Matt McGowan - Exploring The Future of Snapchat

Hi, this is Matt McGowan and I just wrapped with Joe and Matt talking all things Snapchat, augmented reality, Gen Z, millennials. Come check it out.

This is an intro. Intro, intro, intro.

Hustle and float, Shark with your boy, my boy, Matt Wolf.

Joe. Hey. Yeah, we are back with this is Ahrefs. So Ahrefs came back and, you know, a lot of y' all have been talking a lot about the Ahrefs stuff.

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Go sign up a hrefs.com AWT all right, we're rolling, Matt. Well, two, Matt's here, but Matt McGowan, thanks for joining us today, man. Great to have you here.

Hey, it's really good to be here. And Matt, appreciate you guys taking the time.

Yeah, man. Well, Lisa Byer actually made the connection for us and she's always, she's got our back. When it's, you know, and she's like, you gotta talk to this interesting person. We always give her so many shout outs, but she brings these interesting folks like yourself, who aren't necessarily in our wheelhouse, on our radar. But then we start digging in, we're like, okay, yeah, it's a no brainer, man. Yeah.

Well, thanks to Lisa Baier, our podcast is slowly turning into a futurism podcast, which we love. It used to be more of a marketing podcast, and now it's kind of evolving into this futurism podcast, which I is more exciting than marketing anyway.

But it's cool.

We'll talk about marketing on this episode too.

I'm sure you and I had a chat and then we just started riffing all over the place. I mean, what I've found from just researching you, you're a people guy. I'm a people guy, connector type. You know, you're, you're always, I think what you're, you're looking to connect with like three new people every week, I think is like one of your things, right?

Definitely, yeah. 100%. And Matt, and Matt, you're helping me check a box here, so thank you.

I don't count right now.

I'm helping with your quota.

Awesome.

You checked a box a couple weeks ago now, Matt'. Yeah, man, I appreciate it.

Well, I mean your, your, your career has been interesting, man, because you've kind of bounced from a handful of companies. I don't know how many, but at least a few that you've scaled. You've, you've exited and you've done some really interesting stuff along the way. Has it been a lot through just like this, like connecting and figuring out opportunities and stuff like that?

I, I, early on in my career. No, I, early on it was more, I feel like luck of the draw. You kind of, you submit a resume or you know, whatnot and you hope you callback.

The latter half of my career definitely driven by the relationships I built earlier on. And that's, I think been helpful for myself, but also for my employers and my business partners as well. So, you know, there's a bit more known, a little less unknown in the early days, which is helpful.

Yeah, man. Well, I mean, you go all the way back to doing Wall street type stuff. I mean, you were what, in San Francisco? Right? But you're on the Wall street schedule.

And I was in, I was in the world. I was in, Listen, I was in Wall. I was born and bred New Yorker. My first year was out of college, was in New York on Wall street. And yeah, San Francisco was more my speed back then. And even the early hours, even the, you know, the east coast hours and on the west coast, but it didn't take me long to find something, you know, technology as a better fit for my needs and my wants, desires and so on.

Yeah, well, with the, from the finance, what you want was the next step over to Google and YouTube because I know you played a big part.

Oh, no, not at all. I mean that's definitely like a temple moment in my career. Probably the first time my Parents actually knew the name of the company I was working for. Less of us. Explanation, A lot more questions but the no, I jumped. I left Wall street, took a 75% pay cut and started as the first non product person at a small company called Headland Digital Media under the Bay Bridge in San Francisco. We sold that business to Pearson. The guys who owned the Financial Times back then, they owned Penguin, Putnam and Dorland, Kinser Lee and a bunch of other brands as well. And that, that was my first endeavor really in like, in like tech startup, non establishment, kind of non established company. And I went back to business school after that. We sold to Pearson and I was spending a lot of time in the uk, that's where they're based. And and so I ended up going back to school over there and kind of extending my, extending my, my time in the UK by a couple years and then immediately moving close to you guys. Moving down to southern Orange county after that for another startup in the e commerce space, which is still going. But after a couple years there I got wind of another opportunity that made more sense for my background and experience and needs and came back to New York and built with the executive team at Incisive Media. We built out the North American business. So we had a couple hundred employees down in soho and then down in the financial district down off Broad Street. And when we exited that business about nine years, eight years later, I ended up at Google.

Ah, okay. So it was a whole roundabout thing going on.

There was like 10 years before Google that we missed. But yeah, and Google was great.

Google.

I learned a lot. It was very steep learning curve kind of environment. A younger YouTube. YouTube.

A Google that was going through massive growth on all fronts, whether it was revenue based or building the team or the audience that Google was reaching. And.

It'S funny, after a few years there I went back to my entrepreneurial roots and teamed up with Steve and Henry who had founded a company called Adestra out of the uk and we worked on bringing this marketing automation software software to the Americas and then on to apac. And so it was at that point when we sold that business in December 2019 that I joined Snap.

Ah, okay. Yeah, because I know you got from some of the research it sounded like he got wooed from Google and YouTube a little bit. Right by your, by your buddies out there in that company.

I mean if you want the detail.

Like as far as you want to go.

I had just moved to Toronto, I had just bought a house, I had just gotten married and I had just had A child?

Yeah, it's a lot.

And yeah, our first child. And.

That was all within like seven months.

And then in month eight, I lean in. I wake up one morning and tell my wife, I really want to. I don't want to leave Google. But there's this opportunity to build something that was just so in line with everything I wanted to do with my career that I would have regretted it if I didn't make the, you know, give it a try. And of course she was like, how about our mortgage? How about payments about this? Like, because, you know, Google's very secure. Right. You're not worried about getting your paycheck. Adestra didn't have a pay system in the US yet or in North America, so I, you know, I couldn't get paid.

That's my check.

