Tech Brew Ride Home - (SPC CST) a16z's Future Plans And Audio Spaces With @smc90 and @kyurieff

Episode Date: June 26, 2021

We have two special guests this week! The first is Sonal Chokshi, Editor in Chief of a16z and showrunner of a16z podcasts. We’ll be getting her perspective on the launch of FUTURE, which we discussed last week. ​Second, as the major social platforms (save for YouTube!) have launched their social audio offerings, we’ll get the latest updates and analysis from Kaya Yurieff of The Information who recently published “The Week Social Audio Went Mainstream” 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. Cool. much for being here. Glad to join.

I love you guys. Same. You and Brian. Yeah. Did you get a chance to listen to our last tech meme right home episode? I did not. I did not. And I was going to actually ask you guys about it.

I really wish I had, but I've been so, so crazy, busy post-launch. But I was planning on it. And I was so curious what you guys said. Do you guys put out show notes? Because I would have, yeah, Brian May. Actually, that's how I'm going to lead into my question to you, so and so we can get there. OK, good, good, good.

I am actually, OK, so point of order, now that I can rename the title of the space, I'm going to try that out. Let's see, I'll call this T-M-H, a TMR-H, and then future.com. Thanks. Yeah, OK, cool. Nice, nice.

All right. That's cool that you can rename. in real time. I've actually only been in one or two other spaces, but I've never spoken in a space yet. So this is my very first time with the two of you. Well, also, Sotom, I think this is the only time, this is the first time that you and I have officially been on air together. No way. No way. Are you kidding? It's not true. That can't be true. I'm pretty sure.

Wait, let me think about this for a second. So you interviewed Chris Dixon. I remember helping set that up. Well, he interviewed me. Right. You set that up. Oh, right, right. And then the other way around, you did one later then. Yeah, I've done something. Yeah, but I don't think you and I haven't. I wasn't there. I wasn't. I remember I actually sent my audio guy, one of my audio guys over in New York to report that. Right, right, right, right, right. And then separately, you and I have done feed swaps and promo swaps and stuff, but we have not actually been on together.

And first, for the record, we need to change that for sure. 100%. Well, Chris, go ahead, since we're already doing this, go ahead and do the T-Off and then we can go right to it. Cool. All right, everybody. Today, what is today? Today is June 23rd. Oh, my God, it's like halfway through the year.

That's insane. This is the TechMeme ride home experience where every week, Brian and I deep in, dive into a number of conversations, topics, things going on in the tech world. And we are excited today to revisit TheFuture.com conversation, which we started last week. And we actually have someone from the future team here, who is clearly from the future. She's one of the first people to ever publish a video on the internet about Bitcoin back in 2011. I think I have that right. And Sonal and I have been friends going on. I think that's true.

It hasn't been independently verified. Is it a public link or where can we find that video? It was a public link. It was actually like, I think, 2000. Gosh, it was when I was at Park. It was one time the second most cited paper after Satoshi Nakamoto's paper, the team that put this up. Wow.

And it was the paper called, it was about Bitcoin. And it was actually, this is so funny. It was published on SlideShare, which at the time allowed videos. Now owned by LinkedIn and. Yeah, remember that? Yeah. Yeah. And Park might have pulled it down and shut it down too.

So I need to check on that because I've actually looked for that video on it. It's not up anymore. But I know for sure that it was definitely one of the very. very, very first, if not V first. I just remember being so intrigued by this Bitcoin thing back then. Well, all this is to give you credit and credibility for being on the future of so many things. Obviously, you started off, well, I don't know if it's started off, but you spent time at Park, Xerox Park.

And then I believe you went to Wired after that and then eventually, I mean, you can give us a little bit of background if you like, but, you know, now you're over here. Sure, I can. A16Z working on future and their podcasting platform and all of that. So if I left anything else that's relevant, please dive in. Sure. I can quickly add one or two notes on that. But first of all, I think it's so fun to be here with you guys.

And Chris, you and I, so Brian and I were just jamming because as two fellow, you know, kind of early podcasters, he and I trade tips and advice and promos and various things as well. But you actually, I met you at Xerox Park. So it is kind of significant that you reference that background. And I do think that there is sort of this weird evolution from Park to Wired to A6 and Z that all kind of comes together into what this is this future is today. So we can definitely talk about it. But I actually think there is the threat. No, and I mean, that's actually one of the things that Brian and I love to geek out on is putting everything into context to understand like what we've been trying to solve for, whether we achieved it, whether the things that have happened as a result of solving some things, caused other problems.

and like just the fact that you came out of a different world than let's say, you know, conventional business or finance or investment or whatever. I think also, I mean, you and Brian are both much more of the storyteller type, the ones who are seeing what's happening, trying to put into context, weaving together narratives. And that's, to me, like the fabric of understanding where we've been and projecting into the future. So not to, wow, I totally team myself up there. But projecting into the future, which is what you're working on now. So in that sense...

Future.com specifically, yes. Like I said, I didn't mean to do that. But you did buy the domains, so you have that. Anyways, so I'll let Brian jump in now because he had a specific question and he can maybe tease up based on some of the things we talked about last time. Yeah. Well, first of all, Soan, you know, we've been hearing rumors about future for a while. while now, you and I have even spoken about it before it went live and things like that.

So number one, congratulations on it finally coming to fruition. First of all, has it gotten the, what do you think the response, and not even in the media, but just the response on the wider internet has been to it so far. Are you guys pleased with what you're seeing so far? Yeah, I definitely want to speak for the whole. team and I would be completely lying if I said I read every single thing or heard every single thing. Like I actually am bummed. I missed even listening to your guys' podcast discussion about it. You know well enough not to read the comments. Well, weirdly, I am obsessed with that. And even

when I was at Wired, I did read the comments because I actually find them useful. Sure. And helpful. But really, you know, we are really focused on building the thing. So that is where my focus has entirely been. I've been very close to the metal. I actually have not been that involved with any of those pre-leaks or pre-conversations as much. So when extremely heads down on literally doing the work. And to that point, Brian, your question about what I think the reaction is, as you can imagine, there's been definitely a variety of flavors from different camps. I personally like that there is no one definitive reaction because what we are building,

and I care more about proactively what we're trying to do versus reacting and what people are doing out there, quite frankly. what we are building is as tempting to fill a gap and a hunger and a need that honestly, I first saw on the podcast when you look at the success of the podcast, which is not a small, tiny podcast. Brian, you know this. It's pretty big and pretty significant numbers. It's not small.

All of your podcasts, yes. But you don't even have just the one, right? No, right. There's a whole network. And certainly more, you know, the main show is more established than some of the newer ones, etc. But if you look at the industry benchmarks and podcasting, like we are in the top 1% of all podcasts out there when you look at the very, very, very long tail of what most shows get. Are you able to quantify that at all?

There's a benchmark report that I can share. Okay. That multiple benchmarks from Libson to this other company that just issued one early this year that I used and that actually are good, there's multiple triangulation points for this. It's actually about the industry overall. And then in terms of where we are, like certainly there's a very tall. head of the tail. And we're not, like, I wouldn't put us up high with like, like, oh my God, Joe Rogan or anything. But there, we're certainly up there. And for tech in particular,

we're generally always talking those charts too. So there's a lot of significant ways to measure this. And by the way, we have very rigorous metrics, not vanity metrics, because we're on a platform that doesn't just measure plays. They're IAB certified. But my point in saying all this is that what we saw on the podcast is that there, is such a hunger and why those numbers matter, by the way, because I don't think it just grew because, oh, if it were just about A6 and Z, I don't think people would care. Or even just like the founders talking or other people talking, I don't think people, it wasn't enough to like grow the show. There was a hunger for people to come understand what the future, what is happening

in tech. And I think people were trying to scratch that itch and we're trying to do that exact same thing with Future.com by now using the same model of bringing. and outside expanded voices that are not just our own firm and having them publish on a different site. So that's the connection. I just wanted to close that thread. So this is sort of what we kicked around last week, which was a lot of the initial reaction was, oh, they're doing their own media thing, which is just going to, they're going to talk their book. It's just a PR exercise. But the words and the language that you and Margaret, and Mark and everyone has been using.

And if you go to future.com right now, you can see what I said last week was that's not what they're doing. It's more of the educational thing, which is it's not, oh, this happened and we're giving you the news. It's more, this is what we think is happening and this is why people are making these decisions, right? So it's educational in the sense that it's not just, well, these are why people in our portfolio think that these are interesting areas.

