Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sex Podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Washington Post technology reporter Taylor Wrens,
Speaker 1: the social media expert. Taylor, good to have you on
Speaker 1: the podcast. Yeah, thank you for having me. So what's
Speaker 1: the future of Instagram? Gosh, Instagram is kind of in trouble,
Speaker 1: to be honest. I feel like they're going through an
Speaker 1: identity crisis right now. Um. I think that TikTok kind
Speaker 1: of came and ate their lunch a little bit, and
Speaker 1: now they're struggling to capture back some of that like
Speaker 1: relevancy that they used to have. It's just become a
Speaker 1: very saturated, bloated network. It's it's basically just like a
Speaker 1: mobile version of the Facebook Blue app. And as many
Speaker 1: of us know, the Facebook Blue app, the famous original
Speaker 1: Facebook book, is really really sort of struggling these days.
Speaker 1: So Instagram's in trouble. Okay, let's go back to Facebook
Speaker 1: because Facebook pre dates Instagram. Tell me your thoughts on Facebook.
Speaker 1: I think Facebook has just become one of those kind
Speaker 1: of like zombie companies. They can't innovate. Um, they basically
Speaker 1: only innovate their acquisitions, which they can't do anymore. Because
Speaker 1: of all the antitrust stuff. So they've kind of backed
Speaker 1: themselves into a corner. Um, they made this hard pivot
Speaker 1: into VR, UM, you know, renaming the company Meta. Mark Zuckerberg,
Speaker 1: you know, spent pretty much all last year hyping the
Speaker 1: so called Metaverse, which is literally just VR, which he's
Speaker 1: you know, hyped a million times before. UM. But they're
Speaker 1: sort of Hallmark product, which is the Horizons world, which
Speaker 1: is the social VR experience, is pretty bad. It's I mean,
Speaker 1: they sell it as something people can use for meetings
Speaker 1: and remote work, but it's just it looks like something
Speaker 1: that is from like ninety ninety eight. Like the graphics
Speaker 1: are just really bad. People don't have these headsets, People
Speaker 1: don't really want to spend time in these headsets. I
Speaker 1: think that we are probably at least a decade away
Speaker 1: from VR adult like sort of even go becoming slightly mainstream.
Speaker 1: And I don't think that Facebook Horizons is going to
Speaker 1: be the app that that brings it there. So um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Facebook is not in a great place, and
Speaker 1: they've obviously just laid off tons of people as well. UM,
Speaker 1: and so we'll see kind of I think they're struggling
Speaker 1: to survive, right now, I mean they're still printing money
Speaker 1: from the ads business. But yeah, let's slip it over
Speaker 1: to the users. Conventional wisdoms is and it's oldsters on Facebook.
Speaker 1: What is your assessment of who's still using Facebook? That's true. Um,
Speaker 1: it's a much older user base, especially when you compare
Speaker 1: it to something like TikTok or Snapchat or um other
Speaker 1: social platforms, even Instagram. I mean Facebook, the core Facebook product.
Speaker 1: The users have been aging for a while and they're
Speaker 1: not capturing younger users. Um. There's if you ask a
Speaker 1: teenager if they use you know, Facebook proper, I think
Speaker 1: they'll look at you funny. Um. Instagram, you know has
Speaker 1: a slightly better demographic portrait. Um, It's definitely has more
Speaker 1: pop culture relevance. And so you do have young people
Speaker 1: using it, but they're not necessarily creating a lot of
Speaker 1: content or engaging with it heavily. They're kind of using
Speaker 1: it like a phone book almost. Um, kind of like
Speaker 1: the way that we have millennials used to use Facebook
Speaker 1: back in the day. So um, that's kind of where
Speaker 1: things are with them. Okay, but one here's that Facebook
Speaker 1: is still the megaphone for school cancelations, uh and other
Speaker 1: community notices. Is that your experience? Yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: think a lot of public officials use Facebook and Twitter
Speaker 1: UM for the types of alerts like that. UM or
Speaker 1: you know, Facebook groups is still you know, going strong.
Speaker 1: There's tons of Facebook groups for parents and things like that.
Speaker 1: Again goes back to that older user base, UM finding
Speaker 1: utility in those types of things. So, yeah, those are great,
Speaker 1: but you can't sustain a multi you know, billion users
Speaker 1: social product with school closures. You need it to be
Speaker 1: you know growing, and you need to be attracting younger users,
Speaker 1: and you need to be you know, increasing time on
Speaker 1: the platform, and that's just not happening right now. Okay,
Speaker 1: Historically oldsters are a step behind their children. Are the
Speaker 1: oldsters going to migrate from Facebook or are they just
Speaker 1: going to be on Facebook and then they'll end their
Speaker 1: usage of social media? Well that's a really good question.
Speaker 1: I mean I think I don't know if they'll adopt
Speaker 1: something new. It's kind of notorious, really hard to get
Speaker 1: older people to adopt new platforms because their social network
Speaker 1: has already established. UM. They're just generally less likely to
Speaker 1: download apps and kind of want to expand their world
Speaker 1: in that way, unless it's maybe interest base or location
Speaker 1: based like something like next door is a good example. Um,
Speaker 1: But I think I don't know that, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know that they're going to necessarily adopt something new. Um.
Speaker 1: I think that Facebook might be with them, but I
Speaker 1: think that they might start seeing themselves use Facebook less
Speaker 1: and less. I mean, even the boomers that we're using
Speaker 1: Facebook so much in are not necessarily using it as
Speaker 1: much now because it's just becomes less of a utility
Speaker 1: and you have all of these other platforms cleaving off
Speaker 1: parts of what people use Facebook for. Next Door is
Speaker 1: a good example of this. Right, instead of joining a
Speaker 1: local Facebook group for your community, you might just join
Speaker 1: next door. Or instead of using you know, Facebook to
Speaker 1: kind of publish updates about your life, you might just
Speaker 1: start a newsletter or move to email, um, things like that.
Speaker 1: So I think there's also a lot of worries around privacy. Um.
Speaker 1: Facebook does not have a great reputation for data privacy
Speaker 1: or just user privacy in general, and I think that's
Speaker 1: also scared a lot of people away. I think people
Speaker 1: that were sharing tons of kidding photos on Facebook even
Speaker 1: a few years ago, I've been more wary lately to
Speaker 1: do that. Okay, let's switch over to their other product, Instagram.
Speaker 1: Then Instagram was a photo sharing site and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, TikTok gain traction and you have all
Speaker 1: the people. I mean, there's a lot of issues here,
Speaker 1: but let's start with the people who used uh Instagram
Speaker 1: to both boost their base and monetize. Kardashians being a
Speaker 1: good example, they're complaining about the change of Instagram to
Speaker 1: try to compete with TikTok going to video. What's your
Speaker 1: assessment there, Well, Instagram pivoted hard to video. You know,
Speaker 1: back in when they launched a video product to compete
Speaker 1: with Vine. That was their first kind of fora into video,
Speaker 1: and that's when you saw videos performing better in the feed. Um,
Speaker 1: there's that whole sort of pivotal video that happened in
Speaker 1: the Mark Zuckerberg actually, as Lea said that Facebook would
Speaker 1: become all video, I think by I think you said
Speaker 1: that in sen and it really did end up coming true.
Speaker 1: The same is true for Instagram. Of course, now you're
Speaker 1: seeing their latest video product, which is Reels, which is
Speaker 1: direct sort of rip off of TikTok, And I think
Speaker 1: you see these old school Instagram people like the Kardashians
Speaker 1: complaining about that because they can't compete in the new environment, right.
Speaker 1: They don't want to have to suddenly create reels. They
Speaker 1: just want to be able to post the picture like
Speaker 1: it's and it's going to get tons of engagement. UM.
Speaker 1: I would counter that with saying that those celebrities are
Speaker 1: stagnant and um, you know, they need to adapt otherwise
Speaker 1: they you know, users don't want that. A lot of
Speaker 1: this stuff is delivering what users desire, and users desire
Speaker 1: engaging video content. Um, that's just what user behavior shows.
Speaker 1: So I think, um, you know, I think Instagram needs
Speaker 1: to improve discovery. The problem with Instagram is that they've
Speaker 1: built this follower base social on networks. So in order
Speaker 1: you know, to UM, in order to see someone's content,
Speaker 1: you follow them, right, and then you get this feed
Speaker 1: of content that you've opted into. So when you see
Speaker 1: content that you haven't opted into, for instance, Instagram putting
Speaker 1: of reels into your feed, it's very jarring and frustrating
Speaker 1: and you're like, I did knocked into this, or as
Speaker 1: something like TikTok, you don't opt into anything necessarily, you're
Speaker 1: getting all of your content primarily delivered through this algorithmic
Speaker 1: feed called before you page, so you don't have to
Speaker 1: follow a single person on TikTok. You're gonna be getting
Speaker 1: you know, content served by the algorithm. And I think
Speaker 1: those two, like the way that users approach those two networks,
Speaker 1: that difference makes it very hard for Instagram to catch
Speaker 1: up and insert new content into the feed and allow
Speaker 1: smaller creators to grow because people are very like averse
Speaker 1: to it, and because you have these big celebrities that
Speaker 1: are like, oh no, don't you know, don't mess with
Speaker 1: my position on the app. I still want to be
Speaker 1: able to reach my fans, if that makes sense. Absolutely so.
Speaker 1: Do we anticipate, you know, the Kardashians being the pinnacle here,
Speaker 1: so we'll stay with them. You know, they have these
Speaker 1: static photos that they employ stylists and all kinds of
Speaker 1: expensive people to get a perfect, unrealistic picture then ultimately
Speaker 1: tag advertising into it. Uh, will they pivot to video
Speaker 1: or that is? Is that a transition that's just too
Speaker 1: much for them? They've they've pivot, They've pivoted to video.
Speaker 1: Oh pretty well, I mean they the Kardashians are just
Speaker 1: very smart about marketing in general. I mean they post
Speaker 1: on stories like I think that if they wanted to,
Speaker 1: they could hire a videographer to make great video content.
Speaker 1: I mean, look at someone like Jason deruloh, right, Like
Speaker 1: I mean not that Jason Derulo was posting really posed photos,
Speaker 1: but he kind of was like I don't know if
Speaker 1: you remember that like iconic picture of him like getting
Speaker 1: out of the pool. Like he was posting these like
Speaker 1: thirst trap photos on Instagram for a while TikTok came
Speaker 1: out and then he you know, leaned hard into TikTok
Speaker 1: and is now a video superstar. So it can be done. Um.
Speaker 1: I think the Kardashians are just maybe frustrated in general
Speaker 1: that the platform isn't giving them more considering how much
Speaker 1: they feel like they probably gave to the platform. Um,
Speaker 1: but I do think that they can. You know, they're
Speaker 1: still it's not like they're totally irrelevant in culture, right,
Speaker 1: Like they're still relevant. They just need to up their
Speaker 1: reels game a little bit. Well, if one assesses these
Speaker 1: different networks, my viewpoint and we're all being fed different
Speaker 1: videos on TikTok is there's a certain authenticity and credibility
Speaker 1: and uniqueness to the individual on the street that is
Speaker 1: a not embodied by traditional celebrities. And being not on
Speaker 1: the other traditional social networks. What's your viewpoint there? That's
Speaker 1: exactly right. I mean, that's exactly right. And I think,
Speaker 1: um into I wrote this piece for The Atlantic called
Speaker 1: the Instagram aathetic is Dead, and it was just about
Speaker 1: the end of that hyper curated photoshop. Look how that
Speaker 1: was not performing. Photos were not performing any kind of
Speaker 1: hyper curated image on Instagram in nineteen, which is bombing.
Speaker 1: And I think that was that real turning point where
Speaker 1: we started to create more of authenticity. It's no coincidence that,
Speaker 1: you know, TikTok also launched in and so I think
Speaker 1: that's when we really started to see this shift towards
Speaker 1: more raw content more Um, I don't, I don't. I
Speaker 1: guess I shouldn't say authentic because a lot of it
Speaker 1: is equally curated, but it's like a realness and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not so polished looking. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: people at that point in that during that shift, content
Speaker 1: that was shot on an iPhone was outperforming stuff shot
Speaker 1: on a DSLR, which was interesting because Instagram was always
Speaker 1: built on this high quality photography. So yeah, I do
Speaker 1: think that that shift has happened, and for people that
Speaker 1: are still sort of stuck in the old mindset. It's
Speaker 1: hard for them to keep up, especially celebrities, because they
Speaker 1: have these images right that they need to control and
Speaker 1: they can't just always, you know, get on and be wild,
Speaker 1: and so I think they have to be very strategic
Speaker 1: about their presence on and sort of how to grow.
Speaker 1: Jason Drule is a good example of this. He's managed
Speaker 1: to grow and be relatable and collaborate with big young
Speaker 1: creators and but a lot of celebrities struggle in that area,
Speaker 1: traditional celebrities. Okay, theoretically YouTube could have captured this market.
Speaker 1: Why did TikTok blow up? And YouTube means static? Yeah,
Speaker 1: YouTube what a miss? I mean, I think they saw
Speaker 1: the rise of musically, they saw the TikTok gaining traction,
Speaker 1: and they still took a really long time to launch shorts.
Speaker 1: Um And I think it's been interesting to see. I mean,
Speaker 1: the thing is is that YouTube was just the the
Speaker 1: king on top of the mountain for so long. It remains,
Speaker 1: you know, the most stable platform in terms of monetization
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. Um And, I think that
Speaker 1: they were just sitting pretty on their high horse. And um,
Speaker 1: I don't think they did enough to prepare for something
Speaker 1: like TikTok. I mean they should have seen that, they
Speaker 1: should have seen this pivot towards short form video. Um.
Speaker 1: I think they would argue, you know, that they do
Speaker 1: have shorts, which is very similar to TikTok. The problem
Speaker 1: again goes back to discovery. YouTube is a very saturated
Speaker 1: platform where it's really hard to gain new subscribers. It's
Speaker 1: notoriously like one YouTube subscriber is worth like a hundred
Speaker 1: TikTok followers, um for fifty Instagram followers. Like, It's very
Speaker 1: hard to get those subscribers on YouTube. So I think
Speaker 1: that if YouTube really wants to compete with TikTok, they
Speaker 1: need to nail discovery and they need to get better
Speaker 1: about serving people, you know, engage in content from you
Speaker 1: creators that they don't know, and helping those smaller creators grow. Okay,
Speaker 1: not everybody is as up to speed as you are
Speaker 1: on some of these issues. How did Musically, a youth
Speaker 1: oriented app which was ultimately pooh pooed worth into TikTok. Well,
Speaker 1: I think it was poo pooed by certain people. It
Speaker 1: was certainly beloved and lauded, you know, by a lot
Speaker 1: of us. UM, that covered it especially, and we're paying attention,
Speaker 1: But I think, yeah, didn't it appeal more to a
Speaker 1: younger demo than TikTok does? Well, yeah, definitely. I think
Speaker 1: it appealed to a lot of teenagers. And I mean
Speaker 1: the goal is to allow young people to make like
Speaker 1: video selfies, and that really appealed to young people. And
Speaker 1: I think you see, you know, at that point, um,
Speaker 1: a lot of people in the tech world we're just
Speaker 1: so anti content creator. I mean, if you look at
Speaker 1: what a lot of these big bcs were saying about
Speaker 1: influencers in the mid when when musically it was ascendant,
Speaker 1: they just looked down on it because it was women,
Speaker 1: it was young people, It was not people that they
Speaker 1: considered serious people using it. Um. And that was obviously
Speaker 1: such a huge oversight. Um. Meanwhile, you know it was
Speaker 1: it was grow going at a crazy pace. UM. So
Speaker 1: it was acquired by Byte Dance. Byte Dance kind of
Speaker 1: cloned it and then acquired it by Dance of course.
