(Preview) Three Weeks of Meta Momentum, The Ultimate Muse Upside, A King Kong vs. Godzilla Aggregator War

Ben and Andrew begin with the Meta Connect keynote and a simple question: is this the first time since 2021 that Meta has been cool? From there, new VR glasses, the Muse Charm, a basketball analogy for Meta Connect in 2026, and the infrastructure and talent investments that have helped Muse resonate over the past few weeks. Then: An emailer shares his Muse epiphany, a potential secondary effect of agents saving users money, why Muse is not sharing user data with Meta, and the ultimate “aggregator of aggregators” upside. Then: Extended thoughts on the Muse vs. Amazon tensions, why Meta’s Walmart deal was potentially crucial, and Amazon’s moat in logistics (and returns) that may prove durable in the agents era. At the end: A CarPlay victory lap, and a round of AI Show and Tell with a wedding planner, a SunOS coder, and a fantasy football league.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hello and welcome to a free preview of Sharp Tech.

• 0:09Speaker 00

  Hello and welcome back to another episode of Sharp Tech. I'm Andrew Sharp and on the other line, Ben Thompson. Ben, how you doing?

• 0:19Speaker 01

  Horrible. Absolutely horrible. I, I'm sorry, I'm going to have to rant. It is ruining my life.

• 0:27Speaker 00

  Hmm. The delivery windows?

• 0:29Speaker 01

  UPS and FedEx. They can both, seriously. It's unbelievable. Okay. Where do I start? This is, this is a building, a building problem.

• 0:38Speaker 00

  Good.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  So number one, last week, iPhone week, right? Uh, I know, very busy. Get it. Like I was home alone. I had to go pick up my stuff from school. Of course they come in the window and I'm not here. I'd heard there, there are now just leaving iPhones. I guess not in my neighborhood. It's fine. No, it's fine. It's fine. I get it. It's an iPhone. One of the best resale items ever. I get it.

• 1:00Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  So on the next day, uh, did I complain about this already? I can't remember.

• 1:05Speaker 00

  No, you complained about it privately, but I'm glad you're taking it public here.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  It's building. No, it's building. So yes, I was not going to complain about this, but it's building. So on Saturday, I'm, uh, wake up early and I'm like, cause it said it's gonna be there like throughout any time during the day. And then I opened the UPS app and it says, we'll be there between 12:30 and 4:30.

• 1:25Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  So like, oh, the specificity. I appreciate, like, I'm so beaten down by these companies that I'm happy that it reduced from a 12 hour window to a four hour window.

• 1:35Speaker 00

  Give me a four hour window. I will be available. Sure.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  I, no, I canceled an appointment that I had in the afternoon. I made sure that I was gonna be there. And because my wife was flying in from Taiwan that evening, I had to drive down to O'Hare. It's a late flight that arrives. I knew I'd be up late driving. So like, I'm gonna need to take a nap because I woke up early.

• 1:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  I can't take a nap in the afternoon, so I don't want to miss my delivery. So I'm gonna take a nap now at 10 a.m. So I laid down and I take a nap. Great nap. Actually, one of the best naps I've had in a while, right up until I wake up at 11 and it says, your UPS driver came at 10:30 to try to deliver your package. Did not, you were not there. And if you don't get it the next time they come, it's going back to sender.

• 2:16Speaker 00

  Oh God. Wow.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  I, of course, like-

• 2:19Speaker 00

  The sword of Damocles hanging over your head here with this iPhone.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  I get ahold of someone. I'm very mad, very upset. They're like, oh, we'll have the driver circle back around. We'll get you, we'll have someone from the ground. We can't contact the driver directly. Someone there will, will call you within an hour.

• 2:33Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  No call. I call back three hours later, they're like, oh, it says on here, you're scheduled to get a call on Monday morning. I'm like,

• 2:43Speaker 01

  anyhow, uh, I do get the iPhone on Monday. Uh, there's a, we can get to the iPhone. My, I have an iPhone review, uh, which we can get to later in the show, foreshadowing. So anyhow, this is just dangling and I'm kind of annoyed about this. You might've heard I built a new rack.

• 2:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  It's a nice rack. It doesn't have my new server in it, which is obviously, you know, the critical part of the rack, to say the least. Been a little delayed. It's finally on its way. It was shipped, you go, it was supposed to ship like last Monday. They didn't ship it like Thursday, tracking this, whatever. My server is tripping around the state of Illinois right now. I'm not sure exactly why.