It's also, this is why people in tech generally think things are going in this direction or that direction. And it is, it's almost like the analogy that I would make is everything that medium has been or people's individual blogs have been. It's, you know, it's bringing those sorts of things that like, you know, I talk about on my show, that come to the top of tech meme and things like that, where it's like, oh my God, everyone's talking about this piece from, you know, Bern Hobart or, you know, name anyone. In fact, I'm going through your pages right now. And like it is things like you're getting Patrick Collison to talk about things

and all sorts of folks. It's more of these, it's not giving you the news. This is what happened today. It's more, this is why we think this. is what's happening. It's educational in that sense. Does that make sense to you? It does make sense to me. And in fact, the word sense is what I would use. It's about sense making of the ways technology is changing our lives. Like literally, the way we work, live, eat, play, like every aspect of our lives. And, you know, Mark called it software eating the

world. But really, if you really think about how we live, like every single minute, hour of our day. And now people are curious about what does this mean? And quite frankly, to your point, Brian, they need a place to go, just like they go to TechMeme to see the top news of the day what people are talking about to see if I want to understand what is like the expert take, the best take, the definitive take on X topic, then I want to go here. The same way they came to our podcast to kind of get a lot of that. And what I mean is that's where the curation of that worldview comes into your point. It is not only oriented around what portfolio companies, you know, say or do.

A lot of it will be pitched to us. Some of it, quite frankly, we will assign. like to you know a lot of those op-eds were solicited in fact all of them were assigned and some of them are pitched to us in the sense of that the writers will say like here's a trend i'm seeing from my vantage point but here's what i would say are the big differentiators um which is one there's a lot of amazing content out there as you know and techmeem does an amazing job Gabe and the team have done an incredible job of on techmeem itself curating that on your show tech meme right home you've done an incredible job of covering you the news of the day and kind of putting it in context, which is super powerful because not everyone does that. What we're trying to do is share if you want to know, like, what is the way to think about? Like, if you look at the content, like everyone talks about defy centralized finance. Well, here is one of the definitive defy explainers. It kind of answers all the questions, whether you're a big corporate or a big institution trying to understand, how is this going to disrupt

my world or a builder who wants to go, how do I kind of navigate this, the map and the terrain of this topic, you can come to us and you'll have that there. Okay. And the goal is to have that there. Let me jump in because I have some thoughts. Yeah. Good. This is multi-layered. So on the one hand, the fact that one, you have this, you know, background in publishing and, you know, I know you, Brian knows you.

I feel like there's a level of integrity, you know, amongst us who both watch and participate, right? It's sort of like we understand how the sausage is made and then we are also purveyors at the sausage. and we also enjoy sausage. I mean, not to extend that metaphor. It can be vegan. It's fine. Not a big deal. But one of the things you said, one of the words you used was op-ed.

And that presumes that there is an editor. And so my question to you is about bias and about editorial. So if you think back to the way that Wired operated for the good, I don't know, 10, 15 years, still somewhat to this day, but not so much. It feels like a lot of the mainstream media has moved against tech. There's a negative bias that says tech sucks, text ruined the world. It broke up democracy in our elections. And there's some truth in that, but it's also people.

So I guess my question, if I think about the function that Wired had before about being a proponent of the future and sort of a rah-rah about the future. I'm not suggesting that you're only going to do that. But what is your editorial leaning? What is your bias? What are the things that you're saying, you know, we want more of this in the world? in our media and less of that. Yeah. Well, I would say I would frame it less as pro-tech or anti-tech and less as only optimism or

pessimism or any of these like kind of very narrow kind of polarities and put it more as a difference between leading versus lagging indicators. And in fact, we started this conversation with me being at park. Chris, you introduce me as kind of being on the forefront of things. And we're talking about this idea of, you know, what is shaping and what is kind of reacting to things. And what I mean by leading versus lagging indicators, the reason I left Wired, which I loved for the record, and in many ways, there are things I just absolutely still will always love about Wired. The thing that I felt was, why is the section that I'm working on relegated to a side thing? It's actually undeluted expert views highly edited by me. It was extremely collaborative. We actually coined, and we're one

For instance, I was one of the first U.S. editors to put Ethereum in a headline. This is like years, like it was literally a month after the Ethereum white paper came out. Or e-sports. Like the front desk, the copy desk fought me on what the hell is e-sports. It was years before, like, you know what I mean? And so these are the things. And if you think about it, like, why wasn't that stuff at the center of the magazine? And it wasn't for any reason except that it was a different model.

Well, and yeah. Not to coin a term or to coin. firm, but your coin terming, I'm sorry, this is nothing to do with coins, but actually, yes, in a way, like logical or thought coins, like you've provided a lens through which to understand things, either based on their positioning and relative relationship to things that already exist, or by, you know, saying nothing like this actually exists. So let's call it something totally new. Ethereum isn't connected to anything. So therefore, you don't have any bias when you come to that

term. Bitcoin, even by embedding the word coin next to Bit, you have a sense that it's digital currencies. So it's sort of is self-referential and explanatory. I mean, even for me, like with the hash tag, like it's the hash symbol and it's a label or a tag. And so it provides, it's like a step stool to getting to that sense making that you're talking about. So. Well, some of it does start with the label, but I would actually, sorry to interrupt you, Chris, but one thing I would say just to clarify this and what I mean by leading versus lagging indicator is that sometimes it is baked into the term and sometimes you are coining a term when you're doing that. But it's exactly this theme of curating a worldview that is both responding to the

cues and signals that you're seeing, but more from the front lines than where they've already been reported to death or more from like the leading indicators. And why I came to A6 and Z was I felt like at Xerox Park and at Wired, I had seen like a lot of things that were kind of, We were covering the past and the heyday have sort of, you know, kind of in that rear view. Whereas at Andrewson Horwitz, I got the opportunity to be, we as a firm sat in the center of so many networks. And because of that, we get to hear from entrepreneurs all these kind of emerging themes and things. Like, for instance, when Chris Dixon first wrote his full-stack startups post, it was because he kept seeing all these companies, entrepreneurs describing this model that they were using as a way to bypass and create these companies.

And so my point is that by being at that vantage point, we have those leading indicators. And so I wanted to lead with that. And that's literally the worldview, because you're asking about the worldview of future, that's the worldview. It's like, what are these leading indicators? And as for bias, I don't have a comment on that because I think that word is too loaded and too complicated to unpack, except to say that I think everybody has some bias of some form, whether they're aware of it or not, plenty of times.

And even at Wired, when we were in the pitch room, there was plenty of like, points of view that were driving the pieces as well as what we would and wouldn't cover. Well, I think your bias is just towards, as you said, very clearly, like the future. And it's not retroactive or retrospective. It's not looking. And maybe this is an interesting question as to how much do you take stock of, you know, the impact and some of the negative consequences that we're living through and trying to make sense of versus, again, cheering a future or being, you know, very open minded about how things turn out, right? Yeah. definitely more on the latter in terms of being, particularly in the sense of not to say that

implications don't matter. That's actually a key thing that we ask people to cover. Maybe that's a question. How do you bring in some of that broader context that says, oh, well, when we did this last time, we kind of screwed some things up, but actually the net of it was actually quite positive. So how do you balance those two? We're not in the business. Yeah, I can absolutely answer that one actually relatively easily, which is we're not in the business of trying to play judge and jury on the details of that. But what we do do is ask contributors to actually share. So first of all, we situate things on the long arc of history and innovation.

Brian knows this. And we both are very similar in this way, where we think about where we are now and where we're going. And then secondly, so you kind of situate like, okay, so AI, people have been talking about the promise of quantum computing for decades. But here are we now, does this advance actually get us further? Or is it just more hype or reality? Or where are we on this long arc?

So that's one piece. But the second thing to answer your question about how do we sort of, you know, turn that forward. Sorry, I just lost my train of thought. I just had like a little mental blurp for a second. Literally just a second ago. Can I jump in? Yeah, go ahead. Jump in and I'll regather my thoughts.

Yeah, if you cut me off if it jumps back into your brain. One of the things that I said last week, maybe not as coherently as hopefully I'll say it now, is that let's use, let's use, NFTs as an example. If even a wired or a verge, not to mention a Wall Street Journal, does a story on NFTs, they have to spend half of the article grounding it

for a normal audience. Let's use the word, and I'm not being pejorative, but normal audience, right? So to what degree is this, well, can we, if you're going out and trying to spread ideas and talk about the future.