Speaker 1: Is this you know, giant Chinese tech conglomerate. Um. And
Speaker 1: then they relaunched musically as TikTok in August, So that
Speaker 1: musically app just flipped flipped over to the TikTok with app,
Speaker 1: but it had the same functionality. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: spend any time on musically, it was very similar to
Speaker 1: what TikTok is today. It's the same app. I mean
Speaker 1: the apps evolved a lot, but um, but yeah, So
Speaker 1: what caused TikTok to blow up? Because certainly social media
Speaker 1: networks are started, they don't necessarily gain traction. Well, so
Speaker 1: a couple of things. One discovery, I mean, they just
Speaker 1: nailed discovery. There was so much saturation in in terms
Speaker 1: of that Instagram aesthetic, the millennial aesthetic, like it was
Speaker 1: just it was oppressive and people wanted a space to
Speaker 1: be fun and creative and kind of weird. Um. Short video,
Speaker 1: you know, obviously is something that can become hugely culturally
Speaker 1: relevant because it's culturally relevant because it's so share able. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, look at something like Vine. Vine wasn't around
Speaker 1: that long, but if you look at the impact in
Speaker 1: the reach that Vine had, it was really punching above
Speaker 1: its weight. Um. So people could share the TikTok's really
Speaker 1: easily cross platforms. So you started to see a lot
Speaker 1: of TikTok's all over Instagram. Um, and they did a
Speaker 1: ton of outreach towards creators, like they really instead of
Speaker 1: shunning creators and kind of treating them like you know,
Speaker 1: third class citizens like Facebook and Instagram was doing, they
Speaker 1: really leaned into you know, content creator stuff. And by
Speaker 1: the way, you know, Bob, it doesn't hurt that they're
Speaker 1: owned by this multi billion dollar Chinese tech conglomerate that
Speaker 1: spent a billion dollars alone marketing the app to young
Speaker 1: people in its first year and in the States, Um,
Speaker 1: that's a huge amount of marketing and that that even
Speaker 1: just paying for those downloads, you that's almost impossible for
Speaker 1: any other it up to compete with. So I think
Speaker 1: that they, you know, they definitely got a leg up
Speaker 1: in terms of the page. Go into a little more
Speaker 1: detail how they spent that billion dollars and how they
Speaker 1: reached the potential customer base. Yeah, a lot of it
Speaker 1: was on app download ads, so again just getting those
Speaker 1: download numbers, and they ran tons of ads on Snapchat.
Speaker 1: They had this ambassador program for college students. Um, they
Speaker 1: you know, they they were like paying big content creators
Speaker 1: to post on the app. They were really just doing
Speaker 1: so much in terms of marketing to get the word
Speaker 1: out there. And I think it ended up being really
Speaker 1: successful because you might get a teenager to download something
Speaker 1: and it's like whatever, you all download this app, will
Speaker 1: take a look. But then the content on the app
Speaker 1: ended up being really engaging, so people stuck around, and
Speaker 1: before you know what, you're creating content on there yourself.
Speaker 1: So I think it just worked out super well. Now
Speaker 1: we hear again and again about the TikTok algorithm, and
Speaker 1: of course when Trump was president and look like he
Speaker 1: was going to shut down TikTok, they're gonna have to
Speaker 1: sell to Microsoft. Why can this algorithm not be cloned
Speaker 1: or replicated? Well, because they have the best product team
Speaker 1: in the entire world, and our American social media companies
Speaker 1: are just wildly underprepared. I mean like they have not
Speaker 1: spent their time focus focusing on recommendations. Like you know,
Speaker 1: you would imagine that the explore page algorithm would be
Speaker 1: far more sophisticated than it is right now on Instagram.
Speaker 1: It's just not. None of these platforms have focused on
Speaker 1: algorithmic discovery. They've been building these follow based models, um
Speaker 1: and so I think it's something that they didn't invest
Speaker 1: in because they also didn't think that there would be
Speaker 1: any competition, right, the biggest you know, we reported on this,
Speaker 1: but but so much of the TikTok backlash is it
Speaker 1: is funded by Facebook basically, I mean, it's Facebook lobbying,
Speaker 1: it's Facebook pr I reported UM Stories earlier story earlier
Speaker 1: this year about how Facebook was actually hired this UM
Speaker 1: public and operative firm to plant negative stories about fake
Speaker 1: TikTok challenges and local media across the country plant fake
Speaker 1: op eds. So, you know, I think that these big
Speaker 1: tech conglomerates don't like competition, and for a really long
Speaker 1: time they were able to squash or acquire every little
Speaker 1: bit of you know, competing app um and and of
Speaker 1: course this was the first time they couldn't do that.
Speaker 1: Does anybody in the landscape have a strategy to compete
Speaker 1: or is it like the music business twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: We're going to either sue lobby or do use all
Speaker 1: our efforts to hold back the future and competitors. I
Speaker 1: think right now we're seeing these big tech companies do
Speaker 1: exactly what you just describe to lobby and do anything
Speaker 1: to hold back the future because they want to monopolize
Speaker 1: the future and they realize that they don't have a
Speaker 1: monopoly on it necessarily, right now because they have not
Speaker 1: innovated enough. They've become too bloated, They've become stagnant. They're
Speaker 1: not thinking um in innovative ways. And and so I
Speaker 1: think that they've resorted to bullying kind of to maintain
Speaker 1: their power. Um. But I think that can only hold
Speaker 1: for so long. We'll see. Okay, let's go to Snapchat.
Speaker 1: You know, when I think of Snapchat, I think a
Speaker 1: second life sort of the original VR world, and it
Speaker 1: had just a limited audience. It never grew. What's going
Speaker 1: on with Snapchat because two quarters ago everyone was bullish
Speaker 1: on it, said well, you know, their numbers are good,
Speaker 1: and then this last quarter the numbers were bad. Uh,
Speaker 1: explain your viewpoint on that. Yeah. Snapchats also in a
Speaker 1: really hard spot. Also recently did a lot of layoffs.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think Snapchat, like you mentioned, just could
Speaker 1: never scale. I mean, that's a famous acquisition target, right.
Speaker 1: Facebook wanted to buy them um and Evans people was
Speaker 1: like no, um. And I think that they've just really
Speaker 1: struggled there in this weird space where I think it's
Speaker 1: unclear whether they're a messaging app or a social platform.
Speaker 1: They're not really a social platform. They have content Discovery,
Speaker 1: but it's it's kind of it's it's different than TikTok, right,
Speaker 1: it's sort of separated out of the app is bifurcated,
Speaker 1: so on one half is messaging and then one half
Speaker 1: is the discovery page where you can see stuff from
Speaker 1: you know, the Daily Mail and other kind of news
Speaker 1: outlets and content creators. Um. And I don't know that
Speaker 1: that was the right decision to split those. I mean,
Speaker 1: they had their reasons, um, But I do think that
Speaker 1: it's been hard for that to scale. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: very hard for any company to compete with Facebook. It's
Speaker 1: really hard. Facebook has had such a monopoly on our
Speaker 1: social media landscape. And I think that they really did
Speaker 1: a lot of damage to Snapchat and I don't know
Speaker 1: the Snapchat will ever recover a little deeper. How do
Speaker 1: they do damage to Snapchat? I mean cloning Instagrams and
Speaker 1: the way the Instagram cloned Stories, which is their kind
Speaker 1: of breakout feature. I think that captured a huge amount
Speaker 1: of audience that was previously on going to Snapchat for
Speaker 1: to produce that type of content. And just by cloning
Speaker 1: that feature alone, they think they cleaved off a lot
Speaker 1: of growth. Um. And then add dollars wise, I mean
Speaker 1: stap chat just can't compete with Facebook's ad network or
Speaker 1: Google's ad network um. And then I think just in
Speaker 1: terms of messaging, it's you know again, it just goes
Speaker 1: back to not it's not totally clear what snap chat
Speaker 1: is for. It is used by a lot of younger people. Still,
Speaker 1: I don't want to discount it like it's dead or
Speaker 1: anything like that, but I think it's kind of in
Speaker 1: a space like Twitter, where Twitter and Snapchat are both
Speaker 1: like relevant, but and they have similar I think they
Speaker 1: have similar user numbers UM for monthly actives, I can't remember,
Speaker 1: but it's around. You know, they're both kind of like
Speaker 1: that second tier trying to break up into the top tier.
Speaker 1: But I haven't really been able to do it, and
Speaker 1: they don't have a lot of money right now. Snapchats
Speaker 1: they're shutting down a lot of stuff. So how do
Speaker 1: you think it plays out of Snapchat? I mean, I
Speaker 1: think that they have to worry about being caught in
Speaker 1: a death spiral, right Like, there's this point where you're
Speaker 1: shutting down all your innovation because you have to remain
Speaker 1: lean to compete and to just to you know, survive
Speaker 1: as a company. But then that's also hard because you
Speaker 1: can't invest in building things that are going to attract
Speaker 1: future users or you know, thinking out in a five
Speaker 1: year ten year plan, right, because you're focused on just
Speaker 1: getting through this year. Um so we'll see. I mean,
Speaker 1: I really love Snapchat and I can't help but root
Speaker 1: for them, just because they don't want to live in
Speaker 1: this world that's dominated by Facebook and Google. Um but
Speaker 1: I just I don't know, you know where it's going
Speaker 1: to go. Okay, let's move on to Twitter. Twitter people
Speaker 1: call is called the social network primarily by people who
Speaker 1: don't use it. I think Twitter is its own thing.
Speaker 1: You know, from the time we are speaking to the
Speaker 1: time this airs. Who knows what Ellen Musk might be doing.
Speaker 1: But what's your assessment as if today what's going on
Speaker 1: at Twitter? Wait, Bob, that's interesting. Why would you just
Speaker 1: say Twitter is not a social network? This we're splitting
Speaker 1: years here in terms of what we call a social network.
Speaker 1: I you know, I find that if we talk about sharing, Okay,
Speaker 1: people thought of Facebook and they were sharing you know
Speaker 1: what I did today? And when Twitter first game traction
Speaker 1: ten eleven, twelve years ago was like that, whereas the
Speaker 1: people were getting the most traction on Twitter at this point,
Speaker 1: it's based on information and people are gonna go there
Speaker 1: because they want information as opposed to sharing where they
Speaker 1: were that afternoon or something. It's funny because I would
Speaker 1: say the same is true for Instagram and TikTok. Actually, um,
Speaker 1: I think that speaks to the broader shift in how
Speaker 1: what users view social media what these platforms for. Um.
Speaker 1: A couple of years ago, I did a research study
Speaker 1: actually on Instagram and news content, and a huge amount
Speaker 1: of people actually go to Instagram for new the way
Speaker 1: that you're thinking of sort of what people would go
Speaker 1: to Twitter for, especially if you're younger. So I think
Speaker 1: people are are so sally young people are just more
Speaker 1: likely to get their news and information from social platforms,
Speaker 1: and so they sort of turned to all of these
Speaker 1: social platforms. But you're a hundred percent right that Twitter
Speaker 1: is really unique. I mean, what makes Twitter unique is
Speaker 1: is not just the fact that it's You're right, it's
Speaker 1: more like news oriented for sure. It's also the only text,
Speaker 1: primarily text based social network, right, Like you don't have
Speaker 1: to attach an image or video to post on their
Speaker 1: the way that you do on Instagram and TikTok and stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, now I've forgotten your question. Um, you brought
Speaker 1: up you brought up another thing. Okay, one can certainly
Speaker 1: search on TikTok because you know, one of the latest
Speaker 1: reports is young people uh search on Let's go back
Speaker 1: a step for a while. They're the big story was
Speaker 1: people are doing their shopping searching on Amazon as opposed
Speaker 1: to Google. Now they say young people are searching on TikTok.
Speaker 1: And I don't find Instagram quite works that way. But
Speaker 1: the younger generation, when you talk about getting news from
Speaker 1: TikTok and Instagram, do you think they're just seeing it
Speaker 1: in their feet? Do you think they're ultimately searching for
Speaker 1: certain people, following certain people? How do What do you
Speaker 1: think is going on there? Yeah? I think all of
Speaker 1: that actually, Um, I mean certainly a huge amount of
Speaker 1: it is just seeing it in their feet if it's TikTok, right,
Speaker 1: Because TikTok, it doesn't really matter who you follow. Who
Speaker 1: you follow is the sort of one signal to the algorithm. Um.
Speaker 1: But when a big news event breaks, TikTok is where
Speaker 1: you're gonna find out about it. TikTok is where you're
Speaker 1: gonna see the discussion, especially pop culture news and um,
Speaker 1: you know, these big kind of like cultural discussions, those
Speaker 1: are all happening on TikTok um and then Instagram as well.
Speaker 1: I mean, like look at in terms of the way
Speaker 1: that people were finding out information about the Black Lives
Speaker 1: Matter protests or a lot of the social justice issues
Speaker 1: and and election related news, like that's a lot of that.
Speaker 1: People are getting that from Instagram and TikTok um, and
Speaker 1: sometimes they are seeking it out too. I mean, definitely,
Speaker 1: when a big thing breaks where you see people talking
Speaker 1: about it, people will go on TikTok and search out
Speaker 1: those terms and try and understand what's going on, um,
Speaker 1: and they'll usually find content creators. I mean, there's tons
Speaker 1: of massive news content creators on both of these platforms. Um.
Speaker 1: Just the way that people also go to YouTube right
Speaker 1: to learn about things, although that's a little bit more
Speaker 1: longer form. UM. So I think that already a lot
Speaker 1: of what people would theoretically go to Twitter four has
Speaker 1: already migrated off Twitter even pre elon. Okay, let's say
Speaker 1: I'm driving on the freeway. You know, the map apps
Speaker 1: are so good. Right now, Let's say I see something
Speaker 1: in the ear, I see a fire. Used to be
Speaker 1: you would go literally turn on the TV. Only alcers
Speaker 1: do that now then you might go to the newspaper
Speaker 1: in your local place at TV station, whereas if you
Speaker 1: go on Twitter, No, you wouldn't go on Twitter for that,
Speaker 1: though you would go on you would go on, well,
Speaker 1: I'm still may be wrong. Let me finish. In the
Speaker 1: old days, if you were looking for information that was
Speaker 1: in your area, that something's happening, you hear a boom
Speaker 1: or whatever. I found if I went to Twitter, I
Speaker 1: could find information that I couldn't find elsewhere, and there
Speaker 1: was a certain efficiency in that. Whereas, let me pull
Speaker 1: the pull it back just a little bit, the oldsters
Speaker 1: criticize the youngsters for being uninformed. My belief is today's
Speaker 1: younger generations are more informed on the news than ever
Speaker 1: in the history of humanity. However, just like we see
Speaker 1: an argument in politics people's specific news feeds, there's an
Speaker 1: immediacy on Twitter where you can and as they say,
Speaker 1: if it's a big story, someone gets shot, take us
Speaker 1: get shot. Yeah, you're gonna see it on all these platforms.
Speaker 1: But if the story is not that big, what is
Speaker 1: it going to take to find it on Instagram or TikTok.
Speaker 1: That's such a good point, and you know you're right.
Speaker 1: You're right that Twitter has that real time search that's
Speaker 1: really hard to find on other platforms. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: it's funny. If I saw a video of a fire,
Speaker 1: I think most people's default place to upload that right
Speaker 1: now would be TikTok if you wanted to sort of
Speaker 1: alert people, right if you wanted to be like, WHOA,
Speaker 1: this is crazy, I have this crazy thing that I've seen.
Speaker 1: I think five years ago you would have posted on Twitter.
Speaker 1: I think these days you post on TikTok and that.
