Linda is really.
Speaker 8: Smart and obviously she is an active dialogue with so
Speaker 8: many different brands and advertisers. And when you see you
Speaker 8: know kind of what folks are doing, whether it's you know,
Speaker 8: Marsa Thalberg over at Sea World, or you're looking at
Speaker 8: Deacon Morgan Chase and you know Carla Hassen, or you know,
Speaker 8: all these different companies that are trying to figure out
Speaker 8: where am I going to engage, how am I going
Speaker 8: to find audience, and how do I really get my
Speaker 8: message out there? I feel like these are the different
Speaker 8: ways brands are going to be looking to engage.
Speaker 3: You know, Linda Yakarino, you have history in that relationship,
Speaker 3: but will you put money to play it in the
Speaker 3: Twitter platform right now?
Speaker 8: As you know three Pass you know, certainly we will
Speaker 8: because we actually have some films launching this fall. We
Speaker 8: actually have a film that one Sundance called Radical that's
Speaker 8: going to be coming out in October. So absolutely, I mean,
Speaker 8: we want to be where the audience is. And you know,
Speaker 8: to this day, you know, Twitter is still have a
Speaker 8: very active, engaged audience base. Obviously there's concerns around you know,
Speaker 8: kind of privacy or you know, the rhetoric or whatever
Speaker 8: it is, but there's still a very active audience. And
Speaker 8: you know, when you see Olheno with you know, one
Speaker 8: of the largest you know, kind of social footprints, he
Speaker 8: has over eighty million flowers across all social Twitter is
Speaker 8: obviously a platform that we're still involved with, but we're
Speaker 8: still going to be looking for other platforms.
Speaker 3: Stephen Wolf Perera Three PUS Studios, thank you for joining
Speaker 3: us out there in La c S.
Speaker 4: Thanks so much.
Speaker 3: Right, another top story here on Bloomberg Technology, Apple's headset
Speaker 3: will be available in retail stores early next year, but
Speaker 3: the rollout it's going to be a little slope. Mark
Speaker 3: German as the details. Next, this is Bloom Big Technology.
Speaker 7: Time.
Speaker 2: Now for VC round up by d you. Once India's
Speaker 2: most valuable upstart is internal after missing a deadline on
Speaker 2: financial statements giving payments on a one point two billion
Speaker 2: dollar alone and now that crisis is setting alarm bells
Speaker 2: throughout India's VC world, prompted Bloom Ventures, for example, one
Speaker 2: of India's biggest venture capital firms, to cut back on
Speaker 2: what they call frivolous investments and to push portfolio companies
Speaker 2: to increasingly shift focus to profitability. Meanwhile, while when Old
Speaker 2: is New again, Albert Einstein might have died in ninety
Speaker 2: fifty five, but the physicist is still a prolific conversationalist.
Speaker 2: As a chatbot of course, character Ai, one of the
Speaker 2: strangers startups on the Heyhi scene, but valued at one
Speaker 2: billion dollars Einstein. Einstein has responded to one point six
Speaker 2: million messages apparently, from theories of relativity to pat recommendation Zed.
Speaker 3: That is the best story we've done on the Bloombog
Speaker 3: technology ever. That's a big sta wow Yeah, no, it's
Speaker 3: a big sayman, but Einstein's back baby. Apple's headset is
Speaker 3: coming soon ish to store near you.
Speaker 4: Bit of a hard pivot there.
Speaker 3: The tech giant planning a retail launch of its Vision
Speaker 3: Pro headset, but only in select US markets early next
Speaker 3: year before expanding further. Bloomberg's Mark Gunman broke those details overnight. Mark,
Speaker 3: there is a very clear strategy here according to your reporting.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I wonder what Albert Einstein would think about virtual
Speaker 9: reality and the Vision Pro. But in terms of this story,
Speaker 9: so what we're hearing is that there's going to be
Speaker 9: a bit of a slow goo ramp up to the
Speaker 9: Apple Vision Pro launch. This is a thirty five hundred
Speaker 9: dollars device. It requires an immense amount of customization, the logistics,
Speaker 9: the way they're going to launch this thing a both
Speaker 9: online and in stores. It's a very cumbersome process. So
Speaker 9: here's how it's going to work. Early next year, so
Speaker 9: early twenty twenty four in the US, you'll be able
Speaker 9: to order the device either online or in an Apple
Speaker 9: retail store. If you're buying it in a retail store,
Speaker 9: if you're in one of those major markets La New York,
Speaker 9: San Francisco, Texas. In those retail stores, those bigger stores,
Speaker 9: you'll have a new virtual reality Vision Pro experience area
Speaker 9: where you can buy the device, experience the device, have
Speaker 9: it set up, and customize, get training on it. Right
Speaker 9: If you're in a smaller market store, you'd be able
Speaker 9: to go in there and buy it, maybe in a
Speaker 9: small corner at a table somewhere, But over time it'll
Speaker 9: ramp up that new experience center. But the important thing
Speaker 9: to note is you'll be able to buy the vision
Speaker 9: Pro in any US retail store from.
