Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - The Real Estate Content Boom + The Worst Day on the Internet

Episode Date: April 4, 2024

Real estate content is living rent-free in Millennials' heads. Taylor Lorenz talks to the CEO of a media company responsible for a ton of it. Plus, Taylor weighs in on why April Fools' is the worst, Yahoo's acquisition of an AI company started by Instagram's founders, how AI is impacting the music industry, and her time at The Information's Creator Economy Summit.  More info on Estate Media Full video of this episode will be available on Taylor's YouTube channel. 5: Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, music artists are scrambling against big tech. Yahoo acquires an AI company started by the Instagram founders, and our main topic, how content creators renovated the real estate industry. I'm Taylor Lorenz, and that's all coming up right now on Power User. Hi, welcome to Power User. I'm here with my showrunner, Zach Mack, and we're going to run through some of the top stories this week. Hello.

So, first of all, Zach, I want to tell you about what I did yesterday, which is attend the Information's Creator Economy Summit. It's this big annual meeting of a lot of big power players in the content creator industry. There were some content creators there themselves. Also, Diplo. He's everywhere. He's everywhere on the internet and elsewhere. He had some interesting things to say about kind of how he thinks about the distribution of his own content. It's very intentional what he does. He collaborates with a lot of people that are sort of blowing up online. But I thought that the real standout sort of conversation at this summit was

actually about TikTok shop. There was this woman Marnie Levine, I hope I'm saying that, right, who leads TikTok shops U.S. operations for small to medium businesses. And she was basically saying she's heard all of this hate about TikTok shop. She knows it's in everyone's feed and they're going to go even harder into it. They are not reducing their e-commerce push at all, despite the fact that it's angered tons of users. How do you feel about the TikTok shop? I, you know, I made a video about this a little while ago. I think it's a lot of it's overwhelming and it's become annoying. I don't want to be sold products all day on TikTok. I feel like we're losing a little bit of the serendipity that made TikTok good in the first place.

I understand why they're doing it. It's interesting too because in the TikTok band, there's actually a carve out for e-commerce and review companies. So like it seems like there would be a cutout for like Cheon and Timo and stuff. Yeah. But I don't want another shopping app. I want what made TikTok fun back in 2020. When I'm like flipping through TikTok, you know, it's like it's showing me all these videos, videos, and then it inevitably gets to the live shopping thing. And it's just such a halt to my, to my scrolling. And it's like, it's always a guy selling like Pokemon cards. I don't know what it is for you. It's always Pokemon cards for me. I have crystals. They're selling me crystals.

They're selling me bags. I actually, you know, the live streams are more entertaining to me than the videos. And another thing that content creators are all doing now is because content creators know that if you integrate TikTok shop into one of your videos and you use your video to promote a product or whatever, they'll just make like a normal unrelated video and then be like linking a ringlight or something in it because they know that just linking that product will get them distribution in the feed. And so it's just like random. I'm just scrolling through these videos. I'm like, why are they trying to sell me batteries or something? Well, we know why TikTok wants this to happen, right? Like it makes a lot of sense why TikTok the company wants it to happen. Do you get a sense that

people like this, like regular TikTok users? I think average users hate it. I mean, I'm, I'm very very much reminded of Instagram's 2018 or 2019 pivot to e-commerce with the launch of Instagram shop, everyone's saying Instagram's the new mall. I think that you can integrate e-commerce into these apps, but making it too prominent kind of takes away from the fun and it becomes less of an entertainment platform and more of a shopping platform, which, by the way, is how it is in China. I mean, Little Red Book is sort of their version of Instagram and it's all about shopping and recommendations and products. My problem is I just never trust any of these products. I've ordered something on Instagram, it's like pretty low quality. It's terrible quality.

I've bought way too much crap from all of these videos and apps and yeah, it's low quality stuff. And it's like you could get the same thing, honestly, for probably cheaper on Alibaba. But I think e-commerce and social are just becoming more and more integrated. I actually talked to this guy. Oh, I talked to one really interesting guy actually yesterday at the Creator Economy Summit who's doing a virtual AI product placement company. So you can produce all your videos all you want and then you can work with this company that will do AI product placements. And they'll sort of like using AI and CGI I guess in the meantime, they're like putting fake products into your videos and you get paid for that. Our greatest minds are all just going to figuring out how to sell a shit. Yeah.

