00:00:02 ◼ ► part of my checklist before I start recording an episode of this show because I usually disappear for
00:00:09 ◼ ► anywhere from two hours to two hours plus while recording the show is before I start I check tech meme
00:00:31 ◼ ► Today was a big day for Microsoft, but I don't remember anything too big in the past. Yeah few minutes. I
00:00:46 ◼ ► Tech meme is of my media diet at least but can you talk about I mean just for anybody who doesn't know you're here to
00:01:30 ◼ ► Messing with news aggregators and like little things to get news from websites because I've always been interested in news
00:01:43 ◼ ► Have a good grasp of what's interesting and what's trending and if you just follow a bunch of blogs and see what they're looking to
00:02:17 ◼ ► So the bloggers were always like the peanut gallery and the mainstream sites were always the the top so
00:02:26 ◼ ► And I by the way, I launched that site a few bloggers had picked it up, but it wasn't like a big deal
00:02:30 ◼ ► Then I thought okay now it's time to do a vision where the bloggers can be the top headline. There is no
00:02:46 ◼ ► keep the political vertical and so I launched those at the same time and the tech one is the one that took off and
00:03:01 ◼ ► That has taken a lot of twists and turns over the years, but I think in many ways we've been very consistent
00:03:19 ◼ ► at the moment to update your knowledge on what's happening so that you can be informed and make decisions and
00:03:37 ◼ ► Did anything happen usually because I'm on the East Coast even though I kind of sleep on West Coast hours
00:03:58 ◼ ► Recognize recognize I know about that. Okay. Oh, that's interesting. Hmm open up a couple tabs. All right
00:04:26 ◼ ► In that environment and I just want to say what else is going on in the rest of the world
00:04:37 ◼ ► Scan the list and say is there anything else? Of course, I got an iPhone 15 day iPhone 15 is on tech name
00:04:44 ◼ ► Okay, here's but did I miss anything? Is there anything that I missed? Nope. Okay, scroll down scroll down
00:04:55 ◼ ► I know yeah caught up and it's a good feeling. I guess there there are two things I can say that number one
00:05:02 ◼ ► What helps in that what makes it a little easier for tech meme to be that is we rewrite almost all the headlines that they're very
00:05:11 ◼ ► And another thing that gives you that peace of mind is we don't have a page to we don't have an infinite tool
00:05:16 ◼ ► It just you get to the bottom and and you're caught up. Of course, there's more to read in the world
00:05:38 ◼ ► And it doesn't really matter what the story is right now as you and I record by the time this episodes out
00:05:46 ◼ ► the lead article links to Bloomberg's coverage of this and then you've got coverage from Microsoft itself the verge venture beat and
00:06:02 ◼ ► Human aggregated it correct. So yeah, yes and no we we've all like when tech meme launched
00:06:30 ◼ ► So the algorithm could help tie it all up and then sometimes group related coverage, but over time
00:06:41 ◼ ► Sometimes the story is suddenly suddenly expires because some new event happened and then sometimes just there's the algorithm that groups things
00:06:49 ◼ ► Groups things that shouldn't be grouped together and we still kind of fight against that the human editors will sometimes break things up
00:07:00 ◼ ► When it comes to news headlines, it's mostly automated when it comes to social posts. There's
00:07:06 ◼ ► There's like an approval process, but a lot of the recommendations are also automated. So it's it's a dance involving
00:07:21 ◼ ► Compliment you but I think it stands out and I think anybody who's been reading tech meme for a long time would agree
00:07:40 ◼ ► Let's be respectful of our readers our visitors whatever you want to call them their attention
00:07:58 ◼ ► Take the click baiting us out of a head. It really is and I think that's human done, right?
00:08:11 ◼ ► I know art artifact has started doing that and I'd like to talk about artifact in a moment
00:08:19 ◼ ► Not that I haven't noticed when you've done it with daring fireball posts, but I've never once objected to it. You know, that's good
00:08:25 ◼ ► Occasionally we get objections like once in a while. We'll make an error, but we try to be basically
00:08:32 ◼ ► Descriptive and yeah, definitely respecting the reader like that goes through everything we do
00:08:53 ◼ ► Curiosity that goes deeper you'll need to click and and get get that deeper look. What's the name?
00:09:00 ◼ ► I've given myself five minutes here to think of it and I can't so I'm gonna ask you I think you'll remember
00:09:23 ◼ ► Yeah, I think they're thinking of technorati technorati. Yeah, exactly it right and I can't I can't say they were they proceeded well
00:09:32 ◼ ► But yeah, they had I think everyone went through iterations where they competed with us in the in that era
00:09:38 ◼ ► Where they provided some kind of blog summary, but they were originally a blog search engine, but the rankings were sort of
00:10:08 ◼ ► Web based thing or an app like net news wire. It has no opinion or tries to do any kind of ranking. It's just
00:10:18 ◼ ► Email your email client most people's I know superhuman is a little weird like that, but
00:10:24 ◼ ► For the most part you just want your email in order, right? Here's the new messages read them
00:10:30 ◼ ► reply to them you're done and feed readers are sort of like that and techno Roddy was trying to do a little more some kind of
00:10:57 ◼ ► Whereas tech meme to me is as relevant as ever and has sort of been in it for the long haul
00:11:11 ◼ ► like when everyone realized real time search could do wonderful things because there were blogs and
00:11:44 ◼ ► There was a lot of everyone sort of realized blogging would actually not continue growing
00:11:50 ◼ ► Exponentially forever, especially when Twitter came along a lot of the like short post bloggers just moved to Twitter
00:11:56 ◼ ► So technorati had both better technical competition and didn't have as much a reason to exist
00:12:02 ◼ ► Why do you think tech meme of the properties which are all sort of based on the same platform, right?
00:12:21 ◼ ► I've just assumed by the way they look in the way they work that they're sort of built on the same
00:12:28 ◼ ► Verticals as you said right obvious verticals that have preceded even the internet, right?
00:12:45 ◼ ► But there's always been a collection of inside the media publications, you know, that sort of thing. Why do you think tech meme is the one?
00:13:22 ◼ ► For a business audience, you're more willing to like compare coverage and you know, look through the related
00:13:28 ◼ ► But I'm not entirely sure now for sure we've invested more in tech me because it was the early breakout
00:13:40 ◼ ► I'm the political one does still does not even have editor. So it's like it's like a demo of the algorithms
00:13:46 ◼ ► So it's it's a little bit of a mystery but since tech mean pulled ahead that's been our biggest focus
00:14:12 ◼ ► Polarizing as some things in technology can be Mac versus Windows Android versus iOS, etc, etc
00:14:37 ◼ ► I am so interested in politics that I want to check on a more than once a day basis what's going on in the world of
00:14:54 ◼ ► journalism, I would hold up tech meme as a great definition of objectivity right where it's
00:15:01 ◼ ► Just here's a list of all this stuff and there's an editorial voice declaring importance
00:15:15 ◼ ► Think that in politics as we've become more polarized people say they want objective journalism
00:15:27 ◼ ► Success of Fox News is proof that large numbers of people don't really want that right?
