Gary Vaynerchuk and TikTok’s Blake Chandlee on the ‘Ban’ and TikTok’s Future

TikTok is in a state of limbo as the U. S. government decides whether to ban it. In August, President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning the app from operating in its current form in the U. S. The order gave TikTok a 45-day deadline, but after a few extensions, we’re now in December, and TikTok is still running. As TikTok twists in the wind, Gary Vaynerchuk, owner of digital ad agency VaynerMedia, and Blake Chandlee, TikTok’s head of global business solutions, join the Big Technology Podcast in a recording at Web Summit to discuss the app’s present and future. 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 and welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. TikTok is in a state of limbo as the US government decides whether to ban it. In August, President Trump signed an executive order demanding that the app either sell its US operations or shut down in the country due to security concerns. The order gave TikTok a 45-day deadline, but after a few extensions, we're now in December and TikTok is still operating. The app's future is murky, and it's fair to wonder whether it actually knows what the government wants from it. And as we wait, the business and its users twist in the wind. Joining us today in a live podcast taped at Web Summit

• 1:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  are Gary Vaynerchuk, owner of digital ad agency VaynerMedia, and Blake Chandlee, TikTok's head of global business solutions. And away we go.

• 2:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello everyone out there at Web Summit and to those listening on the Big Technology Podcast. I'm thrilled to be here with Gary and Blake for a fascinating discussion of TikTok and where it's going. So let's start with the question that's on everyone's mind and I'll toss it to Blake first. What's going on with TikTok right now? Is it going to be sold or banned in the United States? Do you have any idea where this is heading?

• 2:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, Alex, well, one, it's good to see you again. There's a lot of media hype and it's tough to break through it all. We've been pretty clear that we disagree with some of the, some of the things that have been claimed against us. And we've been pretty public about that. We're, we're obviously going to work with the administration closely to find resolution, which we're, which we're really committed to. But at the end of the day, this is really about us fighting for our, for, for our community and for self-expression and creativity and community. And so that's, that's what we continue to do day in and day out. And I can't speak to a whole lot more than that, of course.

• 3:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, Blake, let me ask you this. Do you know what the United States government wants from TikTok? Because I've been following this pretty closely and it seems to change every, you know, few days. So do you at least have a clear understanding of what they want for you? Or are you just kind of rolling with it at this point?

• 3:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, we have open dialogue with the government every day. And so we've got pretty clear guidelines and we're working towards resolution.

• 3:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, so it sounds like you have a good idea. Gary, where do you think this is going?

• 3:30Speaker 02

  It's so uncomfortably above my pay grade, you know, people that spend.

• 3:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  But you're a great prognosticator.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  I am, but I think, you know, I think people, you know, I'm a great forecast. I'm a great predictor of human behavior in the macro, making a judgment call on the current administration, the outgoing administration, the new administration.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  It's just so difficult and and politics in general tends to not go through a logical consumer centric filter, which makes it hard for me because it's inside baseball, it's politics. And where I make my judgments or the things I like to talk about is when I see the will of humans gathering around something that brings them value or eliminates friction. And so I keep my world pretty narrow. You know, I'll speak about those kind of dynamics. Guessing guessing where the TikTok government thing works out is is over the top guessing from my standpoint.

• 4:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  At the end.

• 4:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, I think we're all pretty much, well, we'll see where it goes. It's gonna, it's anyone's guess at this point. The underlying, I mean, there's, there's a lot of things that might underlie what was going on with the Trump administration's action, you know, on the app. But one of the main questions was, you know, can United People in the US, are people in the globe really trust a company that has links to China to make sure that that algorithm isn't sort of manipulating the culture? That's what people had concerns about. So Blake, what do you think about that? Do you feel like this is something that's not going to be an issue?

