How much are you willing to pay for a verified social media account? | B2B Vault | Episode 150

Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the payment technology podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, the Steve Jobs of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman., and we'll be providing you educational information about fintech, small business payment processing, and the technology businesses are using in the world today. And in today's podcast, we thought we'd talk social media. Um, there's a lot of changes happening between paid, uh, profiles, blah blah blah, Facebook, TikTok, you know, you name it, a lot of different changes happening. How businesses are using social media, some expected, you know, loss, you could say, from businesses pulling out of their social media campaigns.

Well, it's going to be interesting to see how everything plays out, you know, with all the big changes going on with social media. We got Twitter with the $11 charge. Facebook.

You're jumping the gun. You're jumping the gun. You're jumping in it.

All right, we won't jump in it yet.

Yeah. Um, but yeah, I mean, businesses are using social media for a lot of different ways now, and I think we're going to have to get more creative in the ways that we use social media for marketing, uh, our business, our services, or whatever it is that you want to use it for. Um, but You know, on a lighter note, uh, social media to me, uh, it's meant to be social.

Yeah. I mean, social media is, you know, it's meant to be social. I mean, I think that's what it started out as, the onset, and then it became more like loaded with ads.

What's your favorite social media network?

I don't really have one. I mean, I like to watch the, like, the short videos, the reels, whatever, the TikTok, the—

when you wake up in the morning and you, you're using the restroom, what social media usually—

usually I check, um, I check my, I check my email for—

when you're on the crapper, you're checking your email?

Yeah, but I'm usually checking for like the news sites that send me like a wrap-up. And I also go to Facebook and I check the news button. That's where I go.

Each its own.

Um, and I play my games in the morning, so I like to— I like to do my Wordle and the word scramble and Scrabble game. And you know, that's like my way to like get my brain going, you know, in the morning. Yeah, word games.

My favorite social network, probably media network, is probably Twitter. I love Twitter. I'm old, I'm 42, so the Facebook, I've watched it change drastically to the point where I don't like it.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like, a lot of Facebook is like, you go on there and every other thing is an ad.

And then everything is an ad.

Yeah, everything is an ad.

Yeah, so it's a—

getting— got away from like, like a friends and family. And they also changed the way the groups work. And the same thing happened on LinkedIn, you know. Yeah, LinkedIn now it's loaded with a lot of, a lot of ads, polls. Some people are posting good useful content.

Um, I like LinkedIn.

I think LinkedIn is I like Longway, but the one thing they did that I don't like—

we'll get there, we'll get there. You're premature in it.

Okay, I won't premature it.

But yeah, man, I mean, social media networks, and there's just a lot of different tools that are out there that you could use. I would say be mindful of what you're posting on social media.

Definitely.

Be careful of, you know, fraud on social. But I'm, I'm, I'm beating around the bush because I don't want you to, to ruin the whole pie.

Okay.

In two sentences, because, you know, basically we're going to talk about how—

no, and also the advertising game too, we're going to talk about that, right?

But we wanted to touch on, you know, how these platforms are going from freemium premium. Um, I think that it's going to shake up the business world a little bit. I think, uh, we've already seen what's happened on Twitter when Elon took over. A lot of people left, like a lot of business pulled— they didn't leave the platform, but they pulled their, their marketing budget out of it. So I mean, history will likely repeat itself with Facebook.

I think, I think I think Facebook's already started to feel the pinch from the economy because all of these platforms, one thing they all have in common is they're all laying off thousands of people. Our on-air, uh, okay, no, but a lot of these platforms, even Google, Microsoft, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter LinkedIn, they're all laying people off. So it's a lot of stuff is going on in the tech world, in that, in that social tech.

Yeah, I don't know, I don't really follow the layoffs.

No, no, I'm just saying that's the stuff that's in the news. The other stuff that's in the news is what department was getting laid off. I don't know, just exactly layoffs. And I'm just saying, you don't know if they're a part of the tech part of it. Well, no, they're not part of the tech part.

You did just say that, right?

Right, but I'm saying most of it was part of like the sales part.

Okay.

And the sales part has to do with the ads, so they're not getting the ad revenue they were getting before. So there's a— their ad revenue is down. That's what it says.

I don't—

yeah, I follow a lot of the financial news.

Their ad revenue is down majorly, right? That's, that's before they even announced this premium. Exactly, that's what I'm saying. I mean, After announcing this, I think more businesses will probably find a cheaper way to spend their ad budget, but they will not— it's just like on Twitter, like a lot of businesses, they, they pulled back on their ad spend, right? They didn't just pull it all.

No, they didn't pull it off.

I mean, some of the big, some of the bigwigs did, you know, like the— but that's because they had a partnership or relationship previous with Twitter, right? So there was a lot of handshaking, I'm sure, like backdoor handshakes or whatever the terminology that is used for that, right? Going on, just like people would— you— not everyone could get verified in Twitter, even, you know, like journalists, whatever, you know. There, people were having to pay, you know, pay to play, right? You know, that's, that's not right. You know what I mean? And so I, I, I remember that's a moral compass thing though.

No, I remember my daughter when she got hired at her job in Iowa, right? She had to go through a whole process on Facebook and Twitter to get to be a verified journalist through the television station and they handled it. Right. She didn't have to do anything. Now they won't go near it with a 10-foot pole. Any new people come to work there, they're like, you're on your own with that. Whole thing.

I mean, the verification thing makes sense to me.

No, I definitely think that social media needs to have some kind of verification for every single profile.

Well, that's why they're going to do the premium.

I think that they should just do it.

I think that's probably costly.

I'm not—

I saw this— so like, to verify someone, just think of all the process for you that you do to verify a business if they're real or not. So you mean to tell me that Facebook is gonna hire another who knows how many people to fact-check to see if these millions and billions of users are? It's impossible, Allen.