Speaker 1: But but in terms of searching, you're right, I mean certain.
Speaker 1: The thing is you can search for recent stuff. I
Speaker 1: mean you can. This TikTok search is very good. It
Speaker 1: is very good. It's not exactly the same as Twitter, um,
Speaker 1: because Twitter is text based. It's it's different. But I
Speaker 1: do think that, um, you know, it allows people to
Speaker 1: search out like major like events, surviral things. You're right though, Bob,
Speaker 1: that local like that local thing is really hard to
Speaker 1: find on TikTok. You know, Twitter advanced search is just
Speaker 1: more robust, and it allows you to kind of segment
Speaker 1: out the content based on location, based on time like,
Speaker 1: I mean, you can do time on TikTok to. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's there's that that has not TikTok search needs to
Speaker 1: improve for sure. That's something that has haunted YouTube from
Speaker 1: its inception, the tag issue. Whereas if you have a
Speaker 1: text based thing, it's much easier to slice and dice
Speaker 1: the information. Where if I were to even put fire
Speaker 1: Santa Monica into TikTok, someone may even have a video
Speaker 1: of the fire, but if the tags you're not right,
Speaker 1: I won't be able to see it. Well, the thing
Speaker 1: is is that TikTok is smarter than that. It doesn't
Speaker 1: matter if you tag it. It can still search based
Speaker 1: off a lot of information, for instance, captions in the video,
Speaker 1: location of the video. I mean, you're I don't think
Speaker 1: actually concerned by location, but I think I do think
Speaker 1: that I've tried to find a lot of niche stuff
Speaker 1: on TikTok enough and been able to find it that
Speaker 1: it knows a lot more about the videos um in
Speaker 1: terms of text too. I think the captioning, I do
Speaker 1: believe that the captions are searchable, like I do think
Speaker 1: that that's a signal to search when you search on
Speaker 1: TikTok um like the captions on actual video, not the
Speaker 1: like the transcript of the video, I should say, rather
Speaker 1: than the like thing that people write out about it. Right,
Speaker 1: But let's focus on Twitter specifically. Elon Musk now own
Speaker 1: was being a great reduction and employment. He's spouting off
Speaker 1: news is covering it on a micro level. What's the
Speaker 1: future of TikTok? As I say, in between when we
Speaker 1: talk and when this airs, all kinds of crazy things
Speaker 1: can happen. That's a nature of Elon musk But from
Speaker 1: where you see it today, Yeah, future of Twitter um
Speaker 1: very hard to predict under Elon Musk. Um. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I I really wanted to give you on
Speaker 1: the benefit of the doubt, but he doesn't. He doesn't
Speaker 1: understand social platforms at all. Um, And in fact, he's
Speaker 1: aims very misguided about stuff. I'm very concerned about how
Speaker 1: anti free expression and anti free speech he is. I mean,
Speaker 1: Twitter has notoriously been in this platform where you can
Speaker 1: say you know so much and you can communicate so much,
Speaker 1: and you can talk about these really hard, real world issues.
Speaker 1: You cannot talk about these big issues on TikTok or Instagram.
Speaker 1: You will immediately get community guidelines violation if you try
Speaker 1: and talk about Nazis, for instance, on either of those platforms, um,
Speaker 1: Whereas on Twitter you can have these open, hard political
Speaker 1: discussions Under Ellen. I think it's worrying because he is
Speaker 1: so anti free expression, um that you already see him,
Speaker 1: you know, talking about things like banning quote unquote negative tweets.
Speaker 1: What are negative tweets? Who knows? That's up to him
Speaker 1: to decide. He's arbitrarily banned a lot of accounts that
Speaker 1: are sort of leftist accounts or accounts focused on social
Speaker 1: justice reporters, um, and then he's brought back um, you know,
Speaker 1: far right extreme at us to have violated community guidelines before.
Speaker 1: So I think that's really worrying. He really just doesn't
Speaker 1: understand content moderation at all. Um. He has lied a lot.
Speaker 1: I mean, he has lied so much always, but he
Speaker 1: really has lied a lot recently. UM. For instance, he
Speaker 1: said that he was going to have this content moderation
Speaker 1: counsel and nothing would be done without them. That was
Speaker 1: a complete lie. Um. You know, he's also making a
Speaker 1: lot of moderation decisions based on Twitter polls, which, as
Speaker 1: you'll you'all wroth, I hope and pronouncis day Right, the
Speaker 1: former head of test and Safety of Twitter said, is
Speaker 1: the number one most easy to manipulate feature on the platform.
Speaker 1: I mean, making any decision based off a Twitter poll
Speaker 1: that can be so easily manipulated by thoughts for an interest,
Speaker 1: etcetera is so irresponsible. So um yeah, he's also fired
Speaker 1: all the teams that have to do with any kind
Speaker 1: of policing of child sexual abuse material for instance. You know,
Speaker 1: so he can't even police his own platform. Um, it's
Speaker 1: it's not looking good. Okay, let's talk about the free expression.
Speaker 1: We have those on the right who said a that
Speaker 1: Twitter was a left wing platform b uh elon muskeetians control.
Speaker 1: He says it's about free speech, and you're talking about
Speaker 1: it's the opposite of free speech. It's the absolute opposite. Also,
Speaker 1: let's just be clear, Bob, Twitter as Twitter as a
Speaker 1: political investigation is shown as Twitter's own data showed. Right,
Speaker 1: They released their own data showing that over and over
Speaker 1: agun Twitter has significantly amplified conservative voices. In fact, Twitter
Speaker 1: is a conservative news platform because conservative voices and far
Speaker 1: right voices received significant amplification in the feed, far more
Speaker 1: than anybody on the left. And that's been reported so
Speaker 1: many times over. So anybody that says otherwise at this
Speaker 1: point is just lying. I mean they're just lying in
Speaker 1: the face of all of this data. Listen, I agree
Speaker 1: with you totally. But is that viewpoint being in the
Speaker 1: news reporting world. Is this just a canard that the
Speaker 1: right has come up with the wedge issue to get
Speaker 1: results they want. Are they conscious of this? Why does
Speaker 1: this story never die? Well, it never dies because these
Speaker 1: people are lying. I mean, these people are lying. These
Speaker 1: same people that are growing all day about free speech
Speaker 1: are the ones kind of banned books from libraries that
Speaker 1: they don't feel, you know, like it's just ridiculous. I mean,
Speaker 1: as a journalist, someone that relies on the First Amendment
Speaker 1: to do my job, so such a staunch supporter of
Speaker 1: free speech, and you have these right wing you know,
Speaker 1: politicians and far right reactionaries trying to silence I mean,
Speaker 1: trying to silence people. What they want is to silence
Speaker 1: people on the left, and they will lie and do
Speaker 1: anything to do that. And it's it's very disappointing. It's
Speaker 1: very disappointing. And I you know, obviously not saying that
Speaker 1: every conservative is doing that, but you know, most most
Speaker 1: of the loudest ones on Twitter are extremely hypocritical. I mean,
Speaker 1: just Elon endorsing shadow banning people that he doesn't disagree with,
Speaker 1: That's that's bad. I mean just saying like negative downraking
Speaker 1: quote unquote negative tweets. That's so terrifying because what is
Speaker 1: considered a negative tweet, right, that is a highly subjective
Speaker 1: thing to say that you are going to actually prevent
Speaker 1: people from seeing that content in search results. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's just if that was flipped, it would be a
Speaker 1: endless news cycle. But I feel like it's a similar
Speaker 1: I mean, he's doing the Trump playbook, right, which is
Speaker 1: just kind of um, say anything and your actions can
Speaker 1: completely refute everything that you're saying, but it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: because you're just People are just gonna believe what you say,
Speaker 1: even though behind the scenes you are literally doing absolutely
Speaker 1: everything against what you purport to believe. Um. And I
Speaker 1: don't know, people don't have a lot of media literacy
Speaker 1: these days, so I think a lot of people fall
Speaker 1: for it. Let's talk about the news business. Trump array
Speaker 1: of elected in sixteen, really starts amplifying his campaign eighteen
Speaker 1: months before, and it is reported at infinitum There's a
Speaker 1: lot of criticisms, especially with TV News, that this is
Speaker 1: impacting ratings, selling ads, and there was a lot of
Speaker 1: criticism even at the Washington Post, the Margaret Sullivan, who's
Speaker 1: no now no longer with the paper, saying you have
Speaker 1: to take a side. Uh NPR did a story on
Speaker 1: that that you know, you just can't report this stuff.
Speaker 1: You're playing into the hands now this time around, it seems,
Speaker 1: you know, even led ironically by the right, the New
Speaker 1: York Posts, they're giving him less oxygen. Okay, but I
Speaker 1: don't want to make this about Trump. I want to
Speaker 1: make this about Elon Musk. The press is reporting literally
Speaker 1: everything this guy dies. You would think literally world peace,
Speaker 1: you know, depends on Twitter. Okay, it's because the media
Speaker 1: is addicted to Twitter. And look, Elon Musk is one
Speaker 1: of the richest men in the world. Right, the juicy
Speaker 1: story that people want to read, um and it does
Speaker 1: have very serious business implications, and you know, Elan is
Speaker 1: doing stuff that is endangering lives. Um So I think
Speaker 1: that's why you're getting so many stories. I don't think
Speaker 1: that the stories can continue at this pace forever. But
Speaker 1: I think this is a really wild, you know, past
Speaker 1: couple of weeks. Um, And so you're not around of
Speaker 1: bandwidth is commensurate with the reality of Ellen or people
Speaker 1: are just so fascinated by Elon in the business and
Speaker 1: addicted to Twitter that they're giving him all this space. Well,
Speaker 1: I would say people are giving him space, but I
Speaker 1: think they're rightfully debunking a lot of what he says, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's really important to um fact
Speaker 1: check the stuff that he's saying, because he lies with
Speaker 1: such abandoned that I think it's important for the media
Speaker 1: to definitely contextualize that stuff. Um. You know, I think
Speaker 1: Ellen and Trump are very different. I mean, Elan is
Speaker 1: a business leader, right, he's not running a political campaign yet,
Speaker 1: and I think Twitter, you know, the stuff that he's doing.
Speaker 1: This deal even just the way that this deal happened
Speaker 1: was notable and had you know, real money implications for people,
Speaker 1: like market implications. So um, I think, you know, I
Speaker 1: think it's a story worth covering. I think that just
Speaker 1: the way that you need to cover it you need
Speaker 1: to think about obviously, like the way that you're covering it.
Speaker 1: Like I think that's the problem with a lot of
Speaker 1: the Trump coverage to I mean, Cable news was so
Speaker 1: incredibly irresponsible, right, Like the way that CNN and a
Speaker 1: lot of outlets covered that election was completely irresponsible. I
Speaker 1: think now a lot of lessons have been learned, and certainly,
Speaker 1: I mean, I can tell you from working in you
Speaker 1: know where I work, that a lot of you know people,
Speaker 1: people really think critically about a lot of this stuff,
Speaker 1: and um for as many stories I mean, and I
Speaker 1: think that the Elon stories get a lot of shares.
Speaker 1: But it's not like everyone is only writing Elon stories
Speaker 1: right like people are still writing all the other tech stories.
Speaker 1: It is just that those stories, that's what a lot
Speaker 1: of people want to talk about right now because all
Speaker 1: the media people are addicted to Twitter. Again, it is
Speaker 1: their primary platform. If all the media people left Twitter,
Speaker 1: it would not be getting the amount of oxygen that
Speaker 1: it's getting. Well, I guess this is interesting to me
Speaker 1: because I don't think the average person is either on
Speaker 1: Twitter or is concerned to this degree. But before I
Speaker 1: got down that pipeline whige, I may not I see
Speaker 1: a similarity in Trump and in Elon, And then you
Speaker 1: get to Kanye where they are a addicted to the
Speaker 1: publicity and being in the public eye and be traditional
Speaker 1: media doesn't understand. I mean, what you have to give
Speaker 1: Trump credit on was A he was on social media.
Speaker 1: B he was speaking English. I mean, this is why
Speaker 1: I voted for Hillary on a big left winger. But
Speaker 1: when she said her favorite book was the Bible, I said,
Speaker 1: that's just complete horship. Okay, so she was complete, uh,
Speaker 1: really untrustworthy. Whereas you have um Trump using the vernacular
Speaker 1: and it appealed to people, and he gained even to
Speaker 1: this lead date, he gained purchase on people that the
Speaker 1: media do not. Now I feel the same thing with
Speaker 1: Elon if for no other reason. Okay, there's two things. One,
Speaker 1: he's a running Twitter, B is posting every day. CE
Speaker 1: does have a CV superior to Trump and many of
Speaker 1: these other people. You know, it was involved in PayPal.
Speaker 1: We can't slice and dice that. Tesla, whether he started
Speaker 1: or not, under his egis it became quite an enterprise SpaceX.
Speaker 1: So you have the cult of Elon which he is feeding.
Speaker 1: Now the other thing becomes a debate is this positive
Speaker 1: or negative? Is it hurting or helping test actinly not
Speaker 1: helping Tesla. And then you have Kanye who is addicted
Speaker 1: to press in the same way. Kanye is literally mentally ill,
Speaker 1: not that these others don't have flaws, and he seems
Speaker 1: to be self immolating, he's going to go down with
Speaker 1: the fire, etcetera. So on one hand, these people have
Speaker 1: figured out the modern paradigm. On another level, they pushed
Speaker 1: it so far, certainly Trump and Kanye, where there's been backlash.
Speaker 1: So if you want to get your message out, have
Speaker 1: these people tapped into something or is this one and
Speaker 1: done well? I think all of them are really expert
Speaker 1: at leveraging the attention economy and like you said, speaking
Speaker 1: to people and kind of feeding into people's base conspiracies,
Speaker 1: especially I mean they're telling people what they want to hear. Trump, Elon, Kanye,
Speaker 1: they will tell people, especially you know Elon lately he's
Speaker 1: just telling people what they want to hear, whether or
Speaker 1: not it's true, and stuff he says it's not true, right,
Speaker 1: He's promoting wild conspiracy theories, but he knows that those
Speaker 1: will play well online and that people will believe because
Speaker 1: he's rich and this is America and we worship money
Speaker 1: above all else. So that is why he has the
Speaker 1: respect that he does. Um, I don't know. In terms
Speaker 1: of backlash, I mean, I think you're right, like Kanye,
Speaker 1: it's a totally different situation. Um, And I think it's
Speaker 1: very sad, um. You know, just the path that he's
Speaker 1: gone down. Um. Trump, I think has alienated so many people,
Speaker 1: so many of like political leaders in the GOP, that
Speaker 1: it's it's gonna be hard for him. Ellen doesn't have
Speaker 1: to work within the constraints of the political world or
Speaker 1: the entertainment industry. He kind of can played by his
Speaker 1: own rule book. So I think we'll see. I think, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, you mentioned Tesla. I think that if what
Speaker 1: he's doing at Twitter ends up impacting Tesla enough um,
Speaker 1: or you know, impacting his other companies enough, and he
Speaker 1: really starts to lose a significant amount of money, I
Speaker 1: think that's the only way that he can be sort
Speaker 1: of held accountable, I guess for his actions or that's
Speaker 1: the only time that people will start to question him.
Speaker 1: I think as long as you know, he kind of
Speaker 1: has the appearance of success, people won't. I mean, he
Speaker 1: keeps crowing about these gaining user numbers, but he stopped
Speaker 1: policing spam. He's just allowing spam on the platform, and
Speaker 1: you know, millions of accounts that were being deleted every
Speaker 1: week a spam. Now former Twitter employees have said are
Speaker 1: no longer being deleted, and then he's so it's just
Speaker 1: a lot of smoking mirrors. Um, but that can only
Speaker 1: last so long. I think, you know, we'll see he
Speaker 1: can't do this for five years, right, So, UM, I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's an effective strategy or not yet.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about you specifically. Right in the Washington posted.
