Tech Brew Ride Home - (TWTR SPC) Tipping As The Currency For The Creator Economy

Episode Date: May 15, 2021

From Friday, May 14, 2021. A long discussion about tipping as the base unit (???) of the creator economy? Featuring @gregarious as well as @NigelKofi (check out Ko-fi at https://ko-fi.com/) and @reeshahoward. Sponsor: Porkbun.com/tld/design  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. Starting my new recording. Okay, great. All right. I think we can get going here. Cool. Awesome. Well, welcome everybody to another exciting episode of the TechMeme Ride Home Experience for, in this case, Friday, May 14th, 2021. Today we have some special guests. We've got Greg and we've got Nigel. This conversation kind of, I guess, oh, and I guess I'll introduce myself and Brian, too. So I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I I am Chris McSena, a man of the Twitterverse and product designer, et cetera. And of course, Brian is my co-host who actually does the daily TechMeme Ride Home show.

Today's conversation stems out of a lot of what we've been talking about around the creator economy, I suppose the passion economy, and how money is starting to be introduced into this space. And in particular, I believe it was last week we started the show really talking about some high-level launches and a recent acquisition by Twitter of a company called Scroll and how this fits into a larger shift in the industry, or at least I believe it is a larger shift, towards more direct relationships between the, I guess, the people who consume content and the people who produce it, as opposed to being intermediated by advertisers who are sort of going along for the

ride like barnacles on content and taking advantage of that, that attention resource. So I tweeted something out about this in relationship to a Axios piece. And so Axios, I'll have to find that tweet and pin it, basically sort of did a little bit of a chart looking at a number of the different platform features that people have put out there. And then Greg came along and kind of touched it up and then did a nice little thread that went deeper into the space and asked some questions about tipping, which then started a conversation. And so given that, we wanted to actually open this conversation up to a Twitter space and to go a little bit deeper into where we think this might go and what this might do to social media, monetization, et cetera. So how is it to start?

Good for me. I'm going to let you guys take it right now from here, and then I'll pop in. Great. Greg, do you want to just kind of jump in and kind of maybe summarize a bit about what you were seeing and what you kind of put together in that chart? And while you're doing that, I will go find that chart and I will pin it. Sure, absolutely. Hi, everyone. Yeah, I'm Greg. I've been in, you know, sort of a creator, influencer space for some time now. And I took a deep dive just sort of on one column, I think, out of what we started to look at, just to see that tipping was, I saw tipping was sort of the most pervasive feature, across sort of the universe of creator modernization things. What I tried to look at, and try to show is really that, you know, tipping is not all tipping is created equally, I guess. And there's a few factors, one, two, three, four. I guess like five kind of, you know, approaches or layers that I wanted to look at here. Most important to me was just really the fee and really examining, like, who's charging what or who's taking what.

And I think the broader trend or the newer trend, if you look at the sort of more recent entrance into this space, is actually that tipping is functioning as sort of a pass-through now, where they're not participating necessarily, or it's very low transactional fees. So, for example, at Clubhouse is doing a 0% fee, but they, you know, they're used stripes, so you only pay the processing fees, basically, right? Can I interrupt real quick?

Please. You're jumping way ahead of what I want to talk about. So you're talking about already this is happening, but can we go back for a second and poke at why this is happening? Because again, some of us are so old that we remember when no one would pay for anything on the internet, much less you would pay for content on the internet. My understanding of it has been that this has sort of been a thing that has been cultureated over the last decade or so, mainly from things like,

you know, gamers on Twitch and things like that, and the tipping of people is, basically what I'm asking is, why is tipping suddenly working and where did it come from and how did we get to here now before we even get into where it's going in the future? Sure. I'd actually defer to Nigel as someone who's built a tippy platform and might have the best insights into sort of the earlier parts of the trend. Yeah, also let me introduce Nigel because I think this is a very interesting. kind of segue. So Nigel has built a platform called, I guess, coffee. Coffey, another way to say it, I suppose,

K-O-F-I.com. And through his platform, which is a very, I would say, subtle is not the right word, but it's understated. It's very understated service. It's been like kind of like in the background for quite some time. And it's actually been the platform that I have used for several years to collect tips, roughly related to all the product hunts that I do. It's sort of like, I was just like, okay, maybe there's a way for me to make a little bit of money off of that, not as, not pay for play, but just to receive some sort of positive, you know, affirmation, I suppose. And it's turned out to be, you know, a couple thousand bucks, like over several years. It's not paying my rent, but it's, it's been nice to have that relative to what I've seen elsewhere. So there is kind of a

direct, I guess, I don't know, dawning of, oh, this is happening, that has happened to me as well, not because I seriously pursued it or even thought that I'd really make any money off of it, but that these platforms became available and made it possible for people to actually do and engage in peer-to-peer tipping. And so that's actually how I got to know Nigel. And so I just wanted to have that context as he introduces himself and his service and kind of like what he's learned about all this. Yeah, thanks a lot for that, Chris. Yeah, if I might go back to the founding story, if I may,

might give a bit more context. Brian, you said, like, over the last decade, Tipping seems to have been growing from somewhere, which is quite interesting because it's almost exactly 10 years ago since I started the website. Around that time, I was a freelance software developer, and I was, like, struggling on one specific problem. We were working on a project along with my friend.

and we came across something on Stack Overfall, and it literally saved us weeks and weeks of work, and we just copy past it from Stack Overforce, pasted it into the codebase, and wow, we just saved a ton of time. The only thing we could do was click, like, or I guess it's upvote on Stack Overflow, and it just felt so impersonal and not very human

and not really a nice enough way of appreciating this person. so I was talking to my friend and we decided over the weekend I would build something that we could kind of what would be the ideal thing to do there like what we would often do ourselves is we'd buy each other a beer or by each other a cup of coffee or something like that so we decided to knock this prototype together that he that this this person online could theoretically use and that's what we did and that's how coffee started I guess the metaphor was around coffees at that time. So if I like doing, I can buy you a coffee. I got to say, again, not to be old man here, but there's a long history of that going back to share where in the 70s and 80s

where literally you're like, you know, I'm putting the software out for free, but if you want to buy me literally a cup of coffee, that's what people used to say. And people used to send people checks. paper checks in the mail. But it was still that idea of just buy me a cup of coffee. It's not that big. Also, we had this in the shareware days, too, like a long, long time ago. So there have been, you know, P-to-P type payments.

It's just this is on a different scale. But maybe the functional part, though, I think, is also it's gotten easier to send money, right? And we'd normalize very micro and small payments since app stores have been around and things like that. Nigel can speak to that, right? Because I think, like, there's also a question of, like, is this, I don't want to say, like charity, but like where does this fit into the overall scheme of monetization of income, you know, taxability, like, and the coffee platform itself actually doesn't take any fees. So, and yet, I don't know if, I don't know if Nigel will share any of the numbers or

sort of rough estimates of what he's seeing on the platform, but what I've learned is that it's quite significant. Sure. Just back to Brian's point there. Yeah, people were already doing this kind of thing with PayPal buttons like directs. to PayPal. But it felt very transactional still. It didn't feel very, very nice. So what we added was a few extra features where you could leave a message and we kind of wrapped that up to start with. That's how it kind of started there. So yeah, there were these kind of very transactional

feelings. You say like write a check or something. That didn't feel like the kind of thing I would have wanted it to do for this person online, send him a check in post for $3 or something. but yes sorry Chris what was your um you well i guess one of the things that i think would be just really helpful would be your perspective on what has changed in the last 10 years like what does the momentum look like and given where you started from uh with again very humble origin to sort of like you know pass over you know you want to buy me a coffee you want to buy me a beer that kind of thing to kind of like what you've seen in your own business up until now yeah yeah i think there's been a a huge shift in attitude towards sending small payments as well.

And actually just sending someone money online, I think, I remember when I first started and the first few comments on Twitter and things like that, people used to reply to users of the site saying, oh, why are you begging for money or something like that? Right in very early days, and I very, very rarely see that now. I can't even remember the last time I saw something like that. So attitudes are definitely changing. I think like you said, with my prop payments as well and, you know,

people send me $3 here. Do you sense that it's generational? Is it attitudes? Is it availability? Because I totally remember when, you know, like, again, I feel like I'm of that transitional generation where I thought that by setting up this kind of tip me, you know, a button or whatever, it would seem, if not a little desperate, kind of like, you know, we just kind of were building the web together.

So we're all contributing. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And then I guess what I saw happening was there was like this rise in the influencer class that was especially on media platforms where they expected to make money and they were making a lot of money. And I think Instagram, at least in my perspective, changed all of it.