Can we just skip over that sort of like hand-waving about like, well, let's lay the way. Can we assume that people know what NFTs are so that if an essay comes out on the future, that we can skip all that and just go to what we want to say about NFTs? Does that make sense? Yeah, it does make sense. I have a very strong opinion of that is, no, we actually cannot skip that. In fact, one of my biggest beliefs as an editor is that every piece should set context and set it well. Interesting.

To be clear, I don't believe that it's hand-waving if it's, if it's like, what I hate is when people pontificate needlessly. But if it's setting context, like orienting us, like the map and the terrain, what is this, why does this matter? What is this thing even? I believe the art of really good editorial is actually straddles a line where you don't make a trade-off between, quote, dumbing things down or assuming knowledge. And you still have depth. But you can, with really good execution on editorial, you can actually make something so. so deep, so nuanced, and so smart, while also bringing people along. That is, in fact, the art of a really damn good piece, whether it's in Wired, whether it's

on Future.com, which I would consider as our signature. And by that, what I mean is, I saw even on the podcast, when you mainstream things, people all over the world will read and listen if they feel that you're making things accessible as they go. I want people, when they come away from something to feel smarter, like, oh, I got it. Or, aha, I had an ah moment. Or, oh my God, I'm thinking about this little differently than I did before. Why does this happen enough?

I don't have a comment on why it doesn't happen enough elsewhere, except that I think that, I think every media outlet has to define their own signature for how they're going to reach their audience and what their identity is. And I think sometimes people are often led by what they think their audience wants, and they often make assumptions. And if you think, again, where we started here, which is this hunger, I believe so strongly that people are, we believe this as a firm. Like people are so hungry for good information,

smart coverage of technology. Otherwise, like I said, the podcast would not have grown so much. It's not just growing among technologists. And that is because people want to see and understand how is this thing changing my life. Or you hear about everyone talking about GPT3. Well, what is this GPT3 thing?

What is really hype? Is it really going to be general AI? Or is it really going to be, Like, is it really going to change and take, take, I don't have to write an essay ever again. It's going to write all my essays for me. Like, they want to know. Like, what is actually going on? And Brian, you ran that episode because you thought it was one of the best episodes and takes on GPT3.

I don't mean to like throw that in your face. I think it's awesome that you loved it. Yeah. But that's what I mean. That's what we try to do is like everyone's talking about GPT3. I could not find there was a lot of good writeups on it to be clear. But there wasn't a single place to know like. If I want the definitive take on X, where do I go?

What is the one place I can go? And we want future.com to be that one place. Okay, so this is my last question, and Chris, if you got more, but this is a practical one because it's right off of that. And of course, I didn't want to replicate that GPT thing because I couldn't have done it better, so why would I even try? But if you're, this is the practical and making the sausage question, If you're a Jade Raymond, if you're, you know, a Pachy McCormick, do you want, do you want them to save their best stuff for you? Is that, is that your goal that you want them to give you?

Oh, I love this question so much. Can I tell you why I love this question so much? Because I think it's actually at the heart of the evolution of media. Because the world we live in today, as you well know, is that there is more incredible content out there than ever before from newsletters. Like everyone's substacks. I can't count on any substacks. I'm I'm a subscribe to and read from new media outlets to even private WhatsApp groups. Like people are talking about all these things in so many different forums here, clubhouse everywhere. And my answer to that question, Brian, is that the unique differentiator, I think we bring to the table, I think everyone who's like, for instance, have a substack. Like Lenny Sons, you know, contributed to us. And he can write a different piece for his audience, but he's writing for insiders and

people are already following him. So when we edited him, and this is a unique thing you bring to the table. One of the unique things we bring to the table is a very editorial collaboration that you get nowhere else. Like maybe the New York Times for an op-ed, but it's still in a very singular style of op-ed, whereas we're running a range of different styles of pieces from arguments to- How long is this space to produce? That's my whole point, Chris.

Like there's no length. There's no arbitrary limit. They range from anywhere from 800 words to like 15,000 words. Like, I'm never arbitrary about it. I mean duration. Like, how long does it need to be? To produce these pieces. Oh, the time.

Oh, it takes a lot of work in time. And to be clear, I think it's hopefully less lift on the writers parts. But what we try to do to save them, we're trying to make it as painless for them as possible. But many of them, many of them told us how much they deeply appreciated the editorial process. Because most people don't ever get access to that. Especially now with substack. Right? Well, I don't know if SEPSAC is doing an editorial as a service thing, but it's actually just even academics.

Like even when I was at WIRE before SEPC even existed, a lot of the academics I worked with would tell me like, oh, my God, like, we have like an in-house person who can do PR or comms or someone who can do this, but we've never actually worked with someone who's not just, you know, even a journal editor. But someone who actually helps me mainstream ideas or like probes and challenges me for where are the gaps, where's the bullshit, where are the things that I can. you know, improve where the things that I can, it's a really rigorous process. And if you look at the quality of the work, I hope it stands up to that. Like, I'd love your guys as feedback at some point later and what you think was, you know, better or worse. Okay. So I know that you're super busy working on the stuff. I've got two more questions. And then we're going to bring up Kaya, Kaya, I'm sorry. And if, of course, Sonal, if you want to stick around, we'd love to have you. I think the next part of our conversation is going to be super relevant. And so I'd love to

get your perspective on it. But the two questions that I have before, if you choose to drop off, are one, what do you think people got wrong about this launch? It just seemed like there was a lot of negativity that, at least to me, didn't really seem warranted, except maybe the power and money thing, but that's automatic. And then the second question is, if you are successful, what does future look like in five years? Oh, I love both of those questions. Yeah, and I do have to hop off. And I will try to like quickly listen in for a little bit of kious things just because I love the topic so much. But I do have to hop off. And thank you guys for having me on.

I think I just answer that in really simply one way, which is I would love us to kind of evoke the kind of feeling that people had in the, you know, you mentioned Chris at the very beginning of the early days of wire. It's almost like future nostalgia. Is that your thinking? Yeah, a little bit, but also bigger than that, though, because this is a big difference. Okay. So one part of it is, like, you have that excitement when it came to your inbox that, oh, my God, there's a worldview. I know that there's this one place that is going to describe this really important thing that's changing our world and that people aren't talking about enough in a way that's smart and thoughtful. But the second piece, and this is really important, is also that it gives people a sense of, because the difference between wired back then and today is that technology is everywhere now.

So everybody's talking about technology in different ways. So now the next thing is how do we like bring more people into it so that they see the power for like either becoming creators or builders or even like one of my favorite things is getting messages from people listen to the podcast for instance or other pieces like when we did the crypto canon for instance. We had a mother who was literally breastfeeding her baby and like I can't remember what state she wrote from. But she said she came across the crypto canon and she was reading it while breastening her baby. Can you just describe what that is for the listeners who don't know? Oh, sorry. Yes. It was basically a curated list of.

readings that I had, you know, started doing and then pulled in the rest of our team to help us and we published it, which is basically like where to get started for all levels of crypto, whether you're beginner intermediary or later. And my favorite email, I'll try to hunt it up and see if I can find it and sit share part of the screenshot without revealing her name, was she was literally breastfeeding her kid. And then she read all these articles and decided to then go into the space because of reading that. And the other. And the other thing that we've done is actually had policymakers reach out to us to say, can I talk to that person who wrote or spoke about that piece? Because I love what they're talking about. I think we should

propose legislation based on that. That is influence. So I want it to shape and influence the way people think, yet giving them the tools and the mindsets and their frameworks that they come to their own conclusions. We're not going to tell people what to think. Got it. And I've pinned a link to the Crypto Canon. Obviously, you can find it pretty easily. The one thing that I want to just hear from you if you can, you know, comment is again, like, why was there kind of this negative response or what are people getting wrong about their impression of future? Yeah, honestly, I think it's too, it's not that I'm trying to avoid it at all. Frankly, I think it's awesome to talk about, but I think it's too complicated to distill into one

response. But what I would say is, I think like anything, I think anytime there's a mismatch when people are bringing kind of their own lens to the topic, it's kind of like that story of the blind man and the elephants, everybody's going to come at it from. the way that they're touching the elephant, an elephant is a trunk, an elephant is the leg, an elephant is the tail. That's actually the part that cracks me up, because I obviously have a picture of the whole elephant. And so for me, I'm just kind of like, wow, it's what I see over and over again to kind of address that somewhat is it's essentially filtered exactly

through that person's point of view, almost regardless of what we do, honestly. Yeah. For me, yeah. I mean, I'd say as someone that this is my job every day to keep, pay attention to the zeitgeist. It wasn't negative so much as it was skeptical. So, I mean, that's not the same thing as negative. That's just like, we'll see, we'll see, you know. Oh, will these computer people make it in phones kind of thing. You know what I mean? That's not negative. That's more. We'll see it. Yeah. Totally. And by the way, this is an MVP. Like, it is our first step. Like, we are building. I would never want people to come away thinking, oh, my God, we've got it baked and figured out. Like we are absolutely evolving this as we go.

