Tech Brew Ride Home - (Bonus) The TikTok Sales Saga With @Kantrowitz

Episode Date: September 12, 2020

The TikTok saga. It’s gonna end. Or it’s gonna happen. Or it’s gonna… something in the next few days. Will it be sold? Will it not be? Will it be banned in the US. There are so many angles here. So many interesting ways to tease out something that is unprecedented in the world of Tech. Alex Kantrowitz pinged me to talk about it and he’s a good dude to do so because he wrote a book about the big tech platforms, and, as we get into… this is so rare. A big up and coming platform that is just, for weird a-historical reasons, being offered up on a platter for the other powers that be to… maybe take over? I quoted Alex when he was at Buzzfeed for years. But as we discuss at the end, Alex has gone solo! Check out his newsletter Big Technology. Check out his podcast, Big Technology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to another weekend bonus episode of the Tech Meme Right Home. I'm Brian McCullough. Look, the TikTok saga.

It's going to end, or it's going to happen, or it's going to do something in the next few days. Will TikTok be sold? Will it not be anything? Will it be banned in the U.S.? Will it be dark soon? There are so many angles to the story, so many interesting ways to tease out something that is unprecedented in the world of tech, at least recently. Alex Kantrowitz pinged me to talk about it,

and he's a good dude to do so because he wrote a whole book about the big tech platforms. And as we get into, as you'll hear in a second, this is so, so rare. A big up-and-coming platform that is just for weird a historical reasons being offered up on a platter for all the other powers to, I don't know, take over? I quoted Alex when he was at BuzzFeed for years on this show, but as we discuss at the end,

Alex has gone solo. Check out his newsletter, Big Technology, check out his podcast, Big Technology. He had our friend M.G. Siegler on to talk about Apple recently, and I was like, could I have gotten as good an analysis of Apple out of M.G. If I had interviewed him myself, probably not. Alex is great. Subscribe to Alex's stuff. Enjoy our kids. conversation. I did just check for the purposes of talking to you right now, Alex. And as of this moment, TikTok hasn't sold, but for all we know, it could happen in an hour. Have you heard anything? Do you get a sense of that things are getting done? It's definitely got to be crunch time because the deadline's coming fast and furious, right? I'm definitely going to look stupid by the time this thing

goes live when I say this. But I am amazed that it's still even talked about as being in play as something that can be bought because we know that the Chinese government is making the companies, making bite dance go through a review before it sells before it can hand over the algorithm. And the fact that like Oracle and Microsoft are still talking about or still haven't shot down the fact that TikTok could be sold by the September 15th deadline means that they would consider taking it without the algorithm, which to me seems ridiculous and totally counterproductive to what they're aiming for. So I would be astonished if this thing gets sold before this thing goes to air or before that September 15th deadline.

Wait, I thought it was September 20th. Is it 15th or the 20th? Actually, we should look that up. We should. Yeah. I'm pretty sure it's the 20th. But yeah, at this point, my money is on a deal not happening. But, and then, you know, one thing I do know is President Trump said, yesterday apparently. You're right, the 20th. That there will be no extension of that September 20th deadline. Oh, here's ours technical also saying Trump vows not to extend deadline

beyond September 15. See, this is sort of the theme of the sale. This is the most confusing forced acquisition of all time. Like, this is something that if you're used to following a simple cadence of how a company is bought and sold, nothing makes

sense on this one. This is a completely bizarre land type of deal. Well, because you know what, think about it, both of the forces in the background causing this to happen are both capricious. Because we don't really know why, well, we can get into this later. Like, why does the Trump administration want this to happen? And also, why does China, is China going to allow it to happen? Do they really want to put a spanner in the works and make sure it doesn't happen? Why don't we talk about that now?