Suddenly you had people over there charging $5,000, you know, for a photo that they were posting. Whereas like those of us who had sort of grown up on the open web were like, wait, what? Like that's you're totally being corrupted or, you know, old man, get off my lawn kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, I do think it is a large amount of our user base. It's definitely millennial and younger. And it just seems to be that it's almost become normal now. I've got something to offer. You like my work.

Send me a tip if you appreciate it. I think it's almost to the point where we started with this metaphor of buying a coffee because we were kind of like... Because it takes off the sort of commercial. aspect, right? It's sort of like, what are you going to do on the digital space? Whereas, like, before you could literally, like, you know, take someone out, buy them a coffee, buy them a beer. Like, hey, I like your work or like your contributions or thanks for doing this for me or something. Whereas, you know, if you're never going to meet this person, then how do you engage in this type of

appreciation without also cheapening what they did in the first place? Sure, sure. We don't want to say, oh, we think that the thing you've put out there is worth $3. dollars. It doesn't make sense. So we kind of like use this metaphor to kind of almost soften that and make it more personal at the same time, make it more human at the same time. Forgive me, it's almost British. It's almost like, we're embarrassed to put a price on it. We're embarrassed to say that we put it, I want you to value what I'm doing. So let's use this ridiculous metaphor of the coffee things that, oh, it's just, it's nothing, it's a tip of the hat, you know. Yeah, I would agree with that. And we have a funny relationship with tipping. I think in general,

we find tipping quite awkward. But, yeah. Yeah. So what I was going to say is what we're seeing is kind of we don't actually need to be that apologetic over it, especially in the last couple of years. We've kind of come away a little bit from that concept. And, you know, tipping on. line is just a thing now. Well, and actually, Gregorius or Greg, I don't remember what Chris said at the beginning. He said Greg. Greg. Greg. Great. Great. Awesome. Great. So essentially, I'm looking at your tweet thread right now.

And the beginning of it is that essentially, is this right that social tipping is the most prevalent capability in terms of what people are offering on these social media platforms? does that also carry over to that's the most common way that people are monetizing? What do you know about the data? I guess do you mean by dollar amount? Well, so Axios reported the convergence of creator monetization showing that social tipping

is the most prevalent capability so that I'm looking at tipping and Snapchat doesn't have it, substack doesn't have it yet, LinkedIn, Pinterest, but everybody else has it, right? So this is the most prevalent way that right now, these platforms, if everybody is in the game of we want creators to make money, maybe this is just the easiest, lowest friction, lowest fruit, the low hanging fruit way to do that. Do we know if this is the most successful way that creators are getting paid right now? Probably not. And it's sort of anecdotal, I guess, because the subscriptions tend to be at a much higher,

earn rate, right? So I think like you look at Twitch last year, they captured $2 billion in subscription revenue for their fans, but they keep 50%. Right. So, you know, that's still a billion dollars that was collected through Twitch. Now, the equivalent for Twitch is going to be like sending bits, right? And you're sending hundreds or thousands of bits at a time. And there's basically like a 40% fee on the bits. So it's almost a similar take rate. I didn't see any specific data on how many dollars were exchanged from bits, but I believe subscriptions is like 80% of Twitch's revenue, for example. That makes sense.

Yeah, OnlyFans, for example, also, which is another standout leader. I've seen different reports here, but I've seen $2 billion or $2.7 billion captured last year. Now, that's a much bigger mix because there's a lot of bespoke content, and there's also subscriptions. But tipping is also built into that universe, but my guess is it's still not the predominant thing. The thing I will say, though, for creators is

tipping is great because you don't ask, right? And if you talk to most creators, they're usually highly hesitant to ask for money at all, right? You got to beat them over the head to sort of make them get to the point, you know, and now the smart ones that realize that you're doing this and they cost it, it's a business, they're building it, they need to grow it. You know, as I point out sort of in the thread, should ultimately look at tipping as like as a heat map for the most engaged fans

to potentially look at that as a least, to resigning to subscription revenue, which is more like reliable, it's recurring, it tends to be for a larger dollar amount, right? So that would be sort of like how I see it in general. So let me jump in here real quick. So you guys can take a look at the pin tweets to sort of see the thread that we're talking about because I want to go into some of the things that Greg actually talked about in that thread. I also just want to let folks know we will be opening it up to more folks to join the conversation probably in about 10 or 15 minutes. I'd like to just kind of like get this group to touch on some of the high-level stuff, and then we can go a little bit deeper.

So just studying that. So one of the things that you just brought up, and I guess I would maybe point out a couple things, one that thing is interesting is that these other platforms that, let's say, haven't had a huge advertiser base, have moved towards subscription and direct monetization, perhaps as a necessity or because that's where their market, you know, happened to be, right? In other words, they needed a way to monetize and fans were willing to, you know, subscribe for direct access because they weren't going to be able to build an advertising business to compete with Facebook or Google.

So it was sort of necessary. The thing that I'm curious about, and this is something Greg I asked you about, and also this is something that I think came up in our last Twitter space, was about the behavioral change that may result from this. And of course, it's a big unknown, but there are several platforms that do work off of direct monetization or tips. There are, for example, bug bounty programs and things along those lines where you know, there's, I guess, sort of, you know, it's not necessarily a tip jar that sort of put out there,

and then money is gathered into a set of outcomes, or you could even call them kind of like dumb smart contracts. But I guess what I'm curious about, especially in the context of Twitter and a social media platform like this, is whether or not people will start to change their behavior as a result of these incentives being introduced. And whether, as you said, Greg, like, people will start to think, you know, at the end of a broadcast or the end of a space or whatever it might be, that they start to ask for or expect a kind of, you know, monetary reward. I think we're in the early innings where it still feels really uncomfortable to do that. But I guess, you know, given your analysis and looking into this, you know, what do you see in terms of some of the behavioral

norms and conversational norms about tipping as a behavior? Yeah, absolutely. And we touched on this a little bit in the thread, Chris. But I think so there seems to be a few modalities, like where the tipping is sort of or pattern, design patterns. I guess, right, in play. Some people never mention it whatsoever, right? Now, I think that may change if they real, and again, it's just sort of a size factor here, right? Like, because, you know, if you have 10,000 live viewers and, by the way, half the platforms only support tipping when you're live, right?

So you have to be live. But I think, like, we have seen people. There are, like, for example, like in Twitch, you can spend points or bits as a way to vote or to drive action. So sometimes you might push a poll out and then you use points or they do like prediction polls where you can bet kind of currency almost inside that environment. So I do think like there's going to be some aspect of, you know, even super chats, for example, it's kind of a pointer to this behavior that I think that you're anticipating. Like where a super chat helps move your message to higher visibility. Right.

And one of the questions you did ask was like, does this manifest in the platform side, right? And I do think so because what happens as in all things is, platforms observe, you know, how much I'd say the hashtag, what the users do, right? And then they adopt them, right? And so I believe, like, some of this behavior that we do see, I've seen live polls, like on screen where people look at things. Maybe you'll have bonus points or double counts, you know, on things that come from people who've tipped, you know, right. You look at stream labs, which can monitor and watch the live chat feed and also see, like, this behavior and potentially, like, reward it. I think it's inevitable that it will have more of a role. However, I personally, I

personally don't feel like people become performative per se, right? Like I think, like, I think, like, crowd-based performance versus like individualized performance. Like, I'm listening to one person only in sort of that room. So I think it's more of a zeitgeist sort of capability than it would be like an individuated one. You know, I guess like the other thing that when I start to think about long-term, there are some interesting dynamics that can also emerge. So for example, I don't have the tipping feature yet on Twitter, but eventually, you know, let's say everyone, it rolls out to everyone, you could imagine that your top fans actually get top billing in your your follower list as being the top tippers. And you can start to then see kind of the relationships emerging for those who choose to, let's say, promote those relationships in a very interesting way.

And I guess I say this because of the other area that I've experienced some monetization. And I don't want to go down this path too heavily. But because I've participated in some conversations about NFTs and I've both bought and sold NFTs, there are now a number of NFT artists that will reach out to me because now they know that I am someone who is willing or able to spend money on NFTs. And given that, well, then they're like, well, you must have some money to spend on me, right? And I'm like, uh, that's not exactly how that works for me. So I guess what I'm curious about is the nature of the, let's say, kind of like real relationship

where there's a kind of like, I see you, you used to me and like we support one another in the work that we're doing. I mean, like I said, when people tip me through coffee, that's typically as a result of me having hunted them. So it's sort of after the fact thing, it's a, you know, it's, it's, it's a gratuity largely, right? And I don't really pay that much attention to it because it's just sort of like, oh, it's, it's nice that happens, but I'm not working for that tip. But when it comes to other people who are looking to participate in this new economy, then they're going to be looking for those people who are tippers. And so I, I guess I wonder if there will be more The whales, right?

