10. Chartbeat's John Saroff on social analytics and the future of online publishing

Geek Out with Matt Navarra is sponsored by Pinterest. Inspire your audience and grow your company on Pinterest with a free business account. Learn more at business.pinterest.com. It's time to geek out. Hello and welcome to Geek Out with Matt Navarra, sponsored by Pinterest. I am Matt Navarra.

And I'm Martin SFP Bryant. Now, one thing there's no getting away from in the modern world is that almost everything can be measured. Often in real time. Our guest today is responsible for a product that measures the popularity of content on many of the web's biggest news sites. Jon Siroff is the CEO of Chartbeat.

Meaning he'll have lots of insights into the current state of technology in terms of online publishing. So we're interested to chat to him about that and many more things. So don't forget, you can always get in touch with us on Twitter where you'll find me as @MattNavarra.

And I'm @MartinSFP. So Matt, what have you been up to this week?

Oh, well, I've not had to do as much traveling as you because I know me and you have a little piece of work we're working on which has been taking up a lot of time. But I've been thinking about the future of this show really, because we're at the halfway stage of season 2 already, because we, you know, 6 episodes. And, uh, started to think about, you know, sponsorship and all those sorts of things. And I'm a complete amateur to this game, so I'm kind of making it up as I go along, faking it till I make it, as Boris would have said at the next one. You know, I've always, always been open with these things. But yeah, but yes, so we, we now sort of think— I've been thinking about all that sort of stuff this week, and then, uh, just getting so soaked up in— there's been so much weird weird stuff that I found online this week. Some of it I was going to do later on, but there's so many of them. Let's just quickly go to some of these. So there was one story about, you know, the Dolly Parton challenge. You know, people were driving me mad with this this week, so just stop now. There's no need for that anymore. And then there was a big debate about the, you know, do you call Instagram Insta or the Gram or IG or anything else? Which, Martin, which, which do you call it, by the way?

I call it Instagram because that's its name. I don't know, I feel really, I'd feel really weird calling it the Gram or something.

Um, maybe that's just me.

Oh, and then the story for me, which is the headline of the week, was this one, which was TikTok teenagers, teenage boys dipping balls in soy sauce and setting houses on fire. That's like, well, TikTok, you know, slow clap on that.

Yeah, yeah. So essentially, you've been despairing at the news this week.

That's what you've been doing. It's been lots of frivolous kind of fun stuff, which is quite weird. But there's some more of these and some more sensible things later on in the quick hits for me. What about you?

Yeah, I've been actually pretty excited because there's been new consumer apps that are actually really interesting and haven't come from big tech companies. So back when we were both working at The Next Web, it felt like every day there'd be some interesting new app coming out, or certainly every week there'd be something new for us to get excited about. And it kind of slowed down over the last few years. But just this week, Scroll has come out of beta. So that's available now to everyone. Scroll is an app that's basically a publisher-endorsed ad blocker. The idea is you run it, and you pay small amounts every month. It's $2.49 to start off with. It'll go up after 6 months to double that, but still, you know, less than $5 a month. And on all the sites it works with, which is things like Business Insider and Vox Media, titles like The Verge, a bunch of other sites, uh, it will remove all the ads so you get a lovely clean experience. And your money from paying Scroll, a share of that goes to the people whose sites you visited. So you're actually paying them directly, and apparently works out, uh, actually a better rate than they get if they were showing you ads. So I've really liked that. I've been playing with it for a few months, but it's great to see it out in the wild. And then Product Hunt launched YourStack, which, uh, is— I really like it. Um, we both signed up for it yesterday. You signed up for it a bit before me, uh, which, um, uh, I noticed you were on there a few hours before me because I was on a train when it launched. And, uh, uh, what do you make of it?

I really like it. I got a sneaky confession to make. Ryan Hoover, the founder of Product Hunt, did message me and said, I've whitelisted you, you can go and play with it now. So I was— I got in there and started playing with it when it came out, and I've only spent about 45 minutes, an hour flicking through it when it came out. But it's cool. It's really good. And I think it's kind of, it seems so, it's one of those so obvious things when you think of it as an extension to Product Hunt, because I'm always looking for those discussions and it's not easy to find. And this kind of solves a problem and it's quite fun for nerds like me anyway.

Yeah, I like it. Yeah, it's like a kind of TripAdvisor for products almost. And that's what it could turn into.

And we get that in the group all the time as well. You know, questions, people saying, you know, what's the best this tool, what's the best that tool. So those questions can be now placed there as well and you get some great answers. But also they have things like pro tips. So people saying really funny, sometimes quirky, but also really helpful things you've never thought of doing with one other tech product that can solve another problem or a tip on using a tool that everyone gets stuck on. So yeah, it's got lots of stuff to offer. I think it'll be really popular.

And the other one was Byte, which has launched, but we'll talk about that in the news section.

Our guest this week is Mr. Real-time Publishing Stats. So welcome to Chartbeat CEO, Jon Siroff.

Thank you guys very, very much. It's, uh, it's an honor to be here. Well done.

We're great to have you here. And we're going to talk all about the stuff that you get involved in at Chartbeat and how that relates to my previous roles and other interesting things that I'm just geekily wanting to ask you about. So we'll come on to that shortly.

Anything that I can do to satisfy your geekish tendencies is a pleasure.

Absolute pleasure.

Perfect, guys. Great stuff. So social media news, what's going on, Martin?

Well, a bit of breaking news as we're recording this podcast. Damian Collins, a former guest on this show, of course, he was the DCMS Select Committee chair who has been been hounding the social media companies, the big tech companies, over regulation and wanting to hear from Mark Zuckerberg and all of that. Uh, he has not kept his role as the chair of the DCMS Select Committee, so a new guy has taken his place, another Conservative MP, Julian Knight. So we'll have to see if he's quite so much of a bulldog. Uh, we'll have to wait and see. But, uh, surprise news there, Mark.

Yeah, it is. I haven't been following the kind of, uh, sort of changeover for this and, and seeing where it was going, so this is kind of fresh to me. And, uh, Yeah, it's interesting because I was always quite impressed by Damien's work in terms of not only what he was trying to achieve, but also the way that he went about it. I think he was bullish, but I think he was also reasonable. And so from that point of view, I hope that the next person is as good. But yes, I think Mark Zuckerberg can sort of sit there smiling this evening. I'm sure he's quite pleased with that news, I would imagine. I don't know. What do you think about this, John? Any thoughts on that?

