The Vergecast - SXSW Part 1, Facebook Messenger Day, and Sonos Playbase

Episode Date: March 12, 2017

As you may have heard, The Vergecast is live this week at South by Southwest! We have one episode down and another one to go on Tuesday. On this special episode, Nilay and Dieter welcome Lauren Goode and Casey Newton on to talk the news outside of SXSW; in the tech world. And the show wouldn’t be complete without the weekly gadget segment, so Paul — relaxing at home in New York — sent the gang a letter to keep the tradition alive. You can listen here, or watch the video on The Verge Facebook page. 03:55 - Google and Levi’s connected smart jacket will come out this fall and costs around $350 06:59 - Uptime is a goofy video sharing app from Google’s Area 120 startup incubator 09:13 - Facebook Messenger Day 19:52 - The Sonos Playbase is a $700 speaker that sits under your TV 26:19 - FCC’s walk back of ISP privacy rules 36:27 - Anchor is like Snapchat stories for audio, and it’s delightful 38:56 - Paul’s weekly segment “Friendship is like a Keurig” 41:39 - Latest Samsung Galaxy S8 leak gives us a close look at button changes 45:20 - LG G6 and the mobile/desktop dream 53:49 - Twitch replaced its homepage with a Twitter clone for gamers Tune in Tuesday at 1:30 ET/12:30 CT/10:30 PT for another live episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to the Ridgecast, the flagship podcast of Theverge.com, a multi-channel media experience about technology. And we're live. We're live. We're live. We're live. Big noise. Google's AI is really good at providing that artificial crowd noise for us. It's amazing. But we're at South by Southwest. We're doing two shows live here. One today. One today. One a couple days for now. I'm Neil Lepael in The Edge. I'm always by Deuter Brown. Hey, Deeder. Hello. How's it going? On this episode, Lauren Good is here.

Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. Hey, everyone. Hey, everybody. Is that all right, that worked. Yeah. Hello. Technology expert, Lauren Goode will not operate a microphone. And Casey Newton's here. Hi, everybody.

You look great this morning. Yeah. We're just going to get right into some news. There's a lot going on, but kind of not at Southby. So I want to start with Casey and Lauren, because you guys are roaming reporters. You're doing this stuff. Casey, what are you seeing here? So I think the show has gotten off to a little bit of a slow start, at least for the first

couple of days. I think that might turn around today. Joe Biden is speaking. That's the hottest ticket at South By. It really says a lot. Former Vice President Joe Biden. James Comey was supposed to be here, but he backed out. He did.

He heard about some of the questions I was prepared to ask him. And he said, no, thank you. So, yeah, so we haven't seen a whole lot. There's not a social app breaking out that I can tell. But if any of the audience, if you're using a hot new app, you should let me know. Or if you've created a new app, just email Casey. It's Casey at the Verge. Yeah, yeah.

Nelai at theverse.com. Casey's actually been really, really active on the new Facebook Messenger Day story Snapchat clone thing. So you can find him there at South by Southwest if you're looking for it. Lauren, what are your adventures? What are you going up to you? Well, let's see. My South by Southwest started with an interview at the Delta Terminal at LAX, as they often do.

Yeah. And that was really fun. I was supposed to interview some actors that are here, and they kind of backed out. Because, you know, actors. But I did it up interviewing some really interesting technologists. You can find that video on our social pages. Last night I went to a comedy show. And this morning, more importantly, I saw Dean Bacquet, the executive editor of the New York Times.

Yeah. Interviewed by his own media reporter. So hard hitting. Yeah. There was a lot of like, well, you're really my boss. Let me just ask you this. Which is exactly what this is going to be like. Lauren, what have you done today?

What have you been filing? Like a mad person. I am not hungover. If Lauren interviewed you. you'd be wrecked. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't, I think the listeners all know that I'm mostly a figure.

I think it's very obvious that I don't do a lot here. But to Casey's point, I think today is going to be a lot more interesting, and it did kick off with this discussion about the New York Times coverage of Trump. And in fact, the name of the panel was, I think, covering POTUS, the failing New York Times or something like that. And so they just got right into it. And what it's like being the New York Times covering Trump right now, what it's like to sort of wake up and have the president tweeting about the organization, how the New York Times plans to

covers tweets, and has been covering tweets. So it was a pretty interesting conversation, I'd say. Yeah. It just feels like a very quiet year so far. But I don't know. Brands are here. They'll activate. That's the thing is that you have to wait for the activations to start. It's inactive, by definition until then. Well, there's a, there's a Star Wars activation that's like, escape the room but not escape the room. You'd like walk around. I've never escaped a room. Should I escape a room? You should escape a room. Where are the exits in this building right away? There's a hollow lens over there, this robot arm over here?

There's a lot. The robot arm over there that drew a verge logo. If you're in your car, just imagine a robot arm drawing a verge logo. It really speaks for itself. That's just witchcraft is what all this is. I think it's actually filing a story right now, which only goes to show that our jobs are being replaced as we speak. That's good. It's actually a much better story than anything I've written recently. But we should get into some other news. There's actually a lot of Google stuff. Google and Levi's are here.

Yeah. Classic stuff by Team Up. Like peanut butter and jelly. They love each other. But like a year ago, they announced a smart jacket. Those are some words I said. I'm going to buy the hell out of the jacket. Jackard. Jackard. Turn off the music. Because you tap it. Okay. So if you don't know,

it's a Levi's computer jacket. Yeah. And it has fibers woven into the left sleeve? Left sleeve. It's a little touch pad, basically. Yeah. They're touch sensitive. You can swipe and tap and draw circles, I don't know. And it controls your phone. And it has a little, like, Bluetooth cuff link that actually does the work. And then you take that thing off and you can wash it because they're just, like, washable fibers.

The weird thing about this is, I saw the tech, like, what, a year and a half ago? Yeah. It just keeps on taking forever to get released. So it's supposed to come out in spring. Right. It's supposed to go now. So we all got invited to a Google party last night that got rained out because it's raining in Texas. And then the big sort of announcement was,

it's delayed until fall. So really thematically appropriate for their party. Kind of got washed out. At least it's happening, I guess. I mean, I'm just the fact that the rain ruined a party about a jacket is like kind of amazing. Would it be $350,000?

Which is a lot, basically. Well, yeah. I mean, what's a good jean jacket cost that doesn't have touch-sensitive fabric woven into it? You're still not telling us people. You're really setting up the... So our... reporter Nick went to go see this jacket yesterday and he came back and I asked him what it did and

he basically said everything Dieter said and I was like okay but like what is it do and he's like well if you just sort of like mash your paw on the sleeve you can pause the current track yeah and then if you mash it again it'll restart 350 dollars enjoy it I mean how about that voice technology that also does stuff like that now wait wait wait wait I'm super buying this jacket are you really I would what would you rather do as you walk around would you rather scream at your headphones to stop the music or would you rather like gently like

do some cool stuff? I would like it more if there were different like I'm looking at Deeter's jacket right now thinking where should the technology be and like why can it be in different places? I look at Deeter's jacket every day and think where should the technology be. Just a constant refrain about it. If I could go to a store and there's two

jackets and one costs 50 bucks more and it has Project Schaard built into it I'd pay the 50 bucks. Yeah. I think that's true. But it has to be a good jacket that I already want. going to go buy it. It also has to be for sale, which is a problem that Google seems to be having with all of their products. You got a pixel, though.

