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limited time while supplies last. You

1:02

and Betty and the Nancys and

1:04

Bills and Joes and James will

1:06

find in the study of science

1:08

a richer, more rewarding

1:10

life. Hey,

1:13

welcome to Inquiring Minds. I'm Indre

1:15

Viscontes. This is a podcast where

1:17

we explore where science and society

1:19

collide. We endeavor to find out

1:21

what's true, what's left to discover,

1:23

and why it matters. When

1:33

Elon Musk bought Twitter, I have to

1:35

say I was a little bit skeptical

1:37

to understand where his

1:39

vision might take my beloved social

1:41

media platform. And there

1:43

were a number of changes that he made that

1:45

were kind of alarming to me and not aligned

1:48

with the direction that I had hoped Twitter would

1:50

go in. So I

1:52

took a bit of a hiatus from Twitter

1:55

and like probably a lot of you tried

1:57

out a bunch of other social media platforms

1:59

and still haven't found

2:02

the right replacement. But I

2:04

have been fascinated at how these

2:06

different social media platforms have started

2:08

to evolve and change, and

2:10

I'm not really sure what the future holds. So

2:13

I was excited when I discovered Kurt

2:16

Wagner's book, The Battle for the Bird,

2:18

because at least I thought, well, that'll

2:20

give me some history and a sense

2:22

of how Twitter rose to such

2:24

popularity and why I personally liked it so

2:27

much as my social media platform of choice.

2:30

And boy, was I

2:32

wrong about so many things regarding

2:34

Twitter from like the first chapter

2:37

I realized that I really knew

2:39

nothing. So

2:41

I'm super excited to bring

2:44

you Kurt Wagner, who's an award-winning

2:46

business and technology journalist covering social

2:48

media for Bloomberg and other

2:50

outlets. Kurt

2:55

Wagner, welcome to Inquiring Minds. Hey,

2:57

thank you for having me. I'm excited to

3:00

chat about the book. So let's

3:02

start from the beginning because I thought

3:04

I knew the whole Jack Dorsey story,

3:06

and I had a lot of affection

3:08

for the at Jack persona

3:10

on Twitter. And it turns out

3:13

I had no idea. So

3:16

let's go from the beginning. I think a

3:18

lot of us probably know the story of Jack and

3:20

Bistone and maybe even of Williams of like

3:22

they got together, they had this idea

3:25

that they had on a cocktail

3:27

napkin, presumably obviously not, but that's

3:29

the type of story. And

3:32

they launched this thing and then Jack

3:35

became an unwitting CEO, didn't really want

3:37

to do it, but was the best

3:39

person for the job. So

3:41

how wrong is that? Yeah. Let's

3:43

start from there. That's not that far off. I

3:45

think this idea started the best way that I've

3:47

been able to describe it is like, imagine

3:50

the AOL instant messenger away message, right? This

3:52

is sort of what the idea was built

3:54

on was like, how do you give people

3:56

a status update when you're on the go,

3:58

right? For AOL, you're on the go. were kind

4:01

of probably tied to your computer sitting in your

4:03

living room or something and the idea

4:05

was, can we do this mobile? And

4:07

they hit on something big, obviously,

4:09

right? But I think, as you point

4:11

out, Jack Dorsey was not at a

4:13

place both personally and professionally

4:16

to run a company like this

4:18

at that time. He was pretty distracted,

4:20

quite frankly. Jack is

4:23

an artist, first and foremost. And he

4:25

just has so many interests that are

4:27

outside of the world of tech. And

4:30

so I think the first go-around when

4:33

he took over, there's parts of

4:35

the book. And I go over it

4:37

kind of quickly, as you know, because there's

4:39

so much other stuff. But Hatching Twitter, another

4:41

book about Twitter by Nick Bilton really gets

4:43

into it. But Jack was just not

4:45

prepared to be a CEO at this point

4:47

in stage. And yeah, he

4:50

was booted from the company, which I think

4:52

is important to remember, though, because

4:54

that sort of plays a role in

4:56

his kind of relationship with Twitter later

4:58

on. Yeah, I mean, there are two things that

5:00

stand out. You describe how he was doing the expenses

5:02

for the company on his laptop. Yeah,

5:04

and wrong, incorrectly, apparently.

5:06

And correctly, yeah, not the best

5:08

at the math. And

5:11

then also, he would often

5:13

go to sewing class as a person taking

5:16

care of the company. I think we

5:18

can relate, you know? Yeah.

5:20

And this thing about he's really

5:22

into fashion. And so he had this idea

5:24

that he wanted to make his own jeans

5:26

as well. And this like, I

5:29

was jeans, but also he had like a fascination with

5:31

leather. And he was like, he liked the leather because

5:33

it told a story. Like you could see the scars

5:36

on the leather from, you know, the

5:38

life that the leather had lived. You

5:41

know, this is just like very Jack,

5:43

right? Like he is, like I said, he's an artist.

5:46

He is someone who's not your

5:48

maybe typical tech programmer in that way,

5:50

which I think is a really cool part

5:52

about him and how Twitter got started. But

5:55

it's also a very telling part because it

5:57

sort of plays a role in his relationship

5:59

with the company. Yeah. And

6:02

the other thing that surprised me was that

6:04

you sort of describe how he didn't... He

6:07

actually thinks that the original sin, the

6:09

colossal mistake was trying to make it

6:12

a profitable company rather than like

6:14

essentially like a platform or an

6:17

opportunity for people to use code and

6:19

apply it. Yeah. I think

6:21

in a perfect world, to him, Twitter would

6:23

have been like a nonprofit, honestly, like a

6:25

public good. And it

6:27

would have existed as a place for

6:29

people to talk, express ideas, share things.