00:15:34 ◼ ► I well, I'd love to throw Fox News under the bus, but I don't even mean to throw them under the bus in particular here
00:15:58 ◼ ► Sometimes everyone basically has one view on social media. That's just part of doing our job because
00:16:05 ◼ ► People who need to know what is going on here need to know that both those views exist and who's you know?
00:16:12 ◼ ► Voicing them and so on it. Yeah, it goes with our kind of role is sort of like a dashboard
00:16:25 ◼ ► Right. All right. Let me take a break here and thank our first sponsor of the episode new sponsor for the show adblock Pro
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00:19:42 ◼ ► Experience today, that's it. No, no custom URL. Just go to the App Store search for adblock Pro. It'll be the top link
00:19:59 ◼ ► I have always felt that you and I right from when I first started monetizing during fireball with
00:20:07 ◼ ► I've always felt you and I were aligned on that and I vaguely recall when you and I first met which I think was it
00:20:19 ◼ ► In print, I don't know remember but I remember talking to you about it. How does tech me make money? So
00:20:25 ◼ ► For most of the time we've made money indeed from ads and right there like sponsorships from people who?
00:20:35 ◼ ► They know our site and they're making the buy because they want to reach that specific audience
00:20:57 ◼ ► It's sort of like a native format where you know how we have news headlines, but we have sponsor headlines
00:21:01 ◼ ► but they're marked sponsors and they've been there they've been there the whole time and
00:21:07 ◼ ► Yeah, they've always been hopefully classy. They've never even been consumer ads for them. I don't think we've really had anything consumer
00:21:14 ◼ ► It's usually like enterprise or something reached something trying to reach like developers or people in tech
00:21:39 ◼ ► Our sponsors have to do a little work. They have to write some copy specifically for tech meme it there's some friction there. So
00:21:46 ◼ ► Well that will will continue to have ads and we're always encouraging sponsors to reach out to us
00:21:55 ◼ ► And we were probably the biggest new business is in the the media monitor monitoring space. Hmm
00:22:02 ◼ ► It's nothing we've really announced because right now we have a product that's really excels just for the biggest companies
00:22:09 ◼ ► So we just sell that directly. I feel like one way to that. I have an affinity for you is
00:22:41 ◼ ► We have a new thing coming out blah blah blah, but they don't need anything explained to them
00:22:45 ◼ ► Then I have new sponsors who told usually it's like indie developers or something like that and they know it
00:22:51 ◼ ► They've they're like, I'm a longtime Daring Fireball reader. I've always wanted to sponsor
00:22:54 ◼ ► We've got a new app that does blank and we'd love to book an ad and again, I can just send them the specs
00:23:05 ◼ ► Is when I get an email from like the marketing person at a company and the I and whether they say it
00:23:16 ◼ ► But sometimes they just say it explicitly that somebody in the company said we should sponsor Daring Fireball
00:23:30 ◼ ► sponsors page but they and I know that's how they got to me but they still have questions because they don't understand because these ads
00:23:44 ◼ ► Little snippet that I have saved up in text expander to paste into an email with the details on the exact specs
00:23:52 ◼ ► What dimensions exactly the in pixels the ads are how many words you should try to limit yourself to?
00:24:03 ◼ ► If anything, I think the simplicity of it should make it easier, but the fact that it's so different is
00:24:13 ◼ ► Do you run into the same thing? Yeah, it's the exact same all three categories are very familiar to me
00:24:19 ◼ ► I think the funny thing about the the third type is often they speak like a different language. Yeah
00:24:24 ◼ ► Sometimes they've used terms. I'm like, what does that mean? I go. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay, and then
00:24:30 ◼ ► They'll send over the creative or the copy which is almost a little bit of industry term there
00:24:44 ◼ ► And then we copy it from the spreadsheet and put it on the website like whatever works for them
00:25:01 ◼ ► I have to click the Google Docs link make sure I'm logged into the right Google account and then copying out of Google Docs
00:25:16 ◼ ► I'm happy to have them as sponsors and I'm happy to walk them through it and I'm also happy that they often become
00:25:24 ◼ ► Repeat sponsors and I always I often say in my little thank-you messages to sponsors that repeat sponsors
00:25:31 ◼ ► To me are my proof that that my sponsorships work. Why else would so many sponsors come back?
00:25:37 ◼ ► If not for the fact that they thought their original buy was worth it. It's it's a nice little
00:25:47 ◼ ► if you were you know that I I make money because they paid the bills and they they are happy with the
00:25:59 ◼ ► Whatever it is that they're after and they come back and hopefully the readers of my site
00:26:05 ◼ ► appreciate that this is what keeps my site completely free of charge to read and is not annoying and doesn't tempt you to
00:26:22 ◼ ► But I just worry though that as it becomes weirder and weirder compared to the state-of-the-art
00:26:30 ◼ ► That eventually that's going to become a problem for me and I do you worry about that that it's the whole
00:26:58 ◼ ► Descriptions are that it really is like you said when you when you get email from these people it is like they're speaking a different
00:27:12 ◼ ► I do worry about it because it's a real factor. I've noticed like there's there's certain segments of
00:27:29 ◼ ► Hopefully for a long time get that first and second type of sponsor people who know our audience
00:27:44 ◼ ► You've had a podcast and while that's still a sponsor model keeping that going that just adds a whole other dimension
00:27:50 ◼ ► To it and makes the blog makes the podcast stronger and the podcast makes the blog stronger. Yeah, I hope so and
00:27:58 ◼ ► Kind of walked into the podcast business that wasn't something I set out to do but I do think you're right that it
00:28:06 ◼ ► both strengthen each other and I can't quite explain why but I know that that they do and
00:28:16 ◼ ► Is just the emails I get from people who are like I listen to your show and I love your website blah blah blah or the
00:28:27 ◼ ► sponsor both to me is a good sign and that they I don't know that there are siblings that support the same overall
00:28:39 ◼ ► I don't know if that's a good analogy or not because I don't think I don't think a tent actually stands up with only two pillars
00:28:49 ◼ ► Before we move on I want to I still want to talk a little more about the back end at tech meme
00:28:59 ◼ ► Like what's at the top what second what's third how is that determined and how often does it update?