I don't know if Mark Zuckerberg, given with Brussels, London, and Washington all curious about Facebook, I don't know British politics that well, but I do think that maybe he can sleep better because it's less of an attack dog. But I can imagine that there's going to be a lot of regulation around Facebook, at least a lot of questions about Facebook coming from those three governments over the course of the next couple of years. So I'm not sure if he can sleep that much better.

No, I think he's just got one less character that had a certain style, I think, is probably the thing. But you're right. I think there's going to be a lot more of this coming up in the next— well, every day and every month from here on inwards, I think, until it's settled. But what else have we got going on in the news this week?

As we mentioned briefly earlier, The Vine reboot, the sequel to Vine, the app, looping video app from one of the founders of Vine, Byte, officially launched at one of the strangest times I've seen an app launch ever for quite a high-profile app. It was the end of Friday, so it was kind of like midnight on Saturday around then UK time, but kind of still end of the working day in the West Coast of the US as well. So that was quite an interesting timing, but the app itself is actually really good. So you think that maybe be, you know, with TikTok on the scene, there's been no space for another app. Having played around with Byte a bit, it's got its own flavor to the content, and they're doing an interesting thing where they're going to do revenue share with some of the creators. So I think there's an opportunity here. Matt, you've been using it for a while. What do you make of it?

Yeah, I was in the beta for this, and I've been in it for several months now. I can't remember, about 3 or 4 months. And it's great. I really like it. I don't think it— it obviously has some similarities to TikTok, you know, short-form video. You can't get away away from that. Um, there's, you know, lots of differences in that TikTok has a much more developed creator toolkit to play around with. This is much more, you know, of a simpler experience for now. Um, and I think that the content, I think it's gonna be appeal to people who like that renaissance of, uh, of Vine, cuz there's a lot of love, I think, still for Vine out there. I think it'll appeal to people who are interested in TikTok, who use TikTok because it has a lot of similarities. Um, so I think it'll, it'll live or die by kind of the community that built, is built around it. And, and if it does, um, find some sort of niche within it that gives it a USP. But I don't know. John, what do you think?

I will leave the judgment to my 16-year-old stepdaughter, Nina. And when she starts using it, it will have succeeded. And until she does, it will be in like the great unknown for me, right? Having a 16-year-old at home just gives you a much, much better sense of whether or not these things are going to take off or not. So I'm going to leave it to Nina. Absolutely.

Well, I'm the same. I've been a slow burn in terms of use of TikTok. But it's got me by the algorithm. And I'm stuffed now. I'm absolutely stuffed. We've got some other news from Facebook. What's been going on with Facebook this week?

Yeah, so they finally launched their, um, Off-Facebook Activity tool, which is something that you can go into in your settings and you can see all the data that Facebook has essentially bought in from other providers, uh, other apps and things that you use. So you can see what the kinds of things they've collected from these companies, and you can, uh, you can't delete them completely. That's the other thing. Um, Facebook kind of made it seem like maybe you could just delete it and block it from ever coming through again. They'll still collect it. It just won't be as tightly linked to the rest of your Facebook identity. So it seems a bit smoke and mirrors in terms of how they're doing this. Matt, what do you think?

Yeah, I kind of caught the first bit of it, you know, that it was out and I actually spotted it by, you know, I'm like geeky with these things. I was going through the settings of the app about a week before this news came out and I found the setting for off-Facebook activity and I was like, oh, that's new. And I tweeted out as I always do and thought nothing more of it, forgetting, you know, I was so busy that this, you know, was something that we knew was coming in was a big deal. And then of course it was released. But I think, you know, credit for them for doing something that's good. Well done Facebook for doing something. So we should give them credit there. But yeah, it's a lot of— there's a little— it's all about the subtleties and the nuances of the tool. And as Martin was saying about, it's not really deleting or stopping or blocking. It's more about kind of sort of putting it in one place and kind of keeping it separate from other things and other connections and, you know, out in the background. So if things change and they want to use it, or maybe they use it in ways they shouldn't be, who knows? It's been accused before, and then, uh, then that's what they could do. So yeah, I don't think it's going to have great effect in terms of the—

It is worth going and looking at your, uh, off-Facebook activity section in the settings of Facebook though, just because it'll open your eyes to the kinds of companies that, you know, maybe you've got— there's a free app that you use a lot, and it turns out that actually there's a lot of data being fed back to Facebook from there that you, you didn't think Facebook would have any business knowing.

Yeah, I was blown away. I mean, I don't have Facebook on my phone. I'm an occasional web user. Like, I use it probably once every couple of weeks. And I went in there and was stunned at just how much the Pixel tracks me, right? Like, on apps that I never even think about, right? Like, there's a food delivery app that I use every couple of days that, as far as I can remember, have never, ever, ever— I don't use Facebook to log in, right? It's just an app that I use to order my lunch. And I was stunned that something like 300 times it had accessed my Facebook profile. I just couldn't believe it, right? You just— that kind of stuff, I bet I would suggest everybody just go in there and check it out, right? Because it's amazing. It's absolutely amazing.

Yeah, I did a thing for Mozilla not so long ago with Firefox, and they asked me to spend a day from the moment I sat at my computer till the last moment of the day tracking using their Firefox built-in kind of blocking trackers and tool feature to see how many per hour and what sites and things. And by the end of the day, I had 1,000 trackers that were following all of the movements from where, site to site and things I was searching for, everything else. And it was predominantly from publishing sites, which I'm going to come on to a question about these sorts of things with you in a bit. But yeah, interesting stuff nonetheless. So we're going to be talking to John a little bit more later on. But first, Geek Out with Matt Navarra is sponsored by Pinterest, and each week we share tips to help you make the most of the platform. This week's Story Pins, the newest way to share ideas on Pinterest.

