Big Technology Podcast - BuzzFeed Employs AI, Tesla Stock Goes Wild, Salesforce Is Challenged

Episode Date: January 27, 2023

Ranjan Roy of Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the week's tech news. We cover: 1) BuzzFeed creating content with AI 2) The tech industry's destiny to suffer alone in this economic drawback 3) Tesla stock's wild ride 4) Salesforce's challenge from an activist investor 5) Trump's return to Facebook 6) TikTok's recent lobbying efforts 7) Menswear guy on Twitter 8) Ticketmaster's Senate hearing. Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Questions? Feedback? Write to: [e-mail]

Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday edition. We're a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond, and we are coming to you live on LinkedIn and YouTube for our traditional Friday show. Welcome to all the new subscribers who are here. We had a bunch of people come on after listening to my interview Wednesday with Jan Lecun. And just for an introduction for you and for the full. who are regular listeners and tuning into the Friday program, we have the weekly Wednesday show, which is the flagship interview like Jan Lacoon was on this week. And then on Friday, we come here

and we discuss the week's news. And our guest, as always, is Ron John Roy from Margins. Welcome, Ron John. It's Friday. Let's do it, Alex. It's Friday. Let's do it. So we're going to start with a fun story. We'll also end with a fun story. But why don't we begin here? BuzzFeed yesterday either announced or the news broke that it's going to start using AI and its content creation. Now, there had been some other efforts. CNET, for instance, had experimented with some AI. It hadn't gone well. Now, BuzzFeed wants to involve it in the content manufacturing process, for lack of a better word.

What do you think about that? Content manufacturing is a tough term, but I actually think it makes sense here. So Jonah Peretti had given an interview to the Wall Street Journal. It got reported all over. stock jumped. I think at the peak, it was 250%. Obviously, the stock has been battered down, but on this idea that BuzzFeed will start introducing, they had to create quizzes, help with brainstorming, and assist in personalizing content to his audience is what they said. I think it's interesting that BuzzFeed, if any company, you know, they've been built on technology

and incorporating it into media production. If anyone can do it and do it well, it will be them. I think in quizzes, in terms of listicles, these kind of things, there's no reason. These are exactly the type of structured content that AI should be able to solve for, whether or not the stock should have jumped like that, whether until they actually can show that they are able to do this and bring down margins. And I still think it's a bit ridiculous and it's a bit reminder where the market is as of this moment. But I think it's good. I think if anyone can thoughtfully bring in AI, open AI models into media, it's going to be Jonah Perretti and BuzzFeed.

Yeah. And so I should say, full disclosure, it's my former employer. One of the things I liked about BuzzFeed was that it would experiment a lot. And I do think that the fact that they're getting into this is an indication of where we're heading in the future. Now, it is scary, right? Like, is this going to replace journalism? Maybe it will, is it can do a poor job. Maybe it will, at least that's what we saw with what happened.

have seen it. However, there is some interesting things here. And what they want to do is like take the AI to answer to answer some quiz responses for people. And I think there is this whole if you can be a content company and harness what we're seeing with generative AI and use it to actually be more fun than the chat GPT instance, how fun that might be. I think there's a real opportunity there. And that's where they're going for. And as you mentioned, the stock, I mean, you put it in a tweet yesterday, but it was under, was it hovering around a dollar or under a dollar, and it jumped 114% in like two minutes to, it was at $1.2.15, up $1.70 something on the year. So not bad, but yeah, not bad. But if you think about it, I remember kind of like observing BuzzFeed peripherally during their heyday.

one thing that was really interesting from a media perspective that they did is the legendary 12 foods you only know if you're Indian and then that picks up and they see the analytics on that so then they start replicating that across different nationalities basically taking winning content and then being able to replicate it efficiently and quickly and that's exactly the kind of thing that AI should be able to help with that's exactly that that kind of like replicable structured content, that's what AI is built for. And I think one thing BuzzFeed said in a statement to Reuters, they said we are not using chat GPT. We are using open AI as publicly available API. And I think this is really important that people need to understand.

The real value that companies are gonna create is not simply plugging in and creating party chicks with tricks with chat GPT. It's actually building in, you know, into your own, production processes and building your own tools using open AIs, APIs, and different models like Ada and Curie and all these others. So I think they're doing it right. And I think, again, if anyone's going to figure it out, it's them. Right. I think what was interesting in the

BuzzFeed announcement was basically Jonah saying, look, this is going to happen and you might as well be first. And I spoke with Joe Pompeo from Vanity Fair a little bit about this. He wrote this story saying chat cheptis mind-boggling and possibly dystopian impact on the media world looking at what was going to happen with this thing and we're not there yet obviously but we are getting to the point that 20 years from now like right now we're doing the quizzes we're doing the fun stuff 20 years from now are we going to have

AI that's able to surf the internet and write analysis that's better than working reporters I think so so it's just something to keep in touch keep in mind and this is something that we'll touch almost the entire content world, almost the entire media world. I think obviously it's just getting started. It's going to be very interesting to see which shape it it takes. Even if Jan, Lacoon, who is here Wednesday, doesn't think that this is a massive innovation. It's the usability and it's the fact that the public is finally seeing this stuff that was maybe behind closed doors inside Facebook and inside Google. That is starting to become pretty interesting.

Yeah. If any of you have not listened to the interview with Jan, go back and listen to it because first of all, I mean, almost from like a professorial standpoint, the way he describes these incredibly complex topics, what is supervised learning, how does it work for me? It was like a masterclass in it and actually making these things make sense. But on the other side, Jan, you can see almost the disdain for the fact that technologically Facebook, Google, they have the models, they have the technology, but everyone's annoyed that Microsoft and Open AI are now getting all the credit, but that's the, we have to give credit to how, from a marketing perspective, amazing they rolled out ChatGPT.