Yeah, exactly. Right. I do think one of the distinctions, though, that's happening or sort of this transition and part of what we're seeing is why you don't need advertising per se is we're moving from audience to sort of community. And this is like one of the distinctions, for example, that exists in like a Twitch where those set of people are kind of almost cohesive versus your followers are kind of like a bunch of randos, right?

And the future you're even describing adds another layer of cohesiveness kind of to the people who are engaging with you, which is just beyond a counter or, you know, a list of all the people on a discrete objects as opposed to connect it across objects. Can I, can I ask, this is maybe related to exactly what we're talking about or different, but like, the tipping that I'm, I'm most familiar with is like, you know, watching my daughter, watch her favorite people on YouTube or Twitch, where it's like the bell, you hear ding, ding, and then the person playing the game says, oh, thank you for the tip, right? shot out, right. Exactly. So, but that, that means, or I'm presupposing that that means that there's very low friction. It's like it's that low level, like sort of, you know, literally throwing a coin into the hat for the busker, right?

Right. So I'm curious, the low friction, is that what we need? Is that what is happening right now? Or what you guys were just talking about, which is so interesting to me, is this, leveling up idea where like you're paying for different tiers and things like that. In fact, now I realize I don't have a question, but I, like, it's almost like, what is what is the more interesting thing to either one of you that are thinking about this right now? Like the low friction thing where like, let's say I put $5 in a month. It's almost like that thing that got bought by Twitter last week. You know, you pay, scroll. You pay $5 a month and then it gets doled out based on your attention or the idea that we're already willing to pay so then we're willing to pay more to

level up in like sort of the game scenario. It just, you know, it seems like adding currency to interactions is a way of amplifying the signal. And that's kind of what I was saying before, where, you know, if I get a bunch of likes on a post and it goes viral, you know, or for anybody who gets, you know, and this is not me at all, you know, thousands of likes on a post or hundreds of retweets, none of those things are that meaningful. But if someone puts a little currency on that like, then I'm more likely to see that. And especially if I see that person's interaction with my content over time, I start to build kind of like this quasi-awareness, which then leads to a parasympathetic relationship that kind of extends and evolves, I think over the space of time.

And so I do think that there will be different ways for these platforms to dole out aggregated value. it's money, it's subscriptions, it's whatever. And so, you know, I guess like I am trying to create, and this is why I thought Greg's diagram was very useful and very timely, is because there's going to be a bunch of those charts that need to be made about the different platforms and the different monetization opportunities that they afford and the types of relationships that they're building for. Because I think it's a mistake for us to only look at like the feature set and the functionality and not to look at the social dynamics that are in play and that makes sense in those environments, right? For sure. Yeah. And by the way, if you look at the, on the thread, it's number six, but I list out like five or six like use cases for tips, right? And like appreciation, insights, interactions, purchases, campaigns and community. Two of those, which I would argue are probably two of the bit more useful, more utilized ones, like appreciation and community are not performative per se, but they're part of belonging to a thing, right? More so than they are like, can you do something and then I'll give you some money?

totally totally and so i just like i think we have to pay attention to this because it's going to change some of these dynamics it's also going to be potentially harder for some folks to do the cold start thing right like it's bad enough to start on you know instagram today and sort of you know to try to build any kind of following whatsoever and so those you know who have been on twitter for some time or already have that audience they will probably do quite well with tipping relative to anybody who starts new and that is another dynamic i think that also needs to be considered in this space because I guess I've noticed also that there is this, when I've seen some complaints, let's say, about the different design of features, let's say the design of Clubhouse, there is this centering

on, you know, one's own experience as opposed to imagining how does this feel or how does this work for someone who is just joining the platform or just getting started, you know, today. And I think a lot of these platforms that need growth to continue to, like, you know, one, justify any kind of stock price or stock growth are going to need to be thinking about how the next generation comes to their platform and what norms and expectations they have. Because if they don't support some of those things as a baseline, then those folks are just never going to even bother. Because why would they? It's like you're repressing my ability to express myself. And one of the ways that I express myself is through financial or fiscal speech. Greg, I got one more for you real quick,

because I think this is what you were starting to get to at the beginning before I cut you off. The idea of the take rate, because I'm looking at number seven on your tweet storm. And like, TikTok Gifts is taking 50%, Twitch is taking 40%, YouTube takes 30%. And obviously we're talking about this all the time now, the 70-30 thing, and we know that some of these newfangled platforms, like, for example, sub-stack is only doing 10%. Now, you can argue around the edges about different markets, different sort of mediums, require a different sort of agency model. But I'm curious what you think about

these platforms are, everybody all of a sudden doesn't just want to throw ads against something. They want to facilitate the creators. I'm curious about what they're thinking in terms of their margins. And I guess, you know, it's not, it could be a huge margin business because it doesn't cost them a lot, even if they take a 5 or 10% to just be like, here, we're enabling these payments. What do you think about the idea of in the creator economy, what the good agency take

or the rake should be for this sort of thing? That's a great question. And there's a lot of debate. And I think you're absolutely right. But, you know, as with all things where there's a fee, someone will eventually just lower it, right? Except for Apple. except for Apple, that's right. So I do think it's kind of a raise to zero in a lot of ways.

And I think that I think 10%, so just as an example, we're building a platform. Part of why I've been looking at these topics, et cetera, is because we are planning to implement tipping and we're like, what should we charge? We plan to charge 10%. Now, I think 10% is probably like the most you'll probably be able to get away with reasonably, right? And we've been seeing other, I've hearing lots of other talks of other ways to address this. But the main reason I think is that we're seeing ultimately like much like Chris said earlier,

in a lot of ways we're moving from an advertising based universe, right? So the earliest creator 1.0 days, right? Into the creator 2.0 days to like now where creators are like, wait, I can be, I am a business or I want to be a business or I want to be an enterprise. And I think like part of that, the trend line there then is that there's a lot, you know, your upfront costs are very high to get into the creator space or they used to be. coming down now, right? But the software stack and the business stack and the tool stack to support you starting to emulate and resemble the normal space of all business tools, right? Like you got

the enterprise, mid-market, you know, SMB, and the creator set is really a specialized use case or maybe a super set of even the SMB space. There may be more creator businesses than there are SMBs, actually, right? And so they have their own unique tooling requirements. And now I believe, because they are starting to be able to monetize in meaningful ways, a SaaS fee is not like such a crazy idea to a creator anymore. Right? Like, I would argue like in the past, it was highly performed.

And in a lot of ways, brands like totally screwed up the business because they overpaid without really holding creators accountable to the normal standards that traditional media companies gotten. So that's why we saw these inflated rates. And that created that cliff, I think. And so now we're starting to see where, I think creators saying, like, I'm going to be in business. Well, guess what? If I'm in business, there's a bunch of tools I need to buy. I'd like those tools to all be X or Y or Z price.

And then you'll have tiers inside of the tooling to service people over time. And I think like when you look at different models that are emerging, it tends to be a take rate oriented business or a SaaS oriented business. And we're seeing take rates come down. And I think as that happens, you likely have to see more, either more SaaS fees or more creativity around the take rate itself for for companies to build successful businesses on top of the creator universe. Okay. I want to hear from Nigel one more time before we open up for for more more more voices. Nigel specifically like this this is the sort of Greg's previous comments kind of I think fit into your world a little bit more given that you are building one of these platforms.

You've been doing it for quite a while. You've been doing it largely off of just I guess donations. I know now you I think I think you might take you don't take five percent but You allow the creator to then, I think, donate a portion of the proceeds that they receive to your business. And then you also have gold, which I guess is sort of like the SaaS version of what you're offering. So do you want to speak a little bit more about how that works out for you? Sure, sure. Like 10 years ago, when I first put this thing together, it was really important for me not to take any fees or any additional fees. I really wanted it to be a relationship between the supporter and the creator and not to be in the middle of that relationship.

as things have moved on, we still have that. You can come and use the site. You can get tips, zero percent fees from us, use most of our features. The way that we bootstrapped originally was we had our own page where people could tip us as the platform. That kind of got us going so we could give up our jobs. And I got a co-founder on board. But then we moved into this more like a SaaS model, which people have. to pay for if they require those additional tools to kind of make a business out of this.