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So tell a more immersive story. Visit help.pinterest.com to find out how to create your first Story Pin and learn more. So John, tell everybody a bit about yourself and a bit about Charbee, because I know it's a really important app and I also really enjoyed using it when I was at The Next Web. And I know lots of my kind of geeky tech media news type people who work in publishers are very aware of, of it, but not everyone is like that. So tell, tell us a bit about it.

Not everyone is like that. Really? I can't imagine that. So I'm Jon Seraf. I'm the CEO of Chartbeat, and we're the world's leading real-time analytics tool for media companies and marketers. And what Chartbeat helps folks do is see what their audience is consuming, see what content their audience is consuming in real time, and then react to it. So to use you guys at The Next Web, folks at places like The Next Web will see how people are reacting their stories, their videos, both on-site, in-app, on social platforms, and then make real-time decisions. So maybe double down by promoting something on Facebook or on Twitter, or perhaps optimizing a headline or optimizing an image. And over the years, we've built kind of a suite of tools really, really focused on this real-time optimization use case. And we've got about 700 clients in about 70 countries. We serve them all from one office here in New York City, and that's where I'm talking to from.

Good stuff. Good stuff. Well, we've got some interesting questions, I think anyway, to ask you. Most of them from my geeky kind of background of the TNW days. But Martin, I think you've got a couple of things.

Yeah. So you must get— obviously you're collecting all this data from all these different publishers, so you must get a nice overview of trends when it comes to the publishing world as a whole online. So how have consumption behaviors changed in general in the last couple of years? Have you seen any shifts in the way we as readers are changing our habits.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's actually— it's one of the best parts about working here is just that we get to see those trends. And we get to talk to folks like you and our clients about them. So the overwhelming number one trend is just the shift to mobile. I think that when you guys were at The Next Web and when I started here, which was in 2013, it was about 55-45 desktop mobile in terms of media news consumption specifically. And over the last 6 or 7 years, that's more than flipped. So now we're talking about 65%, getting on 70% mobile consumption. And that's stunning. And the reason it's so stunning is that frequently, you'll go to somebody's office, and you'll see them kind of laying out whether it's a marketing campaign or a sports section or whatever it may be, and they'll be laying it out on some giant 60-inch screen. And the reality is that everybody's going to look at it on an iPhone. And I think that's the number one biggest shift is just that we have all moved to devices, and everybody's got to be aware of that.

And it's also like people's behaviors in terms of where the device that they're using and also the way that they're doing it, whether it's through an app of the specific kind of publisher or through social media in one of their private groups. Is there anything in those things that has changed as well, or has that been quite static for a while, or where are we with that?

No, that's also changed a great deal. I mean, I think we saw from 2013 to 2017 kind of an inexorable rise of Facebook, and we kind of never thought that it would stop. And then in kind of late 2017, early 2018, Facebook changed their algorithm to prioritize what they called, I think, friends and family content over kind of news content. Just for your listeners, this is all organic stuff we're talking about, not paid stuff, right? This is just folks, people and publishers and marketers posting without putting any money behind it. And then they changed the algorithm in late 2017, early 2018, and it went off a cliff. So Facebook traffic to our customers went down by about 40% in about a 6-month time frame. And the thing that we found really interesting was that basically simultaneously, traffic from search, specifically from Google, increased actually more than that. So over that time, the rise in Google more than overcame the drop in Facebook. And that tells you a couple of things. One, it tells you that people actually care and they really want to consume high-quality content, and they're going to find it no matter what. And it also tells you that Google, which for a long time was seen as kind of a mobile laggard, is doing a heck of a job. Right? I mean, between Android, the Accelerated Mobile Pages project, project, which is super geeky and nicknamed AMP for the super geeks out there, and also just kind of a general investment in speed and referenceability. Google and search is now, I think, by far the number one referrer to our customers. I think one of you asked a quick question about, are they getting there from apps? And that's also a renaissance story, which is I think, as Facebook declined, publishers' own apps and, for the marketers that have apps, their own apps actually also rose. So people actually started started downloading apps, started consuming them. And that's also driven to kind of a transition to different business models and all sorts of things.

Can you still, within Charbee, and I guess any tools, be able to see a significant kind of movement when an algorithm change may have occurred, even ones where they've publicly said this is going to happen, but also the ones where there's a suspicion of it? Do you notice enough of a difference to kind of give you that signal, or is it such more subtle these days with algorithms?

No, it ranges. I think there are the things that— just to contrast the two I talked about, the Google change happened very, very steadily over time. So we kind of at first thought it was a blip, and maybe it was just an event like a sports event or a weather event. Google traffic tends to spike around big events. But then it just kept going. And that was more gradual. The Facebook thing was clearly an algorithm shift. I mean, there was a— we keep kind of a graph in the office that we're always updating around where traffic coming from. And it literally— you just see kind of one day in October and one day in January, and it looks like a cliff, right? It just boom. Now, I should say to the audience, just so that they're not confused, in the intervening time, actually, traffic from Facebook has picked back up. And we actually have no idea why, right? They haven't said anything publicly. They did announce the negative algorithm change publicly, but they haven't said anything about this. But now our publishers are beginning to see more traffic from Facebook once again.

Yeah.

And I think it's also, they got the, the, um, today in some sort of local news is, uh, is there. I'm not sure how much of an impact that is. I don't think it's so widely spread yet. I think it's mostly US, isn't it? Um, but, um, but there, and there's Watch and there's con— video content and things like that. But, but yeah, I think you're right. You know, there hasn't been any significant announcement about other algorithmic things, but, um, but yeah, Martin.

Yeah. I was just wanting to drill down into that Google thing a bit more because you were mentioning, uh, the, uh, the rise of Google traffic. Uh, as I understand it, the, the new tab, Page in Chrome on mobile is a big driver of that because they put loads of news on there. Is that what's driving a lot of this traffic?

So that is additional. So we actually, we classify— when I say Google, I'm specifically— when I said Google before, I'm specifically talking about Google Search. The thing that you're talking about, which people call it all sorts of different things, we call it Google Chrome Suggestions. I think it actually has an official Google name, but internally we call it Google Chrome Suggestions. Questions. That thing actually is separate. And that thing, just to put an order of magnitude, that thing sends as much traffic to publishers, actually more traffic to publishers than Twitter does in aggregate. So it's this thing that actually I think very few of us notice.