Again, Microsoft giving them free Azure credits to power this as part of their investment, giving this everyone, this access to this interface for a technology that's existed, I think, you know, as much as it might pain, you know, yawning them to see, know that they have this exact same technology this is how it works this is how you inspire everyone around this type of technology and no one had been doing it up to this point no doubt and i can't imagine how frustrating it might be to be in a place like a facebook or a place like a google and see that you have this technology and watch everything move forward and realize that because of corporate concerns about concerns you can't do it and i think that's exactly what we saw with yon

So let's, by the way, I just want to use this point to say we already have some questions coming in. Thank you, Friends, Joseph. We will be taking questions probably towards the end, but as you drop them in, we'll be able to take a look at them, consider them, and then we will answer almost everyone we can. A note to listeners on the feed. This is the show we do Fridays. Once again, it's typically at 11 a.m. Pacific 2 p.m. Eastern, we're a little bit earlier today. you can go to my LinkedIn page it's Alex Cantowitz sign up or follow me and I'll post the event there every week so you can tune in if you want and obviously ask questions or if you prefer to just hang out

on the feed feel free to do that too we'll publish it to the feed right afterwards so ronjohn let's move on to the next topic that we have here which is what I call rally versus the valley and the rally is interesting right we're starting to see that we've had a real rally in the economy the stock market is up. The S&P 500 seems to keep climbing. There are lots of good indicators that inflation is on the way down and that the Fed is potentially going to stop raising rates, which would hopefully in the eyes of some spark the economy again. Obviously, it's not going back to zero, right? And we'll cover. We have at the end of the podcast, I'm just letting folks know, we have a fun segment called, was this a product of ZERP or was it normal, zero interest rate

policy so stay tuned for that but my question here is and the thing i've been thinking about here is obviously we're not there yet like the economy hasn't fully had that soft landing and we've seen tens or maybe hundreds of thousands of layoffs in the tech world that's the valley right the valley has taken the brunt of this and some might say almost all of this because outside of tech it's not a recession inside tech it is a recession you know right now we're not seeing a full recession though over the overall economy. And so here's the thing. Is this going to be pain that the tech industry is just going to keep taking while

everyone continues to be okay? Does it eventually spill over to others? Or are we just kind of at the end of it now? And it was like sort of the main impact is that tech just did their layoffs and took these valuation hits and then we're coming out of it. Where do you land on that, Rajan? Yeah, I think if you see all the different statements and it almost is, In the comments, Franz Joseph said AI is best at repeatable formulate content.

The statements coming out of these companies are repeatable and formulaic. Everyone, meta. At the start of COVID, the world rapidly moved online and the surge of e-commerce led to outsize revenue growth. Google over the past two years, we've seen periods of dramatic growth. Everyone repeats the exact same line. We overinvested because of COVID, and now we're having to cut back. And it's true. you know, every single one of these companies, the numbers seem exorbitant, 100,000 plus,

but every company still is going to be at a higher headcount than when the pandemic started. And I think this is, it's the reason we're seeing this in the juxtapost against generally good economic news and a stock market rally is all of this is trying to right size, and I hate using that word. It sounds very consult-y, but they are they trying to just make sense of their business again. they went crazy and they kind of had to you've covered this regularly and now they're just trying to clean up their business and try to actually focus on the things that are making profits and grow those but what do you think about the bigger picture which is is it just going to be tech taking

the hit is it going to spill over so there was some news this week 3m said it was going to cut 2,500 manufacturing jobs then there was newel brands who makes sharpie said it's going to cut 13% of office staff. Typically, when you have an economic correction, everyone feels it right now tech has only been feeling it. So are we going to, we got a sharpies aren't going anywhere. Right. But of course they're not going to go anywhere. But yeah, do you feel like we're going to end up having a pullback that the rest of the economy feels? It seems right now the only people that are feeling it are the people working inside tech companies, namely big tech companies and investors who've held that in their portfolio.

This is where I will fully admit watching how tech companies, the perks, the FT had a good article about, you know, cutting massages and free laundry, the way these companies grew and the way they assumed they needed to compete for talent around perks and pay packages and stock compensation that was excessive, I think this is where every one of these companies is taking a pause and just trying to understand what is, what are things going to look like? for the next three, five, ten years. And I think the larger question of, are we going to have a soft landing and is everything okay? I am generally a cautious person. So now that suddenly crypto is flying again, Tesla, which will get into nearly 50% BuzzFeed stock on one article about AI,

which they haven't even implemented yet, jumps 120%, 150%. I think it's a reminder that like those, if we call them green shoots, or we can just say the absurdity of the markets, it's still there, but I think overall, is inflation completely subsiding? I still feel one or two good prints

is not a reason that we should all think we're in the clear completely. I don't think the Fed is going to back down for everything everyone says and everything everyone is hoping for. They have made it very clear. Everyone has been in lockstep, saying that our primary goal is to bring inflation down. And I think everyone is hoping again.

And it's a start of a new year. Everyone's books are fresh and everyone's trying to predict what's happening for the year ahead. But I am not, I think what's happened in the last few weeks is not going to be representative of 2023. Well, let me get more pointed then. This is going to spill over to the rest of the economy. It has to, right? Yeah. Yeah. No, I think, I think tech is a leading indicator in the sense that they're the companies that grew the most. They're the companies that from a headcount perspective, from a revenue perspective over the last two to three years, they're over the last decade. They're the ones that grew the most. So obviously, they're going to be the first to actually take this hit. But the downstream effects on housing, on consumer

spending, I think we're going to continue to see that we're, again, we're not in the clear. So I do think that tech, like many other things over the past decade, they're the leading indicator. and they're starting this entire process. And again, as you said, Hasbro, I saw cutting 15%. You said Newell and Sharpies are cutting. So the real economy, yeah. So the real economy, it's happening. Yeah, and I guess the hope is that it's just going to be a quick one.