Speaker 1: The get go.
Speaker 9: Where things get complicated is if you have a vision prescription,
Speaker 9: so you'll have to upload your vision prescription to a website,
Speaker 9: either through Apple or through Zice because Apple doesn't want
Speaker 9: you handing that medical information directly to an Apple retail employee.
Speaker 9: You'll do that at the time of purchase, either online
Speaker 9: or Another important factor is it's going to be sold
Speaker 9: by appointment only in stores, so when you make that appointment,
Speaker 9: they'll upload that information.
Speaker 2: Mark the slow rollout. How much of that is about
Speaker 2: market education, about trying to navigate demand, and how much
Speaker 2: is it the supply side that also holds it up.
Speaker 9: I think it's a combination of all three, but definitely
Speaker 9: I would lean mostly towards supply. Right they don't have
Speaker 9: enough supply to do a global launch at this point.
Speaker 9: They think they'll have enough supply by the tail end
Speaker 9: of twenty twenty four or into twenty twenty five, and
Speaker 9: so what they're going to do is they're going to
Speaker 9: launch in Asia in early twenty twenty five. At the
Speaker 9: end of twenty twenty four, they'll be launching in Canada.
Speaker 4: And the UK.
Speaker 9: Over time, they're going to expand to France and Germany. Basically,
Speaker 9: they're going to probably get to about ten major regions
Speaker 9: by the end of twenty twenty five. In twenty two
Speaker 9: they're also looking at expanding to resellers as well.
Speaker 2: Fascinating the way in which these things, the logistics of
Speaker 2: getting this into our hands. Mark German, with all the
Speaker 2: news as we know, we thank you so much. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: well let's talk about what's going viral right now. The
Speaker 2: Barbie movie. It has sixty four years, the Barbie doll
Speaker 2: has been both an icon and an embarrassment. Now with
Speaker 2: Greta Gerwig's new film, Mattel, the company that builds them,
Speaker 2: is now trying to prove that Barbie isn't hopelessly out
Speaker 2: of date?
Speaker 4: Did that?
Speaker 2: Betpan out? We're going to see. Let's bringing billiam ogs
Speaker 2: Thomas Buckling for more on that, because there's been a
Speaker 2: beautiful big take written by billiam Bag today all about
Speaker 2: how the birth of this occurred, and really all goes
Speaker 2: back to Mattel realizing that they're an IP company as
Speaker 2: much as they're a toy company.
Speaker 10: Absolutely, that's soritally right. And you know, before I launch
Speaker 10: into BET, I had to say that I was just
Speaker 10: watching Mark Gooman and Second Mons temper each others of
Speaker 10: his Pete Walls madst the interview from there, So it's
Speaker 10: incredibly interesting. I mean Ian Craze, the CEO of Mattel,
Speaker 10: who came in to run the company in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 10: background has been in entertainment for really most of his career,
Speaker 10: so I think that when he took hold of Mattel,
Speaker 10: he realized, Look, we've got these phenomenal brands, including Barbie,
Speaker 10: Hot Wheels, Barney and more that would be perfectly suited
Speaker 10: to the screen. And what's interesting is that Barbie has
Speaker 10: had its rations on screen, whether it's video games or
Speaker 10: whether it's straight to TV films, but it's the first
Speaker 10: time ever that's had a comprehensive theatrical release helmed by
Speaker 10: Greta Girl because you know, and produced by Warner Brothers.
Speaker 10: That a cost one hundred million dollars.
