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Speaker 1: The social media app that I use the most is Instagram.

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Speaker 2: It's a tie between Instagram and it had been Twitter.

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Speaker 1: Had so probably TikTok. I just like that. It's like

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Speaker 1: short form, It's just like quick videos that you can watch.

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Speaker 1: I'll probably say TikTok. Reason being is because I'd rather

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Speaker 1: post videos and the pictures sometimes.

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Speaker 3: Instagram, and I'm not into the other ones at all.

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Speaker 1: I definitely use social media less now because I have

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Speaker 1: a job and I don't have as much time.

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Speaker 4: I use it less now. Quote you get carried away

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Speaker 4: with it, maybe.

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Speaker 1: One hundred percent more. It's like terrible how much I

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Speaker 1: use it.

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Speaker 5: They want you to be addicted.

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Speaker 2: Definitely less as I've become.

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Speaker 5: More aware of the dangers of social media, for sure.

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Speaker 4: How are you feeling about your social media habit these days?

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Speaker 4: For the longest time, Facebook and Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, we're

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Speaker 4: growing like crazy, and everyone loved them or love to

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Speaker 4: hate them, but even then still spent too many hours

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Speaker 4: scrolling through those endless feeds. Bloomberg's Max Chaffkin the rights

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Speaker 4: in Business Week that recently, for a lot of people,

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Speaker 4: the love is gone. He says, even as Meta's new

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Speaker 4: Twitter substitute called threads is racking up users. Social media

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Speaker 4: use overall is softening.

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Speaker 6: A lot of people want to go outside and see

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Speaker 6: their friends and they don't want to look at their screens.

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Speaker 6: But I think there's really a possibility that there's no

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Speaker 6: next Twitter.

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Speaker 5: The next Twitter is nothing.

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Speaker 4: I'm west Kosova today on the Big Take borrow that

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Speaker 4: old Internet cliche, touching screens versus touching grass. Max. Great

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Speaker 4: to see you again, Yeah, good to see you. So

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Speaker 4: why did you write this story?

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Speaker 5: Well, two reasons.

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Speaker 6: One is, for the last year or so, there's just

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Speaker 6: been this constellation of things that have been happening, especially

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Speaker 6: in the world of social media, but broader in the world.

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Speaker 5: Of online media.

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Speaker 6: The biggest and I think most important, being that Elon

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Speaker 6: Musk bought Twitter and has proceeded to do what feels

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Speaker 6: like almost everything in his power to destroy it. He's

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Speaker 6: changed all these policies, he's alienated Twitter's advertisers, he's alienate

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Speaker 6: a lot of the core users, he's fired most of

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Speaker 6: the employees. But at the same time, right there are

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Speaker 6: these challenges for Elon Musk, and I started to think about, well,

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Speaker 6: what are those challenges? Why is Elon Musk struggling so bad.

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Speaker 6: Why is a guy who can send rockets into space,

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Speaker 6: who almost single handedly popularize the electric car, who is

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Speaker 6: doing brain implants, who seems like he can do almost anything,

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Speaker 6: he can't run a social media company that should be

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Speaker 6: like the easiest of those.

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Speaker 4: And it's not just Twitter. A lot of social media

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Speaker 4: platforms are also facing new headwinds.

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Speaker 6: The social media platforms are struggling, and not just the

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Speaker 6: social media platforms.

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Speaker 5: So you look at streaming.

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Speaker 6: A couple years ago, Netflix and all these streaming companies

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Speaker 6: basically seemed like they had almost unlimited growth and it

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Speaker 6: was all we were talking about, and you're suddenly seeing

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Speaker 6: shrinking subscriber bases. A headline that jumped out on me

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Speaker 6: a couple months ago was Apple is making its own

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Speaker 6: movies now, and they announced that they were going to

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Speaker 6: show those movies in movie theaters, which was kind of

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Speaker 6: spun in some circles as, oh, like, Apple's just taking

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Speaker 6: over the world.

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Speaker 5: But what it really is is kind of an admission

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Speaker 5: of defeat.

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Speaker 6: It's that they can't market the movies without the movie theaters.

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Speaker 6: A couple others, you know, Vice declaring bankruptcy. Vice I've

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Speaker 6: been seen as kind of the future of media. BuzzFeed News,

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Speaker 6: which was seen as the future of news, just shut down.

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Speaker 6: Those two were companies that were basically drafting off of

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Speaker 6: social media, in particular Facebook. So yeah, you just saw

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Speaker 6: all of these companies that are all facing challenges and

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Speaker 6: you look at what's happening, and the explanation is, like,

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Speaker 6: not that complicated. It's that for a long time, there

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Speaker 6: was incredible growth in this market. Every single year, there

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Speaker 6: were more people spending more time looking at their phones

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Speaker 6: and before their phones, their computer screens, and that basically

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Speaker 6: was almost like a law, and in some quarters of

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Speaker 6: Silicon Valley they thought of it like as a natural law,

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Speaker 6: like the law of gravity or the law of the

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Speaker 6: conservation of matter or something.

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Speaker 5: And during the pandemic it became possible to sort of

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Speaker 5: believe that would go on forever.

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Speaker 6: And then you come out of the pandemic and people

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Speaker 6: are able to see friends, and they start pulling back,

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Speaker 6: and for the first time in twenty two we saw

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Speaker 6: a big drop in the amount of time people were

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Speaker 6: spending on devices. There had been drops before, but this

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Speaker 6: drop was way bigger. And I think a lot of

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Speaker 6: these other stories bankruptcies and digital media challenges of streaming giants,

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Speaker 6: challenges within social media companies.

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Speaker 5: They all kind of come back to this basic.

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Speaker 6: Reality, which is that a lot of people want to

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Speaker 6: go outside and see their friends and they don't want

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Speaker 6: to look at their screens.

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Speaker 4: And as you mentioned that, there had been slow downs before,

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Speaker 4: and you started to see the seeds of this before

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Speaker 4: the pandemic. But and then of course when everyone was

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Speaker 4: stuck at home, there was this boom again.