• 5:09Speaker 01

  Listen, if we go back, if we if we kind of go a little bit to side of this from Alex and kind of go back to mission of the company, which is to inspire creativity and bring joy, like that is why people come to the app every single day. You know, they want to be entertained, they want to create something amazing, they want to be authentic, they want to be themselves, right? We have an obligation and duty to our users around the world to protect them and protect our community. And that goes everything from, you know, their data and security of that data all the way through to how we how we how we protect them from various, you know, with with guidelines of protecting us from various behavior and so on and so forth. And I think we're doing a really good job. Like, you know, spent a long time in a different player in the space, we're doing a good job.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  We really cleared the data for US users, which has been the focus of the government's, their concerns sits in the US and Singapore. It does not have access from China. There's lots of debate on that subject, you know, from from some folks, but we're working through that and getting full transparency. I mean, the one thing you're going to hear from us over and over again is we want to be the most transparent and accountable company in the space. And I think we're going to huge, huge, huge means to do that. And so, again, we're having daily conversations with the administration around the security of that data and making sure people feel comfortable with it. So we'll continue to do that.

• 6:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, and that previous company that you referenced was Facebook. So I'm sure we'll have a lot to say about that towards the end of this discussion, because Facebook notoriously tries to kill its competitors. But sticking with the TikTok centric stuff to begin with,

• 6:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  what does the uncertainty of something like this do from a standpoint of, you know, whether influencers are going to continue to invest in the app? I've had people who've asked me, you know, should I keep using it? Or marketers that have used me, should I keep using it? I think, feel like Gary would be the perfect person to answer this one. How's the uncertainty changed the way that you approach the platform?

• 7:01Speaker 02

  I'm in the business of running commercials on MASH, when MASH is the number one show on TV. I'm in the business of running commercials on Seinfeld, when Seinfeld's the number one TV show. This notion of investing time as if it goes away, like Friendster and MySpace, has been the greatest misstrategic move of most people's and companies' behaviors, of this emotional need to misunderstand what social networks are, which is they are places where human beings' attentions are for a period of time. When you build a significantly great company, like Facebook Inc. has, for all the opinions on it, you get to stay a big show for a long time, no different than SNL. When you're not building an unbelievable company,

• 7:45Speaker 02

  like a Daily Booth, or a Social Cam, or a Vine, or things of that nature, you may have one season of that. So for me, I'm obsessed with communicating on TikTok because of the amount of attention, amount of organic reach, how underpriced the ad platform is, how well the creator and influencer ecosystem works there. And, you know, this is just the truth. Like, I don't know how to be emotional about something being here forever or going away. I just know that I want to be focused on where the attention is today. I can't predict April. I can't predict June. I may get hit by a tree and not care. You know, and so from my standpoint, it hasn't affected it at all. And if anything, it's, I've been weirdly, sorry Blake, I've been weirdly happy about it

• 8:30Speaker 02

  because it slowed down other people's, the ones that really have this misunderstood have been slow, have not put out as much, fear, fear, fear, fear. And that's given me more time to extract the opportunities out of the platforms for myself and for my clients.

• 8:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  Blake, how do you respond to that? Has most of your time been spent, or most of the company's time been spent with people who are making, you know, the best content for the platform, trying to convince them to stick around? I mean, Gary seems like he knows where he wants to be, but what about everybody else that he referenced?

• 9:01Speaker 01

  We're effectively a two-year-old company, and we're competing as space with companies that have been doing this for a long, long time, right? And Gary's exactly right. In the early stages, those that jump in early get to attract value because the demand on consumers' attention, time, and thus the CPMs are lower than what they get as the platform matures and there's more demand, right? You know, where we spend most of our time is not talking about some of the regulatory, the government stuff, where we spend most of our time with our, our brands at least, right? And I'm sure we have a discussion with our creators as well, is around ensuring brand safety and community safety. That is the number one conversation we have, and it's something that we're, we're a pretty enormous amount of energy into, and there's a big body of work around now, and that's

• 9:46Speaker 01

  where we spend our time, and that's where we should spend our time, like that's where the industry needs to spend their time. So, but brands are coming on, and the vast majority of the top Fortune 100 brands, you know, on the platform at this point, in some stage, some are testing, some are all in. And we'll continue to get more and more come on every single day. So we're optimistic on where things are going. On the creator side, we love our creators. It is the heart and soul of our business. That probably makes a little bit different than to me, our platforms you referenced. You know, creators are the lifeblood of the company, and so their experience on the TikTok platform is different than, than on YouTube or Instagram or Snap now or others.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  And, and we're really grateful with all the work that creators are doing, the energy they're bringing, the creativity they're bringing.

