Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 01/26 – Twitter Acquires Revue

Episode Date: January 26, 2021

Twitter acquires a Substack competitor. It’s also iterating product in terms of… check’s notes: content moderation? The black hats are targeting the white hats in infosec. Interesting executive shuffle at Apple. A $2500 smartphone from Sony that really might be a “pro” device. And would you let me put a 5G gear box in your front lawn? You might not have a choice. Sponsors: NewYorker.com/techmeme promocode: techmeme Jamf.it/techmeme Links: Twitter acquiring newsletter publishing company Revue (Axios) Twitter launches 'Birdwatch,' a forum to combat misinformation (NBC News) Google warns of ‘novel social engineering method’ used to hack security researchers (The Verge) Dan Riccio Transitioning to New Project, John Ternus to Lead Apple's Hardware Engineering Team (MacRumors) Sony’s creator-focused Xperia Pro arrives in the US priced at $2,499 (The Verge) Americans spend average of $47 a month on streaming services (The Desk) 5G boxes are coming to people’s homes, whether they want them or not (The Verge) 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 the Tech Meme Right Home for Tuesday, January 26, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today. Twitter acquires a substack competitor.

It's also iterating product in terms of checks, notes, content moderation. The black hats are targeting the white hats in Infosec, interesting executive shuffle at Apple, a $2,500 smartphone from Sony that might really be a pro device. And would you let me put a 5G gearbox? in your front lawn. You might not have a choice. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Twitter has acquired the newsletter publishing company Review, a five-year-old Dutch company with just six employees. The total amount of money that review has raised to date was around $300,000, quoting Axios. The deal marks Twitter's first step into building out long-form content

experiences on Twitter and its first foray into subscription revenue. While deal terms weren't disclosed, Twitter presumably didn't break the bank to acquire review. Review offers free and paid newsletter options. The free version lets writers send newsletters to up to 50 people. The paid version lets them email up to 40,000 people. Review takes a 6% cut of paid newsletter revenues as a part of its transaction fee. Twitter says it will be lowering that cut to 5%. Twitter says it welcomes all. creators to join the platform, including experts, curators, journalists, publishers, and more. It plans to create new features that will make it easier for writers to connect with their audiences, including allowing people to sign up for newsletters from people they follow on Twitter,

and adding new settings for writers to host conversations with their subscribers on Twitter. Review will remain an independent brand within Twitter, and Twitter will continue to invest in review as a standalone service, the company said. Twitter says it hopes to expand the review team. Over time, that team will be responsible for building out more, quote, discovery, reading, and conversational experiences centered around long-form content on Twitter, the company said. Moving forward, Twitter will quote, supercharge reviews offering by helping writers grow their paid subscriber lists, end quote. Okay, Brian, big deal. Is this a big deal even? A tiny newsletter company getting bought? Isn't Substack the newsletter company that we've been

talking about recently? Yes, but that's exactly why. This is so interesting. In interviews, the Substack founders have said they had a simple metric for deciding which people to reach out to to maybe start Substack newsletters. Their Twitter followers, because someone with a lot of followers and a lot of engagement on Twitter, the Substack people found, were the perfect news. newsletter candidates. So Twitter knows it's the source and now has the tools to, as that quote says, expand those conversation experiences into long-form content. On top of this, rumors were abounding last week that Twitter itself had been kicking the tires about acquiring substack itself. With review, Twitter probably paid at most in the seven-figure range, which would be less than the

eight to even nine figures that substack might have been able to command. Now, reportedly, just in terms of traffic, substack is like 10 times or more bigger than review is. But remember, review only takes a 5% cut compared to substack's 10% cut, and they basically do exactly the same thing. But if Twitter follows through on helping Twitter users supercharge their audiences, i.e. turning on the algorithmic fire hose, I know which service I'd strongly consider going with. Here's Morning Brew founder Austin Reef on Twitter, quote, Twitter is a major source of user acquisition for newsletters. Journows, in particular, have large followings.

What could be most interesting, Twitter suppresses reach when you link to an external site. What if they expanded reach if you link to a review? It would help curators on review grow faster, end quote. As Alex Willem tweeted, quote, it's pretty fun to be a writer in a climate where so many companies slash startups are working to build writer-friendly tools, end quote. But also I point this out. How interesting is this that Twitter, the company notorious for basically not evolving

its product much at all over the years, has suddenly been pushed by competitors to get into spaces it alone is probably uniquely qualified to play in? Because, I mean, would have been the big creator slash social media startup, of the past year, substack and clubhouse. And Twitter is in the midst of building competitors to both because they are conversation plays. And conversation is what Twitter thinks it's good at. Now, if tomorrow Twitter were to come out with an only fan's competitor, then we'd have to give them the hot in 2020 trifecta, right? Speaking of product, innovation slash evolution at Twitter. Twitter has also debuted Birdwatch, which it has been testing since last year.