Yeah. So she was a bit nervous. But it worked out. Yeah, it worked out. We, we had a plan. I was on their board for a while beforehand. So, like, I KN the business. I had been a customer of the business when it was nascent and I was running incisive media, so I knew a lot about it. So you could say it was a, it was a, you know, it was, there was risk, but it was managed. And, and yeah, when we sold the business a few years later, my wife said I had a lot of credibility, so I earned credibility.

That's awesome. Yeah.

So I'm curious, what, what attracted you to Snapchat? Like, what were some of the things that you saw that they were doing that made you say, I need to get on board with this? It's.

That's a really, that's a really good question because, like, it's funny, Snapchat, it's just learning now how to tell its story. Well, I feel like, but a few years ago, we, we, the vast majority of the market, had no idea what was going on at Snap. And, and by design, to be fair, Evan's not very big at promoting what he plans to do. He likes to talk about what he has done and the. So for. When I sat down with snap's leadership team back then two and a half years ago.

And we were talking about the opportunity, it was all new information to me. I didn't realize kind of reach Snap had in the kind of Gen Z early millennial demographic globally. And I'm talking 90% plus significant. This is not, this is.

Being older like myself, which I can't believe I just said that.

You don't look older. But yeah, I guess, I mean, I'm.

Closer to 50 than I am 40, I guess. But the I, when I, I wasn't active on Snap, I hadn't been. The press hadn't really been covering snap. Snap had made a lot of, you know, I wouldn't call them errors, but had gone through a lot of growth, growing pains early on in its, in its existence. But all the meanwhile, you know, Evan had been making thoughtful decisions and the team made very thoughtful decisions on kind of where they wanted Snap to be in the future and knowing that it may have to sacrifice some short term kind of pain or accept some short term pain to get there. So when I started looking at the business to answer your question, I was excited about the audience, I was excited about the platform itself and what had been built into a relatively small space. Like the word super app comes to mind.

I was super, like doing my diligence. And going back to your earlier story as a people person, I called around to snap's customers, I called around of Snap's potential customers and everything I heard was, don't know enough, but seems promising. And by the way, that would be an awesome opportunity for you. It seems like a good fit.

So when they kind of like the stuff I got internally, I coupled it with what I learned externally.

Wow.

I was like, let's do this right? Because I wasn't looking for it. To be fair.

I didn't expect to end up at a larger publicly traded company again.

Yeah, well, I mean, your skill set, it seems like, I mean, people, but also what you've been brought on to essentially manage. Right. Like you've been kind of put or, you know, positioned as like a president of a company. Right. It's not one that you founded, but you would come in and then you essentially scale that or like do a lot of organization. Is that the kind of stuff you're doing here with Snap as well? Is that kind of the similar kind of skill?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, my whole. I've never founded a company in my life. I'm not, I don't like people call me very entrepreneurial, maybe I am, but I'm not an entrepreneur. Like, I, I've always partnered with the entrepreneur. Right. Like the entrepreneur has the idea and has certain strengths and they bring someone in who kind of complements those strengths and like rounds out the business. So in a sense I'm doing that here. I'm partnered with Evan and his C suite team to own and build out the Canadian business for the most part. So we're a top market within the business. We're one of the faster growing markets within the business and putting all the pieces in place and making sure they're all operating efficiently to achieve our goals is priority number one.

And then to evangelize the business a bit in Canada is probably another piece. Many of the decision makers in Canada or around the world are not on the platform. Right.

When you think about demographics, executive leadership tends to be a bit older, rightly or wrongly. Not at Snap. At Snap, that's not the case, but in many of our clients and partners. So if you're not on the platform, you're not necessarily seeing all the innovation and all the exciting things that are going on day to day. So it's not top of mind. So getting out in front of that audience and keeping them kind of in the loop and answering their questions is important.

I admitted to you that on our first call that I did not have SNAP on my phone anymore and it was like a couple years and so, sorry.

I re downloaded it and when I opened it back up, actually I had to make a new account. The other one's like compromised. I'm like, I don't know what happened there, but I was like, this is a whole new, different app. Have applied so many different things. I know AR is a huge piece. I mean, Bitmoji, I think was a Canadian company. Right. And you guys acquired them.

Still is. Still is, still is with me in Toronto.

So I mean, like, I was just like, wow, I don't even know what this is anymore. Like, I gotta, I wanna spend some time on it. But it excited me even further for Snap as a platform because I know you guys are just like, you're kind of integrated and doing all sorts of different things, even with other companies and brands.

Yeah.

So there's a few ways to look at it and kind of dissect that from a business perspective. Commercially, advertisers have leaned very heavily into like two or let's say three or four major platforms, you know, your Googles, your Facebooks, your Amazons and so on. Apple, they're looking for choice, so that's fantastic. Right. Like no one wants to put all their eggs in one basket. Right. And it doesn't necessarily make the most sense to do that for a variety of reasons. But we're an ad supported business, so giving advertisers choice is a huge thing for us. Helping them reach this unique audience is another. But also when you think about the platform itself, like you said, it's evolved.

There's a nav bar across the bottom.

Yeah, that wasn't there before.

That wasn't there. Before you had to swipe. And people were really uncomfortable because they didn't know what was coming. Right. So the. So, yeah, you open to the camera. We're a camera company. We've invested heavily in the camera for a decade now. And we believe that the camera, which used to be about recording memories and instances and points in time, is more about input now. So we look at it as the next keyboard. So you can do a lot more with the camera. And augmented reality is one major kind of tempo thing that you can do. You need a camera to engage with augmented reality. So we're a camera company that's moving into like an AR augmented reality platform. But yeah, we got social maps on there. We got, we got, we got content and like shows on there.

Kevin Hart, I think, was one of them.

Kevin Hart's on there. Will Smith's on there. Plus like a million. Million. I shouldn't say that, but you know, many, many.

Influencer types or kind of the, you know, the new Kevin Harts and the new Will Smiths that we may or may not. Yeah, you know, they appeal to a younger generation. We have scripted shows and unscripted shows and new shows and docu series and dramas and horror and so on and so forth. So, like, there's a whole entertainment thing going on with Snap that is new for someone who hasn't downloaded the app in a while.