I guess. I mean, you know, like when a merchant account— I mean, we're verifying Social Security number, federal tax ID.

You're thoroughly checking to see if this person is real or not, right?

And I would say the cost is about $7, as opposed to Facebook doing a billion users, right?

So let's say 7 times a billion, $7 billion, but they want to charge $11 a month or towards something like that, or no, it's actually $11 bucks a month.

Yeah, $11.99 a month if you're on the web. And then if you're using your iPhone or Android phone, it's $14.99. And then—

but you got to explain what that's for because you and I almost got—

I read it, it says right here.

So listen, so if you want to get verified on Facebook, they're going to charge you $14.99 to use it on your phone. Now that does not mean that you're going to have to pay $15 a month to use Facebook.

That's what they want.

That's— of course, every, every one of these are going to be monthly. Yeah, but it's not for— it's only to be verified, right? But they want you to pay the $14.99 to be verified monthly, to be verified, right? Not to use the app.

I understand that, but you're still going to pay the $14.99 monthly if you want to be verified, right? But it's not a one-time fee if you want to be verified. I understand that. I'm saying I could see them charging a one-time. If they said, oh, we're gonna charge you $50 one time, I'm not signing up and verify. I'm not signing up for your business. No, I would pay it. You, $50 one time, not for months.

Google doesn't even make you pay to verify your business.

Okay, so why are these places charging? They're making gazillion dollars for ads.

Google is free. Okay, go to Google My Business and verify your your business for free.

Okay, well, why aren't Facebook and Twitter and everybody doing it for free?

Because they want you to pay to be verified.

Okay, I don't get that.

Man, I think honestly the whole blue checkmark to me is like a class thing. It's like, ooh, look at me, I'm verified.

Maybe. I'm not gonna do it.

I mean, so like As far as— I mean, if I, I did the Twitter Blue thing. Yeah, but just to check it out, I took it off just to check it out, and I didn't really— I didn't, I didn't see the worth in it, you know. I'm sorry. Uh, again, I actually, you know, I don't live my life in the internet. I live in the real world. But I get it, I spend enough time in the internet during the day that when I get home I don't want to be—

yeah, exactly, you don't want to be inundated with social media all night and the computer. I want to be off the computer.

I get mad at my kids when I walk in the door and they're just staring at their phone and the different music is playing from different phones because they're watching different TikTok stories and it's, it's very overstimulating. And but anyway, uh, back to Facebook. I think having a premium model is smart on any business level.

Yeah, but I'm just saying, why are they charging $11.99 on the web and $14.99 for the phone?

That makes no sense.

Right, that's the part I don't understand. And why are you gonna have to pay for both?

Yeah, I would assume so.

So if you want to use on your computer—

$25.

And that's a lot of money, $25 a month to be verified, right? That's a lot of money.

We agree. I mean, to the people who care to be verified, is that a lot of money?

I don't know.

I mean, I'm not gonna pay for that, but you are a person that kind of cares, right?

But I don't want to pay. That's too— I don't— I think I'm gonna have to abstain from the $25.

What would be the number that you would pay to be verified?

Like I said, if they said, okay, you can have a verified— this is what they're offering: a verified badge confirming you're real, your account has been authenticated with a government ID, more protection for impersonation. Okay, so monitoring for impersonators who might target people with growing online audiences.

Why do we have to pay Facebook to monitor impersonation?

Well, because there's a lot of fake profiles on Facebook.

That's my point, like It's Facebook. They're on Facebook, right? And they're impersonating people. Why is that our job to pay you to monitor impersonation?

That's what I'm saying.

That's your platform. That doesn't make any sense, right?

Then increased visibility and reach with prominence in some areas of the platform like search, comments, and recommendations.

You skipped one.

Help when you need it from a real person with common account issues.

Issues. That's BS.

I don't believe that. And I don't believe the increased visibility and reach either. And exclusive features to express yourself in unique— I don't believe that either. What are they going to do, say, oh, you can only do reels if you're verified? I mean, I'm just saying.

Probably.

I mean, that's what I'm saying.

I wouldn't doubt it.

I would pay if they said— if Twitter said, okay, you have to pay $50 and you're verified and whatever, like, yeah, and you get one or two bit, whatever, one business profile along with that.

That doesn't make—

no, no, but I'm saying, and you had to pay 50 bucks.

There's really, honestly, there's no way that you can make, make me say that I would, because I don't like—

I mean, I would—

I don't care enough for you to believe if I'm real or not.

No, but I'm saying I would pay that because as a business owner to put it on, to, to have that. That's my point. And I would have my— I would want my business verified too. And I would have to include the $50 a year or a month. No, for the— forget if it's yearly, fine, $50 for the year. But this stuff, $11, you get— add this up. I mean, dude, we're turning into a subscription society.

Well, if that's what they wanted. I mean, you know, I see the one that— there's this one picture where it's like it shows all these logos Right. Everything's a subscription and it's all owned by 4 companies.

It's crazy.

And so, I mean, this— we had a— we talked about— we touched on this on a different podcast.

Yeah, we talked about the subscription economy, how businesses can maybe give better, you know, do better service to their customers by offering a subscription. I mean, I usually don't opt into that many subscriptions.

Subscriptions. I mean, everything that I have is a subscription. I have a subscription for Netflix, a subscription for Tidal, a subscription for this, a subscription for that. Amazon. Yeah, so cable TV, it's all— it sucks that you can't— there's no, there's no way of bundling it, right? Because it's all—

you would think Comcast would come up with a plan and bundle the subscriptions I hate the way that they're doing their— yeah, everything's à la carte now on Comcast.

Oh, you want— I pay almost $210 a month for internet and TV.

It's crazy.