So exactly as Greg said, really. And one of the things also that I've noticed, and I think you're becoming a little bit more competitive with Gumroad. And the reason why I want to ask about this is, you know, on the one hand, there are people who are just sort of, you know, are present characters, I guess, on the internet, you know, Mr. Beast and those types. But then there's also folks who are doing like digital deliverables and, you know, pay for transactional type of goods. So this fits into sort of like the Hunter Walk

kind of multi-ske creator paradigm, which seems to be, you know, exploding now. And I would just love to understand whether or not you've been moving in that direction as a result of requests from your current users or if you see that that's where the market's going. And so therefore you want to meet the market where it may be. I think it's a little bit of both. People were, we just looked at how people were using the service. And I think Greg made a great point in, in this thread about tipping being a gateway to then always monetizing that audience, right? It's like a filter. These are your top fans.

These are your top supporters. You most engage supporters. Okay, what else would they maybe purchase from me? How else would they support me on a long term? It's kind of an easy way in. But we're looking at how people were using it. And I kind of want a big twist to it here with. To try and coin a phrase of casual commerce.

It's kind of what we've been seeing over the last few years is that this idea of a low-pressure transaction that's been mostly around a tip, and it's low pressure from the supporter and the creator side. Hey, tip me if you want to. And in return, I'll draw you something, or you can download an iPhone wallpaper or, you know, you'll do a service, you know, small service, but it's very low pressure.

It's not like, okay, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to start an Etsy or I'm going to start, you know, my own Shopify or something like that. It's like, hey, I've got this skill. I want to sell something. You want to tip me and I'll give you something. So it's a little bit, it's kind of the opposite way around to the way that you're using it, Chris, which is very much like a tip after the event. Right. This is kind of a way for service.

or sort of a, like, it's like a bid. It's like a request. Yeah, it's like, it's like a very soft request. And it's kind of like, there's no kind of like strict deliverable perhaps. Well, most have to be done in real time, right? So, right? Because like they're not even on for most of the tools. They could be passing through or whatever.

Yeah. Sure. And you mentioned Gumroad there. Yeah. I think we're quite different in that we are still, you know, people know us for tips. and that's, we are, we are predominantly a donation platform, but people want to sell things without having to set up another website.

So, so yeah. Yeah, I think there's just a plur, plur, proliferation of tools. Sure, sure. I think Gumroad would probably come in at the other angle. Gumroad's known for being a shop and they've added tips. Right. So it's kind of that, the other way around, I guess. Yeah, I want to make two more observations and then we'll open it up.

First is just that one of the ways in which Facebook first got a lot of credit cards from its user base was through fundraisers. So fundraisers was a very kind of aligned way for Facebook to say, oh, we're supporting communities. Oh, we're like helping people out. Like, oh, people want to raise money, you know, through groups or whatever. And it just so happens that that was a great way for them to actually experiment and explore commerce on the platform and to kind of butter people up to being more comfortable engaging

in e-commerce. So I do think that the tipping thing is a very, as you said, sort of its kind of it's kind of casual commerce, which now allows for many, many more people to engage in that behavior, which then hopefully will help them open up their wallets in much larger transactional ways. So I think it's important to just keep that in mind in terms of behavior modification that's happening. The other thing that I think is very, very interesting on the Twitter side in particular is the way in which they've implemented tips so far is largely through partnerships.

Well, I would say they're very lightweight partnerships and engagements with third-party payment providers, you know, whether it's cash app or Patreon or Bancamp or whatever, there are largely just links that then link off to the third party platform and the transaction happens elsewhere. Now, I don't know if that's because, you know, Jack is the CEO of Square and so he's got all the financial information he already needs. But previously, I would have thought, just like Clubhouse has done, that they would have been much more interested in capturing that user, capturing that relationship, and gaining the payment credentials and Rails so they could then open up other payment services, whether it's subscriptions, which I discovered today, it's going to be called

Twitter Blue. That's the new premium Twitter service. Or whatever. So I think those things are also in play here. Okay. So I'm going to reset and then we're going to open up the room. So today we are talking about social tipping for the TechMeme ride home experience. We've got Greg up here.

We've got Nigel up here. And of course, myself, Chris and Brian. I'm going to first go to Risha. who has been very, very patient. She had a question or comment very early on. Let's get her up here and see what she has to say. Hey, everybody. Yeah, you know what?

I have been sitting here just dying because there were so many things that you guys touched on that I wanted to chime in on. Please go off. So, yes, I feel like I have quite a bit of knowledge on this topic. I've been in a content creation space for just under five years now, and I left, you know, well, I'm still on YouTube, but I have a monetized channel there, so I know a lot about the super chat and all that good stuff over there. But now, as a power user of the spaces and haven't been here in the beta test since day one, we do have the tip jar many of us like myself, Mr. Dre, a ton of others of us. So we've been just like very anxious to see all the different ways that monetization will be rolled out to us. So this was the first thing that we got access to.

You know, obviously ticketing is on the way as well. But for me, there was one point you guys mentioned about the behaviors. Now, I have to say, I have surely seen change behaviors. It was funny, the day that the tip jar rolled out, my fleets bar was lit. Okay? It was full of people who had blown the dust off of their space. What were the messages? What were they posting?

They were just opening their space in hopes that people would tip. them. Ah, uh-huh, yep. People who, you know, tips are available anytime though, right, Risha? Yes, they're always available, yes. So in case you want to test it out, mine is open right now. Um, mine doesn't code. So that first day, it was cool. It's only been probably less than a week now, but I did receive multiple tips and it was really cool because a lot of people, they felt like we should have been getting, you know, some type of appreciation, monetary, so they were generous and I appreciate that tremendously. But yeah, you can use it at any time.

It's just like Chris described. There's a band camp, Venmo, cash app, Patreon, and PayPal. And I only had three accounts set up, but I scrambled to set up the other two because I just want to make it as convenient as possible for all parties. And my only wish was that there was an integration where we got enough. notified on Twitter when we receive a tip because however you have those accounts set up is how you find out. So it's hard to thank people properly. So that's just something worth mentioning.

But I love it. And for some of us creators who work really hard on these platforms, we are definitely excited about the prospects because we do give out a lot of information. And, you know, it does add up. And so, yeah, I'm here for all things when it comes to compensating creators and encouraging them to keep sharing. Risha, I'm curious, so we're still in the phase, obviously, where it's sort of new and like, hey, throw me a tip or throw it. And so, like, you know, your biggest fans will be doing this now at the beginning to be like, oh, I finally have the chance to do this. As a creator, do you, what do you see six months from now, two years, five years from now? Because it won't always be like this where it's just like, well, this is new. I've just put my hat down on the floor, so throw me a buck. Like, can you, are you thinking as a creator,

is there going to be some sort of a transactional thing, some sort of like, well, we have to be thinking down the road that the next time we're going to ask our audience for money, it's going to be after we do this. Do you see what I'm saying? Like, right now it's still new. Yeah, go ahead. Yes, I'm definitely, I see it the same way you do. There's this novelty right now.

And so there's going to be this rush of people. sometimes people just want the opportunity to test a new feature. I got a ton of like test tips just because people wanted to click the buttons and see how it worked. But that is why these other avenues of monetization are going to be huge for us. Ticketing for me will be major because like myself and Mr. Dre, we put on all types of productions here on spaces including like game nights and we have a show that we do call viral talk where we bring on the author of a viral tweet and we do a deep dive into the background story. and like interview the source and all parties involved and all that good stuff. So I would love to be able to, you know, put a $5 or $10 cover fee to enter something like that.

People love it. They, you know, they enjoy it. It's like it's a whole production. So that is going to be a lot more lucrative for creators who are actually creative. Okay. Now, if you really don't have the sauce and you're just faking it, you're not going to last here and you're not going to make very much. But for those of us who come out with unique, fresh ideas, we will be a okay. So can you talk a little bit about the difference in culture, perhaps, between YouTube and YouTube monetization from what you might expect or anticipate on Twitter?

And I don't really know your relative usage of the different platforms. I don't know if you're also active on Clubhouse or elsewhere. Yeah. So just a little background on that. So I've been on YouTube just about four years. A Clubhouse I've been on since November, I want to say, of 2020. And I do have a club there and all of that, but I fell head over hills for Twitter spaces. I'm not saying that because I'm on Twitter.