6:31

But if it wasn't public or if

6:34

it wasn't a for-profit company, there just

6:36

wouldn't have been as much pressure to

6:38

police the service, quite frankly, right? Because

6:41

you're not trying to appease advertisers anymore.

6:43

There wouldn't have been this pressure to

6:45

launch things just to try and add user

6:47

growth because you're trying to appease Wall Street

6:50

investors. So I think as

6:52

time went on and he started to resent

6:55

the fact that Twitter was

6:57

sort of answering to advertisers

6:59

or investors, two groups of people he

7:01

didn't necessarily like want to be answering

7:03

to, that he wishes he could have gone

7:06

back in time and said, well, I wish

7:08

this had just sort of been like an open

7:10

protocol and a public good for people. But obviously,

7:12

once the genie is out of the bottle, it's

7:14

hard to go back and do something like that.

7:16

And I kind of want to lay this groundwork

7:18

here because I think it's really important to understand

7:20

that complexity because sometimes I

7:22

think it's painted out as well.

7:25

Twitter under Jack Dorsey

7:27

was this really kind

7:30

of ethical social media

7:32

platform. If you were known

7:34

to be someone who was peddling misinformation,

7:36

you were booted off or there was

7:39

a sense that there was this public good for

7:41

it. So

7:44

we'll get to whether that still exists

7:46

and how that relates to the Elon

7:48

Musk story, because I think that there

7:50

is like a Hollywood version of this

7:52

where Jack is the hero

7:54

trying to keep this company

7:56

good. And then there's Elon Musk, who's the

7:58

villain who's coming in. in and like

8:01

bringing all the evil and monetizing it

8:03

and charging people for the check mark and all

8:06

this kind of stuff where that's

8:08

really not true. Like, anyway, so yeah,

8:10

I want to get to that part.

8:12

But I think in order to understand

8:14

how untrue that is, which was so shocking

8:16

to me, we need to understand

8:19

then too like once Jack was

8:21

kind of booted out of the company in 2008 and

8:24

then, you know, he sort of also then

8:26

went and started Square. Yeah. Which I didn't

8:28

realize that that, I mean, I knew it

8:30

was CEO Square, I didn't realize it was

8:32

like his idea and why. Yeah,

8:34

so tell us about Square. Yeah, it's a fun story.

8:38

And I kind of wonder because a lot

8:40

of these companies, the founding stories sort of

8:42

like go through the tumbler over time

8:44

and what comes out as like this really polished

8:46

version, right? That sounds really nice.

8:48

And from everything I've heard, like I think this

8:50

is mostly true, but it's this idea

8:53

that he had this friend in St. Louis, which is

8:55

where Jack is from. His friend was

8:57

an artist as well. He was a glass blower. And

9:00

the story goes that he had created this glass

9:02

faucet and someone reached out to him. It was

9:04

very expensive and said, hey, I want to buy

9:06

this. He was ecstatic. He's going to sell some

9:08

of his art, but he couldn't

9:10

accept the woman's American Express card. So

9:13

she basically said, well, nevermind, I'm going to take

9:16

my business somewhere else. And there

9:18

was this devastation, right? Like, oh, the

9:20

sale fell through. If only I

9:22

could accept this Amex card, I would

9:24

have made thousands of dollars. And

9:27

so he and Jack commiserate and Jack has just recently

9:29

been fired from Twitter. So he's sort of looking for

9:31

something new. And they come up with this

9:33

idea of saying, well, you're basically carrying a

9:35

cash register in your pocket in the iPhone. We

9:38

just need to be able to get

9:41

the credit card information onto the phone. So they create

9:43

this little plug-in and they swipe the card and voila,

9:46

the square business sort of exists. And

9:48

now we all are probably familiar with it. It

9:50

shows up at coffee shops and at farmer's

9:52

markets and things like that. But this

9:54

sort of genesis of this

9:57

company started Because Jack was

9:59

fired from Twitter. had he not been fired from

10:01

twitter see when have had the free time you

10:03

and have been going back to St. Louis to

10:05

commiserate with his friends and ask where would not

10:07

have exist and. Memories I thought a

10:09

little bit to twenty sixteen

10:11

were Now Twitter is looking

10:13

for a new Ceo and

10:15

Jack is the Ceo of

10:17

Square and. Very. Openly

10:20

of not want to leave square to they're

10:22

about to go and and into an eye

10:24

piano and so like if you know if

10:26

a Ceo leave the couple months before. The

10:28

oh that's a disaster. For the investors

10:30

including Zoc who was an investor, Yeah, right right.

10:33

So tell us now about sort of this.

10:35

Next step were like how did

10:37

Zoc convince the twitter board that

10:39

he could be C o two

10:41

companies when they fired him First.

10:44

Off for the canaries e o of wouldn't company

10:46

I mean square was really did see agree. It's

10:48

funny because it was not only the reason that

10:50

if you almost didn't get the job because yard

10:52

he had a full time job. But. It

10:55

was the only reason that they were comfortable bringing him

10:57

back to Twitter to as the scene she built this

10:59

thing. It's square and they're like oh, this guy who

11:01

we fired in two thousand Eight has really grown up

11:03

like is clearly able to build an entirely new. Large.