And I don't even watch the TV. No one does in our house. And it's— but you can't cancel it.

Yeah, because you then you lose all the services with— that's the— your other services, right?

Because then they're like, well, then we have to repack—

like, you have to re-contract and all Yeah, repackage it up and then it comes out to more money when you take off the TV.

And all I want is the fastest internet possible, man to man. And the fastest internet that I have is— would the— if I just got internet alone, it would be more expensive, right?

Exactly.

It just doesn't make any sense to me. I'm really about this close of trying out the T-Mobile.

Yeah, $50 thing.

I'm this close. I mean, I don't know how that— if you can have more than one in the house and that a device could connect to that, I think it could work. But back to socials, I don't think social media is going anywhere. I think that, I think that Facebook itself is trying to figure it out. Uh, they already just— they— I don't know, this morning I was reading that they're gonna start cutting back on video. On Facebook again. Yeah, so I, I think that—

and YouTube is trying to ramp up Shorts.

Yeah, I mean, YouTube is amazing. I like YouTube. YouTube is— I think each social media platform had its, had its functional functionality, right? So like Facebook was when I first, you know, like, like let's say 10 years ago, Facebook was really good for asking your mom for a recipe, right? You know what I mean? And then she'd put it on, on Facebook and everyone would talk about it, right? And they would bring up memories that the— oh, I remember when your mom made this for you at your birthday, blah blah blah. That was great. I loved when Facebook was like that. Twitter is, to me, has pretty much stayed the same. Like, that's why I love— that's why Twitter is my favorite. You know, social media platform.

I could never really understand Twitter, but that's me.

Yeah. Um, it's very journalism.

I'm just saying I didn't really get involved in it. Yeah.

I mean, and then, you know, like Instagram, I like Instagram. Instagram is like one of those places, very, very private for me.

You know what I mean?

It's like my only place where I get to be myself on because I made it that way, right? Um, no, no, but I'm saying, so if you follow me on Instagram, you will see some wild shit. But, uh, if not, don't follow me. And I'm, you know, you won't follow me anyway. I don't— it's private.

Um, no, no, but like on Instagram, they flip-flop back and forth from pictures to videos.

That's because Facebook bought it. Ever since Facebook bought Instagram, they, you know, I kind of stopped using it. I like Instagram as a picture sharing platform. That's what it was made to do.

Right.

That's what it should stay as. I mean, I get the videos sometimes in there, you know, it's kind of cool sometimes, but you know, TikTok, that's, I have an account there. I'm not really into dancing.

So yeah, we can't dance. That's one thing for sure.

Oh, I'm stiff as a board.

We're horrible.

But you know, all the other ones, you know, LinkedIn, of course, you know, out of all of the ones, you know, it makes sense for a premium version.

No, no, but I want to just tell you real quick, for me, the only one that makes sense for a premium is LinkedIn, right?

Out of all of the social media platforms, LinkedIn is the only one that makes sense for a premium version for, you know, hiring, recruiting, uh, sales, sales, all those other reasons, because you're actually trying to connect with businesses. Like, that's— I mean, for me, that's the one that really makes sense for premium. I'm using LinkedIn more and more lately.

Yeah, LinkedIn is a great place to connect with business people, that's for sure.

Then you got Allen's newest favorite, Alignable.

Not my favorite.

I can't hear enough of it. Alignable! We should post on Alignable! Don't forget to post on Alignable! Bro, guess whatever you say.

I don't know, we're trying it out.

Yeah, no, I mean, you know, it is working, you know.

I mean, listen, there's other ones.

It's working to the point where he spent some money there.

So Pinterest, people are on there.

Pinterest, there is a lane for us on Pinterest. I just haven't figured it out. Okay, I mean, what's another social media We just need to make a bunch of infographics to go on Pinterest.

I'm saying, like, what other— I mean, I've seen other—

I wouldn't do— I wouldn't pay for Pinterest.

No, but I'm saying I've seen other social media platforms, you know, they don't have very much engagement on them, you know, smaller ones. There's tons of them out there.

Mastodon, blah blah blah.

Yeah, yeah, there's, there's tons of them out there. Just none of them really gained any traction.

You know, look who you're going up against, right?

But I'm just saying, but you know, it's like on LinkedIn, one of the things they ruined on LinkedIn was the groups. So you could post in the groups and then—

man, LinkedIn, you pissed Allen off when you killed the groups, buddy.

Not that, but I'm saying like the groups, you would post in a group and then every day you would get like a group email, you'd see all the posts in the group. It was kind of nice to see like whatever—

what would you have, like a recap? Yeah, Justin posted a video of his dog.

No, no, not one post at a time, just a recap for the day.

I don't know how that would look. No, would it look in words?

Yeah, just, uh, it would just be like, you know, thing. Oh, this guy posted this story, that whatever. You'd get like the top 10 things posted in the group for the day. I don't know, just now when you go to a group, you don't know if you're reaching anybody because they don't really advertise the groups, or the person who's supposed to be running the group is not sending out any kind of emails from the group.

I think LinkedIn does a pretty good job of letting you know who's watching and who's seeing and who—

yeah, they do, but I'm just saying like the groups aren't as effective as they were several years ago.

Oh, that way.

And then I was looking at Sales Navigator the other day because I just have a low, like the business version of LinkedIn right now. And that because I got upset, I was telling you, like, one of the things I didn't like that they took away from the LinkedIn Premium, which is like $100 a month, is that they took away when you do a search that you could— when you searched, you could say, oh, who was active in that category in the last 30 days. And then it would get rid of all the people who haven't been on there in the last 30 days. But now I saw they put some other new feature in there about some, um, uh, I guess, what are they calling it, buying tendency, or if somebody's searching for what you're—

search intent.

