Snapchat's Business Trouble, Adobe's AI Worries, Are Aliens Real?

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back in New York for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) Snapchat's disappointing earnings 2) The Advertising market's rebound 3) Threads' declining user count 5) Twitter's wonky rebrand to "X" 6) TikTok selling Made in China goods to U. S. users 7) Adobe's AI strategy threatening their core business model 8) The room temperature superconductor 9) Aliens walking among us. --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Questions? Feedback? Write to: [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Snapchat is struggling, but the ad market is rebounding. Blue skies ahead for the economy. Adobe employees are worried they're putting designers out of work and a room temperature semiconductor might be on the horizon. Or maybe it's just another academic fraud. All that and more as we break down the headlines this Friday, coming up right after this. This episode is brought to you by Genesis. What does it actually take to put a Gentic AI to work across an entire enterprise? I recently spoke with Genesis chairman and CEO Tony Bates about why orchestration is emerging as a competitive advantage in customer experience and what companies need to get right in the AI era. Then I sat down with Adam Mitchell, head of enterprise business solutions at Voya

• 0:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Financial to go inside a large scale agentic CX transformation, including the business decisions, trade offs and lessons along the way. You can watch both conversations now on my YouTube channel today. It's never been more challenging to get frontier compute. How do you know where to look, who to trust, or how much to pay? Akash is an open cloud that provides easy access, flexibility and peace of mind. That's how companies like Razor were able to cut their inference cost by 15 times. Visit akash.network slash Alex for a free consultation. That's akash.network slash Alex for a free consultation. Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday edition, where we break down the news in our

• 1:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  traditional cool headed and nuanced format. I'm here with Ron John Roy, as always, joining us to break down the week's news. Ron John, welcome back.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  I'm back in New York, excited to be back on the podcast as well.

• 1:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Great, well, I think it's time for us to fight about Snapchat because this week, I, following Snapchat's dismal earnings, I went on CNBC and said that the company's ad tech just isn't there compared to its competitors and company leadership has wrongfully ignored it. And just as I walked out of studio, I got a text message from you that said, I'm gonna fight you on this one.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  Where am I wrong? Let's fight about this. For me, I, okay, I will agree with you first. Snapchat certainly has not built a monetization machine on par with Facebook slash Meta. But I do think it's very important to think about where is Snapchat in the long run? Again, from a user engagement perspective, and I see this both in their numbers and I see this both anecdotally around me. Everyone still in their early twenties, I know, uses Snap to communicate with their friends. It's the actual place you go to to communicate. Then from an actual user number, growth is flat, but it's not slowing, unlike threads,

• 2:46Speaker 01

  which we'll get to, I'm sure. But then it's also, people use Snap. Snapchat Plus has four million subscribers. So when we talk about subscription business, all the hype is around Twitter Blue and who's subscribing, who isn't. The only social media platform that has actually built a user-based subscription model. LinkedIn's subscription model, remember, is geared up more towards the advertisers or the recruiters. The only social platform who successfully built a subscription, paid subscription model, is Snap. So I still think the ad tech side, they have a lot of work to do. But overall, I still think the company is well positioned for the future.

• 3:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Now, so first of all, I think you're wrong on the user numbers, right? They have 397 million daily active users. They've grown, I think, 50 million by 50 million users year over year. So that is simply like, they are getting the scale part of this right. The thing they're getting wrong, of course, is the monetization side. And that's sort of where I started to pick the bone. Now, I think they do have potential, right? This is one thing that I said on air. If you have 397 million users, you get as many cracks as you want to get it right. And I do know that they're in the middle of really trying to make this work. However, you know, the thing is that it's an ad tech issue. Meta's ad tech, if you speak to advertisers, I'm curious what you think about this, but if you speak to advertisers,

• 4:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  they say, I'm going to spend money with Meta, I'm going to spend money with Alphabet. And that's why we're just at the end of a week of earnings. Meta and Alphabet beat expectations, Snapchat missed. And it's because of their, their far superior advertising technology that's basically gotten advertisers to gravitate their way. Now, there's a caveat here, or an interesting point that is worth making, worth bringing up. Which is that it's the thing that has surprised me most here was that Apple's anti-tracking moves were supposed to hamper Facebook and Google the most. If you can't track, you can't optimize, your ad system breaks and then you end up going to effectively scale advertising based off of how many eyeballs you can reach versus how well you can target.