• 3:19Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  It was supposed to be delivered on Wednesday. Then it was delayed to Thursday. Now apparently it's delayed to Friday. You have to sign for it. Someone has to be here. Guess what I am not covered for? Delivery's on Friday.

• 3:33Speaker 00

  Oh my God.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  Anyhow, no one cares other than like, bring me the AI drones. Bring me the AI customer service.

• 3:42Speaker 00

  Automate all of this for the love of God. Yes.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  There is a, everyone is anti-AI, uh, you know, right now, broad general public. There is an aspect though, where corporate America has so seeded the ground for AI. Like I saw a tweet about someone bemoaning the end of customer service. There's an angle to Muse, like people are like, well, it's cool. Muse is finding you discounts and refunds, but like, once all this stuff become like, it's just gonna become much more adversarial between companies and their customers.

• 4:12Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  And I'm like, we're already there. These are my two mortal enemies. I despise them with the fire of a thousand suns. I don't care what happens to them. So anyhow.

• 4:23Speaker 00

  Well, your story though-

• 4:24Speaker 01

  Muse finds every single dollar they owe every customer.

• 4:27Speaker 00

  It does have a happy ending because you did get the iPhone and you hated it, which as far as I'm concerned, it's wonderful.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  So I, I have to completely retract everything I said, uh, last episode. I said, oh, that one day you need batteries worth the other 64 or days. That is totally a lie.

• 4:45Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  The, the, I cannot believe. So by the way, I don't know, I didn't realize the 18 Pro Max looks the exact same as the 70 Pro Max.

• 4:55Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Substantially heavier.

• 4:57Speaker 00

  Interesting.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  Like, uh, yeah. And, and actually, if you look at, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but it is, every iPhone has gotten heavier and heavier since the iPhone 15 Pro, which I think was actually the best one of this generation. Uh, it's a chunky phone. There's a bit where-

• 5:11Speaker 00

  Thick with three Cs.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Well, the air exists. If that's what you care about, Apple sells you an alternative. Now we'll see how many, I think we'll get the Air 2. I don't know if we'll ever get an Air 3. I, uh, Air 2, I will, you know what I'm gonna do with the Air 2?

• 5:25Speaker 00

  What? Buy it in person?

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Not get it delivered.

• 5:27Speaker 00

  Drive to Chicago?

• 5:28Speaker 01

  I'm gonna be standing in line. No, no, there's an Apple store here in Madison. Look, we're not that backwards. Give me a break.

• 5:34Speaker 00

  I wasn't sure, okay?

• 5:35Speaker 01

  I will be in line to get my Air 2. I cannot wait. Also, look, the burden is mine.

• 5:43Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  If you bought an Air, you're doomed to forever want that phone, not anything else. But I gotta tell you, 18 Pro, 18 Pro Max users, your phones feel cheap.

• 5:54Speaker 00

  Ooh.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  It's just like, I have-

• 5:57Speaker 00

  Throwing shade at the 18 Pro Max community.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  The, the air, it's not just that it's beautiful and it's so light and so thin. You get the sense it can take a beating and it can take a beating. I've dropped my phone multiple times. It's like, it's solid.

• 6:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  The, the 18 Pro is like this flimsy aluminum, blah, blah, blah. I mean, it's fine if you want to see phone.

• 6:18Speaker 00

  The 17 Pro is probably my favorite iPhone I've ever owned. In part because the 16 was such a piece of crap. So it's felt miraculous to upgrade to the 17. Uh, but I'm just thrilled that your love affair with the Air is alive.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  The 16 is a piece of crap, so I upgraded the 17.

• 6:35Speaker 00

  Well,

• 6:36Speaker 01

  what a privileged statement that is.

• 6:38Speaker 00

  Well, all I can say is the battery life is better. The camera is fantastic. It's really the camera for me. I could never go to the Air because I need the best possible camera.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  100%. If, if you have little kids, you should be getting the Pro, the Pro or the Pro Max. Like, I'm sure the camera is spectacular.

• 6:52Speaker 00

  Like the Duo piqued my interest, but I'm not settling for a worse camera at this-

• 6:57Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 6:57Speaker 00

  -point in my life.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  Not only, not only should you have the absolute best camera, you should actually also upgrade every year because that's the one piece that generally gets better every year.