11:06

Business. but. Twitters board at

11:08

that time fought for the company's biggest issue

11:11

was the product. They thought okay, if we

11:13

can make the product more compelling, we can

11:15

jump start user growth. The. Business will

11:17

follow, right? that is. It's pretty simple.

11:20

And so they were looking for a

11:22

product minded Ceo to come in and

11:25

gonna give them that job. They.

11:27

Were deciding between Jack Dorsey, who

11:29

they considered the product guy, raise

11:31

the cofounder of of Twitter, And

11:34

the guy by the name of Anti Chassis

11:36

who at the time most people probably didn't

11:38

know he was leading this division of Amazon

11:40

called eight of Us you may now know

11:42

and he just he is the Ceo of

11:44

Amazon right? So they they were considering this

11:46

guy who's now has its and a success

11:48

and Amazon. For. He was more the business side

11:50

of things to. They had Jack the product guy. They

11:52

had Andy the business guy. They were trying to debate.

11:55

and ultimately they decided that even though jack

11:57

had another job and he was only going

11:59

to able to commit part of his time

12:02

that he was a good enough product

12:04

person that it was worth them bringing

12:06

him on. So, Jack gets brought back

12:08

in 2015 to basically fix the Twitter

12:10

product and then he has two jobs

12:12

for quite some time after that. But that was a

12:14

big dilemma as to whether he could do two jobs

12:16

at the same time. And I think that's

12:19

really where... I mean, this is like in the run-up to

12:21

2016 and the election. And

12:23

in some ways I see that as... I

12:26

think that to me is where the second

12:29

act of the Disney movie, The

12:31

Hero's Journey story really

12:33

begins. Where like now, like, you know, if

12:35

you think about him, he's really taking this

12:37

company that's floundering and turning it into the

12:41

superstar platform. So

12:44

what was it in those years

12:46

that Jack did particularly that led

12:49

to this huge success of Twitter? Yeah, I

12:51

think there's really one

12:53

thing, which is he should

12:56

get credit and did a good job of clarifying

12:58

what Twitter was for, right? I think for a

13:00

long time, Twitter existed and

13:04

you probably had this... I know I had this discussion

13:06

with people. Like they were like, what do I tweet?

13:08

What it... Like, why would I sign

13:10

up for Twitter? Like, I know it exists. I sort of know

13:12

people, you know, talk about their breakfast on there

13:14

or they talk about whatever. It

13:17

didn't feel maybe that urgent. And

13:19

I think in 2016, with the

13:21

election upcoming, Twitter really focused

13:24

on this idea of being live. I

13:27

think the tagline, what's happening came about at

13:29

that point. Twitter is what's happening. And

13:32

they really said like, if it's happening in

13:34

the world around you, it's happening on Twitter.

13:37

And if you want to learn about it, you go to Twitter first

13:39

to learn about it. And I

13:41

thought that was really smart because

13:43

it really crystallized that Twitter was

13:45

essentially a news service, you know? It was

13:48

the place you went if you're watching the

13:50

debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton head

13:52

to 2016, you're following along

13:54

on Twitter because people are talking about it right there.

13:57

And I thought that that was a

13:59

huge reason. for the turnaround. I think

14:01

the fact that President Trump ultimately

14:04

won and tweeted 25 times

14:06

a day or whatever it was certainly didn't hurt either

14:08

in terms of bringing Twitter some

14:10

relevance. But I think ultimately what Jack

14:12

did was he solidified

14:14

where Twitter fit into

14:16

the internet and into the world of

14:19

culture and politics. And he should get

14:21

some credit for that for sure. That to

14:23

me also, I think, was a real turning point

14:25

where I started to feel like a lot of

14:29

my news was coming from Twitter and

14:31

that if I wasn't on Twitter, I

14:33

was somehow not keeping up with the pulse.

14:36

And there wasn't an outlet or a

14:38

news out, a place where I could

14:40

go where I felt that kind of immediacy of

14:42

like, hey, what are people thinking about this right

14:44

now? And that's

14:46

a massive change in terms

14:48

of how we interact as a society.

14:51

What was your experience of that

14:53

as somebody who covers tech and

14:56

social media and the sea change

14:58

and culture that happened around that

15:00

time? I do think a big part

15:02

of that was just the fact that

15:04

there was a sitting US president that was sort of

15:07

running policy straight from

15:09

his brain to his Twitter account

15:11

oftentimes. And I remember when

15:13

he got elected, President Trump got

15:15

elected, we had been

15:17

sort of covering his

15:19

tweets like just he tweeted, we

15:22

should write about the fact that he tweeted, right?

15:24

And it was getting to the point where it

15:26

was like, this is not sustainable. He's tweeting 20

15:28

times a day and having to

15:30

sit down with editors and sort of come up

15:32

with almost like a totally new strategy for

15:35

covering a totally

15:37

different way that a world leader was interacting

15:40

on the site. And I think what that

15:42

did was it just sort of set this

15:44

weird example that Twitter

15:47

was the place that things were announced

15:49

and things got done and you

15:51

needed to be there because you never knew when he

15:53

was going to threaten North Korea with nuclear war or

15:55

something like that. And you wanted to see it first.