Get back on there. Yeah, yeah.

And then it's on. Also, some of the tenants of our old app are still there, right? Like stories. You can still see your friends stories, which is super important. And, you know, especially in these days where, like, people are a bit more hesitant to get together, we found that, like, Snap has helped them come together and it was an interesting stat. One of the things we're most proud of is just over 95% of Snapchatters. We don't like to use the word. I find Evan's way very thoughtful and interesting, by the way. Like, let's not use the word users. It has wrong connotations. Let's call them Snapchatters. Right. At Google, Googlers are the people who work for Google. At Snapchat, Snapchatters are those who use the platform. Just think about that for a minute. So the different frame of reference. So, you know, Snapchatters, over 95% of them, and this is done through research we've conducted on the platform and the third party and whatnot are happier when they come off the platform than when they go on it because they've connected with a friend in an authentic way. Yeah, it's unbelievable.

You don't hear that from Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, all that stuff.

Yeah, but listen, there's no. There's no. What do you call it? There's no endless scrolling wall. Right. On Snapchat, right. We have the curated Discover platform. You're not there just kind of, you know, you're there to engage or to entertain or. Or to use an app, to use the camera to help solve a problem, help you figure out what plant is in your backyard, what kind of dog is you're feeding every morning, how to solve a math problem for your kids, you know, whatever it might be. Like, the camera can do really good stuff. It's pretty interesting.

Oh, man.

Yeah. I'm curious. With Snapchat, like, I've always considered myself not really in the Snapchat demographic, and I'm sure you can kind of correct me, but is the plan with Snapchat to kind of continue to go after that Gen Z younger millennial demographic, or is it to kind of expand out and make this something that's really valuable that everybody on the planet wants to use? Like, what's that sort of roadmap look like?

Yeah, yeah.

So there's over 500 million Snapchatters out there using the app. Right. And they live all over the world.

And for the most part, they tend to be between the age of 13 and 34.

That's where we're most. That's where we focus. Like, if we're going to invest in something, it has to appeal to that subset of that demographic in some capacity. Are we aging up? Yes, because Snapchat's sticky. So like a stat here in Canada we like to reference is that one in three Snapchatters on the platform are parents. I couldn't have said that eight years ago, 10 years ago. But the guy who's on the platform or the person who's on the platform 8, 9, 10 years ago is still on the platform and now apparent. So, like, because of the. The fact that we're a communication mechanism, because we bring happiness and joy, we feel like to two Snapchatters, because we're about connecting people and helping them.

You know, live in the moment, communicate with their friends, learn about the world that they're in with their camera, you know, because we offer that utility, we find that the platform is. Just continues to grow and new people, you know, younger generations, when they hit 13, they're allowed on the platform, and then they don't tend to leave. So we're not actively trying to age up, but it's organically happening. Gotcha.

If you're getting the parents involved and they might have been fans of it before Snap before and they just gotten older, have a kid. It's the feel good thing, right? Like it's like cool. Well, I don't mind and maybe sharing this around or I feel good using the platform. So you know, kids, cool. Maybe that's a better platform for them. Or Kids in quotes. Yeah, I don't know, air quotes, whatever kids are.

Listen, we have news content on there. My kids aren't big into the news, but I consume a lot of my news through Snapchat these days. And it's not us producing it, we're doing it in partnership with here in Canada, the CBC or in the UK, Channel 4 or NBC or CNN, whoever in the US so that part's fun. And I find that the short form nature of the content on the platform, you get a lot of information, short period of time works really well with my lifestyle. So.

That part's good. That part's really good for me. Yeah, like long winded stuff like I always had. We made the Financial Times and Pearson may have acquired us, but I always had trouble consuming those articles. They were just way too long for me.

You and I are similar in that regard.

Well, I want to talk about the marketing implications of Snapchat because a lot of our audience is digital marketers. Right. They have E comm business or course businesses or software businesses. That's what makes up most of the audience of this episode or this show. So I'm curious, what are some of the ways that marketers can leverage both on organic and paid side.

Yeah.

And by the way, both opportunities are available, so that may or may not even be known to begin with. Yeah. So we have a full. We have an ads manager. It's a self serve tool, very similar to our peer platforms that they have. And you can go right in and once someone logs in, it's if they've been in an ads manager before, it's pretty self explanatory. You can upload CRM data, look for lookalike audiences. You can kind of go out and buy large kind of, you know, run campaigns, full funnel. Whether you're kind of looking for.

Awareness or some sort of performance mechanism. We offer dynamic product ads and all that jazz. So we plug into your SKUs and all that stuff. But we also offer augmented reality solutions which is like, whoa, that takes a little bit more explaining.

We'll get to that. I have some questions.

I will say headline there. It's not that expensive and it's rather simple with the tools we offer, but it's definitely something new. And on the organic side, we offer public profiles. Right. So your business can have a profile or you can have a profile where you attach content, maybe lenses, augmented reality experiences, maybe video you've created whatever it might be and you have a presence. So like for instance, here in Canada, like RBC Royal bank of Canada, the largest bank, one of the largest banks of Canada, uses its Snapchat profile to educate younger Canadians on.

Financial best practices and, and whatnot. So like they found it and they do that organically through the platform.

Yeah.

So like that's, you know, and they get reports. How many people watch this thing, you know, tell me a little, you know, a little bit information about them, so on and so forth. So, so that is. Yeah, there's, there's opportunities on both sides. I will say on the ad side, all ads are full screen. They're all super immersive.

There's forced and not forced type view. So they're very familiar, very familiar to anyone who's run on any other platform.

Gotcha. And the ads look pretty native to the platform. They just look like you're watching another Snap story kind of thing.

Yeah. I mean, they're labeled. Right. So it's all done above board. So, you know, you're looking at sponsored content, so to speak.

Some of them are long form, some of them are short form, some are interstitials that are linked together, some are videos.