00:29:22 ◼ ► Build this kind of aggregator anymore and that was different 15 years ago. Yeah, so the biggest factor all along
00:29:41 ◼ ► The new stories that are getting the most links are the ones that will shoot to the top and
00:29:54 ◼ ► Roughly the the more linked things in the past few hours now, there are a lot of caveats now
00:30:08 ◼ ► The Microsoft announcement maybe a press release maybe a Microsoft blog and then maybe some
00:30:17 ◼ ► We decide to just post the verge or tech crunch or some kind of blog to be the like the stand-in for all that news
00:30:33 ◼ ► Get the lift that all the other blog posts are getting it'll be like transferred to that as far as how high it goes onto
00:31:13 ◼ ► They're not linking to it's there's not like one article or blog posts that everyone's linking to
00:31:26 ◼ ► What's linked to the most but then with a lot of ways that's been extended so indeed but in some sense it
00:31:33 ◼ ► and I've always thought this and and I know it's you know, you've talked about it or written about it before but it is
00:32:24 ◼ ► Sources and a couple of them are all linking to the same original therefore that original get some implicit
00:32:30 ◼ ► Credibility or importance because of that and I know that even in the early days of Google like 1998 it
00:32:41 ◼ ► but at a high level it was the breakthrough that made Google search better than other search engines and
00:33:08 ◼ ► The one thing I see less and less these days. It does seem like at some point in the last
00:33:30 ◼ ► competitors and even if they credited as as first reported by the Washington Post comma
00:33:51 ◼ ► Their website was way too good to just be a copy and paste job from the print version and they would have links to other
00:34:05 ◼ ► Always in the news industry so clearly begrudging, right? It is like nobody types that phrase
00:34:19 ◼ ► Yeah that well, obviously we didn't like that either because there's not the metadata to read in and inform our algorithm
00:34:27 ◼ ► I don't know what broke that damn what was it was it the community of journalists and pressure peer pressure among among
00:34:33 ◼ ► Those people or was or just readers demanded it because hey we're on the internet. Of course
00:34:55 ◼ ► Natural for them to think of their publication as web first and so therefore, of course
00:35:03 ◼ ► This is gonna have to be a link if we're gonna mention the fact that so-and-so reported this or broke the story
00:35:25 ◼ ► Professionals, but I think that they clearly to me never ever gave the web the respect it was due
00:35:33 ◼ ► they always felt that they were writing for a whether it was if it's a New York Times for a printed newspaper or a
00:35:49 ◼ ► Medium that to them didn't deserve the respect it was due and I you know, I tried to guard against that myself personally, right?
00:36:04 ◼ ► 29 year olds report that they get the majority of their news or like world affairs news from tick-tock
00:36:15 ◼ ► It's a big pill to swallow but swallow it and deal with it because I think it's obviously true
00:36:25 ◼ ► Yeah, I think I think generational is a good explanation that maybe that was the biggest part of it. It's kind of funny
00:36:32 ◼ ► How though now on Twitter? It's like we're moving backwards because of the algorithm people
00:36:42 ◼ ► They'll put a screenshot because the algorithm will ding link maybe ten minutes later though. Oh, and by the way, here's the link
00:37:25 ◼ ► would think fair to say millions of users who before that hadn't been using RSS at all be
00:37:32 ◼ ► got millions of others to switch from whatever they were using before to Google Reader and then see I
00:37:40 ◼ ► Forget how official their API was and how much was they didn't care that it was backwards engineered
00:37:48 ◼ ► I think I think it was sort of that they just look the other way and they didn't care but
00:38:04 ◼ ► So that you could subscribe to all your feeds in Google Reader and even if you didn't like their interface through the web
00:38:10 ◼ ► You could use net newswire or a bunch of other feed readers on more than one device like your MacBook and your iPhone
00:38:26 ◼ ► Then when Google pulled the plug on Google Reader unceremoniously and just say dab this Google Reader thing
00:38:36 ◼ ► that it effectively pulled the plug on RSS for users and that was that and I mean and that was like
00:38:51 ◼ ► But I kind of also think that even if Google it stuck with Google Reader something like that was gonna happen
00:39:00 ◼ ► This is the first primary way people are going to follow the news was long for the world
00:39:17 ◼ ► It has to be frustrating for you because when RSS was more thriving it had to make tech memes job easier on the back end
00:39:29 ◼ ► Prestructured data. Yeah, it was definitely great when a lot of sites actually put all their text in the RSS feed
00:39:40 ◼ ► It still helped because if they have a snippet we would at least by checking the RSS feed know that new posts have appeared
00:39:48 ◼ ► And then send a bot to fill in the rest and now a lot of sites don't even include that kind of feed
00:39:59 ◼ ► Scraper basically for home pages to find like what are the new links that have appeared there?
00:40:18 ◼ ► I guess there's just enough users who complain and maybe new sites some of the bigger ones begrudgingly add
00:40:32 ◼ ► A lot of whom are probably bloggers and reporters at other sites who are more likely to link as well
00:41:25 ◼ ► The fact that they do include RSS by default and you have to take some kind of action to disable it. Yeah, that's great
00:41:35 ◼ ► It's almost obvious I almost feel silly asking but yes, yeah in other words much much of what tech mean does is
00:41:55 ◼ ► Yeah, we've had to do that for the longest time and it gets it gets trickier too because thanks to AI and AI models
00:42:05 ◼ ► a lot more and more sites are just let's just block all the bots is their approach and let's hire cloudflare to
00:42:16 ◼ ► Fortunately, like if you're if you're a big news site you start blocking tech memes car
00:42:23 ◼ ► You're big enough to have a team where when I email and say hey, you're blocking us. We want to link to you more
00:42:35 ◼ ► Sometimes it takes three weeks to make that decision. Sometimes it takes a day, but we sometimes get that result
00:42:45 ◼ ► It's a mess and I don't like the trend but we're hanging in there. It's been true since the web was
00:42:53 ◼ ► Obscure when it was still hey, have you heard of this thing called mosaic? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that looks
00:43:01 ◼ ► It's kind of cool or no. No, what's that? And it's like oh, it's a way to get on the internet other than through a terminal window
00:43:38 ◼ ► Proper HTML that you can run through a syntax checker and we'll say yes. This is actually
00:43:49 ◼ ► Even at the heyday of that movement which coincides with like the early years of daring fireball
00:44:14 ◼ ► HTML programmatically and you know, I love everybody who not everybody but people who know my own
00:44:33 ◼ ► People are tempted to use regular expressions to parse HTML and they're like a don't parse HTML on your own B
00:44:43 ◼ ► Repeat a and B just don't do it one thing I have found I don't need to scrape but I wrote a couple of
00:44:53 ◼ ► shortcuts for iOS and one of them is a way that I make little notes to myself with the title of a put like here's
00:45:05 ◼ ► I want to send it to my notes app with just the title of the page in the URL and save it in this same note
00:45:59 ◼ ► at this point because my little shortcut when it says get the title if there's more than one it presents them in a list and
00:46:06 ◼ ► It's surprise. It's it's like the majority of websites have more than one title, which is
00:46:12 ◼ ► So semantically incorrect that I don't even know where to start. I cannot believe that anybody
00:46:18 ◼ ► Would do this and yet and I think it's I just bring it up as one example among probably
00:46:39 ◼ ► But now nowadays there are some like some new sites. I'll go to it. They're not serving
00:47:03 ◼ ► Like I'll interpret this new CSS tag because I need to know when something's bold because those titles are bold
00:47:20 ◼ ► For some sites just have to use a browser because of all the dynamic stuff. Yeah, I think
00:47:52 ◼ ► You can run from the command line and dump the DOM and then parse that using your HTML parser. That's Andy
00:48:02 ◼ ► And I feel like it probably will because I feel like you said Google itself probably uses it and it's not the sort of thing
00:48:11 ◼ ► But what if the whole world starts using Chrome from the command line is no the whole world normal people are did
00:48:21 ◼ ► They're getting to their actual consumer properties. Their special sauce is way it goes way beyond their crawler
00:48:28 ◼ ► I mean they're crawling is I'm sure some top-notch technology there, but there's so much to Google