Speaker 1: Let's just say you did not write every day in
Speaker 1: the post one thing that would love for me to
Speaker 1: write every day. Okay, well that's interesting, but leaving that aside,
Speaker 1: the post is more far in advance at the time
Speaker 1: where you work previously, and there are many more articles
Speaker 1: that allow comments. Okay, so if you write once a week,
Speaker 1: once every two weeks, usually it's more once once every
Speaker 1: two weeks, you can see feedback that way. But you
Speaker 1: are a very active poster on Twitter. What is your
Speaker 1: motivation there? Oh? I post more on Instagram that I
Speaker 1: do on Twitter, I think. But what we're talking about Twitter? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the sooner Twitter on a media group chat. I mean,
Speaker 1: the value of Twitter is for what one reporting? I
Speaker 1: cover Internet culture, right, so I gotta be on everything. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I post on everything. I kind of just
Speaker 1: there's no platform that I don't post content on because
Speaker 1: I'm constantly using it one to promote my stories, to
Speaker 1: shape narratives. UM. You know, I talk a lot about
Speaker 1: the media. I cover the media. I care a lot
Speaker 1: about journalism and sort of under people understanding the information
Speaker 1: ecosystem and our media environment. UM. I view Twitter mostly
Speaker 1: as a place to talk to other journe us, but
Speaker 1: I also find tons of sources there. I think there's
Speaker 1: tons of people in tech on Twitter, so it's valuable
Speaker 1: for that point to UM. But mostly I'm like trying
Speaker 1: to think how I use I used every platform differently, UM,
Speaker 1: but Twitter is definitely the one where I'm just like, hello, media,
Speaker 1: people pay attention to this. I have a new story out.
Speaker 1: Here's why this matters, you know, let's go at. Let's
Speaker 1: go a little bit slower word from the outside, which
Speaker 1: may not be accurate. Traditionally, except for the opinion calumnus
Speaker 1: in the major newspapers, most of the reporters were faceless.
Speaker 1: Their names were on the articles, but other than a couple,
Speaker 1: most people really had no idea who those people were.
Speaker 1: Whereas you were reporting on the bleeding edge social media
Speaker 1: and you know, the scuttle butt was the traditional people
Speaker 1: at the New York Times didn't like that you were
Speaker 1: getting that much attention, and we're against the modern period.
Speaker 1: I'm what was going on from that? Oh that's not true,
Speaker 1: that's not true. Look at someone like Ben Smith. No
Speaker 1: one loves attention like Ben Smith. Ben Smith left. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we both left the Times for I think similar Ben
Speaker 1: Smith thought that he was going for opportunities, and I
Speaker 1: didn't feel from the Outtimes. Once again, I say, this
Speaker 1: is perception as opposed to reality. Perception wasn't wasn't that
Speaker 1: there was backlash against Ben Smith? Uh, but perception was
Speaker 1: there was backlash against you. I'm constantly getting backlash from
Speaker 1: Look at Fox News every week, Tucker Carlson is ranting
Speaker 1: against me. I mean, I think that is constant backlash.
Speaker 1: But I never received backlash from anyone at the Times
Speaker 1: while I worked there. I mean, I they hired me
Speaker 1: because of my stories. I don't know, and I really
Speaker 1: disagree with you about people don't know the names. Look
Speaker 1: at Maggie Haberman, somebody ten times more famous than me, right,
Speaker 1: that has a cable news contract. That's an audience of
Speaker 1: one point seven million On Twitter I mean I'm nowhere
Speaker 1: near that big or you know, there's also amazing people
Speaker 1: at the Times that I always looked up to, like
Speaker 1: the critics. I mean, look at someone like John Kara Monica,
Speaker 1: absolute legend in the pop you know, industry, and kind
Speaker 1: of like coverage in New York and um, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's just so many famous journalists at the Times. I
Speaker 1: think the problem with The Times, or my my feelings
Speaker 1: about The Times is that you can't you don't have
Speaker 1: as much ownership, right, Like, it's a big place, and
Speaker 1: I loved I mean, I loved working there, and I
Speaker 1: I you know, I would work there still if if
Speaker 1: I could have more of my own thing. Like, I
Speaker 1: think it's a great place when you're learning stuff and
Speaker 1: you're starting out and if you don't mind being in
Speaker 1: service to the Times brand. But it's never you know,
Speaker 1: it was never my I never aspired to work at
Speaker 1: any of these legacy places at all. Um. And so
Speaker 1: I think for me, I just you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: just gonna take a paltry salary for way less money
Speaker 1: than I could make and not own anything and not
Speaker 1: be able to do any outside projects just to say
Speaker 1: that I work at the New York Times. I don't
Speaker 1: care about that. I don't think brands like that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, to me matter so UM. While I love
Speaker 1: the Times and I'm such a fan, I will remain
Speaker 1: a subscriber for life. I love my friends there, and
Speaker 1: I love my old editor. I would die for her. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know, for me, it's just not where I
Speaker 1: you know, I want wanted to kind of spend spend
Speaker 1: my time, like I thought. I wanted to do work
Speaker 1: somewhere where I could do more of my own UM
Speaker 1: projects and have things that I kind of can manage
Speaker 1: and control a little bit. And again that's just not
Speaker 1: a knock at the Times, because I think that The
Speaker 1: Times is amazing in terms of the resources that they have. UM.
Speaker 1: And I'm you know, I still work with them on
Speaker 1: things if I need to, you know, like I would.
Speaker 1: I'm not against them at all, but but I just
Speaker 1: think for someone like me, it's not it's like I wanted.
Speaker 1: I wanted more basically, Okay, but you know, I don't
Speaker 1: want to h hammer at this point because once it's
Speaker 1: very funny because people are so obsessed with the Times.
Speaker 1: It's like, why didn't they ask me why I left
Speaker 1: The Atlantic? Like why wait wait, wait, wait, wait wait,
Speaker 1: I'm not going there. I was going somewhere to get
Speaker 1: people do know who Maggie Haberman is, But many many
Speaker 1: more people know who you are than any of the
Speaker 1: pop critics, any of the movie critics at the Times.
Speaker 1: I think, I will tell you I don't want to
Speaker 1: go if you're I'm in the music business. Pop critics
Speaker 1: in the New York Times, other than the publicity people
Speaker 1: who want to get stories placed they were, they're meaningless
Speaker 1: because wait, wait, this gets into a bigger thing. I mean, uh,
Speaker 1: and I don't know if it's relevant to what we're
Speaker 1: going on now. But as I say, looking from outside
Speaker 1: of the bubble, this is one of the problems I
Speaker 1: have with the News Business Center. It doesn't quite get
Speaker 1: what's going on. I mean, it used to be a
Speaker 1: critic could make or breakup, movie record whatever. That doesn't
Speaker 1: even happen anymore. So they're working for the Times. Okay,
Speaker 1: This guy pop critic at the Times. He wrote a
Speaker 1: phenomenal book about Atlanta and hip Joe Cocarell, one of
Speaker 1: the best in the business. Yea the video. The last
Speaker 1: time I checked, his book had not had a single
Speaker 1: review on Amazon. Over a month after it came out.
Speaker 1: I don't know about Amazon reviews, but Joe, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is just relative to impact, and I don't want
Speaker 1: to This is not the most important story. But I
Speaker 1: guarantee you if I went on Twitter right now and
Speaker 1: I looked at Kara Monica's Twitter count follower account compared
Speaker 1: to yours, it would be a small fraction. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've developed a huge audience on I started as an
Speaker 1: Internet person. Yeah, but my point was people were traditional reporters. Okay,
Speaker 1: they're jealous of that, of course they are. Of course
Speaker 1: they're jealous of me. This has been my whole career.
Speaker 1: But I don't know what to say other than I
Speaker 1: am an extremely inclusive person. Ask anyone that I've ever
Speaker 1: worked with. I mean, people at the Times will tell
Speaker 1: you how much I go out of my way to
Speaker 1: help people. I don't care about credit. I will time out.
Speaker 1: The reason I brought this up was not to criticize you,
Speaker 1: was to talk about the other people. Okay, that they're
Speaker 1: stuck in a past paradigm. They worked for the Gray Lady.
Speaker 1: You don't want to step out where you're living in there.
Speaker 1: They shouldn't buy into that. They shouldn't buy into that.
Speaker 1: I I tell this to young journalists all the time.
Speaker 1: Don't buy into that. Don't then you are in service
Speaker 1: of some big company. And one of these big companies
Speaker 1: I graduated into the recession, and and the two thousand
Speaker 1: eight recession was one of the really formative events of
Speaker 1: my life. And the biggest thing I learned from that
Speaker 1: it was companies will never have loyalty to you. They
Speaker 1: will literally lay you off tomorrow if it's in their
Speaker 1: best interests. Serving some news company for thirty years of
Speaker 1: your life is not gonna you know, you can be
Speaker 1: laid off. Look, this just happens literally on a weekly
Speaker 1: basis in the media industry. And so I think when
Speaker 1: I started out, and as I've built my career just
Speaker 1: coming up, I never want to I don't view working
Speaker 1: at a big place as stability, and certainly not a
Speaker 1: big place where their brand is kind of everything is
Speaker 1: in service of this brand and you have no control
Speaker 1: and no ownership, and you are nothing, and you basically
Speaker 1: are there to serve a big brand. I I just
Speaker 1: that for me, I don't trust that. I don't trust that.
Speaker 1: I think that is not going to lead to long
Speaker 1: term stability. That's not to say that I wouldn't love
Speaker 1: to work certain place, and I had a wonderful time
Speaker 1: working there, But I just think, I I don't I
Speaker 1: I'd never I always want to hedge. I don't trust
Speaker 1: companies to ever have my best interest at heart, because
Speaker 1: no company will have your best interests at heart. They're
Speaker 1: there to make money at the end of the day.
Speaker 1: And so I just, you know, personally, that's just I
Speaker 1: don't know, that's just my feeling a lot of amazing,
Speaker 1: you know. I think you've made that point well, but
Speaker 1: I want to make a point in addition to that,
Speaker 1: if something is going on in Ukraine, okay, or there's
Speaker 1: a national or international crisis, no one covers it as
Speaker 1: well as the major media outlets. I'm talking about print
Speaker 1: as opposed to cable news. So that's a layer of stories, okay.
Speaker 1: But I I remember the New Yorker, which is revered
Speaker 1: amongst the intelligentsia, did a linked the story on ticketing,
Speaker 1: and I talked to one of the key players in
Speaker 1: the business and they say, what do you think of
Speaker 1: the article? Is tell me something I don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: there's nothing in there whatever, And what I find online
Speaker 1: is there is an expert, an absolute expert, in every vertical.
Speaker 1: This person is not working for traditional media, but they're findable. Now.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons I have you on the podcast
Speaker 1: is from my viewpoint, you're the number one expert that
Speaker 1: I have found on social media. You happen to work
Speaker 1: from major news outlet at this particular point in time,
Speaker 1: but all these other people don't. So therefore, if you
Speaker 1: want to get the heartbeat of not only America but
Speaker 1: the world, it happens on line. And therefore you have
Speaker 1: the older generation who pooh poos TikTok. Most people are
Speaker 1: not on Twitter because they're narcissistic. They want to make
Speaker 1: it about them, and unless you are a player in
Speaker 1: the news business or famous for some other reason, it
Speaker 1: doesn't work and it's not as simple in their minds
Speaker 1: to use. Okay, So assessing what's going on is an
Speaker 1: interesting thing. But I was driving somewhere different, which is
Speaker 1: you are participating online every day, okay, And the question
Speaker 1: becomes and listen, I'll say the same thing about me.
Speaker 1: I don't want to say you're unique. To what degree
Speaker 1: do you need the attention? Do you need the hit
Speaker 1: of interaction? And to what degree does that drive your activity?
Speaker 1: Bob I have I am a user. Do you know
Speaker 1: how irresponsible it would be to go and write authoritatively
Speaker 1: about these platforms when I'm not a user. I mean,
Speaker 1: look at the stories that I have gotten. You don't
Speaker 1: get those stories. Guys sitting on the sidelines and never
Speaker 1: using the products that you're writing about. That's like asking
Speaker 1: a you know, somebody that that does reviews of laptops
Speaker 1: to never touch a computer. You have to use these
Speaker 1: technolog jees and you have to really understand them, and
Speaker 1: you have to understand the dynamics of them. What is
Speaker 1: it like to be docked and and you know, receive
Speaker 1: mass amount of rassman campaign? What does it like to
Speaker 1: say the wrong thing on TikTok and have a zillion
Speaker 1: stitches about you? These are things that I can cover
Speaker 1: because I understand them so innately because I used the Internet,
Speaker 1: and I understand that to a lot of people, they
Speaker 1: don't like a reporter that uses the Internet. I mean,
Speaker 1: this has been my entire career, and by the way,
Speaker 1: I started as an Internet personality. I didn't start as
Speaker 1: a journalist. I started as a person that got followers.
Speaker 1: For most of my career, I've ran social right like I.
Speaker 1: I have been in this since the beginning. And the
Speaker 1: reason that I'm so good at reporting on it is
Speaker 1: because I'm a user. And that is how you have
Speaker 1: to be, as they say, close to the machine. That
Speaker 1: is how you do good tech reporting. It's very irresponsible
Speaker 1: to not participate and to not you know, not use TikTok,
Speaker 1: to not whatever, and then report on it. I mean,
Speaker 1: And that's how to say. And I say that because
Speaker 1: I report on tech from user perspective. I was just
Speaker 1: a business reporter and I was just reporting on what
Speaker 1: happens in these companies. Sure, you know you don't have
Speaker 1: to use it as much, but I think if you
Speaker 1: are reporting on culture and Internet culture of course, also
Speaker 1: just basic source building. I mean, the way to build
Speaker 1: sources is to stay and stay in people's minds. And
Speaker 1: if you just sort of disappear into the ether, you're
Speaker 1: not going to get those stories. I mean, all of
Speaker 1: my best scoops I've gotten from posting on the internet
Speaker 1: and said, like I mean the TikTok one, for instance,
Speaker 1: the targeted victory one. I'll just use that as an
Speaker 1: example of one. Earlier this year, I quote tweeted when
Speaker 1: Blumenthal said something about a made up TikTok challenge, and
Speaker 1: I quote tweeted it and I was like, this is crazy,
Speaker 1: this TikTok. This is not a TikTok challenge, and this
Speaker 1: is made up by YouTube. Why is it that we
Speaker 1: see all of this stuff in local media? Suddenly guess what,
Speaker 1: my source saw that tweet and leaked me all the documents.
Speaker 1: I got that amazing scoop. If you don't that, that's
Speaker 1: just the nature of internet culture reporting. Everyone else on
Speaker 1: my beat, by the way, is hype is the same one,
Speaker 1: the exact same way. They just don't have the big following.
Speaker 1: And I'm the oldest on the beat, and so whatever
Speaker 1: I get where, I get what I get. But um,
Speaker 1: but I mean, this is what we're covering. This is
Speaker 1: our beat. It's like trying to cover culture and sitting
Speaker 1: in your house all day and never going to a
Speaker 1: concert or never watching a TV show. How are you
Speaker 1: supposed to be a cultural critic if you don't participate
Speaker 1: or consume? Well, put, but let's go back to something
Speaker 1: you said a few minutes ago. You said, how you
Speaker 1: use these platforms, And one way you use these platforms
Speaker 1: is to amplify your story. None. You know, let's not
Speaker 1: pointing gasoline on this. Let's just look at it calmly.