Right?

We open up Chrome on our iPhone, iPad, Android, and we're like, oh, let me click on this. Right? Mine is filled with Rise of Skywalker criticism and speculation. Right? And inevitably, I click on it. But that thing is now bigger than Twitter. And it just shows you the power that Google has, right? When these defaults— either they're behavioral defaults because you're just used to using them, or they are installed defaults because your carrier has put them on your phone— it just shows you the power of these defaults, which is just that you kind of get in the habit, you start clicking, and then massive trends happen. Downstream.

Good stuff. And so in terms of metrics now, you know, what sort of metrics are brands tending to be, or publishers tending to want to be able to get information on, and which ones should they be focusing on? You know, I know that in years gone by, it wasn't so long ago, there was a big discussion about attention and an attention score. And prior to that, it was, you know, you know, classic page views and kind of, you know, bounce rates and things. Talk us through what, you know, where, where things are at now in terms of publishers, big or small.

Yeah, I think you're seeing a little bit of a diversification. I think folks who are still really wedded to an ad model, folks who— portals and anybody who has broad distribution and isn't really trying to sell you a subscription or drive you to a purchase, right? Those folks are still concerned with page views and uniques, right? It's about reach and it's about bulk. What we're seeing increasingly and where we're taking Chartbeat is to much, much more of a focus focus on loyalty, right, and much more of a focus on getting the right people in who are going to help you build an audience over time, right? What we've just seen is that the most sustainable businesses are the businesses that focus on, you know, the loyalists. They understand what their loyalists want. They understand how to reach them. And they reach them repeatedly in multiple channels. And that's— those folks are much more worried about things like what we call engaged time, right, which is a metric that you kind of alluded to about engagement, which is actually how much time a user is spending actively consuming content on the site or the app. And they're much more worried about things like what we call recirculation, which is the percentage of people that have actually viewed more than one article on a site, right? If you're actually trying to build loyalty, those two metrics in concert can really, really, really help you deepen engagement, right? And I think we all kind of get that intuitively, right? It's much easier if somebody's already decided to come spend time with you. It's much easier to get them to come back than it is to get an all-new person to come in. And I actually think finally the business models are beginning to line up to that because I think for years everyone was so obsessed with reach and they didn't really care where that reach came from. And I think that's really, really changing.

Yeah, I absolutely agree. And it's an area that I'd like to spend more time doing with them. It's something I miss from not being at the Next Web anymore.

But Martin, when we were talking before about Facebook and how it's a great source of traffic or how it used to be a source of traffic and seems to be again, you were saying, uh, coming back. Uh, I was remembering the golden days, maybe 5, 6 years ago when, uh, publishers could post a story on their site and sometime later they'd post it on Facebook and the traffic would instantly, it was like that.

I remember in the Next Web, we would have events when we'd kind of like, guys, it's picking up, something's happening. You want something happening on Reddit, something's happening on Reddit or something's happening from somewhere else. And you'd see Google Analytics or Chartbeat or whatever we were using at the time, um, just going through the roof. And it was insane. We'd be like 2, 3 hours ordering in pizza. It was, it was Geek and the same, but it's geekiest.

Yeah. And the writers would all be petitioning you, Matt, saying, please put my post up on Facebook, please put my post up on Facebook. But I just wondered what the situation now is, John, around social media. What are the sources when it comes to social, the particularly big sources, and how are publishers approaching using social media as a traffic source?

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, listen, I don't want to pretend like, you know, you guys are talking about the horse and buggy days, right? That still does happen, right? There are still massive Facebook spikes. It is such a big platform. It is still somewhat unpredictable. And that kind of stuff still happens. And it still is the big dopamine hit for lots and lots of folks.

On that point, John, on that point, though, I don't think we've ever had a major traffic spike like that from Facebook. The only time it's happened is either come from Reddit, I think 80% of the time, Hacker News, and sometimes just something completely off the wall that you wouldn't expect. It's huge. But in terms of traffic from Twitter or Facebook, it's never hit those kind of sky-high levels.

Well, that's a reflection of your vertical, right? I mean, I think if you're in mainstream sports, mainstream news, mainstream entertainment, that kind of stuff is just still really, really, really can pop on Facebook and Twitter because the reach is just so, so big. But I think what's kind of happened, I think after that drop, with publishers and marketers who had organic reach kind of realized was, we just can't rely on this, right? We just can't. We have to plan as if it's not going to happen and build our business otherwise. And if it happens, that's gravy. And we can maybe buy a couple extra pints at the end of the day. But let's not go crazy trying to build a business off of it. And I think that's probably the right way. And what we're seeing actually is that a lot of the other social social platforms, you know, folks, things like Instagram, things like TikTok are used much, much more for things like branding than they are for kind of revenue generating or, you know, audience building exercises. So for example, like, you know, you know, just to reveal my inner news geek, right? Like my, my favorite TikTok is the Washington Post TikTok. I don't know if you guys have checked it out.

Oh, I love it.

It's great. Right? It's amazing. Right? And, you know, why are they doing that? Well, one, they're doing it to have fun because it looks like a hell of have a lot of fun. And two, I think they're doing it because they want to humanize The Washington Post. I think they, you know, it's a subscription-driven publication, right? They want to build a loyal audience. They know that, you know, it's a brand that, you know, is laden with history and tradition and high quality. But, you know, for a certain segment of the American population, right? Like, doesn't really have a brand face. And I think what they're doing with that TikTok is they're trying to put kind of a fun and approachable face on The Washington Post for folks who who didn't grow up in DC and don't have that association with it and still think about it through the lens of All the President's Men. And I think it's brilliant. It's absolutely brilliant. And I think the Vox properties, especially kind of things like Eater, are doing that with Instagram. And things like The Intelligencer are doing that with Instagram. And that's really, really, really different than 5 years ago where everybody just looked at social and they were like, traffic, traffic, traffic, traffic, traffic. Right. That's, that's not exactly what it is anymore.

Is it now the case then with publishers that being that traffic for maybe more than usual or more than in the past is not, it's not so much of a big thing. It's more about attention or conversions around the site or other things. You know, what is it the other things it's about for publishers other than traffic and how does that affect, you know, third-party tools that have always been geared towards, you know, tracking things like page views?

