Facebook vs. Clubhouse vs. Spotify vs. Apple: Casey Newton Returns

Platformer's Casey Newton returns to Big Technology Podcast to discuss the intensifying battle among Facebook, Clubhouse, Spotify, Apple, and Twitter in the new, social audio space. Fresh off a conversation with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Newton discusses Facebook's plans, Clubhouse's potential for longevity, and what empowering the individual vs. the institution really means. Plus we discuss this week's big Apple release event. 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?

  This episode is brought to you by Genesis. What does it actually take to put Agentic 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 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?

• 0:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Akash is an open cloud that provides easy access, flexibility, and peace of mind. That's how companies like Razer were able to cut their inference cost by 15 times. Visit akash.network/alex for a free consultation. That's akash.network/alex for a free consultation.

• 1:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Casey Newton, good to see you again.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  Nice to be here. Am I the first two-time guest on this podcast?

• 1:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, Kevin Roos beat you to that, but he did write a book. But you're officially a friend of the pod right now, so this is a hallowed status. Appreciate you doing it.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  Well, I'm glad you've reached friend of the pod status. Nice to be back.

• 1:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, here we go.

• 1:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello and welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. Our guest today is the editor of Platformer, a Substack publication he founded soon after joining us here at the Big Technology Podcast as we launched the podcast last August. Casey Newton is one of my favorite people to talk tech with, and he's fresh off an interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on his new Discord server, SciChannel, or as I like to call it, SciChen. Casey, welcome to the show.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  Hey, Alex, thanks for having me back.

• 2:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it's great having you back. Congratulations on the launch of Sidechance. It's getting a lot of buzz. People are saying good things about it. And I'm excited to speak with you about it and everything going on in the tech world.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's been a really busy week for me personally, but just sort of the wider world of tech, lots going on.

• 2:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, this is definitely one of those weeks where it was like, all right, let me speak with someone who really understands like all the moving pieces among the big tech companies because they're all at war with each other. They're releasing a ton of products. And I couldn't imagine a better guest. So thanks for coming on.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  Last time we talked a lot about fixing journalism. The good news is since then journalism's been fixed. So now we can talk about tech.

• 2:46Speaker 01

  Thanks and no small part to your efforts. So thank you for that.

• 2:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's right. Yeah, we take the credit here. Take it. Okay, so let's get with the news first. So Apple had their big event. They released new multicolored computers, a ripoff of Tile, which helps you find stuff you lose, and a purple iPhone. Is this impressive? Like, should we be impressed with Apple? Because I was watching the reactions flow by the Twitter timeline. And it was like typical, like, oh, Apple has raised it to the next level. And I'm like looking there and I'm like, okay, they made the Macs a little faster. They're now different colors and the iPhone's purple. What am I missing here?

• 3:23Speaker 01

  Um, I don't think you're missing anything. Apple has a pretty familiar playbook. They make things sort of faster, sleeker, shinier. And they did that again. But look, I will say, as somebody who has a seven-year-old iMac, who I love very much, I have been looking for an excuse to replace it. And when those M1 laptops came out last year, reviewers lost their minds. Like, you know, laptop reviewers were not...

• 3:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  And that's the chip. M1 is the faster chip that Apple's made, yeah.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  Right. And like before last year, like laptop reviewers, you know, they might like one laptop a little bit more than the next one. But that was a very like stable mature industry. Then all of a sudden, these new chips came out and people were saying like, you know, this laptop lasts for two days. It's like the biggest advancement laptops we've seen in forever. So I'm excited. To read the reviews of these new iMacs, I probably won't buy this one because this is like sort of the junior model. I think I'm going to want to like the thick boy, but it's a it's a it's a move in the nice direction. And I really like the colors, particularly because there's now going to be a purple iMac and a purple iPhone. And it really is pretty close to the platform or brand colors. So you have to respect that.

• 4:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Sorry, you're going to go with that and match?

• 4:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  One thing I was thinking about is like, it's actually perfect timing for Apple because we're all going to start at some point within the next year, hopefully, fingers crossed, spending time in each other's homes again. And it's like the ultimate status symbol. Oh, you got the green Mac. I can't believe it. Let me take a look. And that stuff is just going to explode because Apple's all about status, you know, in terms of people buying these products.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  When I was in journalism school a long time ago, I walked into the newsroom at the Daily Northwestern and it was just this candy colored swirl of iMacs, like the original like Bondi blue iMacs. And, you know, there was orange and green and red and all of it. And it really is just like kind of a fond memory from my my history of computing. So I think it's cool that Apple moved back there, although it is weird to think that this is just a cycle where it's like some years the computers are in color and some years they're not. And we'll just endlessly swing that pendulum back and forth.

• 5:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's so weird. A couple of years ago, they released like the these new iPhones with the different color

• 5:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  backs that you could get and they had like space black and then just like matte black. And I think it was Charlie Warzel, who is who's now a member of your side channel community, was a colleague of mine at BuzzFeed and he's like, only Apple could convince us that they've given like two names to the color black and people are going to go buy them like crazy. And turns out they did. So that company knows how to market, that's for sure.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, they do.

• 6:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  I guess like I'm waiting to see what they're doing with AR and self-driving. But I just can't imagine, maybe, maybe, you know, time will prove me wrong here. But I can't imagine anytime within the next 10, 20 years, people are going to really take to wearing AR glasses in public. We, yeah, I just don't think that-

• 6:20Speaker 01

  You don't think in 20 years they can figure that out?