• 4:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  The weird thing is that Facebook in particular and Alphabet in some ways have both figured out how to get around Apple's ad blocking and/or ad tracking blocking, not necessarily breaking the rules, but certainly using the technology that's made it less of an impact for them, while smaller companies like Snapchat have struggled. And I think that's the underappreciated issue here, which is like, yes, it's an ad tech advantage, but it's also Apple, you know, by trying to regulate the ad industry, actually empowered the incumbents and nobody talks about that. And I think that's a huge issue, but I'll give you an opportunity to.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no, I think that's, I actually think that's a fair point that Snap, or so, Facebook is back, Meta is back. That was the kind of narrative of the last two earnings releases and it's been correct. And they have shown that advertisers will come back, that they've built using AI and machine learning, not the generative kind, but the traditional deep learning are able to actually target ads again and be able to predict, predict exactly what ad to show what person without needing their activity outside on the web, where, what other websites are going to. So I do think it gets interesting because Snap always has been known as the more privacy-focused

• 6:12Speaker 01

  social platform. That's why it still gets 400 million users. That's why younger people trust it more than they ever will on any meta product. So in terms of, again, keeping users engaged, in terms of being the place where people actually communicate with people they care about, remember that used to be Facebook's mission statement. I think Snap still owns it, but you're right, that actually can hamper your ability to target ads. Because if, even within the walled gardens of Facebook and Blue and Instagram and now Threads and WhatsApp or whatever else, Facebook, even if they can't track you outside what you're doing on the web, in their own ecosystem, they still have a good amount of data to be

• 6:55Speaker 01

  able to show you an ad that will show you something semi-relevant. So I think that's a fair point.

• 7:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  So you think Snapchat's gonna... Okay, so all this being said, I think Snapchat does have a chance to turn it around. Like, I do think people want to advertise there, and its scale is starting to help.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, to me, there's a few things. Snap has shown more product innovation than Facebook has over the last 12 years. I still believe with 400 million engaged users who are younger, who are kind of defining where technology moves and goes, that they have the ability to keep innovating and keep actually building things that people want to use and will be able to figure out the monetization side of it, especially if traditional direct-response advertising is not the future. And again, Meta has shown, they've gotten back to where they were and grown a bit, but I don't think, I think there's going to be more creative

• 7:53Speaker 01

  forms of advertising, and I think Snap is better figured out how to do that than Facebook. Of course, Facebook can copy them afterwards, and we'll see where that goes. But at least up till then, whoever introduces it, I'd bet on Snap.

• 8:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  We're here live on Friday. We're on LinkedIn, we're on YouTube. We're also on your podcast feed. If you choose to listen to us that way, we'd love to have you on our podcast feed. Thank you. Ranjan and I were just on This Week in Tech. It was a great, long podcast, two hours on Sunday. And we know we have some listeners that have come over here after hearing us there. And I just wanted to say hello and welcome. We appreciate you, and we're glad that you're here. Ranjan, you had a good time on that show?

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Oh, I had a great time. I never, I think it was almost, it ended up being two hours and 20 minutes, which was definitely a marathon on the side of podcasts, but I, yeah, and we'll definitely be getting into, while we were speaking on Sunday, Twitter had not yet become X. They'd said they would become X, but we kept refreshing the website and it was still the Twitter bird, which I learned was named Larry Bird. But yeah, I'm sure we'll get to that today.

• 9:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and I definitely want to, let's get to that right after this. The other thing I wanted to say is, you're going to head out on vacation for the next couple of weeks. So I just wanted to let listeners know that we have two excellent folks that are stepping in on the next two weeks on our Friday show. Next week, we'll have Sarah Kuntz. She is a venture capitalist, very knowledgeable in the world of artificial intelligence. So I'm sure we're going to cover that and the week's news. And then following that, Julia Borstein, the correspondent from CNBC is going to come in and we'll definitely be breaking down the week's news. So there's going to be a lot of good stuff on the show and then Ron Chen will be back here later in August. Very excited for your return. We're going to have a lot to talk about, but in the meantime, let's talk about what's happened at Twitter with X.

• 9:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  So first of all, the logged out homepage of Twitter is, is just hilarious. Like you go to twitter.com and it starts with an X and it says, X happening now. Join Twitter today. It seems to be the most confused rebranding where you can't even on its homepage, get the fact right that it's X and not Twitter. What do you make of this rebrand now that it's been out for a week? And, and where do you, do you think we're going to call it Twitter? Do you think we're going to call it X?

• 10:15Speaker 01

  Have you called it X in casual conversation yet?

• 10:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Definitely not.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  Exactly. I don't think anyone has. I think.