15:57

So you're on Twitter. And I think

15:59

that's. snowballed into other things. The Me

16:01

Too movement, for example, was huge on

16:04

Twitter, right? We saw

16:06

even the Charlottesville protests and

16:08

the white nationalist protests, those

16:11

were sort of unfolding on Twitter as well.

16:13

And so you just started seeing these really

16:15

influential cultural moments happening

16:18

first on Twitter. And I

16:20

think the 2016 election, they'd happened before, but

16:23

I think the 2016 election just sort of

16:25

maybe ramped up the urgency

16:27

of those things. And it didn't

16:29

take long, as you know, before it sort of just

16:31

became like, if you cared about news, you had to

16:33

be on Twitter because otherwise you were behind. Yeah.

16:36

And I remember there were kind of

16:38

these growing pains it seemed from seasoned journalists and

16:40

maybe you were one of the ones that were

16:42

experiencing this. Like, yeah, like how do you

16:45

cover something that someone else has wrote written in

16:47

140 characters, but that has

16:49

all this other impact. But

16:52

then eventually I feel like media kind of

16:54

figured it out. And it kind of

16:56

became a little bit more normalized and you would see, you know,

16:59

for example, if you're watching the news

17:01

or you know, you could see like

17:03

a hashtag that is being called

17:05

out or like you can, you know, you can see

17:08

there was a kind of more, a less

17:10

awkward inclusion of what's

17:12

happening on Twitter in the

17:14

news and in the media and kind of a

17:16

mainstreaming of it, which is

17:18

like weird to think about. Yeah, I think

17:20

so. And I still don't know if we

17:22

ever, we be in the media, like really

17:24

ever perfected it, right?

17:27

Certainly it's like on

17:29

the one hand, you know, at the beginning,

17:31

it'd be like, oh my gosh, the president

17:33

of the United States like tweeted something totally

17:36

misogynistic like we need to cover this. And then, you

17:38

know, you fast forward a year and it's like, well,

17:41

he does that quite regularly now. Like, do

17:43

we even want to give this more attention

17:45

than it already is getting? And what's

17:48

actually interesting is the only other Twitter

17:50

user that we've really gone through the

17:52

same cycle with, in my opinion, is Elon Musk, which,

17:54

you know, I'm sort of getting ahead of the story

17:56

here, but There were moments, especially

17:58

when you first started at Twitter where he

18:01

tweets something you'd like All my gosh, I

18:03

can't believe the owner of Twitter is seen

18:05

this like we have to cover it and

18:07

now he says stuff the time that it's

18:09

like. We. we just ignore because

18:11

it's sort of like well he now does it

18:13

all the time but it also like we don't

18:15

want to sort of it that give more oxygen

18:17

to some of these like negative things. And.

18:20

You know that's a that's a ballots right? Be

18:22

good, especially when it's a president. Like when as

18:24

President Trump you're really trying to figure out like

18:26

you don't want to just ignore these terrible things

18:28

that are being said or done. For. Your

18:31

So it's like when they're happening as frequently as they

18:33

are, you have to sort of figure out when to

18:35

strike and will not. Tired.

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So, I mean, let's fast forward a little bit to the point

20:16

where I remember when I was

20:18

experiencing the news cycle of Elon Musk

20:20

is wants to buy Twitter and then

20:23

like, he's gonna pay this much but

20:25

no, he can't get the money and

20:27

there was like those months of like

20:29

then him saying how terrible Twitter was

20:31

and it was like this whole weird

20:33

thing. And the thing that I didn't

20:36

know was that Jack had

20:38

wanted that he had lobbied Elon to

20:40

buy the company to begin

20:42

with and in my head, it was

20:44

just like this kind of hostile takeover

20:46

from Elon because he was pissed that

20:48

people were tracking his plane or something.

20:50

Right. Pretty close. Yeah. So, I

20:53

mean, so tell us about like, like what? Yeah, how did

20:55

that unfold? I mean, we could, I guess we should start

20:58

with the whole Elon jet

21:00

tracking thing. Yeah. Yeah. And

21:02

then like, where does Jack come into the

21:04

story? And sure. So we'll start with the

21:07

Elon jet thing. And this is because this was

21:09

something as far as I'm aware was new in

21:11

the book, but Elon

21:13

has sort of a long history of

21:15

complaining about Twitter to first Jack Dorsey

21:18

when he was still there. And then

21:20

when Jack left his successor, Perog Agrawal,

21:23

and in January of 2022, one of those

21:25

complaints was that this Elon

21:27

jet account exists on Twitter that was tracking his

21:29

plane. And Elon hated this. He wanted Twitter to

21:31

take it down. And Perog essentially

21:34

ignored the request or at the very least

21:36

like did not follow through on it. And

21:39

why that's super interesting is within

21:41

couple days or weeks, Elon started

21:43

buying Twitter stock.