Your pixel will finally arrive. Seven months later. Yay. I'm really into it. Your photos look lovely. I had a terrible crisis of confidence because I got it the day before I came here. And I was like, am I going to turn off I message and switch Sims the day before I leave for five days?

The struggle is real. And I was like, no, I'm not. Like, no, I'm not going to just be like, I will get no text messages for five days. So I have two phones today. That's good. But I keep wanting to use the pixel. So Google actually did a thing today. They might have the app of South by Southwest. Oh, tell us about this. It's called uptime. You've described to me twice, and I still don't really understand it. It's made by this thing called Area 120, which is like Google's incubator division where if you want to quit and

go make an iPhone app, like, what if you didn't quit and you just made an iPhone app here? And so they just, they made an iPhone app that is designed to, you find a friend, and then you watch a YouTube video together, and then you put smiley faces on the YouTube video. It's basically Facebook Live, but for watching YouTube. Yeah. And it's messaging app. Your little icons go around.

Yeah, they float around. They travel around. They're like racing around the circle. As you're watching. So it's basically a kind of progress. It's fun. It's fun. It's cute.

It's cute. It's a 50th messaging app. Eventually just going to be built in, if it works, we'll just be built into the YouTube app. I don't know how Google wants me to communicate with anyone. It's deeply unclear what Google's, like, core conviction is. And now their idea is, what if you watch videos together

while your icons raced around a circle, like throwing hard eyes at each other? Which I guess, now that I say it out loud, it's actually really nice. Sounds really pleasant, actually. I don't know. I want to talk more about Google stuff. There's all this other stuff happening. They can recognize objects and videos.

Yeah, so they had this conference, Google Cloud next at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, and I went and I regret every minute of it. It was the most boring thing I've ever gone to in my life. But they announced a bunch of stuff, so they can recognize stuff in video, which is just crazy.

So the leap I want to take from there is that's great, but what they can actually do is then create videos. So they can watch videos, and then they can generate new videos based on what they've noticed about you watching other videos. So they're automatically editing stuff together based on things

they're stitching together. They can be like you've watched a bunch of kiddie videos. We've made a video that's all the best parts of the other kiddie videos. How do you know I watch Cat videos. They know you watch cat videos. They know when you stop watching them.

They can identify the cat. I've seen your Instagram, Lauren. I know that you make a lot of cat videos. How's your cat doing? He's one. I miss him. He's great though. By the way, my cat.

Android was named after my cat in case you didn't know. We're going to talk about Lauren's cat. Okay, so Casey, I'm just going to let you pop off about Facebook Messenger. I'm ready to go. So messaging, I think we all know, is disaster for every company that doesn't doesn't lock you in with their iPhone. Right. So it's like hyper competitive right now.

Snap just IPOed. It seems like Mark Zuckerberg has a hard directive to every one of his lieutenants. Just copy Snapchat as much as you can. So Instagram, I think, we were talking about this last thing. Instagram has done, I think, the best job of just boxing in Snapchat.

I agree. WhatsApp put out a Storius clone, and then Messenger did something, and you, I believe, hate it. I don't think it's going on. Do you guys have this new update, Messenger Day? Does this make it any sense to you? Okay, do you use Facebook Messenger or is that not hot?

No. These people are their privacy. Okay. Ask them if they use hangouts. No, no. What do you use? What do you use? What do you guys use?

Huh? I message. I message. I message. I message. Some signal users out here. Snapchat and Snapchat users. Allo.

We found Al. Who is the guy in the front row with the checker shirt? Just come to my show. We're going to tag you and release you back into the wild so you can be studied. here's the thing about Facebook Messenger is that it used to just be a list of messages and then you would type on your keyboard and people would receive them

and really they had a nice thing going. Now you open it and the first third of the screen is just your friend's faces just being like, hey, I'm in Austin, I'm eating a taco. And you're supposed to respond to these and it literally is just Snapchat

inside of what was previously a text-based texting at and people are revolting. When I look at it, because it's revolting. Because it's revolting. When I look at the whole screen for Messenger, there's like a bunch of faces. I see three chats and then

a bunch of faces, some more faces, birthdays. It's been Amateur's birthday for like three years now. Every day, it's always his birthday. And then the rest of my messages are actually like, it's impossible to just type at somebody. It's gotten very bloated and I think that's what happens when you

are driven by data and not a more intuitive sense of how human beings actually want to communicate, right? This is Snapchat's strength is that Evan Spiegel and his product people have a very good sense for the way that people really want to interact and Facebook doesn't. Facebook just wants to look at spreadsheets and decide how they can optimize engagement by 3% more and the result is a messaging app that looks like Microsoft Office. So, you know, we'll see what the effect is. Which is your dream. So we'll see what the effect is. But the early reviews have been pretty bad. And, you know, I'm not a heavy WhatsApp user, but my WhatsApp status,

which is essentially the same thing that Messenger Day is, is completely empty. Like, nobody's using it. Yeah. It's crazy to me that when Snapchat first started, people complained about the interface so much. And they were like, oh, God, it's terrible. It's confusing.

There's so many swipes and taps. I don't know what to do. And now everyone's like, Snapchat, messaging, brilliant. And Facebook Messenger was essentially this utility. And now it's become this ridiculously bloated thing. Yeah. Yeah. It makes me pine for the interface of Snapchat,

which is a thing I never thought I would say. I just want G-Chat to come back. Everybody loved it. Who didn't love it? Not coming back. Never coming back. Here's the bigger question. It's on a whiteboard in Sundar's office somewhere.

It's on a jam board. Stop saying jam board. That's why no one will take the idea seriously. Sooner is like I'm not doing any these fucking jam board ideas. Stop rolling that in here. Here's my question for the panel. There's this idea out there that is driving all of this, which is that the keyboard is the interface of the past

and the camera is the interface of the future and that we're moving away from a world where we're going to use text to communicate and it's all just going to be us trading images back and forth. Do you accept that to be true and are we too old to understand how that's going to work? Yes, the children of the future will be dumber than ever. No, I completely disagree with that.

I think if anything, what we've learned is that these products are segmenting super hard and the tablet zone is confusing. It's like, it's become this consumption device, and most people want a laptop and a phone. And fine, they're going to communicate with a phone, and it's very quick to communicate visually with a phone. But that just means your written communication

is going to get richer in some way, and no one's solved that problem. Yeah, here's what I'll say. I don't love typing on a keyboard and taking a picture is way easier, but it turns out that language is a pretty good means for communicating information abstracted from what you're seeing.