That's where we're at. That is where we're at. Speaking of selling shit is April Fool's and brands. Now every brand feels like they have to. have an April Fool's joke, which basically just means putting out fake news or disinformation. Obviously, this is the worst day on the internet. I hate it so much. I did get, I got got. I logged on and I forgot that it was April 1st and I saw a drama alert posting that Keemstar died and I fell for it. I fell for it. I embarrassingly shared it to like four group chats.

I realized it was April Fool's. The same thing happened to me. First thing in the morning, looking at Instagram, and there was a thing about how New York restaurants were going to start using scaffolding, like start seating people on New York building scaffolding. And I was like, this is so stupid. And of course, it was fake. But yeah, it's just like we just have this day where it's okay to spread disinformation. There is enough disinformation online. We don't need a day for it. Also, people have zero media literacy. So it's not even funny. It's like half of the stuff that's promoted, I'm sure people will actually believe. And I just think I miss, I want to bring back Tom Foolery and funny things. I want actual jokes. April Fool's is supposed to be about funny jokes,

not just like lying and then being like, just kidding, we lied. No, that's not a joke. I want, if you're going to do an April Fool's joke, make a funny, do something funny, do a funny little stunt or something. Make me laugh. It's just not cute from the brands anymore. It's not cute. It's exhausting. Every single stupid brand. And I'm sure they had 20 million meetings in PowerPoint. too about their like dumb fake product they're launching or whatever. There's also a lot going on in the music world this week. Over 200 leading music artists including Katie Perry, Billy Elish, Pearl Jam, Nikki Minaj, and Moore signed an open letter to the tech community to quote,

cease the use of AI to infringe upon and devalue the rights of human artists. This letter really specifically calls on tech firms and AI developers to stop this predatory use of AI to steal artists' voices and likenesses. Unlike other advocacy efforts from creators around AI, this letter specifically addresses the tech firms and concerns about music artists like replicating an artist's voice, using their work to train AI models without compensation, diluting royalty pools. This letter is definitely one of the strongest public statements. Any groups of music artists have made against AI, and I think it just shows this increasing tension between creative entertainment professionals and this coming AI wave. Totally. We saw a lot of AI stuff with the screenwriters and actors, you know, in the Hollywood Strike. Makes sense that it's coming to music. There was that, you know, AI Drake weekend song last year that caught fire that really sounded like a Drake in the weekend song.

So it's scary, man. It's definitely scary for creators. Yeah. I'm thinking of that really corny Twitter video that went viral of the AI music artist. I'm a girl. I cry over. stupid boys. My room is a mess. It was this anonymous Twitter account, I think, that it posted this video of this woman that was an AI-generated woman, so her mouth was totally crooked, singing an AI-generated song

that's one of the worst songs I've ever heard, but also is so stuck in my mind. I think that while this is a joke for now, AI-generated music is going to be huge, especially in the background music world. Totally. You know, and there's all these, I'm thinking of this guy Howard. who co-founded Yax, who's a billionaire, who started this thing called Dinah Score a while ago, which was using AI to kind of like tease out songs for branded videos and stuff.

Katie Perry, she's going to be fine. You know, I'm worried more about these like working music industry professionals. Yeah, for sure. And I'm just worried about the music industry in general, right? Between the whole TikTok UMG thing, between Spotify royalty rates, now you have AI. It just seems like if you are a creator making music, you are feeling the squeeze from every direction.

I guess I'm not necessarily worried about someone about AI being able to recreate like Frank Ocean's blonde, but a lot of pop music is very formulaic, and I do think, you know, I do think Katie Perry might have something to worry about. Well, she's already rich and famous, so she got in at the right time. This week, John Stewart revealed that back when he had his Apple show,

the company pressured him not to interview FTC Commissioner Lena Khan. I got to tell you, I wanted to have you on a podcast. And Apple asked us not to do it, to have you. They literally said, please don't talk to her. This kind of makes sense because Apple is caught up in this legal battle with the Justice Department about abusing its monopoly power. It has this tense relationship with regulators. But I think this shows an example of how new entertainers that are operating off traditional media platforms on more tech platforms like Apple also have to worry about corporate overlord. It's John Oliver, famous. criticized AT&T when it was owned by HBO parent company Warner Media. ABC's Jimmy Kimmelf called out false allegations made by Aaron Rogers on the Pat McAfee Show, which airs on ABC's sister network, ESPN earlier this year. You've always seen this tense relationship between these parent companies and talent, which can often be unpredictable or cause controversy that they might not like. And I think this is just an example of these tech companies exerting the same sort of power that