Speaker 1: Does that work. I'm a writer also, I do I
Speaker 1: do not. I do not hype my stories. I'm a
Speaker 1: unique thing. It's not like I'm writing every day. But
Speaker 1: I find which is not your issue. It turns off
Speaker 1: people already read it. But if there's going to be
Speaker 1: a virality, that's in the hands of the people who
Speaker 1: writ no, no, no, no, no no no. I worked
Speaker 1: in audience development, Bob. My job was audience development. The
Speaker 1: people who say, oh, I don't promote my own work,
Speaker 1: they're relying on the institution to promote their work. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't just publish things and have a built in
Speaker 1: audience on the Internet. You need to reach people. And
Speaker 1: the way to reach people is to put the content
Speaker 1: in front of them in a way they can consume. Right.
Speaker 1: If I do a story, I don't just tweet it out.
Speaker 1: I make a TikTok about it, I post about it
Speaker 1: on Instagram, I send it out, is an email alert
Speaker 1: sometimes in my newsletter. All of these things are letting
Speaker 1: the audience that cares about my work. No, Hey, there's
Speaker 1: this new story out just the way that the New
Speaker 1: York Times or the Washington Post would tweet a story
Speaker 1: out or whatever. I just don't rely on my employer
Speaker 1: to do any of that because I used to do
Speaker 1: I used to have that job, right, I used to
Speaker 1: run social media for all of these big media companies,
Speaker 1: and I know how much work goes into promoting people's stories,
Speaker 1: and what a difference it makes when a reporter report
Speaker 1: promotes their own story. I mean, that's the goal. I
Speaker 1: wish we could get reporters to kind of do that,
Speaker 1: but they, of course don't generally feel like that's part
Speaker 1: of their job. And that's fine for me. I think, Um,
Speaker 1: I don't just want to either, Like I also don't
Speaker 1: just want to promote my story, but I want to
Speaker 1: open a conversation about it. You mentioned comments. Comments are
Speaker 1: great for people that are subscribers or that you know,
Speaker 1: might have an account with the Washington Post, but it's
Speaker 1: not great to hear from the public. And I want
Speaker 1: to hear from the public. I want my stories to
Speaker 1: generate conversation. I want to say, hey, look, I found
Speaker 1: this information out. I'm putting this into the world. Let's
Speaker 1: discuss it. Do you have questions? Do you have thoughts,
Speaker 1: what you know? What what does this mean? And how
Speaker 1: can we kind of further the conversation. Those are things
Speaker 1: that that are relevant and that inform future stories. I
Speaker 1: want that kind of feedback, and I want that relationship
Speaker 1: with my audience and the public so that I'm accountable.
Speaker 1: A lot of journalists go off into their you know,
Speaker 1: Ivory tower, and then they you know, they say, oh,
Speaker 1: and here's a story from me. I've come down and
Speaker 1: here's here's my story. No, I want to be in
Speaker 1: the mix with everyone, with the public saying, hey, look
Speaker 1: this is what I found out, here's my story. What
Speaker 1: do you guys think? What questions do you have that
Speaker 1: I can answer? What did I What could I do
Speaker 1: better for next time? Oh? That stuff is really important
Speaker 1: to me. Okay, I think that's well articulated. Let me
Speaker 1: shift the gears a little bit to clubhouse two sides.
Speaker 1: Let's say, how come the medium anybody who followed tech
Speaker 1: history and was I knew this was a non starter
Speaker 1: from day one? Okay, how come everybody missed it and
Speaker 1: also talk about it? It's not quite as an inception,
Speaker 1: But not long thereafter when it was still private, my
Speaker 1: ear quotes you got into a people attacked you tell
Speaker 1: us about that? Oh god, well, people attacked me all
Speaker 1: day on the internet. Um. Clubhouse, Yeah, I mean Clubhouse
Speaker 1: was interesting. I will give them credit, Bob, even though
Speaker 1: you're right that the platform was very doomed I think
Speaker 1: by intentional choices made by the VC firm that invested them. Um,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say that. You know what what it did
Speaker 1: is something that Snapchat did too, which is pioneer a
Speaker 1: new format. And I think you have to give Clubhouse
Speaker 1: credit for that. Short form audio. Short form live audio
Speaker 1: was not a thing, right Twitter, Twitter Spaces would never
Speaker 1: have existed if it wasn't for Clubhouse. I know, Spotify
Speaker 1: as green Room. There's all of these new sort of
Speaker 1: short audio products and features now in other other products
Speaker 1: that we wouldn't have if there was no Clubhouse. So
Speaker 1: I think you you really do have to give Clubhouse
Speaker 1: credit for introducing that new sort of short form audio
Speaker 1: format just to stay with it. Short form. But what
Speaker 1: broke Clubhouse was long form? Yeah. Well, I think what
Speaker 1: I actually descred what what broke Clubhouse was the way
Speaker 1: that they managed the app. I mean, I think they
Speaker 1: scaled without any protections for harassment and abuse, and it
Speaker 1: became very toxic and very overrun with spam. A lot
Speaker 1: of people say, oh, we don't want you know, this
Speaker 1: is Elon's favor thing. Oh we don't want any moderation.
Speaker 1: You know what makes people want moderation spam, And that
Speaker 1: is what happened with Clubhouse. It was overrun with these
Speaker 1: like scam rooms. And then also I think UM discovery
Speaker 1: was fundamentally broken. We're talking about discovery on TikTok right,
Speaker 1: Like TikTok has this amazing ability to surface content that's
Speaker 1: interesting to you and follow, you know, encourage you to follow,
Speaker 1: an engage with people that are interesting. Clubhouse never nailed discovery.
Speaker 1: It was way too late that they rolled out that,
Speaker 1: like algorithmic feed, at that point people had lost I
Speaker 1: think they've benefited hugely from the early days of pandemic
Speaker 1: when everyone was caught in UM. But the main suggested
Speaker 1: user list on that app had a bunch of and
Speaker 1: recent Horwitz partners on it. I'll never forget this is
Speaker 1: in my book, being at this TikTok house in Atlanta
Speaker 1: with a bunch of teenage you know, TikTokers in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: and they're talking about Clubhouse and one of them is like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, I love Clubhouse. You just have to follow
Speaker 1: all these really old, weird white guy guys first to
Speaker 1: get onto the app. And I was like, show that
Speaker 1: to me. What are you talking about. They're talking about
Speaker 1: being forced to follow work and recent to get onto
Speaker 1: the app. That's very bad user experience. You should. I
Speaker 1: think that in the case of Clubhouse, the investors, primary investors,
Speaker 1: use that app to boost their own influence, which they
Speaker 1: continue to try and do over and over again because
Speaker 1: they're so desperate to be influencers these days, um to
Speaker 1: the detriment of discovery, and I think that they that
Speaker 1: and then the crazy number of push alerts that they
Speaker 1: would send. I just think that they burned the user
Speaker 1: base out. Users couldn't find interesting stuff, and then kind
Speaker 1: of like what happened to Snapchat once Instagram Stories rolled out,
Speaker 1: once Twitter spaces rolled out, once we had these competing products,
Speaker 1: it just wasn't you know, people didn't need to go
Speaker 1: to a specific app. Let's go back a step to
Speaker 1: heat hate in general. You know, I get hate every day.
Speaker 1: I remember, you know, I remember this was about eight
Speaker 1: years ago. Tina Fey wanted to won some award and
Speaker 1: she stood on stage and called out one of our haters.
Speaker 1: You have someone that no one would know other than
Speaker 1: so that there's an incredible number of people were afraid
Speaker 1: to play because of the hate. How do you cope
Speaker 1: with the hate? Well, I mean I don't. What I
Speaker 1: experience is not just hate, right, I have for three
Speaker 1: years now been the target of a very coordinated smear
Speaker 1: campaign by um, you know, far right actors that are
Speaker 1: that are politically motivated, that are very anti media. So, um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not just hate. I don't care about hate.
Speaker 1: I cover YouTubers for a living, Bob, So if I
Speaker 1: cared about hate, I wouldn't you know, be in this
Speaker 1: in this beat different question. Lett's separate this out before you.
Speaker 1: Let's just talk about average social media hate is supposed
Speaker 1: to coordinate that you're talking about my hate? Okay, well
Speaker 1: does it? No? No? Does it literally just roll off
Speaker 1: your back? At this point? I think in most of
Speaker 1: it does because I have the last few years have
Speaker 1: been so crazy, so crazy, I mean, so out of
Speaker 1: control experiences that I never thought I would have crazy,
Speaker 1: um that I think at this point, I'm I'm very
Speaker 1: desensitized to it. But I also it's it's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's completely changed how I operated on the internet because
Speaker 1: because because of the backlash that I get. So tell
Speaker 1: tell me how you've changed. I mean, I just I'm
Speaker 1: I'm extremely privacy oriented and like there's a reason that
Speaker 1: you never see me post anything about my life, who
Speaker 1: I'm friends with, I'm not. I'm not sharing any kind
Speaker 1: of details. People don't know anything about me because I
Speaker 1: don't want them to know anything about me, because I
Speaker 1: am intentionally private about that. When I'm on the Internet.
Speaker 1: I'm on the Internet for fun and to connect for sure,
Speaker 1: But I'm not you know, I'm just a lot more
Speaker 1: private about you know, any kind of personal aspect of
Speaker 1: my life. Um in a that I so that works
Speaker 1: for something, But for either the weirdos or the people
Speaker 1: who are out to get you, we know, everybody is
Speaker 1: findable amation Oh yes, I mean I've been docs a
Speaker 1: million times over, as have my friends and family members.
Speaker 1: So let's segue back to the right wing campaign and
Speaker 1: mix it all together. Tell me more about the right
Speaker 1: wing campaign and to what degree you are fearful. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean I've had very credible physical interactions, so I
Speaker 1: am very fearful of these people. I mean, these people
Speaker 1: do not stay online. Unfortunately, they become radicalized and they
Speaker 1: will try and physically harm you. Um. But what they
Speaker 1: you know, what they succeed at most is reputational harm.
Speaker 1: And I've written many, many, many stories about this to
Speaker 1: try and help people understand. Um. But you know, a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, he Booth began to sort of
Speaker 1: fixate on me as this figure and this avatar for
Speaker 1: everything that they didn't like about you know, traditional media
Speaker 1: or which is very ironic because I'm the least traditional
Speaker 1: media person or the tech industry or whatever, um And
Speaker 1: and they kind of just started using me as this
Speaker 1: like stand in right for like the liberal media or
Speaker 1: whatever they don't like that day. Much of it is
Speaker 1: rooted in misogyny. I mean, if you look at the
Speaker 1: attacks against me, it is the vast majority are just
Speaker 1: deeply misogynistic. And I think a lot of women tech
Speaker 1: reporters specifically get this. A lot of my friends went
Speaker 1: through gamer Gate. UM. I don't know how familiar audiences
Speaker 1: with gamer Gate, but it was this hate campaign against women,
Speaker 1: um tech and gaming journalists and sort of against diversity
Speaker 1: in games coverage in general. In the first half of
Speaker 1: the ten UM spent almost ten years actually since gamer Gate,
Speaker 1: and I think that the broader public still does not
Speaker 1: understand how these things work, and so they see things
Speaker 1: like Tucker you know, ranting at me or Fox News
Speaker 1: doing these daily stories about me, and they think, Wow,
Speaker 1: she's controversial. They never actually dig into it and realize that, like,
Speaker 1: most of this is bullshit. I mean, have I like
Speaker 1: done stupid things of the pasture. I'm trying to think
Speaker 1: of what I've done. I don't know. I think I've
Speaker 1: said I hate America and some stuff like that, maybe
Speaker 1: once or twice, but like, UM, you know, most of
Speaker 1: it's just manufactured outrage and UM putting words in my
Speaker 1: mouth or misrepresenting me. And I think, UM, that has
Speaker 1: been really hard to deal with, and it's really hard
Speaker 1: to deal with. It's really the only people that get
Speaker 1: it are celebrities. Like I've found that the only people
Speaker 1: that I feel like I can talk to who really
Speaker 1: understand seeing this image of themselves projected back to them
Speaker 1: through the media that's just so off base with how
Speaker 1: they really are, what really happened, or are famous people
Speaker 1: that they deal with it every day. UM, And I
Speaker 1: don't consider myself as celebrities. So I think it's hard,
Speaker 1: you know, it's hard to kind of deal with that.
Speaker 1: I'm not some a less movie star with a pr team.
Speaker 1: It's it's just me. And oh it's hard, and it's
Speaker 1: it's really hard. This stuff with my family is really hard.
Speaker 1: I mean, having people, um, you know, chow up to
Speaker 1: my parents house and swapped my parents and and attack
Speaker 1: my family members and and my friends and threatened my friends.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's been the hardest part that because I
Speaker 1: feel like I can't protect them. So anyway, that's why
Speaker 1: I'm more careful about, you know, even saying who I'm with.
Speaker 1: I don't want people mapping my social circle or things
Speaker 1: like that. I just would rather keep it all private.
Speaker 1: So what do you think when Tucker started to mention you,
Speaker 1: It was really I mean when it first started to
Speaker 1: happen a couple of years ago, it was really, Um,
Speaker 1: I was so upset. I mean it really it really.
Speaker 1: I was getting suddenly a level of hate and attacks
Speaker 1: and it's not just Tucker. I think Tucker is kind
Speaker 1: of the peak of this whole ecosystem. Um, but it
Speaker 1: was it was hard to deal with and it was overwhelming,
Speaker 1: and suddenly I was getting you know, I changed my
Speaker 1: phone number, like I was getting so much hate on
Speaker 1: every platform and having people attack my relatives, and it
Speaker 1: was hard. Now I've been able to deal with it.
Speaker 1: Now I'm like, oh god, he's on another one. You know,
Speaker 1: I kind of treated like a YouTuber basically in my mind,
Speaker 1: like you know, when a YouTuber makes a video about me,
Speaker 1: I'm like, whatever, I'm so used to this by now. Um,
Speaker 1: And I started to feel that way a little bit
Speaker 1: about the right wing media. But I spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time trying to educate people, writing the stories that
Speaker 1: I do about online harassment and being a voice in
Speaker 1: the industry to try and help people understand what a
Speaker 1: smear campaign looks like. You know, this is manipulating someone's
Speaker 1: sco results, this is planting stories about them, this is
Speaker 1: you know, last year, I dealt with a bot um
Speaker 1: somebody you know how basically use bots to send hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of messages to every single person that follows me,
Speaker 1: and most people have follow Washington Post um messages about
Speaker 1: me just sort of lying about me, saying that I'm
Speaker 1: going to be fired, and I was, you know, controversial
Speaker 1: at the times. All the stuff that's completely untrue. UM.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's just there's a lot of that
Speaker 1: stuff that people don't understand what a smear campaign looks like.
Speaker 1: They think, oh, it's just some mean tweets. I don't
Speaker 1: care about me and tweets. I don't even see mean tweets.
Speaker 1: I have like all my filters on UM. But this
Speaker 1: other stuff is very real, I mean very real threats.
Speaker 1: I have to have security when I go to public
Speaker 1: events a lot of the times now because these people
Speaker 1: have physically, you know, tried to show up and physically army. Okay.
Speaker 1: One other area that you're very vocal about is COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen vaccinations. Everybody gets vaccinated. Everybody. Also it says you
Speaker 1: have an underlying immune condition. Is that correct? Yes, I'm
Speaker 1: severely immuto compromised. UM. So I care a lot about UM,
Speaker 1: you know, advocating for people like myself that are you know,
Speaker 1: not able to you know that we we can't operate
Speaker 1: in the world UM the same way that that many
Speaker 1: others feel that they can and UM. You know, I
Speaker 1: think for disabled people throughout this pandemic, it's been really hard.