21:46

And we can't say for certain, I certainly

21:48

can't say for certain that he bought the

21:50

Twitter stock because of this Elon

21:52

jet situation. But I think if you know Elon,

21:55

and I've talked to a lot of people who were involved

21:58

in this, like there's a lot of speculation that he

22:00

thought owning a big chunk of Twitter would

22:02

help him lobby the company to do something

22:06

about this account and that the whole

22:08

thing snowballed from there. Then he was

22:10

going to join the board and then all of a sudden

22:12

Jack Dorsey's talking to him and

22:14

saying, hey, don't just join the board. You

22:16

can take this thing private and fix it. And

22:19

voila, two months later, he's the owner of Twitter. So

22:22

it's a really interesting thing. And I think you

22:24

mentioned the Jack relationship. I think what

22:27

people need to know is that Jack

22:29

Dorsey was an Elon admirer. And he

22:31

really thought that Elon was

22:33

a phenomenal, not only a

22:35

phenomenal tweeter, he used to describe him as his

22:37

favorite Twitter user, but he just admired what he

22:40

was doing with Tesla, admired what he was doing

22:42

with SpaceX. He thought he was just changing the

22:44

world. And so when

22:46

Elon showed up as Twitter's largest shareholder to

22:50

Jack Dorsey, a guy who, as we

22:52

talked about, thought that the company's original

22:54

sin was being publicly traded, he saw

22:56

this opportunity to say, the best

22:59

tweeter, the richest man in the world, is

23:01

now our largest shareholder. And if anyone can

23:03

take this company private and get us off

23:05

of this Wall Street hamster wheel, it's

23:08

Elon Musk. And he was

23:10

very excited to encourage that to happen.

23:13

And that's the part where I feel

23:15

like, okay, so now because Elon defies

23:18

prediction, it's unclear

23:21

in my, like, I'm trying to understand,

23:23

put myself in Jack's shoes. And by

23:25

then I was not a big Elon

23:27

admirer because of a lot of the

23:29

stances that he took, just like were

23:31

contrary to my own values. But

23:33

can you give us a sense of

23:36

why he thought Elon would not be

23:38

about money? Like why, like, like, that's

23:40

the part that I'm not clear on.

23:42

Like if, if Jack really wanted us

23:44

to be a public good, and

23:47

Elon's coming in and buying it for a bunch

23:49

of but clearly needs to make borrow

23:51

that money to Yeah, like, how did he think

23:53

that was not going to become all about money?

23:56

I kind of maybe would push back slightly

23:58

because I don't think it's all about the money right

24:00

now, which is a problem actually,

24:03

because I think the fact that it's not about the money

24:05

is sort of an issue, like the

24:07

business is doing really poorly and that makes me

24:09

wonder like how long can Elon sort

24:11

of pay this thing out of pocket and be content

24:13

with it. But let's create an

24:15

alternate universe real quick where Elon

24:18

takes Twitter private. He does the

24:20

tough things, right? He lays off a good chunk of

24:22

the staff. Twitter was going to do that anyway, by

24:24

the way. Not saying that would have been easy

24:26

and I'm not saying that he handled it the way that I

24:28

think anyone should handle layoffs, but I

24:30

think from a business standpoint, actually laying people off was

24:33

something that Twitter was going to do whether he got

24:35

there or not. So if he

24:37

takes it private, he maybe tightens up the

24:39

business a little bit, but continues

24:41

to run it in much the same way

24:43

business-wise that it had run before, you would

24:46

now have like a profitable

24:48

company, but without the public

24:50

pressure of quarterly earnings, without

24:52

like, hey, every time an

24:55

advertiser leaves, the stock price is

24:57

taking a hit or something. And it sort of would

24:59

have freed him up to maybe do

25:01

this quote unquote free speech thing that he wanted to

25:03

do. I think the problem is, was

25:05

that he took it private, he dramatically

25:07

cut costs because he took out too much debt,

25:09

so he went a little bit too hardcore there.

25:12

And then on top of that, he

25:14

ran off all the advertisers so quickly

25:16

that it sort of created this

25:19

like untenable business situation. So again,

25:21

I realize this is like an alternate universe situation

25:23

where he would have had to do several things

25:25

differently. But I don't

25:28

think it's that crazy to say, okay, if you

25:30

took the exact same Twitter we knew from two

25:32

years ago, but you simply made it a

25:34

private company instead of a public company, that

25:36

would have freed them up to loosen up

25:38

a lot of their speech-related things, I think,

25:40

in a way that Elon and

25:43

Jack quite frankly wanted to do. They just sort

25:45

of mishandled it in my opinion. All

25:47

right, so let's talk about what happened. Twitter

25:50

under Elon, and again, like it's reading

25:52

your book that makes me feel like,

25:55

wow, I still don't really

25:57

have a handle on what's all going

25:59

on. now. But I can

26:01

certainly say that like before I read your book,

26:03

my impression was this platform is losing

26:06

users. It's like going away from what

26:08

I really liked about it, which is

26:10

that I could tell the app

26:12

who I wanted to follow and then I would

26:14

see that. Now I feel like it's much more

26:16

like somebody's other social media platforms was

26:19

just pushing out content to me and I don't have

26:21

as much control over what it is that I see,

26:23

which makes me as a content creator, less

26:26

willing to use it because I feel like it

26:28

doesn't really matter how good the content is that

26:31

I create. It's like some algorithm that's going to

26:33

feed it out to people or not and so

26:35

I have much less control over building

26:37

a followership or creating a good

26:40

account. So is

26:42

that true? What's happening? How

26:44

did we get here? I know those are all like a

26:46

million big questions. No,

26:49

I know. It is hard. I feel the

26:51

same way for what it's worth. I mean like my 4U

26:55

timeline, so now there's two timelines, right? There's like

26:57

the algorithm driven one and then there's the one

26:59

that's just people you follow in chronological

27:02

order. To be clear,

27:04

there was always an algorithm timeline. They would inject

27:06

some stuff for you from people you didn't follow.