Birdwatch is a tool to let select users flag and add notes about tweets that they think are misleading or false. Jeepas. Twitter now innovating in the arena of content moderation? What is the world coming to? Quoting NBC News. The new system allows users to discuss and provide context to tweets they believe are misleading or false. The problem. The project titled Birdwatch is a standalone section of Twitter that will at first only be available to a small set of users largely on a first-come-first-served basis. Priority will not be provided to high-profile people or traditional fact-checkers, but users will have to use an account tied to a real phone number and email address. While Birdwatch will initially be cordoned off

to a separate section of Twitter, the company said, quote, eventually we aim to make notes visible directly on tweets for the global Twitter audience where there is consensus from a broad and diverse set of contributors, end quote. Demos of the product viewed by NBC News showed a separate area in which tweets are discussed and rated in a format that combines elements of both Reddits and Wikipedia's moderation tools. Birdwatch users are able to flag tweets from a drop-down menu directly within Twitter's main interface, but discussion about a tweets, Veracity will remain exclusively in the Birdwatch section. Twitter says it does anticipate some users linking directly to Birdwatch discussions underneath high profile and controversial tweets, just as some users would

link out to fact-checking sites, end quote. As our friend Chris Messina tweeted, fascinated by how fast social platforms are adopting a jury by peer model of adjudication to fight the reach of miss and disinformation. This trend seems to be taking over faster than stories proliferated, end quote. Chris, if you have more to say about this, email me a soundbite and maybe I'll play it tomorrow. I guess this isn't that much of a surprise after our COVID year, but tangible proof today that streaming is still a growth industry. According to a study released by J.D. Power, the average American household spent $47 a month on streaming services in 2020 up from just $34

a month back in 2019. But also, note that the field is getting crowds. quoted, quote, Netflix is still the top streaming TV service of choice. The $14 a month streamer was used by 81% of surveyed households by the end of 2020, according to J.D. Power's survey. But that was down from 85% just seven months earlier when 85% of households said they subscribe to Netflix, the survey revealed. Amazon Prime saw a similar decrease from 66% of homes subscribing to the service in April to 65% in December. The likely reason for the declines at Netflix and Amazon Prime are people experimenting with other streaming services. Hulu saw a large increase from 48% of households subscribed in April to 56% by the end of the year. YouTube TV,

Disney Plus, HBO Max, Apple TV, Comcasts, Peacock, Stars, ESPN Plus, Sling TV, and AT&T TV, all posted gains as well. CBS All Access, and the streaming-only version of Showtime, remained flat with 10% and 9% of household adoption, respectively, end quote. This is a funny one, although not funny ha-ha, but it does seem like this is as if criminals decided to do a reverse operation on the cops that were surveilling them. The Google Threat Analysis Group has raised the bat signal about a campaign by suspected North Korean hackers to specifically target infosec researchers using fake profiles, blogs, backdoor software, the works, quoting the verge.

According to Google, the hackers set up a cybersecurity blog and series of Twitter accounts in an apparent attempt to build and amplify credibility while interacting with potential targets. The blog focused on writing up vulnerabilities that were already public. Meanwhile, the Twitter accounts posted links to the blog, as well as other alleged exploits. At least one of the purported exploits was faked, according to Google. The search giant cites several cases of researchers' machines, having been infected simply by visiting the hackers' blog, even when running the latest version of Windows 10 and Chrome. The social engineering method outlined by Google involved contacting security researchers and asking them to collaborate on their work.

However, once they agreed, the hackers would send over a visual studio project containing malware, which would infect the targets computer and start contacting the attacker's server. According to Google, the attackers used a range of different platforms, including Telegram, LinkedIn, and Discord to communicate with potential targets. Google listed specific hacker accounts in its blog post. It says anyone who's interacted with these accounts should scan their systems for any indication they've been compromised and move their research activities to a separate computer from their other day-to-day usage, end quote. When you stop and remember that the big hack of December began with a fire eye hack and evolved into a solar winds hack, wouldn't it be ironic if the biggest threat vector at the moment in security

was infosec researchers themselves? Interesting executive reshuffling Tuesday. Apple has announced that John Ternus will now lead its hardware engineering team as a member of the executive team. This means that Dan Richieo is moving to a role focused on what Apple would only refer to as a new project. Insert eyebrows raised emoji here, quoting Mac rumors. There is no word on what project Rishio will be working on, but Apple has an Apple car and various augmented reality and virtual reality devices in the works. The Apple Car project was recently taken over by Apple AI chief John G.N. Andrea, so Rishio's role is a mystery. Going forward, Rishio will be a vice president of engineering, which seems to be a title downgrade, so it's possible that he's

aiming to take a step back from Apple. Rishio has been with Apple since 1998 when he joined the product design team. Rishio became vice president of iPad. had hardware engineering in 2010, and in 2012 took over the hardware engineering team. Apple says that ratio will, quote, continue to play an instrumental role in shaping the future of Apple products, end quote. As Matthew Panzerino tweeted, think something that requires serious cross-departmental hardware shops from chips to ID might be involved? Yeah, what could that be?