Speaker 1: A lot of disabled people are still at home shielding
Speaker 1: UM or they've been forced back into really unsafe work environments,
Speaker 1: UM having to put their health at risk. I've lost,
Speaker 1: you know, several people that I was very close to
Speaker 1: to COVID. UM. It's it's ongoing. I have, you know,
Speaker 1: somebody very close to me as the hospital right now,
Speaker 1: UM sick. And so I think it's just really really
Speaker 1: important for members of the media to understand and remember that.
Speaker 1: I think the problem with a lot of people, especially
Speaker 1: in traditional media, these really nice, cushy jobs. You know,
Speaker 1: they're able to go to their at Hampton's house or
Speaker 1: Upstate New York during COVID and check out and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, everything's fine, I got the vaccine, I'm done.
Speaker 1: What they don't realize is there's thousands of people still
Speaker 1: dying a week. I mean, I think the Washington Post
Speaker 1: has done such great health reporting. Um Dan Diamond amazing
Speaker 1: health reporter. We have Amanda Morris who covers disability issues
Speaker 1: for the Post now, and both of them have just
Speaker 1: done such great work kind of highlighting this. But I
Speaker 1: try to always remember, always remind use my platform to
Speaker 1: remind other people what it's like for those who don't
Speaker 1: have the same privileges and opportunities you know, someone like me,
Speaker 1: I don't have the same protection against COVID. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've had as many vaccines as you can possibly get,
Speaker 1: and I God bless them, but they do not they
Speaker 1: are not equally protective for all of us. Um of
Speaker 1: course I got evy shells as well, but now we
Speaker 1: know that evy shell doesn't protecting. I have a similar situation.
Speaker 1: So I'm just gonna go here for a second. So
Speaker 1: what exactly is the issue that you know you're not
Speaker 1: making antibodies because you have a treatment for b sells,
Speaker 1: So but I can't I definitely can't get into my
Speaker 1: personal health stuff that I take the treatment. I take
Speaker 1: a treatment that wipes out all your B cells, and
Speaker 1: therefore the vaccines didn't work, and I got evy shelled.
Speaker 1: I got the one before that, which was didn't work
Speaker 1: for a macron, and eventually my B cells came back
Speaker 1: and I got three more vaccines. But it was I
Speaker 1: was living, you know, off the grid for two and
Speaker 1: a half years. But just to segue to another topic,
Speaker 1: and you mentioned it earlier, you came to my attention
Speaker 1: primarily you're reporting on the influencers, which I've always found interesting.
Speaker 1: The first influencer that I really became interested in was
Speaker 1: this one, Jena Marbles, and what I noticed, You know,
Speaker 1: with all these influencers who are not expressing. Let me
Speaker 1: back up a little bit. The entertainment business, like the
Speaker 1: major media business, is always one step behind, and they
Speaker 1: think they can always come in and clean up. This
Speaker 1: is like TikTok Records are bourbon on TikTok and they
Speaker 1: want to manipulate the market, which at the time they can't,
Speaker 1: and they believe they could. Anybody blows up on TikTok
Speaker 1: will sign with them. That's I want to go into
Speaker 1: depth there. And switching gears. They were under the uh
Speaker 1: they believed since these online influencers had so many followers,
Speaker 1: they would translate to traditional media. Okay, uh, you know
Speaker 1: there's one of them, uh, TikTok you probably remember the name,
Speaker 1: has their own TV show just like no one is watching.
Speaker 1: But yeah, right, I don't want to go too far,
Speaker 1: but I want to talk about two elements. One that
Speaker 1: since most of these people don't have it in an
Speaker 1: eate talent, they are producing content two seven to the
Speaker 1: point where they ultimately burn themselves out and abandoned the paradigm.
Speaker 1: Two there is a whole house slash factory of producing content.
Speaker 1: I know that those are not wholly related, but why
Speaker 1: don't you start there? Yes, Um, you know, I think,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, Bob, it's really hard for these influencers
Speaker 1: because they burn themselves out and these platforms reward that.
Speaker 1: I mean, these platforms push people into seven work schedules.
Speaker 1: You can't take a break. If you don't post, you're
Speaker 1: not monetizing. Um. And I think that that that stunds
Speaker 1: a lot of creativity, and I think it leads to
Speaker 1: burn out. Um. And I think that the traditional entertainment
Speaker 1: industry is still learning how to leverage these people. Um.
Speaker 1: I think it did not work necessarily to put them
Speaker 1: in traditional movies. As you said, a lot of these
Speaker 1: people are not the most talented actors necessarily. I would
Speaker 1: say music as an area that you know has worked out.
Speaker 1: I mean somebody like Olivia Rodrigo or Shawn Mendez. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of like I mean Justin Bieber, I guess
Speaker 1: came off YouTube, Like there are there are success stories there. Um,
Speaker 1: But I think it's just it's a lot of traditional
Speaker 1: entertainment is still kind of like what do we do
Speaker 1: with these people? And then these people are trying to
Speaker 1: kind of like build their own media companies and figure
Speaker 1: out their own strategy and do they even want to
Speaker 1: be in traditional Hollywood? Does that even make sense? Right?
Speaker 1: So I think it's kind of I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: all evolving. Okay, So what about the creator houses and
Speaker 1: the situation of groups of influencers at this point in time? Yes, um,
Speaker 1: so creator houses have been a thing since two thousand nine.
Speaker 1: Um we had the first content creator house called The Station,
Speaker 1: which ended up becoming Maker Studios UM. And pretty much
Speaker 1: ever since then, we've we've had you know, creative content
Speaker 1: houses UM all over l A, also Atlanta at other
Speaker 1: places to Houston. UM. And people live together because it
Speaker 1: makes sense, right you're young. I think young creative people
Speaker 1: always want to live together. But in this case it
Speaker 1: sort of has a direct financial incentive because you can
Speaker 1: collaborate and kind of grow as a group and brand
Speaker 1: yourself that way. It really I think it really that
Speaker 1: whole like culture really exploded into the mainstream with the
Speaker 1: Hype House and TikTok and I think in one you
Speaker 1: saw so many of these houses, and you had all
Speaker 1: these management companies starting these houses and then now, I
Speaker 1: think lately is cooled off because people realized a lot
Speaker 1: of these management companies realize that these houses are actually
Speaker 1: just like huge liabilities. Um. Anytime you have a house
Speaker 1: full of young people, it's not the easiest thing to manage.
Speaker 1: So um. You know. So you're seeing a lot of
Speaker 1: management companies pulled back. But young people will always live
Speaker 1: together in Hollywood. Okay, you yourself moved from the East
Speaker 1: Coast to the West coast to be closer to this. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm a New Yorker for life, But I have to
Speaker 1: say I love l A. And then and why do you?
Speaker 1: Why do you? Why do you love l A? Well,
Speaker 1: I have a lot of family in California. Um, and
Speaker 1: I had spent a bunch of time in California. I
Speaker 1: mean I was always here. I was here for like
Speaker 1: several months in twenty nineteen and months like I've always
Speaker 1: I was out here for like nine months at one point, uh,
Speaker 1: probably seven years ago. I've I've almost moved here, and
Speaker 1: I've spent a lot of time here, But it wasn't
Speaker 1: until I lived in l A full time. I feel
Speaker 1: like that I really appreciated the city and got to
Speaker 1: see so many more sides of it, like when you
Speaker 1: come in and you're staying downtown or you're just staying
Speaker 1: in West Hollywood and you're just going to a bunch
Speaker 1: of influencer events, Like, that's not the way to like
Speaker 1: experience l A. So now that I live here, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is actually great, and there's a lot of cool
Speaker 1: people here and the weather I mean well, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, l A is a shitty tourist town, which
Speaker 1: is what you're referencing there. If you come, let me
Speaker 1: hit the highlights. And you know, New Yorker comes to
Speaker 1: l A and says, you know, hey, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't get it. There's not the cultural stuff, there's not
Speaker 1: the street life. I'd rather live in New York. And
Speaker 1: Angelino goes to New York, this greatest city in the world,
Speaker 1: but I'd rather live in l A. I aspire to
Speaker 1: be bi coastal. That would be really nice. Uh not
Speaker 1: you know there yet, but I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's great out here. In my California relatives are
Speaker 1: all feeling very smug. I think about the fact that
Speaker 1: I have become I've become such a l A booster. Okay, Now,
Speaker 1: in hip hop there was a New York scene, l
Speaker 1: A scene, Atlanta scene and talking to Joe Coscarelli, you
Speaker 1: know he's talking about scenes in Sacramento, when in Idaho. Um,
Speaker 1: when it comes to the creator economy, obviously people are everywhere,
Speaker 1: But are Los Angeles and you said to a degree Atlanta,
Speaker 1: are those still very much the hot beds in the
Speaker 1: major places? Yeah? I think Um, I mean I think
Speaker 1: l A, New York, Atlanta to a lesser extent, maybe
Speaker 1: like Houston and Orlando, like some cities in Florida, Miami.
Speaker 1: I mean, anywhere you have like creative people, it's it's
Speaker 1: going to be that. That's that's where the content creator
Speaker 1: industry is definitely like this this where the hubs are
Speaker 1: really New York and l A for the brands, for
Speaker 1: the managers, for the agents, but then you have lifestyle
Speaker 1: influencers all over. I mean, this shift in media towards
Speaker 1: personality driven media is not something that's just happening with Tiktoker's.
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of parents, for instance, might follow
Speaker 1: like a recipe in you know, influencers somewhere on TikTok
Speaker 1: or Instagram. That person might live in Charlotte, North Carolina,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of people kind of all
Speaker 1: over moving into this line of work. But I do
Speaker 1: think that New York and l A or where it's
Speaker 1: concentrated in Atlanta, because those are the entertainment hubs, since
Speaker 1: you're so close to it. You know, people say that
Speaker 1: they want to be in the music business. The first
Speaker 1: thing is I tell them is no, you don't want
Speaker 1: to be in the med You know, it's incredibly hard
Speaker 1: work to get in and it's almost impossible to stay in. So,
Speaker 1: having observed all these influencers, what would you tell to someone, Oh,
Speaker 1: you know, because I'm sure you get the same thing
Speaker 1: I get. Somebody says, oh, my kid, they got X
Speaker 1: number of followers, blah blah blah. What would you tell
Speaker 1: that person? Probably everything you tell people in the music industry.
Speaker 1: It's ten times harder than you think. Um, it's it's
Speaker 1: really hard. I mean people are always like, oh, Taylor,
Speaker 1: why aren't you independent? Because I know exactly how hard
Speaker 1: it is, um to do that. It's like you don't
Speaker 1: have healthcare, you know, like you're everything is on you.
Speaker 1: You're basically running a small business and most small businesses fail, right, Um,
Speaker 1: And so I think it's just it's an incredible amount
Speaker 1: of pressure. You have to really be able to handle it.
Speaker 1: You have to be able to manage the business part
Speaker 1: that the public. I mean, you're a public figure when
Speaker 1: you become an influencer, get a following, and that's extremely
Speaker 1: difficult to manage. Um. It's just it's hard. It's way
Speaker 1: harder than you think. And I would say, if you
Speaker 1: have an option to do something more stable, you know,
Speaker 1: keep that in your back pocket always. But okay, we
Speaker 1: always read about the people making big money. How many
Speaker 1: people are really making big money, only the top one percent.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the other thing that I think is
Speaker 1: very misconstrued is that people see it's like seeing you know,
Speaker 1: it's classic Hollywood, right, Like you see Jennifer Aniston and
Speaker 1: George Clooney and these actor and you think, well, that's
Speaker 1: what it is, you know, to act and be in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: and then you realize it's actually going, you know, to
Speaker 1: forty seven auditions for Dorito's commercial that you probably won't
Speaker 1: even get. So it's like, you know, it's like that.
Speaker 1: But on the internet, it's like you see Mr Beast,
Speaker 1: you see Charlie Demilio making you know, tens of millions
Speaker 1: of dollars a year. But the reality is is that
Speaker 1: you will probably make nothing close to that, and it's
Speaker 1: very hard and it's very unstable in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: I mean, the traditional industry is unstable in different ways.
Speaker 1: So I would never suggest anybody go into that either.
Speaker 1: But um, I just think you have to be clear
Speaker 1: eyed about that stuff. Okay, people understand the monetization on
Speaker 1: YouTube their ads. Person who has the channel or the
Speaker 1: influence you gets a percentage of the ads. How exactly
Speaker 1: are people monetizing on TikTok. And an addition, of course,
Speaker 1: one of the great things of TikTok is you can
Speaker 1: be nobody and be boosted to a lot of people,
Speaker 1: which doesn't happen on YouTube. Conversely, you can be somebody
Speaker 1: and not be boosted more. Tell me more about that
Speaker 1: in the monetization on TikTok. Well, I would say, first
Speaker 1: of all, you know, ads are not the only way
Speaker 1: that people make money on YouTube, actually less and less.
Speaker 1: So people make a lot of money through merch and
Speaker 1: through productizing themselves and that's something you see on TikTok too.
Speaker 1: So people do make money through ads on TikTok, whether
Speaker 1: it's through the creator. You know, their version of like
Speaker 1: the YouTube Partner program is the UM the TikTok Creator
Speaker 1: fund UM. It functions a little bit differently. It's just
Speaker 1: one pot of money. But basically, you know, you can
Speaker 1: get paid based if you get enough views on your TikTok's.
Speaker 1: And then also you're doing ads that our native ads.
Speaker 1: So say, you know, Clorox pays you to shout out
Speaker 1: Clorox in the video or put it in the back
Speaker 1: of one of your TikTok's. Um, those are sort of
Speaker 1: lots that. There are lots of different revenue models in
Speaker 1: terms of advertising, and then um, e commerce and products
Speaker 1: is how a lot of people make money too. So
Speaker 1: merch lines um, Amazon storefronts where any time and you
Speaker 1: know somebody, for instance, Lauren Wolf, this great lifestyle creator
Speaker 1: in New York, part of the Amazon Creator program. If
Speaker 1: I go, you know, click, I'm like, wow, I love
Speaker 1: that dress she's wearing. I click on her Amazon shop
Speaker 1: in her bio, and I buy that dress from Amazon.
Speaker 1: She'll get a percentage of that. So affiliate revenue UM
Speaker 1: and a million other ways. I mean, people charge for shoutouts,
Speaker 1: people charge for comments. Like, there's lots of different things
Speaker 1: that people can do to make money, and I think
Speaker 1: it's about developing a sustainable revenue model for yourself. Some
Speaker 1: people also don't even make money on YouTube or TikTok
Speaker 1: and they make it all on Patreon, right, they just
Speaker 1: have a really dedicated audience that will pay that subscription revenue. Okay. Uh.
Speaker 1: I grew up in a different era where credibility was
Speaker 1: king and people said no, Hey, people don't say no
Speaker 1: to anything. These days, the goals if you get any
Speaker 1: traction to become a brand. But when I look at
Speaker 1: the very site that people with longevity, it's still the
Speaker 1: people who don't sell out and have credibility. What's your
Speaker 1: viewpoint on that? Um, I think you're right. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know what, somebody like Dude Perfect on YouTube, that
Speaker 1: group and a few their sports YouTube first, Like, that's
Speaker 1: a really good example of a group that has not
Speaker 1: sold out like they have. They have turned down so
Speaker 1: much stuff that they could have done and cheapened out
Speaker 1: their brand for and they never have. Like they've never
Speaker 1: done the gambling ads or that type of stuff. As
Speaker 1: far as I know, they've been creating contents the two
Speaker 1: thousand nine. They've built a massive media company that rivals
Speaker 1: any traditional sports media company in a lot of ways. Um,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I think, but but but Bob, that's so hard.