All right, let's talk about one of those companies that you mentioned, which is Tesla. The companies had one of the weirdest stock adventures, I think you could ever imagine. you talked about it's up 55% year to date over the last year it's down 39% over five years it's up 633% and over the past month well i guess that is the year but 53% up 23% up 23% up just this week obviously tesla has a lot of factors going writing on its stock right there's the elon factor and his work at twitter did not really help the company's stock i would imagine imagine, but it is making a real comeback and it just had earnings this week. And they were good earnings. It had record revenue. It beat on the earnings expectations. It expects its car

deliveries to increase by 30% this year. And like I mentioned, stock is up a tremendous amount year to date. So all that being said, there was this view that Tesla was kind of screwed and it was about to go into a death spiral. Your interest rate is gone. Elon was distracted by Twitter. not the case what do you think about that this is why one even if you are bearish on the company you don't short Tesla because you have no idea what's going to happen and this one is perfect in December before they released their production number estimates the EPS consensus was at 1.24 everyone revised them down to 1.12 and now they beat on the earnings and everyone's saying it's a beat it's amazing that's how he's amazing

amazing at managing expectations to give you the headline and the right headline that feeds retail feeds the algorithms another thing the wall street journal this morning had Tesla now is back to being the big dog of options trading seven to 10 percent of all options being traded on an average day more than the NASDAQQQQ more than Apple are in Tesla the most popular bet for an option right now is that Tesla shares will hit 800 in the next 12 months. Really? That's a five-fold increase. And gamma-squeezing is something I've written about in the past.

That's what we're seeing firsthand again right now. That's why we're seeing a plus 10, 11% move. What is a gamma squeeze? Okay, so a gamma squeeze when a highly out of the money option is traded, the options market maker needs to buy or sell the underlying stock to head. themselves so when a when someone is buying a call option that Tesla is going to go to 800 market maker has to buy more and more of the notional buy actual Tesla stock so it's a huge wind in the sales of the stock itself and that's something that we saw throughout the

pandemic in a lot of different areas especially in Tesla and that's back so that's a that's definitely pushing another thing retail is back retail traders overall bought, it was the last two weeks after 17 straight weeks of outflows. Retails buying again, they net bought two and a half billion overall. So options trading and out of the money call options are back. Retail traders are back. We're back to seeing Elon brilliantly, you know, manage expectations, bring down EPS consensus so they can say it's a beat. Even you said you gave the correct number that the actual growth was 31%. But they just openly are saying, we are remaining ahead of our long-term 50% annual growth rate.

Right. They're just saying it out loud that we're still ahead of 50% even though they grew 31%. So I think we're right back to the 2020, 2021 kind of gamification of the stock. And it's shooting up. And this is again, this is why Tesla is the hardest stock to trade up or down. Now, oftentimes we get kind of lost in the numbers when we're doing a market analysis. But there's been questions about the fundamentals of this company. And by fundamentals, I mean, its ability to sustain itself

and whether it was going to continue to thrive in a market where Elon had been more polarizing, been distracted. Clearly, Tesla is doing well as a company. I mean, they're expecting, I think, to ship 2 million cars this year. I think that's what they're, I mean, talking about maybe what they're telling us to read between the lines. it's not the official number but they're like saying we're going to do two million wink wink company seems to be in like really good shape and it's it's again like i guess the question of can

it get memed again to the point that it was previously well so Tesla is a good company right Tesla's stock is a whole different thing and and actually the health of Tesla itself Tesla is still a solid car company but in their latest earnings their margins are decreasing they missed on the gross margin. And that actually is a big deal. The whole growth story is that Tesla is this magical company that's going to reinvent the way the economics of cars. They missed on the gross margin, and they are now starting to recognize full self-driving revenue. They recognize $324 million, which is pure profit in terms of going into the margin in terms of how they're measuring net income. And they're recognizing revenue on a product which, yes, people are paying them for,

but has not actually been delivered. So I think in terms of the accounting games, they're doing very well on, but this is still a company that's trading, I think it's 50 times earnings, whereas a normal car company is in the single digit. So it's still trading like, yeah, 51. So it's still a company that's trading on. They're going to have humanoid robots that are replacing workers and full self-driving and robotaxies and a cyber truck that might come so so that that the narrative is still driving it

versus the company it's a solid company but it just should not be trading at these levels without all of the Elon Musk magic of course and one thing that baffles me is that some people think that it's going to go to 800 I mean in what world is someone going to think that this thing goes to 800 well that's a thing though that it's at 167 today yeah but that if you the the bet that it can go to 800 is less about the act it actually going to 800 and more the momentum that be you buying those options everyone buying the stock that it'll start pushing it higher and it's very significantly faster i think again you could believe it's going to hit numbers like that if you get the humanoid robot and robotaxies and it becomes an insurance company

and it becomes the battery storage and electrification and the new power grid of the United States or whatever else is in the story, yes, then you'll see your 800. But as a good car company, the stock still doesn't make any sense. Okay. There was this also this great story about autopilot that effectively, I mean, I think we knew this already, but it's a story in the New York Times. It came out a couple of weeks ago by Christopher Cox talking to the drivers who had their cars crashed on autopilot.

And it was just kind of interesting to see how they reacted. A lot of them were like, yeah, this is sort of necessary training data for Tesla. And others were, we just wouldn't, the people who wouldn't talk were interesting because either they love Tesla so much that they didn't even want to speak about it in the press, or they were in the middle of suing the company and they didn't want to impede their legislative initiative. Or, sorry, legal initiative. So litigative initiative. I get that word right at a certain point.