Because I think that's sort of the important stuff. Yeah, go ahead. You can definitely see why the Trump administration would want to. TikTok to be sold. And in fact, as a bystander, there are definite reasons why you would say this will make sense. The first thing, and I think Ben Thompson, who is a tech crunch, sorry, a tech meme favorite, has pointed out, is that this is an algorithm-powered social app that doesn't really rely on a follow model. So let's say you had the Chinese Communist Party in the background saying we actually want to push these type of memes or this type of feeling in this type of country. TikTok could essentially

tweak the algorithm and do that, and we would never know because it's not coming from people you follow. It's largely coming from this algorithmically powered for UPage. So that's the content side. And then you look at the national security side. And we do know that, like, they could have the power to track in ways that would make people running a country and running a security system feel pretty uncomfortable. So that would definitely be the argument to sell. I was going to ask you, do you have TikTok on your phone? I have it on my phone. I mean, I'm personally not that worried Like I'm not, you know, a member of the CIA. So wait, that's funny because, look, I'm the opposite.

I took it off my phone because on the one, I've said on this show that like I'm agnostic to this whole idea of, you know, a new Cold War with China. And agnostic in the sense that I haven't made up my mind yet because I can see arguments on both sides and things like that. But then at the same time, I'm totally convinced that TikTok is like some sort of Manchurian candidate designed spying tool. Like that, I bought that immediately when the argument was made. So I don't know.

I'm all over the place. I'm also all over the place. You know, I just had, I just, right before we got on this call, I had a conversation with Mega Roger Gopalon, who's a BuzzFeed news correspondent who has written about the internment camps in Xinjiang and, you know, spent years in Beijing as a reporter before getting kicked out. She was one of like the, she was like the hipster of reporters that got kicked out. She got kicked out early.

Now they kicked out like the New York Times in the Wall Street Journal and a bunch of others. And so I asked her about it. I said, what do you? She was on the podcast and I said, what do you think about this? And she said, look, I lived in China. I lived in China where the internet was restrictive and I'd be very worried about the U.S. going to that type of internet. So I see that that's the other side of the argument.

So for me, it's like I definitely see the argument to ban and I definitely see the argument not to ban because I agree with Megga that could really be this slippery, this slippery, slope, or once you start down this road, you don't know where you end up. Yeah, and you know, there's much larger geopolitical things here where, not to verge too far into politics, but like one of my skepticism for the idea of a Cold War with China is that I've been hearing that from hawkish people for 25 years. There's a certain point of view out there that, well, it's inevitable. China's the up-and-coming power. They're going to have to clash with the fading power at some point, the fading power in theory being the U.S.

So I've always been jaundiced towards that because I'm like, well, of course, certain types are always itching for some new fight to happen or things like that. But then at the same time, clearly, you know, I don't, I wouldn't want to live under an internet regime the way that China runs their internet regime. I don't want any, I don't want half the world to run under that regime. I like the, in theory, open internet that we've been operating under for 30 years, you know. Totally. And the argument against banning TikTok is that where we'd be banning based off of hypotheticals.

So then it's like this question of like... Okay, well, that's a question for you. What do you think? Do you think, because I've heard this from a lot of people. Well, in the background, it's one of those things where, like, I was just, I was listening to the hardcore history latest episode. And he was talking about how in World War II, like, they knew all this stuff that the Japanese and Germans were doing, but they couldn't, they would still let battles happen

that they knew would be a disaster because they didn't want to. to give away the intelligence that they had. Lots of people have said to me, yeah, you're not getting the school, the full scoop here. They know what China is doing. They don't want to tell you how they know what China is doing or precisely what they know China is doing because they don't want to give away their, not their sourcing, but how they know it, right? Yeah, I sort of disagree with that. I mean, just look at the history of our U.S. intelligence operation and how they've handled

social media manipulation in the past. There was a widespread, you know, disinformation campaign that the Russians embarked on using Facebook and Twitter and YouTube as primary vectors. And I don't think that this was well communicated by the U.S. intelligence. Yeah, right. Where was the U.S. intelligence community there? Right. And if there's anything that you're going to want to prevent, it's an election manipulation. And the fact that that didn't happen and it still went on and Facebook only discovered it after the fact and then had to answer for it without the U.S. intelligence community answering for it, I think is a pretty clear indication that we are behind when it comes to trying to figure out what's going on with these cyber attacks.