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Speaker 6: I think it was around twenty eighteen, and you see

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Speaker 6: that both in the data. So I cite this data

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Speaker 6: from GWI, which is a market research company. They basically

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Speaker 6: send out surveys to almost a million people, maybe more

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Speaker 6: than a million people every year, basically saying like how

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Speaker 6: much time are you spending on your device, what are

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Speaker 6: you doing on your device? How much money are you spending?

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Speaker 6: And it's in twenty eighteen when they picked up this decline.

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Speaker 6: But I think you can also see it in things

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Speaker 6: that were happening at the time. So the same year,

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Speaker 6: in twenty eighteen, Bloomberg did a story. It was about

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Speaker 6: how people were getting a lot of pings from Facebook.

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Speaker 6: There were all these intrusive notifications that users were complaining about,

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Speaker 6: saying like you haven't logged into Facebook for a long time.

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Speaker 6: Your friend is on Facebook. Just these kind of like

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Speaker 6: almost thirsty kings from this digital media company that was

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Speaker 6: going around talking about as if the growth is going

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Speaker 6: on forever. You also saw Facebook doing all these kind

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Speaker 6: of wild things that were designed to get bigger audiences.

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Speaker 6: There's obviously been a lot of Internet penetration, a lot

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Speaker 6: of cell phone penetration in much of the world, but

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Speaker 6: there were you know, parts of the world in particular,

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Speaker 6: you know Sub Saharan Africa, parts of Asia where there's

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Speaker 6: very poor connectivity, and Google and Facebook we're going to

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Speaker 6: try to solve that in novel ways, Google by floating

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Speaker 6: these balloons. The company was called Loon and it was

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Speaker 6: going to broadcast a signal. The balloons act like satellites essentially,

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Speaker 6: and Facebook had basically the same plan, except with drones.

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Speaker 6: These were high flying, gigantic airplanes that would sort of

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Speaker 6: be way above the clouds and zipping Internet down to

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Speaker 6: the furthest corners of the world. And again, like looking back,

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Speaker 6: you're like, how did they plan on making money there?

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Speaker 5: Because it's not just about the audience.

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Speaker 6: You need advertising, and so I think there was just

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Speaker 6: this conception that it would go on forever, and you

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Speaker 6: start to see skepticism building in twenty eighteen twenty nineteen,

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Speaker 6: but then the pandemic happened, and the pandemic instantly everybody

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Speaker 6: is stuck at home, right, we have nothing, no other

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Speaker 6: way to communicate with people, So people are spending more

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Speaker 6: time online. There was a lot of inks build in

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Speaker 6: twenty twenty and twenty twenty one about kind of like

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Speaker 6: a new normal, how this wasn't a temporary public health crisis,

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Speaker 6: this was an accelerant. In other words, we would never

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Speaker 6: get off of zoom. And you see that in the statements,

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Speaker 6: especially made by these tech companies that were really invested

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Speaker 6: in these services. So, like all of the tech companies

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Speaker 6: were the most enthusiastic supporters of remote work because of

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Speaker 6: course remote work, in addition to like keeping people from

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Speaker 6: getting COVID, was a great way for them to make money.

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Speaker 5: Mark Zuckerberg relocated to Why and.

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Speaker 6: Made all these statements in twenty twenty about how half

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Speaker 6: of Facebook's work force would be remote and one of

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Speaker 6: the reasons Zuckerberg was saying, you know, everyone's gonna be

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Speaker 6: able to work remotely is because he believed that everyone

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Speaker 6: would have these headsets that they would plug into to

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Speaker 6: have meetings, and it was he believed also going to

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Speaker 6: be like the center of our social interactions. The idea

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Speaker 6: of the metaverse was that it was going to be

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Speaker 6: this new platform like social media, but like moral compass

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Speaker 6: than social media. Facebook changed its name to meta you know,

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Speaker 6: with much fanfare. Zuckerberg invested and has continued to invest

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Speaker 6: huge sums of money.

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Speaker 5: You had books written.

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Speaker 6: I looked, you know, there's so many business books about

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Speaker 6: how to set your company up for the metaverse, how

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Speaker 6: to profit from the metaverse, how the metaverse is going

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Speaker 6: to change everything. And they bought a Super Bowl ad

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Speaker 6: and they spend all this money, and you look, and

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Speaker 6: the results are just incredibly piddling. We're also seeing Apple,

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Speaker 6: another company that is trying to make the metaverse happen,

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Speaker 6: announce this headset and they had a whole event, and

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Speaker 6: you're seeing the sales projections get smaller and smaller. When

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Speaker 6: you look at this trend of declining interest in screen

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Speaker 6: time and social media, you can see you can predict

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Speaker 6: that the metaverse would not do very well because if

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Speaker 6: you're dealing with a situation where consumers are like not

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Speaker 6: wanting to spend as much time on Facebook and Twitter

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Speaker 6: and so on, and then your pitches. I've got Facebook,

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Speaker 6: but it's strapped to your face. You can see why

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Speaker 6: consumers would be like, thanks, I'll stick with what i've got.

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Speaker 6: There was this feeling that there were certain parts of

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Speaker 6: the pandemic that would just sort of last, maybe forever,

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Speaker 6: and I think that part just has not borne out.

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Speaker 6: And when you look at the increase in the time spend,

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Speaker 6: it's almost not that encouraging. It was only about fifteen

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Speaker 6: minutes more per day that people were spending on their devices.

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Speaker 6: And you might imagine, given that we were all stuck inside,

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Speaker 6: that the number would be even higher.

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Speaker 5: But I think the thing was we were already pretty saturated.

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Speaker 6: I mean, when you're talking about seven hours a day,

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Speaker 6: which is how high it got, that's almost half of

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Speaker 6: a normal waking day. I think you would really have

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Speaker 6: to work to spend more time than that. And I

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Speaker 6: can say that as like an addict of these things.

