Twitter Product Head Kayvon Beykpour On The Story Behind Twitter’s Revival

Kayvon Beykpour is one of Silicon Valley’s busiest product executives. As Twitter’s head of product, he’s survived for years in a formerly-cursed role that seemed to turn over every few months. Now, Beykpour’s team is shipping. Twitter just released a Clubhouse clone, called Spaces. It bought Revue, a newsletter platform. And it just announced Super Follow, a feature that wraps it all together by letting you pay for added access and content from people you follow on Twitter. This is new territory for Twitter, which spent the past few years 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.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 0:43Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello, Kayvon.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  Hey, Alex.

• 1:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Nice to see you again.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  Nice to see you.

• 1:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'll just read the ad and then we'll get started.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 1:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Media Ocean is for people who like to be efficient, like listening to this podcast at 2X speed. So I'm talking slow to make sure this ad is super clear. If you work in advertising, go to mediaocean.com/bigtech to register for a big virtual event on March 23rd. That's mediaocean.com/bigtech.

• 1:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello and welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. Joining us today is one of Silicon Valley's busiest product executives. Kayvon Bakfor is the head of product at Twitter and his team has been shipping. The company is rolling out a clubhouse clone called Spaces, a paid newsletter feature with its new acquisition of Review, and a subscription product called Super Follow. For a long time, I thought Twitter was just going to be Twitter, a niche product that appealed to a subset of the population obsessed with news. But now I admit, I might have been wrong. We'll see if Kayvon can convince me the rest of the way. Kayvon, welcome to the show.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me, Alex, and great to see you.

• 2:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's good to see you again. I think the last time we ran into each other was at the Blue Bottle right by Twitter offices. And I do miss those times, but now you guys are fully remote. Who knows, are you gonna ever go back into the office again?

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Oh, we will, we'll go back to the office, but it'll, it'll be a very different type of office life than what we were used to pre-pandemic. I think, you know, like many other companies, what's not changing is that we will, we will forever be a remote friendly and sort of decentralized company in a way that we certainly wanted to be before the pandemic, but you know, the last year has just accelerated that shift by probably a decade. So it won't, it won't ever be the same.

• 3:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Are you staying in the Bay Area or have you moved to Miami or Austin? We just did a show with Francis Suarez. He's pretty convincing and with the Austin mayor and Madison mayor too.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  I'm still in the Bay Area. I sort of bumble between Marin and Tahoe, but still, still in Northern California. I have not gotten the Miami itch yet, but I can tell you that I don't love the idea of going back to an office. I think, you know, like everyone else, like I miss being with people and I want to be able to hang out with colleagues and there's certainly occasions where being in an office or in some, you know, shared space is useful, but I love working from home. I love being around the dogs. I love not having to commute. I love being able to go for walks around the house. Like it's, I don't want to go back to an office.

• 4:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, it's pretty nice. I mean, after I left BuzzFeed, I've decamped to working from home forever until I start, you know, hiring people and bringing an office of my own. And I'm into it. I'm into it. Okay, so let's get, let's get into these new products that you guys have been shipping. I'm particularly interested in the timing. So the 2020 election happens, you guys banned Donald Trump, and then you start shipping all these sorts of products. And before this, and don't take offense, and others have noted this, your like biggest product innovation that people point to was expanding the character count on tweets. So were you guys waiting for the election to end and for that storm to blow over before you started, you know, letting these things out of the barn?

• 4:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  What's going, what was going on with the timing there?

• 4:51Speaker 01

  It's funny that you ask that because like literally in the last, in the last 24 hours, in the, in the 24 hours after our sort of Analyst Day presentation, I've seen a bunch of tweets that are, that are of the same flavor. My favorite one, I think, was from Ashley Mayer. She, she said something along the lines of, it looks like, you know, Twitter has saved all their product launches in their drafts and then hit send yesterday.

• 5:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Which is what it felt like, yeah.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  And I can, I can appreciate how it might feel like that, but I promise you that's not actually how it works. And, and to answer your question directly about the elections, it had nothing to do with us waiting for post-elections. Like a lot of what we shared at our Analyst Day presentation has been in the works for quite some time. Like in some cases, over a year. And, you know, a very public presentation like Analyst Day where we're also sharing, you know, our, our strategy with the entire world is a very handy moment in time to do some storytelling around both what we have been working on for a while, what's relatively new, what's launched, what's about to launch, and what's a little bit further out. So I think the fact that we told that story all in one place, really for the first time since 2014,

• 6:02Speaker 01

  the last time we had a public sort of presentation like this, makes it seem like we hit send on a bunch of product launches. But we did not start this stuff prior, you know, around the time of the elections. We started this stuff way prior to that.

• 6:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Of course, you've been working on it before, but you did ship it afterwards, so.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Well, not not in every case. I mean, you know, we talked about a few things, right? We talked about topics, topics we shipped a year ago and it's, you know, Rome wasn't built in a day. We've been drilling and evolving the product experience. Spaces, we first put in beta in late November, early December. People are hearing about it a lot more now because we're expanding the rollout and there's a lot of energy and excitement around the medium. So people, you know, it might seem like it has just launched, but in fact, it's been in beta for a while. It hasn't even fully rolled out to GA yet. The only thing that that we announced two new things that the world had not heard of at all that we announced for the first time yesterday. Sorry.

• 6:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  This is gonna run delayed, so you're not supposed to say that.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  I'm not, I'm supposed to not be tied down.

• 7:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  We had to talk about this. No, I'm kidding.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  I broke the first rule of my club. Super follows, which is new and and communities, which we'd we'd not talked to the world about either of those two things.

• 7:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And we'll get into those here for sure.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  I'm jumping ahead now. I'm going back in time. I'm going ahead of time.

• 7:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, yeah. No, they're interesting products. Yeah.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  The short answer to your question is like, that's not, we don't do product development like that. We don't wait for, you know, some election related thing to then decide to announce a bunch of things anew.