And it really does point to the fact that, like, you have two options. You ban before there's a hypothetical scenario that happens, or you step up your intelligence effort to make sure that this isn't happening. And when you find evidence of it happening, then you ban right away without going through this whole pre-election day reality television. show a situation which the Trump administration is going on with TikTok. Okay, well, let me let me come at this from a different angle, and then we can come back to TikTok specifically again. So I'm also the argument, this argument makes sense to me. If the goal here is to, it is strategic,

it is that the U.S. wants to maintain the technological supremacy that it's had essentially since World War II, right? what country in terms of technology has been able to be competitive with the U.S., both, you know, in a military sense of the technology, but also technology as an industry? I am sympathetic to the argument that we're going about this the wrong way because by banning all of these things, by not just TikTok, like the actual technology, this company can't do business with U.S. chipmakers, et cetera, et cetera. We're creating a scenario where incentivizing and turbocharging the Chinese efforts to essentially create a mega homegrown technology industry that will inevitably eventually supplant the U.S. technology industry. Yeah, I think that if you look at this, I don't think this is a battle over tech supremacy.

And in fact, if you look at this from the view of who's going to be more supreme from a technological standpoint, I think you're right. If anything, this hurts the U.S. position, because it does encourage retaliation. Like one of the things that Casey Newton from the verge reported on was that Mark Zuckerberg told the whole community at Facebook told the employees, look, we're not a fan of this ban of TikTok because if countries see that the U.S. goes and bans TikTok, what's going to prevent a country from banning something like Facebook? You saw India ban TikTok, right? Is there going to be a point where the Indian government eventually says, Matt, you know, we think Facebook is more of a net negative to our country than a net positive. Facebook has gone. All of a sudden, a $1 billion-plus market is out of the picture for Facebook. And what does that do to the U.S.? And you can just go down the line. Let's say China retaliates

by trying to ban Apple, you know, or trying to harm Apple's operation. What does that do? So this has nothing but downside, I think, for the question of the U.S. being a technological superpower and whether it can sustain that. Well, I'm also even saying it in the sense that I did a segment recently about China investing like one and a half trillion dollars, they're going to do essentially a moon shot to create their own domestic chip industry because what, the existing bands, they've already seen, well, Huawei can't get chips from the U.S. So we've got it. So essentially, we could look back in 20 years, oh, in the same way that now there's no telecoms industry without Huawei, we'll be like

20 years later, yeah, the entire silicon industry is now Chinese owned. And it was because 20 years ago, we forced them into, you know, making it all homegrown and they did it better eventually. Yeah, Brian, I mean, this is the thing. Like, all the stuff we're talking about requires a government that's going to think two or three steps beyond. And they can't think two or three minutes beyond the current moment right now. So I think it sort of points to the weakness of the U.S. government today. So to bring it back to TikTok, let's get into the so-called suitors. I think you and I are in agreement that I would give this, I would give it, first of all, I would give it a 50-50 that a deal will be announced. Like someone might in the last minute say, Microsoft, all right, we're going to do

it. But then the deal won't ever actually close because the Chinese will put a spanner in the works, the Trump administration, whatever. I put it 15% an actual deal would ever happen. But when, okay, when the name started to pop up, at first, when Microsoft was mooted as a buyer, I was like, well, that's funny, because that doesn't seem like a good fit. What is Microsoft going to do with social media? But, as we can discuss, progressively it got more absurd for Microsoft. And in a way, Microsoft makes the most sense because they have no real play in social. It's obvious why Microsoft wants to do it, right?

Yeah, I think that, you know, I feel like the theme of this all is, you know, a cascading set of charades that we're seeing being played here. One of them is that there's actually competition for this thing. I think that if it does get sold to a U.S. company, it's going to be this combination of Microsoft and Walmart. A, because, yeah, it makes the most sense there. I don't think Walmart can afford to lose this thing. You saw Walmart actually changed coalitions.