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Speaker 6: And so I think we all collectively had a problem,

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Speaker 6: maybe still have a problem, and the awareness of that

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Speaker 6: is creating all sorts of dislocation where you have these

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Speaker 6: social media companies who are increasingly competing for a market

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Speaker 6: that is no longer growing. So this isn't to say

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Speaker 6: that social media is dying. Somebody see those headlines, but

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Speaker 6: it's not. It's just not growing as much and that

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Speaker 6: has all sorts of knock on effects that makes the

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Speaker 6: difficult for the social media companies. We basically found a

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Speaker 6: saturation point, a point where we like, we can't eat

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Speaker 6: any more Internet. It's seven hours and after that, you know,

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Speaker 6: you start to go a little nuts.

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Speaker 5: Because I've covered.

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Speaker 6: Social media and digital media for almost twenty years, thinking

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Speaker 6: about this caused me to like revisit a lot of

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Speaker 6: things that I hadn't really thought about. One of the

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Speaker 6: things was Read Hastings, the then CEO of Netflix, was

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Speaker 6: going around saying the only competition for Netflix, the only

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Speaker 6: competition that matters is sleep. It was very pithy and

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Speaker 6: memorable he said in our earnings calls and in conferences,

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Speaker 6: and the idea was that you know, if you're watching

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Speaker 6: Netflix and you're getting tired, but you're really into the show,

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Speaker 6: you might stay up and you might skip some sleep in.

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Speaker 5: Order to watch another episode.

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Speaker 6: And like, looking back on that, it really seems weird

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Speaker 6: and problematic and troubling because, first of all, there's no

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Speaker 6: disrupting sleep, right, Like, everyone needs to sleep physically, it's

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Speaker 6: a requirement. But it also kind of gets at the limits.

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Speaker 6: There's only so much attention. And the idea that Netflix

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Speaker 6: was going to like cause people to sleep a little

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Speaker 6: less and that was going to allow them to make

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Speaker 6: their like quarterly numbers for the foreseeable future. You can

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Speaker 6: just see that that's a little bit problematic, super memorable

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Speaker 6: and funny, and he got to go around saying like,

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Speaker 6: you know, we're at war with sleep and we're winning.

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Speaker 6: And people at the time kind of loved it, but

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Speaker 6: I think were looking back that was kind of a

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Speaker 6: warning sign.

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Speaker 5: Or it should have been a warning sign.

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Speaker 6: And right around that time is when time spent online

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Speaker 6: started a level off or even fall a little bit.

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Speaker 4: And so there's this parallel between the streaming companies like

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Speaker 4: Netflix and Apple and Disney and all the rest of

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Speaker 4: them that are trying to claim our attention and the

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Speaker 4: social media companies which are also trying to claim our

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Speaker 4: attention at the very same time.

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Speaker 6: Not only that, but they're competing for the same attention.

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Speaker 6: And I think that's part of what happened. Like you

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Speaker 6: had growth leveling off where people are sort of spending

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Speaker 6: as much time as they can looking at screens. You

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Speaker 6: have parts of the developing world getting online like they're

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Speaker 6: already online. If you look at the World Bank, like

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Speaker 6: how many cell phones are there per one hundred people,

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Speaker 6: it's one hundred and six. They're just like not that

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Speaker 6: many people out there who are not already potential Netflix customers,

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Speaker 6: and these companies their fates are tied together because going

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Speaker 6: back ten years, social media was kind of at the

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Speaker 6: core of how a lot of culture, a lot of news,

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Speaker 6: a lot of everything was being consumed by people. So

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Speaker 6: you're just sort of pushing a lot of stuff into

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Speaker 6: a funnel, and it's you know, the funnel's not getting

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Speaker 6: any wider, and again there's going to be dislocation, or

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Speaker 6: you're going to start to see companies try to pivot,

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Speaker 6: which is to some extent what happened in social media.

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Speaker 6: Facebook and TikTok, which sprung up, basically moved away from

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Speaker 6: having people share stuff and into just serving up this

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Speaker 6: feed of algorithmic content for people to consume. And you

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Speaker 6: see social media transforming itself from being more of an

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Speaker 6: active experience to be more like a passive, consumptive thing.

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Speaker 4: After the break. Is Threads a Twitter killer or just

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Speaker 4: another Twitter wanna be?

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Speaker 1: I enjoy Threads. I think it's a good intersection of

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Speaker 1: you know, Twitter and Instagram.

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Speaker 7: It's no, Oh my god, I'm trying to stay away

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Speaker 7: from threads. I don't need anything.

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Speaker 2: More to do, just with a stroke of genius to

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Speaker 2: literally just take Twitter and make a new platform that

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Speaker 2: it really mirrors exactly what Twitter is. Maybe a couple

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Speaker 2: months from now, it's even better than Twitter ever was.

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Speaker 2: It's possible.

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Speaker 4: Max. Is interesting that we're talking about people's ambivalence towards

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Speaker 4: social media and spending less time on it because we're

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Speaker 4: in the middle of this big promotional surge and a

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Speaker 4: lot of hype around threads, which is, of course is

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Speaker 4: Facebook's answer to Twitter.

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Speaker 6: And you can see why Facebook Meta is doing this.

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Speaker 6: I mean they're doing it because Twitter has just been

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Speaker 6: putting rakes in its path and stepping on them in.

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Speaker 5: The online space.

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Speaker 6: Metas Instagram has unveiled Threads and op designed to compete

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Speaker 6: with Elon Musk's Twitter. Red's currently ranked number one among

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Speaker 6: free apps on the Apple Store. But will the new

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Speaker 6: platform succeed in knocking the Bluebird off of its perch.

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Speaker 5: There's a track record here.

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Speaker 6: Zuckerberg has basically, for the last ten years looked out

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Speaker 6: at the universe of other apps and tried to copy them,

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Speaker 6: and most of the time he's been pretty unsuccessful, but

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Speaker 6: there have been a few exceptions. And as you said,

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Speaker 6: the first couple of days of Threads were really amazing.