• 10:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  But look, Meta seems so stupid the same way in the beginning and now I do call it Meta.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  You will, listeners will notice, I still have a hard time saying Meta. I think I end up saying Facebook slash Meta almost. That's my, that's my style guide. No, I, I mean, X is even beyond. To me, this is a sign where more and more people have seen the way Elon Musk operates. I think, and I was arguing with, about this with some friends over the week, that, you know, still to the default, electric cars and rockets. Like, you know, send people to the moon, or, I mean, into outer space, electrified the entire auto industry.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  But if you've watched how even Tesla's operated with that, like, guy dancing in a robot suit last year, the Cybertruck demo. There's just been a lot, there's a lot of off the cuff type of behavior, and this is such an extreme version of it, but it's not out of the ordinary. So I think he has talked about this. He has owned the domain X.com since whatever, 1999. He tried to rename PayPal.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  That was Siri talking to me, apologies for that. But, but to me, the more interesting thing is, Linda Iaccarino. What is going through her head right now? Because she sent the most, the most amazing series of tweets about how X is going to be the future of everything, and this vision of a super app and all these kinds of things. While someone like her, who I'm sure at NBC, anything related to branding, was the most perfectly orchestrated, tightly knit and run operation that you, we could ever imagine.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  And then to come to this, where half the Twitter, actual Twitter, Twitter accounts, the corporate accounts, are still Twitter. I think only a couple of them are X. They actually stole the handle X on Twitter from the original owner. When we're speaking of advertisers, if Snap is having trouble bringing them over, Twitter is so far gone from being able to, already from an actual ad tech standpoint, attract advertisers. But now this kind of, you know, completely unpredictable behavior, I cannot imagine any major brand advertiser looking at their 2024 budgets and thinking, oh yeah, I'm gonna, what percentage is going to Twitter right now?

• 12:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm not ready to, I mean, look, you're not going to get a lot of dispute from me on this one, but I wouldn't throw the towel in on the Yakarino area yet. So I think there's, there's plenty of room to go and she's just figuring it out. Hold on, but let's not, we could spend like the whole time debating this. I think we should really talk about the one thing that I think will be a point of contention between the two of us, which is that the question of which rebrand was worse, Twitter to X or Facebook to Meta? And my perspective is the Facebook rebrand to Meta was worse than Twitter to X. I think it would, you know, it tied Facebook

• 13:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  to an experimental product that's, you know, long in the future, may never materialized, and it's always hung over its head. And frankly, has longer, I mean, whereas Twitter is always kind of chaotic, and I think Twitter has a much better chance of surviving this, this rebrand. Are you with me on that one?

• 13:54Speaker 01

  I'm with you on that one. I'm not going to disagree. I'm in complete agreement because Facebook switching to Meta, I agree, that tied them to Reality Labs in the metaverse and whatever it was. And, and to their credit, to Mark Zuckerberg and everyone else's credit, they have very strategically pivoted away. And I've been saying this since last September, I was on CNBC saying the metaverse is over. And though still they're upping their spending on Reality Labs, but remember, part of that includes AI research into that budget. So they have been very smart about getting away from this. But in terms of a rebrand, like we both joked about it, are they going to just call themselves AI at some point? Because,

• 14:36Speaker 01

  I mean, the word Meta, they're gonna have to move away from at some point. And I know they still say things like, well, generative AI will also have huge implications in the metaverse and creating worlds instantly, et cetera, et cetera. But I think it's time. Actually, would you go with the new name or would you go back to Facebook?

• 14:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Honestly, I would just stick with Meta. I think at this point is kind of like a sunk cost and they can, they've, they can just roll with it.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  That's fair, I guess.

• 15:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's what I would do.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  Alphabet.

• 15:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  But by the way, yeah, Alphabet's stuck, right? It's not a great name.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  But no one cares about it.

• 15:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  But I still think it's, it's worse than X. Um, the one, and I got so much, uh, hate on Twitter for suggesting that because no one actually cares about the story or the, the, you know, the user anymore. It's all about tribalism. And if you say that, like, you know, now you say, it used to be, you say anything about Facebook, anything bad about Facebook, you got cheered. Now, if you say anything puts Twitter above Facebook in any way, you get piled on, on Twitter, which is interesting. It's just like very clear that people don't look at this stuff objectively anymore. Uh, but, but like one thing I did apologize on air for this, this week was that I thought, um, that it was going to be metaverse or bust for Facebook last year. And actually the opposite has happened.

• 15:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  They've revitalized their core, uh, business in a way that's been surprising to me. They, last year around this time, they actually had their first, uh, quarter of, uh, shrinking revenue. And that has, uh, you know, bounced back and they're now growing revenue. They also had shrinking users and that has bounced back and they're growing users. So once the, once revenue starts to shrink and once, uh, and once, uh, uh, users start to shrink, it's usually the end of, of the, of the line for a social network, but it hasn't been for Meta. So I would say, you know, tremendous amount of, of props for that company and the way that they've turned things around. Totally been unexpected. The stock is now up 149% on the year.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I think that's a good point, but also I wonder, I'm, I'm, as you're talking, I'm trying to think of what other examples of kind of major strategic disasters where companies were able to pull themselves back from it. Google Plus, I would definitely put in there because that was definitely an effort where, and for the listeners unfamiliar, this was like early 2010s. Google across the entire organization was going all in on building its own social network, trying to tie it to every product. And they, it was a complete abject failure and they managed to kind of move on and continue, you know, continue growing their entire business and get back to the core. So, but yeah, I mean, it is too, as well, props to Mark on that one for, uh, getting

• 17:23Speaker 01

  the company back to its core.