That is the honest-to-god truth. And so I've been using spaces since December, but then was put in the beta test with that first 300 back in January. So my experience with audio apps, I have about just about, you know, we'll be pushing a year of like experience on audio platforms and such soon. But as far as the differences for me, and I was just talking, I actually was featured and wired today on this very top of this. about, thank you. It was about

monetization and content creators being paid across the social audio platforms and they were making the comparisons to Clubhouse and some of the others that are out now. But with YouTube, I feel like if anything, that was more of a buster feel because you create the content

and it's just less interaction than what you can do here on spaces. Here is much more because it's more of a dialogue than a monologue. I feel like things happen faster and it's less pressure. It's more of like that pleasant surprise. You're more delighted. Like, oh, okay, someone enjoyed that. So I do feel like it is a totally different culture, different vibe,

different feel. And that's why I really enjoy spaces more to anything. This has been the place where I'm creating the most content now. Nice. I did pin your tweet. So if anybody wants to go check out that article, it's there. Oh, well, thank you so much. I appreciate that, Chris. Yeah. And, oh, and I've been dying to meet you. I think you are so dope. And, you know, the do create the hashtag like that right there. That's forever, forever, though. Mr. Dre down here is who created the purple dot. Fun fact. And that's, well, we have that in common then. Yeah, you guys, it's just, yeah, I'm surrounded by dope people. So that's all like that on that. That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming up and sharing your experience. It's super useful. I do want to

make some room for some other folks. Katan has also requested. So I'm going to bring him up. And then we've got Thomas and Jeffrey. And if anybody else wants to raise our hands, And now it would be a great time to get in line. Good time. And feel free to drop me down, Chris. Oh, sorry. I didn't, the audio cut out for a second. Okay, you're back.

Hey, Chris, hey, Greg. Hey, Risha. You know, it's interesting because I've been on Clubhouse for a while now, and we did an informal poll in a room the other day asking people how much they had made from Clubhouse. You mean through tipping? Through tipping. Yeah. And a few people responded that made.

you know, ancillary amounts like $5, $10, $20. And someone came in and said, oh, I've made $9,000. I was like, through tipping. They're like, no, it was through my cash app. And so to me, I think the problem with a platform having a native infrastructure with tipping is it's always going to compete with the payment platforms. and if I don't have to pay a fee to want to send the money and if the person getting the money receives more of the money, then I think we're going to have a, you know, like Greg said, a race to the bottom.

But I think at some point, people aren't wanting, convenience doesn't pay for the friction, right? Like, you will likely say, hey, I'll just pay you the other way, especially if there's a perception that you'll see now with Apple and everyone's saying, hey, these platforms are taken. taking more than they should, right? So my concern is that tipping is ultimately not a viable method for most creators to make a living off of, and even platforms they're relying on tipping revenue or tipping features to have growth. They're going to be competing with networks that have no charges, and that friction, even after Clubhouse release this feature, that friction is easily surmountable. People are more than happy. If you love your creator enough to give them money, then you love them enough to go into Venmo to go on to cash up and some of the money.

And often the accounts already saved. So it's pretty easy. So I just don't, I don't believe in the viability of tipping. Okay. Wow. So you said a couple things there that I think they were super interesting. One, I think I would sort of just, you know, give my own experience, agree with you. Although, you know, I'm sure that there are, again, some folks that have a very active fan base.

Maybe they can make, you know, a reasonable amount of money. I think I am on the lower end of that threshold for my clubhouse tips. I made about $1.50 and, you know, square or whatever, what is it? The other one. What's the big one called? I can't think of it now. Whatever one. No, no, no.

It was the, uh, Simey copy. Stripe. Oh, Stripe. Stripe took, you know, 30% of whatever I made. So anyways, you know, like 80 cents or something. And then the government's going to take the rest. So anyways, I agree with you that like tipping in that sense probably is not going to be super

lucrative. I do wonder, though, again, if it's not the point about providing craters with a, like, a sufficient income where it's, essentially giving people a different way of communicating. You know, that's different than just the like or the retweet or something. Like it actually kind of takes something out of your own resources, your own calorie store to then say, I like what you did. Like, that was really positive.

And maybe that leads to more positive pro-social interactions. And I have no idea if that's true or not. I'm sure people will reward negative antisocial behaviors as well. But I do think that it is interesting just in terms of the interaction that it will create. The other thing that you said that was super interesting to me from a product design perspective and that I think is super savvy to observe is the degree to which whether native built in payments into these platforms that are not banks and are not payment platforms will ever be able to compete with the outside kind of convenience and familiarity with dedicated apps like Venmo

or cash app. I mean, your anecdote, I think is so good that like people on, especially on a place like Clubhouse are in conversation with each other all the time. And, you know, a creator might set up their tipping function, but then tell everyone in the room, by the way, if you guys like, like what I'm saying or whatever, you know, just go send me, you know, a couple bucks via cash app, you know, and it's this. And there's enough familiarity and awareness of that way of paying that the fans want to actually get around the platform and get around the rails that were put in place because they understand now through a new type of digital financial literacy that the money that they will get through other means where there are no fees is actually a more genuine or authentic

or meaningful way of showing your support. So that I think is very interesting from a behavior perspective. I think there's two parts there too, Chris, though. So that behavior actually exists. If you look at the research, gifting subs, for example. So if you're in the Twitch universe, Okay. Gifting subs is actually the preferred way to actually do it because the creator makes more money. And it actually grows the community. I will plead ignorance. I have no idea what you're talking about.

The only thing is subscription. You know, just like, so you can gift a month subscription to like anyone, right? Okay. And the wise Twitch creators know that and they sort of like they're, you know, they will actively like encourage people like,

don't send bits. Give someone a stuff, right? Like, because it moves it from like a dollar purchase to like a $5 purchase. Yep. but also grows the community and potentially creates someone who stays on the latch for a lot longer, right? Yep. But the flip side, I think, which is like the way I think what I think is smart about what Twitter did and like also what's awful about what Clubhouse did, right?

Is like setting up a stripe account to go through to send money in Clubhouse. It's horrible. It was horrible. It was horrible. Right. And I think, you know, you don't need to go around me to get to my cash app if I can just link to my cash app like right inside the app. Right. And I think that that's the important signal. I don't understand why they didn't do that.

Yeah, Twitter's saying we're not going to make any money on the tips anyway. So it's not even worth it. Right? Like microtransactions with the fees, et cetera, chargebacks, all the other stuff. We don't need that risk. So go put your money. If you want a tip, go do it elsewhere. There's an interesting behavioral thing I'm noticing happening on Clubhouse.

There's a really popular room. Visit Insani runs it called Facial Recognition Comedy. And there's a bunch of comedians doing stand-of comedy. And they're all fantastic. And at points in the show, someone will tip, and they'll say, hey, let's do a shout out. Oh, shout out to Paul. Shout out to Greg. And what's really interesting I'm seeing is as part of the shoutout, it's like usually after someone performs, they'll actually kind of do a little bit of a roast on the person tipping.

And I think it's really interesting as a comedy factor because it almost makes. Yeah, but it's almost in this like, thank you for tipping. Let's include you in the show. Right. Yep. Because think about people. It's the acknowledgement, right? It's the acknowledgement, but I think if you do too much acknowledgement,

then it ruins the pacing of the show. Think of, if you're Yo-Yo Ma, you're performing a class of comedy. You're not going to stop and say, hey, thanks, Paul, for tipping. But, like, in comedy, because of such back and forth and heckling is so much part of it, I'm watching this behavior and saying, these guys, and it's often guys, are tipping to kind of be involved, which is a, there's a lot to unpack there. That could be good and bad. that's totally right. And I think a lot of this does, you know, whether it's in game or there's

lots of other contexts, especially where things are live, right? The shout out, the call in, like all of these ways of participating in something that's going on and feeling like, again, whether you belong in that or you've got something to contribute and you're acknowledged for that, it makes it more interactive. It makes it more real, right? I mean, that was the brilliance of clubhouse in the early days was that you could get up on stage next to an A-Lon. Or I was upstate, I was on stage with, oh, my God, who's the guy 30 seconds to Mars? anyways, that guy. And you know what I mean?

Like you're sort of like rubbing shoulders with folks and it's like totally normal, totally fine. And it, I guess like the tipping piece is an interesting way of rising above just, you know, hands raised and to say, oh, look at this bozo. Let's bring him up or something. Yeah. And I do have interactivity on the list actually because I do. I agree. It is a thing that drives some of this video. It's a different type of game, right?

Okay. So I'm going to bring up Thomas. Thomas had some interesting comments during our last space. So we'll see what he has to contribute. today. And again, if anybody else wants to come up, please feel free to raise your hand. All right. I guess I don't need an introduction. My name is, my name is Thomas. Nice to meet you, Nigel and Greg, a big fan, Catan. I don't have cash app here in Canada. And Brian, great to see you, Chris. You're the best. I'm actually big fan of you. And what was it? Risha.