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Speaker 6: It is the fastest growing app ever in the sense

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Speaker 6: that in just a few days, I think five days,

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Speaker 6: they had one hundred million users. Now I think there

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Speaker 6: are reasons to not get too excited about that, And

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Speaker 6: when you look at the way the stock has performed,

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Speaker 6: which is like it hasn't really moved very much, you

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Speaker 6: can sort of see this part of it is that

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Speaker 6: number one, it's a standalone product, but it's taking the

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Speaker 6: Instagram algorithm and the Instagram user base and essentially pouring

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Speaker 6: them over to another app. So that might kill Twitter maybe,

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Speaker 6: although I'm kind of skeptical of that. But it doesn't

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Speaker 6: necessarily create a ton of new value for Facebook. It

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Speaker 6: just becomes a different way to consume Instagram.

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Speaker 4: For people who aren't familiar with Threads. Tell us exactly

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Speaker 4: what it is like, how it's like Twitter, how it's

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Speaker 4: not like Twitter.

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Speaker 5: Threads is basically exactly like Twitter in almost every way.

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Speaker 6: But I'd say two important differences in Threads. One is

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Speaker 6: there is no chronological feed in Threads right now. Threads

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Speaker 6: is all algorithm. In other words, you can follow people

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Speaker 6: on Threads and those people will be in your feed,

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Speaker 6: but you're also going to see like a lot of influencers, celebrities, brands,

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Speaker 6: kind of what you see in TikTok or if you've

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Speaker 6: used Instagram in the last year, what you see on Instagram.

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Speaker 6: It's not really a way to consume content from your

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Speaker 6: friends as much as a way to consume content from

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Speaker 6: content creators. The other thing, and this is I think

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Speaker 6: the most important thing, is unlike Twitter, which when you

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Speaker 6: sign up for you give them your email and you

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Speaker 6: create a password and so on, with Threads, you just

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Speaker 6: go to Instagram and click a button and it basically

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Speaker 6: takes your Instagram account and moves it over to this

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Speaker 6: other app. And if you look at it, and it's

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Speaker 6: really just like Instagram without the pictures, for better or worse.

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Speaker 6: But again, it isn't as much as standalone app as

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Speaker 6: it is another version of an app you already know,

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Speaker 6: and that could be good, could be bad. It definitely

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Speaker 6: creates a situation where the best case scenario is Facebook

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Speaker 6: controls yet another part of the social media ecosystem, right

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Speaker 6: where Facebook already has WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and then they

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Speaker 6: potentially have like another one of the big apps to

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Speaker 6: consume and create content.

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Speaker 4: Why do you think there's been such a huge number

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Speaker 4: of people moving to threads?

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Speaker 5: Well, two things.

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Speaker 6: One is that Twitter has been really bad, especially if

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Speaker 6: you've been a longtime Twitter user as I have.

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Speaker 5: I mean, you really notice it.

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Speaker 6: The bunch of decisions, some of which have to do

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Speaker 6: with the technical performance of the app, which is not good.

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Speaker 3: Twitter's offices set to reopen Monday after a mass exodus

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Speaker 3: of workers forced a shutdown last Week's sources also say

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Speaker 3: Elon Musk is considering firing more employees, this time targeting

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Speaker 3: the sales and partnership side of the business.

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Speaker 6: Turns out when you fire almost everybody, things start to break.

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Speaker 6: But also Elon Musk's decision to prioritize this weirdo right

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Speaker 6: wing corner of the Internet that he is obviously like

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Speaker 6: a personal fan of, but it doesn't necessarily have a

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Speaker 6: much broader audience. So like you went from seeing well

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Speaker 6: known actors and politicians and journalists and writers, and now

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Speaker 6: you're seeing basically in your feed a lot of Elon

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Speaker 6: Musk's friends and these weird right wing meme accounts, like

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Speaker 6: there's one called cat Turd, which is like, if you're

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Speaker 6: on Twitter, you know what it is, and if you're not, congratulations,

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Speaker 6: you're doing better than me.

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Speaker 5: So Twitter has gotten worse.

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Speaker 6: And the other thing is Facebook made it really easy,

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Speaker 6: and they are all of these digital enticements inside of

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Speaker 6: Instagram that urge you to go in that direction, one

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Speaker 6: of which is if you go into the app and

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Speaker 6: you click on somebody's profile, you'll see very prominent link

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Speaker 6: to look at their threads. If you didn't have threads,

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Speaker 6: you start getting alerts saying so and so is on

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Speaker 6: threads and posting.

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Speaker 5: And then once you're on there, once you click.

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Speaker 6: The button, even before you've done anything, you start getting

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Speaker 6: all of these notifications as people follow you. And this

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Speaker 6: is a really important thing because once you create a

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Speaker 6: threads account, you basically are encouraged to auto follow everybody

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Speaker 6: who already follow on Instagram. So you immediately basically send

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Speaker 6: three hundred pings to your friends, and those create a

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Speaker 6: sense of wow.

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Speaker 5: There's a lot happening here.

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Speaker 6: I kept getting alerts over the weekend that it launched

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Speaker 6: from people who are following me. You click, you're like, wow,

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Speaker 6: this person's on Threads. You click on it, and it's

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Speaker 6: just an empty page. And they're all empty pages because

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Speaker 6: a lot of people haven't actually posted anything, but they're

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Speaker 6: all these alerts. Mark Zuckerberg gets a lot of criticism,

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Speaker 6: but he is very good at marketing and growing a

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Speaker 6: technological product. And we saw this ten years ago as

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Speaker 6: Facebook started to run into these growth challenges. So you

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Speaker 6: could see Threads as a way to address some of

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Speaker 6: the issues that are already going on on Instagram, where

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Speaker 6: you're sort of seeing a drop off on engagement, a

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Speaker 6: drop off and sharing. They're trying to compete with TikTok,

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Speaker 6: but it's not quite happening. The performance of Reels, which

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Speaker 6: is their TikTok like product, it just is not doing

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Speaker 6: nearly as well as TikTok itself. So I think that

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Speaker 6: the game here for Instagram is to hopefully find a

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Speaker 6: way to get people to re engage with this product

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Speaker 6: and give them a reason to contribute to not just

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Speaker 6: consume content, but also create content. It's not clear that

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Speaker 6: that's happening or that that will happen.

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Speaker 4: Though there's been a lot of people writing that Threads

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Speaker 4: could be the Twitter killer, and whether or not that's true.

