Big Technology Podcast - The Threads Explosion — With Alex Heath

Episode Date: July 7, 2023

Alex Heath is a deputy editor at The Verge who's been reporting on Threads from the first row, including an interview with Instagram head Adam Mosseri. He joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss Meta's launch of Threads, discussing who exactly it competes with, what the feed will look like, and the implications for Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. Join us for a lively conversation about the fastest growing social media app of all time. --- 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, where we break down the news in our traditional cool-headed and nuanced format. We have a great show for you today. Meta, it's introduced threads, the so-called Twitter killer. In just about two days, the platform has added 70 million users. That's right, 70 million signups. But what does it all mean? Is it actually going to compete against Twitter? Is it going to be an Instagram competitor that is something that's been underappreciated. We'll get into it. Joining us today is an amazing guest, Alex Heath is here. He is a deputy editor at the verge. He's been all over this story, including interviews with Adam Osseri, the head

of Instagram, and I am so excited to bring this conversation to you today. Alex, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me, Alex. Double Alex time. Two Alexes, that's right. Let's start it off with a bang. What is threads? Because I feel like, you know, people have called it a Twitter killer. I don't necessarily see it as that. Can you just describe what the platform is? Yeah, it's interesting. Actually, right before we started this, Moseri and I have been threading, I guess is the word about this. And he specifically just said to me, like, we don't want to kill Twitter. This is in the context of the news industry, which we can get into later. But yeah, what is threads? I mean, they can be saying that they don't want to kill Twitter,

but I certainly think they wouldn't be launching this right now had Twitter not kind of started to self-dakay like it has in the last several months. So they kind of rushed this thing out. Meta is notorious. They kind of invented this playbook for AB testing, new products in certain markets around the world and the run-up to a public launch being very methodical about stats and usage and all these things and bugs. And they just like push this out the door.

I think Adam Messerre said it was the most yolo launch they've done in a very long time. And it seems to be working. They're at like, what, over 70 million signups now? I think they're going to beat Chad GPT as the fastest growing consumer software product of all time. So it seems to be working. So how does the product work? Because there's a feed that looks like Twitter. It's mostly text right now.

Would you describe it as analogous to Twitter? What are the similarities and differences? Yeah, I mean, it's really similar. It's a much simpler version of Twitter to start. This is definitely a minimum viable product. But they're going to add no DMs, which Adam Moseri told me that they don't really want to add that right now, but they may be frogmarked to do it. I think they will be because I think people who are power users of Twitter have been over the years really get that that loop between tweet to DM is really special. But yeah, it's this very simple version of Twitter hooked off of Instagram.

You bring your Instagram profile over with you, your followers kind of autopod. from Instagram when they join. So it's got this built-in bootstrapped network that I think is why you're seeing this crazy sign-up number. This is being built off of an app that already has over a billion users, you know, Instagram. So of course you're going to get a ton of early interest. I think the real thing to watch will be retention. Do daily users stick on the platform? Do they build a sticky product?

And now they're focused on that. So adding things like a chronological feed, adding more, you know, list-type features, bookmarks, even like you can't see your likes right now. There's a lot that needs to happen, and they know that, and they've got a long laundry list. But right now, it's just like a really simple version of Twitter with everyone from Instagram. So I'm going to make a bold claim and say that it's quite different from Twitter. And the reason why I'm going to put that out there is because there's no following tab.

It's just for you. So it's entirely algorithmically sorted. Actually, the algorithm looks a lot like Instagram's algorithm. So I'm curious what you have to say about that. And it also moves a little bit slower. So actually, it seems like the goal of this app, and I think Meta has said this, is to get you to dive into certain conversations and then participate in the threads, as opposed to just like scroll through a fast feed of tweets.