But here's a thing. It's almost ideal circumstances for Tesla, right? Because if you have people that are this loyal that will crash the car and not fall to you, you can probably get the training data you need that will enable you to do a better job on full self-driving. So maybe that's a when we think about the stock price, which a lot of that is based on Tesla being able to turn these cars autonomous. Maybe that story, though, talking about the crash has actually made the case for why it might get there. Yeah, but even the other thing that came out was that they faked the demo video in 2016,

which was shown to investors and that the whole thing, it wasn't actually self-driving when they said explicitly like the driver is not involved in this, that this is all being done with our technology. And it's still everything one just seems to move past that. So I think self-driving itself, you know, it's 2022. We're still not, we still don't have fully autonomous cars. we're nowhere near that i have a honda and they're you know like driver assist capabilities are actually great on the highway fords uh i think is ranked higher by uh i think it was car

and driver magazine in terms of overall capabilities relative to full self driving so i think i think this idea to me autonomous vehicles i actually think we are behind right now because of tesla's lack of uh coordination or collaboration with regulatory bodies. This has to be government working hand in hand because there's so much around safety, there's so much around just the overall societal way this gets set up, that it's not a technology question.

It's a question around just how do we live as a society. And I think Tesla very proudly worked around regulators for the last number of years. And I think that's why we're behind on this. That's why we're still having to press the accelerator ourselves. I think you're asking a lot for the demo of self-driving that says it's actually self-driving to live up to that promise, Ranjan. I mean, come on. Yeah, I know, but if you say it. You can't be a hater. Can't be a hater. Hold on my prediction on all this. In the next month, Elon's going to be selling a lot more Tesla.

Of his stock. Of his stock. This little nice bump, this little options driven rally, the earnings beat all of this, managing the stock going up 50%. I think, and we all. We are, all know, I mean, on Twitter, there will be more and more capital required. And I think Elon's going to be selling. I think we're going to be seeing some more forms filed at some point. We're going to see a little drop in a day that looks a little out of the ordinary. And then we're going to find out again, he was selling. My prediction is that he's going to be selling Twitter. That's what I think is going to happen in terms of the sale. That will give an even bigger bump. And I don't if you saw this but Twitter reported that its revenue was down uh hold on I have the number right here I think it was 35 30% compared to the previous year in the fourth quarter and I'm actually

working on a story now and I'm pretty sure I'm going to be blasting this to the big technology substack newsletter probably right after we talk about I've been speaking to advertisers all week long about how the company's sales reps have disappeared and they need those sales reps because a you need sales reps to talk through any brand safety concern that might come up. And the brands, they don't want to be next to any, they're, they're shy. They don't want to be next to any negative content, any type of brand unsafe content that Musk might be letting back on the platform or enable with his looser speech rules, which, you know, by all means go for it. But from a business standpoint, they're, they're wary of it. And usually those sales reps will talk them off the ledge.

They're gone now. Not only that, all their systems are. automated. So when there's a bug or a new product, the sales reps talk them through that and they're gone. And so I think maybe this 35% blip was 35% drawdown was really just the beginning having spoken with them. Yeah. To me, the biggest thing I've never understood about this whole drama is Twitter as a product was fine. In fact, for anyone who used it regularly, you know, it was an incredible product. Sure, there's a lot that could be improved, but overall, the product wasn't the issue. It was not a well-run business. Their advertising products never evolved in the past decade when Facebook and everyone else. I mean, I'm sure you have seen it. I'm sure our listeners

have seen it. The ads have been terrible. They've gotten even worse. But the amount of contextual data I have given Twitter in the last 12 years, the number of likes, people I follow. I've told them everything about everything I'm interested in all day long, and I still get the weirdest ads. And that's even before Elon was taken over. And now it's gotten way, way worse. Right. And they are, they're finally starting to do search ads, which is interesting. So that could, that could be something to watch. if you type what you want in a search bar typically if you have a search business it makes sense to match ads to the intent Twitter apparently never had that so wait maybe that will

help you're starting search ads they are yes like within the Twitter platform itself within search something oh okay smart all right all right maybe why hasn't that happened yet I don't know but it's here so Salesforce is in the middle of a battle with an activist investor Elliott the same group that tried to or that basically effectively ousted jack dorsey out at twitter is inside sales force we're going to talk about that right after the break i'm here with ron john roy of margins we're live on lincoln we also have uh some folks watching on youtube hate to both of you groups also to everybody listening at home we do this every week um this is our friday news recap show it's shorter than usual uh it's also i guess we're fast paced we cover the news so when we come

back we're going to talk about sales force we're going to talk about some other social media stuff including the fact that trump is back on twitter and then we're going to talk about some other fun things that have happened this week including menswear guy who's menswear guy stay tuned after the break to find out hey everyone let me tell you about the hustle daily show a podcast filled with business tech news and original stories to keep you in the loop on what's trending more than two million professionals read the hustle's daily email for its irreverent and informative take on business and tech news. Now, they have a daily podcast called The Hustle Daily Show,

where their team of writers break down the biggest business headlines in 15 minutes or less and explain why you should care about them. So, search for The Hustle Daily Show and your favorite podcast app, like the one you're using right now. And we're back on Big Technology Podcasts. We're live, as always on Friday. I'm here with Ron John Roy of Margins. We're talking before the break a little bit about Salesforce.

Ron John, it's pretty wild. I mean, if you look at some of the details that Elliott management, you would think Elliot management behind the scenes is surfacing. They're absolutely incredible in this activist fight against Salesforce. The company has long been held, I think, in a little bit too high regard. Number one, it's a software tool for salespeople to log their activity. I used to be a salesperson. I used it.