And I'm super excited. I just want to leave one last note before you guys bring Kaya on whose work I love, by the way. So I'm excited to listen for a couple of minutes before I hop off. Oh, thank you. Yeah, no, love it. I love Taylor first brought your work to my attention. And I just love anything that talks about creators so smartly and thoughtfully. But basically, I would just say that we're open for business.

And if people want to contribute to us, I hope you do. If you go to future.com, there's a at the very bottom of the link, I've written up pitch guidelines that literally lay out the whole thesis. Like, it's funny that no one's writing about that because it actually says right there what we're doing. No one has even guess at it. That would be people would have to like do their due diligence. So. Oh my God. Seriously. And I just want to say I love talking you guys. And I'm sorry that I can't stay longer. We love you, really, really appreciate. Love you guys too. Thank you. Thank you so much. We'll listen to this. Thank you so much. I'm going to go on mute and. One thing between you two, though, before you totally drop off, is mediums and formats, because we're going to be talking about social audio with Kaya. And so one of the questions that I have about future.com is where else do you see this going in terms of mediums?

I mean, obviously you guys have a huge investment in Clubhouse. So at least the firm has, you know, a financial future in social audio. But for you guys personally, is it important to own the property in the real estate or are you willing to, you know, in this case, you know, you're on Twitter spaces and Brian and I don't own this. And so is, is that okay? Because one of the things that I want to unpack in this part of the conversation is about whether social audio is a feature or it can be a company. And if it is a company, what needs to be behind that? And I think future and your programming and content speaks to that. And I think the fact that Clubhouse hired folks from TED to do content programming could be really important and

signify where the stuff is going to go. So I'd love for you to to actually, if you want to, to talk a little bit about that. Well, I'm going to defer to the three of you guys, because that was your guys' topic, but you guys know I'm super bullish on audio in general. Totally. And as a firm, we love audio. And the thing I'll say about audio is, I think people honestly falsely homogenize it, like text. Like no one would ever say text is like one format.

Audio has many things. It can be short things. It can be conversations. It can be podcasts. It has many, many, many, many flavors. It can be snippets. So I think that's something to think about. And clearly where we started this conversation is with the podcast.

And Future is an extension of that idea of bringing outside voices and that worldview and using experts first. People who are first person experts undiluted by reporting. So direct from the expert voices. And now we're doing the exact same thing on Future.com in writing. And just note that Future does also include our podcast network. So it is going to be incredibly audio inclusive. So that's how I'd answer the audio question. Awesome. Thank you guys.

Thanks so much. Over to you. Bye, guys. Kaya, welcome. Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah. So, well, first, why don't you give us a little bit of background for yourself? I know that you're at the information now, but you have a little bit of a longer career in media. And tell us how you got into first the creator economy and then talk to us about the piece that you recently wrote for the information.

Sure. Yeah. So I just joined the information in April. So it's only been a few months. Congratulations. Thank you. And I came on to launch our new creator economy newsletter. Before that, I was at CNN for four years, and I covered big tech, mostly social media companies, so Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok.

And I was always really drawn there to creator stories. And some of my favorite interviews that I've done are with creators and just talking about, you know, how they build a business and seeing what's on their mind. And whenever we did stories about creators at CNN, they always really resonated. And I think there was a lot of interest there. So I always wanted to make this kind of more of a full-time part of my job. So I was super excited when I saw the information was launching this. That's awesome. And so talk to us about like, I guess your perspective on, you know, the big, the big news, I suppose. And Brian and I have talked about this a bit, both from the creator

economy perspective. You know, I think he and I are both in it. But we've also been watching social audio from the get. And it's been really interesting to see all the platforms now have launched, obviously, except for YouTube. And we're looking at different monetization opportunities. We're looking at just sort of emergent behavior happening on each of those. By the way, by the way, I mean, one of the reasons we're talking to you is because your article from a few days ago, or maybe last week, was the week social audio went mainstream because there were so many things that launched last week. It was crazy.

You literally have a table in your piece of what this platform is doing versus what that platform is doing and that sort of thing. Yeah. I do this newsletter four times a week. So I kind of on Thursdays and on Fridays, I take a time to kind of reflect on what's happened. And I'm like, oh my gosh, this was really the week of social audio. We saw Facebook preview, Spotify launched.

So it really, you know, obviously Discord and LinkedIn has been working on a competitor too. So these competitors have been kind of lurking in the shadows. But last week, to me, really felt kind of like a turning point. Turning point in the sense that, I mean, I guess everybody's got to get their stuff out there. But also, do you have a sense that, um, This is also on the demand side of it, too, or not demand, that's the wrong way to say it, but like the audience side of it too. As you're covering the space, clearly all of the platforms want to do audio rooms. What do you think the general internet public thinks about audio spaces?

It's a great question, because I think a lot of this is being driven by the success of Clubhouse. Obviously, they've raised a ton of money from venture firms. They've had a lot of buzz. They've had some really big names drop in from Elon Musk to Justin Bieber. So I think there's a lot of buzz. And I think the invite-only aspect, too, there was a time where people were really clamoring for invite. So there's definitely a lot of buzz and hype around it. So I think this is definitely coming more from the competition perspective.

But at the same time, you do see really engaged communities on Clubhouse. So I think these platforms, especially Facebook, see a huge opportunity there to tap into the to the existing billions of users that they have. So I think it's definitely coming more from the competition side. I still think kind of the average casual social media user is not tapping into this as much, just because it's still super early. I mean, we always see this.

Even when Instagram launched stories, for example, it wasn't like everyone was using it on day one. It's always kind of a slow adoption for kind of the mainstream audience. I was going to just say something about Facebook. And I'm kind of like, try, okay. Yeah, so my question is like how or do you see like their social audio rooms fitting into their overall strategies? Because yes, I mean, certainly Facebook might have, you know, made some overtures to acquire

clubhouse as they often do. Given the regulatory environment right now, that was probably not likely. And so it's almost a preview of what will happen if some of these regulations go through. In other words, if big tech companies are forbidden from buying upstarts, then they will just clone out the gate as opposed to. even bothering with the overtures because they know that they won't be able to make those acquisitions come through. By the way, I think you were thinking of Twitter. Facebook might have talked to them, but I don't think Facebook ever thought that they could acquire. Go on. Well, regardless,

I feel like corp-deb divisions all-circled clubhouse at some point, whether they were serious or not or just trying to figure out which features to copy, I don't know. But it would go with the pattern that we've seen before. So I guess my question is a little bit about, one, are, is social audio kind of layering on existing communities? In other words, were people getting together and now, whether it's due to the pandemic or due to just the popularization of, you know, iPhones, mobile phones, devices with mics and video fatigue from work, that people are more interested in hopping onto audio? Or are these new communities forms? because social audio just is creating a new type of connection for people that previously either were text-inhibited or video-inhibited or they just didn't find the other mediums that compelling.

Do you have a sense for where this growth is coming from? Is it cannibalizing existing behavior or is it built on existing networks? I think it's a little bit of both. And to your Facebook point, I mean, I think what's interesting is that they're launching this initially just to public figures on Facebook and Facebook groups. So Facebook has obviously struggled with kind of being associated with being like a boomer app at this point. And what one of their, their two big strengths, I think, are events and groups. A lot of people have told me that they have not deleted their Facebook yet because they're in a group that's super valuable. So it's very telling that they're launching this this live audio room feature to groups, which you can see there's already existing communities, really strong bonds there.

So to roll that out to groups, you can see a really, you know, interesting and positive use case there. On the other point, I mean, I think it's a mix. Like I, if someone offers me a regular phone call over a Zoom call, I'm like, yes, please. Like, I think there definitely is that fatigue of being on video all the time. And it's just nice. Like for me right now, it's 9 o'clock. I don't have, you know, I'm not on a video.