Yeah, it's a really good point. I mean, you know, for us it's, it's about a big, big focus and a big push push we're making this year into understanding loyalty and conversion. Right. I just think that there— we've always been really good at measuring loyalty. Right. We know our focus in when you guys were using the tool was, okay, you got this Facebook spike. How do you convert that into a loyal reader? Right now, it's you've got this spike or you broke this amazing story or you have these readers that you never got before from Google. Right. How do you convert them into subscribers? Or if you're something like the Wirecutter, right, how do you turn them into people who are going to click on affiliate links around your site. And I think that's where all of us have to go, right? Because that's what's going to be the future, right? Everybody is becoming a B2C brand, and they're going to have different levers for you to pull, but everybody's becoming a B2C brand, and we have to change to reflect that. And we're very lucky that we have incredible users around the globe who love our products. But there's the Andy Grove saying, only the paranoid survive. And you have to be constantly innovating or else you're in the wrong business.

So what are some of the classic mistakes publishers are making when it comes to content and social media as a distribution channel? You know, the things that happened even a year ago already seem kind of strategies or what people are thinking about this sort of space is different. So where is it in 2020?

I think there's a couple of things. I think number one, right, like you gotta have a goal for every platform, right? You have to absolutely understand, right? Like, you know, this is what we're trying to get outta TikTok. This is what we're trying to get outta Instagram. This is what we're trying to get out of Apple News. And it doesn't necessarily have to be the same thing. It can reflect the audience that's there. But you have to have a strategy. And I think the places where we— that we're constantly advising our users and our customers on is just really, really understand what your purpose is. It's almost like merchandising. When you write a story or shoot a video, what platform What platform are you shooting it for? And what's its goal? And thinking about that, I think, constantly just helps you build a better business and helps you build a brand that connects more with folks. And I think the place where people run into trouble is experimentation is fun. And I think that constantly experimenting, but when it becomes just doing it for doing its sake, that's where folks get into trouble.

I was just thinking about a few years ago when I wrote a piece about ad blockers. And I was saying— this was a furious piece I wrote when ad blockers were starting to become really popular. I was saying that ad blockers were absolutely terrible and they were appalling and anyone who uses them hated publishers and they should delete their ad blocker immediately and it was unethical to use an ad blocker. I roundly got criticized by people who were saying, "You don't understand how bad ad tech has become." I've shifted my mind on that quite a lot since then, not quick enough that that piece didn't get cited in a book someone wrote. That's been quoted in a book.

You live forever on the internet, Martin.

Forever on the internet and in printed paper form, sadly. But, uh, but yeah, so, uh, so if we look at now, I mean, I'm reading, I'm reading our notes for this episode on, uh, in, in Google Docs in Brave, a browser which is designed to strip tracking and all sorts of things out.

He's one of those, John, one of those.

Yeah, but it's, it's become, well, it's become normal now, I think. Uh, you know, just, just this week, uh, your predecessor as CEO of, uh, Chartbeat Tony Hale launched Scroll, which is like a publisher— we were talking about this earlier on the show before you joined us, actually— is a publisher-endorsed ad blocker, essentially. So it's perhaps challenging times for publishers who may be finding the backlash against ad tech growing. Where are publishers in terms of monetization and solving that whole puzzle in the modern age?

Yeah, listen, I think they've become much, much more progressive in the last even 18 months. I think that the Facebook thing was a kind of a wake-up call that you had to come up with new models. And I think that what we're seeing is that particularly subscriptions and commerce affiliate stuff have really taken off. Folks are now reorienting their business in those two directions. And the thing that I really like about it is that folks are experimenting, but they're experimenting tactically, right? They're actually signing up with a scroll, right? And full disclosure, full disclosure, right? Chartbeat is actually supporting Tony and is a very, very small investor in Scroll. But we think that what he's doing is brilliant, right? He's jumping on a trend, which is ad blocking, and he's trying to turn that into consumer revenue. And that's a great experiment. He's got some great people on board. But then we also look at, I think, all sorts of different subscription models and reader revenue models are beginning to emerge, right? Whether you're The Guardian with the little yellow membership thing at the bottom of every Page, or you're the New York Times, right? Or you're somebody who's got a Substack newsletter and is charging $10 a month for football coverage, right? I think there's just a much, much bigger and broader diversity, and it's much less reliant on ad agencies in Madison Avenue than it was 4 or 5 years ago. Now, I think the trick is that if you actually look at the P&Ls of these businesses, right? Advertising is still huge, right? It's still like the lion's share. And the transition is going to be really, really hard, right? But I do think that we're going to come out of the transition— could be in a couple of years, could be in 10 years— we're going to come out of the transition with really, really, really strong kind of next-generation publishers that really know how to deliver stuff to audiences.

And how does it work now for someone like a Chartby or just for publishers themselves when a lot— the things that are kind of progressive or innovative in this space now are things like smart speakers and podcasts and things about listening and viewing a video, listening to audio, viewing of video, and some of the kind of newsletter subscriptions. Is it more all about kind of all the different subscriptions as a monetization option that kind of needs to be managed by a publisher, or is there something else that they're looking at they can look at through some of the data for these things?

Yeah, I mean, I think, listen, there's a huge challenge and a huge opportunity, right? We were very, very early to video and have ways for folks to track their video in real time, just like we do with the standard web and standard mobile apps. And that's been very, very successful for us. And I think video increasingly is a way for folks to really, really engage. And I think podcasts and audio are places where we're also thinking about, because it's not that dissimilar, right? You're basically making an integration with a player. I think the newsletter stuff is an interesting challenge, right? Because you've never— the things like Mailchimp and other HubSpot and other kind of email martech stacks, right? Don't really think in an engagement-focused way or in a reader-focused way. And I also think there's an opportunity there where you can actually almost build a Chartbeat for that. I think for us, the challenge is, right? You can't do everything, right? I think our vision, which is to enable meaningful stories to thrive, has a future for Chartbeat where we're tracking everything on every device in every country on every globe and we're helping every content creator. But the path to get there is a path filled with choices. And for us, I think that's the thing. I mean, I think podcasting is really interesting because, as you guys know, it's a super competitive world out there, right? Anybody with, um, you know, a microphone and, uh, you know, a computer's got a podcast, and very, very few are in the top 10 in Sweden. So I was gonna say, we've hit top, top 10 now, UK and Sweden. There's only 10 that could be the top 10 in Sweden.