• 6:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  I, you know, I think that the creepy factor that they had with Google Glass is still pretty, pretty present. So I don't want somebody who I'm hanging out with, you know, looking at me in their glasses, telling them like everything about me, pulling up like the latest Google search. But maybe I'm wrong and maybe it's not going to be, you know, person to person. Maybe it will be. You use it outside. That would be interesting.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  Well, that's kind of where Snap started with this, right? Like, we'll build it into sunglasses because the presumption is you're outdoors. There's already a reduced expectation of privacy. I think that was smart. I think there are a lot of good principled reasons to not want AR glasses that have surveillance tech and facial recognition tech and all that. And I just think we are 100% going to lose that fight.

• 7:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, so you think it's inevitable. One of the interesting things, we spoke with a person who founded Google Glass or was running Google X on the land of the giants podcast with Recode for our moonshots episode. And he goes, our main mistake was doing this stuff outside. Should have just, sorry, marketing it inside. We should have marketed it outside. Because as soon as people started wearing them into bars and stuff like that, people freaked out. And maybe because it was Google and Apple has been doing this big privacy push and getting you to trust them. And that might be a way for them to set the ground, you know, in order to be able to release AR glasses that people won't have a backlash. Again, certainly it'll be easier for them than Facebook. But I guess time will tell. And they haven't released anything yet. They've

• 7:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  been working on it for like forever. So.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  I mean, I've like talked to the executives who are working on this stuff. And they just sort of say, like, the technology isn't there yet. Like, it like, we're just sort of at the bleeding edge of what this stuff can do. And they need more battery power than they have. They need better display technology than they have. They have a lot of user interface things to figure out. So there's just kind of a lot to do. And I think it's definitely going to take another probably three to five years before we have something that feels like a decent one or 2.0 product.

• 8:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  All right. Well, we'll have you back on, hopefully before then, but definitely three to five years from now. And we'll see if you show up wearing the glasses because we'll be doing these in person. So another thing that Apple released, it seems like they've finally rediscovered the fact that they have a podcast app. You know, I know that most of our listeners listen to this show on the Apple Podcast app. And for a long time, you know, it was like, well, what are they doing with this thing? And I personally have switched over. I use a combination of Overcast and Spotify. But Apple all of a sudden thinks that podcasting is important. And I like to know from your perspective, what's going on here, Casey? Because you have Apple getting into this. You have Facebook getting into this. You just had that conversation with Zuckerberg. You have Spotify, obviously, all in, although their big investment in Joe Rogan seems to have

• 9:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  had diminishing returns because his apparently interest in his stuff is going down. You have Clubhouse, you have Twitter, and everybody's into this now. So what are these companies seeing in podcasting? It's been around for a hell of a long time. Apple basically invented it and then neglected it for a long while. So what's going on?

• 9:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think that there's like a really long answer to that question that accounts for many different trends. I do think that, one, this is just a media format that took a long time to become a habit in the lives of people. I still think something like 40% of Americans do not regularly listen to podcasts or maybe have never heard a podcast. So it's one of those things where it's very big, but there is still a lot of market share to go grab, which is always really exciting if you are a tech behemoth that is already saturated, you know, whatever market you were born into.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  And then I think there's a technological piece of the sort of AirPods generation, right? Like, there was an amazing survey of teenagers that came out a couple of weeks ago that said like, something like 70 or 80% of American teenagers have AirPods. Like, the penetration is just insane. And of course, they become a status symbol. And if you're Apple, you want to be feeding that beast. All of these companies do, you know, whether it's Facebook or Clubhouse or whoever else.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  So that's, I think, sort of the hardware piece on the tech side. And then there's a software piece on the tech side, which Zuckerberg has this theory, which I think is interesting. He first said on Clubhouse, and he repeated it to me yesterday. He was sort of like, when you sort of like, think of the fundamental building blocks of social products, so like text, video, audio, he's like, there's an intersection between that and then every audience size, and there's a product to build there. And so, you know, Clubhouse is like, at the intersection of, like, massive audience, live audio, but then there'll also probably be products for like, short-form audio, you know, with massive audience, which like, Facebook is gonna go now build. So, you know, these folks are always just looking

• 11:27Speaker 01

  for blue oceans to go, you know, find and build stuff in, and audio is having a moment.

• 11:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it's really interesting. I didn't pick up on that, that there's 40% of people that haven't listened to podcasts. I guess they're doing this old-school thing, radio, for the time being, but maybe the days are numbered. So, once in a while, you know, I cause I have, in the car, I have like, one of these Bluetooth things that plugs into the cigarette lighter, old-school like that. And then like, there'll be some, usually faith-based radio station that's inhabiting the frequency, and so I can't listen to music anymore. So I just turn on the radio. I'm like, man, this is a pretty joyous experience. This is nice.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  I mean, when the radio is playing the song you want to hear, there are a few things better in life.

• 12:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And then the AirPods thing is also interesting. I don't know how Apple turned those into something that was so cool. They had so much potential to be nerdy, but they're definitely, I mean, do you think, okay, there were all these memes of how AirPods were like, the shit, you know, if you were wearing AirPods, you were cool. And someone proposed to, you know, did a fake proposal to somebody and opened up the AirPods case, and there were the AirPods, and all the friends went nuts. But was that a plant by Apple marketing, or do you think that was organic?

