Mark Zuckerberg Slams Apple For Its Lack of Innovation

In episode #2903, Eric Siu and Neil Patel discuss Meta's recent performance management changes, the implications of Elon Musk potentially buying TikTok, and the rising trend of CMO hiring in the marketing industry, indicating a recovery in the sector. Don’t forget to help us grow by subscribing and liking on YouTube! Check out more of Eric’s content (Leveling UP YT) and Neil’s videos (Neil Patel YT) TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: (00:00) The Apple-Facebook Revenue Debate (02:47) Meta's Performance Management Changes (05:58) Elon Musk and TikTok: Speculations and Insights (08:54) The Evolution of Social Media Products (11:50) Marketing Trends and CMO Hiring Surge (17:13) That’s it for today! Don’t forget to rate, review, and subscribe! Go to https://www.marketingschool.io to learn more! Leave Some Feedback: What should we talk about next? Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with Us: Single Grain << Eric’s ad agency NP Digital << Neil’s ad agency X @neilpatel X @ericosiu

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Finding customer information shouldn't mean digging through emails, call notes, and spreadsheets. HubSpot Starter Plan brings all of those details together, so it's easier to track what's happening with every deal and what to do next. It pulls information from calls and emails. Then it gets to work, logging and summarizing them. Right after your call ends, HubSpot pulls next steps from your call notes and drafts suggested follow-ups. And it stays up to date for you, so you can build demand, win more deals, and spend less time on repetitive work. Your records, insights, and next steps are ready for you to act on. And you don't have to miss a beat searching for any of it. Try the Starter Plan for $10 a month. Learn more at hubspot.com. So Mark Zuckerberg complained about how Apple takes so much, right? But then it's interesting because Sheryl Sandberg actually talked to Shirvin, who was one of the investors in Uber. And basically-

• 0:45Speaker 01

  Shirvin Perjani?

• 0:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he made a suggestion to take 30% cut for Facebook. And then she went to Facebook and then so- Facebook Meta also takes a 30% cut too with their stuff as well. It's like Oculus.

• 0:58Speaker 01

  Well, it's bigger than 30% cut if you look at all the content us creators create on Facebook and how Facebook monetizes and keeps the revenue.

• 1:06Speaker 00

  Yeah. Look, everyone has their incentives at the end of the day. I'm sure, I think Mark Zuckerberg makes the point that, yeah, they haven't really innovated a lot, Apple. And so they've gone, we've talked about this earlier, they've gone deep into services because they have this giant ecosystem. And people love Apple. Neil and I both love Apple products. Neil, I mean, he went out there, he bought the Apple Vision Pro. He bought multiple ones, I think.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  Which gives you a headache if you wear it long enough. At least it gave me a headache.

• 1:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, so, but I think everyone can complain at the end of the day, but we still use it, so it is what it is. And speaking of Meta, did you see that Meta is raising the bar on low performers?

• 1:41Speaker 01

  They're raising the bar on low performers? So they're giving them AI to help them become better?

• 1:45Speaker 00

  No, no, no. So when you say raising the bar on low performers, it means you're cutting performers. You're cutting low performers. So Meta, cutting 5% of staff, targeting lowest performers. And here's what I- What I find interesting, so he says, "I've decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low performance faster." So they used to take a year or so to move on from people, right? So as of September, Meta employed about 72,000 people, so a 5% reduction could affect about 3,600 jobs. He's like, "Look, we typically manage people who aren't meeting expectations over the course of a year, but now we're gonna do it, we're gonna do more extensive performance-based cuts during this cycle." And I think we're gonna see more CEOs doing this. The biggest signal you can see from Mark Zuckerberg, and I think you're gonna see this from more CEOs, is that they feel like it's okay to do these things now.