So, you know, I think, um, Sweden, Ireland, the UK, in the last, in this season, it's been in top 10. So we've been, we've been pretty—

I mean, I was blown away, right? I mean, you know, listen, I saw that you were in the top 10 in Sweden. I mean, the Swedes know what they're talking about. That's the country of Spotify. That's the country of IKEA, right? I mean, you know—

That's the land of geek. It's just where we behave.

Exactly, right? I mean, that's brilliant.

Absolutely brilliant.

That's good stuff.

It is indeed. And so Martin, you have a newsletter as well, and you're into this area more than I am. What do you make of all of this?

Yes, I have a daily newsletter, which is a bit of a chain around my neck in a way, because I have to— 6 days a week, I have to put together this newsletter in the morning. But, uh, it's fun. Uh, and yeah, I do, I love to see the real-time stats. So I use, um, Revue, uh, for my newsletter, which is one of the platforms that you can use to create a newsletter and monetize it. And, uh, yeah, no, I really enjoy, um, seeing what people are looking at. Uh, and, uh, and it helps me refine my product in a way because I know what my readers are interested in. Um, I, I do wonder if, uh, are you looking at this kind of newsletters integrating into Chartbeat in a more tighter way in the future? Is that something you're looking at, John? Yeah, I think—

listen, our first priority is going to be less the newsletter-only folks like you, which I actually think is fascinating. But to your point, things like Revue and Substack and others have been working on that. And I think what we're seeing is that the newsletter is becoming an incredible driver of audience and especially loyal readers for big publishers and marketers, right? So the thing that's really, I think, interesting about that is that loyalists love newsletters. And that's an amazing thing because it's so hard to figure out how to write and create content that is going to really capture your loyalists. And that's the opportunity we see in newsletters, right? Which is helping folks measure how newsletters are driving brand loyalty, et cetera. And you actually, not to be too of a salesman, but you can track that right now in Chartbeat. And we're We've been very, very happy by that and been very pleased with what we've seen from that.

So what advice would you give, or tips even, to smaller publishers or independent bloggers? Because these are probably not necessarily the sort of people that would use Chartbeat. I think the cost is kind of— am I right in saying it's more geared for Chartbeat for larger publishers? But what about the sort of smaller size publications? What would your advice be to them in 2020 to develop some traffic, develop an audience, and make to monetize?

Yeah, listen, I think everybody's a publisher now. It's a hackneyed and trite phrase, but it's really, really true. I mean, I was out to dinner with some folks yesterday, and somebody was like, I have a food blog. And I was like, you have a food blog? And she's like, well, it's on Instagram. Right? And it's interesting, right? Because the three of us kind of come from the era of when blogging was a thing. Right? And it's not— somebody who has an Instagram where they take pictures of food considers themselves a blogger.

I mean, that kind of blew me away. Right?

But I think it's kind of onto something, right? If you're passionate about something, if you've got an audience that you want to hit, right, just get out there and start creating, right? And I think the one thing I would pick is I would pick an audience, pick something that you know a lot about, that you're super passionate about, and just master it and write everything you can about it, right? Because when I think about the small publishers and small newsletters that I'm reading and that I'm watching, it's all stuff about things that I'm just a geek on, right? Like, so, you know, I'm a huge Liverpool supporter, right? And, you know, the, the, um, you know, all of the things that I love, um, in Liverpool are tiny independent producers, right? And the Liverpool Echo, right? But tiny independent producers who are writing newsletters, um, and the Liverpool Echo is how I get my Liverpool news, right? And I live in Manhattan, right? I don't live on Merseyside. Um, so I think number one, pick something you're passionate about, own it and write it. And number two, take advantage of of all of the platforms that are out there. Right. I think Review— Martin's a great idea. I'm a big fan of what Substack is doing in newsletters. Right. And then make sure you're tracking. Right. And we're not that expensive, so give us a call or put some GA on it and just constantly be relentlessly, relentlessly improving. Right. And that's kind of the Chartbeat story, too. Right. We found something that we were passionate about, which which was helping folks like you guys, right? Like, you know, get your stories out there and get— build a bigger audience. And we've just been, you know, hammering at it for, you know, now 11 years. And, you know, we just keep learning new things and having more fun. And that's, that's what I would tell anybody to do, no matter what they wanted to do.

I think, yeah, it's my advice when someone has ever asked me, and it's not— doesn't happen that often. I think people don't trust me. But it's just to own a niche. And I sort of spiraled into into this kind of geeky niche with social media somewhat by accident, but I was enjoying it. And then I kind of thought, well, I'm going to do something, do it to the best of my ability and be the best person at doing it as best as I can try to be. And I think that that is kind of been the difference between trying to do something that you're maybe not as passionate about. And everything's harder when it's something you're kind of doing for the sake of it or you think is what you should be doing. So I think there's something to be said for finding—

That's what we were saying last week, weren't we, with our guest last week?

Exactly.

Exactly. Yeah.

Martin.

Yeah. So we were talking about Facebook earlier as a traffic driver and that kind of relationship between Facebook and publishers. But, uh, it goes deeper than that, doesn't it? Because there's been a bit of a tortured relationship there between publishers and Facebook with things like Instant Articles, which were the big thing, and then they weren't the big thing anymore. And there's this new news aggregation offering they're going to be launching, and they've just hired a Fox News producer to work on that, which has raised a few eyebrows in some quarters. Uh, so there's still this kind of shaky relationship maybe between the two. Uh, how do you see that shaping up in 2020?

You know, I listen, it's in a It's election year in the United States.

Oh, it's always a good year for the world.

Exactly.