I wish you wouldn't say Buskers so harshly because Buskers are usually very talented people. I said Busker. I was the one that used that term, yes. Okay. Okay. But Catan brought up another great point that connects that is Mozart, right? These guys are usually instrument players or girls. Guys or girls, Katan. You got to get used to saying that. Anyways, I do tip. I tip a dollar to my pizza. a guy on a good day. I also tip on Twitter. And I did send you that screenshot, Chris. You do, yep, okay. Anyways, I just want to get the hashtag pay it forward. You just end your podcast with hashtag pay it forward, Chris. And that's, that should be all what you have to do. I'm also, like, you know, just a Twitter guy. I like Twitter.

I see where we're going, right? What would you like to say about the social tipping? I want to say that it can work. Okay. It can work because it is working. I did tip, like just today, the Bernie Sanders camera guy, at Breathe New Winds. We did a camera thing.

So, like, I just take photos with my phone, right? Yeah. But like good photos. It's an iPhone 10 decent, right? Landscape at least. Are you like making it possible for him to like, you know, pay his rent or like in that kind of tipping? Like you got doughy. I just tipped him because I had a good time. Like we had everybody up. Everybody got to like we did this weird exercise where we all turned left and took a photo. And then we all shared it under a hashtag. I know you're going to love this, Chris. You are loving it. I get paid for every hashtag. Did you know that?

No, I don't. Yeah. I don't at all, actually. You should. At least 0.001%. Okay, so your point is that basically like tipping you think is going to work because... It could work. Okay.

All right. That's great. I've invited... Can I respond something he said? Yeah. I want to explain that the gender dynamics I was trying to get into. Sure. Because Twitter, when they rolled out tipping with PayPal,

it exposed the possibility that you were exposing someone's email address. Yeah, yeah. And internet safety obviously is hugely important. And the point I was trying to make out of clubhouse tipping is that whether it's male or female performers, that often it's men tipping in there, because I think you have to look at the background of where this tipping behavior comes from. Like most things, porn and campsites innovated a lot of business models that now major SaaS companies and create economies use.

and there isn't an in balance sometimes, and we have to be really thinking about safety, because what if someone's in there just tipping you thousands and thousands of dollars, does that mean you have to respond? Right? You have to give in a shout-out. So the point I was trying to make is that,

not that the performers are only one-gender, is that we have to really think about safety when it comes to tipping and access of information. So, okay, I think this is a very interesting point to bring up for two reasons. One is just there was this blowback about, basically like the way that PayPal has always worked, has been based on the email address, whereas, you know, whether it's

Cash App or Venmo to some degree does have usernames and I think does use the phone number. But PayPal being one of the oldest, obviously was set up around eBay, used the email address as the identifier. And so that's the way in which you route money around. And you know what I mean? Like it's sort of like the identifier was exposed through the transaction because that's the way that PayPal works. And so because Twitter didn't design and build their own payment system, that was native

to the platform where you can just do a DM, you know, instead of a DM, it would be money. Who's got that buzzing? Okay. Essentially, they sort of exposed some users' data based on the exposure that was already going to happen on PayPal. Now, I understand if you set up your PayPal, then essentially you may have exposed yourself in a way that you hadn't intended, and that's obviously not great. But I do think that it's interesting to see these layers of, and I think this was said before, that Twitter kind of handed off the chargebacks and all the sort of, whatever may happen, that's the secondary effects or the second order effects of the tipping that might happen. So to put this another way, to your point, if someone were to do abusive tipping, you know, they've made their doge millions and, you know, they've got a bunch of money that

they want to throw at someone, they could do that, but it's all happening, all the abuse basically is happening off platform. Now, that's a really interesting way of pushing that over, and I don't know what the level of coordination might be between Twitter safety, you know, and abuse teams and what's happening on these third-party platforms. Or Chris, do you get the sense that maybe this is sort of what a lot of these platforms have been like looking for? It's like, how do we get out of this sort of, this troll economy where, you know, trolls essentially like spam, there's zero marginal cost to trolling. And so it's it's no longer zero marginal cost. Right. Well, so that's my point is like, are the platform, one of the many reasons maybe platforms are really hot on this is that they're hoping that this will sort of make things more civil because if you have to interact, if the only way you can interact is by tipping 50 cents or something, like maybe, forget about the roadblocks.

I don't know if they know that yet. You know what I mean? Like I hear you, but, you know, from a product design perspective, I don't think you can predict how people will behave. And I think to Katan's point, you know, if I have a bunch of extra money and I really want this person to get my attention and I just throw money at them. Yeah, it could even be worse. It could be worse. I talked to a number, by the way, of live streamers and a number of female live streamers, and they actually told me that they stopped livestream basically because they couldn't deal with the BS that was coming out of the commenters. And, you know, so I think money is one kind of, you know, barrier.

To the tipping and everything, or is that... Well, no, I guess it was... So you have this uncontrolled fire hose, right? And so the dollar thing, like, you know, for example, like I get in Twitch and this modality, I think just continues to spread, but only followers, even Twitter has only like people like follow can reply, right? These types of controls are starting, I think, to make their way in to manage some of the problems that we're talking about. That's kind of what I'm suggesting maybe people are hoping will happen if you attach money to this sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's early. It's a meaningful friction.

though, I guess, right? Yeah, yeah. I want to get... Go ahead. Certainly, I mean, Risha was talking about ticketing. I mean, that could be a barrier, right? If you charge everyone to enter your event, you're going to cut out many of the strolls,

maybe not all of them, but many of them. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. We just don't know, right? We don't know, one, who has money, who's willing to spend that money, and what type of interactions they're looking to expect. And one of things that I would just point out maybe in this context is because we haven't been socialized effectively around money, we don't necessarily know what it means. Like money means different things to different people who have different amounts of it. And so someone who gives a $5 tip may expect immediate, you know, response and a DM and all sorts of attention. Whereas for someone, you know, for whom $5 is, you know, like whatever, you throw it away or whatever. It's like not a big deal. They don't have that same level of expectation of a response. So the subjective value, you know, the subjective value, you know, of money can distort things based on, again, the very broad gamut of humanity that exists on the

internet. This is an open call from me to any journalist listening that if anyone wants to reach out to OnlyFans folks, because again, it seems like they're on the cutting edge of this, I'd love someone to do a deep dive talking to OnlyFans creators to see, is the money, does it multiply the grossness or does it sort of shave down the grossness in terms of like trolling, fans being gross, whatever, you know? Actually, Lee Jen did a great interview with one of the top folks on Only fans. And if you do search for it, you'll find it.

It's, it's, I'm losing it right now. But she was very transparent, very open and had a lot of things to say about it. So there is some information out there. I've invited a few folks up to speak. They might be busy. We'll see. Oh, Mr. Dre, you are up here. Randy, you're back.

Welcome back. If you guys want to jump in, share your experience with this stuff, that'd be great. Thank you, Chris. This is actually a very interesting topic because my startup is creating a monetization system for podcasters. So it's very interesting to see the transition. I guess my question is, do you think that there's going to be a, a hybrid of tipping and advertisements for creators, or do you think one's going to try to focus on more, you know, organic streams of monetization or, you know, what do you think that system is going to look like?

Well, I mean, I think, I don't know if it matters so much what I think, but it seems like hybrids are going to be necessary in order to make the economics work. And Brian, maybe you want to speak to your experience, given what you're doing with podcasting. Well, but also I've wanted to jump in here about this a little bit. It's not so much, we're talking about it from the creator side, but I'm so curious about the platform side. And again, I've mentioned margins before. Like, you know, I suppose that allowing creators to make money

and just taking a rake from that could have better margins than just advertising. I think that the truth is is that like, you know, as I always talk about on the show, like throwing ads against everything has a natural limit. You can only put so many ads against YouTube video or into search and stuff. So maybe all we're seeing is the platforms need to find some other way to monetize in the same way that, you know, Apple had to move into services.

But I think that, right, like this is the point is that it's got to be, it can't just be one thing. It would be interesting if there was like a platform that was like, we're only doing tips. I don't think that that would ever be the case. But I want to, I want to turn this around on you a little bit, right? Because currently you don't make, as far as I know, you can tell me otherwise, but that you don't make money through tipping. And so you make your money through selling ads, you know, your podcast inventory. So I'm just curious like, you know, how you see this emerging and whether or not you would change your behavior to, you know, do more, let's say shows like this, where tipping is a possibility, and to prioritize that, given your mix.