What do you think about? Yeah. Well, I think they shipped what they could for launch. It is a very simple. kind of engagement based algorithm. If you follow more people, you'll start to see more people you follow in the feed. If you don't, they're going to just be recommending stuff to you. And I think that's the right approach. Like, I think power users, people that are listening to a show like this, like want to have that control on their feed, but most people don't. Talking to, as you know,

too, Alex, like talking to people who work at these platforms over the years, the vast majority of users just opt into the algorithmic feed. They prefer it. It's better for engagement has always been. So I think it was actually smart for them to launch that way because it auto-populates threads with content. Now, whether you find that content interesting or not, they've got to fine-tune that, give you more ability to say, I don't want to see this. I want to see more of this, less of this. They have all those surfaces on Instagram and Facebook already, and I think it's going to be

relatively straightforward for them to port that stuff over to threads, especially since threads is built off of Instagram's tech stack. It is effectively a different skinned version of Instagram from like an internal meta backend perspective. So I do think that gives them the ability to move rather quickly on making some of those changes. Okay, and I think you just highlighted some really important points. So first of all, the question of whether you find this interesting or not. Now, there's a lot of energy on the platform because it's a new platform. And people are trying to build up their cloud and they're following there.

And you also mentioned that it's effectively a different version or re-skinned version of Instagram. and you know it's been said by some of the observers looking at this thing is that like people are pretty good at posting a picture on instagram you know show a photo of your family doesn't really take a lot of insight or a lot of skill and you have a great camera so it's probably going to look good but posting text right that does take a little bit or to consistently write like insightful or interesting things that people want to read is much more difficult than posting a photo this leads me to believe that people on threads will end up defaulting to and videos, which we're already starting to see.

Actually, when I open my feed now, I think it's more likely that I end up seeing a photo than I end up seeing a text post. And Moseri said that basically the way to think about this is if you want to have a conversation about something, you put it on threads, if you want to just drop a post, put it on Instagram. But I think it's just such a meaningless distinction. And it just leads me to believe that what meta has created is not actually a Twitter killer, but an Instagram killer or an Instagram competitor that is not quite just. that is not quite sure, not fully appreciating.

What do you think? Yeah. It's an interesting, I was thinking about this yesterday too. If threads continues to take off, how does the distinction remain between the two? It will present meta with some interesting challenges because they are always thinking about revenue. Obviously, they're a huge company. They have this thing called monetization efficiency, which is a term they use internally about how the different apps monetize relative to the other apps. They try to keep them in balance.

The worst situation would be having an app that is new and not monetized, potentially overtake engagement on Instagram where they make a lot of money. So that will be an interesting dilemma they reach when if for some reason Threads is starting to take off to that degree, they have to decide, do we put the brakes on this because we're not making money on it? Is this actually just the new Instagram? How are we going to make it different? I think all that is like TBD. We're like a day or two into this thing, you know?

But like that's, I think that's, you're spot on to point that out early, I think. Yeah. Now, let me tell you what my feed looks like right now. So I have a picture of Tony Robbins at the time. top. That was algorithmically selected, I guess, trying to, you know, promote his business, but it's something he would put on Instagram. Then I refresh, and it's a picture of a pizza on the top, which is great. I love pizza, but I would never use Twitter for that. I would use Instagram for that. And I think this is, it's a risk that I, I just think is underappreciated.

I wonder if Meta really thought this there. I wonder if Mark Zuckerberg's animist with Elon Musk might have and this rush to try to take advantage of a competitor's weakness might have pushed them into something that of course the product is being celebrated but I also wonder if it's going to be an own goal it could be I think they would not mind having an own goal like that's better than just like not doing anything I know for a fact they saw Elon's rate limiting fiasco on Twitter last weekend over the fourth holiday where he was saying you can only view 600 tweets etc and they saw that and the reaction of that and went oh shit we need to just rush this out they were going to they were going to release it next week not this week and give more time for celebrities to get

onboarded but they decided let's work through the holiday through the fourth let's get this thing out as quick as possible and just take advantage of this moment which i think was smart because if they would have shipped this thing even two years ago maybe even a year ago even right before Elon was taking over i think people would be like why do we need another twitter type app but now there's this sense that people are looking for alternatives, and they know that. And so this is the other thing, right? Even though I think the biggest threat is to Instagram, especially Instagram's growth, and we can get to its fight with TikTok in a minute.

It's not good for Twitter either. And I have this theory about Twitter, where is that you want about 100% of all the breaking news to show up on Twitter. That's the utility, right? If something is happening in the world, you want to be able to know that you can go to Twitter and you'll find out about it. Now, let's say even 25% of that energy moved elsewhere. Let's say it moved to a place like Blue Sky.