00:48:54 ◼ ► All right, let me take another break here and thank our next sponsor and it's our good friends at memberful
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00:49:15 ◼ ► Memberful is the way to go and you're crazy if you don't start by at least looking at it
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00:49:41 ◼ ► To move if you wanted to but you won't want to I don't even know anybody who started with memberful has moved on
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00:49:53 ◼ ► But it gives you that peace of mind that you're building your brand and you're still in control of it
00:50:03 ◼ ► Your your members probably won't even know that memberful is in between that's how seamless it is
00:50:08 ◼ ► And they integrate with all of the tools you already use including services like MailChimp
00:50:19 ◼ ► These are all your accounts you plug into your accounts and they they just connect to your accounts at those services
00:50:34 ◼ ► Which is if that's what you want to do. You don't have to set it up yourself. They handle the integration on their own
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00:51:03 ◼ ► Absolutely. Terrific. I subscribe to at least half a dozen memberful sites things like six colors
00:51:10 ◼ ► Relay.fm a bunch of them and I just love it. I'm happy happy happy subscriber to so many memberful sites
00:51:47 ◼ ► But to me the biggest bane of my existence at daring fireball and it must be for you, too
00:52:02 ◼ ► About the decision. It's just a complaint about the experience in a lot of reading scenarios
00:52:17 ◼ ► Kind enough to approve our crawler so that helps and another nice thing even when they haven't
00:52:30 ◼ ► Option, like, you know like a meter paywall that won't put the wall up until you've visited so many times
00:52:51 ◼ ► Of cookies for the New York Times every 20 visits or whatever. I mean, I would hold the tile
00:52:58 ◼ ► I mentioned the times because they're obviously a major source of news across all fields and I also feel that
00:53:17 ◼ ► Free page views a month for people who don't pay they've got enough content and you know
00:53:23 ◼ ► And they publicly held company and they announced their numbers. They are pretty successfully
00:53:35 ◼ ► I mean, I've known it since the web was created instantly. I knew print was going to be killed off
00:53:56 ◼ ► This is one good measurement of how hostile a paywall is is how annoying it is to be an honest paying subscriber
00:54:03 ◼ ► In a if you're still frequently logged out which I am at Bloomberg very frequently. That's a paddling
00:54:25 ◼ ► Yeah, I think but one nice thing about Bloomberg is they to have I think it's very limited
00:54:30 ◼ ► But still some kind of metered situation where you can see a page like one article maybe
00:54:37 ◼ ► You guys have and going back to Technorati and the concept of leaderboards you guys do publish
00:54:48 ◼ ► Bloomberg to me is an outlier at least amongst people who know who I am and listen to this podcast know that I have a
00:55:09 ◼ ► And so I love to bring it up as frequently as I can with a footnote when they're reporting on unrelated things
00:55:21 ◼ ► They're like why even link to them in the first place instead of linking to them with this footnote that brings up this
00:55:28 ◼ ► Story that you're highly critical of why not just not link to them and my answer is they're too good not to
00:56:03 ◼ ► I don't think they show up so much in the links that like mass audiences are linking to on social media to complain about
00:56:11 ◼ ► Politicians they hate or whatever. It's just more like in all these nice industries. They they're
00:56:28 ◼ ► I'm starting to build this little community on discord where we share a number of like feeds useful for
00:56:35 ◼ ► People in different scenarios and one of the one type of feed we have is if you're a publisher
00:56:43 ◼ ► The volume of Bloomberg there is just so it's so high compared to all the other publishers
00:56:55 ◼ ► I I guess I am critical of it. I because I think it's a worrisome practice and no one's ever denied it
00:57:02 ◼ ► So I'm about as sure that it's true as could possibly be and I've spoken to people who've confirmed it off the record
00:57:22 ◼ ► I don't know if it's an annual bonus or quarterly or how often they pay it but that you get a financial bonus
00:57:30 ◼ ► so if you're writing again, obviously my sphere of interest is off obviously often Apple Center and if you post something about Apple and
00:57:42 ◼ ► 2.37 percent or something like that you get paid a bonus for that whether it goes up or down and the well
00:57:51 ◼ ► It's obvious because they're the main way they make money is by selling Bloomberg terminal access and
00:57:58 ◼ ► Bloomberg terminals are insanely expensive there. I forget I think it's like 20,000 a year
00:58:04 ◼ ► Per seat to start and that you can't even get one you can't even if you want to pay the money
00:58:10 ◼ ► You can't just say here. Here's $20,000. Give me a Bloomberg terminal for the next year. You still have to get approved
00:58:27 ◼ ► First with I think about a 15-minute window and so if you subscribe to the Bloomberg terminal
00:58:33 ◼ ► You have the opportunity to read Bloomberg's original reporting 15 minutes before the rest of the world sees it on
00:58:40 ◼ ► Bloomberg calm and if you think this news is very good or very bad for the company being reported on
00:58:48 ◼ ► You have this window of opportunity to trade their stock accordingly that others don't have and that's what they're selling
00:59:09 ◼ ► Contextualize what they're reporting in market moving ways, which I think is often to me sensational
00:59:29 ◼ ► motivating their reporters leads to both producing good work that needs to be cited and
00:59:39 ◼ ► In management who said it like you start measuring one thing you have to like come up with a measure for the opposite thing because it's
00:59:46 ◼ ► Gonna be abused. Yeah, or be careful what you measure, you know, I guess is good advice. I
01:00:00 ◼ ► Mark Gurman who like I forget how many years now he's been on the Apple beat at Bloomberg
01:00:08 ◼ ► But came to Bloomberg from 9 to 5 Mac where he was writing as a teenager and college student. I mean
01:00:15 ◼ ► To say that he was precocious is it's hard to imagine how he could have been much younger
01:00:40 ◼ ► I think people even if tech meme didn't exist or tech meme didn't publish that leaderboard. I think it was pretty obvious
01:00:55 ◼ ► but I've heard that that was part of what led them to say we've got to hire this kid because look at how
01:01:11 ◼ ► Incred you know Bloomberg itself overall is very influential at tech memes leaderboards
01:01:16 ◼ ► But Gurman in particular as a reporter in the tech sphere is way near the top deservedly. So
01:01:22 ◼ ► Yeah, I haven't heard that but I I know he's been he's always been very tech meme aware and sometimes we talk about it
01:01:29 ◼ ► I was referenced as tech meme would spill into Twitter and he wasn't shy about that and and I you know, by the way
01:01:40 ◼ ► I remember meeting him once when he was he was that teenager. Yeah, he's uh, he's probably he's probably still the top of our
01:01:48 ◼ ► Yes, our leaderboards are like well, there's a whole history with of them and it's part it's probably like can get a little boring but
01:01:57 ◼ ► one way we can be helpful to a lot of companies and comms people in particular in companies is to provide lists of
01:02:22 ◼ ► Ultimately that wasn't too too helpful because there are just a lot of reasons posts end up on tech meme that aren't necessarily
01:02:30 ◼ ► Aligned with having scoops or being like thought leaders exactly if you're fast to important stories that also helps you get on tech me
01:02:39 ◼ ► but anyway, once we introduce all these leaderboards on different topics that you know, that's actually a helpful product for a lot of people and
01:02:46 ◼ ► When you look at any of these reports, it's not the exact order that matters like, you know
01:02:52 ◼ ► Number one versus number three usually isn't too meaningful. It's just like if you look at the top
01:02:58 ◼ ► You'll probably have some good ideas of people to reach out to if you want to pitch some
01:03:10 ◼ ► but let me take a break right there and I'll thank our third and final sponsor of the episode and it's our
01:03:15 ◼ ► Long-term sponsor are very good friends at Squarespace. You guys know Squarespace. It is the all-in-one
01:03:26 ◼ ► Lord only knows how many Squarespace sites are out there that I have linked to over the years
01:03:35 ◼ ► Literally everything you need to create your own presence online everything from domain name registration
01:04:11 ◼ ► Actually write code and want to do it on your own you could do it that way or you could do it visually their new
01:04:22 ◼ ► Is the their best way of doing it that they've ever had and the big big difference between what they call the fluid engine and?