• 17:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Absolutely. Another thing that's been interesting, one of the things that Meta has benefited from is there's been an advertising rebound. So Brian Weiser from, he writes this, he's a great ad analyst and writes this newsletter called Madison and Wall, wrote that about that this week we've seen during earnings, we've seen many of the world's largest marketers, including LVMH and Unilever, posting significant increases in advertising spending. And it really is interesting that the ad market has just completely come back and it's bolstering companies like Facebook and Google. And, you know, maybe it's a sign of just an improving economy, but it wasn't expected so soon. I'm curious what you think, what you think has brought advertisers back to, because they're a huge part of all these social media businesses.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, in terms of the mythical soft landing where the economy is now growing and beating expectations, GDP was at 2.4%, which is above expectations. Inflation, I believe it was this morning, came out, you know, softer than expected. So overall, it actually looks like we might be in a good place. And, you know, it's something that I think very few people were expecting as of a year ago. So I think overall advertisers forecasting for the next year, 12 to 18 to 24 months, things feel like things are okay and like the economy should be

• 18:54Speaker 01

  growing and it's time to invest where you actually want your business to grow. And I've thought about it a lot in terms of, you know, is the AI bubble, which certainly feels bubbly since its own ways, kind of generating an overall positive vibe in the business climate? Is it just the, you know, economy as a whole? But I, but I, part of me does feel like there has, there's something concrete with AI right now as a topic that brings energy to the business world, which makes, actually makes people feel like there's hope, that there's something that's going to drive growth across the economy.

• 19:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, it's pretty unbelievable. The S and P 500 is up 20% this year. That is not something anybody expected. We were talking recession in January, S and P 500 up by a fifth. I mean, that's, it's massive. And, you know, it is, it's kind of interesting to think about the role that the Fed plays in the US economy. I mean, this is something that you've talked about in the past, but it's not Congress or the executive branch. It's just this central bank is effectively steering the economy. And, you know, at one point I thought, well, you know, and this is something, the same thing that happened in COVID, like, well, they're not going to let stocks fall that much. Like, they have that control. And I'm curious what you think about that, about, you know, basically, was this inevitable?

• 20:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Was this bounce back inevitable? I mean, they did seem interested, willing to plunge the country into a recession, but they, they have, it seems like they've almost assured us that, like, okay, no matter what happens, the asset prices will, will stay high.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  All right. So I, this is where we can nicely disagree. I think the Fed is prior to the last few years, I mean, prior to probably last year, yeah, I agree, basically, we're the only players with any ability to kind of make change or really impact the economy. This was the book Lords of Easy Money, which was an incredible, kind of like, long, you know, history of the Fed over the last 15 years, and specifically to low interest rates and ZERP, really got into how the Fed, it was because, you know, stalemate in Congress and inability for any kind of action, that they were the ones who had to keep stepping

• 21:12Speaker 01

  in to kind of help the economy. But remember, in the last year, and current economic, like, positivity, the Inflation Reduction Act, all the legislation passed by the Biden administration, like, I mean, and I'm sure we're going to hear a lot more about that going into next year, assuming things stay stable and positive, there's been a lot of investment in money that's been constructively pumped into the economy as well, not just ZERP-y, whatever, in, you know, COVID ZERP injections of funds. So, so I think it's not, right now, the Fed is not as singular in terms of being able to affect the economy as they were, let's say, seven or eight years ago.

• 21:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, that's interesting. Really good point. We're here on Big Technology Podcast Friday Edition with Ron John Roy. We're going through the week's news and we have a lot more to cover. We put this together and then as we were looking through our list of stories, we're like, wow, we have a ton. Let's go quickly. We'll do rapid fire. So when we come back, we'll talk about Meta Threads' stalling growth. We'll talk about how TikTok wants to sell made in China goods and we'll talk about Adobe employees wondering and worrying about whether their technology will actually cost the jobs of their customers. And then finally, room temperature, superconductors, and aliens. Can we do it all when we get back? We're going to give it our best shot. I promise you that. Back right after this.

• 22:40Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 23:22Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 24:06Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 24:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with Ranjan Roy. Breaking down the week's news. Rajan, the lightning round, I think we'll give it a shot. So first of all, this is one of your favorite stories to talk about about the overhyping of threads in the ugly aftermath. Well, threads hit 100 million people.