Let's say people who used to post breaking news to Twitter, they're now posting it to threads. For some reason, maybe they're posting some of it to TikTok. Twitter has a place where you get like 75% of the breaking news is so much less useful than a place that when you get 100%. In fact, it's a much bigger ding to it than just a 25% decline in value. So I'm curious what you think this means for Twitter how Twitter should feel about this, even if, you know, potentially it's not exactly going to kill the app. It could degrade the app in a way that's actually a lot more meaningful than completely destroying it. Yeah, I mean, we know how Twitter feels because Alex Spiro, most personal lawyer,

sent this super cringe letter to META yesterday, threatening to sue because they think that Twitter employees are working, former Twitter employees that META hired are working on threads and stealing Twitter's secret sauce. And then META responded saying, no, Twitter employees are working on threads. That's not a thing, which was I thought a great response. I think the interesting framing here is what most Sarah and I were talking about on threads right actually before we started recording, where he literally said to me, my take is from a platform's perspective, any incremental engagement or revenue, they, the news industry, might drive is not at all worth of scrutiny, negativity, and let's be honest, integrity risks that come

along with them. So that's him being pretty blunt about how meta feels about promoting news. and they're not going to take any active role in putting the thumb on the scale for news to flourish on threads. They're not going to, they're not going to unpromote it. They're not going to discourage it. But they could keep it at an arm's length, and it would still feel better for a lot of people disseminate the news than Twitter, which is where the risk really comes for Twitter. What do you think this means for like a product perspective for Twitter? Well, basically, I mean, we're so early in this.

Like, we should have this discussion again in a couple months. like they can't even really calculate what a DAU is on threads yet because we're not even a week into this. But imagine it continues on its trajectory. Yeah, for the foreseeable future. The energy is certainly there. The news industry is already there in a pretty big way. A big way.

Like I was scrolling through and I was like, the economist is on this thing. Yeah, well, think about it. They used to take years to. I kind of, I underestimated how much the news industry had migrated to Instagram, even though Instagram hasn't really been a place. you think of for news but all the brands have accounts there just because it's such a huge platform and those accounts get automatically ported into threads so that's happening while at the same time most seri the head of the app is saying like we're not going to promote this like we're okay with it but

we don't love it like we don't want the baggage uh definitely don't want the threads 2024 election um like i'm waiting for rfk junior to get on there and starts talking about anti-vax stuff and get labeled and like we're going to be in this like it's like you and i've been covering facebook for a long time i just like i'm ready for this cycle to like start all over again but like with a new app um for twitter uh it's just another problem i mean i don't like is this is this their main problem i think their main problem is like they've got a bunch of vendors that they haven't paid who are threatening to sue them or have sued them for bills that they haven't paid like they can barely hire, all of their former employees are wanting the company to burn.

Twitter has very few friends right now. And so, yeah, the news leaving Twitter is a problem for them. But, like, I don't know if it's even like their fifth biggest problem right now. Well, I disagree with that. I think that, you know, the stuff that you're talking about, money can fix problems, right? If your bills aren't paid, you can figure that out. But ultimately, like, if you're a tech product, what you are as well, you are for users right yeah it does seem like the product is degrading for users i mean users

are there for up to the minute information and entertainment right so if that is trying to take that entertainment thing and and threads and news news folks are trying to find anywhere they can to go that's not twitter and then what are you going to be on the platform for uh Elon you like Elon that's kind of like where it's trending these days um you know like he bought it saying he needs it's essential to have a town square for the world and it's become his town square and i just think it's deeply fascinating that meta this company that you know a year or two ago everyone was going like these guys are evil they should not you know they're a monopoly they shouldn't have more power in social media now we're like please like we need an alternative to twitter run by mark succorberg

like can this be the actual town square uh the irony of all this is i think meta may actually create a good town square or at least a better one than what Elon has in mind for Twitter. So I want to talk about their ability to create a better town square. But first of all, let's just kind of key in on what you just said. It does seem like everybody who's talked about how Mark Zuckerberg is the root of all evil is all of a sudden like praying to Mark Zuckerberg to take, you know, the energy away from Twitter. What do you make of this, you know, shift, especially for many in the media to sort of go from,

you know, Zuckerberg's biggest and Facebook's biggest critics? to now their biggest supporters. I mean, it's the, is it intellectual dishonesty? I mean, what would you say it is? I think it's the enemy of my enemy. You know, I think everyone found a tech billionaire mogul that they hate more than Zuckerberg and it's Elon Musk. And it's kind of as simple as that.