I don't have to like, you know, look presentable. I can just, you know, come in and speak. And I think there's something refreshing about that. I think there's also something about the intimacy of, of voice. For some reason, it feels more intimate than a video. There's also just, I did a story at CNN before I left about just kind of the rise of voice in general. I've noticed myself personally using a ton of voice notes during the pandemic. So that's how I've, you know, stayed in touch with a lot of friends. You know, just voice messaging, like asynchronously. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just

so nice. I have a friend, one of my best friends moved to Dubai in the middle of the pandemic. And there's a big time difference, and we voice know all the time, and that's our main mode of communication. So I think voice is definitely, you know, something that's exciting to people. And obviously, we've seen podcasts be popular for a lot of time, too. But the, and I realize for everyone listening to this live right now, this is not as interactive as some social rooms might be, and that's because we're recording and we'll put this out to the world. And we'll open up later on in the show. But obviously, interactivity is a big shift in terms of like, the podcast format. The podcast format is, it's great. You know, it's high signal. You know,

you can play at 2X. I'm sorry, I might speak, you know, fast, but you can't 2X me. So I guess, like, that's another aspect of this, where it's very participatory and it's ephemeral. So it has other aspects that other mediums don't really have, where there's not really a permanent record, per se. You can hop in a room, you just listen. You could be multitasking, doing other things. So it's filling in a bunch of gaps. And it seems like there was a bunch of other maybe subtle behavior that was happening that then contributed to a comfort of doing this kind of on mainstream social media, whether that's video game and Discord and having those experiences or just having, you know,

like we said, voice memos, sending stuff back and forth like that. I think one of the things that's happening now, which is interesting and I'd love to get your, I don't know, your take reading the tea leaves is around monetization and what that ultimately looks like. Twitter coming out with ticketed spaces that go from, I don't know, anywhere from a dollar up to a thousand bucks per ticket is pretty interesting. I don't think that we've seen that type of audio-only event anywhere else. So, you know, do we think that that's interesting? Is that going to blow up? Is Twitter suddenly going to hire some from TED and have their own programming? How do you maybe think about that type of cultural content being produced by each of the

platforms and how important is it for each platform to invest in high quality content versus just allowing people to have kind of whatever conversations they might have amongst themselves. Yeah, I think what was interesting about doing the table in my piece is that every single one of these platforms has some sort of monetization, even Facebook barely launched and it has monetization or plans for monetization. And I think that hasn't always been the case with these types of products. I remember when Instagram launched IGTV, which is their launch. form video feature and it was supposed to be this YouTube killer and they had absolutely no monetization for creators and to make a long form video that takes a lot of time and effort and

production so and it really didn't take off so it was not the the YouTube killer that some people you know mused it could be so I think it's very very telling that all of these platforms have some sort of monetization you're also seeing kind of monetization sprout up already naturally so there's, you know, sponsored clubhouse rooms already, which are being facilitated between the creators and the brands directly. So you could see maybe clubhouse facilitating some of that. You could see clubhouse adding tickets. I mean, this is such a new medium. We don't know, right? We have no idea if this is going to be successful. There's no kind of roadmap for this. We've seen kind of the creator economy is so fragmented. I talk to creators all the time and

the ways they make money vary a lot. I mean, the number, one way is still brand sponsorships, but some people make a ton of money from subscriptions or tips. So it's going to be a little bit of a trial and error, but it's super important that the monetization is there. And I think that also just speaks to the competition between these platforms. Can I, I'm sorry, I stepped out for a second. So if I'm repeating something, in terms of the creator end of it, do you feel like audio rooms are just, I I mean, one of the ideas about being a creator is you want to have multiple skews.

You don't want to just be a YouTuber. You want to also, you know, maybe have a newsletter and maybe have a, you know, a discord and all these things. Do you feel like creators are treating this as another channel? Or do you get the sense that there is energy behind the audio space for creators? I think it depends. One complaint I've heard from creators about not wanting to be on these live audio platforms, like this is a great example of you're turning this into a podcast, people can listen to it later, there's a record of it. But I think a lot of creators are so stretched for time. So for them to put in,

you know, an hour in a clubhouse room and then not be able to share that later or use that somewhere, you know, that can be challenging and a reason that's been a deterrent for some social media influencers that I've talked to. But I think others, you know, have, have gone all in on Clubhouse in particular and have built, you know, these communities and have reoccurring events and put a lot of time and energy into that and are finding success. I think a lot of Clubhouse creators, I mean, obviously it's hard to generalize, but it seems like a lot are, you know, like personal branding experts and they're using that or some sort of entrepreneur, you know, entrepreneurial pursuits that they have. And then they're using that their clubhouse

rooms to kind of funnel back business to themselves. So that's interesting because you're seeing, less like traditional, you know, YouTubers on Clubhouse, you know. One of the questions that I would have about this, I guess, and I don't know to what degree past is, you know, prologue. But thinking about all the work that you did on the creator, the early sort of creator economy, the pre-social audio creator economy, how much do you think we're going to see similar behaviors in the beginning where people are kind of figuring this stuff out? I think that one of the things that's hard for me to understand, and maybe it was because I was just super ignorant of the

stuff for the early years of my social media life. But it feels like my experience on Spotify Greenrooms, for example, or Green Room, as well as Clubhouse more recently, has an overtly commercial vibe, as opposed to being more creative, focused, expressive, focused. I mean, that stuff does exist, but it seems to be drowned out, just as like you said, sort of like kind of verbal seminars that are about selling something or getting someone to convert to some other business. And I guess I'm just trying to understand, like, is this something we've seen before? Is it likely to drown out quality content? Or is that where the content being programmed by the platform itself will be kind of, you know, a pushback against that type of, I hate to say it,

but like droll content? Yeah. I mean, I think this is always the struggle, especially for full-time content creators. Like, they have to monetize their time. So, and I think a lot of times, creators get big, whether it's on Instagram or Clubhouse, because of their native original content. But then at some point, they have to make that transition and be like, okay, well, I need to make money. And even though there's monetization options on all these platforms, none of them currently are a viable, you know, consistent revenue stream. So I think that's why you're starting to see that. I mean, I remember this in the early days of Instagram of like you would follow these people that you thought were really interesting. And then suddenly all they're posting is ads.

And you're like, whoa, what's going on? So I think it's a very fine balance that creators always have to kind of walk. But I think the thing that I'm trying to understand is how fast these platforms got popular. And they kind of blew up. And Clubhouse certainly, whether it was December or whatever, like had this huge wave of interest and the investment money and the celebrities. And it seems like there's a faster rate at commercialization than I've seen on other platforms. And partially, I think it is because of what you're describing, right? Like there's this land grab mentality where it's like, let's create the most popular groups

and let's get everybody on them and let's do follow for follows every day. And once we do that, we'll be rich and we'll make all the money. And it feels like the sustainable way of making money on these platforms, and I don't want to, I don't know, it's hard to be sustainable on any of them as a creator. But to create content that's good, that's native to the format, that's interesting, I feel like it takes a longer gestation period as opposed to immediately jumping to how do I exploit and monetize my presence on these platforms? Yeah, no, I agree with you. I mean, it does seem faster than usual.

I mean, there are creators who spend years doing this on the side and not doing grant sponsorships at all. So it does seem like it's moving fast, but I think the pace of how live audio has exploded, it's kind of matching that. And do you think that the companies need to do anything about that? Do you think it's okay? Like, I guess I'm also asking, you know, there's been, you know, pushback and a reaction to different types of antisocial or negative behaviors that emerge on social platforms. Do you think that the platforms are doing enough? Do you think they need to do more?

How would you rate the platforms in terms of how they're responding to this, I guess, current moment in terms of the trends and the content? So are you talking, like, misinformation, like damaging content? No, not so much that. Just behavior, right? Like in terms of the, when someone arrives, I guess I think back to like the early days of Instagram and the content that you'd get like was consistently high quality. It was like, you know, there was a small number of people who were using it and they were doing it to express themselves.

It was a new platform for creativity. And maybe it's just my experience. And so I don't want to overgeneralize because I know these platforms are also personalized and they have, you know, algorithmic feeds. But it just feels like the quality of the content has slowly eroded relative to the early days of my experience, at least on Clubhouse. So my question is about the long-term viability of these platforms, gaining enough of a foothold and sort of setting the roots that is necessary to create enduring cultures versus being overrun by, you know, the weeds, you know? Yeah, no, it's a really good question. I mean, I think they're with Clubhouse as you can kind of see, they might be going towards a direction of more formalized program and high-quality content. They hired an executive from TED, and they've hired a long-time Google engineer to work on spatial audio and just kind of making the whole experience, you know, better and less of maybe like an open mic free-for-all.