There's.

It's really funny, like we have all sorts of best practices we speak about, but the reality is like, I think just.

There'S no one way to kind of like run an ad. And advertisers need to find the solution that works best with their media, with their guidelines. But yeah, plenty of UGC type ads and plenty of like done in the studio kind of ads.

Yeah. User generated. Yeah, that's right. How about the Spotlight feature? I think that's a newer one you guys rolled out. Right. And that seems like more of a native type of content play or something like that. Yeah, yeah.

So I'm one of the. Because we're a camera company, what we found was people were making really cool stuff with the Snapchat camera.

Yeah.

Including using augmented reality that's native to the platform. And then because there was no mechanism on Snapchat for them to share it widely, we didn't have like a broadcast function, so to speak, we found that content on other platforms all the time.

That's True.

Like a lot of the viral stuff that's on other platforms was originally originated on our platform, but. So this was a test, to be fair. It was created. We're about. I think we're in. I think we're still less than a year old. I think December or maybe January will be a year.

Wow.

Blown all of our expectations away.

And the interesting thing about Spotlight is it is both AI machine learning and human moderated. So everything gets scanned by the machine, but if anything gets more than a few views, and I'm talking like maybe 10, 20, and a human looks at it to make sure it's within guidelines. And we all know what you know, there's problems. I don't know why. It's not that. It's relatively simple process and it seems to work.

And each individual piece of content is evaluated on its own. So you don't get any props for being like a superstar. The content has to be good. So I have just as good of a chance as someone with a bazillion followers on another platform, which is kind of cool.

What's the kind of content that really catches attention then, that you've seen blow up on Spotlight?

Oh, wow.

Well, I guess, like, if we're talking to more sorts, if there's a business or brand, you know, that you've seen, like, oh, this kind of content they're giving out seems to land.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, so we've seen businesses use Spotlight for their organic.

Right.

And link it back or to like their paid or other organic, like their, their, their brand profile or something.

I've seen all sorts. I'm sure there's a lot of product placement going on in there as well. But the real.

Unique, engaging content, that's different. Like, we're trying. We're shooting for diversity of content. Not kind of. We're not looking for like a million videos on, you know, repeats of the exact same thing over and over again done differently. Like, we're looking at differently. So. So I'd say unique, engaging, fun. Short.

Short, Sweet. Fun. Different. Yeah. Something gets attention. Not a bunch of cat videos all the time.

Sweet. No, I like that. Well, I want to go back to AR augmented reality because I think that when you and I were chatting, you're like, man, there's so many implications for businesses. You guys are working with brands. Give us some examples of how you're seeing AR used already and kind of the stuff that's exciting you on the future roadmap. As much as you can give out. Of course, I know you like to surprise everyone.

Yeah, I mean, so let's talk about retailers in E commerce.

Right.

So you said there's a lot of direct to, you know, DTC type companies out there right now. There's. And yeah, you can, you know, sell your products in very now in traditional flat web pages, marketplaces, whatnot. But what we're finding is retailers are having significant.

Success on the platform.

Using AR as like the last mile between the ad and the store, but to.

Give, to.

Entertain, inform the consumer. Right. So.

We'Re seeing virtual stores being built where you can wander around the store in the AR experience, choosing items, buying them, reviewing them, buying them if you'd like. So AR could be a performance mechanism, which is a channel, which is interesting. It's not just for awareness.

The most successful. Some of the most successful stuff though is around try on. So like the camera is getting smarter. So ar, you know, we're augmenting the world we see around us. So maybe there's products that are existing now, like in between, you know, in your. Between you and whatever the camera is looking at. But we can use the camera to try to fit the size and to fit. So like, not only can I see if like the shirt looks good on me, me and select a pattern, but I could fit it. Right. So the camera measures it and then passes that data back. And I know I'm a medium, not a large or whatever. Right. And that not only surprises and delights the consumer because they get it right the first time, but on the bottom line for the retailer, returns are a major expense.

Oh yeah.

It minimizes returns. So here I think I may have done this with you, but here. So this is a Vancouver company. Me, it's clearly they. There's a bunch of. I'm supporting the Canadian guys, I guess, if you're in Canada. But there's a bunch of companies on Snap that sell glasses. You probably know a few of them like Warby Parker and whatnot.

These glasses I originally tried on via Snapchat. So I have a big head. I don't have a hat here, but if I had like a trucker hat on, I'd be on the last, you know, the last little nib, the last little thing there.

Yeah, I'm with you.

Yeah. Which makes it. Most hats don't fit. Right. And most glasses don't fit. They like hit me like this. They won't go on my face without stretching. These went on perfectly. These are blue blockers. Like, just because I'm spending a lot of time on screens, I got it Right. The first time with the fit, which I've never done in store, let alone online. And I got to choose the frame I wanted. And I don't know, I think the frame works. Like, I don't wear glasses, but, you know, I've been. I like this. These work for me. So that's. That's an example. Like, I don't need clearly, to send me five different. Different frames and five different sizes, which other players do to get one that works, to send four back.

It's crazy. Yeah, yeah. Because you see that all the time. Or you see Amazon, you know, and this is Amazon. So they're an anomaly, but they're like, yeah, under 10 bucks, 5 bucks, whatever. Like, just keep it.

Yeah.

We don't even need it. Yeah. It's like, well, most companies can't.

That goes. That goes to how much it costs.

Totally. That too. Right.

That's probably because it costs more than $10 to return something. So they're like, keep it. Whereas, because we have a lot of small advertisers on our platform, like you said, can't afford that.

I thought one of the coolest things when getting back into Snap was the Bitmoji, or I think it was. You basically create your avatar, you take a picture of yourself, and then it's like, boom, now you can dress yourself. I was like, this is kind of cool. There's Halloween stuff tis the season, but going down. I was like, oh, Levi has their outfits and stuff. I was like, oh, damn. I'm like, I suck at fashion and all that stuff, but. But like, I'm getting some ideas already. So, like, it's maybe not AR in that sense, but I see myself ish, you know, like in the app already. I'm like, okay, that would look actually kind of cool or like, you know, like. So I could see that part of it too. With the brands embedded in there being so powerful.