They were initially going with the coalition that had, I think, alphabet and softbank in it, so they weren't serious, then decided to go to the number one suitor, which was Microsoft because Walmart needs to make big bets on the internet. Right now, while it has is Walmart.com, you compare that with what Amazon has, and it's getting blown out of the water in 10 different directions. Oracle is the other big suitor, right? And I think I'm skipping ahead here, but Oracle makes absolutely zero sense. This is a company that really couldn't even transition very well.

So the cloud, and was the leader in the back-end services that were sort of underpinning the software world, and then very quickly just kind of lost everything, right? They lost their lead to Amazon and to Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, you name it. If anything, what I think Oracle right now is kind of like, they're like the dial-up business of AOL that people didn't know to cancel and just kept propelling that company for years until it eventually collapsed and became oath.

And now who knows what that company is actually doing. So long story short, I would say that if you're thinking, about suitors, it's going to be Microsoft, Walmart, that is the lead here. I don't think they should buy TikTok, period, but they would be the one. The Oracle, I think, is a joke and everybody else. I mean, Twitter, I mean, give me a break. They've already killed the predecessor to TikTok, so what are they going to do, come back and buy it for multiples of that valuation. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. So the last time we had you on the show, we were discussing your book, Always Day 1, which in essence, the thesis, the point of the book is you were trying to

explain to people how these big technology platforms and companies operate what their philosophies are, why they're so successful. And Microsoft was not one of the four that you, but you talked about Microsoft a lot in that book as well. So what's your take? Do you think that Microsoft could, there's no, none of us think that an Oracle, TikTok brought to you by Oracle would work at all. It would be dead within 18 months or something. Do you think a TikTok brought to you by Microsoft could work? Yeah, could it work? Yeah. Well, well, I think it definitely could work. Will Microsoft overpay for it? Absolutely.

I'm specifically asking, do you think that Microsoft has the, because you wrote a newsletter about this, about like, how anyone that got this, got TikTok, it could blow up in their face. And one of the first things that you wrote was, like, you need the leadership talent. And you use like the failed Tumblr acquisition by Yahoo as an example.

So what I'm specifically asking is, based on your understanding of Microsoft, do you believe culturally, leadership-wise that they could pull it off? I think it will be difficult. I think they could, but I think it will be difficult. And here's the number one reason. So why was Microsoft able to do so well with the LinkedIn acquisition?

It's because they took the leadership and they put of LinkedIn and they put them in charge of the integration, which is the opposite of how it usually goes. Usually you put somebody from inside the house in charge of the integration with the company you acquire. And you have the person, that person, start to enforce. all these existing cultural norms that, you know, create made it so that you actually needed to acquire a company to be competitive. And so Microsoft made this really smart move of flipping that and saying we're going to allow

LinkedIn leadership to run this deal. Can they do it with the TikTok situation? No, they can't because the BightDance CEO isn't coming along with the deal. The TikTok CEO just resigned. A lot of the employees, which is where the ideas are going to come from to help evolve the product won't come along as well. So what are you left with? You're sort of left with a skeleton crew from TikTok coming over,

and then maybe you put some people who were on like Skype or something or on their racist chatbot to run TikTok, and to me, that sounds like a recipe for disaster. So, you know, the caveat here is that Satya is a good leader. He's proven to acquire better than his predecessor. You know, Steve Balmer lit billions of dollars on. fire and attempted failed acquisitions. And you look at the quantum deal Nokia, the list goes on.