Speaker 1: As we know, everybody wants easy money. You make one,
Speaker 1: you know, you're like, oh, I'll make one, compromise here,
Speaker 1: and then you compromise here, and then suddenly I'm less
Speaker 1: worried about that side of it. But when I see
Speaker 1: somebody hawking a product, if I see him, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm immediately down them. Because this is one thing that
Speaker 1: the entertainment business is still trying to cope with as
Speaker 1: a result of the Internet, is that in a world
Speaker 1: of unlimited product, consumers king and they have no loyalties.
Speaker 1: So I find free just to finish my statement forgetting
Speaker 1: someone who's selling clothing or other that whatever. Someone who says,
Speaker 1: well you just follow me for me, but uh, you know,
Speaker 1: by vote of vitamin water or whatever you ultimately you
Speaker 1: know it says, well, I'd really rather watch somebody else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's interesting. It depends on how
Speaker 1: aligned that product is with the creator. So in the
Speaker 1: second half of the tens, which were sort of the
Speaker 1: golden age of spa Con, that's when people were just
Speaker 1: kind of throwing money at influencers with big audiences because
Speaker 1: they didn't have any sense of like targeted marketing. You
Speaker 1: were getting a lot of those mismatches. That's where like
Speaker 1: suddenly everyone was hawking the Gummy Bear hair vitamins or whatever.
Speaker 1: That's right. That's a bad experience for the fan because
Speaker 1: the fans like, why am I Like, yeah, why are
Speaker 1: you hawking this? However, I'll say somebody, you know, there's
Speaker 1: somebody like Addison easter Lane, Addison ray On TikTok right,
Speaker 1: like she's you know, talked about her skincare journey. She
Speaker 1: launched the skincare line. It's makeup, it's she can kind
Speaker 1: of work it into her content in a way that
Speaker 1: feels organic, and it's her brand. It has her name
Speaker 1: on it. So people feel a little bit more. That
Speaker 1: seems to be the way that a better way to
Speaker 1: make money. I guess, Well, let me just if you're
Speaker 1: selling something based on your identity, I get it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But even so, most people are not. They're saying, hey,
Speaker 1: this this brand wants to give me money, I'll take
Speaker 1: the money. I'll do what they want. Well, I will
Speaker 1: say most most influencers will not take the money unless
Speaker 1: it aligns with their audience, and most brands don't want
Speaker 1: to pay that money because brands want an r o I,
Speaker 1: so they want to know do you have the demographic
Speaker 1: that we are trying to reach and and are you
Speaker 1: going to actually be able to convert? And if you're
Speaker 1: not going to convert those people, then the brand doesn't
Speaker 1: want to do the deal, and influencer doesn't want to
Speaker 1: do the deal because obvious a lot of times you too,
Speaker 1: you get like bonuses based on your conversions and stuff
Speaker 1: in your sales. So I think you're I think that
Speaker 1: was more of a problem a few years ago, and
Speaker 1: I think the industry is getting more and more sophisticated,
Speaker 1: just the way that when when remember Bob, when like
Speaker 1: banner ads started out, you still be getting these like
Speaker 1: randomit and now you get super targeted stuff. I think
Speaker 1: the same is happening. If you don't have a bad blocker, right,
Speaker 1: there's no a yet. Let's flip the story over to
Speaker 1: the advertiser themselves. There's a lot going on here. You
Speaker 1: have apples, Uh, change in the OS such that the
Speaker 1: users can't be tracked, uh Facebook there well, people the
Speaker 1: advertisers obviously want targeted ads what's the advertiser view point? Now?
Speaker 1: On one end we have Twitter, where the advertisers many
Speaker 1: have pulled back because they're worried about being associated with
Speaker 1: the bad actors the platform in general. On the other treme,
Speaker 1: we have TikTok. What's going on in the average tis
Speaker 1: in community these days? Oh gosh, yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think advertisers are just The Twitter stuff is definitely thrown
Speaker 1: a lot of people for a loop, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people have just pulled their ads bed from Twitter.
Speaker 1: I think more and more a lot of advertisers too,
Speaker 1: are not fully pulling their money because they don't want
Speaker 1: to do it with the backlash from elon, so they've
Speaker 1: just cut it down to basically the minimum so that
Speaker 1: they can kind of like fade out and not you know,
Speaker 1: be caught in this press cycle. Um. I you know,
Speaker 1: I think that advertisers are just they're you know, Google
Speaker 1: and Facebook are still king for that type of stuff.
Speaker 1: And I think in terms of the influencer marketing world,
Speaker 1: they're still trying to figure out what's the most effective
Speaker 1: way to to market a product and a lot of
Speaker 1: that depends on the specific campaign. Um, but there's more.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's more options at these people's fingertips than
Speaker 1: than ever before. UM, I don't know, we're going into
Speaker 1: kind of like I think a recession or like a
Speaker 1: weird downturn. So I feel like a lot of people
Speaker 1: have pulled back on a lot of experimental type stuff
Speaker 1: they were doing even last year. Let's say I'm on
Speaker 1: TikTok and I have a notable number of followers. Am
Speaker 1: I just going to hear from the brands individually or
Speaker 1: to Most of these people have managers or agents, maybe
Speaker 1: even looking for brand opportunities. What's the landscape? Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: I think once you get a certain follower, a count
Speaker 1: or audience size, or you're getting in a decent amount
Speaker 1: of attention online, you're gonna start getting hit up by
Speaker 1: managers and agents. UM. Now, it's just like the music industry.
Speaker 1: It depends. There's a lot of dubious people out there
Speaker 1: that purport to be managers UM, that will sign you
Speaker 1: into really restrictive contracts and exploit you. And so I
Speaker 1: think that UM talent in any form needs to be
Speaker 1: very careful of that. UM. It's a huge problem on
Speaker 1: TikTok actually, UM. But there's also a lot of traditional
Speaker 1: industry players in the space right like U T A,
Speaker 1: wm ME, all all the big agencies, Brostein, all the
Speaker 1: big talent agencies also have you know, TikTok manage and
Speaker 1: so in those cases, those people will go out and
Speaker 1: solicit deals, and they're gonna solicit the bigger deals, and
Speaker 1: they're going to try and negotiate partnerships, bigger, you know,
Speaker 1: deeper kind of working relationships instead of just like hey,
Speaker 1: I send you product, you post for it, but you
Speaker 1: are I was talking to someone who says, well, you
Speaker 1: know they they heard from one advertiser and she got
Speaker 1: five thousand for this, and you know they talked another one.
Speaker 1: Can you make a living? Or those really few and
Speaker 1: far between where they're you know, brands just reaching out
Speaker 1: to individuals. Yeah, I mean, brands do reach out to
Speaker 1: individuals and exactly like you said, there's no like, there's
Speaker 1: no standard rate for anything. Everything is negotiable. Um. Analytics
Speaker 1: are not great on a lot of stuff like That's
Speaker 1: why people do focus on things like sales and affiliate
Speaker 1: revenue stuff. Um. But you, I mean, you certainly can
Speaker 1: make a living. It just depends on the audience that
Speaker 1: you've cultivated, the vertical that you've cultivated it in and
Speaker 1: you know, are you making family friendly content? Are you
Speaker 1: not making family friendly content that affects the advertisers that
Speaker 1: you can get the deals that you do. How loyal
Speaker 1: is your fan base? You can have millions of followers,
Speaker 1: but they're not that loyal versus having a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: true dedicated fans where they're paying you twenty dollars a
Speaker 1: month in subscription revenue. Right, So it just it really depends,
Speaker 1: and it's there's so many factors that play for each person. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's just go back to Twitter for a second. The
Speaker 1: amazing thing about the Internet, which most people were oldsters
Speaker 1: still don't understand, is it's is not a replica of
Speaker 1: the physical world. Physical world. You know, you might be
Speaker 1: able to drive ten miles and get a cheaper price,
Speaker 1: but your time is worth something, gas, etcetera. So we
Speaker 1: tend to have these behemoths in this world, Amazon, Google,
Speaker 1: So there's always backlash against the Amazon, and there's always
Speaker 1: people saying I'm deleting my account, deleting my account, and
Speaker 1: it makes no difference. Okay, so when we look at Twitter,
Speaker 1: I hear the same people and you hear about mastadon
Speaker 1: whatever blah blah. Is Twitter too big to fail? Let
Speaker 1: me kind of throw some other stuff in here. So
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs dies, Okay, the power of one individual when
Speaker 1: you can look at Trump and give that example how
Speaker 1: they can influence you know so many people. Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: was very much about Houston look ui interface, and since
Speaker 1: his death, we've moved backwards. They're more buttons. It's harder
Speaker 1: to use. That's one person. Okay, So Twitter, yes, if
Speaker 1: you want to be on the up to date news, certainly, uh,
Speaker 1: stuff that the major media reports that's there. Could Twitter
Speaker 1: ever be clips by another site because people leave or
Speaker 1: b but okay, it could be. Theoretically, you think it
Speaker 1: would happen. I think it's already happening with TikTok. I
Speaker 1: think that he huge part of what people would have
Speaker 1: gone to Twitter for. They're going to TikTok for now,
Speaker 1: just just slowly, because certainly there are a lot of politicals,
Speaker 1: a lot of major reporters on Twitter. Would they have
Speaker 1: a home on TikTok. There are a lot of reporters
Speaker 1: on on on TikTok too. It's just that it's it's
Speaker 1: like the shifts to digital. I don't know if you remember,
Speaker 1: but a big, a big controversy early in my career
Speaker 1: when I was a blogger was people saying our bloggers journalists,
Speaker 1: right do you remember that whole discussion so um and
Speaker 1: and people always were saying, oh, you know Taylor the rends,
Speaker 1: she's she's just a blogger. Um. And now I think
Speaker 1: we're seeing that with social platforms right where you see
Speaker 1: these journalists coming up on platforms native right, there's news
Speaker 1: content creators, journalists just working on YouTube or TikTok, and
Speaker 1: people are are sort of like, oh, you know, are
Speaker 1: they doing real journalism? Are they real journalists? Yes, they
Speaker 1: many of them are, and some of them are affiliated
Speaker 1: with mainstream media. Is um, will every quarter that succeeds
Speaker 1: on Twitter transfer over to TikTok or somethink? No, But
Speaker 1: I think a lot of them will move and and
Speaker 1: sort of discipate to other platforms. I don't. I'm not
Speaker 1: convinced that Twitter is going to die, by the way.
Speaker 1: I don't. I wouldn't like make that bet at all,
Speaker 1: But I do think that, like what people used Twitter
Speaker 1: for previously, they're using other platforms for more and more
Speaker 1: just to stay with Twitter for a second. When Twitter
Speaker 1: started you just had your regular flow. Then they have
Speaker 1: their algorithm where you can have your you know what
Speaker 1: they think you want to watch. Then they have their news,
Speaker 1: their trends, their lists. I don't Maybe I'm old school,
Speaker 1: but I don't find that stuff useful. I just find
Speaker 1: a traditional time based flow to be not that I
Speaker 1: don't check the other stuff, but the time based flow
Speaker 1: to be the most rewarding for me. What do you find? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like the time being. I mean I actually prefer
Speaker 1: the algorithmic feed to the to the time based feed
Speaker 1: only because I wollow so many people. I follow eight
Speaker 1: thousand people because I restrict my replies. So I used
Speaker 1: Twitter a little bit in a weird way. But certainly,
Speaker 1: I mean, certainly, the feed is the core experience. Um,
Speaker 1: I love Twitter. Spaces Trending needs to die. I mean,
Speaker 1: I hate that the only time I go on there
Speaker 1: is to make sure that my name isn't trending again. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I think it's a I don't know who clicks on
Speaker 1: those trending things that I think it's sort of a
Speaker 1: bad distraction. Um. They bought Nuzzle, which was an amazing
Speaker 1: app that surfaced most shared links and could really tell
Speaker 1: you what people were saying and sort of collected conversation
Speaker 1: around different stories and then they just shut it down.
Speaker 1: And it's really too bad they didn't incorporate that into
Speaker 1: their product in my opinion, So if you could snap
Speaker 1: your fingers forgetting Elon and his personality, because this has
Speaker 1: been been a debate from long in the Jack Dorsey years,
Speaker 1: and in the investors wanted to change get rid of
Speaker 1: them long before Elon. What would you do to in
Speaker 1: improve the site? Well, Number one something I've advocated as
Speaker 1: somebody that deals with a lot of for assement and
Speaker 1: doxing is um is allowing users to define their experience
Speaker 1: better on Twitter. A lot of things that people don't
Speaker 1: like about Twitter is that it's like this open, broadcast
Speaker 1: based social platform where you're sort of trying to reach everyone,
Speaker 1: and it's hard when you're new. You have to build
Speaker 1: up a following for it, you know, otherwise you're just
Speaker 1: posting to the void. I think discovery I would improve,
Speaker 1: and I would improve UM. I hate to say user safety,
Speaker 1: but more allowing users control. Right, sometimes you want to
Speaker 1: just post to your mutuals. It's crazy that you can't
Speaker 1: do that on Twitter, right, like you have to either
Speaker 1: post to everyone or post on a private account, but
Speaker 1: then you can't post mutuals only like and now they
Speaker 1: have this close friends thing, but it's very limited to
Speaker 1: only a few people. That's just the whole thing is
Speaker 1: a mess. I think that they need ability to segment
Speaker 1: your audience. You need to be able to set expiration
Speaker 1: dates on tweets, like the fact that tweets live forever
Speaker 1: is crazy to me, especially when we're moving more and
Speaker 1: more towards cephemeral media. So um. But yeah, the two
Speaker 1: things that I would really focus on our discovery because
Speaker 1: I think that's key to growing any kind of social platform.
Speaker 1: And um and customization in terms of privacy protections. And
Speaker 1: you know he's bad at about you know, the name
Speaker 1: Twitter blue and your verification charging for verification? Do you
Speaker 1: mean that actual thing right? And you believe it's dumb?
Speaker 1: Why I wrote a lot. I wrote a long piece
Speaker 1: for The Atlantic years ago about the problems with Twitter's
Speaker 1: verification system. So I'm not defending the current system, but
Speaker 1: his allowing anybody taking this thing that has become the
Speaker 1: Twitter check mark has authority and value because it was
Speaker 1: limited to a few amount of people. If you just
Speaker 1: go and then allow anybody to buy it. It immediately
Speaker 1: devalues your work, right, I think of it kind of
Speaker 1: like look at what like Huffington posted right with their
Speaker 1: contributor network or four. You're taking this valuable media brand
Speaker 1: and suddenly you're letting anybody post on it, and that
Speaker 1: ultimately devalues the brand. What he's doing is it sort
Speaker 1: of doing that to the check mark. So it's like
Speaker 1: it's it's also dangerous, as we saw, because people don't
Speaker 1: know who they can trust anymore. Like the average people
Speaker 1: are not super with it. So they see a blue checkmark,
Speaker 1: they still think, oh, that's trustworthy. So I think his
Speaker 1: whole stupid color code of verification thing is dumb. I
Speaker 1: think he just has an ax to grind with journalists.
Speaker 1: That's seriously what his skill is and what he doesn't
Speaker 1: realize because he's so inept at understanding these things. But
Speaker 1: it's like, you verifying a journalist is a service to
Speaker 1: the user. It's not some crown that you're bestowing on
Speaker 1: a journalist. You're letting average users know, wow, this is
Speaker 1: who I who I think it is, and I can
Speaker 1: trust this person that is. That is a valuable service.