Yes, search intent. So now I'm thinking maybe I should try it out for a month and see if their search intent is actually what works.

And, or if it's going to tell you what people are searching for on you, right?

So if someone was searching for merchant services or they were searching for fintech, you'd be able to see that what they do that. Yeah, I want to try it out.

No, do that. Don't try, do it.

Yeah, get a truck.

When we're done with this podcast, go buy that.

Okay.

For me, so I can—

I'll get it for you. We'll try it out. We'll see if it actually, if it works, because I don't— it doesn't tell you what categories it's searching for. No, but it's going to be interesting to see. And then also there's a bunch of stuff going on with social media right now where the government is— there's a bunch of cases in the Supreme Court about the 230 protection that social media has.

I don't even know what that is.

Oh, so 230 is that they're protected. They can't get sued for what people post on their platform.

Sounds right to me.

So they have some protection, and people are fighting whether that protection should be stay or it should go.

Are you saying like, so if this is something that I'm very opposed to, right? Okay, so like on Facebook or Instagram or whatever, TikTok, you know, people post very violent—

well, that nobody should be posting.

Well, the person shouldn't. It's a moral thing, right? But I mean, people shouldn't kill each other, and that shit happens every day.

Yes.

Uh, but I don't think that these social platforms should— there's got to be a better monitoring of like violent content. Definitely. The other thing is the bullying stuff on, you know, I think that all comes from that, right? Like, because they see that it's okay to post videos about fighting, to post videos of someone getting stabbed, shot, ran over by a car. Like, why is that even— why are you really showing that? Is it— is it— what is the purpose that it's not valuable.

So just to give you a little insight, so when somebody wants to have a creator platform, right, we were talking about freelancers and everything before. So if you want to have a creator platform, uh, and you want to accept Visa and MasterCard, right, they now require— they made new rules and they require those companies to have real-time monitoring set up for what the videos that are being posted on those platforms.

Yeah, I mean, I've read that, right?

So why doesn't, you know, who— why isn't Visa and MasterCard coming after, you know, Facebook and Twitter? Good point. And, and all that, they take credit cards. Yeah, you would think like the government would be on there, but it's not that. Visa and MasterCard.

Well, I mean, because you can't just post anything on cable television and the news, you know, there's all kinds of, right, you know, warning, this is extreme content. I've noticed they're getting better at that on the social platforms.

Yes, sometimes I'll see a video on Facebook and I'll say, oh, you need to click this button and then put in your password if you want to watch some violent video. I don't agree with that. Usually it's a news story showing something Right. Um, I don't know. And you know, I don't know.

People are crazy, man.

Definitely.

But there's been stuff— we're in a tough spot because I always, you know, I explained because my kids, right?

Like with Facebook, for instance, real quick.

So like with social media, I would tell my kids all the time, don't be on there. Right. But then they're like, Dad, you're on there all day. All I see you is on Facebook, you know. And I said, well, that's different because I'm working, right? But they're like, how was it different, Dad? You're still on Facebook. You can still— and my argument would be like, well, I'm working and I'm posting things that are useful as opposed to things that are like degrading and negative. And the time that you What their point was, I couldn't, I couldn't, you know, there was nothing I could do, no rebuttal.

They were right.

I was on Facebook for a long time because it's, you know, for business-wise, you got to manage a bunch of pages. Yeah, it is what it is. You got to post your content so that people can learn about your business and services. So I mean, yeah, it's weird, dude.

So yeah, but also the other thing that's kind of crazy is like Facebook Live, right? And other platforms that have live on there, you know, the, the, um, you know, there has to be moderation. But also the, you know, we've had instances where there's a fight in a school or something going on and then 50 kids are going live, right? And these videos are being seen by a lot of people that maybe should not be seeing that kind of stuff, you know.

Well, of course, I mean, and then And then it's all— it just perpetuates the, the cycle of nonsense, right? Like, because the kids see the video, the family sees the video, now the family's mad at the family. Now it's just like that guy in Buffalo, he walked into that. I don't want to talk about—

no, no, but I'm saying he had Facebook Live going.

That's, uh, terrible. Took a walk in his head.

No, no, it took a while before the Facebook got that Taken down.

I mean, how—

I—

yeah, it's ridiculous, man.

No, I'm just saying that's the problem.

So Meta, Meta is, is kicking off their, their $14.99 per iOS or Android thing in a couple European countries, right?

No, Australia and New Zealand this week.

Oh, in Australia, New Zealand?

Yes.

So they're already rolling it out over there to to see how they like it, right? Or if they don't like it, right? I'm assuming they don't like it, but you know, and they're on— you make an ass out of you and me.

And also, I read an article about Meta, and they're in a bunch of lawsuits, which we talked about on the podcast a while ago, about buying all these companies that have the word Meta in it.

Yeah.

So one of them is like fighting with them really bad because because they're like, no, the money's too cheap. And they also—

you're talking about the one, the company that was actually named Meta?

There's two of them. One that was actually named Meta, then there's another one called Metaverse. And then Mark Zuckerberg's trying to buy that company, and they said that they, they were not— they're not being— they're being offered a joke amount of money.

Yeah, the other company I read It was— they were like, they were insulted.

Yeah, they're both insulted and they're not settling.

I wouldn't either.

And they're taking them to court now.

And the— I also read that the lawyers are sending some really nasty letters. So stay in the fight, man. Don't give up. Don't quit, man. Stand your ground.

I don't know if the— you know, I think if Mark Zuckerberg, you know, wants those companies, then he needs to pay a premium. And I don't think you can tell somebody, oh, that was your dream. Yeah. And now I'm gonna just cut you off at the— no, cut you off at the knees.

No, that's not gonna— that wouldn't fly with me, buddy.

No, that's what I'm saying.

Wouldn't let that one ride.