• 7:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  Everything that we shared at our analyst day strategically, like our focus on health, conversations, interests. These have been our strategic pillars for like two years. And it's taken us more time than I would like, but nevertheless, it's taken us time to kind of build a foundation of changes such that now the world is seeing our pace and hopefully seeing and feeling the fact that we're speeding up. But, you know, it took a while for us to get to that point.

• 8:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I want to get into the products. I want to get into the culture around it. Quick question about culture before we jump into the nitty gritty of products. Because we're talking about Trump and I've been just fascinated about Twitter culture ever since I started reporting on you guys many, many years ago. From the reporting, it seemed like the policy team made a decision to ban Trump, and then they told Jack. So what does that say about Twitter's culture that the process went that way? Are you so decentralized in your decision making, or what can we learn from that?

• 8:32Speaker 01

  Well, how else would you expect the process to go? I'm curious.

• 8:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  Everybody on the outside thinks that, you know, when it came to banning Trump, Twitter and Facebook basically, you know, had years of wanting to stay in the middle of it. And then finally, this happened and they took it, Facebook took it to Mark and Twitter took it to Jack, and the CEOs made the decision. There've been so many op-eds that have said, "Oh, it was always about what one person at the top, you know, wanted anyway." But it seems like it was different inside Twitter. So I'd love to hear like what actually happened. And, yeah, what do you think it says about Twitter?

• 9:07Speaker 01

  I think we've, Twitter has always, I can't speak for other companies, obviously, but Twitter has always made policy enforcement decisions on the basis of having clearly defined rules and being able to make enforcement decisions that are commensurate to those rules. And what I just described sounds simple, but it's actually incredibly difficult. As you can imagine, the interpretation of rules and the circumstances around, you know, how enforcement decisions are made is really, really complicated. And that's something that we've had our own sort of process and evolution around being better, being more transparent, being more consistent about getting those enforcement decisions right.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  But the way we made this decision philosophically is no different than how we make any other decision, which is like, we have a set of rules and we need to enforce those rules.

• 9:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, but banning the President of the United States has always been a different category of decisions. So, and it's something Twitter has talked about in the past. So it is interesting. So, yeah, I mean, it is interesting.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  It's a different magnitude of decision, but it's one that we've also tried to carve policy around, right? Like, we've tried to craft policy to articulate why that circumstance, not like the US President, but like world leaders generally. And we've had our own, you know, process of evolution around that, so. I don't think we purport to be perfect, like it's difficult to get any policy right from the beginning, which is why you see us iterate on the policies themselves, as long as our, as well as our enforcement against them. But that is how the process works. The engine of policy making and enforcement is how we go about making our decisions. It's not like a, hey, let's, let's go get Jack to make a decision this way or that way. That's just never been how we, how we work.

• 10:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. So it wasn't Jack who made that call.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  I mean, the, the, in terms of like who approved the decision.

• 11:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  That's been well documented, like Vijay, you know, Vijay is our lead for, for policy enforcement. I know that the world will find it juicy to be like, well, who made the, who made the decision and all that. But like, that's, I, I find that to be a little bit over dramatizing, honestly.

• 11:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's a fair point.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  I think for us, it's.

• 11:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  But yeah, it's also in the public interest to kind of know how these choices are made. So, but yeah, sorry, go ahead.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  No, it's, it's just that, right? We have a policy apparatus and an enforcement apparatus. And, you know, ultimately Vijay is our, as our head of policy made, made a decision.

• 11:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  Jack is aware and supportive.

• 11:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  How often do, do decisions boil up to Jack versus, I mean, Jack sometimes will be at Square. Sometimes he's on vacation or in a different country that operates on a time zone, you know, where it's day, where it's night here.

• 11:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  Is, is decision, like, how about your decision making on the product team? Does Jack sort of set a vision and then you end up going ship or how does that work?

• 11:55Speaker 01

  One of the things that I love about Jack, both because it's something I admire about him and, but also because I think it jives with how I like to work is he, he provide, he, he provides a lot of trust and autonomy to his leadership team. And, you know, that for me, that's everything around the product and development apparatus. And so Jack, I often, when it comes to big strategic changes or just gnarly product changes, will consult Jack. But Jack is immensely trusting of, you know, ultimately my, my decisions, even if he disagrees with them. There are plenty of times where Jack and I will have some fun product debate where we land on different sides and. You know, I always know his perspective that he trusts me to to make the call.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  And that's a style of working that is not a function of the fact that he has two jobs. I think that also is one of those like juicy things that people for understandable reasons.

• 12:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, it's untraditional. Yeah.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  It's of course, it's untraditional. And I think that's one of why he's one of the most interesting leaders of of our time. He's built two amazing companies out of a nontraditional way of working, and I have a lot of respect for him. But one misunderstood thing about Jack is, you know, though it's again, easy to talk about the fact that his there are constraints on his time. I have never ever needed something from Jack and had him not be there for me, regardless of time of day, time zone. You know, what I don't even know what he's focusing on that it doesn't seem like he has any other job other than being there for Twitter.

• 13:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  Which is just my my perspective.

• 13:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Now, people have talked about this culture in the past, like as I've reported on Twitter. You know, where where Jack has led a lot of the decision making live lower down. And they've pointed it pointed to that as the reason of the slow product shipping. I mean, Jack met, you know, and admitted in the analyst day that you guys just had that you guys have been slow. So has something changed inside Twitter? I mean, what's gotten into you guys?

• 13:53Speaker 01

  It's a good question.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  First of all, I think that the this is the like the cause for our slowness in the past. Extends far before Jack's return to CEO. I I think there's a lot. There's a lot. Honestly, I'll try and break it down from my perspective. But, you know, one is there just was a lot of churn at the company. I mean, just take my my role like the head of product role when I got this job.