So I think— listen, I think that publishers and Facebook are going to have— I mean, there's a big article today about is the Trump campaign far ahead of everybody else when it comes to Facebook? And I see publishers actually returning to what they're good at, which is I think they're going to spend the year covering Facebook. Right? I think they're going to spend the year covering Facebook covering its role in the election and almost playing a watchdog. And I think that actually will probably make Facebook uncomfortable, right? Because I think Facebook is very, very good and very, very professional when it comes to having the relationships that they've been having for the last couple of years, which is traffic and building audience and whatever. And now I think publishers are going to do what they do, which is— I don't know where it was, but I saw it today. It's a big article about, is Trump really far ahead on Facebook and why? Why? And what's that about? And that's what I think the relationship is going to be. And then in 2021, when things get back to normal, if they do, then I think we'll see a retrenchment. If I was Facebook, I would be much more concerned about Washington, Brussels, and now that London is no longer Brussels, London, than I would be about the publishers. I mean, I think that's where they're big. And that's where the big unease is going to come from over the course of the next year or so.

And as a citizen of the US and the motherland of Facebook, I'm intrigued. Can you tell me what's your personal opinion of the situation with Facebook for the year ahead in terms of all the things it's embroiled in and the risks to its business or the opportunities to its business? What's your assessment of Zuckerberg and Facebook for the coming year?

Yeah, listen, I have actually a little bit less criticism of Facebook than I do of some of our largest advertisers. I think that Facebook has been very, very clear. I don't particularly agree with some of their stances in terms of content moderation. I actually think that if they wanted to put 1,000 engineers on it, they probably could solve the problem a lot easier than— I don't know if you guys have seen Casey Newton's reporting in The Verge, but what they've done with moderators is a little nutty. To me, it's the advertisers, right? The advertisers are what create create the billions and billions of dollars of revenue. And the reality is that a lot of America's biggest advertisers just don't care, right? And as much as they want to participate in a debate around what should and shouldn't be on Facebook when they're having dinner in their homes, right, they're still spending tens of millions of dollars on the platform. And Facebook is very, very explicit, right? Again, if I was running it, I would probably take a different stance. We have a very high standard at Chartbeat in terms of what clients we accept and we don't accept. But Zuckerberg has been very explicit. And still, the advertisers who create a lot of the revenue, they don't really seem to care. And that goes for everything from small companies to the biggest advertisers in the world who literally spend tens of millions of dollars. And that's the way— if you want to send a message that you don't like the content that's on Facebook or YouTube or anywhere, that's the way to send it. And that's where my frustration lies.

Yeah, I just think Facebook is still a bit like Teflon, isn't it? You chuck anything at it, and the share price seems to still creep up, and the value of the company and the interest in it from a business point of view doesn't seem to falter too much. Although there have been signals of plateauing of growth in some of the monthly active users on some platforms. And I don't think it can get much more spotlight than any kind of company in the world because they've got it all. They're hogging it with their involvement in all these court cases. It's just, you know, what is going to be that tipping point and is it going to happen this year? I don't know. I just, I think it's going to be another year that Facebook is going to dominate and they'll slide through it somehow. I don't know, Martin, do you think the same?

Yeah, I mean, as John was saying, the fact it's an election year kind of means there'll be lots of scrutiny of them. But at the same time, they are such a key information provider to America and to, more importantly, Americans, that yeah, you can't really mess with them too much because so many people rely on them. And they will continue— well, no matter what happens, they will continue to make a lot of money, which is the important thing for the stock market, which is why their stock price isn't being affected and why all of that continues to go great guns. And I think depending on the result of the election, I think that will help influence the future of the company in terms of, Does Trump get another term, for example? That will make some people incredibly angry, but then maybe make Facebook— Facebook have been very on the side, talking to a lot of people in the Trump camp, and they know how to play the political game. I think that's the important thing to remember, they know how to play the political game. I think it's going to take a lot to shift Facebook from their position of dominance.

A lot. Yeah, no, I think so. I don't think it's going to be any dramatic movement in that front, other than what you said, continual spotlight on Facebook and its antics. There was something else that I was just recalling, but I can't bring it to mind. So see if I can think before the end. But we're coming up to the end of chatting to you, John. It's been fascinating stuff, as I predicted and expected it would be. But I wanted to leave enough time to have a bit more of an open question about kind of the future, really, of content consumption. Because one of the things that we've heard from the likes of Andrew Bosworth, who was on the show, who's who's head of AR and VR on Facebook. And also— never heard of him.

Never heard of him.

Some random—

never read— does he ever tweet? I've never heard.

He likes to write memos, I found.

Yeah.

I think he's written internal memos too. I think— yeah, very easily.

Anyway, he was talking to us about the fact that, you know, some of the tech that Facebook's invested in or owns now, you know, can do things like, you know, read, almost like read your thoughts because it can detect the electrical nerve impulse signals in your body and then produce emails for you if you're thinking about doing it rather than having manually type it. But then also, they're pushing— all of the big tech companies like Apple, and Google, and Facebook, and others are pushing AR spectacles, or some sort of AR kind of head frame unit, some sort of thing, and virtual reality further down the line even more. How's that going to work out for content consumption, just the way that we live our lives, reading news, and engaging in news, and content in general?

Yeah.

Matt, listen, your guess is as good as mine. The thing that I am very, very confident in— there's a little bit of the woe is me around the news media around the current cycle. But I think if you go back, I'm a huge media geek, right? And I went back and read Katharine Graham, whose family owned The Washington Post. I went back and read her memoir, Personal History., which I highly recommend folks read. And the '60s and '70s, it wasn't so easy to be a media company either, right? But the one thing that was constant was that people wanted to make sense of their world, right? They wanted to know both from a news standpoint, right, what the president did last night, right, what the score of the game was last night. They wanted to know opinion about what kind of leading minds were thinking. And that's not going away, right? In 50 years, we're going to need professionals to help us figure out how to make sense of our world. And I'm not sure if that's going to be VR and AR. I hope for all of our sake that we won't get so nauseous when we put VR goggles on anymore. I don't— but I'm pretty confident that'll happen in 50 years. But I'm even more confident that in whatever format, folks are going to want the services that journalists and editors and folks are providing. And I think that one thing that the internet and tech will continue to do is make everybody able to be that kind of creator, right? Because one of the things that we've learned in the era of the last 25 years is that there's just a lot of really smart people out there who have a lot of interesting things to say, and we can learn from them. And it doesn't have to be the same 25 white men in a cigarette-soaked room like it was in Katherine Graham's biography, or memoir. And I think that's, to me, the takeaway, right? That if we can keep getting people out there creating in all sorts of interesting ways, we'll figure out— if you create it, we'll figure out a way to measure it and give you feedback.