I think is what I called it in my newsletter. Right, right. But I think the platforms could do more to promote, you know, I think it's hard, though, because it's a personalized feed, but they could do more to kind of promote other rooms. but I think maybe some of this comes from the fact these are getting so commercialized because there isn't a consistent revenue stream. So Clubhouse to its credit has really put creators first from the beginning. They launched a creator program where they're paying creators. Do we know how that's going?

I mean, I know that there's been like the town halls, but I feel like I don't have a good sense for, you know, who's, you know? I really don't either. I mean, it seems like they are doing all the right things. So I think, but I think some of that commercialization comes from the, the fact that there isn't a great way to make money otherwise. So you kind of feel like you have to press, you know, push your brand or your, you know, whatever. The other side of this, again, to the other side of the table, you had an interview, I think, just today, actually, with another friend of this show, Hunter Walk, and talking about how at least $2 billion of investor money has been poured into.

creator economy startups so far this year. When you talk to creators, is this just sort of like boom times, man? This is like, boy, this is an old man analogy, but like the stand-up comedy boom

in the 80s or something, where it's just like everyone wants to talk to us, money's coming at us, left, right, and center. Are the creators feeling empowered right now? Do they feel like money is chasing them? So what's funny is this money is really going to these startups and the founders,

and very few of them are actually creators themselves. The tool makers, the people selling the pickaxes and whatever for the gold rush essentially. Yes. Yeah. So I think, you know, I spoke with a creator recently who was like, instead of investing in like the seventh, you know, back end software for creators, why don't they start investing in some creators personally? You know, So I think some of the creators are seeing all that activity. On one hand, I think it's good because it just adds more credibility to this industry and more people are talking about it. But I think a lot of that money is, you know, it's going to the entrepreneurs and the startups,

not necessarily the creators themselves. One more thing. And Chris, forgive me if this is taking us into a completely different tangent. Go for it. one of the things that I've been talking about on our show recently is this idea of whether or not the creator economy is being held back by the app store taxes. Oh, yeah. I love this topic. Yeah, I have some math that I'll pin to this space.

Right. And I said that on the show today. Like if you do a super follower, if someone pays you $10 a month for your tweets, you basically, you basically walk away with around $5 of that, but $3 of that goes to Apple or Google. And even if Twitter takes even a dollar of that, so in the sense that if you're a creator, so much of the rake is going to,

I'm sorry, but it's rent-seeking because, you know, Apple didn't do anything. If Twitter is the facilitator that would get you $10 a month and they're only taking 10%. I'm sorry, I'm editorializing. My question is, where do you, what do you think about this idea that the creator economy can't really take off if we can't figure out how these middlemen are going to take their, take their cuts? Yeah. So this is fascinating to me because, you know, some people have been talking about this for a while, but it hadn't really gotten into the public conversation until a few months ago. The first

time that this was kind of spoken about publicly was during the Epic Apple trial. And Epic CEO cited their creators and said, look, we're trying to make this ecosystem where creators make money. And when Apple takes 30% off the top of that, that makes it really hard. And that kind of started all these complaints. We had Mark Zuckerberg very publicly, you know, say, we're not going to take any creator fees and when we do, it's going to be way less than Apple and Google. Twitter yesterday cut its take. So it was originally going to take 20% of earnings from Superfollows and tickets. And now they're going to take 3% until a creator hits $50,000 in earnings.

Yeah, if you check out my pin tweet, you'll see the math. It's pretty insane. Yeah. When you look at that, so, okay, a Twitter space's ticket is $10. Apple gets three. The creator gets $6.79. And Twitter gets $21. So it's really wild to think about.

A lot of people have been calling for it to go lower. Apple and Google both make some exceptions for like small developers. So if you're a small developer that makes less than a million dollars in annual revenue, they par that. By the way, one thing that was unclear, and I don't know if you can answer this. And I posted this to. Cave on. Hopefully, you know, he'll get back to me. But the question that I have is whether or not all Twitter subscribers, I guess, or Twitter superfollow subscribers, fall under the Twitter umbrella or if they're independent. In other words, like, if, do I register as an independent developer and I get up to

$2 million of revenue and then that's the lower take rate from Apple? Or are all Twitter superfollow were subscribers grouped together under Twitter as a developer. And therefore, the take rate is way above 2 million because Twitter is going to make more than $2 million, $2 million from these sales. And so therefore, the take rate is going to be 30%. So I believe it's 30%. Yeah. That's basically what Facebook is saying.

That's my assumption. Our creator tools are. Yeah. So when a company that's bigger than that is offering creator tools, then the creators get that haircut. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, again, if you look at the math on mine and I applied to the super follows program, I don't know if I'm actually going to charge money, but if you guys want to pay me for, you know, my tweets on a monthly basis, if I convert 10% of my 100,000 or so followers, then I would end up making, which sounds like a great amount, like $37,000 a month, which is way more than I make now. However, it actually would start if you remove all the taxes around, $54,000. So if I am able to, you know, jump over to substack and they take 10%, I'd be doing way better than staying on Twitter and converting my followers there.

I'd be making $11,000 a month for Twitter to stay on the platform to put in perspective. Yeah. It's wild. I think that's where these startups have the advantage. And if you think about substack and medium and those are all web-based, like I don't, look, I don't have a substack app. They don't have to deal with any of the Apple fees, too. Yeah, I think it's a great point.

And by the way, I highly doubt that I would convert 10% of my followers into that. But you never know. And I bring it up only because in the Twitter app itself, they provide this little tool for estimating your potential earnings, and that's what it told me. So if you can imagine a bunch of people on, and this is another question that I have for you, which is really related to the substack subscription fatigue question that we

had going a couple months ago and then kind of died off. But if I'm able to convert 10% of my 100,000 followers on Twitter to paying me, you know, five bucks a month or whatever, how much cannibalization is going to happen from everybody else who is also trying to convert 10% of their followers into super followers? In other words, how many people are likely to superfollow more than one, two, or 10 different followers. Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. I mean, I think it just comes down to the community that the creator has built. And I mean, people on, I've spoken to creators who make basically most of their earnings from Patreon from reoccurring membership. So it's definitely possible,

but I think it depends on kind of the relationship between the fan and the creator. But yeah, I don't know how many people are going to be willing to, especially because we're so used to getting all this content for free. Totally. And actually, that's a good question, right? Like, if a bunch of people have their, you know, subscribers already on Patreon or on OnlyFans, what's the likelihood that they would switch over to Twitter, given that the economics actually aren't that good for them? Yeah. Well, I don't know.

I don't know that that's the question, though. It's like I said earlier, like the multi-skew thing, which, by the way, I think I stole it from Hunter Walk speaking up. You did. You did. Yeah, he mentioned that to me, too. Not that you stole it, but he mentioned that analogy. Right.

He's the OG multi-skewer. It doesn't matter. it only matters so much as what Kai was saying, which is creators have only so much time and so much energy. And, you know, Taylor has done a lot of work about the creator burnout and things like that. So it's not a question of you have to pick one horse. It's just a matter of like, you know, however many lily pads you want to, you know, plant your business on, I guess.

Yeah, should we open it up? I mean, if there's folks in the audience that want to talk about this, yeah, creators especially. Yeah. Yeah. And are considering these different platforms and which ones you're excited about and which ones you want to invest in. Obviously, we are on Twitter spaces, and so that may skew our interaction. But I know I've talked to many folks who are in the audience today and who are pretty active on, you know, clubhouse and green room and other spaces.

And so the degree or how those platforms treat and interact with their creators with the people who are holding these conversations, I think is really important and relevant to this conversation. Let's see. We've got Steve. I'm going to bring you up, Steve. I can say something quickly, if you like. And I've got Remy, we've got Morgan, we've got Randy. We'll just bear with Twitter spaces, which has not worked for me reliably today. Chris, you're not the only one. You can see Hosellina laughing as well. We've all been talking about The little bugs here and there.

Okay, cool. Well, you want to say just who you are and what would you like to contribute? Oh, yeah. My name is Bremi. Basically, just one of the many smaller creators in social audio. And just like a, I love social audio just because most of the other mediums just, I worked on being out and talking to people. That's how I worked in the world world before we went into a pandemic.

So it just made sense. Also, I do want to say, it's so nice to see you in this. space, Guy. I've been following your newsletter. It's just like the way you cover your story's phenomenal. I'm glad this conversation happened between you and Chris. Oh, thank you. Oh, and also thank you because, Remy, this conversation and getting Kai on here was thanks to you. You replied and got me into a conversation and that's how this happened. So thank you. Yeah, and I'm glad it worked out. I literally as soon as I remember you made the post about social audio, Kai, and I was like, it would be phenomenal to just see her do a space and like just, just,

hear her thoughts on social audio in social audio. So what questions, Remy, do you have for Kaya? I think my biggest one is, have you had an experience? What has your experience been like in social audio? Have you been using a lot? If you have, what has it felt like, Tie? Great question.