27:09

But I think it was a smaller percentage

27:11

and there also wasn't this pay

27:13

to play situation that exists now, which is

27:15

like if you are willing to pay $8

27:18

and be a subscriber to X, you

27:21

get preferential treatment in the feed,

27:23

quite frankly. So what you're probably

27:25

seeing is a lot more content

27:27

from people who are just paying

27:30

customers and less content from

27:32

perhaps really good

27:35

or interesting content creators who aren't

27:37

paying the company. Although for

27:39

me, my experience has changed dramatically. I

27:42

talked about how important Twitter was for news.

27:45

I don't want to say it's unusable

27:47

for news because I still get

27:49

some value, but it's certainly not

27:51

as valuable as it was. My

27:53

feed doesn't have nearly the timeliness

27:55

that it did around news. It

27:57

feels more like an entertainment feed.

28:00

like it's just trying to lure you in

28:02

and like I get I don't know what you get I get

28:04

a bunch of weird like historical like this video

28:06

from 18 year like 1920

28:09

has been Colorized and

28:11

like now you can see what it was and I'm

28:13

like, okay Like am I watching

28:16

the history channel or like what is going on here? So to

28:19

me this all comes back to Elon

28:21

Musk's sort of disdain for the

28:24

mass media and the mainstream media

28:26

and Every change

28:28

he's made to me feels like it's intended

28:30

to make X or Twitter

28:32

less relevant and helpful to those people

28:35

Because I think he sort of just

28:37

disagrees with a lot that the media has

28:39

done especially how they covered him and you

28:42

know I'm happy to get into this a little bit

28:44

more I don't want to like keep rambling here But

28:46

I just think like it's clear He's not a fan

28:48

of the mainstream media and I feel like a lot

28:50

of the decisions He's made with X since taking over

28:53

have been to take the power from

28:55

journalists away Yeah,

28:58

I mean that's exactly sort of been my

29:00

experience that I don't find it as relevant

29:02

anymore or as an Informative and I

29:04

just don't feel like it's as necessary

29:06

Yeah, but again, there isn't something

29:08

that I found that has taken its

29:10

place I mean, so let's talk about

29:13

what now like how do we fill this void

29:16

that Twitter? The changes

29:18

like have created. I still have a hard time

29:20

calling it X. Yeah, and we didn't know we

29:22

needed right like Before Twitter it was

29:24

like people were like, oh I need to like know what the

29:27

pulse is and this like kind of crowdsourced

29:29

way But now I feel

29:31

like I miss it and I'm not really

29:33

quite sure and then there's all these other you

29:35

know a lot of the other platforms to like

29:37

tick-tock has become a Primary platform

29:40

for a lot of people and it is

29:42

entirely about pushing out content. There is very

29:44

little kind of engagement there So

29:47

what do you think has been X's role in

29:49

this changing landscape of how we use social

29:51

media? Are we returning back to

29:53

a model where we're just passive consumers

29:56

rather than active curators? Where are we

29:58

going? It kind of feels? that way.

30:00

Although I would point out that on almost

30:02

every social platform, everyone that I can think

30:04

of, the vast majority of users on there

30:06

are passive consumers, right? We think of Twitter,

30:09

I think is maybe feeling different,

30:11

probably because, again, the

30:13

people you're following are actually posting content, which is

30:15

what you're seeing. But really, the Instagram,

30:18

Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, all

30:21

of those platforms, like, I don't know, I'm making

30:24

this number up, but it's, we'll say 99%

30:26

of users of these services are

30:28

just consuming. And they're not actually

30:30

creating. And I think

30:33

with X, what's, you mentioned

30:35

something, you said it doesn't feel necessary anymore. And

30:37

that's the thing, that's what made X so good

30:40

was that if you cared about news, you

30:42

felt like you had to be on Twitter.

30:45

And it doesn't feel that way anymore. I agree

30:47

with you. But nothing else feels that way either,

30:49

right? And I think, as someone who,

30:51

gosh, has spent the last

30:53

decade tweeting about the news and tweeting

30:55

my stories and interacting with other people

30:57

about the news, I don't

31:00

even know where to go myself. And

31:02

that's maybe the problem, right? It's like

31:04

people who are newsmakers or reporters or

31:06

journalists, they're not really sure

31:09

exactly where they should be posting. So I'm

31:11

like posting on X, I'm posting on threads,

31:13

I'm posting on Blue Sky, I'm on LinkedIn.

31:15

It's sort of like, where are, where'd

31:17

we settle on? And so I agree with

31:20

you, it's splintered. And there's

31:22

no clear winner. So as a result, you sort of

31:24

get like, people are picking and choosing,

31:26

but you're not getting the mass migration to any

31:28

one of these things. And as a result, none

31:31

of them feel urgent or necessary to me either.