Sight has been a little bit better about that, but I just really am worried because when it comes to helping a consumer social app thrive, you need the leadership who have been able to, who know the cadence, who know the user, who know the, who have the ability to transform. And when those people aren't going to come over in the deal, you're already playing like three or four steps behind. Meanwhile, you have Facebook going hard at the skeleton of the already forming skeleton of TikTok, and that will be really difficult to fund off. Can you remember the last time? I mean, you know why Microsoft wants to do it, right? Like, we're both in agreement that if you're Microsoft, you've got to take this because, again, like, when was the last time something

like this happened where an obviously next big thing suddenly became available? And, and, obviously, next big thing suddenly became available. And it sort of like drops from the sky if you're a Microsoft that doesn't have a play in social. And it's like, oh, here, you can have it if you want it. If you're Microsoft, you can't not take that deal if you can get it, right? I think you can, well, if it's going to be,

all right, so here's the thing. I think you can walk away. The thing that really bugs me is the price, $30 billion for something that might not even come along with the algorithm. That sounds a little bit. Let's come back to the algorithm in a second. I'll finish that thought.

So, but the other, I balk at the price, but then you look at the economy that we've had under Trump in the middle of this coronavirus situation. And that $30 billion would essentially be found money for Microsoft because it's had this, you know, Microsoft and the rest of the tech giants have had this surge in the middle of this pandemic. And so it's definitely increased its market cap by more than that. So it would almost be like you're spending free money on an asset and you can sort of, you know, you can afford to fail on it. because it's not really coming at a great cost. But there are downsides to it. If you kill it, you're going to have the next generation of enterprise software buyers.

Remember that you destroyed their favorite apps when they were a tween and they'll never want to buy for you again. You're going to have the reputational damage of being a company that sort of bought this thing illicitly. And, you know, I almost, you know, my book is always, day one, always be reinventing. And it's going to be weird to say this. But like, there's almost a sense of like if it isn't broken, don't feel. fix it. And right now, Microsoft is in the middle of a reinvention going from that desktop operating system in Windows to a company that prioritizes mobile and cloud, and especially giving people the platform to build things on their own with Azure. So do they want to now muddy that and sort of

have this become the thing that they're known for? Sadia is heralded right now as a brilliant CEO, a great leader, someone that's transformed the company. And this is tainted, no doubt about it. And I do wonder about what the reputational harm will be from Microsoft down the line, A, if they buy it, B, if they ruin it. Let me, this is going to be super, this is going to be super history nerdy, but let me, let me hit on this one more time with a really nerdy history analogy. Into it. I'm saying, I can't remember the, I can't remember any time that something like this happened

in the sense of, this reminds me of the war of the Spanish succession, where all of a sudden France could put one of their, the grandson of Louis the 14th on the Spanish throne and all a sudden the entire, like, and then the great powers of Europe got together is like, should we allow the French to put somebody on the Spanish throne? And like, you have all of the great powers of tech. Suddenly, oh my God, we can scoop up what is clearly probably the next big thing. And it's like the power balance in tech. I can't remember when. something like that happened where it's almost like, you know, the king dying without an air, like the fact that, can you remember an example like this where all the sudden a major

piece on the chessboard was available for everyone else to scoop up? Yeah, and this is where I dispute that it's the next big thing in its acquired form. That's probably where we're disagreeing. Yeah, go on. Yeah, because I sort of hinted out it before, but I do think that if you come along with only a segment of the user base, if you come along potentially without the algorithm. You know, I've heard people say, oh, Microsoft will very quickly develop an algorithm that will mirror what TikTok does. We've never seen any evidence of Microsoft, you know, being able to do it.

Facebook, for instance, has built social algorithms for a long time. And it's put a massive effort in building up reels. And the algorithm and the experience on reels is still inferior to TikToks. So people are like, but Microsoft will no-brainer be able to replicate that. experience if you get the shell of TikTok and you don't get the algorithm, you don't get all the users, you don't get the leadership. To me, I think that's overly optimistic of what Microsoft will do with it if it comes along without those parts. And yeah, I don't know. It's just I look at the risks. I look at the risks of, you know, the money and the reputational harm, the algorithm, the leadership.