• 14:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  You've held it for long. It's cursed. It was a cursed job before.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, when I got this job, I had had 12 predecessors in the last 13 years. Which is crazy, like literally when I got this job, people were like, okay, how like, whatever. Tell us what you want to do. Like, let's see how long that lasts, which is kind of a weird. Weird sort of role to step into.

• 14:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Welcome.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  Right. So, but I think just thinking about that more organizationally, when there's that much historical churn with a, an important role, like the product, product leader role, the sort of organization builds calluses around that where people don't want to work on things that get killed. People want to work on things that see the light of day. And so organizationally, over time, the entire org sort of gravitates around things that are most likely to be seen through. And that tends to be really iterative, smaller things that are less controversial. And so that's sort of one, one thing. Two, there was a period of time at the company, and this is right around when I joined, you know, as you know, I was very focused on, on Periscope for the first like two years of my time at

• 15:22Speaker 01

  Twitter. You know, the stated company strategy, like product strategy at the time was refine the core. A lot of this, we talked about at Analyst Day too. We were hyper focused on doing very, very few things. And the one main thing we were focused on from a consumer standpoint was refining the relevance of our home timeline and all the recommendations. And honestly, at the time, like I was sort of on the sidelines casting stones, being like, this is kind of.

• 15:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm the head of product. Let me build something new.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Well, no, I wasn't the head of product. I was the CEO of Periscope. And just as a fan of Twitter and as an, as an employee of the company, I, I, you know, was, I wish we would have taken bigger swings. And so I, I was a critic at the time. Looking back on it now, as much as that was frustrating as a phase for customers, because they sort of perceived that Twitter wasn't evolving very much. What I appreciate about that time now, and I have a lot of respect for the leaders who made this happen, was that period of a year and a half or two years where we literally did nothing other than make our recommendations better, return the company to user growth, return the company to revenue growth, and gave us the wind in our sails and the oxygen that we now have to take bigger

• 16:32Speaker 01

  swings and bigger bets that will take time to pay off. We did not have that luxury five years ago, six years ago, when I joined the company. And I think the unfortunate thing about that is, you know, there's a period of time where customers, our customers were like, what's going on? What's going on at Twitter? Like, the product isn't changing.

• 16:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Your customers are your users, because those are two separate things.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  It's interesting you bring this up. We, we don't consider them different things. We sort of internally, in our nomenclature, we've tried to stop using the word users because it's less empathetic and like, what is it?

• 17:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  We don't pay you guys, though. The advertisers pay you, so.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  Well, people pay us with their attention, which is something we have to be respectful of. And, and, you know, the fact that people aren't paying us with their dollars doesn't change the fact that they are customers who come to Twitter to fulfill some need that they have. You're right that advertisers are a different form of customer. They have, they have different needs and different problems that we try and solve for them.

• 17:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  But that's interesting. It's a really untraditional way of looking at it, the way that you're describing it.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  That's another one of those Jack things. Jack feels very strongly about framing, you know, framing all of our focus around our customers and solving customer problems, not, not users.

• 17:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, I want to get into the specific product changes that you've made, but one more question before we do to talk a little bit about what's going on inside the company. Sometime last year, I believe, Elliot Management, an activist investor, comes in, tries to oust Jack and, you know, wants to make big changes inside the company, thinks it knows what's best for Twitter. How did that, like, how did that, how did that go down inside the company? Like, what were the discussions that you had, like, was, is that, and also was that like a kick in the butt that was like, oh, we really need to get these products out? Because there is a deal that if Twitter doesn't grow by certain metrics, then Jack has to leave or something like that. So how did that impact what was going on inside? How was that felt inside?

• 18:23Speaker 01

  So I would say for 99% of the company, it was not, it had no, like, that whole, that whole period of time had no impact. People had no sort of visibility into the.

• 18:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  But maybe you were part of the 1% that it did impact, so.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  Honestly, it wasn't, it wasn't that time consuming for me either. I can tell you, like, honestly, it was distracting, hearing news cycles around, you know, lack of faith from a cohort of shareholders about the CEO.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  You know, that sucks to hear and that's distracting emotionally for sure. But you know, ultimately, the decisions that were made and the a lot of the hard work, you know, around that period of time was not something that I was spending time on. I, you know, that, you know, certainly, certain members of our management team and the board were were very involved. You know, I I've been focused on, you know, building the product. So it's it's not high leverage time for me to get involved in those in those dynamics. And, you know, I'm happy with where where things ended up. But one thing I want to touch on, you mentioned. Sort of like it being a kick in the butt.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  I think that like there's not a single person on our management team who, for the last two years, hasn't understood that if we don't deliver for our customers and our shareholders, that like. We are not the right people, that we would not be the right people in our jobs. Like, we we don't need like any more external pressure to understand that. And I think, you know, another one of the sort of convenient narratives I've heard in the last. In the last week have been around like, oh, look at like the pace that that Twitter is sort of picking up. It must be because of all these changes to the board. And I can promise you like, that has nothing to do with it. Like, we have been working really hard over the last three years to. Make progress and build the momentum that people are seeing now. Like, we did not start that work a year ago, like.

• 20:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  Good on us if we could have achieved something like that in the last, you know.

• 20:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Two months.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  Two months or or even year, like, we've had to reshape our leadership team, hire new people across product engineering, design, research. We've had to set new strategies in place that, you know, it's took, it's taken a while to sort of like shift this cruise ship that is Twitter and aim it at a different, in a different direction and at a way faster pace. And we're starting to just see the results of that. Well, the the world is starting to see the results of that. For us, it's been a long, multi-year journey.

• 20:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, no doubt. I mean. Yeah, well, let's just, let's leave that there.