• 7:06Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  And you get one opportunity to take pictures of your kids at the particular age they are. So it's like, this is the beautiful rationalization. You can justify getting a new iPhone every year. And I think it is a legitimate justification. It's like, one of the, one of the few that actually exists.

• 7:20Speaker 00

  There you go.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Look, no one is better at coming up with justification for spending money on electronics than me. But this is one that I think is actually, is actually a real one.

• 7:27Speaker 00

  Makes sense for everybody. Absolutely. Well, all is right in the world. You're back in the fold as an Air evangelist. Uh, as for the show today, we will begin with Meta Connect. Meta Connect was held Wednesday night in Menlo Park.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  I've already made, put in my request, stop having events on Wednesday. Please accommodate my publishing schedule. Um, reasonable request, I think. Wednesday night? Come on, Meta.

• 7:57Speaker 00

  Hey, listen, I had a good time reviewing the Meta Connect event at like 1 a.m. as I was lying in bed. There was a lot going on out there. Okay.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  What was great about it? 50 minutes.

• 8:10Speaker 00

  Yeah. Nice and tight. Live audience.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:13Speaker 00

  Zuck doing it the old fashioned way. Love to see it.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Live is so much better. Like I just blew through it. Like wait, I, I was gonna watch the, but I just started watching at night, locked in, just watched the whole thing. Why? Cause live's compelling. Apple puts out these marketing videos. I'm like drifting off into space within like 30 seconds. Like their live is just better. They actually pulled it off with all successful demos. Uh, so congratulations to them. I think that's the first one they made it all the way through keynote without a failed demo.

• 8:39Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Uh, but yeah, 50 minutes. Love it.

• 8:41Speaker 00

  Well, and Muse Mania is also sweeping the United States as we speak. So we have a lot to wrap our arms around with respect to Meta. Let me start with a general question though. Facebook changed its name to Meta on October 28th, 2021. If we consider the past three weeks as one moment in time, is this the first time since the name change that Meta has officially been cool? What do you think?

• 9:09Speaker 01

  There's a bit where you can lean too much into it and the cool thing becomes cringe. That's a good observation. I mean, I think if you're an investor, Meta was pretty cool from like the 2023 period or 2022. I think it was on.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  Probably, I mean, it's first time they've probably been cool in, in a very long time.

• 9:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  It's a, it's a good, I don't know. You're, what do you think? You're the normie here.

• 9:33Speaker 00

  I do probably have a better sense for what's cool. And zooming out.

• 9:40Speaker 00

  Metaverse was a creepy disaster that almost instantly became a nationwide punchline. The headsets never really moved the needle. Llama was a cool idea that never gained any real traction. The glasses, they are a hit in relative terms. It's not a Google Glass situation, but I wouldn't say they've swept the nation or captured anyone's imagination, really. And I think of our past podcasts after Meta keynotes where you would come on and say, you know, I really admire this risk that they're taking. They're committed to it and some of the innovations in the glasses space are pretty cool.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  Wait, did I say that?

• 10:20Speaker 00

  Well, you've been generally pro what they're doing with that initiative. Look, I don't want to mischaracterize.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  Look, I've had a bad week. Okay. I was on TVPN in making the point that, that, look, you might, I don't know if you know this, Andrew, but I'm very enthusiastic about agents. You may have heard about this on and offline. Yeah. And racks and like hardware to run my agents and my own.

• 10:49Speaker 00

  Hardware is in again. It's cool.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Agent for my thing that I've spent weeks and like, like blown past my subscription multiple times. Spent real money on this. I believe in agents, to say the least. When Muse came out, I said, when Muse came out, this is the same day as OpenAI solved that math equation. Or sorry, that sounds so trivial.

• 11:08Speaker 00

  Navier-Stokes.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:11Speaker 00

  Millennium Prize. Sure.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  No, one of the math, math questions that is so significant, I knew about it well before this AI moment. Like it's a super big deal, like to be clear, but I made the case like, look.

• 11:22Speaker 00

  This is a bigger deal.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  Muse is a bigger deal.