• 2:29Speaker 00

  The biggest thing, like Zuckerberg, of all people, knew he couldn't say, "Oh, you know, I'm, you know, the government forced me to do all these things in the past, and then, you know, we're gonna cut all these programs, right?" He had to wait for the coast to be clear, and rightfully so, because he has all these social networks.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:44Speaker 00

  So he waited for the coast to be clear, now he's doing all these things, and now other CEOs will follow suit and say, "Oh, okay, we're seeing more and more people do it, okay, we can do it too." So.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  The thing that Zach sees, whether it's true or not, is he believes the movement of quote-unquote "woke", which is what a lot of people define it, and Eric and I are not saying it's woke or it's not. He's saying a lot of that is over, so he is firing people whenever he wants. He's going on like the Joe Rogan podcast and just stating his opinion. And he also, I believe, removed certain labels for people's identity from Facebook.

• 3:16Speaker 00

  He took tampons out of the men's restrooms.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  At Meta.

• 3:20Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  And then, I didn't know that, and then he also took away, I think, labels like transgender and stuff like that, right?

• 3:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, and then I think the entire DEI division's gone.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can see that. If you're doing all this stuff, you're pretty much removing DEI.

• 3:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, and so a lot of people are complaining, but I think now people are, they're standing up for what they believe in, whereas four years ago, you couldn't do that.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, he also put Dana White on his board.

• 3:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  And then Dana White is about to release an energy drink. I don't know if you saw that one.

• 3:48Speaker 00

  No, I didn't.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:49Speaker 00

  No.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  He's partnering with, I think, Ambev or one of those guys to create an energy drink.

• 3:53Speaker 00

  Good for him. So record revenue, by the way, on track for 156 billion, record profits on track for 55 billion, fresh enough memories from firing 25% of staff, and then Meta is at it again. So, take it for what it is. I think what I've told my staff is the Overton window has moved, meaning that things you couldn't say four years ago, you can now say, and it's happening across the board, so.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. Speaking of social networks, do you think Elon Musk will buy TikTok or not?

• 4:21Speaker 00

  No. Um, I don't think it's gonna, I think they're just gonna, we have till Sunday, right? I don't know if that's a bluff from the Chinese, but um, I, I do love the fact that they picked him. If that's a true story.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  Well, to give everyone context here, Bloomberg uh, reported that the Chinese government would be okay. And they would be open to Elon Musk buying TikTok.

• 4:43Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  Now TikTok themselves says, hey, we have no conversations of this. This is the Chinese government stating supposedly stating what they would want to do. And uh, as we all know, if the Chinese government wants something done in their own country, it'll get done.

• 5:00Speaker 00

  You know, I mean, look, Elon said great things about the Chinese people. He's done business in China and to be honest, I mean, I'm, I'm Chinese, but I don't have a horse in the stake. Right? I'm Taiwanese to be clear, uh, right? So I know for, I know how Taiwanese people work. I know how Chinese people work. It's no like US versus China, whatever, like the normal US person, the normal Chinese person, they don't really care about this whole US versus China thing. Um, and Elon's just being real. It's like, hey, you know, I do business there. I like the Chinese people and um, I would be excited if he bought it because he's, I think he's done a pretty good job with X. People can debate that. I think he's, you, you'd agree with that.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  I think he's done a decent job with X.

• 5:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, pretty good, pretty good. Maybe not from ad side, but like a product side.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  From a revenue side?

• 5:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  I don't think so. From a product side, honestly, what has really changed?

• 5:45Speaker 00

  What do you, Grok?

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Okay, what has really changed that's useful?

• 5:49Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Do you really use Grok that often?

• 5:51Speaker 00

  I do use Grok.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  Really?

• 5:53Speaker 00

  You use Grok on the, like, if you write a tweet, I can hit Grok and summarize the whole thing. I do like how I can write longer form posts. Okay? I do, I like how like, if you post something or I post something, you can see the views. That wasn't there, like, that's a pretty big thing, like.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  I thought the views were there for a long time.

• 6:05Speaker 00

  It was never there. It was never there.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  I know he hid the likes, so you can't see who likes it anymore.

• 6:09Speaker 00

  And community notes is fantastic. When like Gavin Newsom posts something and then he gets community noted, it's great.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, but from a product perspective, this isn't like crazy changes.

• 6:18Speaker 00

  It's not, they're good changes.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Sure, they're good changes, but they're not crazy like.