media companies have always exerted over their employees and talent. Yeah, it's no surprise that big companies want to protect their own interests. That's just like... But I think it's depressing to hear, you know, because I think, I think like what these tech companies specifically sort of wanted to offer people was more creative freedom, right? Go independent. Build your back on our platform. We'll give you a deal to get started. And then it turns out that they're acting like the same sort of corporate overlords as everyone else. Yeah. Uh, yeah. Right. Some of this regulatory stuff came up after John Stewart left. But Apple has always had a very contentious relationship with regulators, right? I mean, it's same with meta, same with all these big

tech companies. They have this very, they don't want to be regulated. Our Vox Media colleague, Neelai Patel, he always says three words, break them up. Totally agree. Totally agree. And we love we love Nelai and the whole Vox Media family. Also some more AI News. Yahoo acquired Artifact, which was this AI-driven news app founded by the two co-founders of Instagram. I don't know if you ever used Artifact, but it was supposed to sort of deliver

you this custom feed of tailored content using AI. Artifact won't run as a standalone news application anymore. It's actually being shut down and integrated into Yahoo. I think this totally makes sense for Yahoo, but I think it also shows how news brands are increasingly seeking to integrate more AI-driven

recommendation algorithms, content, etc., into their platforms. Listen, we got to figure out some way to get people more news, right? No one's reading news off Twitter. We got to figure something out. So if AI and this app and Yahoo can do something to get people to read more news stories, I'm all for it. I don't know if I'm all for it only because I don't think people are going back to Yahoo. No hate to Yahoo. I also just wonder about the quality of the content. You know, I think as these news companies are seeking to rely more on AI, the quality of the content sometimes goes down or the quality of the recommendations. I think the days of the homepage where people just go to something and editors are choosing what people read is sort of gone. And people are looking to these algorithmically driven recommendation systems.

That's it. Wrap it up. Thanks so much, Zach. Next up, we'll be talking to estate media about how content creators renovated the real estate industry. All right. So interest rates are crazy. Housing costs are unreasonable. And the housing market right now feels like a bust.

But the real estate content market is in boom times. Hey. How much do you pay for rent in New York? Do I have to tell you? Gray floors are canceled. The wood, the vinyl, the tile, what were we thinking? You ever walk around New York City and wonder what would it be like to live inside a gilded mansion? We're used to seeing luxury housing tours, but now we're seeing more relatable real estate and lifestyle videos,

tours of tiny apartments, investigations into the bedrooms of messy men in their 20s, and TikToks of 90s-style kitchens. I wanted to get a better sense of how the internet is upending and reshaping the real estate world. So I hit up Griff O'Brien. Griff is the co-founder and CEO of Estate Media, a new type of media company that works with agents and content creators to make and monetize real estate content online. But first things first, we have to talk about the elephant in the room. Hi, Griff. Thank you for joining us today on Power User. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited. Homeownership is currently at the lowest that it's been in 30 years, according to Bloomberg.

And a lot of the places that you're putting out content like TikTok, YouTube, elsewhere, I think skew quite young. How do you sort of square those two things? And how do you reach these older buyers or how are you growing your network if they can't afford to buy homes? It's a very good question. We see our audience generally right now skews a little bit older. As you said, right, who are the people who are buying and transacting? The audience does skew a little bit older for us.

But for the B2C side, the entertaining concepts we're creating, we are very focused on working with creators in the space that are younger as well, that bring in that younger demographic. Because people of all ages are still interested in real estate. They might not be in a position to buy, but that is not to say that we can't create content around real estate that they're interested in, that maybe might just be entertaining, but also could be informative. Tell me about what's happening in the real estate creator scene. I feel like Zillow gone wild is a good example of this genre of accounts that sort of built off the backs of really outrageous Zillow listings. And then we've seen the house tours, which I feel like those house tours are a parody level now. You see people joking about it on TikTok. I saw someone pretending, seeing two house tour guys trying to tour each other's house. What is sort of the next frontier of real estate content? What do you see popping off now? And what trends do you see sort of emerging and dying in that world?

Yeah, I think Cody Coe did a really funny parody as well of these house tours. They've gone to such a level where they can be parodied. But look, I think in my view is that the house tour genre is near saturated. I think that there are a couple of very big creators. Anez-Yil Nasr and Eric Conover are kind of the two biggest, right, that have eclipsed at three to five million subscriber threshold on YouTube. My view is that there are only so many people who can create long-form house floors at scale and make them real businesses. People like looking at mansions, but to sit down for 20 to 40 minutes and really dive in to a property you'll never be able to afford, I just think that the market there is near-saturated.