• 12:41Speaker 01

  I don't remember this video.

• 12:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, it's amazing. Yeah, a guy gets down on one knee, opens up his AirPods case, and there are two shiny AirPods in their holsters. And he's proposing to the person standing up next to him. I don't know if she said yes or not.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  I mean, that's, that sounds like a wonderful love story to me.

• 12:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And let's talk a little bit about Apple's offering in particular.

• 13:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Maybe this is just me being grumpy about Apple Day, which is, I guess, something we do often on the podcast here. But what Apple wants podcasters to do is provide an exclusive feed of content to people who use Apple's podcast app. And then they, you know, you, you get, if you're a podcaster, you pay Apple a fee, you pay them a cut. It seems a little ludicrous to me like we have, you know, we have, I think, the majority of listeners of this podcast that are listening on Apple. But we also have people listening on Spotify, a real good chunk of people listening on Spotify. We got Overcast, we have Stitcher, sometimes people listen on the desktop. And if I'm going to create an exclusive offering to folks, I want to make that available to everyone.

• 13:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  And I think that if you're just making it available to people listening on Apple devices, then you're really limiting, you know, what you might be able to, to do and the people you might be able to reach. So how does this have any chance of, of working?

• 14:01Speaker 01

  So two chances. One, as you know, Apple is the biggest podcast app, right? So like the fact that your, most of your listeners are on Apple podcasts is not an accident. Like that's just the default for where everyone has the most listeners, right? And, you know, I think eMarketer predicts that this year, Apple is going to have 28 million of monthly users of the podcast app. So that's not a bad market for you to go after, right? And if Apple can go find you many more customers than the, the next brand, then maybe it would be worth the cut to you. The second way that they're hoping to get you is just that payments are so seamless, right?

• 14:43Speaker 01

  Like your, your Apple account, you know, you basically can't use an iPhone unless you plug in the debit card. And so you're going to have essentially one tap access to paid content, which is a lot easier than the, you know, some of these like crazy workarounds and rigmarole that the other podcasts and Patreons and podcast players have implemented. So, you know, between those two things, I do think they're going to see some decent amount of pickup, or at least people trying out paid subscriptions.

• 15:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, that like look into the phone, get the Face ID thing, do the double click, you're paying for a podcast you like. That could be appealing. Okay, I'll give it a chance to work. I think it's gonna work. Now, a lot of this stuff seems to have been something that emerged, like the excitement around audio seems to be something that emerged after Clubhouse came out. And all of a sudden, there are all these dynamic live conversations happening on Clubhouse. And, you know, people are calling it the cure to loneliness during the pandemic. And then Twitter's like, oh, we're gonna copy that. Facebook's like now saying, we're gonna copy that. You and I have done the Twitter Spaces version. I actually think it's awesome. I really enjoyed it. But I also wonder about the future of these things. Clubhouse in particular.

• 15:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  It has all these big competitors now coming in on its territory. Facebook, Twitter, maybe Spotify at some point. There's another one that's built, you know, specifically for sports. What's it called? Like Locker Room, right? It just got acquired. And we're seeing right now in the data that Clubhouse downloads are down significantly. I've done some channel checks, as they say, in the business, and it seems like usage is down on Clubhouse. And people are like, is this an everyday thing? Is this a one every three day thing? And I do wonder what's gonna happen when we all start going to dinner again and whether we're gonna really want to sit and listen to Marc Andreessen talk about the good old days for our Wednesday or Thursday night activity.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  So do you think that this thing is gonna, you know, we know it will survive. It's got all this funding. It has energy. Does it have a chance of, does it still have a chance of thriving? Or do you have like some, some pulled back expectations, given what we've seen recently with Clubhouse?

• 16:53Speaker 01

  Like, anything can work. I've been wrong about social apps before. I thought TikTok was gonna die after a year. Like, Clubhouse is now valued at $4 billion. They have a lot of money in the bank. That just means they can take more swings, right? Like, if Clubhouse is circling the drain, they could try to pull another rabbit out of the hat, right? So like, I will just sort of stipulate all that upfront. That said, like, I share most of your feelings about this. I started doing my stuff over on Twitter too, because everyone who follows me on Twitter is on Twitter. Twitter is on Android. Why am I rebuilding my following on Clubhouse? You know what I mean?

• 17:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, totally.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  Conversations on Twitter Spaces sound identical to conversations on Clubhouse. You know, it's not like they have some cool features over there that I'm missing out on. You know, they have started like a creator payments program, but that's like kind of still in the early test phase. So, you know, but there are like a million problems with Clubhouse. There are a lot of really great Twitter threads about sort of everything that's going wrong. And yeah, I sort of, I don't know how you feel about stunts on your podcast, but I honestly want to just open up Clubhouse right now and see what the top conversation that it like recommends to me is. And we can just see whether-

• 17:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  I feel great about stunts. Let's do it.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  All right. We're doing a stunt right now. So I'm just opening up my phone and we're going to see what is the top recommended Clubhouse conversation for me to join right now. And so I've opened it up and it's, okay, we have the future of climate journalism. We have Boss Talk M&A Edition, which is-

• 18:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm seeing that too.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  That's an Andreessen, like, show, I guess.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  Talking about the Chauvin verdict, which is, you know, definitely relevant. And then something called Art is Dope, which, you know, who can disagree with that? So, you know, like, I would say that's not a bad mix of things. There have been other times when I've opened up the app and the number one recommendation was in Mandarin, a language that I don't speak. You know, mostly I just kind of see a lot of generic business wisdom style podcasts, which have no appeal to me. I keep calling them podcasts. What should we call them? Rooms, shows, clubhouses, whatever?