Oh, yeah, man. It's wonderful. Like, Bitmoji is just. It's such an effect. I mean, the whole Bitmoji kind of pioneered the avatar world and continues probably to be the, like, the leader in the space. And brands are noticing and like, if I'm gon create a virtual representation of myself that I'm using on Snapchat in my video games. So, like, when you play games on Snap, you're not Mario and Luigi or Donkey Kong or whatever. You're literally yourself. So we have a whole hyper casual, like, gaming business, which is all vertical, full screen that you can play with friends. So we're on. Joe, you And I can, we can waste some time together, but we play as ourselves, we play as our Bitmojis. And now my Bitmoji is wearing Levi's or now my Bitmoji is in a Ralph Lauren suit. So Bitmoji is slowly opening its doors to commercial opportunities and we're looking at iconic fashion brands first. That makes sense to partner with. And when you think about the jeans space, the denim space, Levi's was by far the leader in the space for a generation. But some would argue it may or may not be anymore. I don't know, I don't have the data. There's a lot of options, way more today than ever. So, you know, partnering. When you think about the long term value, the lifetime value of a customer, like I would rather someone, if I'm, if I'm running Levi's, I would rather like a, you know, 22 year old find me in his early 20s or early 20s and buy Levi's the rest of my Life. Then an 85 year old find me and buy them for the rest of their life. Right. So when you start to think about lifetime value, you start to think about these younger generations who are now in the workforce having kids, buying homes, own cars, subscribing to cable, whatever they do, and you start to think you want to future proof your business.

We become a very kind of, I think Snap products kind of are in the pole position when you start thinking about that sort of stuff.

Yeah, very cool. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the very basics of augmented reality isn't like when you get on Snapchat and you put like the filter on, right. And you puts a crown on your head or like makes your cheeks rosy or whatever it does, isn't that just like the very basic level of augmented reality? Just for anybody listening, I think like who may not be kind of picturing what we're talking about. Like they're probably already using augmented reality in some form on social media in some way right now. Yeah.

And listen, and you know, we just announced the world's first augmented reality studio at AdWords Week this week in New York called Arcadia. And, and we believe that augmented reality is, while we may be the leader in AR, and there's over 200 million Snapchatters using AR every day on the platform for, you know, an interesting stat that's a lot of consumers.

They, we believe that it will exist everywhere. Like we don't, we're very much focused on merging, laying, overlaying computing on the real world than creating virtual worlds. Right. So there's a very big distinction between AR and VR and virtual reality is about recreating your own world in a closed environment. But like, you know that there might.

Be a place for that.

Sure.

Ready? Player. Sounds amazing.

I love the book, you know, like I, and I love the movie.

Yeah.

Metaverse type style. But we, we're very much, we very much believe, and you could argue that there's two big bets one way or the other or they'll both coexist, who knows? But we, we believe that overlaying computing on the real world is, is much more useful and much more aligned with our mission and our, our, you know, kind of our belief of the future.

Yeah, I mean, personally I definitely see the use for both. I like the heads up display kind of stuff that you can do with augmented reality where maybe you're wearing glasses and you're walking around in public and you just, you look at a billboard and the billboard will superimpose stuff into your glass, you know, data that's, you know, they've got on you kind of stuff like that. To me, I think is really excited in the virtual reality world. I think, you know, especially in like a post Covid world, you might start seeing more like meetups and stuff like that. Maybe more in a virtual reality world. So I definitely feel like I'm very bullish on both, I guess.

Oh yeah.

And maybe you can overlay computing in virtual too. So maybe you can bring AR to virtual reality.

Right, right. Yeah. I mean that's the thing. It seems like ar. Yeah, it's the, it's the more of the bridge. I mean, I don't know how far it'll get into the virtual reality space completely, but there's always going to be this layers and layers that are going to keep stacking. I mean that's what you guys have been doing with AR from the beginning. And yeah, I'm looking at Arcadia right now and it just looks insane. Yeah, the website. So check it out.

Yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, definitely do, please. It's all just brand new, but many years of work kind of finally out in the wild. So Snapchat was founded with two core tenants. Right. So the first was private by design Design, which back then everyone thought Evan was crazy. It's called a spade. A spade. Why would you not want to use all this data for advertising? And today we're like, wow, maybe he was a bit of a prophet. And then two.

It'S built around being the fastest way to communicate. So think about camera being like Picture expressing a thousand words. And how quickly can you take a picture and send it on Snap app versus writing something out with a keyboard.

But pictures, people.

If you start to send selfies, you get a little uncomfortable because the reality is everywhere else it lives forever. Sure, but so the ephemerality of the image, meaning it disappears at predetermined time so it doesn't live forever, helps you get comfortable sending a picture, believe it or not, because you know it's not going to come back and haunt you or you know it's not going to not people aren't going to think about it and identify it with you because it just won't exist anymore.

Yeah, there's less baggage associated with it.

Yeah, less baggage with it. And then you can slide these filters or lenses. Right. And basically the difference between a filter and a lens is a lens is before you take the picture and a filter is something you slide after you take a picture and augments the right so. But you slide these AR experiences with really quick, seamlessly, effortlessly. Also helps you feel more comfortable with the image or helps you be more expressive with the image or video you're sending. It's pretty basic. At the end of the day, it all makes sense.

It totally makes sense. I mean, it's crazy how much it makes sense. And I'm kind of curious because I haven't dug super deep into all the different features of Snap, like Snapchat as you have it now. What are some things that are just that you're pumped up about or the team's pumped up about that people should know about, about in Snapchat, like using some of this stuff where he's like, yeah, it's easier to just layer this and you can play like, I didn't know there were games in there. Yeah. But stuff like that, it's the feel good stuff. People need more of this.