• 10:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and Gary, you know, he's talked a bit about, at the beginning, about prediction. We decided not to make predictions about the government. But speaking about where the social media world was going, you were right on this. If I recall, you were an early investor in Vine, or at least, you know, were working with GrapeStory, I believe, which was an agency. I mean, both, the agency that...

• 10:54Speaker 02

  I was an investor in Vine, but to your point, once I understood its magnitude, I started an agency that represented a lot of the early influencers. Because I really understood that the YouTube thing I learned in 2006 was about to happen there. And that became the precursor, probably to the newer version of me as a marketer, which is why I stayed so on top of Snap, Musically, TikTok. Because that was a tipping point moment for me on Vine. That kind of made me understand that the scale and the long tail of influencer seemed more viable. And I think that's what we've seen play out.

• 11:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  Gary, how did you feel when, I mean, Vine, obviously, was shut down by Twitter? You had invested a lot into it, and I know we talked a little bit about how thinking about investing into the long term in this world might be a little ridiculous.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  But yeah, tell us about your personal journey.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  I'm great about it. I personally wish every social media app disappeared tomorrow. Because that would mean all that attention would go somewhere, and people would struggle to figure out where. And I'm very good at figuring it out, right? And so for me, when things change, I'm at my best. I don't want, I, listen, I've extracted uncomfortable amounts of value out of Facebook and Instagram, but I never wanted, I never want that to be the only places. I mean, I'm blown away and excited about TikTok, but can't already wait for either the new feature that TikTok puts out, that makes it a competitor to something, or waiting for the next two incredible young women from Kansas City or Kenya

• 12:31Speaker 02

  to start something that wins, that I can then extract. This is real estate for me, right? I'm a real estate developer. I find new places that I think are under... Valued, misunderstood, and I start building buildings and then it gets populated. So for me, refining my skillset on Facebook, focusing more on groups, 90-year-olds, refining, I mean, the amount of times I've refined my skills on TikTok already before people have even jumped onto it, you know, this, I day trade culture and attention. So I, I had a non-emotional thought on Vine whatsoever because what I thought would happen, happened, which was those individuals segued pretty aggressively to YouTube, Instagram, and at the time Snapchat.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  And so, you know, watching people move their behavior more to TikTok, you know, micro-influencers than Instagram because the organic reach and the community explosion made it better for them, that didn't upset me, even though I was winning on Instagram when this all went down over the last two years. That excited me because now I'm in pattern recognition, I'm in refined skillset, and I went and built a massive audience on TikTok for myself. You know, that's just life, that's business, that's the game. Like, if, if you want to freeze time, you're a losing player. And so for me, I have zero emotion to things disappearing or growing in importance. I think accountability is something that no one's talking about these days.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  Everyone's scared the algorithm is tricking them, delete the app. Like, you know, like, it's like alcohol, like, don't drink at all. You know, like accountability, and I take on accountability for being great at what I do.

• 14:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Gary, what do you think it is about the social media world where people seem to get bored of apps so quickly? I mean, we, we talked a lot at the beginning of this era about network effects and how when you started, you know, something in motion stays in motion. Now it seems like people abandon a platform every other day. So why do you think that?

• 14:26Speaker 02

  You know, Alex, I disagree with that, actually. I don't think people...

• 14:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, you were just saying that you like it, though?

• 14:31Speaker 02

  I would prefer it. Unfortunately, for me, I don't think it happens often. I mean, Facebook's, you know, now, Facebook is a different product today than when Blake first started working there. When I played on it, it was much younger. Now it's older, but it's here for quite a long time. Twitter is here now for quite a long time. We're getting into, you know, decade plus, right? Instagram is old, you know, TikTok. I can't, when Blake said two years, I'm like, ugh, getting old. You know, like, like, I, I think these things have been sticking, I think, a little bit longer than people realize. Snap has not disappeared. Snap does its nice thing and what it does. LinkedIn went a decade as a utility and then converted into a content, social network-like environment and is having its run. So, I,