31:33

Yeah, I mean, I think the closest is

31:36

probably LinkedIn as kind of, you

31:38

know, it has its own businessy,

31:40

totally different vibe and different audience,

31:42

etc. But I'm really

31:44

wondering, you know, we're coming up into another

31:46

election year, this is going to be another

31:48

battle between social media

31:51

platforms in a sense. And yet there isn't

31:53

a centralized place as you do think people

31:55

are going to come back to X because

31:58

of the political scene. No,

32:02

not really. I mean, I will

32:04

be interested to see what Donald

32:06

Trump ultimately ends up doing. He's like

32:09

back on X, but not really. As

32:11

you know, he's still mostly posting the

32:13

truth and true social that is. And

32:16

him coming back in full force, at

32:19

the very least, would probably bring the

32:21

media attention back to X in a

32:23

different way than we see it right

32:25

now. And that might be the kind

32:28

of like a bit of a domino effect, right? But

32:31

otherwise, it just feels quite

32:34

combative sometimes. I don't know how you feel,

32:36

but like when I'm on X, it feels

32:38

really combative and I

32:40

don't really necessarily want to go

32:42

and like have a discussion about

32:44

every single hot button election issue.

32:46

I'm not sure that other

32:48

people do either. So it'll be interesting to

32:50

see like, do people just go back and are they

32:53

less informed? Are they more informed? Because now

32:55

maybe they're getting their information from a newspaper.

32:58

I don't know. Do people read the news anymore? Are

33:00

they going to TV news?

33:03

I don't have a good answer for you, but I

33:05

just don't see what could happen in the

33:08

next six months that's going to

33:10

dramatically change where X

33:12

feels like it fits in this ecosystem unless perhaps,

33:14

like I said, President Trump comes back and tweets

33:17

25 times a day. And

33:19

that would only be because it would bring the media

33:21

back to cover that. And that might sort of be

33:23

a snowball thing. Yeah. One of the things that I

33:26

find really interesting about this moment is that in the

33:28

past where you've had a sea change in

33:30

culture that's driven by some new tech innovation,

33:32

it's because a new player has come on

33:35

the scene and then it's

33:37

sort of like, oh, then it's like the question

33:39

is, is this new player going to, how much

33:41

of the market is it going to take on?

33:43

Like Clubhouse is an example. Like, you know, we're all

33:45

going to spend our time on Clubhouse and like that didn't

33:47

quite pan out. This is almost

33:49

like the absence or the demise of a platform

33:52

that is causing the cultural change. And I feel

33:54

like, yeah, there's like a kind of sense of

33:56

being adrift that I haven't seen in other times.

33:59

Yeah. I mean, it's created

34:01

a vacuum for sure. Like

34:03

I said, to me, it feels very

34:05

splintered right now. You mentioned LinkedIn. Don't

34:08

get me wrong. I don't think people are going to

34:10

say, hey, I wonder what's going on at tonight's debate.

34:12

I'm going to tune into LinkedIn to find out, right?

34:14

That's just not what it's for. But

34:17

you have seen what Twitter's

34:21

change has done, which is it has forced

34:23

people to go explore other

34:25

things. Do you use threads at

34:27

all? I'm curious. Like threads is... Yeah,

34:30

but threads feels the

34:32

closest in that way. But it also

34:35

feels like the biggest mountain because

34:37

I've been on LinkedIn for years, so

34:41

I already have... Yeah, I found my

34:43

followers. But

34:46

I feel like from threads, it's just been really

34:48

hard to find the people that... I mean, they're

34:50

just getting easier, but yes,

34:52

I think that's probably the place

34:55

that people are going to end up. And that's one of

34:57

the reasons I sort of put a little

34:59

bit more effort into threads than I would have otherwise.

35:02

And I'm sure why Mark Zuckerberg created

35:05

Thread or whoever it was on Instagram

35:07

that did, right? I mean, threads to

35:09

me feels the closest to what we

35:11

had at Twitter yet I still don't

35:14

feel... It's like Twitter. It's like nice

35:16

Twitter, I feel. I

35:19

can post on threads and I

35:21

feel like people are going to be

35:23

nice to me, which is a

35:25

cool feeling quite frankly because

35:28

it's quite enjoyable to have

35:30

a nice thing. But as a

35:32

result, I also don't feel like

35:34

I'm having the meaningful discussions there, right?

35:36

So it's like, yeah, I feel

35:38

like I can share my news there, but

35:40

I don't think I'm going to have the

35:43

same sort of intensity or the same seriousness

35:46

that I did with Twitter a

35:48

few years ago around certain issues. Yeah,

35:51

I don't know. I don't know if it'll ever be replicated,

35:53

to be honest with you, because I feel... I thought about

35:55

this a lot. And what made

35:57

Twitter super unique was, again, this urgency, this feeling.

35:59

we all needed to be there, I don't

36:02

know if you could convince people that they need to be

36:04

anywhere in 2024. So

36:07

Twitter benefited from the fact that it started in like

36:09

2000, or not started of course, but

36:11

sort of like started to really pick up in 2012, 13, 14. Because

36:16

that was a time when people

36:18

were willing to say, whoa, I need to

36:20

be on this social network. I

36:22

just think the social scene has changed so much that like, I

36:25

don't know, I don't think you could convince people they

36:27

have to be anywhere. And so as a result, you're

36:29

never going to get that same collection of people in

36:31

one place again. Yeah, I mean, I have

36:33

the same feeling about threads. And it's

36:35

interesting because, but I still find it

36:38

difficult to be serious on there because

36:40

to me, it's still tied to Instagram,

36:42

which is like the whole like Instagrammable

36:44

as an adjective to me does not

36:46

equate with seriousness or critical thinking

36:48

or more like beauty,

36:50

aesthetics. Right. And

36:52

I don't know if you've followed what Instagram has even said

36:55

about threads. But Adam Massari, the head of Instagram has basically

36:57

said like, they don't really want

36:59

threads to be a place for politics. And

37:01

it's like, okay, that's totally

37:03

fine. But then it's never gonna be a

37:06

Twitter replacement. Because quite frankly, like Twitter was

37:08

a place for politics. And it was a

37:10

place to go discuss these important issues happening.