• 20:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think that we've covered the culture stuff enough. I want to talk about the actual products. So first of all, I would say that maybe even a few months ago, you know, Twitter seemed to just be sending me like different apps or different experiences. Like, I feel like every other tweet was like a clubhouse, join this clubhouse, sign up for my newsletter, watch this TikTok. But now you're building some of those elements into Twitter. Spaces is a dead ringer for Clubhouse. Review competes directly with Substack. So were you guys just sick of seeing people build audiences on Twitter and then make money from them elsewhere? What's behind this push that you guys have made to try to compete with some of these other services? That essentially are, you know, people who have Twitter audiences that are going elsewhere

• 21:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  and finding a ways to be, to make productive use of them?

• 21:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know, it's less reactive to the competition than it may seem at the surface area. The competition definitely is relevant in the sense of driving urgency for us, which I think is great for any ecosystem to have that urgency. But the sort of motivation, to answer your question, stems to, stems back, you know, a year and a half. You know, we started publicly talking about how our focus, we have this focus on our conversation strategy, which to us has always boiled down into a few different kind of sub-goals. One is enabling new use cases. You know, for the longest time, we've been describing Twitter as a place where people can talk about what's happening. And yet we have been very slow to evolve the actual form factors that people can use to talk about stuff. Like, you can only accomplish so much with a-

• 22:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Your conversation strategy, you mentioned that. Can you just like very quickly elaborate what that means?

• 22:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, to us, what the conversation strategy means is, like, the thing that makes Twitter unique relative to some other platform or service that you can use to like find out what's happening is that- Like Twitter relies on someone, somewhere in the world, using their voice to say something, whether that's like 140 characters, 200 characters, or publishing a link. Like it's a user-generated platform that's predicated on people feeling comfortable talking in public. So if we do not create a service with capabilities and features and incentives that people use to say stuff in public, then there is nothing for people to consume.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Like this isn't the New York Times where we have, you know, publishers that are employed to create content. Right? Like we, it's a user-generated platform. Um, it's a two-sided marketplace. And so, um, the conversation strategy for us is essentially the umbrella of work that allows us to really build the capabilities and the functionality that motivate people to create content on the platform. And for us, that, that sort of boils down into a few different things. One, we want to enable new use cases for conversation because like for the last 15 years, Twitter has actually been quite limited in the analogs of conversation that are supported. Right? Like Twitter's better tuned for sort of short-form quips and short-form broadcasting than it is thoughtful discourse.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Um, and we've built an amazing service that's very valuable to the world, I think, out of a very narrow form factor. But therein lies the opportunity. And that's why we're focused on things like fleets, which enables more sort of lightweight, ephemeral, uh, media-forward content sharing. So why we're focused on-

• 24:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Stories, which is essentially Snapchat stories copied, but okay. Well, that's what fleets are. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. Keep going.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  Was that your way of sneaking in a zinger, Alex?

• 24:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, I'm not zinking. I'm just saying, you know, people don't know what fleets are, so now they know what fleets are. Sorry. Go ahead. You guys, you guys don't get, uh, you know, shit for copying Snapchat stories. I think Facebook, you know, started that. We might be able to talk about you copying Clubhouse, but let's, let's keep, keep the list going.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  We'll keep the list going. You know, Spaces for us is, is sort of pursuant to the same goal of enabling new use cases, but it's, it's really focused on, um, you know, long-form, audio-based conversation. Um, which is a, both at the surface level is a huge departure from Twitter. Cause people are like, wow, we had tweets and now we have these like audio-based conversations. But like fundamentally to us- This use case is Twitter. This is people talking in public.

• 25:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  So what are spaces? You know, we've tried it. We've been in spaces together, but just, you know, how do you think about them? Like, if you were to explain to someone who hasn't been in one, what would you say they were briefly?

• 25:11Speaker 01

  Spaces is a way for people to literally talk on Twitter. So you

• 25:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  With their voices.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, with their voices. You know, you can start a, you can start a space, which is basically just a public room that anyone can drop into. Most often, your followers are, you know, followers of other speakers who join you. And it's a, it's a space where people can literally talk using their voices about, you know, anything they want. And I think, to me, what's interesting about this is, it is Twitter. Like, this is how people have wanted to use Twitter, but sort of mechanically by proxy of asynchronous text-based back and forth. And this audio layer on top of Twitter is fascinating, because people already leverage Twitter as a sort of interest graph, right?

• 26:00Speaker 01

  They're following the people and the topics that they're interested in. And being able to hear interesting, long-form conversations about those topics is just a, it's just a, it's a, it's a more powerful manifestation of what Twitter already is. Anyway, my point was just to say, we've been focused on this problem for a while.

• 26:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  And then Clubhouse came out and you said, okay, let's just do that.

• 26:25Speaker 01

  Clubhouse undoubtedly encouraged us to focus and move way faster with more urgency. And I think what the, what the Clubhouse team has done is awesome. Like, they've, like, you know, every half decade or so, someone uncovers some new use case or mechanic that changes how people communicate on digital platforms. And I think Clubhouse was really the first to kind of visualize that for, for what is the sort of audio conversational format. I don't think these things stay exclusive to one platform. Like, we saw this with ephemeral content. We saw this with live video and Periscope, by the way, right? Like, a year after Periscope launched, every platform had essentially a carbon copy.

• 27:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  So I think this sort of is a natural evolution where there are, there is a company or startup that usually uncovers some mechanic first, and then other, other platforms kind of think about how to adapt them to, to their, um, to their, to their mediums in different ways.

• 27:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I think it fits pretty well on Twitter, as I've written in the past. Um, let's move on to another thing you're doing, which is, uh, this super follow. What is super follow?