• 15:16Speaker 02

  I would actually argue that, that there hasn't been movement. I think, now, to your point, there's been, during all this time, the peaches of the world, right? The social cams, like I mentioned, the Bytes, which was the Vine founders. There's been, you know, Plark, if you're old school like me, back in 07, 08. There, there's been Biddler. The great mistake of my entire social media career was being one of the first people to pop on YouTube and then move over to Biddler exclusively because they gave me 7% of the company and I just didn't even know how to calibrate that. Like, that was so remarkable. It was so early. I had dreams. But honestly, that was a mistake because I gave up the

• 15:59Speaker 02

  attention that I would have been able to get on YouTube. So, you know, there's been a ton of things that were the next hype thing. There was that Vero, I think, right? Like, all these things have popped up that are gonna be the next big thing. The reason I don't tend to talk about a lot of things until six months or a year after they've been grounded is there's always gonna be the next thing. But I think they, people haven't changed. What, you know, if you look at, if, I'm gonna throw content, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, you know, now TikTok. I, I think they get nice five, seven, 10, 15-plus year out of them. I do think what is interesting and what TikTok triple reaffirmed for me is if you build a tremendous product, there's

• 16:44Speaker 02

  always room for somebody to come along and that's interesting.

• 16:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and some of these social platforms with staying power that you mentioned are ones that have reinvented themselves over and over again.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  By the way, that's such a tremendous point by you. I would argue that Twitter could be much bigger today if it reinvented more often during that half decade that I think about very little innovation. I would argue YouTube has given up more opportunity than anybody else. There's so much permission they had to innovate more mobile centric, some of the dynamics. So that's such a tremendous point.

• 17:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  So Blake, how do you respond to this? First of all, what do you think about the fact that Gary seems to want you guys to go away quickly, even though he likes you? And then how is TikTok going to reinvent itself over and over again in order to stay relevant? Is that even on the roadmap?

• 17:37Speaker 01

  This is actually one of my favorite conversations. And Gary's got it right now because you brought it like, it's not only reinvent it, you have to disrupt, right? Because at the end of the day, you will get disrupted if you don't disrupt. And I think, I do think that some of the leaders of the other companies, the reference all realize that and they try to. They've gotten very, very big and it's harder and harder, the more scale you have to disrupt yourself because you're accountable to shareholders, you're accountable to investors, you're accountable to employees. And it becomes just more difficult to capture that moment and to capture that fire in the valley again. And you wrote a book, Alex, Always Day One. And that's what made those companies so successful.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  And it's actually one of our bite styles at TikTok, which is it's always day one. And so we're constantly trying to figure out how to disrupt ourselves. And we're, we're young enough that that's just part of the DNA. It's the reason we've all joined the company. It's, we're here, it's like Facebook 2007, 2008. That's how the energy is, the culture is, the speed, the pace that we're operating in which the products we're launching on both the user side as well as the commercial side of the business. And so we're disrupting ourselves every single day.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  And yeah, I think that if we look at Instagram, it did a great job with stories when Snap was disrupting it with an audience. Um, you know, Reels is certainly something that, you know, they, they, they put out there as a, as kind of a potential TikTok competitor. And yeah, we'll see how that works out. You know, Google Plus did the same thing to Facebook back in the day and didn't quite capture the same magic. Um, because they couldn't, didn't quite understand social. You know, we're not a social platform. So like, we're not, we're not, we're not reliant on people's social graph, which is where Facebook is just very, very good. Like, there's nobody better in the world at doing that. Um, and building products that, that, that emanate from that is kind of their core competency.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  We're a content graph, right? We're an interest graph, which is different. The nuances are different, but how people create and discover content is a little different. It happens faster. It's not reliant on these kind of circles to grow. Um, so we're very aware. And we're a very innovative company and, and I love the pace of which we're operating.

• 19:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  And Blake, you've been at Facebook. You were there even during the Google Plus battle. Uh, you've seen the company go into destroy mode and though it didn't necessarily destroy Snapchat, uh, definitely built a big product, uh, or helped accelerate its product based off of copying stories into Instagram. Now you're on the other side. You're in a company where Facebook has trained its destroy laser on and has released Reels. How worried are you knowing the company's capability to do stuff like this?