Speaker 1: And so to take that away is ultimately degrading. These
Speaker 1: are experience. So pulling back the lens a little bit,
Speaker 1: let's talk about TikTok in China. Okay, most most people
Speaker 1: going on about this or not on TikTok a. To
Speaker 1: what degree do you believe it's a problem and be
Speaker 1: do you think we'll just continue to have a talk
Speaker 1: or there will be a change here? Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'll say that it's in Facebook's interest to just focus
Speaker 1: on TikTok um and I think, I mean, look, China,
Speaker 1: you know there there are there are reasons to be
Speaker 1: concerned about China owning a popular social app. Right, although
Speaker 1: I will say that the data is not kept in China, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: There's no proof that they've you know, violated the stuff
Speaker 1: that they've said. Um, but I my feeling is that
Speaker 1: it's you know, making TikTok a scapegoat is really easy,
Speaker 1: and that is absolutely what Facebook and Google and these
Speaker 1: American tech companies would love. But I think we need
Speaker 1: to take a hard look at user privacy and data
Speaker 1: privacy specifically, because the truth is is that they basically
Speaker 1: have no data privacy. People can buy our information anywhere
Speaker 1: we have no control of our data. We don't have
Speaker 1: anything like GDPR or even so I think the bigger
Speaker 1: and also, there's so much money China, you know, money
Speaker 1: from from China in Silicon Valley. I mean, look at
Speaker 1: the gaming industry. It's just like it's so it's so um,
Speaker 1: it's it's such bs to hear these people like crow
Speaker 1: about China with TikTok and then turn around and you know,
Speaker 1: not have anything to say about the fact that, you know,
Speaker 1: there's tons of Chinese money in Silicon Valley and gaming
Speaker 1: companies and all that. So I think, um, I think
Speaker 1: that we need to kind of look at all of
Speaker 1: those economic relationships and in general just allow for more
Speaker 1: better data privacy protections that people can't just buy our
Speaker 1: data and and you know, do whatever they want. We
Speaker 1: have like no protections in this country. So hopefully we
Speaker 1: have comprehensive reform. Realistically we are ever going to have
Speaker 1: any reasonable privacy protection. I don't know, because you know,
Speaker 1: the lawmakers in this country don't know how to use
Speaker 1: the internet. They don't even understand stuff. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: why amazing. It just blows my mind. They don't understand
Speaker 1: the business. They have hearings too late. They're you know, mesmerize,
Speaker 1: don't understand it. It's just just a waste of time.
Speaker 1: But staying with a similar concept that um oldsters believe
Speaker 1: something is forever. If we talk about social media, we
Speaker 1: saw friends, or we saw my Space, we saw Facebook, Instagram, TikTok.
Speaker 1: In reality, the users have no loyalty to the platform.
Speaker 1: They have a loyalty to their friends and what's new
Speaker 1: and exciting. So what's next? Good question. Um yeah, I
Speaker 1: do think that Facebook and Instagram are in trouble. I
Speaker 1: think TikTok is clearly ascendant. I think also platforms to
Speaker 1: watch or use live streaming platforms like Twitch, which is
Speaker 1: I think under under respected for the role that it
Speaker 1: plays in culture and not just gaming, but the rise
Speaker 1: of just chatting streamers, the way that it's upending media.
Speaker 1: Um I yeah, I just I basically I think Facebook
Speaker 1: is in trouble. That's like the main one that if
Speaker 1: you were to like look around and see like who's
Speaker 1: first to struggle, it's them. Because as you mentioned, Bob,
Speaker 1: like you know, these companies, especially tech companies, they really
Speaker 1: they have somewhat of a shelf shelf life. It's hard
Speaker 1: for a software company like a social platform to stay
Speaker 1: relevant for that long because of the network effects and
Speaker 1: all the other stuff. And I think Facebook is in trouble,
Speaker 1: and TikTok and all of those types of apps are
Speaker 1: more on the come up. Well, I'm more interested in
Speaker 1: the bleeding edge, pushing the envelope in the rear. Look
Speaker 1: at if we look at music okay, and we look
Speaker 1: at Spotify, So what's that next after Spotify? Well, that's
Speaker 1: hard for me to conceive because Spotify is an on
Speaker 1: demand platform, so it's all in the history of music.
Speaker 1: You get it what you want. The interface can look different,
Speaker 1: but that since we've hit the wall, which is different
Speaker 1: because essentially it's a marketplace and statistically for all the
Speaker 1: pipe Bold playlists, they are not what dominates listening. So
Speaker 1: when we look at the landscape, what comes after TikTok? Well? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So one one big conversation that's been happening in the
Speaker 1: creator world especially that just becomes more and more and
Speaker 1: more of a discussion point is this idea of ownership.
Speaker 1: And this goes back to what I was talking about,
Speaker 1: is why I left The New York Times. Um, if
Speaker 1: you are creating content on the Internet and you have
Speaker 1: developed a audience on the Internet. You, Um, it's a
Speaker 1: big point of tension like that that you don't have
Speaker 1: direct access to them or you don't own that audience, right,
Speaker 1: That audience is still mediated through these platforms, and that's
Speaker 1: something that creators are less and less comfortable with and
Speaker 1: okay with, especially as these platforms proved really volatile, right
Speaker 1: their algorithms change, or they launched a new fee sure,
Speaker 1: and suddenly their prioritizing that. So the big thing now,
Speaker 1: I think is direct connection with an audience and ownership.
Speaker 1: So you see people moving towards things like subscription based
Speaker 1: revenue UM and stuff like sub stack, even not to
Speaker 1: say that sub stack is gonna be around forever, but
Speaker 1: something where you actually have a you have the contact
Speaker 1: information for your fans and followers UM, and you can
Speaker 1: reach them directly without an algorithm. That is very appealing
Speaker 1: for creators. And if you look at a lot of
Speaker 1: creators that are successful these days that are coming up,
Speaker 1: there are people that have built that direct relationship with
Speaker 1: their audience and then own a lot of their content
Speaker 1: UM and so I think that's just going to be
Speaker 1: a bigger I think whatever platforms comes next, ownership is
Speaker 1: going to be a big part of that, allowing people
Speaker 1: to own that relationship with their audience control you know,
Speaker 1: who sees their stuff and how they reach people. I
Speaker 1: just think whatever comes next will be more about that. Okay.
Speaker 1: I don't wanna have a discussion about substecs business model.
Speaker 1: That's going in the wrong. But on better it now
Speaker 1: says on your handles, subscribe to my sub stack. Oh
Speaker 1: I can't change. I can't change that because I changed it.
Speaker 1: I made it that for one day and then Ellen
Speaker 1: made that change where you can't change if you're verified,
Speaker 1: you can't change your name anymore. Okay. I was wondering
Speaker 1: because you don't post that off and on something. But
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get everyone's emails. So subscribe to myself
Speaker 1: stack and give me your email address. I do send
Speaker 1: it sometimes I send it to promote articles usually, Okay,
Speaker 1: Just so I understand In terms of substack, do you
Speaker 1: own your data a hundred percent or do they have
Speaker 1: any access to your the emails, you collect, etcetera. You
Speaker 1: own your you own your email list, and you can
Speaker 1: take it wherever you want. You could leave stuff back
Speaker 1: to but they don't get it. Hm. Okay, Okay, So
Speaker 1: just for the naysayers, and this tends to be the
Speaker 1: older audience, people over the age of thirty five, who
Speaker 1: poo poo TikTok, etcetera. Explain, tell them what is good
Speaker 1: about TikTok, why they should be on the platform, and
Speaker 1: how to use the platform to their advantage. And definitely, uh, well,
Speaker 1: I'll never say someone has to be on social media.
Speaker 1: I'm very jealous of people that can live their life
Speaker 1: and never set foot on on these apps. So you know,
Speaker 1: it's if you don't want to do it, you don't
Speaker 1: have to. But I will say that if you want
Speaker 1: to reach people at scales, TikTok is the place to go. Um.
Speaker 1: It can seem a little bit overwhelming because it's a
Speaker 1: it's a creative tool. You know, they have a lot
Speaker 1: of creative tools. I should say, uh, but it's pretty
Speaker 1: simple to post. I mean it's you hold down the
Speaker 1: middle button and record a video, just the way that
Speaker 1: you went on Instagram stories. Um. I think it's valuable
Speaker 1: because that's just where a lot of the cultural conversation
Speaker 1: is happening. As you mentioned earlier, that's where people are
Speaker 1: going to search for content and to shop. So if
Speaker 1: you are promoting anything, or you want to be in
Speaker 1: the cultural discussion, and that is where people are going. Okay, wait,
Speaker 1: let's start one on one because most people, especially as
Speaker 1: you get older, lurkers, So forget about creating content. Start
Speaker 1: from downloading the app. Well, if you download the app,
Speaker 1: I mean, the good thing about TikTok, I'll say, is
Speaker 1: that you don't have to follow anyone. You can just
Speaker 1: download the app and watch a bunch of videos and
Speaker 1: the algorithm will learn what you like and it will
Speaker 1: start to deliver you a very engaging feed. I mean,
Speaker 1: one of my friends, she was extremely into cooking and
Speaker 1: she just downloaded too. She still I don't think she
Speaker 1: still has an account even but she you know, she'll
Speaker 1: just you can just swipe through and watch a lot
Speaker 1: of engage videos. It's like going on YouTube, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: we all go on YouTube to watch and cooking videos.
Speaker 1: I would say TikTok is great for learning, you know,
Speaker 1: for skills. I tried to pay a little bit slower
Speaker 1: because a little bit slower because for most people, the
Speaker 1: initial hurdle is difficult. Download the app and then you say, oh,
Speaker 1: just watch videos. You download the app and tell them
Speaker 1: what happens to get them through their anxiety. Okay, oh god,
Speaker 1: I have to. It's been a while. I don't know
Speaker 1: the exact user flow in terms of UM, in terms
Speaker 1: of what like what that pathway is when you download,
Speaker 1: I don't know the screens UM. Basically, you download the app.
Speaker 1: I will say, you download the app, and you are
Speaker 1: very quickly funneled into the fore you page. That is
Speaker 1: what they want you too. So you might have to
Speaker 1: set up an account. You might not UM. I think
Speaker 1: you might. You know, you might have to register for
Speaker 1: some that will give you an automatic user name or whatever.
Speaker 1: But then it will just feed you. It will see
Speaker 1: you will be on a full screen video and it
Speaker 1: will be up to you to watch that video or
Speaker 1: swipe up and see the next video. And with every
Speaker 1: swipe and every like, the algorithm will learn more about
Speaker 1: you and it will deliver you, you know, the content
Speaker 1: that you want to see. So it's it's really not
Speaker 1: hard to download TikTok like it's it's a that's the
Speaker 1: reason that they've scaled so much, right Like parents, I
Speaker 1: mean there's so many there's more parents on TikTok and Facebook.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I feel like I know that's not true, but
Speaker 1: it feels like that sometimes, Okay, and pulling back the
Speaker 1: lens all the way we're social media in the landscape,
Speaker 1: as you say, the government, certainly in America you use
Speaker 1: a little bit better or at least is bringing up
Speaker 1: the issues in terms of what is the effect of
Speaker 1: social media on the world at large, terms of everything
Speaker 1: from consumerisism, politics to uh, how it affects buying influences.
Speaker 1: Because many people have social media in a bubble as
Speaker 1: large as it is, they see, well, it doesn't impact
Speaker 1: the rest of the world. To what degree does it?
Speaker 1: And to what degree is it shaping our culture? I
Speaker 1: mean it's completely shaping our culture. I think our pop
Speaker 1: culture is Internet culture at this point. There is no distinction.
Speaker 1: If you think about like the music, the entertainment we consume,
Speaker 1: our political ecosystem is completely worked by the attention economy. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean I think we were seeing that even preach Trump. Um.
Speaker 1: It's affecting everything. I think connecting people at scale has
Speaker 1: massive implications, um and literally everything. That's the core of
Speaker 1: my beat. That's what I got into covering this whole
Speaker 1: world for is that it's not just a bunch of
Speaker 1: teenagers making videos on the internet. This these types of
Speaker 1: technologies and communication technology in general. UM is it can
Speaker 1: affect everything, business life, you know, literally anything you can
Speaker 1: you can think of. Um, there's a great talk from
Speaker 1: this UM. I can't remember who it was who gave it,
Speaker 1: but it was. It was at XO x O and
Speaker 1: he was talking which is a tech festival that doesn't
Speaker 1: happen anymore. But UM, this guy was talking about the
Speaker 1: Internet as a people connector and how the goal of
Speaker 1: Internet has always been to sort of connected people. And
Speaker 1: I think social media is the first time we're seeing
Speaker 1: stuff happen at scale and seeing those connections happen at scale.
Speaker 1: Obviously there's been a lot of downsize, but there's so
Speaker 1: many upsides too, and it's not going anywhere. I think
Speaker 1: things are changing in the social landscape. Not everyone wants
Speaker 1: to reach every person on earth at scale at at
Speaker 1: all times. I think we're realizing that that's generally not
Speaker 1: always a good idea. But but it's you know, the
Speaker 1: core of the Internet is still as a people connector
Speaker 1: and what's your personal dream? And I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: as you go down the pike, you're in your thirties
Speaker 1: now one can easily do the math when you graduated
Speaker 1: from college and you just want to do this to
Speaker 1: the end of time or is there some you know,
Speaker 1: something on the horizon that you right now say well
Speaker 1: I'd love to be or do that. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: I my whole goal with my career, and I've had
Speaker 1: a million different jobs and stuff, is just to help
Speaker 1: people understand and the Internet and to take creative work
Speaker 1: on the Internet seriously, Like I really really really want
Speaker 1: that as somebody that does creative work on the Internet,
Speaker 1: I just want people to understand that that that online
Speaker 1: life is kind of our default reality now and people
Speaker 1: shouldn't dismiss that. So I guess my my dream is
Speaker 1: to impact the media and to build a better media
Speaker 1: ecosystem and do whatever I have to do to get there.
Speaker 1: I mean, I want in ten years there to be
Speaker 1: a mediate ecosystem where one we're not condescending, you know,
Speaker 1: to reporters, not saying that you're doing this, but it
Speaker 1: happens a lot on time, like where it's not where
Speaker 1: it's laughable to suggest that, oh, because a reporter uses
Speaker 1: Twitter a lot, that they're you know, self promotional or whatever.
Speaker 1: I think that we should just take all of that
Speaker 1: stuff as a given and think, well, what does that
Speaker 1: mean for media? I want a media landscape that's more
Speaker 1: diverse that Pete, that that journalists are more secure in
Speaker 1: their jobs, and that they have ownership over their work
Speaker 1: and can see the upsides of their success, you know,
Speaker 1: as much as these media companies have seen. So um yeah,
Speaker 1: those are all the things. And I don't know that
Speaker 1: I'll always be a writer. I've definitely not always been
Speaker 1: a writer. At My background is in strategy, um and
Speaker 1: and theis dev and audience development. So maybe I'll go
Speaker 1: back to doing that or something, but just something to
Speaker 1: make the media, you know, you know, build a version
Speaker 1: of media that that I want to see. Okay, Taylor,
Speaker 1: this has been great. You know. The problem is is
Speaker 1: there's well to your advantage. On one level, there's only
Speaker 1: one of you. I can't say, well, follow and pay
Speaker 1: attention to the articles of Taylor the Rands and then
Speaker 1: this person in that person, I don't know who those
Speaker 1: other people were were. And for those who don't realize
Speaker 1: you were history or your CV, you're really the authority.
Speaker 1: So I want to thank you so much for taking
Speaker 1: the time talk to my audience. Well, this is so
Speaker 1: fun because you're such an icon and I'm very honored
Speaker 1: to be included, and to be on this podcast is
Speaker 1: so fun to chat. Wow. And I'll leave it at
Speaker 1: that till next time. This is Bob Leftson,