• 6:22Speaker 00

  Okay, what's a crazy change?

• 6:25Speaker 01

  Let's say he created Grok and it worked like ChatGPT, that would be like revolutionary amazing product. And I'm not saying he won't get there with Grok, it's just not there yet, it's far away from it. I wouldn't bet against Elon from creating something like that, it's just not there yet. Um, I would actually bet that he can create something like that, he just needs time.

• 6:46Speaker 00

  He's got the mega cluster, he can do whatever he wants.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Yes, but when I look at social networks, a lot of them have released many features over the years like Elon has. I, I do agree, before he bought Twitter and changed it to X, there wasn't much that was changing. But like being able to add more of a link to Twitter, showcasing views, like they're cool changes, but I don't think like they're the biggest.

• 7:09Speaker 00

  That to me, it's, it's made it more usable, like the, the, I think I mentioned like four or five things. Um, and then he's emphasizing video more, it's not like the best yet, but before Twitter was a stagnant product. And that to me is like, you, you can churn people really easily. And at least now he has more, it's like record usage all the time, right? So I think.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  But that's not because of the product, I think that's more so because of the filtering and uh, community notes. Instead of just suppressing information.

• 7:37Speaker 00

  It's a better product.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Yes, okay, you can say it's a better product, but I'm talking about like from a development standpoint, like what's like crazy tech that he's built.

• 7:46Speaker 00

  Give you an example from the other uh, social channels in the last couple of years, that's been great, groundbreaking.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  TikTok, social commerce, Instagram, social commerce, like I think those two are really gonna change the business for these platforms and for all of social media.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  The ability to discover products and easily purchase them and then eventually go live and sell those products in real time. And people can discuss it, kinda like home shopping network, that is changing the game of e-commerce. I would say that is a very useful social media feature.

• 8:18Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  I'm not saying X can't create that, and I do agree he made it a way more popular place. But I think the big thing that he did that the other players didn't, and this was smart for Elon, is he said, hey, I'm gonna let people say whatever they want and you can just do community. Notes, if something's really bad, they, I believe they supposedly remove it. I could be wrong on this. Um, and I do think that was a really good change. That's what got him a big traffic boost. And you're seeing Facebook following the footsteps because they want the traffic as well because they know it's going to lead to more ad monetization for them.

• 8:51Speaker 00

  I would say, so if it's like a major technological change, um, like something groundbreaking, I would consider shopping. Not exactly there, like I think shopping is important from a revenue standpoint, right? And also a usage standpoint because, because they just copied Chinese companies, right? Instagram and what was the other one? TikTok, right?

• 9:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:09Speaker 00

  Now with what Elon did, they're not like the most groundbreaking things, but it's like, to me, it's way more useful and that to me is good product development.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  So I'm on the opposite. I look at what TikTok and Instagram did with social shopping as much more useful and it shows in the revenue numbers. Versus what X is doing, let's say with Grok, which doesn't show in the revenue numbers.

• 9:31Speaker 00

  Well, this actually shows both our personalities, right? Because Neil's very optimized towards the revenue. I'm optimized towards like, how, how much can I learn from this thing? Right?

• 9:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:39Speaker 00

  So it just, it's, it, there's no right or wrong answer.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree.

• 9:42Speaker 00

  Depends on what you think is important. Um, go ahead.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  But going back to Elon and TikTok, look, I'm with you. I don't know if he's going to buy it or not. What's interesting is when people made the claim that he just bought a crazy penthouse in Florida to be close to that Trump. He quickly tweeted saying, this is false. This is not true. And usually when people start putting out a lot of news and it's nowhere near accurate. He is one of the first people to tweet or message saying, hey, this is inaccurate. He spends so much, I forget how many spent time he spends, but he sends out so many messages. I believe it's polymark, people are.

• 10:16Speaker 00

  Polymarket, polymarket.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  People are betting on how many tweets he's gonna do on a weekly basis.

• 10:21Speaker 00

  Participate?

• 10:22Speaker 01

  I do not participate. I'm not really a betting man. But this is one thing where he could have easily said, this is just totally false. I'm not interested in TikTok. He did not message out saying, I'm not interested in TikTok or anything about that.