• 20:15Speaker 01

  I don't think we did look that much extra early. We, we, we see what's going on, whether it's Facebook or, or any of the other startups that are coming, you know? I think to Gary's point, we worry more about the startup that hasn't gotten there yet. You know, two people in a garage, wherever they might be, whoever they might be, and that becomes the next big thing. Uh, we're watching whatever he's doing in the space, of course, like we'd be remiss.

• 20:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. So you're not worried at all about Facebook? I mean, I imagine you've seen the capabilities, so.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you, I have enormous respect for, for Mark and the team there. Like I've spent a decade there and, you know, I've seen how well they can, they can operate. Um, so I wouldn't say we're not worried, but like we, we, we're a job and focused on our capabilities, our relationships with our influencers, how we're building commercial products that introduce brands into that environment in a really natural, authentic way. Um, and that's really.

• 21:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I will say TikTok seems to be giving Facebook its toughest challenge to date. All right, Gary, we have 45 seconds left. So who wins? Facebook Reels or TikTok and why?

• 21:18Speaker 02

  TikTok because it's their actual thing and Reels is a feature within a thing. I think it's a good, I think both get value out of it in different ways. But if you're asking it the way I think you're asking it, do I think Reels puts, you know, TikTok out of business or makes it disappear? No, I mean, they did an incredible execution on Instagram stories to Blake's point earlier, and that didn't put Snapchat out of business. Do I believe that massively slowed down the growth of Snapchat at that point, going into that 35 to 55 year old demo? Yes, I do. But, but back to Blake's point, every minute you're spending scared about somebody else's shit is a moment you're not spending innovating your own. And I think that, let's also, let's not be naive.

• 22:03Speaker 02

  I don't know how educated, but I assume wildly the audience that's watching this. TikTok is already at such significant scale, it would almost be scary to me if they had any level of true fear about it. Because they, they, we've got the history of the last 20 years of this, educating us that they're at enough scale that as long as they worry about innovating. And I'll be honest with you, the observation I have is I think the Chinese DNA for TikTok is very, very powerful. And what I mean by that is, let there be no confusion. The nuances of a communist infrastructure, a full stack for the We Chats and the Weibo's and all that in China lends itself to understanding the full stack of retail, live selling, you know, and I see a lot, I, I think TikTok's innovating a ton.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  But to Blake's point, I mean, I, I respect Facebook Inc. at the highest of highest levels. I also think if Facebook tomorrow launches a standalone app that is a monster competitor to TikTok. I don't think either company actually gets affected. I don't think people understand the abundance of time consumption. You know, that is actually out there. They're not competing with each other. They're competing against Xbox, PS5, Netflix, The New York Times, this video right now. There's a lot more real estate to be eaten up by the five to 10 winners of this game. So I think we enjoy the battle of like the game. But if you take a step back and are actually thoughtful of full time consumption of stuff.

• 23:32Speaker 02

  I would say both Facebook Inc, TikTok, YouTube and Twitter and Snap still have more land grab to go around other platforms.

• 23:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and it's gonna be a heck of a battle to watch play out, especially now we see the FTC might be bringing some action against Facebook. So it's gonna have an extra stumbling block to try to get over. Okay, well, Gary, thank you so much. Blake, thank you so much. Great to see you both as always. Thanks, everybody out there watching. And now I'm gonna toss it back to Web Summit in Lisbon. 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.

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• 25:02Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 26:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we are back here on the second half of the Big Technology Podcast. We just recorded the first half at Web Summit, and now Blake Chan Lee from TikTok has graciously decided to stick around and spend another 15 minutes talking about the business and his career. Time at Facebook, time at TikTok. Blake, it's good to have you back for the second half.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  It's Alex. I appreciate it, man.

• 26:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  So I wrote the book Always Day One about tech giant culture. I learned a lot about Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft. I didn't hear anything about TikTok. Can you tell us a little bit about what TikTok culture is like and how it either differs or compares to ByteDance, which is the parent company based in China?