I'm sorry, but I'm saying that's what he's trying to do.

Oh, yeah. I mean, he's got the money to do it. Yeah, but apparently he's got the money and the political Twitter prowess, I guess.

I don't know how much protection he's getting, that, that, that's all getting right now.

He's been getting quite a lot, I would think.

I would think. I don't know, they called the whatever, that the whole Twitter Files thing going on on TV all the time.

I'm surprised you haven't heard, uh, Zuckerberg's name and more of the, uh, you know, FTX stuff and the, um—

yeah, we haven't heard anything about Zuckerberg and the FTX. But I'll tell you one thing, with the FTX, the, the guy who's in charge is asking for money back from all the political donations, the nonprofit donations. And then I think last week, two more companies that was associated with FTX both declared bankruptcy.

Oh yeah, I did read that.

Yeah, so that's the turning into a big debacle. But let's, let's also talk about like, how, you know, so AI, right, is also part of this whole social media thing, because there's all these AI tools now, right, that can supposedly make pictures, right, make pictures, make social media posts. Then they have some kind of, like, the ones that you pay for have scheduling stuff, or you can put it in Canva and do scheduling through there.

Yeah, I mean, everything that you just said is pretty technical, right? Um, Yeah, we don't know.

I mean, I don't understand it.

I understand it. I think, I think AI is a tool that it's gonna be like a partnership. We're gonna use it. I don't— we're gonna use it for practical purposes. Like, police are already using it for tons of things like facial recognition, They're checking plates with it.

Yeah, well, that's been going on for a while.

That's my point. Like, the AI thing has been around. Like, all these people just don't understand AI or the definition of artificial intelligence. Um, and I think that this is a good way of using artificial intelligence and social media to stop those violent posts from coming through.

Right.

You know, I'm sure they're already using a form of it to filter it through. Um, but yeah, man, I mean, AI is— so it's not taking anybody's jobs though.

I don't think it will, not anytime soon.

I'm talking about it's not taking my job as a web developer. It's not.

Well, I think that it's missing like the human element. Yeah. Plus they, they've already— and also Like, I saw this thing back where ChatGPT now is putting like watermarks into the stuff. So when you go to copy and paste it, I mean, it's all watermarked out.

There's a guy who created a whole platform to run your content through to see if it was—

yeah, he's in college. ChatGPT Zero.

ChatGPT Zero, that's the one. Young kid. Yeah, he's wanted to be a He wants to be a teacher, I think, too. But that's why he started the program, because he, he started it— I mean, he created the, the technology off of ChatGPT because he didn't want students to, to cheat, and he wanted them to have to go and learn the same way that he did. So I liked, I liked the way that he, he put that out there.

And also, you know, is it— it's the whole AI thing, right? Because Google has theirs called Bard, Baird, and whatever it's called. And then OpenAI is now owned mostly by Microsoft, Edge, Bing, whatever they're calling that whole thing. And now they've got rid of Explorer completely. They just poofed it the other day, right? So now is there going to be like advertising war to see like You know, is Microsoft going to have a better AI thing going than Google? And where are people going to start spending their ad spend going to go? Are they going to stop spending on Google, spend more on Microsoft?

Or what's going to happen? Yeah, we're really too early to tell that. But I mean, I would say that people are going to stick with Google.

Yeah, they're having problems with the AI thing though, so everyone is. Yeah, I don't think it's—

even if the AI launched on Microsoft, I mean, whatever it is.

Yeah, Microsoft Edge.

Edge.

Yeah, it's not that great.

I mean, when I'm doing a search, I'm not looking for like the chat explanation. Yeah, right. I, I— when I'm I'm doing research. I'm not just reading the headline, you know, I'm actually clicking through and then doing another Google. So I don't see how this is gonna replace search engines because it's not.

I don't believe— no way, not for me.

Um, I mean, it's a long way for that to go from, you know, utilizing, you know, relying on just Google search and then going, stepping away from that and utilizing and relying only on AI. It's not a human. I don't trust— like, I'm untrustworthy, you know. I don't trust people as it is.

So no, I'm just saying, like, you know, so it's, you know, I just think that like from a small business, medium-sized business perspective, you know, what are businesses gonna do now? Like, how many of these will— what Like, how many of these platforms can they pay for, right? Or how many are you going to pay for a month as a business owner? How are you going to, you know, I could, I can't afford to spend, you know, the amount of money that like a large competitor in credit card processing can spend.

Yeah, like we said yesterday, you know, you can't spend for web design is $75 per click, right? I can't compete with a local agency that's got a $5,000 ad budget, right? You know, I mean, we can't compete up against First Data, PayPal, yeah, so on, Stripe. I mean, their marketing budget is probably a million dollars a quarter, right? You know what I'm saying? So actually, us trying to figure out how to spend $500 the right way.

Exactly.

You know, there's enough challenge.

So yeah, that's a challenge for every small business, and it's, you know, it's becoming more challenging because— no, I'm saying like, because, you know, years ago, like, I had my restaurant, right? So the best place to advertise was either in the Sunday paper. There was a special like section in the Sunday paper for restaurants, and And then Friday, that the weekend section, right? So they always had an area in there for restaurants people would go to, and you'd have put ads for your restaurant. And it was very— and they sold it like, um, you could pay more like if you wanted the whole Broward County, right, whatever. But if you wanted just like a local area, there was space for that, right? Nice. And I used to always wait till the end of the week for the remnant space. That's what they call that one ad left. You can get it for a couple hundred bucks.

Oh yeah, the cheapy, right?

And, and you know, those days, you know, that ship sailed. There is no rep— there's no, you know, there's no, uh, newspaper really anymore. And even digitally, you know, oh, that is so expensive. Newspaper—

I looked at advertising in a newspaper Once it's very expensive, right? Online, any, like, a lot of these platforms are ridiculous with their ad space online. I don't, you know, I understand everyone has to make a dollar, but sometimes you're just being greedy.