It's a pretty good invention, and there should be a way to continue to use it on a phone. And a picture just isn't language. It's a language, but, like, I need to tell you I'm going to be late. I'm not going to send you a picture. Wait, wait. I'm going to definitely start doing that to you because I'm always late, and I'm just going to start sending you cryptic photos. What if you just send me a picture when you're not going to be late, and then I'll never hear from you again.

I'll never send you any photos to do. I think we have a writer's bias. I think we are writers, and I think for as long as I live, I will have a writer's bias where for me sitting down and typing something and being like, meanwhile, at the Driscoll, Neil, I was having important meetings. Like, what am I doing? I was just thinking about like writing something about South by.

I was going to drink butt light all day, but do I have to? No, I mean, I just think that's always going to be something that I turn to. Yesterday's podcast, the Too Embarrassed podcast with Mary Lou Jepston, we talked a little bit about how she, her newest startup, they're looking at neural activity and how you'd basically wear this ski cap that would monitor your neural activity and then put images out there in the world based on what you're thinking, which is this crazy, awesome, futuristic idea. But there's a certain, there are all these ethical and interesting complications that come up when you're talking about just using voice

control, pressing buttons, and not really thinking about, I think there's a little bit of a, perhaps a thoughtlessness that can happen with communication when you're not actually taking the time to sit and write. Yeah. Also, the moment at which my thought Because thoughts become visible is the moment I'm just sent to jail and never seen again. This technology, how can we go back in time and prevent this for being invented? There are so many things of photo can't do. Like, what are the most viral photos that are like memes? They have text on them.

Right. Because you need to enhance that photo in some way. Like, you can't deliver an insult to someone. I'm thinking of you personally. Things that you would want to do and communicate. Like, you can't do that just by taking like a photo of your own face. You have tried many times to deliver a cutting insult just by showing what your face looks like. There's things people want to do.

You can't really tell a joke with just a photo. Yeah, I agree. And so it sounds like we're on the same page that there's value in human language, so there's our hot tape from the verge. So the question is like... That's a Burgecast, everybody. Yep, and good night. But the question is like, is there still going to be a text-centric messenger in the future or is every single one going to morph into this, you know, say it with your face type of thing?

I think that's the open question. So I think there's actually a really cynical reason behind that push, which is I don't think anyone would accept advertising in their text chats. So, like, as I'm talking... He's about to steal my idea. It comes from me, by the way. I'm just going to... No, no.

If you're in your car, what I'm doing is I'm awkwardly passing an invisible wall to Deter. But, you know, like this. That's what you do. I can't catch it. I'm a professional mime. It didn't go well. Mime is always so great on a podcast. Yeah.

No. But, like, you would never accept if I was text. with you, just Google being like, and they're trying with Allo in some way to be like, hey, we're reading what you're writing. Why don't you go to this coffee shop to meet your friends? Yeah, exactly. But with Snapchat, what they've done with stories particularly

well is you're clicking along and then all of a sudden it's like an ad. And that is very valuable. That means they can monetize this interface track. Which is your whole thing. The core innovation in stories is, it sounds dumb, but instead of scrolling by moving your thumb up, you're swiping

by moving your thumb to the left. and it becomes a pain interface instead of a single sheet that moves. On a single sheet that moves or in text, if that gets interrupted by an ad, like, what the shit? This is no, uncool. But when you're swiping between things that change,

bop, bop, bop, if one of those bops is an ad, you're like, oh, yeah, that's the way the world works. Right. Too bad. It's just like it's a magazine reinvented. And so when everybody is copying Snapchat, it's not that they're so deeply in love with the magic of stories and telling your day

and look at this interface, it's that, oh, shit, they figured out a way that people will accept ads that they didn't accept before. We need to get in on that. Yeah, and that's what you want everywhere. It's nonstop, intrusive advertising in all of your communications. Yeah, we say as we sit inside a giant advertisement

made out of National Geographic. No, but National Geographic is great, and I really appreciate all the work they do. Please subscribe. They gave me this beer. Yeah, I got a beer, we're sitting here. That's great. It's good.

Open bar. All the brands at the bar are great, too. My favorite boozes from all around the world. Next Vergecast is going to be from Antarctica, so be sure to stay tuned. They're going to tell us we're going to Antarctica, and we're just never coming back. That's how National Geographic puts the kibosh on you. We've got a great idea for a mini-series. They're like, we really hope that smart watch works for you out there in the wild.

No what I mean? We're definitely scheduled to do two episodes of this series. We're now definitely just doing this one. Is Messenger like existentially in trouble, do they need to dial this back, or is it just this is the way that things look now. It's actually sort of an interesting question. I don't think it's existential in trouble in the sense that they're just going to have to get rid of it or something. It has hundreds of millions of users

but most people assume that their engagement is pretty low, so the amount of messages that people are sending per day on Messenger is much less than what you would find on something like Snapchat. And the other big thing to think about with Messenger is they made this big push into bots last year, right? Which was going to be the other way that they monetized was by helping you

interact with businesses and taking a cutoff of sales and that just totally flop. So that flopped. So if this advertising based push into stories flops as well I have a question outside of like the Echo or Google Home or Siri does anybody interact with a bot at all

we've got a fundraiser over there the one Allo user's like he's like yeah all the fucking time because that's the only thing to do in aloe just me and the robot anybody else any other humans we've got a couple over here yeah what bot stuff you do?

Slackbot Slack bot okay Oh it's not by bot Oh it's okay so a couple nerd specific bots are invading the world. I just think it hasn't happened, but I think the voice stuff will kind of make it happen.

Which is an excellent way for me to segue into a lengthy rant about Sonos. I'm really mad about the Sonos playbase. I understand that it is a low interest product for everyone but me. Although Casey's very angry about it too. You just yelled about it a lot. You just love failure.

Describe what the playbases. Take the play bar from three years ago, the sound bar, and then make it really $700 and do nothing else to it. And then put the TV on top of it. And lower the price to $400. Oh, whatever. Well, I'm just got, you know, for those out there that are wondering about the price.

No, the Playbase is $700. Oh, it is? Yeah. Oh, I thought I was lower price for some reason. No, no, no, no, no. I don't listen to what I just said. So Sonos has a new CEO. You interviewed Patrick Spence.

Patrick Spence. You interviewed him. He says all the right things, but hasn't done them yet. Yeah, is what I will say. And their big dream is that they're going to sell you a distributed speaker system in your house where you can talk to every voice assistant. Yeah.

It's... Issue commands to all of them. Yep. So, like, you can say Alexa or, hey, Siri, or whatever, and it will, like, do the back in and go talk to the right assistant. Yeah. So, Solos's core claim is, because they are in Santa Barbara, not Silicon Valley, they're the Switzerland of smart assistants, and everybody...