• 25:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  And Mark Zuckerberg said ideally, it would be awesome if all of them or even half of them stuck around. We're not here, we're not there yet. So 50 million people have already left threads and that sort of sort of tracks with the experience I'm having there. This is from Reuters, Meta is looking to add some quote unquote retention driving hooks, which is like a very scary phrase. To entice users to return to the app like making sure people who are on the Instagram app can see important threads. How do you read this?

• 25:27Speaker 01

  So I definitely have been saying for a long time, and I think this will go down as a strategic blunder. Not quite on par with naming themselves Meta, but Facebook pushing threads so aggressively. And even though they said that there was no marketing or promotion involved clearly, and we know and anyone who went through the signup flow. Saw very well how if you're an Instagram user, how frictionless, let's say, getting set up on there was. I think getting to 100 million users was a mistake because they hyped it up so much and they had this moment and everyone was interested in it. And then when it wasn't interesting, no one's going to go back.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  I've not been on it in days or I I'll almost more from a research perspective, check it like once every other day. And and I even started following everyone I follow on Instagram, which is friends, family, you know, interesting accounts. It is a cesspool of like, it's kind of, if if listeners are familiar, there's a Kevin Roose was famous for a while for starting this Twitter account that would post the top 10 trending stories on Facebook or what are the most traffic paid the stories. And it was always either right wing type stuff or just kind of the most weird memes, like things that didn't make any sense, that aren't funny. And that's kind of what my threads is turning into already.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  It's just, it's these awkward, odd memes that feel like the Instagram algorithm come to life and trying to inject something with you, but not for, I think no one I know is actually posting on there, so there's nothing to show me.

• 27:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, it's time for you, for us to correct the record because I'm posting on there. My audience is actually quite engaged on threads.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Really?

• 27:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Despite small size, I'm always getting some feedback and responses and some really good stuff there. I've definitely started posting there. Again, I understand that it's smaller than than Twitter and my Twitter audience definitely exceeds it, but I've been like pleasantly surprised with the quality of engagement on the app, but I also think that like, yeah, it's it's sort of, it has suffered from that quick start and that now now it feels empty, even though it's not.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Well, this it's very clear that the Facebook's algorithms are not picking up that we are speaking on this podcast together every Friday because I'm following you on Instagram and I'm not getting any of your threads, so.

• 27:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  You gotta unmute me, Ron John, I think that's the first step.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  Ah, that's what it was, that's what it was.

• 28:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  So TikTok wants to sell made in China goods to Americans. I picked this story up because I like saw and I was like, this is red meat for Ron John Roy. Here it is from the Wall Street Journal. TikTok is launching an e-commerce business in the US to sell made in China goods to consumers, stepping up its rivalry with popular shopping platforms, Shein and Timu. To me, what's so interesting about this is like. The social platforms see how the ads that they have convert. And they've always had this ability to basically go ahead and Bigfoot some of the, you know, made for TikTok or made for Facebook industries and they don't because that's scary to their advertisers. But here's TikTok going ahead and doing it. What do you make of what's happening?

• 28:46Speaker 01

  Well, I think this is the continuation of one of the most interesting trends in commerce. As you said, red meat for me, one of my favorite ongoing stories. And I always think in these situations, Amazon is the most under threat. It's because all through the 2010s, Amazon started really bringing in, you know, kind of like small to midsize Chinese manufacturers onto the platform. And for anyone who's shopped on Amazon, they know that, you know, so much of the platform, it changed from either brands you knew to kind of what is the, you know, the race to the bottom. Just try to find the cheapest thing you can, can't trust the reviews exactly. But what's been so fascinating is now Shein and Timu come in and disrupt that process.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  They go directly and they start building networks in this marketplace, either networks and marketplaces for these same manufacturers. And I think TikTok sees, so building that kind of network of manufacturers, being able to really, you know, deliver commerce in that fast, almost real time way that Shein and Timu have developed. They can take feedback, like Shein's famous right now that they'll put an item on the website, have like small amounts actually manufactured. If it starts getting clicks, they can call up the man, or not even call up, have a signal sent to the manufacturer right away, start producing more, get more onto their website. So that whole, the flywheel works so well.

• 30:12Speaker 01

  Obviously TikTok's going to see that and they say, we own the entire end part of that transaction with the consumer. So why not start actually getting into the manufacturing side of it and the selling side of it?