• 11:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  Like just, just what it represented, giving literally everyone a computer. Like that's, that's the core of it. It's not just AI. It's actually giving people a computer and an entity that can use that computer on your behalf. It's, it's actually incredible. Like I have told everyone that in my regular life that they should try Muse. Like just because, and it's because I believe in agents so much. I think they're so helpful and so useful. What I don't think is useful is trying to sell people on productivity. People don't want to be productive. Enterprises want to be productive. What you sell them on is making annoying stuff in their life go away. Making life more convenient. This is about a marketing message.

• 12:05Speaker 00

  Eliminating hassles is what people will buy.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  So I make this point on TVPN and I'm talking about the framing of this question. Somehow I get clipped and it's all over the internet that I think agents are stupid, is pointless. Muse is a failure. It is so aggravating. Like, like the clipping thing is out of control. Like, like it's fun to go on these other podcasts. It makes me not want to go on. I don't blame the TVPN guys, but like, but it's really annoying. This happened with, when I went on a Packer Shonesty thing too. Like, it's like the, the clipping, oh.

• 12:39Speaker 00

  Well, every couple of hours I will see you responding to someone new on Twitter being like, actually I've written the exact opposite of what you just said. I said, so stop mischaracterizing me. I don't want to mischaracterize you. As far as Meta Connect, all I'm saying is.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  Anyhow, anyhow, what I'm saying is, what I'm saying is, don't stop. What I'm saying is, as annoying as this week of clipping has been.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Do you know the, the basis on which I met Mark Zuckerberg for the first time?

• 13:06Speaker 00

  I don't know. Enlighten.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  So this was, this was in 2020. It was the week before everything shut down. And he invites me in and the reason he wanted to talk to me is he wanted to understand why for seven, for six years, however long it had been, I had been relentlessly opposed to what they were doing with the Metaverse and Reality Labs. And it actually increased my respect for him a ton. Like he, he just, he was, he didn't want to argue with, he did argue with me, but it was, it was a, it was a Socratic sort of like, I want to really understand what you think. I obviously didn't change his mind about it at all, but he's like, I just want you to come and meet because I want to really understand your thinking about this.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  Because I want an outside perspective, like why do you think I'm doing the wrong thing? And we went back and forth, had a good discussion and then he's like, okay, uh, you know, great to meet you. And then kept doing the same thing, which by the way is very Mark.

• 14:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Which is fine. All that to say is like my discomfort with and issue with Meta doing this whole space and spending all this money and doing hardware when they're a horizontal services company that should be serving everyone. And hardware diverts you and sets you into competition with folks that should be your partners. All of which happened, by the way. And then you get on this podcast and say, you who have been defending their glasses effort all along. It's unbelievable. I didn't even get clipped.

• 14:38Speaker 00

  No. All I'm saying is in those podcasts after past Connect events, I have felt like the wet blanket who has to come out and say, look, I don't think anybody's actually going to use these and there, there's not anything that.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  Right. I've been enthusiastic about the technology. I've always been had a problem with Meta specifically doing it. And in fact, I think there's an argument that Meta actually killed the technology by virtue of bringing all the talent in-house. It was, it didn't develop organically.

• 15:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  It didn't develop in the broader ecosystem. Anyhow.

• 15:09Speaker 00

  But after this year's Connect.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  UPS.

• 15:13Speaker 00

  Andrew Sharp.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  TVPN. I'm like Arya Stark right now.

• 15:17Speaker 00

  I had lots of random people on Twitter who've been driving you insane for the last 72 hours. I was sitting there last night thinking, holy crap, they nailed it with the VR glasses. Like, what did you think of Meta's VR headset? I just look at this now and I'm like, they're nailing it on all these different vectors. And I'm wildly impressed with where the company is. Only a couple of months after everybody was freaking out saying, what the hell is Meta doing? You wrote a script for Mark Zuckerberg to get his messaging on point. And now here we are a couple of months later, it's the hottest company in technology.

• 15:55Speaker 01

  There's a sport you might've heard of called basketball. Like, um, I tried to.

• 16:00Speaker 00

  I'm vaguely familiar.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  In basketball, there's this interesting dynamic that happens. Like when a player is injured or when a team like acquires a player, say at the deadline, where you can have a team that seems woefully deficient and you add one more player and they get way better, not just because they added that player, but because everyone slots into a position that's much more suited to them. Right? Like, like of course you know what a number one needs to be, you know? Everyone knows it's coming. They still score, like they draw the defense, they kick it out. You need a number two who can carry the offense with the number ones on the bench, who can be a secondary ball maker. Needs to, depending on if number one is a distributor or not, if they're not, they need to be a distributor. If number one is more distributor, number two needs to be a scorer.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  And then number three is like basically the guy who you could put him on the best player to defend and will knock down every single open shot. And then you have the, like, you have the dirty guy who does, does all the dirty work, grunt work.