Yeah, no, agreed. So like.

What should you know? I mean, definitively. It doesn't take many friends who really enjoy Snap. Data shows that if you're connected to two or three people, you start to unlock the kind of completeness of, of what Snap offers you. So that's something a lot of people just I think don't realize. Two is like our entertainment business. We are, we have some. We have two types of shows on Snapchat. One, through partnerships with media companies, we're not scraping their material, but we're partnering with them and producing for Snap and rev sharing with them. So we become a, we become a revenue opportunity amongst a really hard to find audience. For, for these companies. And then two stuff we originate on our own is called Snap Originals and that's where we have more kind of creative license. So I'd say entertainment, the future of entertainment might be on Snap. Believe it or not, the numbers are pretty wild.

So augmented reality, it's not just a toy. It's here, it's being used by hundreds of millions of people every day. And they're using it to make their life easier. They're using it to express themselves, but they're also using it to kind of, of like complete certain kind of mundane tasks and things that like, you know, just making their lives easier. Yeah, whatever that, whatever that means to, to the Snapchatter, it can help. And then there's some really cool maps on Snapchat. We call them social maps. So like not on very different than like the maps that we're used to like Google Maps or Apple Maps. Similar in the sense that, that commercial stores are on there. So if you're a large retailer, you want to make sure your stores are on Snapchat, get maps, I guarantee you. And you get like a page where you can add like Contact us or delivery or whatever, like address information, hours, reviews, all that stuff. So there is activity happening on Snap that you may or may not be aware of that's affecting your customer base. But, but the really cool thing about the maps is we have this layers functionality in there. So you can pull so much information through maps and you can also see where your friends are and what they're doing if they opt in to let you do that. So we're like an opt out by default type of business, I like to say. But if I opt in, Joe, you and I can see where we're going and know that we're down the street from each other. Maybe one to grab a beer. But yeah, so I'd say those are some of the, some of the more interesting things. Gaming's really cool.

There's a ton of titles on there. I don't know the number. And we do them in partnership with some of the biggest game makers on the planet as well as on our own. And they're really entertaining. And if you got, if you got like five, 10 minutes, there's a little rocket ship icon. That's how you fire up games. And they're social so you can, you and I can go back and forth over the course of a week and play a game together.

That's my kind of game right there. Like you said, just a little quick hit, gotta have it. That's cool, man.

Get out of there.

Oh yeah, exactly. I want to go back really fast because you said this for people running ads. I thought this was cool that you can run an ad and then you have AR as the bridge in between and then a landing page and that thing. I was just kind of mulling on this. You can kind of put a potential customer in the product's shoes or in the shoes, put the glasses on, wear the thing. And I haven't seen that in any kind of ad platform where you can literally just kind of.

So just to clarify, so if somebody's like on Snapchat, they might see a video of themselves like looking at the camera and it'll be with those clothes on.

Yeah. So I mean you can swipe shoes. So once you fire up the lens, the experience, I can point the camera at my feet and like, you know, Adidas is doing a lot of this these days as well as shoe companies I've never heard of.

Didn't care.

But you know that we have foot tracking tech. So I can walk around the room with the shoes on, swipe colors and it's telling me what size I am and it's telling me, it's helping me understand how it looks on my feet from all angles and whatnot. So yeah, so apparel in general, even watches, glasses, you know, so accessories, all that for sure. But it take, take it a step further. Automotive. Oh yeah. Especially want to see yourself in the car.

That's the thing. It's like around.

You want to look around the interior of the like, let's do that. You know, so. Or entertainment. Like do you want to like. Or like so restaurants or like, I don't know, like, I mean like movie releases are a big one for ar as is, you know, the quick serve restaurants of the world.

Yeah.

So like.

I mean when we look at how there's no, there's no vertical. I don't know, I mean probably cover 30 sectors around the world from, from retail to CPG to restaurants to automotive to tech, you know, you name it. They're all experimenting and many have kind of moved past the experimental phase now with this and are just heavily investing in ar. And then some of it's portable. Right. You can take your AR experience out of Snap and put it on another platform as well. So we're seeing more and more of that. Which is interesting.

Yeah, I mean sampling or putting yourself into the product or into the car or whatever. I mean it just does a number for the body. Buyer, potential buyer, you know, the experience feels good. But, you know, there's a reason why samples work and, you know, like, actually seeing what it looks like on you. You're like, but think about that, right?

Like, I don't know. I don't think I'm going into Sephora anytime soon to, like, try on lipstick anymore, right? In this world, like, anymore I can do it with my phone, but anymore. I used to do it all the time, but, you know, but now with my phone, I can see what the color looks like for sure. Another. Another great use case.

Matches your eyes perfectly. Yeah, go with that one.

Thank you.

You're welcome, man. The future's bright brown lipstick.

Perfect color. Well, Matt, I don't know. This is. This is cool. Was there any rabbit holes before we.

I. I mean, I think we covered a lot. I mean, is there anything that we didn't cover that you think, you know, regarding Snapchat that you think we should. Because I know we covered a lot of ground.

Save that for episode two. Save that for episode two. No, I mean, listen, I. I would say that at the end of the day, if you're in the business of.

Introducing your business.

To a new customer base, Snapchat should be on the radar full stop.

It's a growing platform that's offering some really unique opportunities that are all within your IAB standard sizing. So, you know, like, your current assets can be used.

Yeah, man, Very cool. I'm in on it. I'm gonna go explore. I'm gonna force you to get back on that platform to play some games.

Against each other or with each other. I don't know.

Hit me up. Hit me up. We're gonna find.

I'm the gallon, Matt. Yeah, that's the other thing, too. It's, like, hard to find people on Snap, and that's by design because we're not about, like, connecting to just everybody, right? And. And there's no likes, and there's none of this, like, kind of anxiety material that gets everyone so anxious. It's literally about connecting, having a good time, being social with your friends and entertaining or kind of, you know, playing around with some of the other features on the platform. So.