• 10:35Speaker 00

  I would be excited if he bought TikTok.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I would too.

• 10:39Speaker 00

  Yeah. The question would be like, who, who would be the CEO? Who knows?

• 10:45Speaker 01

  I don't know, but I think he's done a good job with Exis' current CEO.

• 10:48Speaker 00

  I think, you know what, the way I look at Elon Musk, he plays a lot of video games. In video games, you have, there's like good and evil, right? But you also have like lawful good, chaotic good, right? He's chaotic good. So he's very chaotic, but he operates off his morals. And if you look at his actions over the years, he hasn't done something to like screw his competitors over. In fact, you look at Amazon, you look at OpenAI, both Sam Altman and Jeff Bezos were like, they don't think they would use his, he would use his political power to screw them over. And I believe that that's why China feels like maybe if they're to sell it, maybe this is a guy you can sell to because.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Wait, who doesn't believe that they would use his?

• 11:30Speaker 00

  So this was, this was an interview done, Mixbook. Andrew Sorkin was interviewing Sam Altman and he interviewed Jeff Bezos. This is a couple of months ago, right?

• 11:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:38Speaker 00

  And then he asked both of them separately, like it's like Elon's gaining a lot of power. He's kind of cozying up to Trump. Do you think he would, he would use that power against you? And then Sam Altman's like, I don't think so. And then Jeff Bezos is like, no. And in fact, like when Jeff Bezos launched the rockets today, Elon was the first one to be like, congratulations.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can see it. He'll poke fun and do his memes, but I don't see him.

• 11:59Speaker 00

  He's for humanity, like whether you like him or not.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  And if someone does an amazing job, I do believe he'd be like, cool. How can we be better than them? And I think he likes competition.

• 12:09Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  But yeah, time will end up telling if he tries and buys TikTok. What I really think is happening is TikTok's just waiting for Trump to take office. The TikTok CEO or president of the United States is going there to the ceremony.

• 12:25Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, that's in a couple of days.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Uh huh, it's on the 20th. And what I believe is going to happen, he's just waiting for Trump to come back in in case he gets banned and try to convince Trump to just push it back in and say, hey, we're still around.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Can you put us back in?

• 12:39Speaker 00

  Yeah. Frictionless Growth Marketing hosted by Sonya Thompson is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Frictionless Growth Marketing hosted by Sonya Thompson shows how modern brands grow by removing the friction in their marketing and customer experience that pushes customers. Away every single day, often without leaders even realizing it. Each episode delivers practical insights, real brand examples, and conversations with marketing leaders, showing brands how to win with the new rules of growth, identity-driven marketing, cultural relevance, and frictionless customer experiences. Listen to Frictionless Growth Marketing wherever you get your podcasts. Dude, on a side note, this is completely random. Did you see that the Biden administration tweeted about how they were so happy to get the

• 13:24Speaker 00

  the Israel Hamas ceasefire done?

• 13:29Speaker 01

  Uh huh, but they also mentioned how they were working in

• 13:33Speaker 01

  with the Trump team to get it done.

• 13:35Speaker 00

  So a Twitter account, an X account, the Defense Administration, the Defense Ministry of Israel, which is a verified government account tweeted, "Thank you, Trump, for helping broker the deal," right? So on one end, it's like, oh, yeah, taking all the credit. And then Israel's like, "Thank you, Trump." So it's just, it's all marketing at the end of the day. It's, if you feel like you can like, I don't know, piggyback onto something, you'll do it, right? But it's funny that they actually went out of their way to do that.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think less wars is going to cause the marketing ecosystem to boom, and we're already seeing signs of it. And I'm not trying to pick sides or anything like that, nor is Eric. But at the end of the day, neither of us want to see people die. And there's innocent people all around that are dying, which just sucks. And, you know, it's not a good way to live life. But Ad Age had an article recently talking about how the CMO hiring is on the rise.