It was terrible. I mean, I understand why it's useful for managers, but instead of the joke was always that like instead of you using Salesforce, they forced sales to use it. And they're now being challenged that their margins are not where they needed to be. This is sort of another function of us starting to exist in this correcting economy. Elliot management is in there. They are a activist investor. They're trying to get a board seat. And there's some amazing details in this financial time story about what has come out in Salesforce, including the fact that what Matthew McConaughey and and Will I Am are now involved in some of the business

meetings. I mean, people saying that Will I.m. is there for his business acumen. It's totally amazing. I'm a big fan of the black IPs, but I don't think Will I am and enterprise sales really make a lot of sense together. Have you, have you been following this story? What do you think about it? I have. And the, Will I am Matthew McConaughey, just that general air of celebrity driving the strategy. Right. They're in the offices doing business meetings with them. I mean,

so the first thing, this is where Elliott management is just, I mean, a force in the fact that how brutal that leak was to the financial times and clearly, you know, just that news happens to surface right as this takeover starts. And it's such a good headline and it's,

but it's so evocative of what is happening. And as you said, there's a bit of a meme right now. what the hell is a Salesforce? Everyone's like, what is Salesforce? I too, having been on the sales side of the world, have used it. It's terrible. In terms of software, it's rough. It's like, it's this big, clunky, heavy enterprise software that you need engineers in-house to really customize to make usable for you. They tried, I think it was Salesforce 360. They tried to make sleeker products, but still, everyone ends up with, if you use it, the main product looks

like it's from 2007, 2008. So they haven't really involved, but somehow they took on the air of a meta, Google, really trying to push things in that direction, which to Benioff's credit, he does position the company as this kind of like platform for the future of work rather than just a CRM, a customer relationship management software. So I think, I think this is going to be a really interesting thing to watch because it's the most you know like brutal of private equity and activist investors going into a company that had gotten that had sold everyone on a bigger dream but has come far from realizing it again the the acquisition of slack is a perfect example like how did that drive additional revenue on the CRM side they should they should have been somewhere in the

whole remote work suite of digital workplace against Microsoft teams against Google workspace like they were supposed to be in there and they're not right and they bought slack at a 55% premium which is again like seems like a product of a bygone era and i think the thing that's really coming to the four here and will is that mark benioff obviously built a successful company but he comes out of oracle under the shadow under the shadow of larry ellison And now he's trying to establish himself. And he is enamored both with Salesforce, but also with Mark Benioff.

And his desire to push forward and become a celebrity has really been a limiting factor for Salesforce to the point where it's limited margins. And I think when you have the Will I.m. and Matthew McConaughey in the business meetings, that's where it starts to come out. And I totally agree with you. It's a ripe target for Elliot to come in.

They're nominating, I believe, a slate of directors to come on. So there's going to be a fight. And it'll be interesting. I mean, obviously, Jack Dorsey's out of Twitter. Salesforce is a different situation. But I would be surprised if Mark Benioff survives this. I think they might find someone else to run the company. I mean, that's going to be huge.

We have a comment here about, and this is correct, that Will I am, I think it was a, was it an augmented reality headset? He built a technology product. And I think they've raised, I mean, I want to say like over $100 million. So he definitely, you know, like straddles the line. between celebrity and tech entrepreneur but i think that's a really interesting thing here the whole when tech goes hollywood question i think is going to become more and more interesting to watch like jeff bezos did it right he left and then he went full hollywood um you know i think like

the the tech CEOs that want to be something bigger than just a tech CEO and become an actual celebrity i think exactly they're the ones that are going to be ripe as targets when Again, they sold a dream and they didn't realize it. And now it's going to come home to Roost. And I think it is interesting, the new, like the new CEO of Slack, it's a woman Lidion Jones, pure enterprise sales came out of the Salesforce commerce cloud. She was the general manager of commerce cloud. She was at Microsoft before. Sonos is a VP of product management.

So I think it is good to see that they are moving in the right direction where it's the people who know how to sell things for a Slack, because again, Slack should have been dominant. Slack should have been, you know, like the same way Zoom did not realize anything greater than a pretty good, you know, like a calling software, a video conferencing. They were trying to sell a bigger enterprise software vision. Slack should have nailed that and they didn't. Right. And there's a, there was actually a great stat that, Tene Haipura, who's great on Twitter, it's T-A-N-A-J, definitely worth a follow he put out there this week, that Microsoft Teams has more than 280 million monthly active users right now, and Slack has 40 to 50 million. So definitely a terrible buy.

Didn't work well with the Salesforce. Obviously, you would imagine Salesforce's Salesforce would get it in, but it hasn't. And like Fred, our commenter, Fred Stacey said Slack was a terrible buy. Totally agree. And there's always a part of me that I will say the monopolistic element of Microsoft Teams that obviously, you know, they already had everyone on Office and the entire entire suite of apps that they were able to get every large enterprise on teams because of that always makes me a bit uncomfortable. But that's the same. That's a whole point. That's why Slack was bought by a much bigger software company that it was supposed to connect different things. They should have been buying other smaller productivity softwares. And, and, you know, your sales

or suite should be where you're starting your day and it's not unless you're a salesperson, which is not. And even then it might not be. And even then it might not be. And if you do it's with the grimace. I remember logging into that and just being like, thinking about things that AI will replace. I mean, maybe in the background AI will, I mean, no way, no doubt it will summarize your sales notes, input it, and log your calls and then present you with scripts for the next person.