It'S a fun space.

Yeah, man. Well, you're leading the charge for, like, a whole new wave of folks, too, in business. Business and consumers, too, and just consumption in general content. So something to pay attention to for sure, Matt. Appreciate you, man. We'll probably do a round two, it sounds like. I'm sure you guys are going to be developing new stuff. Just give it a few, but appreciate Your time, man. Thank you.

Thank you, Joe, Matt. Really appreciate it.

Whoa, another one wrapped up, huh?

It was a snappy one.

It was snappy. But also I think there's a lot more rabbit holes that we could go down with Matt in round two.

I was only saying snappy because of the Snapchat.

Oh, it was very snappy. Yeah. I was like, actually it was a little longer than just a quick snappy episode. But yes, it was.

I was just trying on words and it didn't land.

It's okay. Yeah. Matt, this guy. You've got a cool background. Other Matt McGowan.

I have a cool background.

You do as well, Mr. Wolf.

And actually not. But yeah, I mean, this guy. Well, another shout out to Lisa Byer. Thank you very much for making it happen. Because she brings us all the futuristic.

People, which is awesome.

I feel like she has actually opened our eyes to a lot of what's coming. Metaversey stuff, but also introductions to folks like Matt who are literally building kind of like that stuff or at least managing a team, running a team on it. But it's so cool to hear the application and uses of all lot of this AR and that stuff in technology and business right now.

Can I be honest with you?

Please? Always.

I have not thought about Snapchat in probably two plus years before this conversation.

I told him, I told him on the first chat that I didn't even have it installed anymore. Yeah, it's all good.

But I mean, we're.

I reinstalled it though.

You know, we're not necessarily the demographic that they're targeting either. Right. Like kind of that 34 and under is about the demographic they're going at after. But saying all that, like, I love tech, like I love virtual reality, augmented reality, obviously we're talking a lot of web3 stuff on our podcast in coming episodes. And like, the futuristic stuff excites me. And to me, it sounds like Snapchat is one of the people on the forefront of the AR side, the augmented reality side.

Right. They definitely are. They're a camera company is how they describe Snapchat, which is all about ar.

Yeah. And I mean, there's a lot of social media platforms that have.

Let'S be friendly and say, borrowed that kind of.

I didn't want to drop any names.

But I was augmented reality stuff. But Snapchat was the one who was doing it first.

Oh, yeah, They've been around and.

There'S a lot of integrations and cool ways they're working with other companies to build this stuff. Out. It's really cool to see it in action, but in a much deeper way than some of the others are doing with this technology or, you know, different technology.

Just the brand stuff where it's like, you can open it up and, like, see yourself wearing a shirt, look at your shoes with your camera and see yourself wearing those shoes. See what you look like in glasses or hats or whatever.

It's. It's. It was kind of blowing my. I mean, I was joking in the fact that, like. Yeah. You start off with, like, a Bitmoji thing, and. And then all of a sudden, you have. You have the ability to wear some cool clothes. Like, here's. Here's me. I'm in a skeleton costume. I don't know if that's showing up.

I mean, you could always.

But I figured it over the video. Yeah, but I just like styles. I'm in Crocs. I didn't know that. But look at this. You have, like. I'm not recording my screen. Maybe I should. But here, I'll use this for the video, actually. This is getting smart now, Joe. So, like, look at that. There I am. And, you know, you have Crocs in here. I can. Okay. I've never actually worn Crocs, but this is what I look like in Crocs now. There you go.

I mean, yeah, that's. That looks like.

Looks like me and Crocs.

Looks like you and Crocs.

I mean, hey.

Well, that's what you normally wear when you're not doing podcasts.

That's not even Halloween.

Yeah, that's just your normal outfit.

Here's Matt.

Oh, yeah. Actually, that is kind of what I would wear. It actually kind of looks like what I'm wearing today, to be honest.

I know, but this is the thing. I was like, I suck at fashion, but I could totally see myself, like, okay, so. All right. I guess a denim jacket kind of work, but this is the Canadian. Hey. Hey.

Styling you.

It's Canadian tuxedo right here, too. Denim top, man bottom.

Yeah, there you go.

I mean, like, look at this. Like, I don't know what other American eagle. I mean, so it's. It's really.

What was that one?

Buffalo. Oh, Bitmoji Fashion.

Oh, Bitmoji.

Hey. Oh, hey.

Short shorts.

Hey. Oh, man. But, yeah, I mean, like, this is. I could be cool. Spacey guy, alien.

It looks like an nft.

I mean, let's be honest. If Nickelodeon. I mean. Yeah, so it's catering to, you know, younger dudes. Yeah. SpongeBob. Hey, now.

I mean, If. If your Target audience is 34 or under, like, Snapchat is an ad platform not many people are paying attention to, which probably means that they're going to make it attractive for ads to run on their platform. So it's probably a good time to get in front of that market. I mean, you and I have even talked about this. We're kind of moving more into talking web3 and blockchain and crypto and all.

That kind of stuff, integrated tech and how it all all, like, plays together with other things nicely.

And our buddy Brad Costanza and I were having a call about this just yesterday. We were having this conversation about how most of the people in that space right now are the younger generation. They're like 34 and younger, right?

Gamers.

Yeah, they're like the gamers, the basement dwellers.

Yeah, for sure.

Right. That's one of the other things we.

Have, like that pump it up, you.

Know, but like, that's that demographic. And if you want to get in front of that demographic, well, they're on Snapchat.

Yeah, yeah, they're there. And I forget. I think you said 5,500 million of them are there. And the fact I love. Yeah, they have an ads platform. Learn that one. So, like, if you use Google Facebook ads and all that stuff, well, you could probably use theirs. So go check out Snaps. And then they have the organic side of things. They have that Spotlight Newish feature. It's been almost a year old now, but that's creating a whole bunch of more organic traction for content creators. But it's all done through, like, this whole passing of making sure the content's actually great, it's different, it's helpful or entertaining, all that stuff. So it just sounds like a fun platform in the games. I'm gonna go find Matt and you on Snapchat, you gotta redownload. Let's go play some games, huh? Let's go play some games. And if y' all wanna. Should we shout out ours or is that. Is that not what you do with Snapchat? I don't even know.