I mean, how do you, if it's about rooting for executives, then how do you have a lot of credibility or any credibility? If it's, I mean, I guess like I'm trying to wonder, I'm not saying you, Alex, I'm saying, you know, royal you. I'm trying to wonder, like, how press that could have, you know, how did, how they so totally went after Zuckerberg can cheerlead threads and still be believed in terms of, like, their ability to evaluate technology issues critically. I don't know. Does anyone do, if you took a normal person off the street and said, do you think the news industry can evaluate these tech companies critically and honestly, would they say? say yes. I mean, I think we as the collective news industry have been losing our credibility

slowly as objective truth sayers for a long time, which is a whole bigger discussion. But I do think Mark Zuckerberg, as your lower third, you know, is suggesting his image has shifted quite a bit. And it's also a result of like the jiu-jitsu and the cage match and him bragging about how much sleep he gets and his kids and like he's got this kind of dad vibe going that it's just more endearing than Musk's um whatever you want to call it i i don't know like um i i just it's interesting to watch today said that what musk has been doing is just the walrus which is his yeah his so-called uh wrestling move where he just like lays on top of you and just wiggles and they're like most of what he's been doing has just been you know lump maneuvers

without much thought or skill yeah i mean it's like you know uh Elon has built some amazing companies like he knows how to do hardware he knows how to do deep tech scientific breakthroughs no question software i mean PayPal is in X and software although his his influence on PayPal i think yeah definitely was influential but like that's kind of a a little bit I think thornyer but yeah in terms of like he can make amazing cars and spaceships in the satellites like absolutely software and people my body And Eli wrote this great essay when he took over Twitter called Welcome to Hell, just saying like, basically all these things that you think you're good at, like you have no idea how different social media is because it's people and the weirdness that comes along with that. Mark Zuckerberg has been doing this his whole life.

He knows nothing except social networks. And so Mark's not out there trying to make cars, but Elon's now trying to do social media. and Mark's now saying as of this week, like, let me show you, like, how it's done. And like, oh, and we may go fight in a cage as well, which, like, I still hope happens, obviously. But for now we're just in software fights. The cage match has been such a great promotional tool for threads. Like, you couldn't imagine a better way to gin up interests in your new social platform than to say you're going to fight one of the world's richest men who happened. to own the biggest competitor in a steel cage.

Yeah, it's great. I hope it happens. I mean, it seems like even less likely now, but I do hope it happens. Especially because I just, I played such a small but fun role in it where Elon was responding to me about it. And I just wanted, I just, it would be, it's going to be so self-fulfilling if I can just be sitting there, ringside, and watch the walrus take place. It would be great to see.

I mean, Elon has to try the walrus at this point if he does, if he's in there. And, you know, if it happens at the Colceum, that's going to be a bummer because, you know, that's going to be super hard to get into. It's very limited seating. It's going to be very expensive. So I hope it's actually in Vegas. I hope Dana White gets that done in Vegas. But, yeah, we'll see. Exactly.

All right. I want to take a quick break and then come back and talk a little bit about whether threads can actually make friendlier social media. And then we can also, you know, potentially get to some questions. We're streaming live here on LinkedIn. So if you have questions, please drop them in. and we'll get to them. Yeah, so why don't we do that? All right, we're here with Alex Heath.

He's a deputy editor at The Verge. Very big into this whole story about threads. We'll be back right after this. 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 2 million professionals read The Hustle's daily email

for its irreverent and informative takes 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 Hustled Daily Show and your favorite podcast app, like the one you're using right now. And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast Friday edition with Alex Heath, Deputy Editor at the Verge. He's been covering this thread story in great depth. And, well, anyway, it's been a week for you, Alex.

I won't get to see what to that. It's a week, yeah. So let's just talk about the dynamics of threads. Because when Zuckerberg and Masary have talked about how they want to make this like a friendlier version of Twitter, I thought, okay, that's a little bit delusional. Social media isn't friendly at all. However, there have been some interesting things in the product that have been pretty intriguing in terms of the way that they're operating it. So first of all, there's no counts on the numbers of retreats or rethreads you get.