• 30:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  The fascinating part of this is that you have like the basically you have media, social media and commerce starting to blend in ways that are quite remarkable. So you have now Amazon is one of the biggest sellers of advertising in the US. Walmart has a pretty significant ad business. And now you have the actual media companies like a ticket or social media companies like a Tik Tok going the other direction and starting to manufacture.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, but but Amazon and Walmart's business, ad business, even though it gets kind of grouped in to other media advertising, you know, businesses, it's still a bit different because it's more within an existing shop. It's kind of that's again more akin to in a supermarket paying to be at the front of the front of the aisle. Like that's within the context of a shop. We are paying to put our position or product in a different position versus a Tik Tok getting into this or even a Facebook. It's a much harder problem to get into commerce because you're a lot further distant from that actual transaction. And that's why I think Facebook and even Google in ways like with YouTube have not

• 31:38Speaker 01

  really nailed commerce because it is harder the further away you are from the transaction to really blend it. I mean, both of us coming from media, the in the early 2010s, like content and commerce blending together were going to save media. That was even at BuzzFeed, that was a big thing for a while.

• 31:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  The only part of BuzzFeed's business that worked.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true. So, okay, maybe content meets commerce will rise again and save or actually not save. It'll bring the rise of Tik Tok and the death of Amazon, maybe.

• 32:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I guess it's a good time for me to introduce the big technology store. No, I'm kidding. We had to do it. But it's a huge lift to actually build commerce. So maybe, maybe one day, maybe our, our chief revenge officer Doug can pick this up and.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  Here, here are my 10 favorite products on Amazon listed out one by one affiliate links.

• 32:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, I was gonna say, we want to manufacture our own stuff like T shirts that like sort of, you know, play off of the news and different memes and stuff like that. I think it could be fun, but it just takes a lot of effort.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  Three years ago, we would have just been a unicorn already, but

• 32:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  I know.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  Rates are at five and a half percent right now, so.

• 32:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think you could.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  A little tougher.

• 32:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think we could raise, you know, a solid 500 mil on that and even in today's climate.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  Generative AI.

• 32:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Generative AI, uh, content and commerce, and our CEO is Adam Newman.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Inside Adobe, this is our next story. Some staff worry that AI tech will kill graphic designer jobs and undermine the company's business model. So there's, this is from Insider. It's a great story. There's a debate raging over how new AI technology that threatens to kill jobs among a key group of customers, uh, and potentially undermine the company's business model might play out. Um, it, so the software giant this year unveiled Firefly, a suite of generative AI tools that's rolling out across its products. Uh, Photoshop, for instance, got an AI tool that lets users add or remove graphic elements or extend a picture with simple text prompts. The response from some Adobe employees has been less than enthusiastic.

• 33:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  You know, including one of the employees just saying, is this what we want? Basically, like, why are we enabling? Uh, you know, folks to displace the power users of our products. It's so interesting because Adobe needed to have, you know, they needed to have a, a Gen AI product. But of course it comes up against the people that are using, using the software. What do you think is gonna happen?

• 34:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I, I thought that was the most interesting part of this story because in most of the other cases where big, especially big technology companies are launching generative AI products, it's almost perfectly in line with their customer base. The better their products are, the better and more productive their customers will be. And the more money they'll make and the more money they'll pay Google, Amazon, whoever else. Adobe, it is an interesting situation where they could shrink their customer base based on how good their tools are. And I have used Adobe Firefly. They have really interesting user-friendly, unlike a mid-journey or something where it's still very fantastical and more kind of like fun.

• 34:55Speaker 01

  Adobe Generative Fill with Adobe Firefly, you can see very quickly, you can like select little parts of an image and change it via text prompt to whatever you want. If you can see how that's going to be much more. You know, an actual graphic design tool very soon. But I, I think there are two main things on it. One, it is inevitable. So to not do it would actually be putting Adobe at more of a competitive disadvantage other than if they didn't. It's just the standard innovator's dilemma. And I think like this is, they have to do it. I also found it kind of a bit rich that like, you know, is this what we want written in the internal AI ethics Slack channel when Adobe,

• 35:37Speaker 01

  in terms of market power and their deal with Figma currently is under review by EU antitrust authorities. I mean, they have destroyed so many actual like up and coming graphics tools and SaaS products. And the way, and again, to their credit, the way they built their subscription business and pivoted from traditional software to subscription and SaaS has been, it's like a brilliant case study, but the idea that, you know, like they're helping small, like, you know, that they're, someone working there is worried about small business and graphic designers and stuff like that, I think is a bit rich.

• 36:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  But those are their, their customers, but.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, but there, there's, it's not like, maybe then have the businesses charge more, uh, pay them more.

• 36:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  If they're as productive.

• 36:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. So, um, I don't want to get too deep into this because I still want Adobe executives to come on to the show. But Adobe, because I had teased it. I feel like I owe listeners an explanation here. Adobe's general counsel, Dana Rao, was supposed to come on the show and rescheduled a bunch of times, like 40 different emails back and forth between me and this person's representative. And then this week just canceled the interview outright, no explanation. And I asked Adobe PR if this was, you know, the reason and no, no email back. So.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  All right. Well, I might have put the nail in that coffin.

