Thread Carefully: Meta's Attempt to Weave a New Social Space - I Will Not Lose Podcast - #0035

Transcript

[00:00:05.260] Yo, good morning, good evening, good night, good afternoon, whatever time you're listening
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[00:00:24.180] been anywhere in the world, but it's here right now.
[00:00:26.880] Take a moment to be present and recognize that it's now, right now.
[00:00:31.460] Whether you're right now is working, running, exercising, cleaning, flying, laying down,
[00:00:36.000] driving, be grateful we're alive.
[00:00:39.040] Failure can be frightening.
[00:00:40.440] However, as Winston Churchill reminds us, success is all about going from failure to
[00:00:44.540] failure without losing enthusiasm.
[00:00:46.960] This is I Will Not Lose podcast, where we set out to prove everything is learned from
[00:00:50.480] failure, and we must persevere and recognize it as one step closer to success.
[00:00:55.160] I'm your host, Tony Ortiz.
[00:00:57.000] Let's jump right in.
[00:00:59.240] Thread carefully.
[00:01:00.060] looking at Meta's attempt to weave a new social space. I know I don't normally talk about current
[00:01:06.570] events, but I was on Just a Phase this weekend. If you haven't checked out his show, check it out
[00:01:12.690] on YouTube. It's Just a Phase. It's a live show. It's a little bit of a different format. So we
[00:01:17.610] just kind of went off the top and chatted for a good hour. It was nice after not dropping an
[00:01:24.150] episode last week, which was the holiday week. I just needed to recharge, you know, so I hit the
[00:01:32.510] beach for a little bit, got my toes in the sand and got to hit reset on everything. So we're back
[00:01:39.410] and a whole lot's happened. But one of the topics we talked about on It's Just a Phase was threads,
[00:01:46.130] and it got me thinking about how imitation is the highest form of flattery. You know,
[00:01:51.730] you can't always lose if you're being imitated. So we're going to get into that. We're going to
[00:01:56.690] get into the theme of imitation, especially in the world of tech and social media. And I mean,
[00:02:03.820] it seems to be like in tech or in social media, why create when you can steal? You know,
[00:02:10.540] we haven't really seen any new social media come out in 2016 or 15 when with Snapchat,
[00:02:18.600] you could kind of call that the beginning of the video, the beginning of the TikTok generation,
[00:02:24.760] you know. But if you think about it, Reels and all that stuff that's on Facebook and Instagram,
[00:02:29.720] that was stolen right from Snapchat as soon as that started to get popular. So is this going to
[00:02:36.180] be another Twitter-like platform? Does this have any wings? Is it going to stick around for a
[00:02:40.920] little bit? You know, FaZe thinks the name is stupid, doesn't think it's going to stick around
[00:02:46.280] simply because of that, as well as some other reasons. But so what is it? Threads is Facebook's
[00:02:53.400] new Twitter-like platform. It launched on the 5th of July. We're currently recording this on the
[00:03:00.620] 9th. And so far, there is 80 million users on it. So people are adopting this fast. What is it?
[00:03:08.740] I mean, it's literally Twitter. So it's a text-based social platform. You link your Instagram
[00:03:15.000] and follow everybody that you would follow on Instagram, and then they show up in this text
[00:03:21.960] base, and then you can kind of just start a chain of threads or tweets, whatever you want to call it,
[00:03:28.900] underneath that person's thread. So it's kind of like a mixture between a forum. It's literally
[00:03:35.060] Twitter. If you're familiar with Twitter, it's just like that. It's like an absolute clone.
[00:03:39.480] so they claim they being meta and facebook claim that they want to get away from internet fighting
[00:03:46.560] and have this as kind of a safe place that you can just be yourself so there's their expectation
[00:03:53.260] of what they think it's going to be and then there's when it hits the internet we'll see if
[00:03:57.620] that tranquility lasts and if people aren't savage uh my experience with it so far there's
[00:04:04.020] definitely been people posting some dumb stuff and then people really flaming them in the comments so
[00:04:10.500] i don't know if they're just going to promote like uh positive content that might be a smart
[00:04:17.310] marketing move to promote positive content um right now it's ad free so who knows if it's going
[00:04:24.510] to stay like that but this is not the first time something's attempted to come along and be the
[00:04:29.590] the new Twitter. There's been instances like Mastodon or Blue Sky. Mastodon in the March of
[00:04:37.610] 2016 had maybe 2.5 million users. It's down to maybe 1.8 million now. So did it become the new
[00:04:46.090] Twitter? Statistics would say no, but I believe it's still a thing. You know, the marketing seems
[00:04:55.440] like it's become we're the new twitter alternative this is a new decentralized platform and the thing
[00:05:03.260] about it is is so many of them came out so many twitter alternatives and they're still being
[00:05:08.100] marketed they don't kind of stand on their own but people spread their attention they don't know if
[00:05:14.400] they're following so influencers aren't sure if they're going to post a mastodon or blue sky or
[00:05:19.140] both and people spread their attention between the two of them so it's kind of splitting their
[00:05:25.880] attention they don't really get that full deep enthrallment that every social media is looking
[00:05:32.380] for you know they want it to be like crack they want you to be going back and checking your phone
[00:05:36.240] and refreshing all the time so uh they're looking to do that we'll see whether it happens so the
[00:05:43.680] idea of imitation versus innovation everything is derivative you know there's always some
[00:05:49.910] preceding even with notes and chords we were talking about that on the uh on the podcast
[00:05:55.370] there's so many there's only so many chords so you know ed sheeran recently won that uh lawsuit
[00:06:02.330] where they're trying to say you know we own these chords you can't play these and they went back to
[00:06:09.830] you know the 1600s to gregorian chants that use similar chords to pop music so you could argue
[00:06:17.750] everything is derivative but as it stands right now as of the 9th there's a cease and desist
[00:06:24.430] flying from twitter to threads to meta saying hey you know you guys essentially stole our platform
[00:06:31.970] and they're they're worried so the fact that i mean 80 million users that is no joke that means
[00:06:38.870] this is essentially a two-player game. It's really Twitter versus threads. And if you looked
[00:06:43.850] on Twitter, Twitter versus threads is trending. So you can't get away from the conversation.