• 17:00Speaker 00

  It's like, imagine the Knicks without Karl-Anthony Towns. Karl-Anthony Towns is a second best player. And then he allows their role players like OG Ananobe and Mikail Bridges to slot into their proper roles as opposed to asking those guys to do too much and being inevitably disappointed.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  So the problem is that if you're missing your number two, then your number three seems worse because he's a bad number two. Your number four seems worse. He's a bad number three, like all the way, it goes all the way down the chain. You, you can slot just one guy in and a team gets massively better because everyone is now in their proper position. Meta's problem is they were missing a number one.

• 17:37Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  And what I mean is the reason why the glasses seem compelling is just not because they're small and thin and like, you know, even the VR ones. Like I thought it was a great reveal. Actually, they've been sitting out here the whole time and you didn't notice.

• 17:50Speaker 00

  Amazing.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  Because they look kind of like, that was the best part of like, just from a showmanship perspective. Cause he kept saying, oh, look, here's all our glasses. He has our glasses. Like he was, he was kind of setting it up the whole time and.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  Once you have Muse and Muse is the thing, now you're not selling VR glasses, you're not selling AR glasses, you're selling Muse delivery devices.

• 18:12Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  And it just, it's so obvious. Muse is something that wants to break out of the phone. You see it in your little app up in the little corner, typing away and doing work for you. It's like, oh, poor little Muse is stuck in my, like, you're not thinking this clearly, but you're getting a sense of, I would like Muse in more places. How can I get it more? Oh, Meta is, has devices on which I can interact with Muse. It isn't ethereal AI glasses. These are now Muse glasses. Your little Tamagotchi is a Muse Tamagotchi. And that is what, that's why that keynote comes along, feels so focused. It's why you feel so excited. It's because they had VR as their number one player.

• 18:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  Not a number one player, right? They, they had kind of VR, they had AI as their number one player. Also not a number one player. Your number one player is a product that resonates. And the product doesn't need to be pushed on people. People pull it because they want it. And once you have that pull effect, everything else slots into place. Muse is their number one. Their AI models, number two.

• 19:21Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  The VR glasses, great number three. Klay Thompson, not a number two, terrible number two, can't dribble the ball. The best number three in history. Locks down the opposing guards, doesn't miss a shot. Like, that's why the glasses feel better now.

• 19:32Speaker 00

  And as tech, the glasses also, they look better. They weigh a hundred grams, same weight as a deck of cards, Zuckerberg pointed out, and they're set to retail for $1,300. I would call them a Vision Pro killer, but I think the Vision Pro is already effectively dead. But a third of the price and basically all of the performance that you're getting with Vision Pro. Vision Pro is like real 4K and these aren't quite as high resolution. But just a super impressive product. And a lot of what we've imagined should exist in our conversations about the Vision Pro over the last couple of years. Not nearly as heavy and an entertainment device. They've secured sports rights. They secured football, UFC.

• 20:17Speaker 00

  I'm curious to see what it turns into.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  I think it's a little oversold. I think ESPN has like 180 degree cameras at some of these games. So it's not like the immersive camera stuff that Apple is doing.

• 20:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  It's going to be more like, if you go on YouTube with your Vision Pro and you can access some of these 180 degree videos, which are still, it's still super cool, to be clear.

• 20:36Speaker 00

  But, but yeah. Not quite as transformative and transportive as the.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  Well, that's why it's so frustrating is Apple went to the trouble to make these incredible cameras that actually delivers this fully immersive.

• 20:46Speaker 00

  And they don't really use them.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  They just suck at it. Um, so, uh, yeah, the, and we'll see what, you know, so I'm wary also of it being delivered by a company that is focused on 2D video because the whole point is learning a 2D experience. When you're wearing 3D glass, you know, 3D and immersive sort of thing. So we'll see how that works. But yes, to your point, for what the Vision Pro is actually used for, uh, if it's used, um, I do want to see the resolution. I mean, you, you could argue the 4K or the resolution on the Vision Pro is amazing.