I often think of Santa Barbara as being Switzerland. Yeah, yeah. It's great. It's fine chocolates, Europeans. Yeah, there you go. Aquine features. I don't know. They think that Amazon and Google and Apple and I don't know, whoever else makes it and it's just Microsoft are all going to be totally fine to all have all their assistants listening at the same time on Sonos's speaker system because Sonos is the switcherlind of speakers.

Right. And that they're going to link fairly to all of the services that you can possibly listen to. In order to achieve that future, they have to A, make sure that those companies let them do it. And B, here's an important thing. They need to put microphones in their shit. Yeah. Which they didn't do with their brand new $700 speaker. Right.

Which makes no sense. Yeah. That makes D-O-A. Also, the speaker doesn't have H-DMI inputs. If you're making a home theater thing and people, there's a lot of arguments about this, but I just don't think you should make a $700 home theater speaker that doesn't accept H-TMI. How does it actually sound compared to the initial $700? So Chris Welch went and listened to it.

He says it sounds great. Yeah. I have a bunch of speakers. They all sound great. Like, they're fine speakers. I think their problem is they're just so high on their own supply that we're the simplest way to listen to music. We have the simplest way to distribute music. They've forgotten that there are many, many other ways to do that now.

So it's like a lot cheaper to buy a bunch of Google cast devices and stream music all over your house. If you have services that are compatible with Google cast. It seems like they're really, Sonos is just totally doubled down on this idea that they're selling to audio files or selling to people who really want hi-fi. super great sounding stuff while maybe missing the fact that even if someone buys a crappy speaker, like an echo dot, which is a totally crappy speaker, and to some extent the echo,

that's still money and hundreds of dollars that someone is going to spend on something else and possibly not spend on a sonos, even though they offer two completely different value propositions. Yeah. I mean, I think that if you offered somebody a sonus play one, which sounds great. And they're only $199.

Yeah. And they sound, yeah, they're not. Super expensive. And then you offered them an echo, which sounds awful, but it's clearly easier to use because you can just talk to it. I think a great number of people will just pick the echo. Yeah.

I don't know anybody who's dying to put a huge piece of plastic under their TV. Also, Bose makes that product, and if you're just going to buy a huge speaker to put under a TV, you can get it for $300. So the only people who care about this product

and people already have a sono system and they want another speaker for their bed. It's just very confusing. Yeah, also people are going to pay, one voice assistant for their house. I honestly believe that. Like, it's hard enough to learn the interface for one. The idea that you're going to pick a speaker because you can speak to five at the same time is insane. No, but I think that's how you address the market. And also, I think a lot of people have Siri and Alexa in their lives already. Sure, but not, I don't think they're

super happy about it. Or I think they, like, probably choose to use one a lot more than they use the other. Or they use them essentially interchangeably because the set of commands is basically the same. Yeah. No, I disagree again. All right. I think the reason that you have Alexa in your life is because you want it to do house stuff. Yeah. It's like ambiently around you. Yeah. And the Siri home kit stuff is in some cases better and some cases worse, but Alexa just owns that space.

And then when you leave the house, you have your phone with you and you might talk to Syria. But Siri's, to me at least, it's about like what's happening on your phone. Right. You're out and about where Alexa is like what's happening in your house, right? Sure. It was like neither of those things are really going to differentiate a Sono speaker, right? You're not going to be more excited by Sonos because it has Siri in it. Right.

As long as everything is still kind of a walled garden, even if you have five assistants in the same speaker, you're still ultimately going to default to the voice assistant that's going to bring you to the service you want. I can't imagine even thinking to say like, Alexa, open my iTunes or play. It's just not going to happen that way. I guess to your point, I think to your point, you can have five assistants in the same speaker and ultimately you're just going to use one or two. Right. Yeah.

But if you want to sell speakers to everybody, which Sonas has to do, I don't think they can just sign the deal with Amazon. be like, it's Alexa now, right? They have signed a deal with Amazon, but that's so you can buy an echo dot and light up your sonos. Which I'm very excited to do it. That's the other thing is they haven't shipped like a full Alexa skill yet because they're trying to have a deeper integration. So like their claim is when they finally, like you can buy a dot

and stick it on top of your sonos, right? So buy the play one, put the dot on top of it. Can you actually? Oh, you can't put a line in. I didn't think you could do sonos. Yeah, but it doesn't like fully integrate yet because they want to have, they want to live in a world where, you ask Alexa to play Apple Music on your Sonos.

And there's like three partnerships that have to happen there and like three translation layers. Alexa needs to know that you like Apple Music, but Alexa doesn't talk to Apple Music, but Sonos talk to Apple Music. So they got to do this whole like jigsaw puzzle of crap. And that's like they're waiting. The story of Sonos is like,

we know what the perfect solution is and we're going to have it for you in three years. Yeah. And that's always been their story. And people wonder why vinyl is resurging. popular. Does that seem easier? Like, I'm just going to walk over there and play some music.

I know. Turn up the volume and it'll be fine. It just seems very complicated to me. Yeah, this company sucks. What else we got? I just wanted to rant, right, about plays. So, I don't know if you guys have been following this. I am personally tracking the day-to-day movements

of FCC chairman, a jeet pie. Does he share his location with you on Find My Friends? Has he agreed to him on the Vergecast yet? Well, you know, he's really. waxing those privacy rules, so I just know where he is. So Jake this week wrote a big thing. There's a move afoot. So

when the FCC reclassified the internet on the title two, they are granted to new power to regulate the internet. One of the things that the FCC did with that power was affirmatively tell internet service providers. You can't share data. You can't share browsing data. You can't share information about what

websites people visit, all this stuff, with other parties without getting consent. In fact, you shouldn't do it, just don't do it. This FCC is rolling that back. They've halted the implementation of that, and Congress is going to pass a law just wiping it off the books entirely. So I have a conspiracy theory. Which is?

I'm just going to do it. No, I don't think it's a conspiracy. I think it's fact. I know what his theory is, but like, the thing that, before you get into your thing, the thing that boggles me is the FCC is basically saying with a little bit of like hand-waving and talking about the FTC, Verizon

and AT&T and Comcast can look at the website you visit and then sell them to advertisers or to whomever they want and they don't need to even tell you they're doing it. I don't understand why the entire internet isn't on fire with anger about it. It's like

nobody can notice because they're too busy seeing all the other crap that's happening that your browsing habits you, like you, sorry you go to a porn site at Incognito. Comcast still knows that, no. They can see it. Someone at Comcast is like, oh, another hot night.

It was getting wild No, this is the thing. We did a story. I can't remember for us, AT&T or Verizon's Data Center, where we went to their data center, and they have to make their jobs seem interesting, so they all build these, like, war game-style rooms, where they're like, this is the internet,

and it's like, who looks at this? They're like, you, just come back, whatever you want, or so forth. But they build these huge walls, like data walls, and they're like, that's all the porn, and that one's all Netflix, and it's like, here's the internet, and it's like one-third net, Netflix and like two-thirds porn.