01:04:44 ◼ ► Which is let's face it the phone is the primary computer for a growing growing number of people and as I always
01:04:54 ◼ ► It's not just for you the nerd is listening to the talk show with John Gruber who might want to build a website with
01:05:07 ◼ ► Need a website or I have an old website that I want to update where should I go to do it?
01:05:12 ◼ ► Tell them Squarespace first give them the URL from here and they'll even if they don't listen to the show
01:05:36 ◼ ► Or a website using that code so why even care about giving my custom version of their thing well
01:05:51 ◼ ► All right, I feel like there's a big topic which is why I wanted to get the third sponsor spot out of the way
01:07:00 ◼ ► Blogging's decline you can just look at the people who their posts went down as their tweets went up
01:07:08 ◼ ► Apparently not all of them probably not you but maybe I don't know maybe some of your quick posts became tweets
01:07:16 ◼ ► or two well very early on we were posting the Twitter because I got that people wanted to see tech meme headlines
01:07:44 ◼ ► Fortunately when it comes to like informing a news algorithm for an industry niche like tech meme does
01:07:51 ◼ ► You don't actually need like the fire hose. You don't need this massive access to what's going on in Twitter
01:08:00 ◼ ► So we did that fairly early on and it helped us but you know, it would have been better like in some
01:08:12 ◼ ► Like, you know, maybe RSS aggregators found a way to just get the post instantly and apps made it super easy
01:08:19 ◼ ► So that Twitter never had a wedge. I mean that would be a superior world for tech meme and I guess mastodon and
01:08:32 ◼ ► but a lot more a lot of more things need to fall in place before we begin to see that reach even like
01:08:39 ◼ ► 5% of where it could go. It's like in some ways Twitter as originally conceived is one of the
01:08:48 ◼ ► To me great accomplishments of the entire world wide web. Hey, and I still think the basic idea is because it was
01:09:01 ◼ ► Stuff on the web which I think was central to the concept of the world wide web. Yes discovered
01:09:27 ◼ ► Strived for in design to make things as frictionless as possible because it's just good a it's just better like an
01:09:35 ◼ ► Interface that feels like you don't have to fight it that is actually helping you accomplish that whatever it is is
01:09:51 ◼ ► But it also makes it more popular and makes it useful people stick with things with less friction, but I do think
01:10:24 ◼ ► Even if you only have two fields in your CMS title and then content that's versus Twitter where it's just one field
01:10:57 ◼ ► short-form link posts where the primary purpose is here's the primary link from what I'm linking to is to this article at the
01:11:09 ◼ ► Wherever else and here's a quote from the article and here's my two cents or my thoughts about why I'm linking to it
01:11:16 ◼ ► I think I've done it less there were times it like the peak of my Twitter usage maybe midway through the teens
01:11:31 ◼ ► Let it go through the ad during fireball account. I should not be tweeting so much from ad Gruber. I
01:11:37 ◼ ► Should be putting it on my website and but it's like even me who has a website that supported it. I
01:11:45 ◼ ► Was doing it less because it was easier and the pressure was lower right I think my tweets are mostly
01:11:51 ◼ ► Grammatically correct and well punctuated and whatever just because I'm old-fashioned that way
01:12:09 ◼ ► Format for their reporters to post the equivalent of a link post. So therefore if they couldn't you can't go through
01:12:16 ◼ ► Bloomberg or the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal if you work there full-time, there's no equivalent of my link post
01:12:37 ◼ ► I forget when you started doing it, but it's I don't remember when you didn't but let's just say there's a
01:12:49 ◼ ► And then there's a bunch of links from a bunch of other sites that are linking about the same thing
01:13:17 ◼ ► you can just hover the mouse over them and the hover text will show you the whole tweet because tweets are little and
01:13:33 ◼ ► Comments that used to be per post and were per CMS and therefore were off in their own universe
01:13:39 ◼ ► It's like a universal commenting platform, which in theory is great. And I think was good for tech meme. Is that how you see?