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Speaker 4: But one thing that you write is that even though

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Speaker 4: a lot of people are signing up for Threads, a

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00:20:06,640 --> 00:20:09,680
Speaker 4: lot of other people just aren't looking for yet another

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Speaker 4: social media platform to replace Twitter or anything else. They

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Speaker 4: kind of just don't want to spend that much time

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Speaker 4: on social media at all.

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Speaker 6: We've seen over the last nine months since Elon Musk

409
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Speaker 6: took over the company, just this collection of Twitter killers

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Speaker 6: that is just the last one. There's this thing called Mastodon,

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Speaker 6: There's Blue Sky, There's Post, there's substack notes, discord. There

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Speaker 6: have been a lot of efforts to create Twitter killers.

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Speaker 5: And some of them have done okay.

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Speaker 6: But I think there's really a possibility that there is

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Speaker 6: no Twitter killer, that there's no next Twitter, the next

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Speaker 6: Twitter is nothing, and that this just becomes something that

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Speaker 6: slowly is phased out of people's media diets if they

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Speaker 6: stop using Twitter itself, which if this trend, which is

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Speaker 6: the decline in screen time or the lack of growth

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Speaker 6: and screen time, continues, you're gonna need to see some

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Speaker 6: apps fall by the wayside, and Twitter maybe one of them.

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Speaker 4: There is this perception among a lot of people because

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Speaker 4: Twitter gets so much attention and because politicians, companies, everybody

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Speaker 4: uses it, that it gets echoed in news stories in

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Speaker 4: other places that even if you're not on Twitter, you

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Speaker 4: wind up seeing tweets. Gives you this impression that it's

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Speaker 4: really really huge. But by social media platform standards, Twitter

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Speaker 4: has actually always been kind of small and niche.

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Speaker 6: It's big, but it doesn't have anywhere near the scale

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Speaker 6: of Facebook. And as you said, it's always been this

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Speaker 6: app that kind of over indexes in media and in

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Speaker 6: news and in politics. And you can sort of see

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Speaker 6: why that is. It's like a word based platform. It's

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Speaker 6: a great way to broadcast an announcement or something like that. Remember,

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Speaker 6: in twenty twenty one, Twitter and the other social media

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Speaker 6: companies ban Donald Trump. This was after January sixth, Trump

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Speaker 6: had been seen as inciting the insurrection.

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Speaker 5: There was a sense they'd kind of been itching to

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Speaker 5: do it for a while. Well, all the platforms.

440
00:22:01,200 --> 00:22:04,640
Speaker 6: Banned him, including Twitter, and it was seen as this

441
00:22:04,800 --> 00:22:08,520
Speaker 6: watershed moment. Politically, Trump's appeal to a lot of people

442
00:22:08,640 --> 00:22:11,959
Speaker 6: was so tied up in his ability to grab the

443
00:22:12,000 --> 00:22:14,879
Speaker 6: news cycle, and there was a lot of inkspilled about

444
00:22:15,080 --> 00:22:17,840
Speaker 6: this is going to permanently weaken Trump, It's going to

445
00:22:17,880 --> 00:22:21,399
Speaker 6: permanently change the course of social media. And then Elon

446
00:22:21,680 --> 00:22:23,680
Speaker 6: Musk bought the company and one of the first things

447
00:22:23,680 --> 00:22:25,960
Speaker 6: he did was let Trump back on right and there

448
00:22:26,000 --> 00:22:28,600
Speaker 6: was a whole that was a big controversy too, And

449
00:22:28,880 --> 00:22:32,960
Speaker 6: a surprising thing happened, which is Donald Trump, despite having

450
00:22:33,000 --> 00:22:35,600
Speaker 6: seemed totally and utterly addicted to Twitter before he had

451
00:22:35,640 --> 00:22:38,639
Speaker 6: been banned, has managed not to go back since the

452
00:22:38,640 --> 00:22:41,720
Speaker 6: band was lifted. But it's also surprising because Trump is

453
00:22:41,840 --> 00:22:44,960
Speaker 6: leading the Republican polls by huge margin. It turns out

454
00:22:45,000 --> 00:22:48,760
Speaker 6: Trump doesn't need Twitter, and maybe no one needs Twitter

455
00:22:49,080 --> 00:22:51,719
Speaker 6: in the sense of as a way to access that

456
00:22:51,920 --> 00:22:54,879
Speaker 6: part of the media ecosystem. It really does feel like

457
00:22:55,359 --> 00:22:58,400
Speaker 6: it no longer has the importance that it once had,

458
00:22:58,680 --> 00:23:02,000
Speaker 6: partly I think because of Elon and partly because there

459
00:23:02,040 --> 00:23:08,280
Speaker 6: have been shifts in the media landscape. To be fair

460
00:23:08,280 --> 00:23:11,280
Speaker 6: to Elon Musk, Twitter was in a weakening position even

461
00:23:11,320 --> 00:23:14,000
Speaker 6: before Elon Musk bought it, but as part of the acquisition,

462
00:23:14,320 --> 00:23:17,280
Speaker 6: they've loaded up on a bunch of debt he's alienated

463
00:23:17,280 --> 00:23:19,240
Speaker 6: a bunch of key partners, and then you have this

464
00:23:19,359 --> 00:23:24,479
Speaker 6: competitor with very deep pockets and competence, and so obviously

465
00:23:24,480 --> 00:23:26,480
Speaker 6: it could be a big thread. I think the idea

466
00:23:26,760 --> 00:23:29,439
Speaker 6: that Twitter would just go away, that's probably not going

467
00:23:29,520 --> 00:23:29,919
Speaker 6: to happen.

468
00:23:30,880 --> 00:23:33,960
Speaker 4: You went to Meta and asked them about threads. What

469
00:23:34,040 --> 00:23:34,719
Speaker 4: did they say?