• 19:01Speaker 01

  So, you know, the content isn't, the content isn't great, you know? And they need to, I mean, it seems like that's something they should work on, but I don't know that it would actually fix their problems.

• 19:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And yeah, at the end of the day, like, if you're sitting at home and that's your only thing to do, talk to maybe, maybe talk to people, get on stage, build followers, extremely exciting. When you have a chance to go see friends, go see a show, go to a sports game, you know, kick back with a friend and watch some TV or watch a movie. Clubhouse just seems so boring.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  And once in a while, it's gonna be great. Like, I watched this one conversation with Balaji and Zainab, you know, debating about East Coast, West Coast and the future of all this stuff. And I thought it was unbelievable. On an appointment basis, yes, awesome. But as something that I just kind of open up because that's the app that I want to hang out in right now, definitely not interested. I think, I think it's gonna get, I really think it's gonna suffer in a big way. Once we really get back.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Yes. And, you know, you say that, and I, can I brag for one second?

• 19:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  I'm getting my

• 20:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's what we're here for.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  I'm getting back, I'm getting my first vaccine shot on Friday and I'm like thrilled out of my mind.

• 20:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's, um, this stuff is moving fast here in the US.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Not as fast elsewhere, unfortunately.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  But it, you know, it's so, it was interesting. At first, it seemed like Israel was way ahead. And then we seemed, you know, doing, like, we were doing terrible. And the folks were saying we're four to six weeks behind. And we're literally like four to six weeks behind what they're up to. And, you know, we've been mass producing this stuff. Obviously, more, uh, more investment needs to happen in terms of, you know, the way that these vaccines operate. But this is gonna go global super, super fast.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  Yep. Well, I mean, I certainly hope that that's the case. Like, it seems like there's a lot of, you know, struggling, uh, developing countries that we could probably ship some vaccines to.

• 20:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  But, but I definitely share your hope.

• 20:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  So, um, last part of this segment, the Facebook pitch. You know, it's interesting because we're, we're seeing that this stuff, I think you and I seem to share an agreement that the whole Clubhouse thing, you know, might not take off in the way that a lot of people anticipated. Like, all those, I remember the early days when, like, Elon Musk was on there and people were like, this is the end of media. There's no more journalism. It's all about Marc Andreessen and Sriram interviewing people. You know, obviously, that's, that's not gonna be the case. We're gonna still have, like, journalism, we'll still have media. And it just seems like, okay, Facebook, uh, one of, okay, one of my perspectives was Zuckerberg stopped by Clubhouse one day and then said, oh, this is cool. You guys go ahead and copy that. And like, they're already, like, they're, they're on their way to copying it.

• 21:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  And it might be on the decline. And it just seemed The set of audio features that Facebook wants to launch, which you talked about with Zuckerberg,

• 21:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  they seem very uninspiring to me. It's basically like clubhouse clone. Okay, well, not very bullish on that. Little audio clips that come to you in a ranked feed. I think a company called Anchor used to do that. And I just found it exceptionally painful to like hop into different audio clips and be like, okay, who is this? What are they talking? Because the audio really stuff is really about relationships. And then, then they're going to do some sort of podcast recommendation service, which I'm personally excited about. But I don't think it's really a game changer. So what do you think about Facebook's effort here? Am I underestimating what they're going to roll out?

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Maybe. I mean, I think the thing that has the most potential is that feed of short form audio clips. Could you build an audio TikTok? And I think about a couple of reasons why maybe that would be the case. Pandora has comedy stations that are just clips of like five or six minutes of audio that are very popular. Why couldn't you just create that? But instead of like licensing clips from Patton Oswalt, you just get users to create stuff and then, you know, let them monetize somehow. They're also going to build a lot of creative tools for that, by the way, right? Like, one of the reasons TikTok worked was they lowered the barriers for creation. What can Facebook do in that regard? So I'm willing to give that one a shot, right? Like, I always think you're on shaky ground when you're evaluating

• 23:09Speaker 01

  products that you've never seen. So that's where I sort of think they have the most potential. And like, by the way, it would be such a huge morale booster for them if they could create a product like that, because, you know, obviously, the conventional wisdom about Facebook is they don't invent anything. So if they could, you know, make this happen in the United States, that'd be good for them. You know, the other stuff, I'm basically on the same page with you. It would be great if they could, you know, help a lot of podcasters grow their audiences, and that sort of thing. What does that say?

• 23:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I respect the strategy. Like, so many of the things that they do don't work, right? The dating thing never really took off, as far as I know. Maybe it's popular.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  No, I'm famously still single.

• 23:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, so, well, I don't know if a dating app will help that.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  You could be right.

• 23:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  You were just named as one of the most eligible bachelors in San Francisco.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  I know.

• 23:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Congratulations.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  I got like two DMs on Instagram, and that's it. Shows you the power of the traditional media these days.

• 24:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, well, anyway, well, I think we talked about Tinder last time also.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, suffice to say, it's always on my mind.

• 24:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  So did those DMs turn into anything?