• 27:35Speaker 01

  Super follows is a feature that we're building, not released yet, um, that will allow, um, creators or influencers, anyone, anyone who has a Twitter account, to be subscribed to by their, their biggest fans. So rather than just following Alex to get his tweets, you can super follow him, um, to get access to, um, a subset of whatever, you know, content that Alex might want to publish for just his subscribers. Um, so that's sort of like mechanically what it is. Um, sort of the why, like the why behind this and like why, why we're super interested in it is, um, for years, people have had, people have built followings on Twitter and have had to really leverage other tools and services outside of Twitter to be able to, um, sort of,

• 28:20Speaker 01

  um, be supported directly by their audience and to sort of provide exclusive content to their subscribers. Like, we've seen platforms like Patreon, um, and OnlyFans and many others kind of, um, build these capabilities that fundamentally are just helping creators make money and helping creators kind of have a new type of relationship and, and sort of back and forth with their, their biggest fans. Um, and we think it's a, you know, a huge opportunity, both for creators and for Twitter, um, to help offer that as a layer within Twitter, um, particularly one that allows us to sort of stitch together for creators and influencers, many of the capabilities that we're adding on to Twitter right now. So if you had a super follower capability, Alex, you would be able to publish newsletters, um, using

• 29:05Speaker 01

  review to your super followers. You'd be able to host subscriber-only spaces.

• 29:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  The newsletter platform that you guys just acquired and then space subscriber-only spaces, which is interesting.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  Subscriber only DMs, subscriber only tweets, you can just imagine subscriber only fleets. Like imagine every sort of capability that exists on Twitter right now in terms of how you might create content and share it with the world, but then add to it the ability to kind of like narrow cast and target that that content to either everyone or just your your super followers. And be able to kind of create a, you know, your own custom definition of what you will provide your super followers, whether that's the price point that you choose or how much, you know, content and what type of content they should expect from you on a periodic basis. Like we we expect all those things to be highly customizable by the the creator

• 29:56Speaker 01

  themselves. But we think of this as a like, audience rewards layer that allows creators and their biggest fans to have a new type of interaction on the platform.

• 30:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, this one is particularly interesting to me, because you know, I did leave BuzzFeed to start my own newsletter, Big Technology, and of course, this podcast. And and I tweet a lot. So I'm kind of doing all the things that you guys are getting into. But I, you know, I think that like, there is some hesitancy to go on to one platform. So like, maybe I could like, take the, you know, I could potentially take the newsletter, bring it to review, take this podcast, bring it to Spaces, put some of the tweets that I do behind a paywall.

• 30:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  What's what's, you know, I guess, like, what's the convincing argument, though, for me to leave, you know, these services that I like and then bring them to, you know, a centralized platform and then essentially bet everything on Twitter?

• 30:53Speaker 01

  You know, I'm not, I'm not sure you need to. Our intent here is not to be winner takes all. Like, there will be many platforms that allow creators to, you know, be rewarded by their audience. And I think we imagine a world where Twitter can be a part of that ecosystem and actually play quite nicely with that ecosystem. I think that there are specific capabilities within Twitter that We are uniquely well positioned to provide like being able to have a conversational layer, a public conversational layer, um, you know, between you and your followers and and your sort of biggest super fans or super followers. Like that is something that we are uniquely positioned to excel on, but I don't think in order for us to succeed, like, we don't need you to stop podcasting

• 31:35Speaker 01

  and like move to use spaces exclusively. Like you can create a podcast, um, just like you you normally do right now and then use Twitter as a layer to have either conversations beforehand, like, hey, what should Kayvon and I talk about? Um, like, do you want to influence what the agenda of this conversation is going to be, super followers?

• 31:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  And I did just ask that in a tweet right before we got on the line. So.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  Um, so I I think like we're less thinking of this as a, like, we need to create the one and only way where people can have, like, you know, create the subscriber graph. Like, I I don't, that's not how we're thinking about this. Like, I think it would be foolish for us to be so narrowly centered on, we're going to create the best and only thing, um, rather than how do we build something that's uniquely, that uniquely leverages the strengths of Twitter and also can sort of play nicely with the rest of the ecosystem in a way that ultimately helps creators. Like, our goal here is to incentivize creators to be able to have more interesting conversations on the platform.

• 32:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And it is interesting. Review will take 5% of subscriber fees, whereas like Substack will take 10. So I think you will have a convincing argument that you're going to be able to make to a bunch of people in my position. And in fact, you know, I'll tell you already, the chatter is among some folks, you know, do I start charging, you know, people who have built decent sized followings on Substack? Do I start charging on on Substack or just bring everything over to Review? Uh, so that's pretty interesting. And bring it over to to Twitter.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  How do you think about that? Like, what's what's the sort of, what are the pros and cons and the dimensions of of that decision for you?

• 33:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  I I personally think Twitter is a compelling use case for what I'm trying to do. Um, I think Review has a lot of work that it needs to do in terms of design. Uh, like, I don't like the design there. And I really think Substack is good, uh, and the CMS is better. But if you guys get a parody there, uh, then, you know, and and I'm able to like bring subscribers into the same experience, um. That would make, I think that would make a lot of sense for what I'm trying to do. In fact, like I have had people who've, so when people unsubscribe from big technology, you know, I have a little form, tell me about what you've, why you've decided to leave. And people have just said, well, I'm just going to read your tweets. So there is a tension between like what I'm writing for newsletter subscribers. By the way, newsletter is free.

• 33:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  And what I'm doing on the podcast, podcast is also free and ad supported. I'd always want to keep a free element, but there, there's definitely something intriguing about taking everything that I'm doing and bringing it under, you know, one roof, charging one fee for it and trying to make this, instead of an experiment, which it is right now, you know, something that potentially has long-term staying power.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that what you just touched on, this question of how much of this sort of like class of creator we're talking about that you-

• 34:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  The middle class, that's what I call it, the middle class. We're not, we're not the big influencers, but there's enough people paying attention that, you know, it's a, there's, I mean, that's the bet that I'm making big technology. There's a chance to make a living off of it.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think what the, one of the super interesting questions is like, what subset of my content goes as part of the sort of free layer versus the subscriber only layer? I think it's a fascinating one and something that we're also thinking a lot about because, you know, you know, there's, there's sort of podcasting as one medium. There's the newsletter, long form newsletter is another medium. And with super followers, we're sort of, we're adding a bunch of other mediums to this where tweets kind of have their own formula of like, well, what do I tweet to my, you know, super followers versus everyone? And I think it's something that I'm super interested to see how that evolves. Don't, don't purport to have the right answer, but we want to build, build the product with the flexibility to let everyone kind of figure out what that formula means to them.