470
00:23:35,080 --> 00:23:38,399
Speaker 6: So? Facebook didn't comment to me directly, but the head

471
00:23:38,400 --> 00:23:42,159
Speaker 6: of Instagram who's overseeing threads, has been very upfront about

472
00:23:42,200 --> 00:23:44,960
Speaker 6: the shortcomings of this. What they're saying is, look, it's

473
00:23:45,040 --> 00:23:47,840
Speaker 6: early days. We understand like we're working on and make

474
00:23:47,880 --> 00:23:49,840
Speaker 6: it better. They are very clear that this is an

475
00:23:49,840 --> 00:23:52,479
Speaker 6: early product. Of course, they're very excited about the massive

476
00:23:52,560 --> 00:23:55,960
Speaker 6: user growth. What they're saying is that we're not trying

477
00:23:55,960 --> 00:23:56,760
Speaker 6: to be like Twitter.

478
00:23:57,400 --> 00:23:58,959
Speaker 4: And of course he also went to Twitter. Where did

479
00:23:58,960 --> 00:23:59,800
Speaker 4: they have to say?

480
00:24:00,119 --> 00:24:03,120
Speaker 6: Twitter's press account sent me a picture of a poop emoji.

481
00:24:04,080 --> 00:24:05,640
Speaker 4: That was their actual response.

482
00:24:06,040 --> 00:24:10,919
Speaker 6: Twitter has set their press department, insofar as they have

483
00:24:10,960 --> 00:24:14,360
Speaker 6: a press department, to respond every email with the poop emji,

484
00:24:14,880 --> 00:24:18,280
Speaker 6: which I think says a lot about how they view

485
00:24:18,320 --> 00:24:21,720
Speaker 6: the press and how seriously they take their position in

486
00:24:21,760 --> 00:24:23,600
Speaker 6: the news ecosystem.

487
00:24:24,080 --> 00:24:26,600
Speaker 4: After the break, So what does the future of social

488
00:24:26,680 --> 00:24:27,480
Speaker 4: media look like.

489
00:24:36,480 --> 00:24:38,159
Speaker 7: I used to love Twitter. I did a bunch of

490
00:24:38,320 --> 00:24:41,600
Speaker 7: university projects on Twitter. It was like the reliable source

491
00:24:41,640 --> 00:24:44,520
Speaker 7: of information in a lot of ways. And because it's

492
00:24:44,520 --> 00:24:47,439
Speaker 7: such a controversy, I can't really trust the funnel of

493
00:24:47,480 --> 00:24:48,760
Speaker 7: information as much.

494
00:24:49,160 --> 00:24:52,160
Speaker 1: How Musk has taken away jobs from people, and how

495
00:24:52,200 --> 00:24:55,080
Speaker 1: he's trying to make the platform more subscription based. It

496
00:24:55,119 --> 00:24:57,520
Speaker 1: is not really like something that's for the people. So

497
00:24:57,640 --> 00:24:59,680
Speaker 1: I support threats as it's free.

498
00:25:00,080 --> 00:25:03,280
Speaker 2: One of the big things for me as a person

499
00:25:03,280 --> 00:25:05,320
Speaker 2: of color was the fact that as soon as he

500
00:25:05,320 --> 00:25:07,119
Speaker 2: took over, hate speech and things like that ticked up

501
00:25:07,160 --> 00:25:09,000
Speaker 2: a lot because he's pulled back on a lot of

502
00:25:09,000 --> 00:25:10,880
Speaker 2: the restrictions max.

503
00:25:10,960 --> 00:25:13,399
Speaker 4: One way that Threads is very different from Twitter is

504
00:25:13,400 --> 00:25:16,760
Speaker 4: that they are explicitly trying to stay out of politics

505
00:25:16,840 --> 00:25:20,199
Speaker 4: and stay out of controversy. Whereas Twitter, of course is

506
00:25:20,240 --> 00:25:21,520
Speaker 4: a giant stew of.

507
00:25:21,480 --> 00:25:24,760
Speaker 6: It, Threads is doing a couple of things, one of

508
00:25:24,800 --> 00:25:28,199
Speaker 6: which is the algorithmic feed which I mentioned, which steers

509
00:25:28,200 --> 00:25:32,639
Speaker 6: you towards influencers, creators, brands, and so it tells you

510
00:25:32,680 --> 00:25:34,160
Speaker 6: a lot about what they're trying to do. They're trying

511
00:25:34,200 --> 00:25:37,159
Speaker 6: to make a place that feels safe both for people

512
00:25:37,200 --> 00:25:41,080
Speaker 6: to spend time without being delused with controversial or upsetting

513
00:25:41,240 --> 00:25:44,320
Speaker 6: or outrage provoking stuff, and I think, more importantly from

514
00:25:44,359 --> 00:25:47,280
Speaker 6: the point of view of meta Mark Zuckerberg, it's a

515
00:25:47,320 --> 00:25:50,679
Speaker 6: platform that advertisers will feel comfortable with. And then the

516
00:25:50,720 --> 00:25:53,920
Speaker 6: other thing that Threads has said, which is they are

517
00:25:53,960 --> 00:25:57,760
Speaker 6: not going to prioritize news or politics.

518
00:25:57,920 --> 00:25:58,400
Speaker 5: There was a.

519
00:25:58,400 --> 00:26:01,960
Speaker 6: Time five years ago or so where Facebook was talking

520
00:26:02,000 --> 00:26:04,960
Speaker 6: a lot about its place in the news ecosystem. They

521
00:26:04,960 --> 00:26:09,440
Speaker 6: were like courting media companies, they were investing in journalism.

522
00:26:09,840 --> 00:26:12,359
Speaker 6: They wanted Facebook to kind of be at the center

523
00:26:12,800 --> 00:26:15,480
Speaker 6: of the news ecosystem. And that's all gone. They're not

524
00:26:15,520 --> 00:26:19,439
Speaker 6: going to do that because that they view as fraught

525
00:26:19,520 --> 00:26:24,480
Speaker 6: from a regulatory and brand perspective, and also it's controversial,

526
00:26:24,720 --> 00:26:26,560
Speaker 6: and you know, they don't want to have any controversy.

527
00:26:26,680 --> 00:26:31,840
Speaker 6: They want this to be a relatively benign, almost sterile environment,

528
00:26:32,040 --> 00:26:34,119
Speaker 6: which of course is great for advertising.