01:14:06 ◼ ► You don't share the tech meme link once in a while a tweet will also be the news headline doesn't happen too often
01:14:12 ◼ ► usually if we wait five minutes will get a post from a blog that just adds more contacts and that'll be preferable but
01:14:19 ◼ ► Sometimes sometimes sweet to the news as well. Yeah. Yeah, you see it with like in my sphere like Ming Chi Khloa
01:14:29 ◼ ► But then it sooner rather than later somebody like Mac rumors or somebody is going to have an actual article
01:14:38 ◼ ► Yeah explains where it fits in a little bit of history a little bit of context and even for an industry audience
01:15:25 ◼ ► so there are all these dynamics that were corrosive and it made people feel bad to go there and so on but I
01:15:41 ◼ ► Had smart things to say about the news often in a fun funny way. It was really powerful and
01:16:01 ◼ ► Tweets that link to it so that we could recommend them to our editors to add to the site
01:16:13 ◼ ► But that has crested because of something that happened last year and it's not just because we stopped using their API
01:16:25 ◼ ► But it just doesn't seem worth it to us people with good contacts added to news really are
01:16:35 ◼ ► But it's missing a lot and it's and it's dispersing. It's not unfortunately. It's not in one. Well, maybe fortunately
01:16:52 ◼ ► We'll have some of it and that's that also is reflected on tech meme. It's kind of ridiculous now
01:17:07 ◼ ► Looked I computed something right before I got on with on this podcast and I guess in October
01:17:33 ◼ ► Well, it's got to be all new threads because threads didn't exist in October 22, right? Yeah and and blue sky
01:17:58 ◼ ► Alone and sustainable isn't isn't enough that you it's viewed as a failure to be anything less than
01:18:26 ◼ ► Apple, you know had I don't know five percent market share or something like that or depending on where you measured it or at least in
01:18:34 ◼ ► The US they did and it was a good five percent market share because they all even back then sold more expensive computers than other companies
01:18:43 ◼ ► essentially considered in the business press a complete failure because Microsoft and Intel were so much bigger and that the drumbeat was they
01:18:54 ◼ ► Microsoft makes billions where Apple makes millions because Microsoft licenses their OS to PC makers
01:19:02 ◼ ► Therefore Apple should license their operating system and then eventually Apple is like fine
01:19:08 ◼ ► We'll do it and they license these clone makers and I know it is like that of all the things Apple has ever done
01:19:26 ◼ ► I really think it's people would think that it was a prank and that you've photoshopped the articles about these companies
01:19:32 ◼ ► That did it and one of the first things Steve Jobs did when he came back and became the I CEO was just canceled
01:19:41 ◼ ► We're gonna get rid of it, but the basic idea was just look this company is so much bigger than you
01:19:46 ◼ ► That's what they're doing. You should do it too. And then in the Twitter context, it's the comparison to Facebook, right? Facebook is
01:20:01 ◼ ► The basic and the idea is well, they're both social networks where you go and post things
01:20:18 ◼ ► Because they were being measured against Facebook. They tried things that I think were contrary
01:20:26 ◼ ► To what Twitter should have been and it was to the detriment of the site and then it only
01:20:33 ◼ ► Once Musk took over a year ago that was out the door because now all of a sudden instead of answering to shareholders
01:20:46 ◼ ► I think the reason Twitter was even available to be taken over was the fact that they sort of flailed in that
01:21:10 ◼ ► Fantastic premise where the idea is the wily coyote from the Bugs Bunny cartoons is suing the Acme
01:21:16 ◼ ► Corporation who sold them all of these gadgets he used through the years to try to catch the Roadrunner and
01:21:35 ◼ ► David Zaslav the CEO just somehow this somebody did the math and said it would actually be better for us
01:21:48 ◼ ► Probably close to 100 years ago at this point, but at least like 80 years ago, but the quote is we don't we Disney
01:22:01 ◼ ► Disney was in the content business and first as a priority and they wanted to be profitable doing so so they could keep doing it
01:22:11 ◼ ► Obviously anybody who's the CEO of a movie studio who would be willing to do what they've done with this
01:22:18 ◼ ► Coyote vs. Acme movie has their priorities the other way around and I kind of feel like you and I are
01:22:24 ◼ ► Some pot to go in in this regard like I don't run daring fireball to be the most profitable thing imaginable
01:22:44 ◼ ► iPhone that would never be able to run at that length anywhere else and also post weird little
01:22:53 ◼ ► If I make a good living then that's good enough and I feel like tech meme has always been like that too
01:23:00 ◼ ► Like you have a vision for what tech means serves and the point isn't how do you make the most money?
01:23:05 ◼ ► The point is how do you make money at all to keep it afloat while you're doing it? Would you agree with that?
01:23:10 ◼ ► It's just thing to solve except I always would like to make more money as it turns out but well
01:23:27 ◼ ► Part of that reason is because it would make tech meme crappier for its readers in ways that you're talking about here
01:23:35 ◼ ► I think we did see the same with Twitter like they wanted to get impressions and maybe they should
01:23:40 ◼ ► Come up with some API access scheme. I mean, I don't know exactly what what would have been optimal for them
01:24:00 ◼ ► I'm also hoping that that'll unlock new business opportunities. That'll make things more lucrative so I can
01:24:10 ◼ ► Well, let me just put it this way as an admitted daily reader of tech me for as long as I can remember tech mean
01:24:39 ◼ ► Oh now you can only see three times a day and then it cuts you off and asks for you to subscribe
01:24:45 ◼ ► Like you can only - there's no now there's a paywall just to read tech me or something like that
01:24:55 ◼ ► First yes, you it is a very important priority for the company to be profitable and sustainable
01:25:03 ◼ ► Going forward in the face of all this change in the media world, but never more important than well
01:25:20 ◼ ► Putting myself on the back now. Yeah. Well, let me pat you on it. I'll do the back padding for you
01:25:33 ◼ ► right that you just pick people to follow and everybody can just pull at the top for a decade or two is
01:25:40 ◼ ► 140 characters, but you've got this severely limited character count per quote post and
01:25:58 ◼ ► Aren't you know, you see it when you get emails from them, right? Most emails would be so much better off
01:26:07 ◼ ► everybody out there knows the people who you're either your colleagues or people at other companies that you deal with who
01:26:17 ◼ ► emails that you have to scroll to read the whole thing and that should have been tweet length and so
01:26:22 ◼ ► Mandating that length on everybody a was a great benefit, but B it just gave people a platform
01:26:29 ◼ ► That they wouldn't have and yes in a way that it's this massive trade-off where it didn't kill blogging
01:26:39 ◼ ► It's obviously far less common as a practice than it was at its peak which was pre Twitter
01:27:01 ◼ ► I have I'm on still on Twitter X whatever you want to call it. I'm on threads and really like it
01:27:09 ◼ ► But really got active on it once musk took over Twitter last year and I've been on blue sky
01:27:29 ◼ ► it was so much easier when the only Twitter like thing that I cared about was Twitter itself and
01:27:36 ◼ ► Now that there are multiple Twitter like things that I do care about and want to keep up keep up with in some regard
01:27:57 ◼ ► You guys keep track of all of them as a source for commentary on your articles. Do you do you think it's
01:28:23 ◼ ► Sorry, I'm one of these people who will say it's both but it's it's definitely from a user perspective
01:28:38 ◼ ► Fortunately, it's if it's a story on tech meme you can look under tech meme and see our roundup and hopefully that's good
01:29:30 ◼ ► To tie all this together is there's this promise of Federation if the Reds actually hooks up to activity pub then
01:29:37 ◼ ► Threads and Mastodon will in some ways be one thing and you'll be able to get your threads
01:29:46 ◼ ► Crawl threads posts in an automatic way through Mastodon API's and it'll go both ways and it'll be great