• 24:16Speaker 01

  No, but it's okay. I have some, some new DMs going on on Tinder.

• 24:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  There, there are once again, irons in the fire.

• 24:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, okay, that's great. And now, now that we'll be back in person, we'll be on the way. So dating didn't work. What else have they done recently? I don't know their whole push into, into video. I know Mark Zuckerberg was telling you that, oh, it's worked out, you know, extremely well. I don't see it. They're pushing to, you know, doing their own news tab. Also seems to be kind of flat. Marketplace has worked though. And, you know, I think, and Stories has worked. So it only takes a few hits for them to really, you know, dramatically improve what they're doing on, on that platform. So.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  Also, just like the core business is doing great and they get tons of usage for, you know, all of their core products. They're, they're desperate to be seen as an innovative company though. And so that's why this stuff is so important to them.

• 25:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And now that they've banned QAnon, they have to find some new engagement plan.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 25:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Did you watch that? Sorry, this is non sequitur. Did you watch that QAnon documentary on HBO?

• 25:18Speaker 01

  No, one of my favorite like extremism writers gave it like a pan and I was like, no, thanks then.

• 25:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think it's just the extremist writers are jealous. Like they've been, you know, the only one seeing this for a long time. And now they're like, watching this documentary guy parachute in and get amazing access to like, the people that created 8chan. And I, I, you know, it was called Q into the Storm, but it really felt like an 8chan documentary to me. I learned so much from it. I thought it was really interesting.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  For what it's worth, my landlord, Kara Swisher, also really loved it.

• 25:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. Yeah. So we'll have to get Kara on to talk about it.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, she would love to.

• 25:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, her partner in crime, Scott Galloway, will be on sometime next month. So.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  Oh, nice.

• 26:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  We can get Kara on as well. Okay, let's take a break. After the break, when we come back, I want to talk a little bit more about your conversation with Zuckerberg. Specifically why they're courting folks who are writing newsletters and podcasts and whether we can trust them. So let's discuss that right after the break here on the Big Technology Podcast. This episode is brought to you by AVPoint. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Co-pilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data. And most teams have no single way to see it, secure it, and prove it's under control. That's exactly what AVPoint does. For 25 years, they've been the trusted layer

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• 27:30Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 28:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Learn how to stop online threats before they become real-world attacks. The link's in the show notes.

• 28:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here for the second half of the Big Technology Podcast with friend of the pod, Casey Newton. Hey, Casey.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  Nice to be back.

• 28:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's great to have you back. So the first half, we talked a lot about, you know, this big podcast war or audio war between Facebook and Spotify and Apple and Clubhouse and Twitter. So let's zoom in on Facebook because you did just sit with Zuckerberg or you discorded with Zuckerberg and talked a little bit about this. So, you know, actually, let's start here. You know, one of the interesting things I found about your conversation with Zuckerberg was how enthusiastic he was about the individual versus the institution. What did you make of that? Basically, he was saying that power in this world is moving from institutions, you know, read between the lines, stuff like the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall

• 29:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Street Journal, to individuals, people like you. So what did you make of that? And is that good?

• 29:20Speaker 01

  I mean, it's good for some people. It's bad for some people. It enabled my business. It enabled your business. On the flip side, you know, all the institutions of democracy are under attack all around the world. And, you know, Facebook probably plays some role in accelerating the attacks on that. So, you know, there is no one simple answer to all of these questions. But I think it's worth highlighting that empowering individuals over institutions is Facebook's business model. That is what hyper-targeted personal advertising allows them to do because it means that really small businesses can find their exact specific customers. And, you know, Facebook then has this incredible, impenetrable business. So,

• 30:03Speaker 01

  you know, I do think, yeah, so I do think, you know, that Mark believes all this stuff very strongly. And, you know, if you listen, like, he has a pretty measured answer to that question. But I just also think that, like, all CEOs ultimately wind up arguing in favor of the business model and like, all principles flow from there.

• 30:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and that's why it was interesting to me to hear that. Mark said something like, all optimistic views of the future involve empowering individuals. And I'm like, thinking about this and I'm like, okay, great. I'm an individual. I'm not in a publication. This is awesome. And then I was like, someone wrote a tweet that was like, well, you know, Facebook's wanted to empower individuals for a long time and it hasn't really worked out well. And actually, it has worked out really well, but those individuals are cute or whoever it is behind that.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  Right, it's Ben Shapiro and Dan Bongino.

• 30:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, exactly. So I'm curious, like, okay, you know, this individual thing sounds good, but then you start to think about it. Is there a way that it turns out? You know, I mean, obviously, like, the individuals that need, that Facebook empowers don't need to be ideologically aligned with me, but I also think that this has sort of been questionably successful, the whole empower the individual thing. Is that close minded to me? I mean, it's weird because we're not publications. So we're not like old school journalists standing up on the hill and being like, everybody must read our editorial page. That's the only way they'll be informed. But on the other hand, it seems fraught.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  Well, yes, it is. You know, I think if you have 10 million Instagram followers and you make a lot of brand deals, you probably feel like the shift individuals has worked out really great for you because the thing you're doing wasn't actually a job before Instagram. And now you're rich, right? So that's like a pretty good outcome for your life. You know, but again, we do see all of these other trends, which, you know, just from my perspective, have mostly to do with the rise of right wing extremism, fascism, authoritarianism around the world. And that does seem to go hand in hand with the arrival of the internet and its spread.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  So, you know, I like, I feel like every question about Facebook is on some level trying to weigh morally the good that it does versus the bad that it does. And I just think the human mind is like very poorly suited to this task because the thing itself is so big that we don't really have any mechanism for processing that.