and to me, you know, it sort of adds up to like, you can do this Microsoft. It's free money that you're spending. But I don't think there's this guarantee of success that a lot of folks are assuming. And you wrote in your newsletter that the algorithm is ultimately the most important part of the purchase. So if the algorithm's not a part of the deal, everyone should walk, right? Totally. Yeah. Walk without the algorithm. I mean, unless Mike, yeah, again, I don't. And it's ironic because it's the algorithm that we think the U.S.

government is suspicious of. It's the algorithm that in theory, like if you could even take the name TikTok off it, but if you just knew the special sauce, but it's the special sauce that is maybe the reason that China doesn't want it to be exported. So let's say, I think we should add a little bit of nuance there.

So it's not the algorithm itself that the U.S. government is worried about. It's the possibility of, the back doors and things like that, right? Well, I would say more than any, anything, it's the possibility of an app that's based in China, that's owned by ByteDance, which has already apologized to the Chinese Communist Party for not censoring enough. Is there a possibility that the Communist Party then comes in and asks ByteDense to tweak the TikTok algorithm in a way that puts pro-Chinese messaging out in front of U.S. users and controls the culture

in a way. Now, it's kind of, you know, conspiracy theory sounding in this country, but, you know, for people that study China, I think it's a real issue. So yeah, and then, so that's really the main worry here, I would say. So this is another thing that I feel like, can you remember when this happened? Like, obviously things drop in popularity all the time, like Dig and Tumblr just slowly bleed out or like Blackberry Messenger or AOL instant messenger or whatever. Like by the time they go dark, it's because everybody left anyway. Can you remember a time when by the end of this month, in essence, and we can get into some of the details speculating about how,

if this is even technically feasible, but if all of a sudden the 100 million people in the U.S. or something, monthly active users of TikTok suddenly couldn't use it. Like, can you remember any time that has happened? No, that'll be a first. I mean, there's so many firsts. Like we talked about the beginning of this discussion, this definitely defies precedent.

It's something that you just haven't seen, happened before. And all the sort of shortcuts and thinking that you would take to sort of understand something like this just don't apply here. So it is extremely confusing. And one of those, it's such an interesting story because there are so many moving parts. Like we said, we couldn't, we don't, we're getting mixed messaging. We have like three dates of when the actual deadline might be to sell. Right, right. So not only that. All right. So will it actually go dark? Because I read a piece from Bloomberg this morning that actually got, yeah. So think about this. Like the president does not have the power to delete an app from my phone. Okay. So then what would happen? Well, he could sign it. You can't do

business with TikTok. So Apple and Google would have to remove the app from their app stores. But that doesn't mean that the app functionality would go dark if it's already on your phone. Right. Right. So then the next order could be, all right, you can't do business with TikTok. So I guess, you know, AWS or whoever hosts their stuff and whatever, maybe would have to make it go dark. But in theory, what if it's not a month from now, no one can use TikTok? It's that TikTok continues on in a zombie way because it actually really, you can't flip the switch, or we have no real mechanism to flip the switch. Yeah, it could happen.

I read that Bloomberg story too, and I was a little confused because they're saying he doesn't have the power to delete an app off your phone, but he does have the power to compel the app stores to no longer allow you to be able to use it. Well, that's that that's that CFS thing. Yeah. That's the thing you can no longer do business with Huawei or ZT or whoever they, that CFS organization. It's like it's against the law to do business. It's essentially like if you're, you know, you can't do business with Iran because they're under sanction, right? But do, so now let me ask you a question. Do we know that the president has the same, has the power? Well, right. I don't think so. Because CFS is one thing. The president is another thing.

Right. So this, yeah, I don't know. Okay, let's just go with the Bloomberg example and say that it can stay on our phones, but can't update. Yeah, so it could stay for a while, no doubt about it. But like, let's say there's a bug, right? They just had to fix this bug on Android. So if there's a bug, okay, let me throw out this scenario to you. Okay.