Speaker 3: Thomas producer John Harland makes a really good point, which
Speaker 3: is that the hype around this has been astonishing. It's
Speaker 3: been everywhere social media, on all the streaming platforms. I
Speaker 3: see ads for it. But the origins of this product,
Speaker 3: the history of Barbie. Some people say, actually, this is
Speaker 3: a pretty big risk for the company. Explain that to me.
Speaker 4: That's actually right.
Speaker 10: So I think mention it when Barbie launched in nineteen
Speaker 10: fifty nine, and she was immensely popular for several decades.
Speaker 4: I mean, she was.
Speaker 10: Modeled on the German build Lily, and you know, in
Speaker 10: a country that had recently embraced the eranism. So I
Speaker 10: think that, you know, the marketing of the doll at
Speaker 10: its early stages, blue eyed blonde Head appealed to you know,
Speaker 10: a set number of people, but wasn't necessarily that wide ranging. Now,
Speaker 10: Barbie's brand actually suffered because it was being perceived as
Speaker 10: very elitist in the past couple of decades and I
Speaker 10: think that what this film is going to try to
Speaker 10: do is really undo a lot of those preconceived notions
Speaker 10: that Barbie is only suitable to a set demographic by
Speaker 10: making her more accessible. And that really follows the trend
Speaker 10: of actually making the doll itself more accessible. A number
Speaker 10: of Barbies have been produced, you know, in current times
Speaker 10: that have, for example, alopecia or down syndrome or different
Speaker 10: skin tones in a bit to actually build the brand
Speaker 10: into something a lot more accessible than it has been
Speaker 10: in the past.
Speaker 2: I mean, I go back to that amazing outfit by
Speaker 2: jay Z and Beyonce when they came as Barbie dolls,
Speaker 2: really to highlight the point it was a Halloween costume
Speaker 2: to that end. If this does do well and there
Speaker 2: are limitations, we understand, you know, they've rouffle feathers to
Speaker 2: put it mildly in Vietnam, But what do they manage
Speaker 2: to make this a sequel if it goes well, if
Speaker 2: they managed to overcome those issues of Nam.
Speaker 10: There are some ongoing considerations. I believe, according to a
Speaker 10: familiar that a sequel is perhaps being put into development.
Speaker 10: It all depends on how well the film does. I mean,
Speaker 10: as ed rightly pointed out that the hype for this
Speaker 10: is really unmatched in recent times in Hollywood. I think that,
Speaker 10: you know, the only film that I can think of
Speaker 10: that's had as much hypersthisis maybe the Avatar sequel. Certainly,
Speaker 10: nothing this year has even come close. And we're observing
Speaker 10: the tracking for this film that is to say, how
Speaker 10: it's going to perform on this opening weekend, and the
Speaker 10: tracking jumped domestically by fifty four percent just in the
Speaker 10: last week alone. Set to open at about one hundred
Speaker 10: and ten million dollars. Now, if the film can grows
Speaker 10: you know, something like half a billion, which is a
Speaker 10: fall ask but not impossible given some of the hype
Speaker 10: around it, then I'm fairly certain that a sequel would
Speaker 10: be put into production.
Speaker 3: A right Bloomberg Thommas Buckley with the Barbie latest Thank You,
Speaker 3: Time for Another Story and You. Study from Watchfinder showed
Speaker 3: that as many as ten percent of the watches received
Speaker 3: from sellers last year were determined to be fakes during
Speaker 3: an authentication process, and half of those fakes were Rolexes.
Speaker 3: And the problem is set to become worse for the
Speaker 3: twenty seven billion dollars secondary market as fakes become more
Speaker 3: sophisticated and hard at a spot. The question out for you,
Speaker 3: Caroline is how does technology fix that?
Speaker 2: And there's a will, there's a way ed, and let's
Speaker 2: bring in someone who knows the luxury space specifically using
Speaker 2: technology to verify goods. Entropy authentication uses like a combination
Speaker 2: of artificial intelligence, of course it does, and microscopy. Microscopy,
Speaker 2: of course, the objectively kind of says is the authenticity
Speaker 2: of an item. I'm pleased to say the founders with us,
Speaker 2: the CEO of Entropy, it's video tun Okay, how does AI?