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that TikTok is a reflection of its overall mission, right, which we talked about earlier, to inspire creativity and bring joy. And that just brings a certain energy level within the employee base especially. People join it because, one, They see this as a new opportunity to kind of, well, be a little bit disruptive. Like, we're definitely trying to be disruptive. Yeah, we see this content graph is really important. Yeah, the 4U feed is a really powerful component of that. But the ability to give really, really strong and tangible creative tools to people and to really democratize creativity is an important part of what we're trying to do here. And, you know, we use the word influencers, we call them creators versus influencers. Anybody can be a creator.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  It could be me, it could be you, it could be, it could be Charlie, it could be, you know, it could be, it could be anybody. Yeah, they're huge influencers. We still call them creators. Or there could be someone who's got, you know, 3,000 people following them, but they're, you know, talking about some kind of science capabilities that are, it's really relevant to their audience. And so we just think this open, this open exchange of creativity is really powerful. And then that just oozes its way through the business and through the culture.

• 27:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and also like what I'm getting at is like in Facebook, obviously there's a zuck ideas bubble up to him. He makes product decisions. Is that how it works in TikTok? Like, obviously, there's been some leadership changes with the US business, but how do, how do products get? I mean, I guess TikTok doesn't have the bloat that Facebook has, so. But how do decisions get made inside the company?

• 28:21Speaker 01

  So there's a lot of collaboration. I mean, Vanessa's, Vanessa basically has effectively replaced Kevin.

• 28:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, and let's, let's give their full name. So it's Vanessa Poppas, right? Who's the acting head of TikTok in the US?

• 28:33Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. And she's got more of a global remit than just a US remit at this point. And there are, there are these GMs all over the world on the user side of the business that are, you know, working closely with the engineering teams and the product teams, which are distributed, you know, across the world. And, and trying to find out what's the best user experience? And is there a different user experience in parts of MENA, Middle East, North Africa, Turkey, versus Southeast Asia, versus the US? And, and for the most part, you know, behaviors are very, very similar, right? Content.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  And so those teams work closely with the different engineering groups. And there's lots and lots of testing, there's lots and lots of iteration that's taking place. You know, there's a lot of work going on around live stream right now, which is not just within us, but across the industry in general. You're certainly exploring different areas around commerce and shopping. And Facebook and others have made a big bet there around what that looks like and the role of that in the future of those companies. And certainly, we're in the early stages of exploring some of those ideas. And on the commercial side, it's very similar. You know, what's working, what's not. The world's changing pretty dramatically out there in terms of, you know, it used to be collect as much data as you possibly could. And that's how these businesses were built. You know, the terabytes and terabytes of data.

• 29:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, you know that well from your time at Facebook.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  You know that very well, right? And but that's not, I don't think that's the currency going forward. Like, I think that the shifts in IDFA going in early next year, I think there's going to be some fundamental changes. And so the guidance that I'm trying to take the company in on the commercial side is, let's not look in the rearview mirror and build everything that Facebook or Google and everybody else built. But let's build for the future where we think there's much more control from a consumer perspective. So all those conversations are taking place 24/7.

• 30:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, all right. Let me ask you this. So one of the funny things that I hear from Facebook employees from time to time is when they've, I mean, maybe this happened in the earlier days, but they went out in the wild, you know, quote unquote. People had never, who met them were like, wait, people work at Facebook. Like, what do you do? You know, sort of believing that the product is static. Whereas, of course, inside Facebook, you're constantly testing and building new features and products, which you know well. But like, I kind of asked to myself the same question about TikTok. Like, TikTok obviously is not, and we've sort of touched on this, but it's not filled with feature bloat. It's a pretty straightforward experience. The algorithm seems to do much of the work.

• 31:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  So what are people inside the company actually building?

• 31:09Speaker 01

  There's a lot of work going into different future functionality and feature sets. And so, yeah, the algorithm and then, you know, the feed, the same thing with Facebook. The feed did most of the work in the early days and it was connecting friends and family. And then that social graph was the driving, it was our version of our for you feed, right? And you're right, people would come up to us in the early days and go, whoa, you work at Facebook? Like, what do you do? And the same thing happened to TikTok. Like, I was traveling recently and someone saw my TikTok logo on my phone or my computer. So I'm like, whoa, you work at TikTok? Like, what do you do? But just like any company, there's all sorts of different businesses that we're thinking about in terms of features and functionality. And there are different groups that are working on those from a product and engineering perspective.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  And there's so many policy and commercial and, you know, there's, it takes a lot to run a big company like this.