Though maybe Stephen Hackett nailed it when he tweeted, quote, laser writers are coming back, end quote. Sony has a new flagship smartphone called the Experia Pro. It's the first Sony phone to support 5G in the U.S., but it's also priced at $2,500. So that's basically a non-starter, right? Well, maybe not, because maybe the Experia Pro is not for you. In fact, maybe the Experia Pro is the first smartphone that truly deserves the Soberkett Pro, quoting The Verge.

Sony is targeting the device at professional users, who it hopes will use its HDMI input to turn the phone into an external camera monitor and its 5G connectivity to quickly upload or live stream footage. Let's start with the HDMI input, which is located on the bottom of the phone. The Experia Pro's USBC port is still on the bottom of the device, but it's shifted to the left. Sony says it's capable of taking up to 40K 60 frame per second HDR video streams and should work with any cameras that have an HDMI output. In practice, what this means is that you can connect the Experia Pro to a camera's HDMI output, for example, and use its bigger screen to get a clearer view of whatever's being filmed or photographed. You can pinch to zoom into the image displayed on the screen or overlay grid lines to help with framing.

Where this functionality gets especially interesting is with the Experia Pro's 5G connectivity, which enables it to act as a live streaming link for your camera in addition to being an external monitor. The Experia Pro can stream footage from its HDMI input to YouTube directly, and it supports StreamLabs and StreamYard for streaming to other platforms like Twitch and Facebook Live. The phone supports both sub-6 gigahertz and millimeter wave 5G, and Sony claims that it has a unique four-way millimeter wave antenna array to maximize reception. There's also a built-in network visualizer app that can be assigned to its shortcut key to help you find the best position to get a signal. Hopefully Sony's software and hardware are enough to mitigate millimeter waves problems with limited coverage.

Ever since it started teasing the Experia Pro early last year, Sony has emphasized that it's a device for professional users, and its $2,499.99 price tag makes this more obvious than ever. When I asked Sony why it hasn't released a 5G device aimed at consumers in the U.S., it told me it's waiting for the technology to be more broadly implemented by carriers. Until then, Sony says it's focusing on professional users who it thinks can get more use out of it, end quote. Finally today, what if I said to you that in order to get 5G rolled out in your neighborhood, you had to give over a portion of your lawn to a freezer-sized box. That's a bit of an eyesore and might even be big enough to block the view out your window.

You'd probably decline my offer, right? Well, what if I told you you might not have a choice? Quoting the Verge. That's the exact experience some Houston residents have been having. Verizon has been installing the boxes as part of its 5G network rollout since at least 2019, and from the reporting done by the Houston Chronicle, it seems as if it's been anything but smooth. The boxes are known as ground fixtures,

and they supply power and data to 5G antennas that are placed on utility poles nearby. The ones gracing people's front window views are being set up to build out Verizon's 5G home internet service. It's well known at this point that while millimeter wave tech is blazing fast, it also has terrible range. The solution to that is to blanket in an area with antennas and the equipment for that has to go somewhere.

The first speed bump is that Verizon is under no obligation to get permission from homeowners before installing the boxes. In fact, it's not even required to notify them that it's going to happen. This is because, technically, the boxes and the utility poles that go along with them are installed on the right-of-way, which is land owned by the county. It's not just Houston that's having to deal with the surprise boxes, and it's not just Verizon putting them down. This drama has been playing out for years as telecoms are trained.

trying to expand their networks and prepare for 5G transitions. And while it may be startling, there are other complaints homeowners have as well. A common one is that the cellular equipment brings their property values down, which can lead to some extreme emotional reactions. While the strife is currently limited to certain areas, it's perhaps a sign of things to come. As 5G continues its rollout, we can probably expect to see many more stories like this

where the desires of homeowners push up against the desires of telecoms and the community at large, end quote. And you thought NIMBY's were just for keeping real estate prices in San Francisco artificially high. Yeah, I made a classic mistake yesterday. I pre-announced an announcement before all the beta testing for the products underlying the big announcement was fully done. So I will be making that promised big podcast announcement tomorrow in order to give us one more day. to work out a few more unexpected kinks. I know. Vaporware, right? Sorry, but big news is coming soon, hopefully tomorrow. Talk to you then.