And people have talked about how Twitter is this anger video. game and the points are the retweet numbers. And now they don't display the points. I mean, they're very interested in, you know, showing metrics and hiding metrics. And so like the fact that they've hidden those is pretty telling. It also seems like the algorithm is just prioritizing. I mean, you can, you know, tweak a social media algorithm to be like if someone calls you like an idiot or a dummy or a loser or nerd, you know, get that out of there. And if someone says awesome, amazing, super, that's so cool, you know, you can promote it. So, What do you think about the way that the product is structured and do you think they have a snowball's chance in hell of actually making it a friendly social media forum?

Because that would be quite an accomplishment. I mean, give them the Pulitzer if they do that. I mean, or the Nobel Peace Prize, actually. I don't know. Is it possible to quantify the friendliness of a platform? I don't know. I'm sure meta has tried.

Yeah, we can do vibes quantification. A vibes. I mean, this has been done. Like the comments on YouTube, for instance, are like the meanest place on the internet. And, you know, places like Reddit can is a helpful place and places like Twitter is an angry place. I do think the identity portion of this is important. So you can certainly have alts on Instagram and have pseudonymity there. But in general, you're getting a lot of people who are themselves, like their, their real names coming over from Instagram and are following the people they follow on Instagram, which is a good mix of people you actually know.

and, of course, brand accounts and celebrities, but it's not this totally anonymous, unpersonal thing, like Reddit or even Twitter has been where you're just coming into it blind. So I do think that has a chance. I mean, the vibe I've gotten in the last, you know, whatever, 36 hours is that it is a pretty friendly place in general. I would hope that a new platform wouldn't just start off being super mean,

but I guess it could. I don't know how they make it ensure that it's friendly. I mean, what will inevitably happen the bigger it gets is that people who want to sew discord, people who want to rage, dunk, bully, the like conspiracy theory stuff, that's all going to come on there and they're going to have to moderate that. And I think they're prepared to do that. They're pretty aggressive with moderation on Instagram. and it's the same tooling.

So is Instagram friendly social media? I guess that's the question. If you think Instagram is relatively friendly social media, I think threads will be too. It seems like it. But also Instagram is filled with fakeness. Well, yeah. And I think threads already is too.

You've got a lot of like the LinkedIn, high LinkedIn, but like LinkedIn thirst trap influencer contents, like recycling memes from that I've seen the same. thing posted on Twitter and LinkedIn, like, there's a lot of people trying to already game the system. But I don't know. It seems friendlier, at least for now. Yeah. So we have a question from someone watching here from Doug about whether meta is really ready to moderate threads. And I am curious, like, if you, I think there is going to be this kind of culture war issue where, like, Twitter will be like, oh, people will say Twitter is the free speech network and

meta is the censorship network. And, you know, so I'm curious what you think the moderation is going to look like and does it like divide into you know two networks where like twitter is like you know potentially like you know true social and you have meta as like the you know democrat twitter i definitely don't think they wanted to be democrat twitter i have already seen like their warning labels misinformation labels that they have on instagram people have been saying that's been spotted on threads so again it's like the same tooling so well are they ready to moderate it again, we're talking about something that is literally built on Instagram's tech stack using the exact same moderation content guidelines, et cetera. So, yeah, they're going to moderate it.

They certainly have more moderation capabilities than Twitter does, even before Elon. So, yes, I do think it's going to, there's no nudity, for example, which is a huge difference from Twitter. Maybe that's more likely, or like Twitter is the porn social network and then. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I saw someone say Tumblr for incels, which I think is good. Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, it is interesting.

I mean, the porn will keep the appeal of Twitter. I don't know. Ever since Elon's took over, I've definitely seen way more showing up in, like, really benign searches. I like search for, like, the Mets game. The next thing I know I'm like watching, you know, seeing this awful images scroll across. I mean, like the top thing on my feed on Twitter yesterday was like three hours. our Lex Friedman video interviewing RFK Jr. Like literally it was like maybe three hours long

like at the top of the feed. And I'm just like, okay, this is what this platform is now. It's just, it's changed so much. Do you find Lex, do you think Lex's right wing? I think he's more down the senator. Yeah, no, I'm not saying he's right wing or that it's, I'm just saying like, that's the kind of content.