529
00:26:34,040 --> 00:26:36,919
Speaker 4: But it's exactly the opposite of what people were on

530
00:26:36,960 --> 00:26:40,359
Speaker 4: Twitter for. So you can imagine that some number of

531
00:26:40,359 --> 00:26:42,359
Speaker 4: the people who are coming over to Threads looking for

532
00:26:42,400 --> 00:26:44,879
Speaker 4: a new home because they're no longer happy with Twitter,

533
00:26:45,000 --> 00:26:48,160
Speaker 4: we'll look in there and say, hey, where's all the

534
00:26:48,200 --> 00:26:49,199
Speaker 4: real conversation.

535
00:26:49,920 --> 00:26:52,760
Speaker 6: As somebody who has been a Twitter addict and who's

536
00:26:52,760 --> 00:26:56,040
Speaker 6: also just totally aware of the shortcomings of the platform,

537
00:26:56,400 --> 00:26:59,000
Speaker 6: it makes you appreciate Twitter a little bit because you

538
00:26:59,119 --> 00:27:02,160
Speaker 6: go there and you see and this is my own

539
00:27:02,200 --> 00:27:05,119
Speaker 6: personal experience with Threads, and you see a lot of

540
00:27:05,240 --> 00:27:09,399
Speaker 6: okay jokes, a lot of posts from brands. It's a

541
00:27:09,400 --> 00:27:11,760
Speaker 6: lot like Instagram. It's like the way that people sometimes

542
00:27:11,760 --> 00:27:16,040
Speaker 6: critique Instagram is this like overly manicured, not that fun,

543
00:27:16,640 --> 00:27:19,000
Speaker 6: not that interesting place, and Threads is kind of like

544
00:27:19,080 --> 00:27:20,120
Speaker 6: that in text form.

545
00:27:20,480 --> 00:27:23,680
Speaker 5: It definitely doesn't have the free for all quality of Twitter,

546
00:27:23,680 --> 00:27:24,520
Speaker 5: which should buy design.

547
00:27:25,359 --> 00:27:28,600
Speaker 4: One thing that you mentioned was that TikTok is really

548
00:27:28,680 --> 00:27:32,679
Speaker 4: the breakaway success in the middle of this era of

549
00:27:32,800 --> 00:27:36,800
Speaker 4: declining overall interests in social media. Why is TikTok so

550
00:27:36,880 --> 00:27:39,480
Speaker 4: successful where others are having more of a hard time.

551
00:27:40,640 --> 00:27:45,359
Speaker 6: TikTok is sort of perfectly pitched to these headwinds that

552
00:27:45,359 --> 00:27:49,480
Speaker 6: we've been talking about four years. People have not been

553
00:27:49,520 --> 00:27:51,680
Speaker 6: sharing as much, right, and that was a huge problem

554
00:27:51,720 --> 00:27:54,400
Speaker 6: for Facebook because your feed is composed of your friends,

555
00:27:54,720 --> 00:27:57,840
Speaker 6: and if your friends decide, either because they've read too

556
00:27:57,840 --> 00:28:01,159
Speaker 6: many stories about camerge analytica, or that it's just TACKI

557
00:28:01,400 --> 00:28:04,480
Speaker 6: or whatever, that they're not going to post every family picture,

558
00:28:04,480 --> 00:28:06,040
Speaker 6: they're not going to post every vacation, they're not going

559
00:28:06,080 --> 00:28:07,720
Speaker 6: to tell you what they had for breakfast today. All

560
00:28:07,760 --> 00:28:09,280
Speaker 6: of a sudden, the feed is empty and you have

561
00:28:09,320 --> 00:28:12,720
Speaker 6: to do something about that. And TikTok doesn't have that

562
00:28:12,800 --> 00:28:16,119
Speaker 6: problem because although you can create content in TikTok, and

563
00:28:16,160 --> 00:28:19,719
Speaker 6: although there's the same kind of friend follower mechanism, the

564
00:28:19,760 --> 00:28:22,119
Speaker 6: core of TikTok is the algorithm, which is it's not

565
00:28:22,280 --> 00:28:25,639
Speaker 6: about your friends, it's about your interests, and it's just

566
00:28:25,760 --> 00:28:30,760
Speaker 6: TikTok serving you up a steady stream of funny, amusing

567
00:28:30,880 --> 00:28:34,040
Speaker 6: videos that are tuned to your interests. In other words,

568
00:28:34,119 --> 00:28:37,639
Speaker 6: it's an experience that's much closer to television than it

569
00:28:37,840 --> 00:28:39,760
Speaker 6: is to social media.

570
00:28:39,800 --> 00:28:41,720
Speaker 5: And I think it's telling that the big.

571
00:28:41,480 --> 00:28:44,280
Speaker 6: Social media breakout of the last decade isn't really a

572
00:28:44,280 --> 00:28:48,400
Speaker 6: social media company. And when we're seeing how Facebook, the

573
00:28:48,440 --> 00:28:52,120
Speaker 6: dominant social media company, is trying to adapt, they're trying

574
00:28:52,120 --> 00:28:53,800
Speaker 6: to do the exact same thing. I mean, this is

575
00:28:53,880 --> 00:28:56,480
Speaker 6: how a lot of Instagram works now, and it's how

576
00:28:56,520 --> 00:29:00,000
Speaker 6: Threads works. If you go on Threads and you follow people,

577
00:29:00,480 --> 00:29:04,560
Speaker 6: you'll see their messages. But eventually you exhaust that and

578
00:29:04,600 --> 00:29:06,760
Speaker 6: then you get back to the brand managers and the

579
00:29:06,760 --> 00:29:10,400
Speaker 6: brands and the YouTubers. Sometimes it's amusing and sometimes it's

580
00:29:10,440 --> 00:29:13,600
Speaker 6: Internet drek, it's stuff on Reddit that was there three

581
00:29:13,600 --> 00:29:14,680
Speaker 6: months ago or whatever.

582
00:29:14,920 --> 00:29:16,680
Speaker 4: Because they're going to feed you something. They're not going

583
00:29:16,760 --> 00:29:18,160
Speaker 4: to say, salary, we're all out for.