Let's say they find a bug that exploits all the user data, right? So you can go in and learn everything you want about the people using TikTok. right and they have a bug fix but apple and google aren't allowed to push that update right what happens then do we judge are they just required to let all of americans data leak out of that app or um you know ticot has gotten into trouble about you know bad videos on there uh you know not to trigger anybody but there was a suicide video on there recently there's been you know issues around content and children and stuff like that well what if you can't prosecute or you can't you can't get ticot to take things down that you would want them to take down.

Exactly, right? So this is the whole thing. Like, we're talking about a world where you really need to think, because there's so many unintended consequences when you do anything, when it comes to technology, you need leaders that think two or three or four steps beyond what actually happens in the immediate aftermath. And this is like one of those scenarios. I mean, we've had so much mixed messaging from the administration.

We don't really know what's going to happen. and it's very clear that some of these long-term consequences haven't been well thought out. I'll say that while saying it's good that we're examining TikTok in this way. No, sorry, it's good that we're examining TikTok. I don't know if this is the right way to go about it. Right. All right, then let me give you one more hypothetical that's almost impossible, but after you give me your answer, I'll tell you what I think would happen.

Yeah, people always yell at me on my podcast when I do this, but I kind of like these questions. So bring it on. TikTok. TikTok goes dark. Yeah. And so all the kids got nowhere to go to share their meme-fied videos. And so everyone would assume, okay, well, maybe everybody migrates to the Facebook clone or whatever, reels.

We've seen it in India. Apparently, all of the TikTok clones in India have seen a surge and whatever. But what if not? Like, what if this just dissipates a certain moment and a certain energy and a certain kind of social? And because, and then by the time it recoluses, I mean, the example would be Reddit is Reddit because everyone left Dig. But what if that doesn't necessarily have to happen? I don't see everyone's left Tumblr, but I don't see a replacement for Tumblr. Things just evolved into something else.

So I would say that's a possibility. But here's why I would bet against something like this stuff dissipating. short form kind of fun videos with like a lot of stuff packed into a few seconds is i i think twitter actually didn't invent it with with vine yeah that that constraint those that quick seven-second video um required uh i think created a new format and then okay all the creators left vine because vine wouldn't pay uh pay them and they went and recreated that world on snapchat now they've moved to tic-tok so i think this really is this kind of feature on the internet that we're going to see for a long time the question is like what form it takes in the long run and that I'm not sure about.

So Alex, since you were on this show the last time, you and I have talked offline a lot since then, but you've gone into the business of Alex Cantorwitz or people can go into business with you in the business of Alex Cantorwitz. So newsletter, podcast now. Tell me about what, tell the audience about what you're doing now. And then tell me about how What's going? Yeah. So I was, when we were speaking, I just released the book always day one. I was a reporter at BuzzFeed News and then decided to go independent. And so I do a newsletter called Big Technology, a podcast, big technology podcast, and I'm now contributing on air for CNBC. And honestly, the podcast, so I saw you tweeted that you were looking for some people. Can I share this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You tweeted you were looking for some people who were interested in doing, you know, podcasts with you.

And I was like, I was thinking about this idea of going independent. And that tweet actually inspired me to start, you know, my own podcast. And we, I called you up right. I think I, I apologize. No, actually, I was going to say that the podcast to me has been the most fun part of this entire thing. It's been super rewarding. And I love the ability to just be able to, you know, sit with people in the tech world. and kind of talk about things.

We've had some interesting guests, Box CEO, Aaron Levy's been on. Casey Newton from The Verge has been on. Like I mentioned, I just interviewed Megha, who has been from BuzzFeed News. And the MG Siegler interview, I thought was amazing. Yeah, MG. And I read MG all the way through reporting my book because I was like starting from a low knowledge base on Apple. And just thought his writing was terrific and used a podcast as a chance to be able to go and speak with him about like his views on Apple and what I saw was happening with the company.