It's like, it's Elon's circle of who he spends time with, Twitter has become this reflection of him. not a town square, not something that's objectively more has bigger breath, more types of content. It's actually narrowed quite a bit into like, I think, the circle that Elon would like to, like, go to a barbecue with on like a Friday. Yes. So what do you think about pseudonymous account? Is that the right way to say about accounts with fake names? It's a very difficult word to say.

But, like, one of the things that's really thrived on Twitter is people that have, you know, made these names like, you know, these parity accounts or, you know, sort of accounts. without their names and they've just gone crazy on putting all this content out there. Now, it seems like there's a lot of people who are pretty worried about using threads because they think that they're going to lose their, you know, their anonymous identity or medical inevitably exposed to their parents, like what their Finsta account is, things like that. It's a real concern, right? Yeah, and you can't cycle threads accounts like you can, like between them like you can on Instagram.

Also, if you try to delete your threads account, it will delete your Instagram account, which is a huge problem for people i think they're going to they're working to untie that but that's what the v1 experience um yeah instagram really embraced all accounts because they saw that that's what young people wanted they wanted the they wanted the finstas and their instas and all that and um i don't know i just don't think that's like a first order problem for them with threads right now i think they'll get to that but that's not like at the top of their list like threads is not available in the EU yet, for example. Like, that's a tier one problem. Sudenominy or pseudonymous accounts are like probably the 20th problem.

But it is a huge difference from Twitter. I think it's for the best. I think alts give you more cover for people to treat others in a way that they wouldn't treat them if they were talking to them in real life. I think as a platform, if you can encourage people to talk to each other like you would face to face, you have a better shot at kind of maintaining civility the EU thing the way that I read that was kind of like a f you from that to Europe and the company didn't really think that it was going to have threads take off in this nature and so they thought it was like a an easy way to just kind of thumb their nose at Europe now the platform's taken off I mean of course they can operate

in Europe they have Facebook operating in Europe they have Instagram operating in Europe what is this business that a new app can't operate in Europe so I I always imagine that they very quickly, you know, back down on this. Like, it's kind of like the same thing that they do. Like, you want us to pay for news. You can't have any news. Like, it's like that, except now it's actually costing meta in a big way in terms of its ability to grow this platform in Europe. Well, I think you're right that it's costing them, but I think you're wrong on the reason they did it. And it's going to take a long time. I would, I would not be surprised if in six months threads is still not in the EU. Maybe in six months that would be on there.

Because of regulation that the EU is passing that's coming into effect next year called the Digital Markets Act, it labels meta, Apple, Google, all the big tech platforms is gatekeepers. And with that distinction comes a bunch of new requirements about they have to be interoperable with other platforms. They can't self-preference their own services on their platforms. The list goes on and on. It's the most sweeping tech regulation that's ever been passed by such a large governing body. And all the big tech platforms, not just meta, are freaking out about it and how they're going to comply with it. But how can they operate Instagram there and not?

Because it's already an existing product. So when you launch something, there's a level of attestation you have to do about the data leakage, how that data on that platform interacts with the data on the rest of your gatekeeper platform. So because threads is tied to Instagram, are they mixing data for ad targeting with other platforms? how are they doing that? They have to certify how all that is happening internally directly to the EU. And if they're wrong and how they certify it, or if they miss something or because they're so rushed, they don't look under all the covers and they miss how some data leakage is happening, they get fined out the wazoo.

These are not just like parking ticket fines. These are debilitating fines based on a company's market cap. They could literally put a company out of business. So they don't want to play with that. That's what Adam told me in other. and so that's why they're taking their time on it. They didn't even like A-B-test threads in the wild like they do, like I was saying earlier. They just like released it to get it out.

And so this is the first example of the EU and the DMA and how that's going to slow new products from coming on the EU. I do think we're going to see plenty of other software products like this not come out on the EU initially because of the DMA. Interesting. Okay, so that's something that I will agree with you on that. I stand corrected. Let me ask you a further question.

I mean, how do you think European citizens are going to react to this? Can't imagine they're going to be so happy. Yeah, I mean, I would be mad if I'm in the south of France right now, chilling on holiday, and I can't get on threads. I do know friends who are in the EU right now and they're using threads. So it is possible and people have VPNs. Let's not pretend that you can't get an app if you don't want it no matter where you are. But it's not like in the EU App Store, right?