• 37:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, like, I don't know, I still think even even if we're critical of companies like, you know, I'm definitely willing to hear them out. I feel like they should have an open forum here. Um, you know, we've been critical of a lot, but we have, you know, Amazon, uh, Amazon VP of uh, AWS Matt Wood, who I interviewed at the AWS Summit this week is going to be on the show next week. So folks can look out for that. We have Colin Murdock of DeepMind, who's going to be on uh, later in in August. We have a great slate of executives, but we do not have Dana Rao from Adobe. So Dana, if you're listening, or if your representation is listening, I'm sad that you doesn't, you didn't decide to come on, especially in the moment, a tough moment, where answering some questions would have been, I think advantageous, but you have an open invite if you'd like to join.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  I'm a little disappointed as well because Adobe actually has been the most forward-thinking, progressive or aggressive in terms of like the content authenticity. Even with Firefly right now, it's almost annoying that anytime you create any content, there's a little watermark that's stuck on the bottom left of whatever you generate. Like they're actually really like they, every model is trained off non-copyrighted material and they can validate that. They actually came out and man, we gotta get her on now because she would actually, it would be actually very interesting. Okay.

• 38:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes. Um, speaking of of ethics and training data, so I just to plug it one more time. When Matt Wood comes on next Wednesday from Amazon, I asked him some questions about whether Amazon should be training on my Substack without my permission. And I think that that part of the discussion is something that folks aren't going to want to miss. Some actual candid answers from a tech executive about this stuff. So I think it's worth tuning into. Last two stories, uh, there's this pretty interesting breakthrough innovation that everyone's talking about, but may actually be fake, which is that um, there's been a a second paper now that's uh, claimed that they have, these scientists have discovered a room temperature uh, superconductor, which um,

• 39:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  This is from Popular Mechanics. It would drastically, if it's real, it would drastically lower the cost of technology like MRIs, deep-space radio antennas. It's vitally important to fusion reactors, and it would unleash a new era of computers, wireless communication, and transportation. It'd be a very big deal. I've even talked about, I heard about, people talked about how it could basically make trains levitate. What do you think about the magnitude of this, you know, potential breakthrough, A, and then B? Why is everybody so skeptical of it? It's just the research wasn't good? I mean, it's a couple of scientists have gone out and claimed that they've been able to create this, but it hasn't been replicated yet or peer-reviewed?

• 39:55Speaker 01

  Two things on it. One, I fully recognize I don't understand how it will lead to trains levitating. I've read, I haven't dug too deep into the topic, but I've definitely seen a lot of people very excited about it. But actually, on the topic of, you know, skepticism around research, actually, hold on. First, are you excited? Are you, do you think this is going to change the world?

• 40:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  I don't think it's real. If it was real, I would be excited, but I just don't think it's real.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  All right. Well, if you're interested in things that might not be real, then one other story we didn't have on the agenda, but I was just listening to the Planet Money podcast this morning while commuting, and there was a really interesting story. Had you heard anything about the Dan Ariely, Data Calada, any of this type of drama?

• 40:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes. Why don't you introduce it for our listeners?

• 40:54Speaker 01

  All right. So, Dan Ariely and Francesca Gino, they're two researchers. And for anyone unfamiliar, behavioral economics, the idea of nudging in the 2010s was kind of, you know, this moment where all you had to do was just change one little piece of some process, and behaviorally, people would have incredible and optimal outcomes, and the world would change and everything would be better. And basically, I mean, it literally was in the forum of TED Talks that people, you know, these ideas were really pushed. So there's this one specific one that if you ask someone to, you know, attest to whatever they provided was true at the top of a forum, rather than the bottom of a forum,

• 41:39Speaker 01

  It's much more likely that they will tell the truth if it's at the top of the forum. The idea being now it's in their head. It came out that basically all the data, no one was able to replicate the experiment academics or in the real world. In the episode, they even talked about in Guatemala, they actually invested hundreds of thousands of dollars and launched this huge test across three million taxpayers to try to actually implement this and it did not work at all. Then it was found and I, as an Excel nerd myself, I loved, like this, this blog data collateral went in and actually found first, like one of the columns in the data set that was published was very, very clearly fabricated.

• 42:22Speaker 01

  Then even in another data set, going through the version history of the formulas, we're able to see that cells were actually moved around. And to me, the most interesting thing is, like, do you remember in the early 2010s, when TED Talks were big, the Obama administration was all about, you know, like these things like behavioral economics and all this stuff felt like, you know, the ultimate win-win situation that all you have to do is just change little bits of behavior and we're all going to be happy. There's no tough trade-offs in life. I think this is just kind of for me, the final nail in the coffin for that entire moment of like pure optimism where, I mean, this stuff was just outright fabricated.

• 43:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, yeah, no, it's obviously disastrous for the field of behavioral economics. And, you know, I don't know if the fact that you're bringing this up means, leads me to believe you don't really have a lot of faith in this room temperature superconductor either.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so. I mean, it was amazing and.