01:30:03 ◼ ► Not surprising at all as a Facebook property because I think Facebook has had some sort of API in the past
01:30:12 ◼ ► but in general over the length of the company, they just have not been API driven and therefore as
01:30:28 ◼ ► cutting off the API that third-party apps could use like tweet bot and Twitter if ik and those things were instead of using Twitter as
01:30:45 ◼ ► They loved those third parties and they got you know talking to Craig Hockenberry at the icon factory
01:30:59 ◼ ► The word tweet was invented by the icon factory not Twitter and the idea that the logo would be a bird
01:31:06 ◼ ► Came from the Twitter if ik bird not Twitter itself Twitter itself had it just a lowercase T is their logo
01:31:13 ◼ ► Before that's how you know and it wasn't that I don't think the icon factory feels ripped off
01:31:21 ◼ ► Sort of partners in it and took it as a badge of honor that they influenced the course of the company so much
01:31:28 ◼ ► But then long before Musk took over Twitter more or less just came out and said hey don't make a new third-party client for us
01:31:42 ◼ ► Effectively business reasons, you know that they thought we we want to do ads in a way that we don't want to or our vision
01:31:52 ◼ ► Therefore we need people to use our client and if they have to use our client, we don't want third-party clients
01:32:04 ◼ ► Truly built in the spirit of the open web right where and they actually even in the good ways to have things like documentation
01:32:11 ◼ ► So you yeah, it's not just that their API is stable and that you don't have to piss off a central authority to use it
01:32:22 ◼ ► And it works and there are you could get get the posts from a mastadon user via RSS and the RSS is actually valid
01:32:46 ◼ ► Mastadon post URL and you you like tweak the URL that'll you put something before the number and then it stays on
01:32:53 ◼ ► Yeah, that's the the data right there that you don't need to be authenticated. There's other stuff you can do without
01:33:02 ◼ ► The like the limits are generous. It's maybe if if mastadon becomes really big maybe they'll have to find ways to
01:33:08 ◼ ► To cut back in some ways just to make just so these servers can function or maybe to cut off forms of abuse
01:33:21 ◼ ► They're like an open source not-for-profit philosophy behind all this because you know, they're not going to go in
01:33:28 ◼ ► In the kinds of directions that led to all these great Twitter experiences being destroyed. Yeah, I know I've I
01:33:47 ◼ ► Who's also comes from Instagram where he's also the lead and they even say and they've said since threads launched that it's an Instagram
01:34:10 ◼ ► participants on threads and I know that there are cynical people who think that because they are major
01:34:19 ◼ ► It's some kind of social media team at meta who does all these posts, but it's not I mean
01:34:29 ◼ ► Zuck, but I'm not sure there is I'm not sure that anything that's ever been posted by at Zuck on threads isn't actually from
01:34:41 ◼ ► Personally very very active on threads personally, but he asked hey, we're moving as fast as we can
01:34:52 ◼ ► What are the most important things that we can do and as next steps to keep moving forward and you posted the API API API
01:35:00 ◼ ► Yeah, I talked about API so much that I changed my bio at some point to say on the guy who complains about API's
01:35:18 ◼ ► You can talk about the ones that Twitter used to have and then lost but you could you can still post to Twitter
01:35:23 ◼ ► You can't even post right now. That's right. There's no API even for posting and that is
01:35:37 ◼ ► Anything that had an aspiration to be a microblogging service would would even for a while talk about
01:35:54 ◼ ► They they're not like super excited about having you know news content all over threads, but so many kinds of Twitter like posts and
01:36:16 ◼ ► an API that will enable a kind of tweet deck or right alternate reading type app because
01:36:42 ◼ ► They talk pretty openly they post pretty openly about stuff. That doesn't look like it's approved by
01:36:51 ◼ ► There are a few more likes from some of those people on my post about API's and like that's interesting
01:36:57 ◼ ► But I'm not gonna like call them out. I just wonder what's going on here. And then yeah a few days later
01:37:02 ◼ ► I got these people were like at Nate had mentioning. Hey, they just announced that posting API is coming
01:37:08 ◼ ► I do the same thing with Apple folks. Sometimes where somebody who I know works at Apple
01:37:13 ◼ ► will favorite something I posted on one of these services or jump into the thread with a reply and
01:37:33 ◼ ► Because I don't want to bring the eye of Sauron upon them inside Cupertino for jumping into this. It's there
01:37:42 ◼ ► But I don't want to bring undue attention to it and I could I think you're saying the same sort of thing with these API
01:37:51 ◼ ► I think the other thing and I mentioned this earlier my basic theory that Twitter was corrupted by its
01:38:13 ◼ ► Twitter is a billion dollar idea and there's nothing wrong with having a billion dollar idea unless your
01:38:20 ◼ ► expectation is hey, you need to be a thousand times bigger the advantage threads has is
01:38:48 ◼ ► But that's fine because they own it and they don't need it to be right in a sense. There is free
01:39:01 ◼ ► Mastodon even though threads is not open source or a community project, but there it's free
01:39:19 ◼ ► Being a in Zuckerberg's words. Let's get to a billion users and then we'll figure out how to monetize it
01:39:26 ◼ ► But let's just effectively let's just kill Twitter if we can and that's all they need to do and it's incredibly freeing that they don't
01:39:33 ◼ ► There's no expectation Zuckerberg's mission isn't you have to build something that's going to be bigger and more profitable than Instagram
01:39:44 ◼ ► Yeah, I hope they have a reason to sustain it if it's only a small fraction of Instagram revenue
01:39:52 ◼ ► There are business they're good at making money and finding new ways of making money and
01:40:17 ◼ ► Activity pub I hope it doesn't get to that but like a lot of people just roll their eyes at the idea that they're gonna federate
01:40:28 ◼ ► Who are so cynical about meta that they're like this. There's no way this is ever gonna happen, but I have
01:40:55 ◼ ► And I think that's one of those things that is very hard for anything but a founder led company to do is to grow
01:41:16 ◼ ► Ethically speaking than they were five years ago and there just seemed to me to be a lot of people
01:41:36 ◼ ► But just to accept that hey, they used to do blank which was morally questionable and now they don't do it anymore
01:41:48 ◼ ► Whatever it is that you think they did wrong during the 2020 election or whatever it was
01:42:06 ◼ ► Product people on threads itself. Yeah, I think they will do the activity pub thing and I get why it might be
01:42:23 ◼ ► Mastodon dot social or whatever of the thousands of mastodon servers are out there and if you would like to follow Gabe Rivera
01:42:32 ◼ ► Without you being on threads but follow from your mastodon account. You'll just follow at
01:42:40 ◼ ► Gabe at threads dotnet or well, I don't know what is your username at threads? I forget it is gay
01:42:48 ◼ ► So follow at gay Bravara at threads dotnet and all of a sudden your threads posts come in the way they would if
01:42:56 ◼ ► threads were a mastodon server and you can just follow along from your mastodon account and get Gabe's or at
01:43:12 ◼ ► Where do I stop posting on threads and just post on mastodon and assume people will follow it
01:43:17 ◼ ► There's questions about that, but I don't think to me. There's no question that them implementing it in that way
01:43:23 ◼ ► Will not hurt the overall number of people who go to threads dotnet and use the official threads app. I
01:43:35 ◼ ► Strengthened would will and would only strengthen their position as a sort of canonical source for people's short-form
01:44:01 ◼ ► Like areas like security a lot of security people because they're if you're a security person you're not posting on
01:44:23 ◼ ► I think it helps threads and meta in in numerous ways. I hope they continue to be convinced by that
01:44:31 ◼ ► Where where do you see X go and where what do you think of the the year one under Elon's?