584
00:29:18,160 --> 00:29:19,400
Speaker 5: Today, exactly.

585
00:29:19,800 --> 00:29:21,960
Speaker 6: No, there's no being all out for today because again,

586
00:29:22,080 --> 00:29:25,640
Speaker 6: these platforms are dependent both in how they're structured and

587
00:29:25,680 --> 00:29:28,800
Speaker 6: what they've told investors on growing. That's why we're seeing

588
00:29:28,960 --> 00:29:33,160
Speaker 6: basically all of these companies move towards these algorithmic feeds

589
00:29:33,360 --> 00:29:35,840
Speaker 6: that are really like less social than what we normally

590
00:29:35,880 --> 00:29:37,040
Speaker 6: thought of as social media.

591
00:29:40,000 --> 00:29:42,680
Speaker 4: So Max, like you say, you've been covering this industry

592
00:29:42,680 --> 00:29:45,680
Speaker 4: and watching the changes for twenty years. Now, where's this

593
00:29:45,720 --> 00:29:47,080
Speaker 4: all heading? Where do you see it going?

594
00:29:47,640 --> 00:29:49,760
Speaker 6: I mean, I think we've sort of hit the high

595
00:29:49,760 --> 00:29:53,719
Speaker 6: water mark of the cultural relevance of social media. That

596
00:29:53,760 --> 00:29:57,040
Speaker 6: doesn't mean that social media is going away, or that

597
00:29:57,280 --> 00:30:00,040
Speaker 6: there isn't room for innovation, or or that Silicon i

598
00:30:00,200 --> 00:30:02,840
Speaker 6: couldn't come up with some new way of drawing us in.

599
00:30:03,120 --> 00:30:06,320
Speaker 6: And I think if you ask, why is Mark Zuckerberg.

600
00:30:06,360 --> 00:30:08,600
Speaker 6: Mark zacker is a really smart guy, why does he

601
00:30:08,680 --> 00:30:10,640
Speaker 6: keep spending moce He's spending money on the metaverse even

602
00:30:10,640 --> 00:30:14,080
Speaker 6: though it's obviously kind of not working. I think because

603
00:30:14,120 --> 00:30:17,240
Speaker 6: they're hoping that there'll be some technological breakthrough that will

604
00:30:17,320 --> 00:30:19,840
Speaker 6: change the equation. And I think some of this is

605
00:30:19,960 --> 00:30:23,160
Speaker 6: pinned on hardware. It's like maybe the headsets that's somewhere

606
00:30:23,160 --> 00:30:25,960
Speaker 6: down the road will get good enough so that the

607
00:30:26,040 --> 00:30:29,000
Speaker 6: prospect of strapping Facebook to your face as I described it,

608
00:30:29,000 --> 00:30:31,280
Speaker 6: doesn't feel so unappealing. And I don't think we should

609
00:30:31,320 --> 00:30:33,960
Speaker 6: overlook the possibility that these very smart people, these very

610
00:30:34,000 --> 00:30:36,360
Speaker 6: big companies, with almost unlimited amounts of money to spend

611
00:30:36,400 --> 00:30:39,040
Speaker 6: on research and development, that they won't figure something out.

612
00:30:39,280 --> 00:30:41,320
Speaker 6: But I think for now we're just not going to

613
00:30:41,320 --> 00:30:44,959
Speaker 6: see the growth, and that creates all sorts of challenges

614
00:30:45,160 --> 00:30:49,000
Speaker 6: for the companies and then for other businesses people that

615
00:30:49,040 --> 00:30:51,520
Speaker 6: depend on those companies. And we're seeing that now where

616
00:30:51,560 --> 00:30:56,000
Speaker 6: news organizations are really really struggling to figure out how

617
00:30:56,040 --> 00:30:59,640
Speaker 6: to attract readers, how to find an audience. Now that

618
00:30:59,680 --> 00:31:03,160
Speaker 6: you don't don't have this dependable stream of social media,

619
00:31:03,200 --> 00:31:04,440
Speaker 6: and you see that in entertainment.

620
00:31:04,480 --> 00:31:06,000
Speaker 5: You see that a lot of the media industry.

621
00:31:06,400 --> 00:31:09,960
Speaker 6: So I think we're still working our way through that period.

622
00:31:10,240 --> 00:31:12,720
Speaker 6: It probably won't end until there's some new breakthrough or

623
00:31:12,760 --> 00:31:14,320
Speaker 6: there's some sort of cultural shift.

624
00:31:14,960 --> 00:31:16,880
Speaker 4: Max. It's always great to talk to you. Thanks for

625
00:31:17,000 --> 00:31:21,000
Speaker 4: coming back, thanks for having me, Thanks for listening to

626
00:31:21,120 --> 00:31:23,520
Speaker 4: us here at The Big Take. It's a daily podcast

627
00:31:23,520 --> 00:31:27,240
Speaker 4: from Bloomberg and iHeartRadio. For more shows from iHeartRadio, visit

628
00:31:27,280 --> 00:31:31,200
Speaker 4: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen, and

629
00:31:31,240 --> 00:31:33,840
Speaker 4: we'd love to hear from you. Email us questions or

630
00:31:33,920 --> 00:31:38,160
Speaker 4: comments to Big Take at Bloomberg dot net. The supervising

631
00:31:38,200 --> 00:31:41,360
Speaker 4: producer of The Big Take is Vicky Ergolino. Our senior

632
00:31:41,400 --> 00:31:45,560
Speaker 4: producer is Catherine Fink. Rebecca Shasson is our producer. Our

633
00:31:45,600 --> 00:31:50,080
Speaker 4: associate producer is Sam Gobauer. Rafael m Seely is our engineer,

634
00:31:50,480 --> 00:31:55,440
Speaker 4: with additional production support from Nieli Haremio Plata, Abrea Rofin

635
00:31:55,800 --> 00:32:00,600
Speaker 4: and Isabelle Webcarey. Our original music was composed by Lee Ocidron.

636
00:32:01,120 --> 00:32:04,520
Speaker 4: I'm Westkasova. We'll be back tomorrow with another big take,