With that being said, where I think it's going is you see these hyper-niche creators who are starting to really blow up. And it's hyper niche in the area or type of property that they are focused on, but the audience is massive, right? And so tiny old homes is one on Instagram. I love that account. See people in every, like most, not just major cities, but across the country and across the world, right, that are building these pages that are hyper-specific. Maybe it's homes under a million dollars in like, you know, a random city in the Midwest. But it's not just that area that's captivated by it, right? It's everywhere.

And so I think we're going from this like super massive $100 million home in the hills to content that is more relatable, right? Like, hey, these are homes you can find for under half a million dollars, right? Here are like gens you can find in various areas that are becoming appealing to people, younger people, right? Because it makes it more tangible. And it makes it like, hey, this home's crazy. It's not an area that I live, right? But it's something I can actually grasp. And so I think that's the next frontier, right?

and like the real estate content creator side of things. How have real estate agents been forced to evolve in the era of the internet? Because I have a couple of friends whose moms are, you know, real estate agents in their respective home communities. And suddenly they're asking how to use Capcut. They're trying to figure out how they can best market their homes out there. I do feel like a lot of real estate agents did use Instagram and still use Instagram for a while. But how has the social media landscape, I guess, affected the actual people that are selling?

these homes or traditional real estate agents that have maybe worked in their market for decades and now have to sort of compete with these content creators on TikTok. Yeah, absolutely. Look, it's always been a relationships-based business. But before social media, when you looked at the brand or how someone was able to market, right, it truly was who they knew. Today, when you're going to interview someone to sell your house, most people I talk to, the first thing they look at is what is their agent or the person they're interviewing is presence

online? Right, at the end of the day, negotiating a home is important, being able to show a home is important. But how many people can you reach, right? How many eyeballs can you bring onto my property? And so many of the most successful agents today, especially those that are starting, or the ones who have the biggest social followings. Because if I'm going to list my house with someone and I know they can get me 100,000 views on the 90-second reel they create of my property, I'm going to list with that person over someone who has no social media presence. because that's the way to really sell and market property today. Yeah.

It's why you see if you dig into realtor TikTok, right, or realtor social media, everyone is making content. And everyone is trying to grow their personal brand because ultimately that's the key to getting business today. What do you guys look for in a content creator? And also, do you think that we'll ever see a platform specifically for real estate content?

So the biggest thing is authenticity, right? We work with people at all stages. And if you're there early in your career and you're a great content creator, right, but you're not selling $20 million homes, getting in front of a green screen and saying, here's how to sell a $20 million home, right? You're going to be sniffed out by the audience like that. And so people being very specific and real to where they are in their journey, if you're making content saying, hey, I'm starting as a realtor, it's really hard. Right. Here are five things that have worked, but, like, I'm not claiming to be the top producer in my city. we see a lot of people like that that have done very well. A woman named Glenda Baker out of Atlanta, Georgia, who we work with, has become probably the biggest digital first real estate creator in the world. She built about a 1.5 million subscriber follower fan base really over COVID. And she is incredibly real and to the point, right, about her life, about her market, about her success. And she's become a voice for the everyday realtor.

Let's talk about the platform landscape. What is it looking like today? Where is real estate content popping off the most? And where are you seeing growth? Because I feel like it was all Instagram. Then we saw the TikTok house tour boom. Now it seems like a lot more people are trying to move into long-form content on YouTube, maybe move into streaming.

What is that mix like today? And do you see any platforms getting hype? I'm surprised that Zillow hasn't added some sort of like TikTok-like feature to tour some of these houses. So there have been a couple of companies that have tried to create the TikTok for real estate, right? And it hasn't necessarily caught on. And I think that, you know, realtors today at the end of the day are trying to use these platforms to drive business.

And so we did see the TikTok boom of house stores that started slowing down. Part of the reason, right, is I think the algorithms are different. It's just harder to grow followers today on TikTok. And realtors saw less attribution, right? There are several realtors who grew million, you know, million follower fan bases on TikTok. But from what I've heard, right, anecdotally, it hadn't really driven leads. Instagram still is the key place where realtors in this space and real estate creators are really building their businesses. I think it is the best platform for them today and what I'm seeing.

But as you mentioned, we are starting to see this shift from hyper short form content that is really geared towards virality towards longer form content. And so even if it is 3,000, 5,000 followers on YouTube, many of these personalities are saying, you know, in the creator space you call your true fans, right, as more valuable. It's how do you engage the people that are actually future buyers? Yeah. The accounts on TikTok that have 5 million followers, no one actually really looks at that person, right? They don't look at them as an agent. They don't look at them as someone who is really a voice of authority in the space. Navy sheets, no duvet cover, sweat stains on the pillows, deodorants in the bed.