Porn industry leading the way once again. I mean, they know. They're hyper aware of this stuff. Yeah. So what's happening is, I think you just add up all the, this is truly a conspiracy theory. Okay. This is some Alex Jones shit I'm about to do,

but it's like a live audience. I'm going to start screaming, turn red, and take off my shirt in a second. It's going to be great. But all the pieces line up. So Verizon in particular has gotten in trouble several times for injecting a super cookie into every network packet.

So if you have Verizon, phone, they're literally tracking on a packet level what you do with that phone. They've been told to stop, they change it so you could opt out, but it's still there, which is, it's like a dancer on the rule. They're like, we're just not... Do you need to explain what a super cookie is? It's a cookie that's super. Okay.

You guys all know what a website cookie is, right? I think Vergecast's listeners know. So super cookie, you can clear your cookies on the browser level. You can clear that data on sort of a mobile phone, you can like push the button on the iPhone, and get rid of all that tracking data. You can do it on Android phone. Verizon just does it at the network interface level. So you can't just clear it.

And even if you could, it would be a Verizon user interface. So it would be like punishing it hard to use and probably not work. And then charge you $39. So they're already tracking this data on a super granular network level. Yep. Their old lawyer, Ajipa, who's now the chairman of the FCC. He's wiping out these rules. They're buying AOL and Yahoo.

which is just... Pause for laughter. Their whole plan with that is to build an ad tech stack to compete with Google and Facebook. I think all they're going to do is say, like, we've built an ad tech stack, we've integrated it into the network, the Verizon network, don't buy ads from Google, buy ads from us because we can track customers better than everybody else.

And the regulatory framework is getting... They're clearing the decks of everything that would stop them from doing that. And their argument, which is amazing, is, well, Google built a business on the internet selling advertising and tracking you. Why can't we? And the answer is that Google provides you services for free in addition to tracking, like in exchange. Well, but the other thing is Google's ad track, Google's tracking, this is a bad metaphor, but I'm going with it. And then you're going to hit me because you're going to be mad at me.

Finally, some violence on the show. All of the ad tech right now is over the top. It's not built into the core of what the network is. Right. If you don't want Google to track you, there's ways to get around. Yeah, don't use Google. I was just going to say don't use Google. Use an ad blocker.

It's all stuff that is like on top of the core of like what the Internet is. The Internet is like TCPIP and HTTP and like, you know, all that stuff. Yeah. Acronyms. The Internet is acronyms. Yeah. It's the thing you need to know. It's basically letters.

Right. But increasingly pictures as well. Oh. You know, it's mostly letters. But now, but Verizon wants to. make, like, add to all, like, the core technologies that make the internet run, just put in ads and tracking.

Yeah. Like, that's the move. And I think the other ISPs are all going to do it, too, because they're going to see the business, and they're going to say, we have this data about what you do. It's the same kind of data that Google and Facebook collect. We want to monetize it in the same way. The difference is if you're a Verizon customer, you can't just stop it. Right. Right. It's very hard. Whereas if you're a Facebook

and you hate Facebook, you can stop it. Right. And I just think that is actually, I agree with Deeter, I don't know why the world is not on fire. How many of you trust your ISP out here? Anybody like any Comcast employees out here? Not seeing any hands for the record. I just assumed Comcast follows me around with a sniper at all times. They're just waiting.

They're like, all right, like Brian Robert. At my command. Yeah. He's got it. He's like, just do it. He's annoying again. Disclosure of Comcast invests in our company. Yeah.

There it is. That's your disclosure for the day. But honestly, how many of you really trust your broadband provider to have your best interest at heart? Right? How many of you really trust your wireless carrier to not fuck you over at the first? I see no hands raised here in the audience. How many people just really don't often think about this stuff, be honest? Yeah.

Yeah. Right? To me, it's just one of those things. But how many of you worry about Google and your privacy, right? How many of you worry about Facebook and privacy? A lot of hands raised. Why is that? Because the explicit nature of the exchange, that you make with Google and Facebook

is Gmail is free, but Google gets to read your email. Whatever it is the fuck that Facebook does is free. But like they get your pictures and your status messages, and you think about that exchange and the value that you give to them in exchange for what they give to you.

No one thinks about that. What most people think about is I pay my internet providers some money and they provide me with a set of bad experiences and often overcharge me and cause me to pay more money. really, really interesting customer service calls. Yeah, you pay for those too.

Yeah, well, that's the thing. The thing that you get from Google and Facebook tracking. They're going to start training actors to make those even more exciting. They're going to get to do all the ads tracking stuff that Google and Facebook get to do. And they get to charge you money for the privilege of being tracked. That's a pretty good business. Yeah. It actually is, I will say this.

It sounds like a great business. Like, I wish that I had thought of it. They started Verizon. They're just going to use all the parts of the cow, man. Yeah. Yeah. So what's the move? Because last night we were talking about this,

he looked distraught, despondent. Because the last time the net neutrality stuff happened, there was this huge outcry, there was push, there was angry articles, websites blacked out, websites blacked out. Why isn't any of that happening right now?

I don't know. Is it Trump is too distracting in general? I think Trump is too distracting. I think that the thing that happened with like SOPA and PIPA and even net neutrality is there were crystallizing moments that were very easy to rally around

and say, hey, this is happening. stop this thing and people can do that. But this is not, like, the crystallizing moments look smaller and are happening in a myasma of other shit that's going on. And so it's like, it's just accretive. And so if, you know, they're boiling the frog, basically, and we're the frog.

Yeah. Not that that metaphor is actually true. Data frog. That's my new startup. I'm watching it here at South by Southwest. I'm 100% sure data frog is already a company. There will be tweets at you within five minutes with a link to their website.

Yeah. I just Google DataGrod, which is a different thing. I was just to say my boyfriend works in fraud, and he says on a regular basis, people misinterpret what he's saying is frog protection, not fraud protection. So that is a common thing. But I think what you're talking about,

I think, A, there's some very complicated technical issues that people on some fundamental level may not understand, including journalists. And it's something that we all have to really read into in research. I think some people just demonstrated it's not something they're really thinking about regularly. And I think to your point, the whole boiling the frog analogy, the frog protection, that, you know, you're saying this is going through Congress and Congress is likely going to roll this back, but there have been a lot of things proposed in the past few months and people have said, well, that bill's never going to pass. And I think that people just kind of have that attitude or that understanding of how government works in general that things don't necessarily get pushed through. And so maybe some of it, some of the lack of reaction is due to that too, people thinking, well, this isn't actually going to happen, even though it sounds. like it is.

Can I just say, I'm so excited when these nice people go home and like, oh, how is your South by? They're going to be like, well, I went to this ad tech podcast inside the National Geographic House and it had an open bar. Like, that just makes me excited. That is South by Southwest. That's like fundamentally what happens here. That's right.

Look, here's what I want this podcast to provide over next year. A crippling sense of anxiety. I think I just heard people drinking more. You can actually hear people drink. Isn't that? That's like every podcast. for me now. Like, even, like, the ones I used to like. Okay, speaking of podcasts, so we can talk about Anchor. You are obsessing. Oh, yeah. This is, this is nice.