I don't know. I don't have one yet.

I don't even know how I would shout it out.

I don't know.

Find us. But I don't know. Look at. I'm in a suit now. Dang, I look good, man.

Yeah.

I gotta go buy some more clothes.

See, it's already sold.

It's working. So. Yeah, man, I don't know. The future is fun.

The future is faster than you think it is.

Yes. And That's a great plug for. Not our book, but it's a good plug.

Not even Matt's book either.

Not Matt's as well. I don't think he has one. But when he does, we'll plug your book, Matt. But the fact is, like, all this stuff that's happening so quick, it's so cool to see, you know, just a fun seeming company, but it's integrating throughout all these other brands, and that's only going to make it. I feel like it will speed up to the web. 3. Not saying that like, you know, that that wasn't even part of the conversation here with Matt today. But you, Matt, you and I have our opinions, and I feel like this is. They're like building a solid foundation of where things can be built.

Well, I mean, I see augmented reality and NFTs playing very nicely together. Like, I can have my art hanging on my wall, but I have to be wearing these glasses to see the art, you know, for sure. Yeah.

And he mentioned avatars, too. They basically created avatars like you embodying yourself in a game.

Yeah. And that was like Bitmoji sort of pioneered that.

Yeah. And like, hello, NFTs, metaversey type stuff. Obviously AR is not totally in that space, but like, it's.

It's all gonna blend. It's all gonna, you know, there'll be a lot of crossover between those technologies in the future, and that's exciting. Yeah. We didn't go down that rabbit hole with him, but it's all good. Maybe next time we talk to him, we might.

Maybe you might be surprised by snap too, because he said they just kind of roll stuff out without saying much, so. Could be surprised. It's true.

Well, we do have a couple announcements.

We do. Tell us about them. What do we got?

All right. Well, one, it might come.

Tell them about it.

Who am I talking to? Steve. All right. Hey, Steve. So the Evergreen Profits Letter, we're phasing it out. So if you're an Evergreen Profits Letter member, you're not going to get billed on it anymore. But we're also not going to be sending you any more. It was a business that over time, costs went up and it just wasn't a very profitable business anymore. And it was taking up more and more of our time and it just didn't make sense anymore. And as we're a podcast that's focused on the future and future tech and that and digital first, that it just, it didn't seem to make sense anymore. So the. That that newsletter is going away. And along with it, the action guides for these episodes is going away. So we're not going to be doing action guides for these episodes anymore. Anymore. You can still listen to them on, you know, itunes, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts. And you could watch them over on HustleandFlowchart TV, the YouTube channel. So there's still tons of ways to consume this content and get it. And they are slightly different too.

They will be edited differently. They're starting to be already. And we'll have other little rabbit holes you can choose to go down based on some of these other topics we're talking about as well.

Yeah.

So around the web, three stuff or just other things. You're gonna find a lot more on YouTube. And like, just. Just keep an eye on it. Hustleandflowchart TV, go hit that subscribe button, that bell thing. And if you're watching video, you'd see what I did. Yeah.

He farted, Matt. Geez.

Come on.

If you're watching audio.

He farted.

Watching audio.

Watching audio. That's a new one. They could be watching AR thing.

They could be watching the waveforms with AR glasses.

I'm sure it's possible.

Probably.

Ooh, that's with AR glasses.

We could be sitting in the same room with them.

I love that. I love it. Yeah. So go check it out. Hustleandflowchart tv, Go subscribe, do all that fun stuff and also go leave a comment and go like it and tell us what you learned from this episode and maybe some other ones.

Yeah.

And we are also hanging out in our brand new Discord community.

It's shiny.

If you go to hustleandflowchart.com Discord, that's where a lot of the community interaction is getting shifted to. We're not as much on the Facebook groups as much as we'd like to. Algorithmically, we're not getting seen as much.

Do we really want to be on Facebook?

We're not huge fans.

It's not really what we like to do. We just don't want it.

Yeah. So we're over hanging out on Discord now. So if you go to hustleandflowchart.com Discord you can chat directly with us, chat with other listeners, chat with some of our guests. You'll get updates about new episodes straight into your Discord. We'll be doing contests and giveaways and throwing parties inside of the Discord. We're going to do all sorts of cool stuff for community members for Hustle and flowchart. So that's hustleandflowchart.com discord yeah, man.

Hustleandflowchart.com Discord and I think we'll probably put some videos out on YouTube, probably about how to use Discord, why we're doing this, kind of go a little deeper. So if you're fresh to Discord, have never used it, don't be worried, don't be scared. It's basically like a slack, another messaging platform with some cool stuff in there integrated. So we'll make it easy.

And if you get in there and you don't see a lot of people in there yet, that's because it's brand new. So jump in, join the group, say hello. There's probably going to be a small amount of interaction in the very early days, but it's going to ramp up and we're going to, we're going to turn that into a very, very thriving community.

So it's gonna be fun.

Hustlinflowchart.com Discord this is going to be fun.

So let's give a shout out to Easy Webinar to wrap this puppy up. Thank you very much for your support, Casey and team. And if you have not checked out Easy Webinar yet, you've heard us talking about it for literally years, you should definitely go take it and take them up on their offer because they're hooking you up with a fat discount. If you are any at all interested or already running any at all, whatever. If you're doing webinars, you're thinking about it, go get that thing. It's your toolkit, it's your treasure chest. It's got all the features and everything you need and it makes it easy. So. Easywebinar.com hustle yeah.

Thank you for listening. Subscribe, review, tell a friend about it and get on Snapchat with us and our Discord and all those places, all those fun places.

All right, Bye.

Bye.

It's.