So I am very much a lurker in social audio. So, like, I've done, like, a handful of Twitter spaces. I have not spoken in a clubhouse room, but I very much lurk and just pop into things. I think for me, I do think Twitter has a big benefit of the built-in network. So I've been on Twitter, I think, since 2011. So when I see spaces pop up, I'm like, oh, I know this person or I follow this person. This seems really interesting. Whereas on Clubhouse, I am still a little bit lost of where to go and what's interesting

and I'm popping into random rooms. And, you know, I turned on, like, the maximum notifications you can get. And I was like, oh, no. Oh, that's dangerous. Total noob move. But so I do, like, pop into stuff. There's one, a clubhouse room that I love that's, I think it's called All Day Dreaming, and it's a creator named Tyler.

And it's just, like, these really soothing beats. And no one speaks in it. Yes, no one speaks in it. Everyone is just, like, listening. And it's so soothing. And I love popping into that one. I think Facebook will kind of have this benefit, too. But mostly, I mean, to me, a lot, like, the experience is very much the same on a lot of these platforms.

Like, the interface is all similar. The functionality is pretty similar. I think, like, where it will differentiate is the speakers or, like, if you're involved in a community. There's no diamonds here, so. Yeah. I know. Also, like, I find the chat in greenhouse, like, very distracting. It's very distracting.

Interesting. I find it very interesting how, I feel like Chris, we've gone into, and hosteling especially, we've gone into these little threads on the timeline about this. Like the very small differences in the UI and the little details in the room, how big of a difference. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You guys are like social audio pros.

For me, I very much come at it as like I'm just kind of like an average social media user. Like I don't spend. You know, Kyia, would be really great for you. Not to, like, you know, put you on the spot too much. But being a creator or setting up your own room, like one of things I haven't done yet that I need to do just, you know, for completeness, is to schedule a room on green room and set up recording and see how that is relative to here on Twitter where I'm juggling kind of DMs. I'm juggling my feed. I'm juggling like pinning tweets. Yeah.

Is this, you know. And it's not like you can open it on an iPad either here. It's like you have to have it open on your phone and you have to share to your space from your phone. Yeah. So I'm a bit of a, you know, tweet DJ right now and it's a little bit confusing. Whereas if I was on, you know, green room, maybe it'd be different. Clubhouse has, I think Clubhouse has done a really good job of trying to be an app that you can, you know, shut off your phone, basically, and put in your pocket and just kind of listen on your earbuds and walk around. and you don't really need to interact with the space too much.

Imagine your thing. That's from like the host perspective. Yes. That's what I'm saying. As a listener, yeah, as a listener to me, you know, obviously there's subtle differences. But for me, it's like what the one of. I kind of imagine you with a notebook like walking around in the back, you know, like listening. And I'm like, no, no, come up on stage here.

Like, take the mic. I know what? They tried to pull me on stage on the Spotify one and I was like, oh, no. I don't know what I'm just the year and I'm out of the room. I'm out. Right. Who else wants to jump in here? Me.

Who? Nathan. Oh, Nathan. Hey, what's up, Nathan? How much. I think I saw my buddy from college in here. I just want to give him a shout out. Carlos Aguilar.

Okay. Cool. Might have been here earlier. No, he's still here. Oh. Any other questions about social audio or anything, Nathan? Did you want to contribute? Yeah, so I've been heavily on Clubhouse.

Okay. And I've also recently tried the Green Room. Yep. I think the Green Room is a bit jarring. It's kind of hard to navigate. It feels a bit too dark inside. It is. Sort of like a dark club.

It's like you're in this abyss and trying to figure a way around it. I think the strongest competitor to clubhouses, Twitter spaces. I like the fact that you can have these emojis. Yep. And that adds some more emotion to the... Would you pay for a Twitter space, a ticketed space? Yeah. You would?

Sorry. A call is coming through. That'll kill any social audio app. So clearly the operating system needs to adopt that. Hey, you know, Chris, I was going to say not to jinx us or anything, but usually we have that right around the hour. Twitter spaces. It's like the Bermuda Triangle of Social Audio.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So far so good, but then I just jinks this. Well, I want to hear from Randy. Randy, you've obviously got an interesting perspective on this. You're building a business in the space. What's your take? It's kind of a half question, half statement. But I feel like each of these audio rooms is getting a very specific, not reputation, but more a target market.

Rooms or platforms? Sorry, platforms. So I feel like green room is turned into the social platform, especially with the rise of it being linked to Spotify and podcasting versus now Clubhouse. I see it's a lot more business focused. Facebook, I feel like it's going to be a lot more social than it. it would be business focused. And then Twitter spaces, I feel like it's been very tech focused as well in terms of the conversation. But I also have noticed that across all of these platforms, the rooms that I'm seeing most often,

and I don't know if it's because of the algorithm, but it's the same people over and over and over again. So the entire purpose of the creator economy is to allow for those almost unseen creators to come up and be visible in front of the world. but it seems like it's the same creators, you know, double-dipping everywhere to try and monetize as much as possible, right, which is taking away opportunity as well. So, Kai, what do you think of that perspective? And instead of these audio platforms being a push towards undiscovered creators, it's now more like a double-dipping strategy. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great point. I haven't seen, I haven't been tracking that as closely, but.

It's something I've definitely heard. And I think just for me, too, on my clubhouse, I'm like, maybe I need to follow more people, but then I don't know who to follow. So I wish that they did a better job of kind of highlighting different rooms and different creators because it's discovery, I think, is still a challenge across the board. But I would love to see them do that. I think that would be great. Because I have the same thing.

I have like the same rooms every day on Clubhouse. And I'm like, well, what else is going on? No, you're not the only one either. I every day I go on to Clubhouse and I go on to Clubhouse every day for a single room. Like I go on for the News News News Room in the morning and that is the that is when I sign on the Clubhouse and then I leave Clubhouse and then the rest of my day is usually has no Clubhouse in. I've been hearing that too where like the people that were spending like 40 hours a week on Clubhouse, even the hosts are like I just come in and do my thing or I just come in for this one room and that's it. Like it's not as much like spending hours and hours on it. And you hear a lot of the bigger or the people that have been on for a long time.

It's like, if I hold a public room, it's because I produced it. Everything else I'm doing is private. Every other room that I go on. And you'll see them in social rooms all of the time. And you'll rarely see them in a public room unless it's like a produced event. Huh. Interesting. Now, is that basically like turning into more of a, I don't know, like content scheduling,

like a TV network where you know, I mean, you know, Brian and I are now doing this every Wednesday, 6 p.m. PST, 9 p.m. EST. And we feel like one, that's, you know, good for him and I to just kind of talk about the week's news so far. But also building that regularity means that hopefully it becomes a little bit more like appointment, you know, listening. And, you know, maybe that works and people will show up for that. Are you seeing more of that happening, like, emergently on clubhouse and other platforms? I think yes, but I, and this is just a hypothesis. I feel like that's popping up mainly. as a bid for the creators to make it more sustainable. For the platform? What do you mean by that? No, for them to be able to make their rooms and then not feel burnt out because they're doing too much or they're expected to just open room every day.

Like I've had conversations with even people here on Twitter spaces. It's like, yeah, I can't just be popping into rooms all day anymore. Like it makes me feel burnt out when I like produce like a 12 hour long event. And then, you know, I just want to just chill. a little bit. And then in order to chill, especially on Twitter spaces where it's all public, sometimes people hop in and expect me to be on. I think are there private spaces on Twitter? Or no, not yet. Okay. They will have those. That's when ticketed spaces come about where you could do your shenanigans. I do think it is cool how they said you don't have to charge them. So you could have a zero dollar ticketed space and then... From what I understand, yes, that is possible. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't see the point of that, but... I actually very much do for a couple of reasons one you can hold the space it's like no I really only want the crew in here so yeah but that's you charge but you DM your friends to come in for free is different than a large space right yes but you can because you can set the limits of the number that's like it makes sense but I'm I'm hoping fingers crossed that there's like an ability for a pay what you want kind of thing interesting yeah Well, we have some people who work on Twitter spaces in the audience today. So hopefully she's listening.