Yeah, I'm just saying, I find it difficult that, I find it difficult that you're— how do you, how to, you know, where, how small businesses I mean, listen, this is a small business. How can, how can a small business compete with, you know, big business? And we're not getting any help from social media. We're not getting any, any help from anybody to, to, to get the, you know, whatever. They're not giving a discount to small businesses.

No, they're not.

You know, that's, that's kind of a, you know, it's messed up.

Yeah, man, I didn't even think of that. You know, if— so I wonder how Facebook is gonna do that, because if I'm gonna pay $15 a month to manage my account on my phone, are they gonna charge me for every page I manage too?

I don't know. That's what I'm trying to figure out. Like, how are they gonna verify the pages and say, oh, Oh, we're going to remove this group, remove that group. Oh, this page is inactive. I mean, listen, I've had a group on Facebook, okay, when I used to do a networking event, right, every 2 weeks, okay, me and like 3 friends of mine, we built a Facebook group, okay. We still— I still have that Facebook group. Now it's called Executive Something. Business Owners or something, right? It used to be something else for the event, and you know, some people post stuff in the group. I don't think— there's not a lot of activity in there because the way Facebook does not notify people for the group.

Oh yeah, you never know that something's going on, right?

Unless you—

couple days later you'll get a—

yeah. And the other thing is, is You know, I don't like it in the groups too in Facebook where someone can do that @everyone and then it sends everybody an alert that's in the group. Have you seen that?

No.

Yeah, so that's something new that's in groups too. No, I'm just saying, like, I don't know if you're getting your money's worth out of, out of any of these, paying any of this money, enough money's worth that, like, are they going to boost my posts? Are they— my post going to be more visible than other people's posts? I mean, how's that going to all work? And they're not really spelling it out for you of what's the benefit of doing that. I mean, you don't get a benefit like that on LinkedIn either. Like, just because you pay for LinkedIn doesn't mean your post is— oh yeah, goes up.

I mean, you can't pay to play, bro.

No, I'm just saying, like, and so that's That's a good segue.

And so like, what, because I'm not paying to be verified that no one is gonna see my post?

Right. Who knows? We don't know that.

I'm sure that's probably how it's going now anyway.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, because I mean, a lot of times I post stuff on, you know, on Facebook or whatever I'm posting on, and, uh, you know, my wife will be like, I haven't seen you post in days. So, you know, what does that mean? All right, yeah, shadow banning thing, is that— I don't know.

I believe— well, I know for sure they were definitely shadow banning people on Twitter. They proved that already. The people admitted to it in the congressional hearing that they shadow banned all these people, right? So yeah, they really do shadow ban. I'm sure they were shadow— I'm sure they shadow ban people on, on Facebook if posting stuff that maybe they don't like, maybe they shadow.

Absolutely. Because I mean, there's stuff that I posted the other day and a lot of people should have commented.

Okay. You know, and it's also weird, like my daughter—

of course that's being like egotistical, right? Yeah, it sounds like that. But when you, when you, when you post something one day and it gets 37 likes and 20 comments and 5 shares, and you post pretty much the same content the next day and you get nothing.

Yeah, we see that.

Same time, same place, same channel, but zero engagement.

Yeah, no, see, and it's really weird because I think like, like even like one day I said to my daughter, I go, Where did your blog go? So she, her and another meteorologist have a blog. I go, I don't see the blog anymore. So, you know, I had to go back to like the page and like re-like it, unlike it, then like it again, like it again. And then it started showing up, but it still doesn't show up every day.

Yeah.

And then I have to remember that my daughter doesn't— she blogs on the weekend, right?

So like, uh, one thing that I've learned with Facebook is if you like something or someone's post, yeah, you will see that person all the time, right?

Um, yeah, but unless you only like it once in a while, then you're not going to see that person.

So, or if you do, yeah, you won't at all.

Yeah, and you might have to go look for them.

I have to do that all the time.

Yeah, that's what's weird about the whole thing. And it used to be that all your friends showed up in your feed. And it's not like that anymore. Yeah, it doesn't work like that.

I don't know whatever algorithm update that was, but that was terrible. I remember when that happened. Yeah, like it literally shifted from me being— having the dopest news feed on Facebook because it was nothing but positivity, creativity. Uh, I, you know, I had— well, yeah, I had it really set nice, bro. Like, you know, it was the businesses I wanted to see from, it was the newsletters I wanted to get, it was the content that I wanted. But now, almost whatever algorithm update they, they did, they ruined that for me for sure. But that's probably when I started hating Facebook.

No, but now also, like, almost every other post you see in an ad, and then you see little ads underneath them, and ads everywhere. Ads, ads, ads, ads, ads, ads, ads, ads.

And video, video, video, video, video, video.

Yeah, tons of videos, tons and tons of videos, and it's just flooded in.

Yeah, I'm not a, I'm not a huge fan of this.

I just don't know. I'm just saying, like, all these platforms keep changing and changing and changing, and are the changes for the good or for the bad? I mean, now, like, there's some people in the government, they want to ban TikTok again, which they tried to do like a couple years ago.

I mean, if you've seen that video of what the people in China or Japan see on TikTok as opposed to what we see, it's night and day.

Yeah, it's crazy. So it's a different algorithm.

No, it's a different— it's a totally different product.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, because it's just different. Yeah, I mean, it's terrible, but that just goes to show where we're at as a country as well. I mean, that's— this is a whole different podcast.

Yeah, we can't do that, Bob. Yes, we're not in that business. No, but I'm just saying, like, the whole thing is like— but the struggle I have, and maybe, you know, hey, let's ask, you know, listeners, or we'll do a poll, right? Where do you, you know, are you gonna pay for— how many platforms are you gonna pay for?