So actually two Salesforce, I remember using it like 28. they did have, and they definitely marketed big as AI, it was, and it was one of those things simply like, you have not contacted this person in three weeks, would you like to contact that, you know, like suggestions that are just time-based and are not the most complicated things. So at least from the sales side, maybe they've been, you know, advancing on this kind of thing, but I don't know. Well, we'll see. We'll see. Okay, let's hit a few quick topics in the time that we have left. I call this segment, Zuck, TikTok, and menswear guy. So just going through one by one. Trump is back on on Facebook and Instagram and it

feels like the most anticlimactic thing ever to happen. He's been back on Twitter for months at this point. I believe and hasn't tweeted once. He's fairly diminished in US politics and it doesn't seem to me like him coming back onto Facebook is going to be a big deal at all in Facebook put this whole announcement out like as if we were still in the thick of the 26th. 16 race, but it's a different world right now. And I'm curious what you think about that. Yeah, I think Trump, I'm trying to look up. I know he has some kind of exclusivity deal with truth social where he's supposed to, oh, okay, he's only obliged to wait six hours from first posting on truth social and then would be able to post on other platforms. He hasn't really yet.

And I think, as you said, it's anticlimactic. In a way, it makes me feel happy about the world in the sense that this is the, I mean, the worst thing that could happen to someone like Trump is, it's not interesting. It's, you know, like, think about, yeah, as you said, even two years ago, the idea that Trump is allowed back onto Facebook should be dominating every headline, and no one is that interested. And that's actually the, like, greatest threat to someone like that. right and there were some headlines that he was going to be workshop he was workshopping some tweet to post on Twitter and it's like the second you hear workshopping from a guy like that it's it's kind of done like the whole point was shoot from the hit could you imagine the pressure what's the first tweet it's just

sitting there sweating just like I got to make this one count I got to I know if it was me it would be what was it co cofefefe yeah just come back with a bang just come back with co-feffin. But it is interesting. It is interesting that he's back and it sort of, it was one of the most meh headlines of the entire week. Now, I wonder what will happen. And maybe over time, this will end up looking stupid, but I wonder what will happen when he comes back and starts posting. But it is, yeah, it's just interesting how he seems to effectively have like lost credibility. Even with, yeah, go ahead. The happiest person in the world right now is Mark Zuckerberg. I mean, you are Mark Zuckerberg.

you went through over the past number of years and suddenly Trump is back and you're not getting any crap about it and no one really cares. Elon Musk has taken over the main character, bad guy. Your advertising business looks to have stabilized and is growing again. I mean, again, we talked about this last week. All he has to do is just stop saying Metaverse. But I think right now, happiest person in the world, Mark Zuckerberg. And talk a little. bit. You mentioned that it's stabilized and growing again. Say more about that. Yeah. I mean, there's been a few. I think even Business Insider had something today about they have a product advantage plus, I believe it was called. And then there was another article a couple of weeks ago

that using AI, they've actually rebuilt their advertising products to be able to target ads well without using too much personal information and without using cookie-based data and it's working. and brands are moving back into it and TikTok has definitely been slowing a bit in terms of its meteoric rise. So I think Facebook, the business side, the core business, the advertising products, us all sitting in a virtual meeting together. I don't know where that's going, but the business itself is doing well again. Right. I'm again kind of skeptical that it will be this master term. But the one thing I've seen is that advertisers, you know this well,

advertisers will, like, pop around and try to find different places to replace drops in effectiveness when that happens. And it definitely happened with meta. And it might just end up being that the norm for them is going to end up being advertising with Facebook.

Although I do think that this whole move to, this whole idea that they're rebounding is a bit of a blown, but we'll find out. We'll find out. That earnings call is going to be a very interesting one. Yeah, definitely. And we'll definitely recap it. when it comes out. Okay, TikTok, speaking of Facebook and its rivals, TikTok is now on this

charm offensive to try to not get itself banned in the U.S. Do you think that that's going to be successful? No, my other prediction is that TikTok will be banned in 23. I think in terms of anything that is bipartisan in the world, I think this is something where everyone will happily come together. I think I personally do believe that it's still crazy that a company where we have no visibility into the algorithm itself drives culture in the United States. I think there's a lot of concern over where is the data held who has access to the data. That is a big concern. And every report, one after the other, actually BuzzFeed News has been great on this, shows that, you know, and there's a Forbes journalist who found out she was tracked in

targeted because she had written about TikTok. So we know, we know. I mean, it's all out there that they are not separating the data. They are not protecting it, that anyone within the power structure does have access to it. But again, to me, the bigger thing is a black box algorithm driving culture is a concern. And the other thing for me, there's talk of a spin-off. There's no way to me that you completely just spin out TikTok, sell it to Oracle, Disney, whoever else because all other reporting also shows that the company is inextricably tied to

the bite dance, the parent company in China. They're algorithmically, infrastructurally, everything is still as much as they say it's not tied to bite dance. It is. So you're not going to just easily sell it. And then the last part on why I don't think there's going to be a simple spinoff is the price. Bight dance itself like everyone else was valued at, I think it was like two or three hundred billion dollars they've seen that come down they're not going to just take this asset that is still a prized asset and sell it as a fire sale i think easily i think that in itself what is the right price around that i can't imagine bankers going to those discussions and trying to negotiate that so so i think ticot outright ban my my perspective is that so we have a question

here from ashwin desic con he says do you think it'll be an absolute ban or divesting TikTok's US services to Microsoft to Oracle, which we've covered. And I'm just gonna weigh in here. I do not see the US government forcing TikTok to go. I just think that the government is not very effective when it comes to tech policy. It hasn't really shown a willingness to make any big moves at all.