Duve covers are super overrated. You just wash that and keep it moving. It's interesting that you mention that Instagram is the best place for real estate content because I notice as they've cracked down on political and news content and tried to get all of this other sort of more divisive content off the feed, I notice that they're pushing a lot more real estate content and beauty and lifestyle stuff and a lot around homes. Have you seen an uptick recently at all since meta has made those changes in the past maybe nine months? We have, I would say that house content across, yeah, as you mentioned, Instagram and Facebook, we have seen a rise. We launched our business publicly six months ago. But even looking at Josh,

right, my co-founder, who I've been working with now for over two years, a simple post in feed on Instagram is doing like 1.5x what it did a year ago. And so it certainly, we're seeing a pickup and house-related content. If you even go on to Instagram, you can't scroll without seeing some celebrity home. And so these genres that certainly have risen to the top, interior design, DIY, beauty, as you mentioned, but certainly homes, I have seen just an explosion in the past year. How has the boom in the real estate content creator industry affected the actual real estate industry? I think there's certainly the transactional side of things, right, that the internet and social media has become one of, if not the most important place for people to buy and sell homes.

But these real estate creators are becoming also taste makers of what's cool. Not just in what type of home you buy, but what you do inside your home, how you decorate the appliances you choose. And I think we'll continue to see that, that the tastemakers are the creators online, as they have been in other industries, but that's becoming increasingly prominent in real estate as well. Tell me where we might be seeing the impact of some of these real estate content creators when we're looking at home content online. Because I think a lot of people think, well, I don't follow any real estate content creators. I don't really know who these people are. I buy my house from a trusted agent. Can you talk about the impact that they're having that might be right beneath our nose?

Mid-century is still going crazy. Like the number of people, and I think, too, it's a degree of passion. People who are into mid-century homes are really, really into mid-century homes. In fact, the biggest house tour we ever did with Josh Flag was a mid-century modern in Beverly Hills. It was priced at $6 million, right? And that did over half a million long-form views. There's a lot of art in this house, but also built into the house. Yes, for example, the Dexter Frankel piece over the fireplace.

I mean, it would be very hard to remove it, but that is original to the house. It would be very hard to take this out. How cool is this? Oh, my God. It's pretty incredible. And of course, it looks so great over the fireplace. Yes. And thank God that, you know, your friend who lived here for so long never updated any of this.

And it's because people were obsessed that this house had not been touched, that it's same, still have the same elements. And so I think today, especially seeing in big cities all the development in the white boxes that are being put up and in these major cities, even in the Austin's and Denver's of the world, you're seeing the same million to $2 million condo being built in all of these. cities. People love homes that have been around since the 50s, 60, 70s, and have maintained their structural integrity. And thinking of this viral video I saw of that scallop-shaped shell sink, did you see this video? I think so, yeah. There was this sink shaped like a scallop shell. It was this beautiful, sort of kitschy old bathroom. And of course, the woman ripped it all out and made a video and transformed it into this gray, horrible monstrosity of a bathroom. And I feel like people were so angry about that. I mean, she wanted it to be this aspirational home flip,

and people were like, what did you do? And there's so many, have you heard of the other Instagram account? We prefer the before. Yes, I have. It reminds me of that as well. We prefer the before is this whole Instagram account showing remodeled houses or sort of upgraded houses where maybe there's gray flooring in or white floors, but it actually makes the home look worse. And again, you asked like a bit earlier of how these creators are shaping the market. I think that's exactly one way. If you're going to now tour a home and you've seen that content and you walk into something that a realtor, right, or the market might tell you is outdated. But now it's like, hey, I do have an appreciation for that, right? I think that subconsciously, these creators and what they're bringing up and what they're profiling is really going to change market behavior. And it's hard to, again, put it into a report that Zillow or Realtor.com is putting out. But you start seeing the cultural underpinnings of what's cool. what's not. And it takes a couple of years, right, to show up in the data. But I think we're certainly starting to see that. All right, Griff, thanks for chatting with us today. All right,

that's the show. You can watch full episodes of Power User on my YouTube channel at Taylor Lorenz. Power User is produced by Travis Larcuk and Jalani Carter. It's mixed and mastered by Brandon McFarland. Our video producer is Brandon Kiefer. Our executive producers are Zach Mack and Nashat Kerwa. Power User is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. If you like the show, give us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. We'll be back next week with another episode of Power User. See you then.