When I started my space, I deliberately gave it a name that's easy to remember because it was monetized Monday, so people knew it was that. And I did that for a reason because the saturation, I didn't want to get lost in the shuffle. So I wanted to have something that's, I'm a marketer. So I do things that are easy to remember because that's the essence of. of marketing. First, introduce yourself, if you don't mind. And then second, tell us a little about the folks who are showing up, what they're showing up for. Are they hardcore social media people, or did someone tip them off that social audio is this,

you know, trending topic? And they should get in now because the getting's good. The oceanfront real estate is still super cheap. And you might as well, you know, playing your flag now. That's a good question. So that's me? Yeah. That's my question.

Okay. So first of all, my name is Hoseley-Mannet. I run a boutique agency, marketing agency, but I use Twitter spaces primarily to be an early adopter, I've always been relatively early adopter. So the monetized Monday space that I created three to five Eastern Standard every Monday was because I was looking at platforms like OnlyFans, where initially there were the smaller creators were getting the lion's share of the revenue. and then all these celebrities started to jump in and they started to take away the revenue. Going back to the question that you mentioned before, which is like, if everybody's charging,

who do you invest in or how many people could you invest in? So there's only so much money you have to contribute to a creator. Are you going to invest the $4 in a little known creator or the celebrity that you've seen on TV or in a rap video? So that's a thing. So I wanted to have the preemptive discussion. Because when I first enter a Twitter space, I've already monetized it because I had an offering. And then I had already gotten tips before the tip jar. So I wanted to have a discussion of like, I've already done this.

So why aren't other people doing this? Let's just talk about how to do it. And let's talk about preparing for the tip jar for inevitably it's showing up. So whether you have the tip jar or not, how do you become self-sufficient as a creator? So that would kind of like the whole logic. But one question I did have, or to address the tip jar or to address, the issue of on the phone. I've actually been on the phone and in the Twitter spaces and other apps. So they saw that. So I've been, I do a lot of testing. I've been in multiple spaces

simultaneously. So I do crazy things. So don't follow me. I just test stuff out. Anyway, so my question to Kaya is, what percentage of the creator economy are creator supporting other creators? Do you know this information? Oh, this is fascinating. So my biggest struggle with this beat is the lack of data because this industry is so fragmented that it's really hard to get the data. Like, I would love to know that. I mean, I have no idea. I would imagine it's quite, I mean, I would imagine it's somewhat. Are the platforms not forthcoming or like if you ask them or how, what does that look like? I don't know. I mean, I'm sure the platforms have the data. Kaya, you're the information. You need to know.

There's no comm score for this yet. There's no Nielsen. True. Yeah, but that's the point. There really isn't. So that's why I need to plug my database that's coming out next week. Oh, what is this? So I looked at U.S.-based creator economy startups that have raised funding this year. And I'm building a database of creator economy startups because there's no one else that did it. So I was like, all right, I'm going to do it.

Yes. I need that eyeball emoji just because as soon as you said that I was like, ooh. Because one of the interesting things, because I go to so many of these social audio apps and things of that nature, one of the nice things that I notice about HABS, which is a video streaming platform, is that they reward the frequent user of the app with creator coins that have no value intrinsically for themselves, but are specifically designed to give to other creators in the platform. So every day you jump in, they give you more coins to give away. So I thought that was a very... Kind of like gems. Exactly.

And Loon did something like that too, right, Hostelene? Well, Reddit has it with coins also. Yeah. So the interesting things is gems have no intrinsic value. But in HAPS, they're converted into value once you give it to someone else. I'm sorry, how do you spell that? Say that again? How do you spell that?

It's H-A-P-S-T-V. Great. So they're kind of like Chuckie Cheese tickets. Yep. Yep. So what's nice about that is what I do is I'll host my Twitter space. Then I'll also stream it live on HAPS, which goes to HAPS TV. It goes to Twitter, Periscope, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and also Twitch, which you can monetize,

but that might violate the TOS for that. And they have an output for other services. So as I'm having a space about monetize. spaces, I'm monetizing my space to show people how to monetize your space. I, first of all, yeah, go ahead, go ahead and then I got one question that we should wrap, but go ahead. App specifically is unique in that it is very like a lot of tools we used to see for Twitter. Original desktop tweet deck where you could tweet, you could post to like to like

like 15 different social accounts. The original generation of API when it was just unlimited, right? When it was easy to spam everything. Yeah, it's what's bizarre to me, and something I would ask of the whole social audio thing

in general, I keep seeing duplicates of this of these apps that knock off social apps that have exactly the same function. That's the The thing that boggles my mind is choosing out of all the types of applications to shoot your shot for and like, you know, try to make your take of an app, like a type of app. Any sort of like streaming, like where this heavy, like media data is being streamed.

And I just like choosing to do that and take that infrastructure challenge, I do not understand. Like I don't see any reason for like the not throw away, but like the continuous flood of social audio apps that I get in my email inbox. You're saying that there's just like a lot of clones that are being produced and it's like, why are they doing social audio? Well, not just in this space, but like, even HAPS, okay? Like, HAPS is a relatively faceless tool in terms of I've seen basically zero tech coverage of it in talking to its creators. But it's as powerful as Restream or more right now. I just, I don't understand how that happens.

Because like the infrastructure behind it is, I believe it's definitely temporary, by the way, anyone who's really into apps, that's sort of cross-platform magic where you get to stream to a billion different video apps or a billion different video services. I mean, I guess like, yeah. So on the one hand, it feels like this is an arbitrage opportunity and it feels like people do just, you know, multiplex in order to figure. you're at how to monetize content and there's ads inserted. So it just feels like it's supplemented in that way.

By the way, I went to haps.tv, and ironically, there is another conversation happening right now called social drop-in audio wars, clubhouse, Twitter spaces, Facebook audio, speed off a green room. So we've already been commoditized. This conversation is already taken. It's done. I wanted to actually bring this to a close. Brian had one more question for Kai.

She's been so generous with her time. We invited her on and she's taking the barrage of our question. questions, and so I really appreciate that. Brian, what do you got? Just two closers, and they're from things that were earlier, so this is kind of tying things at a bow. But there's a longstanding sense or sci-fi trope where sometime in the future, the only economy will be, we'll all have shows, and we all pay to watch each other's shows and

things. So when we're talking about this, like, is that dystopic? Or is that future.com? Well, but see, that's the thing, is that that's unclear. But it does seem to be coming at us rapidly like a freight train. But one thing, we should end on this, is a lot of us in here, as we've been saying, our early adopters, our hustlers, our people that are, you know, attempting to monetize this sort of thing.

When you're looking at the audio space writ large, there has to be a weird, like there's the weird internet and weird Twitter and things like that. And we know this because there's those clubhouse rooms that have like the, um, the, the whale songs and things like that. So like, well, and the, is, is this medium creating, you never bought the moon CD?

No, is this medium doing things that maybe, even though we're, we all think we're on top of everything, like is it evolving? in ways that maybe we're not paying attention to and it is doing its own thing and it's going to find its own level? No. I think that the internet has always been weird and there's always going to be cool and weird corners. Like on Discord there's a server to send each other all day and like it's actually soothing or just like threads. I think like that will always do this on everything. I think like that will always on every

movies be kind of like weird and like fun courses and like fun courses but I think live audience and that will ultimately where like these are strong

the speakers of Kai you seem to be breaking up a decent amount it's a sign it's a sign it's clearly a sign we've we've we've run our luck but Kaiya listen thank you so much

thank you to all all of the speakers, all of the listeners, but Kaya, especially, who has sat through an hour and a half of this, but given us such great insights. Thank you so much. And please plug anything you want, the information. Right. Actually, where are people going to be able to find that database? Go ahead. Plug your newsletter. Can you guys hear me now? Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Yes. Yeah, so you can find it on the information.com. You have to be a subscribe for it to get access to the database, but you can sign up for my newsletter for free, and the link is in my Twitter buyer. Perfect. I believe it's theinformation.com slash creator dash economy. Is that right?

Yes. Okay. So for those of you listening by your ears. I do recommend her newsletter. It's absolutely fantastic. Awesome. Thank you so much. Perfect. All right, guys. Well, this was another instance of the tech meme ride home experience. Today we talked about the future and we talked about social audio. I want to thank our guests. I want to thank Brian. And for everyone else who participated today, this is going to be put out on Spacecast tomorrow. you can check us out at pod.link slash spacecast. I think it might be Campbellcase. Anyways, thanks, everybody.

We'll talk to you next week. Thanks, everyone. Night. Peace, y'all.