• 32:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, you asked Zuckerberg about that at the end of your conversation. Can you just summarize what his remark was and whether you found it credible or optimistic from your perspective?

• 32:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, what he said was.

• 32:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  You were basically like, how do you sleep at night? I mean, some form of that.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  Um, not my words, but I did ask him.

• 32:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's a good question.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  I did ask him. How he makes the case to himself that Facebook is good for the world. Because I know he makes it to his employees and I've heard him make the case to his employees. And it's not so much that I thought that he makes a different case to himself than he makes to his employees. I just wanted to phrase it that way to introduce a hint of like the personal into it. And what he said was that essentially, social networks do good and they do bad. But the bad that they do is largely to institutions. And the story of this time is being written by the losing institutions. And because of that, we have a distorted perspective on what is happening.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  And then if you were to ask, you know, the small businesses that are thriving on Facebook. If you were to ask you or me, who are thriving in this new world, uh, maybe we would tell a different story. And that was basically the answer that that he gave.

• 33:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it is interesting seeing there's, there has been this huge institutional backlash or sizable institutional backlash to things like Substack. And I can just sit there, you know, writing Substack newsletter and I'm like, are you sure that this is really the target here?

• 34:04Speaker 01

  I mean, you know, American newsrooms lost something like 16,000 jobs last year, according to the New Yorker. And then Substack comes along and probably creates like 300 new jobs in journalism. And the American press is like, is this the end of journalism? And it's like, is this like, what, what, what? Come on.

• 34:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I know. But it is interesting because some of the folks that are carrying the banner happen to be extremely antagonistic to the mainstream media, quote unquote. Uh, I think it's good to have individuals to check the power of these institutions because we've been in them. They can have group think, they can, you know, pick up narratives. Uh, they can create environments where people don't feel comfortable sharing the fact that they think everybody's thinking about an issue wrong. And so they never really engage with that. Uh, but like, I wish there was a way, and maybe this is me having wishful thinking, but I wish there was a way where the individual could check these bigger institutions and it ends up being a constructive dialogue as opposed to a war.

• 35:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Because it often ends up in this war situation.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, like, you will never catch me on Twitter complaining about the New York Times or the Washington Post. Like, I do not think that it is worth my time to do that, because even if you're right about your criticism, you're just sort of giving ammo to the worst people in the world, you know, which sort of sounds like, you know, there's some sort of journalist code of silence. I just think it's better to go out and make the journalism that you want to see in the world, right? It is so easy to criticize, say that you would have done the story differently, you would have interviewed different people, you would have written a different headline. Like, we're journalists, we can actually just go do that. So that is the thing that we should do, rather than go on Twitter and

• 35:55Speaker 01

  be like, oh, the New York Times has done it again, right? Like, there is actually not a lot of positive benefit to society that comes from doing that.

• 36:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Totally. And I noticed you didn't, as far as I know, you didn't really weigh in on like this, the big Substack controversy over the past few months.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  I don't. And candidly, it's because I have no desire in being closely associated with Substack. It's not a secret that I am on Substack. I enjoy Substack. The founders are, have been great to me. I really enjoy talking with them. I'm very grateful for the services they, that they have built. But I see myself as somebody who's building a business, that I want to transcend Substack. It may not always be on Substack. So, you know, when people start throwing blows at Substack, you know, for me to get on Twitter and start carrying water for them, it's like, you know, Substack is, yeah, it was the meat, exactly.

• 36:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And for listeners, just that, the context here is that Substack has been paying some folks advances in order to write newsletters on their site, and they don't disclose, and some people have been upset about that, because of who they might be funding. I don't have funding from Substack. Casey, do you? You have like a small subsidy from them?

• 37:02Speaker 01

  I get a small healthcare subsidy for them, which is guaranteed for the next few months. Like, basically, it could expire in October, we'll see. And then I'm part of, I'm, I'm part of their legal defender program, although interestingly, that's really more of a gentleman's agreement than anything else. Like, I haven't, like, signed paperwork with them that says they'll definitely defend me if I get sued, so. But yeah, but, and I disclose all that, like, on my other system.

• 37:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And your, your subscription revenue, they're taking 10%, so I'm sure it more than pays for that type of stuff. And yeah, I go into the group chats with my friend and my friends and being like, oh, I gotta weigh in on this. And they say the same thing you do, which is like, let the journalism that you do speak for itself. And don't get involved in these fights, which I think is the right move. So I'm grateful, grateful to friends. So, so I guess as we close the podcast, as we round third base and head home. Baseball season's, you know.

• 37:56Speaker 01

  I mean, you know, I love a sportsman.

• 37:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  I know, I'm just doing it for you, Casey. So, so now Facebook seems like it's interested in getting in on this whole movement. It wants to do newsletters. Zuckerberg talked about that with you. It wants to do podcasts. We know that Facebook traditionally has sucked content creators in only to pull the rug out from under their feet. So the question around Facebook is always, you know, why should we trust Facebook? Do you have any, make the case for them? What, what would, what would compel anyone to trust them to go join this product suite?