• 35:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  No doubt. I'm going to seriously consider migrating. We'll, we'll see where things go when you, when you roll it out, but it is definitely interesting. And it, what, what strikes me also is that it's not just paying for tweets. That's what kind of annoyed me yesterday. Everyone's like, oh, you can pay for tweets. It's like- Well, I don't know, you know, it's paying for tweets, but also, you know, you pay for, you know, the stories in the newsletter and you pay for, you know, potential, you know, the community with spaces. And that's much more compelling than just paying for 280-character missives.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I definitely agree. I don't think paying for tweets is the right take. It's paying for community and paying for, paying for a relationship that is, is different than the relationship that creators already have with their audience. This is a different type of relationship that can take new forms and, and be a little bit more intimate, just as a natural function of how much smaller the community will be.

• 36:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Totally. Before you guys bought Revue, which is the newsletter platform, we've talked about, people were saying you were interested in buying Substack. Did you guys try to buy Substack?

• 36:11Speaker 01

  I've long admired that team and, you know, I've, I've met, I met the team a couple of times. I think they're really awesome. And just like what we were talking about with, with Clubhouse, I think, you know, Substack has done a really amazing job of kind of willing this new form. It's, it's both not new, but also in the way Substack has really grown, like they've made this a movement.

• 36:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  You had acquisition discussions with them?

• 36:36Speaker 01

  I'm not going to comment on, on M and A, but I can, I can tell you I've like, met that team and really love what they're doing and admire them.

• 36:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  All right. We'll read between the lines. And then it was interesting that they said, we're not selling to Twitter, like that they thought the, the opportunity was bigger on their own. And it is now interesting that you and Andrew Chen, the guy who funds them and is also funding Clubhouse from Andreessen Horowitz are kind of head to head.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  I've, I've already reached out to Andrew over DMs and complimented him. I think he's very good at his job. And he's supporting some awesome companies. I definitely admire.

• 37:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, obviously you're following his, his roadmap in some ways, which is interesting. But what's different between you guys?

• 37:20Speaker 01

  I wouldn't quite frame it like that, but I, I appreciate the, the observation. Go for it.

• 37:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  What, what's interesting about you guys and them is that like, you know,

• 37:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  The Andreessen investments are sort of hostile to journalists. You know, maybe implicitly, but Clubhouse is definitely has this aura. Marc Andreessen, who's like one of the biggest user blocks, like every reporter he sees. You know, you guys have made a specific effort to bring reporters on to Spaces. Substack, which by the way, I love, I use, it's been super helpful for my career. But you also look at the messaging from like CEO Chris Best, who's like, you know, had, you know, very straightforward anti-New York Times tweets. You know, he's selling against them. Whereas like, it seems like you guys are giving like Kate Conger access to you and,

• 38:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  and you know, and your executives before this stuff comes and access to Spaces. So tell me a little bit more about your more pro journalist strategy. How do you guys think about that?

• 38:21Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, I'll, I'll give you sort of my perspective on Twitter first. I can speak, speak better to that, less, less about how the other companies are thinking about it.

• 38:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, just tell us why you got, why you guys are pro journalist, it seems like.

• 38:33Speaker 01

  Journalists are our customers. Like there's one of the most important demographics of people who use, who use Twitter. And so it's instrumental for us to make sure that we're building a product that is valuable to journalists, both from a consumption standpoint and particularly in the case of Spaces, a creation mechanic. I, I long for the day that journalists as a matter, a sort of natural course of their work are able to use a product like Spaces on Twitter to communicate about their research, the pieces they publish, and to talk about what's happening in the world. I think that that will make Twitter a better, a better ecosystem if, you know, journalists, along with many other types of, of, of customers have that capability.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  So it's just invaluable for us to have folks like you and Kate using the product in the early days and helping us shape how it works. And for what it's worth, like, I don't think that, I know, like Marc Andreessen and A16Z has their own, you know, views. I think, like, I don't see Clubhouse as necessarily being anti-journalist either. Like the product is, has that same, has that same promise. I think how certain people leverage their block lists is different than like what the product's intent is.

• 39:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, no, I hear you. Maybe I was a little bit overboard on that one. But, but it certainly is, you know, you said, like, you know, you said a tone, you said a culture, and that gets reflected.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, for us, the the tone we're trying to set with spaces is we are building in the public and we want to hear from all of our customers and that is inherently messy and chaotic, but like it's so Twitter like we've always at our best, we've built in public and we've shaped the product through the intent and will of our customers. It's how the retweet was born. It's how the at mention was born. It's how the hashtag was born and we we want to like what we're doing with spaces that's

• 40:26Speaker 01

  simply like in that same spirit is obviously developing in public. What's different about spaces is we are building very, very quickly like we are taking action in days and weeks like we don't use the units of time of months and quarters and we're we're just, you know, we're trying to build build this product really quickly and bring it to our customers.

• 40:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and I'm hopeful from it like I think it can do really good things for journalism because unfortunately journalists have you know, I mean, don't don't be too upset about this, but they've spoken to the public in tweets and that has not done them a lot of harm and a lot of good because, you know, it takes the nuance and the thoughtfulness that's inherent to the job and strips it out completely. And I think that when people do see reporters up there having a conversation, it it will reveal them to be people and it will reveal some of that thoughtfulness that exists in the work and for journalists, it'll be good to hear from people who disagree with them. Like I could try to have a conversation with someone who disagrees with me and the and like the at mentions or the replies to tweet is not going to happen. The temperature is way too high.