I mean, look, if you own a business, are you gonna stay on Facebook if they make you pay?

Yeah, so you got Facebook, Twitter, then you got to pay for LinkedIn, something or nothing. And then Alignable. And then what other things are you paying for online?

I mean, on top of all the tools that we pay for already, like having to pay for a marketing channel is, is blow— it blows me. It like, right, that I can't, I can't see the value in that for like a small business owner spending $15 a month. That's That's almost $200 a year. For what?

No, but like, they want you to pay for web and iOS.

So if you use both, that's almost $300 a month—

I mean, a year. So then you're talking $12 plus $15.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's almost $300 a month.

Yeah, it's crazy. It's too much. Now I can see like, hey, you want to verify like every business and you say, okay, well, you can have one business or two businesses.

Why aren't they just following the Google blueprint? I mean, if Google figured it out— Google figured it out with the business verification thing, right? Verify your business. If you want to have a business page, verify the business. I don't see— I mean, dude, they got robocallers. That's all they do is, is where they send you a postcard. Yeah, that's kind of expensive though, right?

The postcard? Yeah, probably with the bulk mail that they're using, they probably have a good deal. It's probably not costing them that much money.

True.

It doesn't come right away.

Oh yeah, you're right. So, but still, man, I mean, I don't know what to do with the— with that payment.

No, but I think, like I told you, it's not costing them more than $5 or $7 to verify a person, right? So they're charging $20, $30, almost $30 a month is a lot of money to charge. Yeah, you want people— okay, you want to be on Facebook, you got to upload your driver's license. Great, I'll pay $50 a year for that.

Why do you have to pay to do that?

No, no, I'm just saying, like, if they had— if they were— if I was gonna get—

why wouldn't they just do that now?

They could, and it could be for free. Are they— I mean, I'm just saying, only gonna cost them maybe $5.

Yeah, I mean, I know that Zuckerberg. Zucker— what's his name?

Zuckerberg. Yeah, Mark Zuckerberg. Zucker— fucker. And he wanted to have it free. He never wanted— you know, you watch the Facebook, whatever. I'm just saying, he— oh, we don't know.

It'll be free forever.

It'll be free forever.

No, I don't mean— no, no, it ain't. Yeah, no, but you know, Zuck, uh, you're in a tight spot, buddy. I don't know, you know, I know you lost your but on, uh, Metaverse last year. But you can't try to stick us with a $25 a month ticket.

Add it up. How many? Let's say there's, what, 100? We've got a phone in here.

Yes.

So let's say there's a million people on Facebook. We'll just do a million. We know there's more than that. There's probably a billion, right? Easy. A million people on Facebook, and then they pay— what did we come at? What did we say?

$27.

$27 a month. That's $27 million a month. That's ridiculous. That's just covering 1 million people. No way, man. That's nuts.

What do I want a piece of that?

Yeah, exactly. I'm starting a new company. I'm going to call it Bookface. Me and Justin, we're launching the website tomorrow. Bookface.

Book of Faces.

Book of Faces.

The many faces of books.

The many— yeah. Book of Faith. I'm just saying, $27 million, that's so much money.

And there's probably way more than a million.

Yeah, there's probably a billion people on Facebook. Look it up, Google how many people are on Facebook.

Let's just say, Siri. Okay, Siri, how many people, how many people across the world are on Facebook?

Let's see what Siri says.

2.7 billion monthly active users.

2.7 billion.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Times $27. Whoa, you can't even get that on your calculator, bro. That's like a trillion dollars a month.

It does. Definitely doesn't work.

Yeah, that's insane. That's insane. It's not going to even go on the calculator.

No, he only goes up to 270 million.

Right, but I'm just saying, imagine half the people do that. What's half?

2.7 billion.

Yeah, so 1.5 billion. Yeah, okay, that's insane. And you want to charge everybody $27, Mark Zuckerberg? No, no, no, no, no.

Maybe he's trying to regroup, recoup from that metaverse crap.

I'm telling you, man, that's just crazy.

I know you spent a lot of money.

How many people are on Twitter?

That's enough. Yeah, yeah.

How many, how many people are on Twitter?

Hey Siri, how many, how many active users are on Twitter? $330 million times $11.

It's a lot, a lot of money. Yeah, it's a little bit crazy. I could see a one-time fee. Oh, we charge a one-time fee. The same thing.

Why does that— I mean, dude, if you charged everyone a dollar, that's $330 million.

That's what I'm saying, it's a lot of money.

What charge everyone a dollar?

Yeah, but you know what else they could do?

Facebook for $2.7 billion a month. If that's not enough to get your little pet project going, bro, you need to find different projects.

Exactly. I mean, I think Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk have enough money. They don't need any more money. No, but you know what else? The, like, the government makes you do this ID.me thing when you want to pay for the— pay your taxes and all that. You got to go through this whole thing. Verify who you are. It took me like 20 minutes, right? Okay, why don't they— all these platforms just sign up with that? You're verified by the US federal government and boom, chart. I'll pay a dollar a month.

I'd pay, I'd pay for that.

Yeah, I'd pay for that monthly and then I can go across any platform that there is. You know, this ridiculous— this is, this, these people are talking about making trillions of dollars. I mean, I'm I don't know how many people are on LinkedIn, but on LinkedIn at least you can actually like contact somebody, you know, oh, you want to do business?

Well, you have an opportunity to make money on all these networks. Yeah, but LinkedIn is the most probable, right? I would say, yes, you have the highest percentage to, you know, actually do some business. All the other ones is, uh, from the— yeah, man, I mean, I can't tell you how many wasted hours of my life I have from going back and forth with people on Facebook about jobs.