• 43:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Think about the room temperature semiconductor. You're like, well, let me tell you about another academic fraud. But look, if it's real, we're both gonna have to come on and eat crow because it will change, change the world, so.

• 43:37Speaker 01

  I when when I'm in a levitating train, I will definitely tell this get up and be on here and say loudly, I was absolutely wrong and enjoying this levitating train.

• 43:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  That would be cool. So, speaking of levitating trains, we said we would talk about aliens. There was a hearing this week where we've had some former intelligence officials come on and basically say that aliens do exist and we have even, I love how they didn't even call it bodies. They call it like, what is it like biotics that the United States is?

• 44:11Speaker 01

  Not non-human biologics, non-human biologics. It's the greatest phrase ever.

• 44:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  I tend to feel that when you're trying to pull a fast one on someone, you use phrases like non-human biologics and not like we found freaking aliens. So I'm also.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  Is it, is it, is it an entire body? Is it like some defecation? Is it like, I mean, I?

• 44:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, like, just, I mean, those are two interesting possibilities around John. But I would just say, like, don't use phrase, if, when you're a lie, I think it's a tell when you're lying and whatever. I think that when you're lying, you use phrases like that. I would just say, you know, if you're trying, if you really saw it, you'd just come to Congress and be like, yo, I saw an alien toe.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  I guess sometimes on the New York City subway, now I'm gonna start using the phrase human biologics when you're getting down into the station. But yeah, to me, to me, the most amazing part, my favorite part of the story is, is it really is no one cares that much? Like, it's interesting and I'm definitely having conversations about it, but it's not the biggest thing that has ever happened to us that it's, you know, in the how intense news cycles are or just kind of people's general, I feel like fatigue around anything. I'm still amazed that this is just happening and we might find out it's all real and be like, okay, well, yeah, but let's just move on to the next thing.

• 45:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  You know, this story, this story would have been huge in the 90s. But I think that society in 2023 is just too shell shocked, like, especially after COVID, we're like, no more of this external stuff. Just like, give us a break. We're not ready. We're not like psychologically or physically ready for an alien invasion. That's my perspective.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm on board. In the 90s, this would have been the entire world coming together, watching CNN and every other 24 hours news network, classes being like having a TV wheeled into them to keep like up to date on this, to watch the hearings. And now everyone's like, eh, it's summertime too.

• 46:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  We're just spent.

• 46:19Speaker 01

  It's hot out there.

• 46:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's tough. We don't care. If they, it's basically, I think that society's mentality is like, if aliens are gonna come wipe us out or do something to us, just get it over with already. We are, we don't wanna wait anymore.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  We're not gonna be Will Smith on Independence Day.

• 46:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  Like, get out, you're not gonna live rent free in our heads unless you land with your saucer and start doing some crazy stuff.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  And even then, even then.

• 46:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  Even then, we will, we will ignore you and have two completely different views on what you all mean on two different networks. Thanks, everybody for listening. Thank you, Ron John Roy, again, for being here. Hope you have a great vacation, man. Where are you going?

• 46:58Speaker 01

  To Taiwan. My, uh, mother-in-law and wife's family is, so.

• 47:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Amazing.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  Excited for that.

• 47:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  We'll have to have a full report back when you return in mid-August. In the meantime, we'll have Sarah Kuntz on and Julia Borstein, two amazing voices in the tech world. And you won't want to miss it. My interview with Matt Wood, the VP for AI Products at AWS, is coming up on Wednesday. I wrote a little preview of it in Big Technology this week, but the full conversation, I think, is worth listening to. So please tune in for that. Again, if you're here from Twitter or any other place, and this is, you're an early listener, I want to say thank you, and we appreciate you, and we're glad that you're here. And that will do it for us. Thanks, everybody, for listening. Thank you, LinkedIn, again, for having me as part of the Podcast Network. Thank you, Chief Revenge Officer,

• 47:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  Doug Gorman, for doing the titles here on the livestream. Appreciate the thumbs up. That will do it for us for this week's edition. We'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.

• 48:07Speaker 02

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• 48:36Speaker 03

  In this life, you can't win.

• 48:38Speaker 04

  When the world gets you down.

• 48:39Speaker 03

  No!

• 48:40Speaker 04

  Escape to Pluto TV.

• 48:42Speaker 03

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• 48:43Speaker 04

  Relax into the movies and shows you already know and love, all for free.

• 48:47Speaker 03

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• 48:48Speaker 04

  Even our news is uplifting.

• 48:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  You stay classy, San Diego.

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• 48:57Speaker 03

  We're not worthy!

• 48:59Speaker 04

  The best things on TV really are free. You just have to know where to look. Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.