• 41:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  And so maybe spaces can be that place where someone who's like, you know, disagreeing with me, I say, okay, let's, you know, instead of trying this, let's go in and have a discussion about it. And let other people come in and and discuss with us.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  I couldn't agree with you more. I would just like copy paste everything you said, but like that's true for not just journalists like I think

• 41:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's good for everyone, probably.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  I think like we've we've actually and this is we've been talking about this as part of our product strategy for quite some time like, you know, Jack. Over a year and a half ago said like we're rethinking the incentives of the service. And what that refers to is exactly this conversation. Like the mechanics of Twitter have long incentivized a certain type of discourse. And that discourse is way more tuned towards witty quips that can get lots of likes and retweets. And that is useful for some.

• 42:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Outrage stoking. Yeah.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, outrage tends to do well sometimes when you're optimizing for reach. And that has really, that has some positive, the, the mechanics have some positive. You know, outcomes, right? Like news can travel very quickly. People can stay informed about things that are happening in the world very quickly. But it has a lot of downsides, too. It does not lead to empathetic, thoughtful discourse. Like, it's no wonder why, like, the depth of any conversation on Twitter through tweets, like, doesn't go particularly deep. Like, it's really hard to have a substantive back and forth. And that's a product problem. That's a mechanic, that's a mechanics.

• 42:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  People are, are so angry on there. And I think that it's even ramped recently. So I do hope that this is, I, I view it almost as like the ice bath. Right? After a pretty intense practice, you jump in the ice bath and cool off. And maybe spaces can be like the ice bath of Twitter. Or instead of just like, you know, running more dead heats and yelling at each other, you go in and talk it out.

• 43:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think a lot of it's the medium, audio specifically. And we, you know, we even, when we first started Periscope, like, we always used to say, like, we chose live video as a medium for our sort of teleportation goal because live video can build truth and empathy. And the empathy bit is very voice specific. Cause like, when you hear someone, when you hear their intonation, when you hear the emotion behind their voice, like, it's a level of empathy you can build with them that's very different than seeing an avatar and 140 characters of text.

• 43:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  And I, I believe that that's a really big part of what's going to make this medium on Twitter. Change the change the tone of conversation on the platform. Not to suggest that there isn't value for like asynchronous text based back and forth, but it's the complement of the two together that I think is really fascinating.

• 43:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I agree. I think they work well together. There is a so there's a thing inside Substack. I don't didn't mean to focus so much on journalism, but actually this stuff has real implications. So let's let's keep going. There's something inside Substack. They call it the Biches number. I don't know if you know about it.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  No.

• 44:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's named after Nathan Biches, who used to work there and he's now doing his own newsletter. And they basically take like the number of Twitter followers that somebody has and they look at their engagement and they can tell pretty well like whether they would make a successful newsletter writer or not. And I believe they go try and recruit. This didn't happen with me. I did this on my own. I didn't. I don't meet the Biches number, but they they they try to recruit them and say, hey, you could have make a better living, more stable living if you were just writing a paid newsletter. I'm curious if you guys think that like how you think this and Casey Newton's discussed this in his newsletter. How do you think that this feature will change like modern day newsrooms?

• 44:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Because superstars who have like, you know, long gone in and they've gotten paid well and felt comfortable may actually be able to make more money doing something like a review spaces super follow combination and feel less of the need to be entrenched inside, you know, let's say the New York Times, for instance. I'm sure people are going to leave the New York Times to try this out. So what do you think about that?

• 45:19Speaker 01

  I think we're already seeing it. I mean, I think it's it's

• 45:24Speaker 01

  you know, the the tools that now exist both help the tools that help you build your own audience, the tools that help you publish with minimal investment and a minimal team behind you. And the tools that help you sort of make money to support yourself to continue your craft. It's never been more rich. And so I think that's that's true. By the way, Broadly, well beyond like long form publishing, like this is the best time for an entrepreneur to start a company and go build some new technology based product, you know, on AWS and like you don't need to hire a 30 person infrastructure team to go build some tools. So

• 46:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Never been cheaper.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  It's never been cheaper.

• 46:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  And you've never been able to do it as quickly.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  And you've never been able to reach an audience as quickly. You know, helpful in part due to platforms like Twitter and IG and all the other platforms that help you get distribution. So I think that we're absolutely going to continue seeing this across all verticals, not just, not just journalism. And I think it's, it will be interesting to see how sort of traditional publishers evolve and how the platforms like Twitter evolved and how sort of this burgeoning ecosystem of, of, of tools

• 46:34Speaker 01

  sort of evolve around it.

• 46:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  What other use cases do you see?

• 46:38Speaker 01

  With, with what?

• 46:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  The super follow. Like, I mean, I've talked a lot about journalism because it's what I know well. But when you say not just journalism, what are you thinking of in your mind?

• 46:48Speaker 01

  I, I think that one of the things that's most exciting to me and also a little bit intimidating is that something like super follows will, it's not going to displace an existing type of conversation that's going to move from public to like private subscriber only. It's going to create a new avenue for conversation that isn't happening right now. There's this funny back and forth where someone tweeted, I don't remember who it was, but someone tweeted,

• 47:17Speaker 01

  like, what, what would this person need to tweet for you to, or which of these tweets would you be willing to pay for or something? And Scott Belsky, who's an old friend and one of the first investors of Periscope, had this great response. He replied with, you're super following them for the things that they don't tweet, which I think is so spot on. Like I think this layer will, this layer, if done correctly, will allow a new type of relationship and a new type of sort of conversation to flourish between creators and their, and their audience that doesn't really flourish today on Twitter at least. And maybe it flourishes through other mediums.

• 47:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, now I got to ask the, the OnlyFans question. Do you see this as competitive with OnlyFans?

• 47:58Speaker 01

  I think that OnlyFans.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  I think that there are certain use cases.