Let's put it that way.

I'll tell you what. I've been speaking more and more increasingly to teenagers and younger people, friends of my daughter who's only 9, and then my son, really young children. And it's amazing how confident they are. They're all seemingly very confident, believe they can change the world, and don't care for the old structures of how to go through university and having to do a job. It's like they'll make their job, they'll make something they like, and then that'll that will be the thing they're gonna make money out of. You know, and it's so entrepreneurial, it's quite inspiring. And I'm just intrigued to see how they will impact the world. I don't know if you've got kids, John, but that's—

I just hope they don't get jaded. Let me just say that, 'cause that kind of optimism could improve things massively in the world.

We're their parents, so it's our job to make sure they don't get jaded, right? It's our job to make sure that we, you know, we invest and make them dream and hope, right? 'Cause that's all there is, right?

I think it could be more, it'd be good to have more Gretas in the world is all I can say.

That's what I think about them.

Anyway, it's been great.

You are, you're top 10 in Sweden.

I mean, let's be clear. That's probably why.

That's exactly the link. Exactly right. I mean, right, right. I mean, is she a listener? I mean, I don't know.

She is now. I'm going to say it. I'm going to make it happen. John, it's been amazing. We could have chatted to you probably for another 50-odd minutes and still had more to ask about, but it's been great chatting to you. And I think people have got a good insight into the world of geeky social media traffic for publishers and more beyond. Thank you so much for coming in.

Pleasure was all mine, guys. Thanks for having me.

Thank you.

It's time now for Quick Hits. Here's Matt with tests, updates, and more from social media companies. They'll make you feel, they'll make you feel, they'll make you feel like a natural woman. Woman. Or maybe they'll just make you feel mighty real. I don't know. Matt.

My mouth is just hitting the floor with absolute cringe at the moment. I do not know what to say. Your parents know what you do. Do they hear this sort of stuff you're doing? It's crazy.

I kind of get paid for it. For this. I don't know how.

Insane. Anyway, it's getting worse every week. I'm sorry. Okay. So what have we got? Um, Google, um, just today as we're recording this, um, they've sort of launched a kind of like a TikTok-y type app. It's really, it's a short-form video app, but they're saying it specifically focuses on the sort of creativity and DIY area. Uh, it's come out of Google's sort of experimental kind of products and apps area, Area 120. So that's new today. So the name of this this app. It's called Tangi. We think it's T-A-N-G-I, Tangi, Tangi, something like that. Hopefully we'll know clearer next week on that one. Um, TikTok have, um, started testing their dark mode a few, um, with a few more people in their latest beta on iOS. So people like dark mode will get that soon. Uh, Pinterest also have launched a new AR feature so you can try on makeup for a bit like the ones we've seen before on YouTube and some other places. Um, but they're gonna start doing a bit more of that by the looks of it on the AR side of things with Pinterest. Instagram shared a story earlier on this week, we were recording, where it was talking about all those classic questions that you have around, you know, does the algorithm favor this? And what happens with comment pods? And how do you get verified? And what happens if you do this? I've been told it helps you get verified. It doesn't involve contacting me.

Is—

that was a story, but you can find the details of it because it's been really helpfully saved by Social Media Today's article on it, which we'll put in the episode notes. LinkedIn, and that doesn't always do exciting things, but sometimes very useful things, is merging its Elevate, uh, employee advocacy toolkit product with company pages to, uh, make them kind of work together better. And I think they realize the competition there for that space is, uh, pretty intense. And also they have a lot to give by giving some of this stuff away to get them and getting it being used. So I can see that being a smart move. Uh, good Instagram account to follow is, uh, influencers in the wild. If you go to Instagram, search that. If you haven't seen that this week, then that's It's, well, you'll see, it's good. Uh, Joanna Stern from the Wall Street Journal, she's done an amazing TikTok explainer, kind of 101 video, which is, uh, just, you know, plain and simple and, uh, as you'd want it to be helpful. So, uh, go and have a look at that. New Instagram share mentions in stories feature. So when you create mode, you can now, um, there's an symbol kind of button for your story, which allows you to share any recent mentions of you in other people's stories. Uh, you can do this in other ways on Instagram, of course, but this is just another way to do it and into some design spin on it, I guess, in terms of how it's presented within that feature. And then finally, the Twitter DM reactions. So this is something that was kind of at the cusp of when we were doing the last show. So you can now react to direct messages in the app or on desktop and a bit like Facebook's where you have the kind of different emojis, there's a selection for you to pick. So Twitter has got on the emoji reactions as well.

There we go. And I certainly feel mighty real now. So there we go.

Jesus. Sponsored again. Anyway, Martin, who have we got on the show next week?

Next week we'll be talking TikTok because we're gonna be joined by Inam Mahmood, who is in charge of EMEA commercial partnerships at Yes TikTok.

I'm glad to have someone from TikTok on the show. Everyone's asking me questions about it. I'm hoping to get some answers there for me to give to other people to present that they are mine. Anyway, if you haven't done already, hit subscribe in your podcast app of choice so that you get notified notified as soon as the next episode is available, which will be in a week from now.

Geek Out with Matt Navarra is a Big Revolution production. Find out more at bigrevolution.net/podcasts. And we also have a daily newsletter which you can subscribe to, to keep up with the latest tech and media news. Uh, each weekday edition also has a big dollop of analysis on a current trend or story from my fair typing fingers too. Visit bigrevolution.net/newsletter for more information and to sign up. You can find me on Twitter as @MattNavarra. @martinsfp.

And I'm @MattNavarra on Twitter. So don't forget to tell people about the podcast. The more people that will get to listen to it means we can keep on doing it. So help us out there. And of course you can join the Facebook group, the Social Media Geek Out on Facebook, where everyone is discussing all of this stuff and lots, lots more and some great memes.

Absolutely. So we'll see you soon.

Goodbye, geeks.