Speaker 2: How does micross compy help in the scenarios? What exactly
Speaker 2: are you doing and able to tell us?
Speaker 11: Sure? Firstly, thanks for having me. And what we do
Speaker 11: is we use visual we use images. We run images
Speaker 11: through AI models and help them understand the minute differences.
Speaker 11: So my new share per se and this could be
Speaker 11: at such a deep resolution that it's almost impossible, not impossible,
Speaker 11: but almost impossible for counterfeiters to actually beat that. And
Speaker 11: we train computers at scale to understand these differences. And
Speaker 11: then when our customers, anybody needs on demand authentication, Someone
Speaker 11: has an item in front of them and they need
Speaker 11: to know if it's real or not. We are providing
Speaker 11: them the ability to take images of the item, ship
Speaker 11: it out of the cloud. AI says yes or no.
Speaker 11: If it's a yes, then we give them a certificate
Speaker 11: and a financial guarantee.
Speaker 4: So it's almost like insurance videos.
Speaker 3: Where's the technology come from? Have you developed this yourself
Speaker 3: or you're bringing in the software component from a third party?
Speaker 11: No, everything is built in house, including the microscopy even
Speaker 11: any other camera information that we get is all processed
Speaker 11: in house. The data we collect and we train computers
Speaker 11: on is also completely in house, which makes it kind
Speaker 11: of unique and also valuable. And yeah, I mean when
Speaker 11: we started this there was no one else doing it.
Speaker 4: It was also a weird thing to do. Think about it.
Speaker 11: You're a Bloomingdale's, would you expect someone to walk around
Speaker 11: with a device like that? But it turns out there's
Speaker 11: a lot of value because about ten to twelve percent
Speaker 11: of all the items that we authenticate our counterfeit.
Speaker 4: And this is only with businesses.
Speaker 2: Wow, what's interesting. I'm looking at a handbag and can
Speaker 2: really understand how your technology would work for that. Are
Speaker 2: there items we were just talking about watches that sort
Speaker 2: of impossible because you've got to basically take the thing
Speaker 2: apart to be able to take the photos. Where are
Speaker 2: the limitations? Where is the scalability for you?
Speaker 11: Sure so scalability where scalability is available in almost any
Speaker 11: category where there are kind of fits. Because the beauty
Speaker 11: of AI is this flywheel of learning and improving constantly. Typically,
Speaker 11: when you do that long enough and at large scales enough,
Speaker 11: you are disincentivizing counterfeiters from constantly going off of that
Speaker 11: space making better quality fakes because at some point that
Speaker 11: their margin is at a ceiling, right, so you're always
Speaker 11: half a step ahead. So that's where the scalability and
Speaker 11: the AI piece is useful. Limitations wise, I think you
Speaker 11: raise a very good point. When it comes to certain
Speaker 11: types of goods, there's form and there's function.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 11: Forum is say a handbag or a shoe, or a
Speaker 11: piece of a paddle or an necessity. Function would mean
Speaker 11: does it work well?
Speaker 4: Right? So for a whilech you need to do both.
Speaker 11: AI is excellent at form, might not be the most
Speaker 11: ideal solution at function, but there are other ways. So
Speaker 11: the question is how can you put both together in
Speaker 11: a seamless way.
Speaker 4: That's what we're working on.
Speaker 2: Come back when you nailed the watch market as well.
Speaker 2: Really great to have some time with you. Thank you
Speaker 2: for any of us on their Entropy founder and CEO.
Speaker 2: We thank him while we all suddenly consider our goods
Speaker 2: and whether they're real or not. And I mean that
Speaker 2: does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. It's been
Speaker 2: a very quick, short week, but a fun one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a short week dominated by threads, but there's a
Speaker 3: lot more to recap. It's interesting how real focus on
Speaker 3: social media, so much going on in China. A lot
Speaker 3: with the hardware side, with Apple and Mark German's reporting,
Speaker 3: so you can recap it. Don't forget.
Speaker 4: We have our podcast.
Speaker 3: You can find it on the Bloomberg terminal as well
Speaker 3: as online on Apple, Spotify, and iHeart, wherever you choose
Speaker 3: to get your podcasts. A short week, a big week
Speaker 3: in the world of technology, coming up from New York
Speaker 3: and San Francisco. This is Bloomberg Technology.