• 14:36Speaker 00

  Let's come back to Trump real quick. I have one more thing for you. Then we can go to yours. Okay? So did you see that Donald Trump just received the first ever presidential commemorative inaugural Diet Coke from the CEO of Coca-Cola? You see that? No, look at that dude.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  So he got a Coke?

• 14:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, he got a Coca-Cola, man.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  Is it like a special Coke?

• 14:56Speaker 00

  No, it's just a Diet Coke. It's, it's, it's, oh yeah, actually it is kind of special. There's like a White House on the Diet Coke.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  Oh, cool.

• 15:01Speaker 00

  But point is, it all comes down to marketing at the end of the day. Um, and so I don't know why Coke, for the first time, decided that this is the thing to do. But they're like, okay, we're going to leverage him, right? To, to do that. And, um, look, it's all a game of attention. And I believe that one of the X factors, I, I tweeted about this. I was like, okay, what are the X factors? The cost of intelligence is coming down. That means software is going to be easy to create. Well, one is going to be distribution. The second one is what kind of data advantage do you have? So that's all I wanted to say. Um, but again, Neil and I are not saying we support one or the other. This is not a political podcast. And now let's go to your ad age article.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, so speaking of economies recovering, especially in, uh, the marketing industry, ad age is reporting that CMO hiring is on the rise. Uh, everyone's talking about AI and how this can disrupt marketing. But companies at the end of the day still need CMOs and they're starting to hire more and more of them, um, at a rapid pace. And I think that's a good sign that things are starting to recover. If you also look at the earnings from a lot of the social networks out there that are publicly traded, ignore like the metas, ignore, um, Google doesn't really have social or they have ad revenue, but not. Uh, Google has, Google has, yeah, they have the social as well. But Google has a lot of other divisions, so does Meta. But if you look at Snap, Pinterest, a lot of those,

• 16:16Speaker 01

  they mainly generate their revenue from advertising by far, right? And when you look at Pinterest's revenue specifically, you know, you look at their last earnings in September, 2024 is up 17%. But if you go to like December of 2023, it's 11%. So it's starting to grow again. Snap was another good one. Um, I know they have the spectacles and stuff, but if you walk around the streets, no one really wears the spectacles, not trying to talk trash on.

• 16:42Speaker 00

  The Rayvans, people are wearing them.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  The snaps?

• 16:45Speaker 00

  No, the, uh, the Meta ones. They're not mainstream yet, but I think they're going to become mainstream.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you, you go to like snaps, December 2023 revenue growth, it was 4.74%. Then March 20%, then 15% in June, then 15.48% in September. It, it seems like they're starting to grow all over again. And I do hope 2025 is going to be a more of a. I don't think it's gonna be a blockbuster year for marketing, but it's gonna be more of a normal year.

• 17:15Speaker 00

  Do you think your guys' sales cycles have been the same since the last six months or so picked up? Velocity wise?

• 17:22Speaker 01

  No, sales cycles have not changed roughly in the last six months.

• 17:25Speaker 00

  Same for us. But lead flow is good, but sales cycles still.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  Sales cycles still slow.

• 17:32Speaker 00

  I think this is good. I think like my bet still, okay, CMO hire, like I think companies are always gonna need CMOs, at least for the next couple of years or so. I think still the, the rate of cutting CMOs is still gonna be high. Like usually that, what's the average tenure of a CMO, like 1.8 years or something like that?

• 17:47Speaker 01

  It's around two years.

• 17:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's not very long. And so, okay, well, how do you protect yourself if you want to become a CMO? If that's your aspirations. You have to keep, like we mentioned earlier, you have to keep adapting. You have to keep trying new things. You can't, if you're gonna, you have to look at all the channels, right? Search everywhere optimization. And if you can approach it with that mindset and figure out how you can leverage AI to actually help you and not just do the same thing that everyone else is doing. I think you'll be, you'll be okay because you're proving to your executive team that you're ahead of the curve. And usually, usually what happens is if you don't come with the good ideas anymore, you get canned pretty quickly. So anyway, guys, that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, view, subscribe and go to marketing school.io slash agency if you want to join 50 plus other agency owners to grow your agency faster.