It's pretty weak in this area. And there has been some movement on the bands, but maybe, and maybe it will happen with government employees, maybe it will happen on a state level. But I think until we see an actual foul versus the anticipation that there might be one, then I don't think that we're going to see a ban at all. The foul part, I think that's where it will be interesting. I think we've seen enough that the momentum has been building. And that's why I think one big thing comes out and it happens. Again, we find out that a certain type of content has been suppressed or promoted

for political reasons. We find out, you know, like, all it takes is just one and then the damn break. So I think we will see. And again, as Ashwin had asked, I think divesting the services for the reasons I'd given earlier, I think it's just too difficult. I think that's going to be a discussion for a while, and then it ends an outright ban. Okay, why don't we cover menswear guy? then we should probably wrap up I did want to cover this are these things the product of zero interest rate policy or not why don't we leave that for next week oh shoot we have to cover ticket master also okay let's quickly do menswear guy and then ticket master then we'll then we'll head out too much news too much a lot of news a lot of news that's why I figured this was going to be fun to do every week because there was not going to be any limit of stuff we could talk about so menswear guy so ticket so Twitter has started to show the same menswear guy in like so many feeds in this for you tab that he's starting to become a meme and it is interesting how twitter has tried to tic-tacify itself right how it's said okay we're going to use algorithms to insert the content you might like and what that content usually ends up being and right now

it's this weird menswear dude and people have talked about how they hate their four you tab on Twitter and how this is not what they signed up for. But I think that they're doing this because the data shows that this is working and people do want this. I'm curious to hear what you think, Rajan. Okay. So it is funny. As someone who is not the most stylish, but aspires to sometimes be a little bit stylish, I've randomly followed menswear guy for a couple years now. This is all your fault. You are the reason why we're getting menswear guy. My likes, my liking his tweets is a jammed him into your feed, but I think, so the 4U tab, let's remember though that Twitter,

actually do you know remember when Twitter actually changed to an algorithmic timeline as a default? Yes, of course. Actually, you know I broke the news. You broke, alright, there we go then. I think probably the biggest scoop of my career that this was gonna come, that this was coming. And I wrote that this was gonna come as early as next week.

And over a million people, that weekend after hearing the news tweeted rip twitter it was this huge blowup and jack dorsey tweeted a storm over the weekend saying that my reporting was wrong which it wasn't they went and confirmed it a couple days later and you should have seen my mentions after that a whole stream of people talking about how i lost my credibility i'd never work as a journalist before so yeah this stuff is is definitely jammed in my memory and a little bit raw given the reaction that happened Jack, are you listening? I think, but remember, for the last number of years,

I've been one of the people, I'm like a strong believer that reverse chronological feeds are just better than algorithmic feeds. I'm always, I would always have to go back and click latest tweets rather than home, which was algorithmic. They weren't as aggressive on the algorithmic side, which for you has definitely become. But it's funny to me, I've been seeing all these people,

you know, saying, like, complaining again about I'm losing engagement. While the menswear guy takes over the world, everyone else is complaining about losing engagement. And I think I had not realize how many people actually look, who are not professional media people, monitor their analytics that closely and care that much. And I do think that, again, algorithmic timelines by default are bad. The 4U tab, everyone is complaining about, but I think might work well because as much as people complain, it's easier. It's more, you know, it hits your lizard brain just a little harder. So I think the 4U tab is going to stick around. Oh, I think it will definitely stick. And I'm a fan of the algorithm, even though I caused that uproar, or maybe Twitter caused

that uproar by not confirming or denying or whatever it was. Anyway, that was definitely a chapter in my early reporting history where it was like oh boy if this is actually wrong then i am toast so then yeah when they confirmed it the next the next week that was awesome let's just quickly talk about about ticket master uh there was this big hearing in the senate in the senate talking about how ticket master and live nation are this monopoly and it was because they couldn't they there's all these people try to get Taylor Swift tickets and they realize that wait a second the same company owns the ticketing they own the venue they own the promotion company that does the tour and this is an issue and it's amazing because the government let this through already and now they're trying to go back

and it's like sort of another product of the loose regulatory era that we had uh that that we're now starting to re-examine and i just found this hearing interesting for a few reasons number one was because it because of that going back on what the government had done before but also the fact that the leaders in the senate just kind of were so cringeworthy trying to get their youtube moments and they're you know a spot on the evening news by quoting taylor swift tickets and also there is an argument that they sort of got this whole thing fundamentally wrong the bottom line is it doesn't seem like the government in this case will definitely will do anything at all and it was just a pressure campaign and well they got their headlines we're talking about them now

but it was seemingly another embarrassing moment for the u.s government versus tech your thoughts i okay so there was this very cringe worthy moment where senator richard blumenthal tried to make a joke about uh like quote some taylor swift lyrics oh i think we have the audio come me to play oh Oh, you have the, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's better if you hear it. Is Taylor Swift's fault because she was failing to do too many concerts? And may I suggest respectfully that Ticketmaster Auto look in the mirror and say, I'm the problem. It's me. All right.

For people who don't know, I'm the problem, it's me, is a, if you're not a Swifty, it's a Taylor Swift lyric. That, he even pauses momentarily after that because he knows that's going to be the clip. And as someone who works in content, I hate knowing that there was a meeting, a bunch of staffers sitting around, pitching him on this idea, practicing that line. And it still worked because that was a big headline. I think one thing, so as you described, like, I think it was 2011 or 2012, the original merger went through. The Obama administration just let it go through. And at that time, the government was incredibly weak, and we know that around anything around competition and antitrust. The big thing that has changed, though, is the promise that was made was size breeds efficiency

that only by bringing these companies together will we be able to create much better experiences for the customers. And this showed that wasn't true. Taylor Swift announced the concert. The system essentially couldn't handle the amount of traffic and interest. They laughed about it. Their CEO was on CNBC saying, you know, she hasn't been on tour in four years. She's so popular.