This is a, a fun social app. I encourage you to check it out. It tracks everything you do. At the packet level. It's basically Snapchat stories for audio. They're a couple years old. They just released a new version. It's really nice. And the basic idea is you record a short snippet of yourself talking about whatever you like. And then you can dress up your clips with music or these professionally recorded sound effects or people can call into your show. can add their comments onto your own clip and so you can have kind of a radio vibe. So, you know, the problem with most of the audio social apps that I've tried so far is that everything just sounds like a really long voicemail. But it turns out that if you put enough effects on it, it does kind of start to feel more like a professionally produced podcast,

more like radio. And so they're having a kind of having a moment right now. And it's a fun new thing. And I like fun new social things that aren't just Snapchat clones. Yeah. My favorite thing about it, like all these new apps, is it lowers the barrier to entry. So it's actually really easy to use and like distribute this other form of thing. I really want us to start using it in various ways. Yeah. Mostly just Casey ranting at things as he walks around. It's like crazy rants.

But it's legitimately one of the first apps I've seen in a long time that is not, as you said, not a clone of something else, but also makes it easier to create and distribute like stuff in a way that feels real as opposed to forced. Like, Allo, I hate to you picking on Allo. By the way, in my mind, you are just a way. one-to-one Allo. You are Allo. This is your fault.

Can he be on the show tomorrow? We didn't take your picture. Every time we write about Allo, we're going to use you. Oh my God, it's his birthday. Happy birthday. Hello. Did the robot tell you that guy in the front row at a comedy show right now that just the comedian picked on and you're just going to get roasted for the rest of this show.

I hope you don't mind. It's fine. Allo will calm him down later. We'll sue them. I was insulted today. No, but that interaction to me feels really forced, right? Like, we're going to create a new way for everybody to talk to the internet. You have to download this messaging app.

You have to think about talking to a robot. Anchor is one of those things where it feels like, oh, this is the thing I've actually always wanted to do. On the flip side, it is also just voicemail. Like, it's basically just like, I'm going to lead a long string of public voicemails for people. Yeah. Maybe that's what we need in our lives. Maybe. More voicemail.

we're all missing. Personally, I think we're missing jelly. Oh. Okay, wait, speaking of a voicemail, that was all just a long buildup. Paul is not here with us. I think you may have noticed that audience, unless you've assumed that he's like hiding in the corner. Paul didn't make his tap-by, but he basically loves us a voicemail because he does a segment every week on the show. It's the same name every week. Same name every week. I've asked that we all dim the lights if that is still possible, Andrew. Out of respect. All right, let's roll out. Let's run Paul's segment.

Dear Nilai and Dieter, this is Paul. How are you? I'm fine. Thanks for inviting me to South by Southwest, or as I like to call it, Southy South. Sorry I couldn't come. The thing is, I just hate barbecue, tacos, and live music in that order. I do love brand activations, though. Sorry to miss out on those. Is there a wrecking ball this year? I hope there's a wrecking ball. Hit me up on Snapchat if you find it. There's a segment I do. I do. do every week, no matter if I'm physically present or just back at home not doing much and wondering how my good friends, Nilai and Dieter, are doing when they're far away. It's called Friendship is Like a Couric. This week, Ashley Carman reviewed a smart garden for the home that is, it's not hydroponic. You subscribe to the soil pods and they grow plants out of the soil pods. And it's kind of like a currig. It's called a Click and Grows Wall Farm Mini.

And it's pretty cool. And I wish I was with you so we can talk about it and laugh about it. But I guess you just have to go to the website, theverge.com slash circuit breaker and just look it up. But it's a good one. It's a real good review. She did a great job. And I think farming is a good metaphor for the things that we care about. So have a good time in South-Y-South and say hi to the wrecking ball for me.

Your friend, Paul. Paul. We miss you, Paul. Say hi to the wrecking ball for me. Paul. Was that here? I was like listening to that. Yes.

It was, I believe, two years ago. At the Mashable House, there was a wrecking ball because Miley Cyrus's Wrecking Ball was a fun new song at the time. And famously, AOL's digital prophet, Shingie rode the wrecking ball in a now iconic South-E South photo. Yeah. Do you ever get the feeling Matchable exists just to employ Sam Sheffer? 100%.

and I'm going to say not the worst use of their money. They started that whole thing and they're like, we don't know what this is for, but one day Sam is going to make this. It's so that it could actualize Sam. It might dream by the end of this year,

they just rename it Sheffable. We can make that happen. Let's do it. Let's get hashtag Sheffable trending on all the social media, please. All right, Dieter. I don't think we've talked about this a lot on this show.

Lauren, I'm curious what you think to. The Galaxy S8 is just leaked. It's just out. It's just everywhere in the world. exploded onto the scene. Wow. I feel so bad for them. Yeah, I feel really bad

for the giant faceless multinational corporation that just brought down the South Korean president. When are those guys gonna catch a break? Fair. It is just really complicated. Sam Byford wrote that piece

about one of the piece like four times. Like here's the guy and he's gonna be the guy but then there's like some corruption and also there's a cult. I definitely used my like editor-in-chief power as like I really need a flow chart. Can you go back and publish a flow chart in this piece?

And they're like, that'll be really hard to make. They put one in there. It's still very confusing. But yes, Samsung, which is embroiled in a bribery corruption scandal that literally did just bring down the president South Korea. Embroiled like on fire. These jokes will never stop coming.

They really think it's over. I think Samsung is like, yep, handled that. Yeah, we have an eight point checking system now and moving along. It's like we're going to make sure they don't explode by looking at him real close. But the thing is leaking everywhere. Yep. It's a big moment for them. Yep. I don't know. What do you think? I think that's what phones look like now. Yeah. All the leaks are like, it's a big screen and there's no buttons on the front. And I don't know, it's fine.

The thing that we saw is like, we definitely know for sure that like the home button fingerprint, the power button fingerprint sensor is on the back literally right next to the camera lens. Very confusing. Don't understand that choice. Yeah. There are going to be a lot of smudges on those pictures. You know what I mean? It's going to be awful. for the two weeks you have it before it explodes. It's just sitting there. You know what I love about Samson?

Even though all the jokes are easy, they're still funny. It's never not funny that the phones exploded. Yeah. That's true. Funny thing. I mean, it's awful for the people who's phones exploded. Yeah, I mean, it's sad. But I think they still found some joy in it.

How can you not? I'll be honest, if my iPhone exploded, I'd be like, that is badass as hell. I would have gotten a second phone. I would have vined it back. You know? I saw... That would have been their worst nightmare.

I'm going to tell the story. It might be a little out of bounds. I'm going to tell the story. I saw Casey Nistat last night. I asked him a phone he was using. He's like, I have an S7. I don't like it. He doesn't like the radius of the curve on the edge.