At least I think that's sort of what Randy's getting at. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So, all right, I'll just, like, putting ads against stuff is too easy for me and too lucrative right now. It's the lowest hanging fruit. It just is. No, as, as, as, as, as perfect. Chris, you and I have discussed that length off air.

And so almost doing the subscription, like, community thing is harder. I know other people, and don't get me wrong, there are podcasters that have way more success doing the subscription and the community thing that I have. But it's, I think that when, like, Legion and people like that are talking about the creator thing, it is that sort of multi-skew business that I think Hunter Walk talks about too,

where it's like, yeah, the creators want to do everything. You want to sell T-shirts, you want to have live events, you want to have whatever. So I think that that's also the point is that, again, if all these platforms want to just get off of the just putting ads against things, they want to be a platform to facilitate all these things. I guess someone's going to buy T-spring. You know, like just the ability to facilitate this sort of economic activity that they don't have to gin up themselves has to be super, super. attractive to any platform that's mature, especially. I was just going to say, though, I think the average creator, individual creator, actually, I think they have like five or six active revenue sources.

And I do think, Brian, and Chris pointing this out earlier, it's impossible to become large right now. There's very few platforms that it's quick to grow in, right? because there are such built-in advantages on the larger side ecosystem. And advertisers don't actually want to target, you know, 5,000 individuals to try to, you know, spread their ads out. They'd rather go to, like, a few large places. So I think these, and by the way, some of the value prop for some people is that there are

no ads, right? Like, you know, a lot of people on Substack have switched off of something else. Yeah. Because they're like, I'm going to produce over here so you never have to see an ad, right? Or I'm going to do a podcast now. Or I have a premium podcast now. There's a private stream that doesn't have ads. but also has maybe some follow-up or extra material, et cetera.

It's a funny thought that, like, tipping in a way or direct monetization is kind of a sort of social ad block, you know, or at least it could be in the sense that I want to consume your content and I'm so sick of your advertising content. And it just kind of gets in the way. Can I just give you some money instead? Now, granted, you have to aggregate enough demand that that actually works. But I think that that is sort of interesting. I do want to bring out Mr. Dre, who's been waiting patiently and giving in the slots of hindoos in his emotes. I got to imagine, you know, you are one of these multi-skew creators. In a way, I'm definitely not as talented as my friend Risha, but I really think with these platforms, the tipping jars, I think it's pretty much like a bare minimum.

And it's not really, I don't think it's like a net trap to like bring creators to your platform. I think it's like the bare minimum that these platforms can do. Can you, I want to impact that a little bit because I think like I feel that as being intuitively true, but it feels from my older man brain like unintuitively true or false. And what I mean by that is this is the generational divide that I was describing where I have kind of one foot in both generations. And I if I were to like pick a platform now to spend my time on, I'd be like, well, one where I could possibly have some sort of monetization opportunity. if for some reason I blow up, you know, because I heard this guy today who is, I think he's in Dubai or someplace. And he like, like, it blew up during the pandemic because he cooks on TikTok, but he sounds like Thor. And you just can't predict that. You know what I mean? So you

kind of want to be like, now he's screwed because he's on TikTok and, you know, there's no right tipping there. Anyways, continue. No, no, and I completely agree. I think it's like the equivalent of, you go to a restaurant and you, you're providing good. service and you get a receipt for your service and then the patron has to decide to tip you, but on the receipt, there's no line that says tip. Something as little is just having the line tip and it suggested gratuity probably makes it more likely for the person delivering that service to get a tip. Like, I don't know who mentioned it earlier.

On Clubhouse, you could have always put your cash app. in your bio and mentioned it. And I don't know how hard it is to open your cash app and copy and paste the person's cash tag and send them money directly and avoid any, any like money being taken from the creator. I think Twitter adding that feature, just the fact that you can just push one button

probably makes it more likely. And like I said, I think it's bare minimum. I'm also like Risha very interested in seeing how it is. When you take away the access and make people pay for access with ticketed spaces and when super follows rolls out, how that looks in regards to like newsletters and live content and things like that. So just tell us a little bit more about your own use of social media and platforms. Were you, are you a recent sort of, I guess, comer to Twitter or did you have your following on YouTube before, et cetera? What is your background in that sense?

Well, I'm just pretty much a regular user. I didn't use it professionally. I used them more for news purposes, staying in touch with friends. So when you say it, you mean Twitter? Yeah, Twitter. For the most part, I don't really use any other platforms too much, but as space is rolled out and we started having in-depth conversations, just found more people gravitating to me and the topics that we talk about. And, you know, when the tip jar came out, like Risha, I got a bunch of people that appreciated having conversations with me over the past couple of months, sending me tips as well.

And now, like, DMing me and requesting that I, host conversations and curate conversations over spaces so and has has what what does it feel like to receive those tips and does it feel like it engenders you to the Twitter like to twitter as a platform that you want to actually kind of come back on and i'm not saying that you're doing it because of the tips but i'm just trying to get a sense for as you know someone who used twitter in one way before clearly this may be you know changing your perception of how you use the platform now no absolutely absolutely and i was telling risha the other day in regards to this there are lot of conversations that can take place online in a fire side chat memo or like a format or

like a seminar format that just for whatever reason it doesn't take place on Twitter but Twitter does have the built-in bones it definitely has the built-in audience that if it is possible to monetize on this platform and the discoverability and the sharing. ability of the conversations to monetize is readily available, I think you're going to see a lot more people creating content. And I don't think it's going to be in a way that it has typically been on Twitter. Like, I'm an investment professional. I would never have a conversation on Twitter unless, let's say, I was able to have a closed room and have a closed space and have some kind of vetting process between who was able to join the conversation.

So I would never think of having that conversation on Twitter two years ago, but now it's an option. And I'm excited to see what that looks like. Huh. That's, yeah, that's super interesting. And if you were to describe this feature, the tip jar and how it works and how you think about it, to someone who is like not a very active Twitter, you know, maybe this was you two years ago or maybe it's some of your friends, what is it that you would say to them to help them understand what it's all about?

Well, I think a lot of people on a smaller scale understand in the everyday economy what it's like to provide value to one person, let's say like brick and mortar, and that person give you money based off the value you provide to them, whether it's laugh, whether it's information, whether it's entertainment. I would say you come on Twitter. I don't know how many active daily users now. Every day you have the opportunity to be exposed to more and more people. Just the other day, Risha, who almost never used Twitter before Spaces came on, she just went viral for the first time and she didn't understand how so many people, I think it was like 20,000 or 30,000 or 40,000 people that were messaging her and retweeting and liking her tweets. And then she actually got some tips from the tip jar, just people appreciating her content. So like you said, it's like lightning in a bottle sometimes, but just being able to scale that fast based on the value that you provide, that's just an opportunity.

I don't know that has been out there before on any platform other than like, let's say only fans. But even the discoverability of only fans is exponentially multiplied on Twitter. You see people grow their only fans on content on Twitter and Patreon. accounts on Twitter. So they're using the virality and the serendipity of coming across content that you would like to see on Twitter on other platforms. But see, that's interesting. Weirdly, that's sort of the internet that a lot of us always hoped would have, hope would

come to pass. Like, forgive me if I said this on this show. I can't remember when I said it recently to someone. about how Tim Berners-Lee always claimed that he was going to put a micro-payment

thing into the web. He also claimed there were going to be backlinks, too, and he'd never get around on that. So what you're describing is, you know, she goes viral and people just appreciate it.

Like, that's kind of what we all kind of hoped that the web. I think we were also really worried about perverse incentives. And so that's the thing the fissure that I'm most interested to see from a cultural perspective. If there's a younger generation that grows up where tipping and moving outside of the normal kind of financial apparatus

is normal, where they look at what happened with the housing crisis and all those things, and they're like the institution system for financialization is fucked, and it fucks over people. And so if we're able to support one another directly through modernization tips, through subscriptions and whatnot, that is a much kind of, I don't know, flatter internet in a way, right? And so I agree with you, Brian, on the one hand, that having those micro payments in the beginning was the way that we thought that we might actually compensate great writing, great content. But then we went through this wave where Google was the intermediary that was, you know, being gamed by all these content farms,

you know, where you no longer made sense to do tipping. And now identity and personhood on the web is the way through which you connect. And because there's so many more live spaces, whether it's IG Live or whether it's Twitter spaces or Clubhouse, you get a sense that there's an actual person on the other end that is creating and composing content. And we needed to go through that shift to be able to recognize that it's no longer just sort of like this bot farm

that's producing links on the web, but there are people behind it. So in some ways, I feel like we had to go through that, I don't know, that sort of process to come out the other end and to build up the antibodies against those types of distortions. I'm sorry, go ahead, Ken. I think there's an unexpected downside to potentially if this was built in from the web from the beginning. So there's an article that just got posted just a few hours ago where they found Joe Biden's Venmo. Oh, interesting.