[00:06:51.770] So the idea of not always losing when you're being imitated. Snapchat didn't necessarily
[00:06:59.610] lose out when reels and stories came out, which were essentially snaps. It got more popular.
[00:07:08.520] you know it was marketing for snapchat because whenever you're called an alternative you get
[00:07:15.400] free marketing and people get to check out both they get to see okay what makes this unique
[00:07:20.440] uh the idea the hashtag or trending topics you know twitter has trending topics reddit eventually
[00:07:27.400] uh evolve those i don't know if if reddit had trending first or what i think i got my timeline
[00:07:34.660] right that it was kind of a twitter thing and reddit which was the older social platform
[00:07:42.080] really changed a lot of its stuff based on the new social media it hasn't adopted completely
[00:07:47.780] to mobile just yet but it's still a huge player in terms of where people spend their attention on
[00:07:53.460] online so that's what the competition is that's the role of competition and imitation people
[00:07:59.700] if you make something easier to use and you get them engagement, people are going to use their
[00:08:05.180] platform. So part of what I'm seeing is influencers are saying that when they post on threads,
[00:08:11.800] they're getting more engagement than they got on Instagram. So they're looking to move their
[00:08:15.920] content over there. Nobody knows what this is going to be when it grows up. Nobody knows if
[00:08:21.040] it's going to be memes, if it's going to be recipes, food pictures. We're going to see what
[00:08:26.320] the algorithm pushes and we're going to see people are going to change what they post based on what
[00:08:31.100] people interact with so not sure it's kind of the wild wild west right now uh is it going to last
[00:08:37.900] this is the question that everybody's asking and probably why you tuned into this nobody knows
[00:08:45.180] obviously 80 million people can lose interest in a month or so um and just not be posting or using
[00:08:53.220] the platform ads haven't been added yet so that's going to change the experience if people feel that
[00:08:59.000] this just becomes another playing ground for people to promote their stuff and just get pounded
[00:09:05.000] with sponsored ads it's probably doesn't have a chance of lasting like it would uh like phase said
[00:09:12.000] does the name it's the fact that it doesn't have the greatest name mean anything for whether or
[00:09:16.740] not it's going to last was this really thought out and do they have a runway and a game plan
[00:09:21.960] and a tech launch rollout? Or did they just say, hey, we can copy this while Twitter's in the news?
[00:09:27.660] People don't like it. Now might be the perfect time in the marketplace to drop something new.
[00:09:33.280] You know, this isn't necessarily bad for Twitter. I mean, sure it is if users are going to spend
[00:09:40.780] their attention on threads and say it's one or the other. I wasn't a huge Twitter user. I'm down
[00:09:47.300] to check threads out. There's probably a lot of people like me. Everybody who uses it isn't
[00:09:52.960] necessarily giving up their Twitter to use it. And we're talking about Twitter now. I haven't
[00:09:58.100] talked about Twitter in years. So the fact that it's part of the conversation, it's not really
[00:10:04.080] losing. This is something that they can spin out to say, hey, we've reformed this. We've done this.
[00:10:10.640] Maybe they go back to bare bones. Maybe they go back to bare bones Twitter. Maybe they shift their
[00:10:15.380] algorithm towards what people like to see on threads. And now you're just getting the same
[00:10:19.900] thing. It almost feels like a third party reader app. It's so much like Twitter. I mean, it feels
[00:10:26.400] like you're just reading Twitter and people are posting the same content that they're posting to
[00:10:30.520] other forums because they're not sure what their personality should be on this threads yet.
[00:10:35.200] So I don't know. Tech critics like it. People are loving the app so far. Try it out yourself.
[00:10:41.560] get your own experience drop something in the comments let me know what you think you could
[00:10:45.900] drop your threads username i will follow you if you drop it in the comments on youtube
[00:10:50.120] um or in any of the reels that that go out for this episode so my prediction on the future um
[00:10:58.660] i think it has a runway i think it like anything i don't know in today's day and age if it can last
[00:11:04.960] as long but hey if tiktok is caught on and doesn't look like it's going anywhere i guess people have
[00:11:11.340] room in their attention span for another social platform so hey the fact that the market is
[00:11:17.440] saturated with different social media and different ways to connect with people that might pull
[00:11:22.740] people's attention in a different they might not even try threads but who knows let's see what we
[00:11:28.760] got uh in conclusion announcements uh conscious beautiful grand reopening is july 28th that's on
[00:11:36.980] 1101 Hamilton street and that, uh, Hamilton business center with the colored flags on the
[00:11:43.120] outside. It's, um, I don't remember the suite number. I'll get that and update you guys in
[00:11:48.920] future. I'll be pronouncing that. Um, same day, July 28th, Andrew Schultz has come into wind
[00:11:55.860] Creek. So that's going to be a pretty crazy day for me. Uh, just saw Bill Burr last week. That
[00:12:01.860] was a great show so if you get a chance he's on tour if you get a chance go uh see him that was
[00:12:07.420] well worth it so i would encourage you to explore threads form your own opinion about it and let's
[00:12:14.720] start the conversation if you want to follow me i'm at teo the designer like i am on every other
[00:12:19.680] platform but this has been i will not lose podcast where we set out to prove everything is learned
[00:12:24.600] from failure we must persevere recognize it as one step closer to success to support the show
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[00:12:47.560] thank you for listening peace