01:44:51 ◼ ► There are simple reasons and more complicated reasons for that, but I just sense like Elon Musk
01:44:58 ◼ ► There are certain aspects of Twitter that he just doesn't get and he doesn't realize he's destroying a lot of it
01:45:26 ◼ ► universally is regarded as an executive who does not want to be told no by his employees and
01:46:03 ◼ ► He can maybe push through something like I think of questionable design for the Cybertruck
01:46:11 ◼ ► But the gull wing design for the the model what I think it was the model Y or the model
01:46:17 ◼ ► I forget which one of the models it was but that had the stupid doors that open up from the top
01:46:21 ◼ ► It was pushed forward by him and people said that's a bad design boss and they got fired or just blown past
01:46:28 ◼ ► But overall Tesla continues to grow and Tesla owners are overall pretty happy, but I think with Twitter
01:46:46 ◼ ► But you can measure it and before he took over there were 7,000 links and now there's 5,000 for the same month a year later
01:47:08 ◼ ► I'm over on threads or on Mastodon or I'm on both but the hell with this place and then I think there's a lot more
01:47:19 ◼ ► I I just do it less because it's just lower in my ranking of which apps I check and sometimes I don't get to it
01:47:39 ◼ ► And I don't think he understands the role Twitter plays right and I can't think of a better example and it looks like they've
01:48:04 ◼ ► Then the link will contain the verges headline so that people can read it and I can write my commentary in the tweet with
01:48:15 ◼ ► I paste the URL and then the link is formatted with the title and he took the titles away
01:48:21 ◼ ► He admits it was his decision and then it just says the verge comm and has no context for the headline
01:48:48 ◼ ► $10 a month or whatever it costs to post more than that but pay to become a Twitter pro user and
01:48:58 ◼ ► Publication was ever going to do like the verge you're not gonna get neil I Patel to have verge writers post the entire article on
01:49:07 ◼ ► Stupid but I guess that's what musk wanted. I I feel like he doesn't understand that and that's one thing again tech meme
01:49:22 ◼ ► By design, you know the whole point of it is you come to tech meme and then you immediately go elsewhere
01:49:31 ◼ ► and then yes go go to Bloomberg go to New York Times go to the verge go to daring fireball and read the article there and
01:49:37 ◼ ► Because you found good stuff through tech meme you'll come back and that's how Twitter worked and the idea that you would take that away
01:50:02 ◼ ► These new the Twitter algorithm changes and the new subscriber formats and all that. It's pretty
01:50:11 ◼ ► I I get I still actually get a lot of value out of Twitter and it's by meticulously crafting lists
01:50:29 ◼ ► And I'm not anti algorithm right like threads is is generally algorithmically driven and you can you could switch to a
01:50:45 ◼ ► seems optimized only to surface stuff that's of interest to me and I've sort of feel the same way about
01:50:59 ◼ ► And then you can switch to a for you feed that shows the people you follow a chronological order
01:51:08 ◼ ► Just seems driven to show you things of interest because that keeps you coming back in that that's good for meta if you come back
01:51:21 ◼ ► Following a bunch of accounts and being generous with my likes and things that I found interesting. I found it. Excellent
01:51:32 ◼ ► Like too many influencers and so on but I think just tending to your follow graph and doing a little liking can get you past
01:51:47 ◼ ► Let's see and it's like yeah, this is I'm not liking this feed at all. And that complaint you had about too much influencer content
01:51:55 ◼ ► Why do what why am I getting shown all these posts from youtubers? I don't want to see that and then a week later
01:52:20 ◼ ► And I know Facebook slogan used to be move fast and break things but it it seems as the company has matured
01:52:42 ◼ ► Isn't people protesting even though there are a lot of high-profile people who are actually protesting the political
01:53:22 ◼ ► How do I say it gently not the sort of people whose thoughts I really care to hear and yet their algorithm?
01:53:42 ◼ ► Again, I'm a curmudgeon probably a little resistant to change more than most people but X is just a stupid name
01:53:50 ◼ ► It is I believe so always felt that way and I I think people are pointing to App Store trends
01:54:05 ◼ ► Has stayed low and when you go through the list of free downloaded apps the number of apps that are listed above them
01:54:13 ◼ ► It's almost it's almost comical. What's what's got higher recognition above? I guess that about covers it
01:54:19 ◼ ► I guess if there's one last bonus question, it's AI and I don't know what to say about it
01:54:57 ◼ ► Driven alternatives are not gonna be a part of a complete solution right now LLM's are are
01:55:04 ◼ ► trained on the past and news has the word new in it and a lot of what makes us interested in
01:55:30 ◼ ► Another thing like a lot of the value of tech meme is people will go there just to see they'll just look at headlines and
01:55:44 ◼ ► I'm just gonna glance or like people not many people click on our fundraising headlines
01:55:54 ◼ ► And oh, this is something a lot of a lot is being invested in this is something on the way
01:56:10 ◼ ► It's got to have that data on what you glanced at and process it and and do something meaningful with it
01:56:39 ◼ ► Introduce like either LLM's for summarizing or like machine learning approaches to better detect
01:56:57 ◼ ► But we haven't trained neural networks yet to be like this a trending story that you the edge or want to consider for tech me
01:57:22 ◼ ► Purposefully create false context. I mean and obviously in the context of a major US presidential election is sort of what I'm thinking
01:57:51 ◼ ► Well, if you honestly believe it, I mean what you're probably not an authoritative source of information on Twitter anyway, but people who?
01:58:01 ◼ ► Mislead people I mean the best one of the best examples of that and it's it's a trick that predates the web
01:58:16 ◼ ► And and of course everybody's voting day in the u.s. Is Tuesday, but that's a dirty trick and using AI to commit dirty tricks
01:58:26 ◼ ► extremely realistic looking photographs of fake things at you know Photoshop's have been around for 30 years, but
01:58:54 ◼ ► But like I'd because I'd as far as I know you and I think your your employees would agree
01:59:17 ◼ ► Goes to the users the users can trust what they see on tech meme and tech meme knows who they can trust going forward
01:59:27 ◼ ► Yeah, I think so. I think we would have seen a lot more mayhem from deep fakes if these
02:00:00 ◼ ► to say real things are fake rather than vice versa and I'll just go to the 2016 election and when the
02:00:14 ◼ ► I mean like in the aftermath of that tape coming out that what was it access Hollywood was the TV show
02:00:23 ◼ ► serious movement in the Republican Party to get him to drop out of the race, which is just
02:00:28 ◼ ► Absurd in September of an election year and I know everybody out there's a yeah, but he won the election anyway
02:00:38 ◼ ► Him and his cohorts now. I think they would just say app fake. That was fake fake fake fake
02:01:00 ◼ ► This was you've been somebody who I wanted to get on this show for a long time and it was just as much fun talking
02:01:22 ◼ ► R-a-n-d-u-m. That's the political news aggregator, right? But but that that's a that's a weird that that's
02:01:44 ◼ ► Carefully curating is media gazer and if you're in content industries or you're into what's happening in journalism or especially
02:01:59 ◼ ► It should be it should be what you're checking every day and and I'm Gabe Rivera on all the social networks