He's like, I just don't like it. I asked for the regular S7. But what I really wanted was the Node 7. And Samsung was so afraid that Casey and Istat would like be exploded, that they personally like went to him. They're like, you have to give us this Note 7. They showed up at his door. He was like, no, I love it.

And, like, Samsung was like, no, this will be really bad if you explode. Like, you're very famous. Give us the phone. That must be so amazing. When there's just a knock at the door and there's just two men from Samsung there, like, with a briefcase. They're, like, kind of bluff. Sir, we need to see the phone. The one thing I will say about whatever the S8 brings is that you know that whatever

Samsung does is going to be very conservative around the battery because they don't want another exploding phone. They have to make up for the disaster that was the note. And that's unfortunate because battery technology is something that generally does not improve much year over year. I mean, lithium ion battery technology specifically generally just gets better, but single digit percentages, maybe 10% better a year, right? And companies have to do all kinds of creative things with software and processors to try to get you the most battery life possible. And this is not likely not going to be an advancement year because of everything that happened.

It's going to be a year where it's like, okay, the battery just works and doesn't explode, and that's it. So the LGG6, which everybody except Vergecast listeners have forgotten about because it was really sent it to what all LG phones do, which is disappear. What's out yet? You can't buy it. Well, whatever. I'm sure they're going to try and market the phone. We only know, we only care about it because it was the inspiration for Cizzer vodka. Yeah, snipped out through the night.

There it is. Why are we not drinking vodka? What the fuck is wrong? They, in the most brand-activated environment. in the entire world, we didn't drink vodka. I'm sorry, we'll do it better. That stops me from drinking this beer. They explicitly said, when they told me about the G6,

they talked for like 20 minutes about the metal frame around the battery, and they said they could have put a bigger battery in it. They could have crammed more battery in it and chose not to because they knew, because the carriers did not have the risk tolerance to do it. So, like, that thing could have longer battery life. they chose to put a smaller battery in it. I am sure that Samsung's going to do the same thing. Yeah, and I'm sure Samsung's deal with all the carriers this year is basically a single sheet.

It's on you. It is time. You promise, right? And they're like, no one runs this company. They're all in jail. Like, they already got punished. No, the only thing we really, like, there's some details about, like, what's it like without a home button on the front? Stuff that we don't know.

But the big thing we don't know is the nerdiest thing, which is how is that Dex desktop thing going to work. It's called Dex, right? Yeah. Right? Yeah. I mean, this is, we have talked about this. Yeah. Not Dex in particular, but the dream where you take your phone, you plug it into a dock and it becomes a computer. This is like the continuum dream. Yes. Okay. And Tom

Warren just reviewed, has a terrible name. The HP Elite X3, Pro, 25, Enterprise Edition. Just keep running off numbers and letters. You'll get there. Or GLTE. Max touch. The continuum stuff isn't great. Because it's just your phone shit blown up. It's a little bit more desktop-y, but the thing you want is a,

the thing you want is desktop Chrome. Right. That's otherwise, what, wait, what do you want? WebOS. WebOS. I'm just going to go lay down. Thank you. You know, no way.

You're going to go to $1. I was a pre-arranged troll. I haven't brought up Palm at all in this podcast. I know. I made the signal. That's why I started screaming. Yeah, but that's what you want. You want a desktop web browser and no mobile.

product offers that. Samsung isn't going to be able to offer that to you. Are you kidding me? They totally could. Motorola did it four years ago at the Atrix. They had four Firefox. And that was a rip-roaring success. They didn't lead them selling themselves to Google and then being sold off for scrap to Lenovo. That's what they were like. Lenovo's like, you know what you want is that fucking

Atrix tech? Their desktop mode is going to be pretty useless. It's going to be pretty bad. But it is going to be a feature bullet that is going to maybe sell a few more phones because people will think of the dream. I'm like, oh my God, I could do this thing. And then they'll do the thing and it'll be like,

eh, it's not very good. And then they'll never do the thing, but they'll still have the dream. Yeah. So what you're saying is it's another Trello card for us. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. We have to write a story about the dream.

It's like an ongoing Trello card that we have, like write about dream. Yeah. I don't know. So here's my big question. This is a trend that virtually every mobile operating system and manufacturer, except for Apple has engaged with in some way. Okay. Right?

So Motorola has done it. Samsung has thought about doing it. Microsoft, tinned its hopes and dreams on it. That was great. We all really enjoyed that. Google, it seems like they're trying to... Is doing it from the other direction by putting Android apps on Chrome?

Is everyone doing that just because it's a thing to do or because it's a good idea? I think it's because nobody has any more ideas for software. They're like, well, we've done everything we could think of on the phone, and we've definitely done everything we can think of on a computer. So let's just start taking stuff from the one and putting in the other and vice versa. Like, that's been the story of Mac OS for the past two years.

It's done nothing to Mac OS that's interesting except like slap some iPhone crap on it. Right. They made the mouse cursor a lot bigger when you move it really quickly. That never works for me. It's really exciting. They color-coded labels. I mean, they label, no, no, I don't know. This is definitely only working like 10% of the time.

They didn't do much. No, I think it has to do also with the way people are consuming apps, the way people are just obsessed with mobile apps and are showing, you know, are they still obsessed with mobile apps? I think so. I mean, I think we've sort of tapped out in terms of how many each of us use on a single device, but just in terms of people who have shown they're willing to spend money on apps and app stores. App stores are making money.

I think that has to, I think there are some things that maybe have been done in terms of just privacy on mobile from the ground up that maybe are starting to influence the way things are being done on desktops. I don't know. I mean, maybe I'm just taking a sort of optimistic view and saying, yes, these tech executives definitely have an idea of what they're doing and the merging of. of mobile OSs and desktop OSs, which is probably not the case. Maybe they're just throwing a lot of mud at the wall,

but I think it's the way we use these that is driving that at the end of the day. Yeah. Casey, what do you think? I think that there is a world where the technology gets good enough that Apple can essentially put Mac OS and iOS on the same device.

You plug it into a dock, it shows up and maybe it justifies them charging you another like $3,400 on your phone. It's like a sort of mega-premium iPhone extreme. Apple of all companies is never doing that. Where you plug a monitor into your phone and it just becomes a Mac? I don't know. I mean, I think, well,

what makes the Samsung thing interesting is if it generates enough attention to put pressure on them in the same way a larger galaxy put pressure on them to release a larger phone, right? They're not immune to the competitive pressures out there, and I think that somebody probably will develop a pretty

good phone that is also a pretty good desktop operating system. It's just a lot more likely to look like a Chromebook, then a sort of full-fledged Mac OS, at least in the next five years. Yeah. But then I look at something like this, which is super light. This is my little MacBook, by the way. I know, it's the 12-inch MacBook, super light, doesn't have the world's best processor.

I think it's a CoreM, right, if you remember correctly. But you look at this and it's essentially a shell for your desktop operating experience, right? This doesn't really take anything. I'm having a hard time articulating this right now. Not that much bigger than a phone circuit board. It's just a battery and a screen. And it's not much for you to carry this around South by Southwest. You know, it doesn't hurt your bat.