37:12

So if threads isn't willing to lean into

37:15

that, and in fact, you

37:17

know, I don't know exactly what they're doing with the algorithm. But if

37:19

they're gonna take anything that's political and

37:21

sort of, you know, demote it in the

37:23

feed or something like that, it's just never gonna

37:25

have the same feeling as Twitter, which is

37:27

okay. Like I don't think we're all sitting

37:29

here saying, you know, Twitter had

37:31

its massive flaws, for sure. But

37:34

you know, it's not gonna have the use cases as

37:36

well. So it sounds like

37:38

we don't really have a clear vision of what the

37:40

landscape is gonna be like in the next few years.

37:43

But maybe there's one more person we can come back

37:45

to. And like, what is Jack

37:47

gonna do next? Like, what do you think

37:50

is gonna be his next big thing? He's focused

37:52

on two things right now. One

37:54

since we're talking social media, I'll start there,

37:56

which is Decentralized social

37:58

media. You may be on

38:01

blue sky or heard a blue sky just on

38:03

the board there. it's no longer he is, he's

38:05

not running and or anything but it was sort

38:07

of his his baby when he was a twitter

38:09

before he left. And. Again, it's this

38:11

idea of like social media, but

38:13

without the centralized control of a

38:15

single company and. Hopefully

38:17

if they do it right to most consumers,

38:19

it'll feel just like normal social media like

38:22

it. You know you'll you'll law again and

38:24

and it'll feel like you're on Twitter or

38:26

Facebook or Instagram or whatever. But

38:28

the behind the scenes stuff will be

38:31

handled than a very different way because

38:33

everything is open source and risk of

38:35

like getting too technical. Basically you don't

38:37

have a single company making all the

38:39

rules. That's what is focused on

38:41

social media front. Beyond. That though he

38:43

super interest in Bitcoin right now and given

38:45

that he still running blocks or which was

38:48

square announced block. That makes lot

38:50

of sense. It's a, you know, financial thing, but

38:52

there's a lot of overlap. In

38:54

Bitcoin and Blue Sky, they're both

38:56

decentralized, sort of versions of one's

38:58

a social network, In one's a

39:01

currency. And. Said Jack is like

39:03

right now. Very. And to

39:05

sort of eliminating any level of

39:07

company control over these things: Government

39:09

control, Company control. And so that

39:11

seems to be where he spent most of his

39:13

time these days. Which is it. But he's He's

39:15

not nearly as visible as used to be. I'm

39:18

sure you maybe I'm seen or heard from him

39:20

much. he some. And. Was a side

39:22

in out but he's definitely not putting himself out

39:24

there. and the way the he's still and maybe

39:26

that is that of where where. We're headed

39:28

the true promise of decentralization.

39:30

You know where, In some ways I feel like

39:32

that bitcoin. Promise never really hasn't

39:34

yet com to it's. Full from us

39:36

and we know the whole ft accents

39:39

and back fried story and were at

39:41

all then and how. Now it's like

39:43

becoming more regulated but maybe there's still

39:45

hope for some other ways that decentralize

39:47

a said it's going to become a.

39:50

A bigger part of our lives I think so I'm

39:52

not ready to write it off yet. by any stretch,

39:55

I do think it's have. A. Really

39:57

idealistic way of of doing these

39:59

things as. Actually, Given.

40:02

Met his place in in the world

40:04

and dominance in social networking right now.

40:06

Like the idea of sort of this

40:08

new, scrappy, decentralize, same cropping up. And.

40:10

Somehow. Taken. A meaningful market

40:12

share is hard for me to believe. I

40:14

think like. What? People forget. Is

40:17

the power of you know, the social graph raid

40:19

and this idea that Emmy do you even talk

40:21

about it with threads is kind of like you

40:23

gotta start over and my dog had you. find

40:25

the people you want to find and like how

40:27

do you build your following. It's a

40:29

lot of work and for a lot of people. It's.

40:32

Easier to just stay at the place where

40:34

they've already built the fall, when or where

40:36

they already sorted know to expect. And

40:39

I'm that's why they. Compete.

40:41

In a social media as really hard as his,

40:43

you gotta really build that network back up and

40:45

you have that people patient enough to do it.

40:48

And I'm now. Blue Sky, Two Doors, or

40:50

some other decentralized network could certainly do it.

40:52

I think it's an interesting idea. I'm not

40:54

gonna write it off, but I'm also not

40:57

super optimistic that. That they're going

40:59

to convince the the masses to move anywhere

41:01

else Fi Where Are. Minor. Listeners that Kurt

41:03

Wagner's but Battle for the Bird Jack

41:05

Dorsey, Elon Musk and the Forty Four

41:08

Billion Dollar fight for Twitter his soul.

41:10

Is now available at booksellers everywhere, Kurt,

41:12

thank you so much for being on

41:15

inquiring minds, thank you for army this

41:17

lot of. so

41:20

that that for another episode thanks for

41:22

listening and if you want to hear

41:24

more don't forget to subscribe if you

41:26

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41:33

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41:35

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41:37

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41:39

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