• 48:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  People in my mentions were like, yeah, they were all like, this is an OnlyFans competitor.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  I think there are certain use cases that, you know, I would hope, you know, people would choose Super Follows for rather than OnlyFans, but I think OnlyFans will continue to exist. I mean, they have also a particular sort of demographic of usage that we're not sort of shooting for on Twitter. So, but I think like any, any time a capability like this gets built at a, at a bigger platform, like there are certain use cases that it competes for, and there are certain use cases that it doesn't compete for. So I think time, time will tell. But we're not really thinking of this through the lens of, hey, let's go like get, let's go like, let's go after OnlyFans and Patreon. Like we're, as hard as it might be believed, we think of this from a first principle standpoint. Like, how do we build

• 48:49Speaker 01

  a product that allows creators on Twitter to get more value out of Twitter and get, be able to develop a new type of relationship with their, with their audience? And it just so happens that that does, you know, that will intersect with some use cases that other third-party tools fulfill today, and in some cases will allow for use cases that aren't fulfilled by any tool.

• 49:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I like that. It's the stuff that people aren't saying out loud, but might say to a small, select group of people who are willing to pay and be part of a private community. That's really interesting. Okay, last question. Maybe we can fit two more. So first of all, at your Analyst Day, you said you're gonna add 120, or you expect to add 123 million users in the next two years. You only have about 200 million, in the 200 million range now. Why does Twitter set such high expectations for it? Because it just seems like, you know, this is what happened with the IPO. And then it took years to dig out of the, the gulf between the expectations and, and what Twitter was actually doing. And isn't this just creating a situation where, yeah, you're gonna be, you know, fighting

• 49:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  against that number versus, you know, I don't know, focusing energy where it should be?

• 50:02Speaker 01

  I can't speak to the IPO and what decision making went into into expectation setting then. I can tell you that, well, a couple of things. One, I would actually argue that people have low expectations of Twitter. Like, over the last five years, I think people have had like

• 50:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  No doubt.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  insanely low expectations.

• 50:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, but you're ramping them up again.

• 50:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think rightfully so, for a couple of reasons. One, these are our expectations. And we, I think there's a power to being transparent about your own expectations, because it is yet another way that you can be held accountable, right? Like, it's one thing to have your own intrinsic motivation to do something, but when you put it on the public record, it really puts a fire under you. And I think that's a good, that's terrifying, but it's a good quality to instill in a team. So I think that's one of the benefits. Like, the other, and I suspect this is somewhat different to Twitter of yesteryear, is we're not like making shit up. Like, this is our strategy. We have goals around that strategy that we want to hold ourselves accountable to. And we're not pulling things out of a hat.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  Like, these are things, this is a strategy that we didn't, we didn't publish this like last night or a week ago. Like, we've been focused on this strategy for quite some time. We have some momentum under our belt and we're intent on seeing it through. Sorry if you're hearing my dog bark in the background.

• 51:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's okay, we always have dogs in this work from home podcast era. Dogs appear on every show.

• 51:26Speaker 01

  Millie, Millie, come here. Let's see if Millie can get a little feature. Millie, come on. So that, to me, this is a, it's both important for the world to know where Twitter is going.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Because, you know, we are building a public conversation platform. Like, you know, it would be ironic if we were not public about our own strategy and ambitions. I think it is sort of uniquely Twitter to be leaned in and transparent about the work that we're doing. So I don't see it as a distraction. I think it is, you know, it's an added layer of complexity, which I think is a feature. Not a complexity, it's an added layer of accountability, which to me is a feature, not a bug. And, you know, we're gonna try really hard to not let ourselves and our customers and our shareholders down.

• 52:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Great. The last question I was gonna ask you is, I know we're out of time. The last question I was gonna ask you is, how did Jack show up at the beginning of your Analyst Day in a sweatshirt in what looked like a yoga lounge and then end up with like a hunter hat in some other location later in the day? But that's just gonna be a mystery. We're just gonna leave that to the universe and I don't know if, does that happen every day at Twitter?

• 52:40Speaker 01

  What, which?

• 52:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Jack's, you know, physical transformations.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  You know, it's funny, I had-

• 52:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  He's a man of mystery.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  I lost power for the entirety of Analyst Day, which is like the worst possible time for the utility company to like ruin the neighborhood's power. So I actually wasn't able to watch on video, so I didn't see the transformation. But I will say, I think Jack has earned the right to wear whatever the fuck he wants.

• 53:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, well, we'll end it with that. That was a good exclamation point for a really interesting conversation. Kayvon, I appreciate you joining. It is great to hear from you guys and be able to discuss this stuff. This is the longest, I think, we've spoken before. And I appreciate you making yourself available. I've seen you in all the spaces. I hear there's a rule that you have to join every space that gets started, so I hope we can pick up the conversation at some point over there. But until then, I do appreciate you coming on the show.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me. I've always enjoyed our conversations. I remember the first time we chatted was about-

• 53:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  We're on the roof.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  The rise of Periscope in Turkey.

• 53:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, that's where it began.

• 53:45Speaker 01

  It's not where it began, but it's where-

• 53:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  The idea, the idea came from.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, the idea came, the idea was part in part inspired by my trip to Turkey. And then it was one of the biggest countries that kind of blew up. It wasn't the first, but it was one of the countries that really blew up in the first few months. So anyway, our conversations have morphed quite a bit since then, but-

• 54:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Definitely.

• 54:05Speaker 01

  Always great to keep in touch.

• 54:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Always great to chat. Yeah, that was fascinating to watch how Turkey really grabbed hold to Periscope after your experience trying to travel there, ended up influencing the creation of the app. It's a fun story. I'll put it in the show notes. Well, this has been great. Thanks again. Let's do it again soon. Thanks, everybody for listening. If it's your first time here, please subscribe. We have new conversations with tech insiders and outside agitators every Wednesday. If you're a long time listener and you want to rate us, we of course appreciate that. Thank you to Nick Watney for editing the show and for Red Circle for hosting and selling ads. And thanks to you all for listening. We will be back next Wednesday. With a new episode of Big Technology Podcast. Until then, take care.

• 54:59Speaker 02

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