And they were able to track all his grandkids, all his friends, and all contacts that he had on Venmo. Wow. In a bad way, I see. In a bad way. And they've now since the White House accounts for Biden and his wife have now been deleted. All the friends have been deleted from Venmo. But I think if the way- Activities on the Republic?

They were private. I mean, this happened to Matt gets too. So, you know, it's like politicians, come on, guys. Like, you know. Right. Yeah, I think the transactions are private, but the connections to one another were public or something. Interesting. Right.

Yep. But I think the question I'm trying to get to is that if there are actors, bad actors, They're going to find ways to exploit things that we didn't estimate. So if the web from the beginning it had micro transactions or had some way of tracking those transactions, this is where we come into problems with any kind of financial traction or social networks, is like, do I want everyone to know everything? And I think Tim Berners-Lee from the beginning was an open web, right? That's what he was always espousing.

And payments by its nature is probably more private, right? And who you're willing to pay. But payments followed that model, right, of the open web, right? And it was like, hey, everything. Who was that? Didn't Phil Kaplan have, like, one of those things where you can see every transaction, like, that someone posted? I forgot what the name of the company was.

That's right. And there was like a receipt thing. And I mean, so there, it's interesting. Because Katan, I think you're, you're totally right in what you're pointing out. But what I would say is, is also that there's a lot of pendulum swings in the opposite direction based on whatever the pressures or structures are that exist at the time. So if Tim Bernersley is trying to create the open web, it's an opposition to a closed, privatized, ActiveX, Microsoft-controlled, you know, proprietary platform, right? And so the

financialization that's happening now is also in opposition to a sort of cloistered, private, you know, why don't we just make us all open? Like, why don't we let everyone see? And there are going to be downsides. But the alternative, the opposite, the status quo seems to be one that feels either corrupt or just working against individuals. And especially in a case where those of us who have been publishing on these platforms for years haven't received a dime necessarily for our contributions unless we've gone the influencer route and we've, you know, sold out a bit. And so now there's actually like a shift that's happening where there is some remuneration that's coming as a result of participating and creating, you know, positive content. But there will always be those that want to exploit it.

And I guess I am watching these things, but also I'm hopeful that there's a new culture that's also coming with these new features. Yeah, Chris, actually, the other pendulum you identify those is actually the, that switch from any time sort of asynchronous content to synchronous real-time content. And part of it is the distance we feel like emotionally to the content creator, right? So we're swinging back to more personalized, experience-based things as opposed to static publish things, right? and they're playing off each other. Institutions are becoming too slow. They're not interactive. I was thinking about this actually in terms of these types of conversations.

There was a great comment, oh, God, it was on a podcast I listened to. I tweeted about it about how the early days of blogging, oh, it was I think it was slow burn and it was something about the Iraq War. Anyways, but like in the early aughts, when people were first getting blogging for the first time, you know, the institutional news agencies were publishing information, but they weren't revealing their sources. they were like so close to the Bush administration. And so there was a distrust.

And so the bloggers came out. And they said, no, we're going to like publish as fast as we can. And that's where Vox came from and a bunch of other platforms like blogger that got their start. And there was this immediacy. There was seeing people as humans and having them publish, you know, in a very human way. And what these types of social audio spaces allow us to do is to come back to a less polished, a less influencer kind of, you know, overseen. stylized, I don't know, type of content to one where there feels like there's a sense of resonance. And that's worth, I think, paying for. All right. So we're going to wrap up real

quick here, but I brought my friend Tina up. Tina, it's great to see you again. What would you like to contribute? Oh, sorry, just getting used to this. Hi, everyone. Thank you, Chris. It's just very interesting hearing your comments that you just made about celebrity versus content and context and quality, right? It's kind of like the theme of everything. which I think a lot of media. I actually had my own multimedia platform 2013 to 2016, and I could say the hardest thing is juggling objectivity, if you're going to be a news outlet,

and how you're going to take in the advertising dollars and how that gets to be pretty... It has problems with this, where you kind of turn into a whole different sort of non-objective, somewhat tied to becoming almost like a beginner for these entities and you can't tell the truth anymore and all of a sudden are you actually being a news outlet or are you being you know advert or advertorial content so that's kind of interesting and I also just wanted to add that in 2014 there was change tip which was a of course it was a crypto big doge coin tipping bot

and I have to bring that up because for some reason it didn't really come up early And, you know, as it's coming up to be on point again, and it's funny to hear the same exact comments circulating about changing tipping behavior and whether or not content and creators will ever get their due. But I think they really should, if we want quality media to ever survive. Totally. That's a great point. I was thinking this whole conversation, actually, about crypto.

And I feel like, me too. Given how little crypto has come up, kind of points to the, I wouldn't say crypto has missed the boat, but it's almost like it's missing the moment here of the tipping moment. Well, I mean, Joe actually was the group prominent on Reddit for tipping. Right, that was the whole use case for it. But it goes back to this question, I think, of usability and access and ease. And crypto is still in that weird space where, you know, it's very different, I think, if I give someone money through cash app and it's liquidity and their ability to, like, you know,

go, you know, buy something immediately versus the sort of multiple layers that you have to go to, like receive crypto and then liquidated and it's not impossible. I just think it's a heavier lift than what a lot. So the congos are converged. Oh no, sorry. I mean, I was just saying that there's a lot of conversation of Web 3 kind of very commingled in this sort of arena as well, though. But it's definitely not into tipping part because it's too complicated. Yeah. Yeah, I thought it would be around the fees, but liquidity is probably the bigger answer here for sure. It's just it's friction, right? is one of the ways in which you measure, you know, the utility of something. And it still seems like unless you're really in the crypto world,

like I'm trying to just imagine kind of like newcomers that are just learning Twitter and then also trying to get them into like the crypto space and like, oh my God, like they are just targets or would be targets for exploitation in a way. Yeah, it doesn't help that if you tell the crypto people that the UX or the UI is terrible, they try to run you over with the truck. Well, some of the very things that make crypto powerful and preserve privacy are the very things that makes it harder. So it's, it's that tension that you have to be willing to accept. And I think for a lot of folks, it's not quite there yet. But okay, Brian, any last thoughts before we wrap up? This has been great. Yes, too. Oh, by the way, it has been great. So I want to say thank you to everyone that's contributed. Two last thoughts, which are, I keep hearing people talk about specifically the Jack connection to what Twitter has been doing and the fact that, you know, we keep mentioning Square. and the cash app and the frictionlessness of it.

And I keep hearing people say, watch this space, watch this space, watch this space. If there's any platform, I know there's separate companies, but they're run by the same dude. If there's any platform that can make this sort of frictionless, it might be Twitter. The second thing,

we keep talking about this creative, or creator economy stuff, Packing McCormick's Not Boring newsletter, I recommend everyone and Chris can put it in the notes. The Great Online Game was, I think, his free, one of his free newsletters this week. The thing that I keep coming back to is, and he's actually, he's quoting somebody Nick Milanovic or Milanovic, as I've learned, because if it's VIC, it's VICH. this idea of what we're talking about when we're talking about the creator economy is

sometimes it's weird to remember that we're all effectively competing to hit the right keys on our keyboard in the right order, and if we do it for long enough, we can buy a house. And that's the best summation of the creator economy in a way, and I know that that's reductive, but it's also highly accurate. kind of true. Amazing. All right, guys, this has been

the Tech meme ride home experience. Thank you once again for joining us today. This is super fun. We went super deep on social dipping,

which I think is great. There's a lot for us still to learn. I'm sure this year is going to be full of all sorts of interesting, I don't know,

learnings and discoveries. But for now, Brian, where can people find this? Is it still tech. com or supercast.com? What is it?

What? for it to listen to the show. Yeah, yeah, to get the download. No, tomorrow, it will be live on the tech meme ride home feed, which is free everywhere. Just search, search your podcast app for ride home or the tech meme ride home. Um, and it will be free with ads. If you want to pay, Chris is his mentioning he, Chris, Chris is, I'm a better salesman than you are. You're my agent. Yes, there's also, you can pay to have, uh, an ad free. and bonus episodes and stuff. But yeah, just search right home.

You can tip me for being your agents. That's right, right, right, right. Okay. Well, anyways, now you guys know where to find it. Follow us. And, yeah, we'll be here sometime soon again. Thanks all. Awesome.

Thanks, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.