It's not ridiculously heavy. It's not ridiculously cumbersome or anything like that. So I look at something like that and I'm like, well, why not just carry this around like you're doing rather than expecting this to run a full desktop operating system? Yeah. And it's, Deider, do you bring a tablet with you? You brought your Switch. I brought a Switch. Yeah.

I think the switch is going to destroy tablets. It's the most optimistic reading of that thing because Nintendo probably can't make enough to sell. Yeah. Because that is the Nintendo story. But device that can play good games and can run Netflix, which it should be able to do in a year or so. Right. Why would you buy your kids any other thing? It'll destroy Android tablets, which is not a hard thing to do at all. But there's no way it'll ever, like there's no way the software, like the tablet stuff on it,

is ever going to approach like iPad status. That's not happening. But I think the future of the iPad is like enterprise apps. Right. Right. It's the like the guy from the gas company is like, I've come to, check your meat and they like types like yeah it's that sort of like single purpose experience whereas i i just for consumers like i don't i have an ipad i've not thought about buying a new ipad they can put out as many new ipads as they want yeah and i don't know what i would do with that new one when i when i got when i when i was packing to come here yesterday i definitely like

packed all my stuff and then laid out on my bed my ipad my switch and my uh kindle e reader and i just sat there and started him for a while. Yeah. And this is the saddest story I've ever heard. And you were like, fuck words. I like pictures. I took the switch. I live in the future. And then you look at your neural ski cap and you decided

to use that. But I think what you want to do with a tablet when you travel. You want to watch Netflix. You know, you have a t-shirt that's just fuck words. But it'll be written. Yeah. So you get the whole. Yeah. Wait, explain it again. Because you can't express that in a photo. I don't get it. I don't get it. I would like all of you to send me a photo that you think

expresses the concept of fuck words. You just tweet at me. I'm at reckless. I'm dying to see what this looks like. You're about to get weird. Yeah, that's what Twitter is for, being a little disturbed. Yeah. So lastly, we're kind of running at time here. Okay, so I want you to talk about Twitch,

because there's a bunch of Twitch things happening. Yeah. We launched a Twitter clone. They hired somebody from Twitter. The head of the guy who had the best Twitter client for Android, then he went to work for Twitter, and then he bailed on Twitter for, like, after like six months. Yeah, so this is my secret conspiracy theory,

which I sort of only maybe 70% of a lot. Only ad tech conspiracy theories are a lot. It all comes back to ad tech. Hear me out. So Twitch is the streaming service owned by Amazon. It is most famous for being a place where people live stream games. It kind of does some YouTube-like things, but they introduced a feature called Pulse this week, which enables you to, if you're a broadcaster, you just have an account on the platform.

You can just write text. You can send images. You can send gifts and other memes. Or you can promote your broadcast by actually including the videos. and it appears on the homepage, or at least it's rolling out now, in kind of reverse chronological order, it's just like a baby Twitter. And then right after that happened, yes, they hired the Twitter Android developer. So I don't think Amazon is necessarily trying to destroy Twitter,

but I think at the very least... Also, the easiest thing to do. Well... Wait, what's easier to destroy Android tablets or Twitter? It's a good question. I mean, actually a lot of things have tried to destroy Twitter, and nothing quite has. But it does look like a wounded gazelle.

out there. But what I would say, just limping along. Yeah, it's just like and if you're like Jeff Bezos, yeah, you can kind of Yeah, that's good. Really? You were in the Nat Geo space for an hour and you started just doing wildlife reference. That's right.

Yeah, I promised them I'd get in at least one wildlife reference before the end of the show and now I've fulfilled my contractual obligation. Yeah. So anyway, I just think it's interesting to think about you know, has Amazon essentially pulled in Instagram stories on Twitter where they've kind of taken the part of Twitter that would be most interesting to their user base

and how they've just built it into their own product. How much further are they going to go with this? They just released a desktop app this week which is sort of another thing you need to do if you want to replace Twitter. But after I wrote about this, some people started tweeting at me saying, well, no, they're really just trying to go after Discord,

which is this kind of separate experience that people use to have voice chat during their multiplayer gaming. So it's like all kind of a mystery box, but I just love the idea that Bayes is like, fuck it. rebuild Twitter. And if I were going to do it, like Twitch is exactly the kind of

wedge you need just with like an insanely rabid community that's already looking at something for eight hours a day. Well, the interesting idea there is that you don't, they don't necessarily have to like replace Twitter to be successful, but they basically like, it's like Dropbox. Steve Jobs famous he didn't buy Dropbox

because he said, you're not a company, you're a feature. And maybe that's fundamentally the problem with Twitter. Twitter isn't a company, it's a feature. Do you imagine Twitter or an Amazon Twitter clone on Amazon, not for Twitch. Like, just bought Glad trash bags.

Just ordered more kitty litter with my gosh button. E-commerce social network. Well, there was that... The dream of South by Sout. Again, if there's one place where you could just wander the streets, there's a lot of dumb money here, man. I mean, actually, like, VEMO is arguably

the E-Commerce social network, right? Don't do that to me, man. Let's not get it to it. Come on. We only have 13 seconds left. All right, well, with those 13 seconds, we'll wrap it up. We're doing this again in two days, so apologies to all of you. We'll punish a new group of people in a couple of days. But there's a bunch of other podcasts to listen to, most of which are superior to this one.

For example, Lauren Good's podcast, too embarrassed to ask. You talked about it earlier. You had Mary Lou Jepson on. Yes, we had Mary Lou Jepson on yesterday. Karras Wisher and I are in this exact space. And the video is available online right now. The audio will be soon. Mary Lou Jepson, for those of you don't know, she's brilliant.

She's a display technology expert who has worked for a Facebook Oculus. Google X, and she's now doing this really cool imaging startup called Open Water, where we did talk about, she did a TED talk about this. It's crazy stuff, like being able to read your neural activity. So I highly encourage you to go check that out. We got some great questions from the audience, too. Yeah. And then RICOD decode with Carrey Swisher is happening on this stage. That's right. Tomorrow, I believe.

Tomorrow. The VEP, the members of VIP, the producers and writers. The cast of Veep, and then we're Mac, which is great. But then you can also listen to Recode Media. Peter Kafka did that yesterday with Glenn Beck, which is really interesting. And then I host a show control Walt Delete. With one Mr. Walt Mossberg.

You know, all that's on iTunes. You can find it all. If you're here at South By, just come rolling back through this space. There's another merch cast happening. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just...

We're mumbling over that because we don't have... Tuesday. Come back here Tuesday. Yeah. Well, the Allo Guy's going to come back. He's going to get. He's going to bring his one friend who also has... You have to change your Twitter handle, the Allo Guy.

Anyway, that's our show. Thank you guys all so much for coming. Thank you. Thank you. We'll be back in a couple days. We love you, Austin. Rock and roll. Paul.

Paul.