• 32:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, we have a few minutes left. I just want to kind of end with your personal journey. So you spent 10 years at Facebook just about.

• 32:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  What makes you decide to pick up and go to a TikTok?

• 32:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know. I'm one of these guys that I like, I like kind of that path less traveled. And so, you know, joining Facebook was a big deal back in 2007. And I was, you know, running a big part of Yahoo in the UK. And people said, you're going to go join Facebook? Like, why in the world would you do that? Like, Yahoo's a really big job. And I just kind of saw where some sort of behavior is going. And so, you know, jumped on that opportunity. And the same thing's happening now. Like, there's just a shift in this, the next generation is spending less time on, you know, suddenly, you know, the, you know, the big blue badge on Facebook and Instagram even, and even Snap. And so, you know, TikTok is, has kind of taken this, and I believe there's a fundamental shift taking place.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  I don't think those, to Gary's point, I don't think these companies go away. I think there's way too much, you know, people find too much value in the different platforms. I do think that in terms of entertainment, where people spend time and where they just want to have a moment of joy. And people say that, you know, TikTok's the last sunny spot on the internet, right? You go there and you're not worried about politics. You're not worried about things like that. You just go there for a laugh or...

• 33:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  I used to say that about Instagram too. And, you know, TikTok has not been immune to political and conspiracy theories. There's no doubt about that.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  No, I think there was, we saw some of that need with Black Lives Matter and we saw it with some of the early political stuff.

• 33:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hong Kong protests.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  And we've been really diligent about watching, but I don't think people go there with the expectation, right? I think people are much more there for this sense of community and the sense of joy, right? And that's important, why people are using the platform.

• 33:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I remember when Mark Zuckerberg, we talked about this in a previous podcast, when Mark Zuckerberg wanted to acquire Instagram, Kevin Sistrum was talking with investors about like, should we go to Facebook or is he going to go into destroy mode? And it's sort of like the, you know, Gary talked about how there's room for so many competitors, but it also seems like it is zero sum because you are competing for time. So maybe you're both in destroy mode for each other.

• 34:21Speaker 01

  No, I don't think so. I do think that there's, we are going to compete, everybody's competing and competing for time. I do think that the, that there are other places where people are going to spend less time. And I think there's a lot of opportunity and space there for everybody.

• 34:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Okay. Finally, the way that you're talking, it seems like you think that TikTok's going to be around for a while in the US?

• 34:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. I said earlier, we're working closely to find a resolution with the administration. That's our, that's our end goal. We want TikTok to exist for our 100 million plus US users and we're committed to that.

• 35:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do you think you're going to have to go through a similar process with the Biden administration or do you think that this will sort of do it and then you'll be able to move on and legalize?

• 35:12Speaker 01

  I'm going to take Gary's quote on this one, say that's way above my pay grade.

• 35:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Well, I, look, I think that it's an interesting app. I'm a user, I like using it. And I also think that we're going to be seeing questions about it because it is an interesting corporate structure with, with unique liabilities in the United States. But number one thing I think is it's important to have a dialogue between folks inside TikTok and the public. And, you know, we spoke before this and I was mentioning that like, I don't think we hear enough from TikTok, so I appreciate you sitting down, taking the time, being gracious to spend a couple of extra minutes on the podcast, and wishing you luck.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I appreciate it. And you'll continue to hear from us, Alex. Like, we want to be, as I said, we want to be as transparent as we can, and we've opened these transparency centers, and we've published our first few transparency reports. And so we're being, we're trying to be as transparent as we can with both just the public and the administration, everybody else, and we'll continue on that. So you'll hear more from us in the future, of course.

• 36:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, sounds great. Well, that will do it for us here on the Big Technology Podcast, broadcasting, of course, from Web Summit. So I want to thank the Web Summit folks for allowing me to record this session and turn it into a show. Thanks also to Red Circle for hosting, selling ads on the podcast, and Nate Guatney, who's our audio editor, does a great job of it. We do these shows every Wednesday. If you're a first-time listener and want to hit subscribe, I would appreciate that. And if you're a longtime listener, a rating goes a long way. Thanks, everybody, and we will see you next Wednesday.

• 37:55Speaker 03

  Stream now, pay never.