There's nothing we can do. they were supposed to bring, you know, efficiency and reliability, and they clearly didn't. But I also think, oh, actually, sorry, one thing also, just to check and remind myself, as someone now with two kids, I don't go to concerts as much, I used to go a lot more. I was looking, a pair of Red Hot Chili Peppers tickets, crappy 400-level seats in the Vegas concert that's coming up. It's basically, it was a 31% surcharge of fees. 31% of the total amount. That's nuts. This is a digital service. It was like, I think it was like

$85 total. It got up to 125. It's insane, but we all have gotten so used to paying those fees, seeing them, it's a bit of an annoyance, and then you just move on. And I think this is going to be big. I don't, I think the government will take action. I do think, you know, we're seeing a new era, you know, this government suing over the Microsoft Activision Acquisition, Facebook Giffy, any number of things we're seeing antitrust is being clamped down on. Now I'm going to give two bits of contrary information to kind of talk about why this was a bit of a farce and why the public doesn't understand the Ticketmaster situation as well as it could. So first of all, the convenience fees, I'm pretty sure that that convenience fee is split between the band

and Ticketmaster and Ticketmaster just says we'll take the heat on it. And if you come with us, we're going to give you this money. So maybe that is a dirty trick, but that band, or at least the venue is getting some of that cash. The other thing that I found really interesting from a friend of mine who had worked at Seat Geek, which is a competitor. Okay, so he talks about that they were, they brought in to talk about how Ticketmaster the ticketing company and Live Nation, which is the event promoter and also the venue owner are, we're being hauled in front of Congress to talk about this Taylor Swift thing where people couldn't get tickets. Taylor Swift actually does not work with Live Nation. She works with Messina, which is Live Nation's biggest competitor. So it is interesting that...

Wait, wait, wait, hold on. Clarify that or explain that. So the person that puts on the tour is Messina, which is a competitor to Live Nation. Live Nation and Ticketmaster are owned by the same company but taylor swift was working with their competitor so you can't blame the consolidation on the fact that this is wait so so she so she was not working with live nation as the venue slash promoter just ticket master all right no that's fair that's fair and again like that does feed into the this is about the show as opposed to the the substance on this one now obviously there's a complaint to be made with the fact that you couldn't get tickets but he makes another interesting point, which is that obviously the tech screwed up, right?

You had to show you were a verified fan or whatever. If you bought merch, you got bumped up in the line. The other way this works is that you make these tickets available, open and available. It sells out in a minute. And 90% of the people that have actually bought those tickets are not, you know, fans, verified fans. It's the ticket brokers. And then the ticket brokers put those tickets on the secondary market,

where they end up being $1,000 each. The proposed solution here is to make those tickets non-transferable. If you buy it with an ID, you got to show up with the ID. If you can't make it, you bring it to the box office, and that's the solution. I think that that's an interesting thing to consider. And I, you know, understanding that this situation was not born of the ticket master of Live Nation monopoly, maybe those are some alternative solutions that need to be thought of. But I do think, like, I think the stub hub acquisition was actually even more critical here

where it master should not be able to both be the initial seller of tickets and drive the resale and essentially funnel you directly into the resale. Because think about all economic incentives for Ticketmaster are actually let the ticket brokers build their bots and buy up all the tickets because then they're making money on the initial sale, then they are the ones listing it on their site for resale and then they're making money again on the resale and they're making a lot more money so so the fact that those two things integrated of course they're not going to fix that problem that you know they might do little things like if you buy merch you'll get moved up in the line but i mean this is again one of those things pure economic incentive

from like a concentration of market power they have all the incentive in the world to let ticket brokers essentially drive the entire market and they're not going to fix it well look i'll say this this is this will be my point to end on i'm not a fan of ticket master obviously you love ticket master no i've had to pay those fees and i've sworn under my breath and over my breath along with everyone else so i guess i'm just bringing this up to point out some of the hypocrisy of congress but overall if you think about the targets that they could pick it's a pretty good one no i i'll agree given we'll see something go ahead given the stagecraft of that taylor swift lyric that stuff does bother me a bit in the sense of rather than folk and again like

if you're correct and on this idea where you're telling me around she was not actually working with live nation yet i think that's even more is it's even worse that they're clearly doing that for a headline and that's actually going to make it more difficult to solve the problem okay well that will do it for us here on big technology podcast edition we end with a nice comment to faric clead he says great discussion thank you for putting it together well it's our pleasure we'll do it every friday so stay tuned on my lincoln page for those events we will be broadcasting them right within the events and then dropping them on the feed right after these things wrap ronjohn thank you this is what was this our third or fourth third one our third one i think we're really hitting our

our stride on it and and i think we'll bring a guest on at a certain point so we'll won't just be the two of us although it's always fun i have i have an idea for a guest i'll share with you off air but hopefully it will be be someone good so thanks again for joining always great to talk see you all next week all right see you all next week thank you for listening again we'll be back here on big technology podcast on wednesday with an interview with brian stelter the former host of reliable sources at cnn i'm obviously going to speak to him about why he's no longer at CNN and then a lot about the media industry so hope you tune into that if you're a new subscriber thank you so much a rating would go a long way on your podcast app of choice

so please hit five stars on spotify or apple podcast that helps us grow the podcast then we get better guests and other people find the show it's a virtuous cycle and we love it when you do it so five stars on spotify our apple would go a long way if this is your first time listening or if you're watching us live the show goes live twice a week now you can find it all on your podcast app of choice. And all you have to do is type in big technology podcast and you will get it. Well, that will do it for us here.

Thank you again, Ranjan, and we will see you all next week.