• 38:33Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, the thing that they've said that is really interesting to me is that they are now pro data portability. So if you start one of these Facebook newsletters, you're going to be able to take your list with you if you want to go, which is the same deal that Substack offers, but it's like a pretty radical shift for Facebook in particular, right? Like you cannot take your Instagram followers with you. You cannot take your Facebook page followers with you. But if you have newsletter followers, you will be able to take them with you. So that I think is interesting. The second thing that they're saying, although they have not disclosed the details, is basically they're going to take a smaller cut of your revenue than Substack is. So Substack charges us 10%. I think there's a chance that Facebook charges 0%, maybe it'll be 3% or 5%, but it's going to be less.

• 39:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think it's likely zero.

• 39:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, so let's say that it's zero. You know, if you're making six figures on Substack, that could be meaningful revenue that you would rather keep. And if Facebook makes a pretty good seamless product, you know, that can be appealing.

• 39:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And the reason why I think it's going to be zero is because Facebook's best ad product is custom audiences, where you can upload an email list and then they can find people that look like those people and you pay to advertise to them. And if Facebook could show, using our ad product, you get a conversion rate that gives you a return on your investment. That's profitable to you.

• 39:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  There would be no reason for the folks that are doing this not to go bananas and spend money like crazy on Facebook's ad platform. So they're going to make way more money on the ad product than they will charging us a percentage. And when you do charge 0%, you're much more compelling in terms of a place to go than Substack.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  That's a great point.

• 40:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  And Zuckerberg was also like, he's like, we're focusing way more on the creator than the consumer, which was interesting to me. And I think that's why, because he wants that ad money.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  I love it. This is a, this is a great take. I'm, I'm just here to applaud it.

• 40:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Thank you, Casey.

• 40:30Speaker 01

  I have not thought about this, by the way. This is, this is breaking news for me, but I think you're totally right.

• 40:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, we'll see how it plays out. So would you, would you ever think of moving there?

• 40:39Speaker 01

  You know what I like to say is there's a lot I'll do for $10 million. So, um, you know.

• 40:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Is that your saying?

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's my mantra. Yeah.

• 40:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  And the, the phone lines are open. But I mean, look, Facebook is like, kind of my core beat company. I write about platforms broadly speaking, but Facebook, I think, will sort of always be my home base. It's just kind of what I do. You know, so if I had some sort of financial arrangement with Facebook, like immediately, I think I alienate a huge percentage of my customers. So I think it's probably better for me personally to maintain my distance. Like, you know, as I said to Mark yesterday, the whole reason I started a newsletter was to become less dependent on platforms rather than more.

• 41:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Exactly. Yeah, I thought that's the same thing. I was like, the whole idea behind newsletters and podcasts is you build this direct relationship. And you, you don't want to get back into feed wars, number one. And number two, like, so one thing that annoys me is like, there's been all this energy to build towards it. And like, now you have Facebook and Apple coming in and taking their cut. And it's like,

• 41:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, I understand they can help accelerate and, you know, move things. But I also like, thinking even about Clubhouse or Twitter Spaces, like, this is yet another case where people who create things end up having the value sucked up by platforms and become disintermediated some way from their audience, even if the emails are portable, even if, you know, you're making a ton of money on, through Apple's podcasting thing, hypothetically.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  So yesterday, so you know, we're doing this thing, side channel, it's a shared Discord server.

• 42:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, yeah. Before, yeah, before you get into the story, why don't you pitch side channel, then we'll.

• 42:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Because now that you've mentioned it, let's get into it.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  So, um, you know, I have a paid newsletter. We have a paid newsletter. I think you think about a lot is like, how do I make this more valuable to people over time, right? Like I charge you a price and you know, what I'm selling you for that price to start with is four emails a week, right? It's just free, it's one email a week. Maybe you don't find the idea of more emails for me all that compelling. So what can I do to get you a little bit more interested? So I reached out to some folks who I knew who also had paid newsletters and I said, what if we started a Discord server? Where we each created channels related to our beats? And then if anyone subscribed to any one of our newsletters, they could have access to all of those channels.

• 42:55Speaker 01

  So we could create a community and I went out to people who I thought were sort of on beats adjacent to mine. So we have, um, you know, Ann Helen Peterson, who focuses on culture and remote work. Charlie Wurzel focuses on the attention economy. Nick Quah focuses on podcasting. Delia Kai focuses on media. Kim Zetter, cybersecurity. Eric Newcomer, startups and venture capital. So we have these folks who are sort of like adjacent to the realm that I care about in interesting ways. And so like, so are their communities. And so now we have this Discord server and open on Monday and people come in, you can check out all those channels. We have some shared channels like jobs, we have a lounge, we have a news channel where you can just talk about the news. But then we also like for platformer, we have a channel where you can talk about like basically today in platform news.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  I have a channel where you can just share good tweets. And then I have a members only room. So if you just want to talk with other platformer readers, like we have that room too.

• 43:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  Love it.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  So, you know, we, we kicked that off, uh, you know, a day ago. And on day one, we had 2,500 people walking through the door. And what's so cool about it is not only do we have a place to do text chat, but we have this stage where any of the co-hosts at any time can hop up on that stage and talk about current events, which gets me to the point that I was about to make to you.