So there's a level of accessibility that you're not getting. not getting. I wonder if backlash from people not being able to get threads or whatever else comes out next, the next chat GPT, et cetera, will result in the EU Commission rethinking some of this. I don't know. The DMA has changed so much since it was first proposed. Its release has been pushed back something like two years. There's been so much lobbying about how to change it and make it more something that companies can actually comply with. It's just so sweeping and affects so much of how these companies operate. Again, it's very unprecedented.

So I think it's all kind of like happening in real time right now. Right. Okay. A couple more questions for you. First of all, do you think meta is paying or do you know of meta paying any of the creators to be on threads? It seems like that would be a standard part of the playbook, but why hasn't it happened in this case then? Yeah, they're not. They have had done that playbook before, and I think it's not worked for them.

That's been, if you work in the news industry long enough, you'll have heard about four different cycles of Facebook launching new products, new surfaces, the watch tab, et cetera, writing a bunch of checks to publishers to get on there and then pulling the plug in two years. It's like a tale as old as time. And I think they've realized that the video. Yeah, the playbook just doesn't work. So no, they're not, I had heard that they were considering it, but they decided not to. And so, no, they're not writing checks this time. Okay. And I had teased earlier about the TikTok battle.

That to me seems to be the biggest thing in meta sites right now. And you don't think this is going to be a little bit of a distraction, like how do you think this impacts their battle with TikTok? I think they feel pretty good about where reels are at relative to TikTok. They've made up a lot of lost ground, and certainly they're still worried about it. but they see the opportunity with Twitter's implosion right before them. And I think the real stuff is kind of more just, kind of just trending up. And they're not as worried about it anymore, has been there.

There's some amazing data that I think last quarter, they had 24% more time spent on reels, thanks to some AI improvements they made in the algorithm. And it just shows you that that product is just absolutely exploding. Yeah, I mean, this is what meta does. take formats that other people invent stories short vertical video tweets whatever tweet threads and then they just bolt on billion plus user bases scale it add in better tooling better infrastructure more moderation and it's like it's it's their playbook and it's it's always

worked yeah and so here they come what's your what's your what's your as we wrap what's your prediction on where this goes? Threads, like just a general? We won't hold you to it, but yeah, speculate away. What does threads evolve into and what's its impact on the rest of the meta business and Twitter? Well, I, what I can safely predict is they are now going to be throwing a lot more resources at threads than it had originally.

Threads was built by a team of a few dozen people inside Meta, the first code, for the app was written in January. It's come together very fast. Now it's got the attention of the world. It's got Mark Zuckerberg posting regular new user sign-up goals or milestones. The whole company is excited about it. And when that happens inside a big company like that,

guess what everyone wants to work on it? People want to throw more budget at it, more headcount. I expect that team to grow really quickly and them to start shipping a lot. And be very curious to see what they keep borrowing from Twitter in terms of like, do they have bookmarks? Do they add audio? What do they choose to take?

What do they choose not to take? They're ruthless studiers of these other platforms and the metrics and all of that. And so if they are choosing to leave things out that Twitter has, it's probably because they've done research and they know that it's not really working. So they learn, from their competitors more than any other software company that I've reported on.

So I think the safe prediction is like Threads is going to change quite a bit, and they're going to only throw more resources at it now that it's blown up. And where does this leave Elon Musk's Twitter? I don't know. He's trying to turn it into like a bank. I mean, he wants, he got some money transmitter licenses the other day. They're trying to convince advertisers to come back. He's got the new CEO, Linda Yaccarino, who's not really a CEO, but she's got that title. I don't know, man, Twitter's in such a tough spot. I never count out Elon.

Like, that's what everyone who knows him tells me. Like, you know, he's one of the generations defining entrepreneurs, of course. But you've got meta to contend with in a social media war. That's a tough battle. This is not, these are not rockets. Like, these are people and posts. and Zuck knows that better than anyone. So I don't know.

It's going to be really interesting to watch. Alex Heath, thanks so much for joining. Thanks for having me. All right, everybody, thank you for listening. We'll be back Wednesday with our next flagship interview. And again, back here on Friday with Ranjan Roy, who's currently out in Romania. So we're excited to hear about his travels.

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