And we had this like nice little, you know, back and forth. And then this week, and so we talked about with Casey Newton, I talked about why people hate tech journalists. Now this upcoming week, I'm speaking with Roy Bahat from Bloomberg beta, about this sense of grievance in the tech world right now where like a lot of VCs and tech folks seem to be upset at the way the world perceives them, especially reporters. And so Roy and I sort of psychoanagan.

analyze a little bit of like what it's like to be in the tech world right now, what drives people to tech and start to look at the problem from that perspective. So it's been an absolute blast. This is definitely the most fun I've ever had in my career. It's really nice to be self-directed. And I don't, I mean, I wouldn't say it's worked yet. Actually, I would say it hasn't worked yet. But will it work? I'm giving it like about a year, so about three months in, so maybe nine more months, then I'll make a decision about whether I need to get a job or whether I'm going to keep doing this. I think it's going to work. I just see a lot of positive signs. I've really enjoyed it. Everything's growing slowly, but it is growing. So we're not at a hockey stick. We're more like

one of those 45 degree angles. My analogy is always the reverse. My career is rolling a snowball down a hill. It might not roll fast, but you wake up one day and you're like, oh, shit, I got a big snowball here. Yeah. That's right. Yeah, that's what it feels like. I agree. So it's, yeah, it's been super exciting. And you've been so helpful, just to give you a shout out on your show. But just so generous with your time and so helpful. And I feel I feel like I've just learned a lot about podcasting and, you know, what it's like being independent from you. And I want to say thanks. Well, happy to do it. Let me let's end with this. I'll be this kind of podcaster. There's lots of people. out there now trying to go solo. What's the one lesson so far you've learned that if someone out there is wanting to go solo, build their own brand? What's the thing that's either surprised you or you didn't know and you're like, well, this is what you need to do to launch well? Okay. I would say that if you're thinking about doing this, you've probably seen some

evidence that there would be a demand for your services, whether it's reporting or analysis of companies. And there's probably some truth to that. For me, what I've found is that the hardest part is just knowing when to say yes to things. And I had been a freelancer before, so I kind of knew what running your own company might be like. But like, I feel like there's never a shortage of work that you can do. And the question is, I think someone, I think I saw someone saying that There's like this 20-80 principle, which I've thought about a lot, which that like 20% of the work will get you 80% of the results. And for me, it's really just been a matter of focusing on that and asking myself, am I doing 80% of the work now to give me 20% of results or 20% of the work to give me 80% of the results? And just like the biggest trick is just learning how to dedicate yourself to like the high value activities.

And also like, you know, learning to be an entrepreneur. it doesn't come naturally for a lot of folks. And I think that just like having that desire to be an entrepreneur, to be a salesperson, to be someone who runs their own company. I've always had that. Like I've worked in sales. I sold ad tech for a year before going into journalism and bought ads for two years before doing this. So I had a sense of what that was like.

But it's definitely different from, you know, typical, you know, reporter jobs, typical analyst jobs. And so I've actually had to teach myself to do that again. Like there was this book that I read before I became an enterprise sales guy called Hope is Not a Strategy, which is just like one of those like embarrassing covers of like it's a white cover with a white guy standing on it in a suit and it says, hope is not a strategy and you're like, give me a break. But actually it has tons of good lessons in terms of what it's like to do with solution sale. And all that stuff just kept, you know, came back. So yeah, definitely different skills. It's hard. You have to make difficult choices, but it's been it's been super, super fun and so rewarding. And I've really enjoyed every minute of it,

and that's not an overstatement. Well, I'm enjoying it too because you're obviously good at what you do and a smart voice. But you miss the most important thing, which is the Alec Baldwin lesson from Glenn Gary Glenn Ross, which is ABP, always be plugging. So let's end by again. Again, the newsletter is and the podcast is and I can find them where? Yeah, so newsletters, big technology. Bigtechnology.substack.com. Podcast most importantly is Big technology podcast. It's available on all the apps.

And I think that's mostly it. I think if you follow along there, you'll hear about anything else. But those are the two main places that I like to hang out. Thank you, Alex. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. Thank you.