• 21:18Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  It's also still not good enough. Uh, you know, you could pick that up with the immersive video thing, sort of things. So we'll see how these work out. Would a little bit bigger with more resolution be better? I don't know. Also, they're only $1,200.

• 21:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  Uh, only $1,200, all things considered. Uh, yeah, it, those are great. But then you, everything else makes sense. Like the glasses with no camera. Like number one, way less creepy. Thank you. Uh, that's good. The, you know, the fact you can talk, uh, they're Muse devices, they're Muse delivery vehicles.

• 21:50Speaker 00

  It's all coming together.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  Makes so much more sense.

• 21:52Speaker 00

  The Muse charm is going to be ready as early as the holidays. I believe that's when they're trying to have it ready.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  Uh, oh yeah. By, by the way, uh, yeah, yeah. The Muse charm, article in Bloomberg about, oh, this is like what Alan Dye did. Uh, complete BS, by the way.

• 22:07Speaker 00

  Okay, good note.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  There, there is some, there is, uh, some drama about like, do everything that everyone hated him at Apple for, already doing it at, at, at Meta.

• 22:16Speaker 00

  Well, out of curiosity, do you think that's Alan Dye driving that confusion there? Like, how does that happen?

• 22:22Speaker 01

  That's what Alan Dye does. They, that's how Alan Dye became the VP of Industrial Design at Apple, despite being terrible at his job.

• 22:27Speaker 00

  So good reputation manager. Alan Dye, good, good to know. Uh, well, do you think failing with the other product launches or failing in relative terms with past product launches has helped Meta refine its product instincts with respect to Muse? Because I've been pretty stunned at how well they're executing across basically every vector with this product. The ads are great. The character is meme-able and wonderful and perfect for the internet right now. And they're shipping new features literally every day. They're developing new partnerships literally every day.

• 23:09Speaker 00

  And it's all come together and looked pretty seamless, which is not how it's felt in past eras of Meta, at least from my perspective.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  You get what you pay for.

• 23:21Speaker 00

  Okay. Just bringing in talent that knows how to do this stuff and has good instincts?

• 23:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I'm biased because this is a previous Stratechery inner subject, but I, I don't think it's an accident that Mark Zuckerberg called out Nat Friedman by name. Um, I think anyone who's worked with him knows he's one of the greatest operating executives in tech.

• 23:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Swore he would never do it again. I don't know what it took to get him back, but, uh, whatever, whatever Mark paid to get him back, uh, was the bargain of a lifetime. I, like, there's just an aspect to that that is, that is real. If you're a big company like Meta that has to deal with all the internal politics, like the Alan Dyes of the world, like a Meta does, you don't have people like that. They have left, long ago left if they were there. Uh, everyone who's still there has their own little kingdoms and fiefdoms in their own right. They're not going to be able to, you know, and so this is a, all this is ultimately down to Mark Zuckerberg for sure. The pivot, like a year ago, a year and a half ago, I did that interview with him, which I've referenced multiple times. That was bizarre. He was out to sea.

• 24:21Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  And to his credit, he didn't know how to solve it, but he realized he was out to sea.

• 24:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  And in the end, fired basically the whole AI team, uh, brought in a completely new AI team and didn't just bring in AI team, brought in a product team. And they delivered the first new product from Meta since the original.

• 24:46Speaker 00

  I know.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  That they didn't buy. Like, like, again, we're only two weeks in. Let's not overstate it. Let's put in all the caveats. But the reason to be hyped up is number one, the momentum is obviously real. You could, like, you could see it, feel it. Number two, this category is real. I promise you it's real. The hard thing is selling it and getting people to understand what they can do. And Muse delivers on the promise of this product by and large. Of course, there's rough edges for sure. We're at the very nascent edge of it. But there's a reason for it to be taking off.

• 25:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  And then number three, the implications of winning the space are astronomical. This is like, this is the winner take all of like consumer everything. This is the aggregator of aggregators. You reduce the connection to the human to one cute little character that fits into Tamagotchi. And it mediates everything online.

• 25:44Speaker 00

  All right. And that is the end of the free preview. If you'd like to hear more from Ben and I, there are links to subscribe in the show notes, or you can also go to sharptech.fm. Either option will get you access to a personalized feed that has all the shows we do every week, plus lots more great content from Stratechery and the Stratechery Plus bundle. Check it out. And if you've got feedback, please email us at email at sharptech.fm.