• 44:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Great. I'm glad that you were able to bring it full circle, but I wanted to get the side channel plug in, but yes, go.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  Totally. So. You know, basically, at the end of the day, Eric Newcomer, my co-host, had me up onto the stage and, you know, was just asking me about the Zuckerberg interview, how did it come about, you know, various things about it. And then we just took questions from readers and we had this one awesome reader, you know, not a person who I knew, but he just said that he was basically so galled by what Facebook is doing here because he was like, Casey, like, you did everything you could, like, after platforms really eroded the value of the open web, to get away from the platforms, and then here Facebook comes back and they says, we're gonna take that thing too. And that, that was super galling to him. And I, I feel that a little bit myself, you know,

• 44:59Speaker 01

  but I'm also just a realist about the basic forces of the market, which is, somebody's always coming to eat your lunch, you know? And so, like, yes, it sucks that so few of us have stable jobs that we feel like we can count on, but I'm, I'm 20 years into a media career, man. Like, I've, I've just accepted the fact that nothing is ever gonna be stable for any period of time.

• 45:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I agree. It always feels a little bit like surfing to me, where like, you just get up on the board and you try to have fun while you can, and eventually you're gonna either wipe out or hit the shore, but enjoy the ride while you can.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, a story you never see is a journalist has retirement party. And you know why? It's because they either got laid off or canceled. Those are the only two ways to leave this business.

• 45:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  True, or buyout, basically the same idea.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 45:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's true, journalist has retirement party.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  No, the story's never, it's never been written. You can look, look it up.

• 45:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, great. Well, uh, this has been great. Did we miss anything?

• 46:00Speaker 01

  No, I mean, look, I just wanna say, like, I think side channel is a super interesting idea. I hope other folks try it. Like, if you have a paid product and you have other people who are sort of, um, doing similar work, um... I think there are so many interesting ways to collaborate that are still yet to be invented. And I've just been feeling really pumped about that lately.

• 46:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I'm excited about it. I'm obviously, my podcast and newsletter are totally free. We're ad-supported. In fact, when this podcast goes live Wednesday, there's going to be some more news about our advertising program. So, obviously not a candidate to join side channel, but it made me want to turn on paid subscriptions so I could get my listeners and readers in. So, maybe we can talk about that sometime down the road. Would love to find a way to turn that on and get people in.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  Well, and look, I mean, you're welcome in the server and we can always have you up on stage and just, you know, talk about tech.

• 46:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Would be great. I would love to join you one day on that. And I want to say thank you very much for joining part two. Part two of our conversation, hopefully two of many.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, if you thought this was good, wait till I, what do I have to say in part three? Because it is, I'm not even sure I'm allowed to say it, but I'm gonna check with lawyers and hopefully I'll be able to by the time we get to it.

• 47:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, I, part three, I think we foreshadowed it well. Vaccinated Casey.

• 47:14Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 47:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Makes good on the DMs.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  Vaccinated Casey and Tinder, like, there's gonna be some sort of connection there. Yeah.

• 47:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm ready, I'm ready. It'll be fun. Well, thanks again, Casey. If you, if you haven't subscribed yet, go subscribe to his newsletter. It's platformer.news.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  That's right. It doesn't sound like it's a real URL, but it is.

• 47:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's legit. Yeah, I have to do one of those for big technology. I still got the Substack URL. And then if they want to find you on Twitter, other places.

• 47:44Speaker 01

  So, I'm at Casey Newton. And if side tunnel sounds interesting to you, if you subscribe to Platformer, your welcome email will include instructions for how to join the server. So, yeah, just a lot of, a lot of fun stuff going on here in the media biz.

• 47:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Sure is. Okay, last thing I'll say. I feel like it's the most dynamic moment in consumer social that I've seen in a long time.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  Dude, in this Discord today, like, my community organized itself into an Apple Live blog. Like, we all did live commentary together, and I'm staring at this thing like, like, I can't, I cannot remember the last time I felt like I was living the future of media, and I felt it today in Discord.

• 48:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I, I think it's awesome, the Discord stuff. Even though I don't have a lot of hope for Clubhouse, I think Clubhouse Spaces, very interesting new application of stuff, and we've danced around it a little bit today, but I'm kind of obsessed with TikTok. Um, I know there's some questions about security there that, you know, I, you know, you have to mention disclaimer, but that thing is unbelievable, and even like during the pandemic, I think it's gotten even better. All these people making these extremely creative videos, and that algorithm is just insane. It's so good.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  So good.

• 48:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Not banned, so.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  No, it survives Trump, like, like you and I.

• 49:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's right, we made it through, and, uh, fingers crossed, maybe soon we can say the same about COVID.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  Can't wait.

• 49:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  How sweet it is. Okay, well, let's do an official wrap up. Thank you, Casey, for joining. Uh, platformer.news is the website, side channel is the Discord server. Get him on Twitter, it's always fun to watch his tweets. DMs apparently are open. Uh, thank you for listening. Uh, I want to say thank you to Nate Guatney, who's turning this around in a shorter timeline than usual. I feel like I say that at the end of every episode, but we wanted to get newsy this week, so appreciate you, Nate. Thank you for doing this. Thanks to Red Circle for selling and hosting, selling ads, hosting the podcast, and thanks again to you all for listening. We'll be back next Wednesday with another repeat guest, Ron John Roy, and John Durok from Margin's great newsletter about the financial system.

• 49:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Uh, we'll be talking about Dogecoin and anything else, uh, related to how crazy our economy has been, so I hope to see you there. Thanks again to Casey, and have a great week.

• 50:10Speaker 02

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the HouseMajorityPact.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.