No, and I've gotten like tons of fake spam messages. Like, I'll go to my chat and then—

I mean, LinkedIn is terrible with their messaging.

Oh yeah, LinkedIn is terrible. I get messages from people with no picture on the profile. Those get deleted. If you're a coach, I'm deleting you. If you're selling me, oh, I could get you 5 million podcast downloads, I'm deleting you.

I love the guys.

And also the digital marketer, the website.

Oh my God, you guys, being a web developer, you are the most aggressive invasive species I've ever seen on any social media platform in the world, bro. Like, come on.

No, no, but these profiles are all fake. They all have the same kind of picture on them.

I'm not talking about those ones. I'm talking about the ones who are like, you say connect and they are aggressively in your inbox.

Yeah, that's too much.

Like, dude, turn off the autopilot and you should, you should gotta be able, if you can't turn off the autopilot, at least set it so there's like a 30-minute window from when I accept the request and they message me.

No, they already got the message loaded in.

That's what I'm saying, it's all robots.

They're using robots to do it.

So my, my little thing right now is every time I get one of them, I send one right back like, hey, it's Justin, nice for connecting. We have a very nice product that we would like for you to check out.

So yeah, why not?

That's what they get from me. Oh man, a lot of them— the one guy, he cursed me out.

Cursed you out? Yeah, guy. What do you have to curse me out for? No, but I get these podcast guys, right? Oh, I can promote your podcast. I go, well, how many phones do you you have in your phone farm?

200 or 5,000?

That's what I ask them. How many phones do you have? I didn't even know that existed until one day. I think you were— you didn't tell me.

I showed you the video.

You showed me the video, right, of this guy with these pieces of wood and they just have phones. And then that's all they're doing is sitting around in a room somewhere over in the Philippines where people are making $3 an hour and they just going over there and they're just hitting download, download, download down— They're just going down the line.

Play, play, play, play, play, play, play! That's why you know your favorite artist went platinum last month.

Right?

But it's none of my business.

We don't know that we could happen, could be, we don't know somebody man but yeah check us out on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn. Yeah, we're everywhere.

MySpace.

Let us know what you think about social media. We'll make some posts about it.

I miss MySpace. Do you remember MySpace?

MySpace was kind of cool.

MySpace was the— because you could actually customize your page, right? You could have music playing on there. Dude, MySpace was cool.

You know who owns MySpace?

Tom?

No, not now. Now it's owned by those dudes from The Facebook Movie that got in a fight with Zuckerberg. They own it now. What was it, the, the, the, the Winklevoss twins? They own it. They were the first Bitcoin billionaires, but that ended quickly as Bitcoin took a— right? So they don't have— I don't— I think they lost a lot of money unless they were cashing it out, but they were already loaded. I mean, they were already rich and they got paid by Mark Zuckerberg. They had—

yeah, I remember that.

I remember that in the movie, the lady says, you're gonna write a check, it's gonna hurt for a little while, and then that's gonna be over. And whatever, you wrote a check, he wrote them a check, he wrote that guy Eduardo a check.

He did Eduardo dirty.

Yeah, he did Eduardo dirty.

We should have a— we should have a podcast about the Facebook movie. I might have to go watch that.

Should we watch that and do a Facebook movie review?

We gotta make sure Camille is a part of it too, though.

Really? Camille and Samantha too? Coordinator of everybody in the room talking about the Facebook movie. That would be cool.

I wouldn't— I would be down for that.

You'd be down for that?

Samantha is not getting on camera.

Okay, we'll see if we can get Camille on camera for that. No, she won't do it. Okay, I don't know who who can maybe get— I don't know who else we could get. Todd, my friend Todd, he would definitely have a lot to say. Sure. No, I'm just saying. No, but the Facebook movie was crazy. But Zuckerberg, he did not— and then the guy who's, uh, Justin Timberlake played the guy. What was his character? He was the owner, original owner of LinkedIn.

I'm gonna have to— yeah, I'm gonna have to look it up.

He got kicked out of LinkedIn.

I like the one where they try to go get the job at Google. That movie was hilarious.

Oh, the one with— oh, that's the one with—

The Wedding Crashers dudes.

The Wedding Crashers dudes. Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn.

Yes.

Yes, and they go get a job at Google. That movie is great. That is a crazy movie., and they just get a job there because they heard they're hiring just anybody. Yeah.

And then they get in there and they're like living, but they fake the funk. Like, they, they don't know anything about programming. They have never, you know, they— yeah, that's a good movie.

They fake the whole thing. Yeah. And they make money, then they—

then they figure it out because they got to be a part of a team. So yeah, that's a good movie. I should watch that one too. I haven't watched it in a long, long time.

It's funny. Facebook movie. Crazy though.

Social Network.

Yep, Social Network. That was a crazy movie.

Well, let's give us your thoughts in the comments, man. What you think about this pay-as-you-go, pay-as-you-play, the premium versus freemium?

No, first it's free. Yeah, it's free versus paid.

Freemium versus premium, right? Uh, what's your thoughts on it? Are Are you gonna stay on Facebook? Do you still— are you paying Twitter? Do you have the super LinkedIn profile with the— I don't know what happens.

Sales Navigator.

Sales Navigator, and you know, LinkedIn mascots come to your job and give you foot massages.

I don't know about that. You can't even get them on the phone.

There you go.

Unless you spend money.

So man, let us know what you think about the pay-as-you-go. Platform.

Where are you gonna— how are you gonna advertise your business in 2023? Where are you gonna put your ad dollars? How's that, you know, from a small, medium-sized business? What do you— how can you use— you know, you're gonna pay social media, are you gonna look for other alternative forms of advertising?

Let us know. All right, we're looking forward to it.

Carpe diem. Peace.