12. Snap's Ed Couchman on why Snapchat matters in 2020

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. This week we'll be looking at one of the most interesting companies in the whole social space, in my opinion, Snap. We'll be joined by Ed Couchman, General Manager at Snap's UK operation.

Yes, and we'll be talking about the future of Snapchat and everything else the company is working on in 2020. So don't forget, you can always get in touch with us on Twitter where you can find me as @MattNavarra.

And I'm @martinsfp. So Matt, what have you been doing this week?

Another busy week of train journeys for me all over the place, back in London a couple of times this morning as we record this. I've been at We Are Social, which is an agency in London, and we've been digging into all the latest digital trends and figuring out what people people are interested in, in social or what's growing and what's shrinking. Uh, and found out that dogs are beating cats on platforms in terms of Instagram and others where people are posting pictures and GIFs of dogs more than cats, which, uh, stirred up a few people in the room this morning. Uh, also having a nightmare with my MacBook cuz the keyboard is still broken and I'm kind of trying to sort of keep it going till it really dies. And cuz every time I try and speak to someone about buying a new MacBook, they always say, oh, just hold on, hold on a bit longer because the keyboards are still dodgy. And so I'm putting it off.

The new 16-inch one, you get a new 16-inch MacBook Pro. They've got the new keyboards that are fixed. They're the new keyboards.

That's your answer. I'm very, very tempted. So I'm thinking about that. I'm seriously, but it's just a chunk of money to stick out at the moment, which I want to save money. Um, and also I've been thinking about toying with the idea of a newsletter because everyone keeps on, I say everyone, lots of people have suggested to me why I don't do a newsletter that sort of rounds up kind of the things that are in the Geek Out Facebook group and stuff that I tweet out. So I've been toying with that idea and I've been thinking about the future of this podcast. You know, we've come to the end of this season, but we've got lots more to come. So we've been talking about that with you, Martin, and we're going to come up with some ideas for something exciting for season 3.

Indeed. We're not going to be away for long, are we?

No.

Yeah, absolutely. We wouldn't leave you loyal listeners in the lurch. Don't worry about that. My week, well, I have been again on trains as well. Lots of trains in the last week. It feels like it. Certainly in the last few days, I've spent literally days, like as in 24-hour periods, periods on trains in total, if you add it up. It's a long time. The other day, I was sitting next to a guy. I was on a train from London to Manchester, and I was sitting next to a guy who, in the space of about an hour and a half, chugged down 3 cans of— big cans of cider. I was thinking, train drinking during the day, it's a thing. It's perfectly socially acceptable. It's really strange. If you saw somebody, anyone, just sitting in public anywhere else at midday drinking multiple cans of alcohol, you'd be thinking, "Hmm, that's a strange thing to do on your own in the middle of the day." But it's strange, as soon as you sit them on a train, in the UK anyway, it's suddenly fine. It's strange. I don't know why that is. Has that ever crossed your mind, Matt?

It's one of those things like when you go to the airport, it's like any time of day drinking a pint before you get on the flight. I think it's one of those things maybe, but it's a bit weird if it's a commuting to work train journey. But I think that annoys me more on the train trains. And the drinking thing you just mentioned is people who have notifications for messages on and they have a long conversation and every 30 seconds you hear like that chirp sound because I don't know what device it is. It's obviously an Android phone of some description that kind of makes this annoying chirp every time the message comes in and just sat there kind of beep, beep. Oh my God, it just drove me insane.

Why do you need the notification on?

Turn it off.

You need to go on the quiet coach. On the Manchester to London trains, they have quiet coaches and I was once told off for typing. That's how, how strict some of the quiet coaches are.

Ridiculous.

Anyway, right then, what we got coming up this one this week? We've got a nice interview coming up with, uh, with Ed Couchman from Snap. But first we need to talk a bit about the news. So what's been going on in the news this week?

Well, first up, some interesting news. If you are involved in Instagram's IGTV, if you're a creator on there, uh, you could be able to monetize soon through ads. So TechCrunch, uh, had a report this week that, uh, Instagram may 'Finally let IGTV video makers earn money 18 months after launching the longer-form video content hub,' says Josh Constine. The idea here is this is something they've been prototyping internally. It's not an official thing, but essentially they give people a cut of the ad revenue from the ads shown when people view their videos. This sounds to me, sounds like a basic no-brainer idea to maybe kickstart IGTV, which has been, in my opinion, not that successful. I mean, we had, we had Instagram's head of product on earlier this season. Make sure you check out that interview. If you haven't already. And, uh, you know, it was around the time when they were removing the IGTV logo from the main app. Uh, but, uh, he still seemed very upbeat about IGTV. Uh, so what's your thoughts here, Matt?

Well, you know, the things that people have been saying that they, um, to me at least, that they want from IGTV is, is, is monetization is one thing and better discoverability on the platform to make their content be surfaced or people to make it easy for people to find. Um, so that this addresses one of those issues. Um, I, I think, you know, I'm surprised when you said a minute ago, 18 months, I didn't realize it's been as long that. But it really just comes down to, you know, what range of options they're going to give people to monetize and what split they're going to get of it and all those kind of things. But at the moment, to me, it just seems like any other video kind of option that are just whacked on the edge of Instagram rather than it being some unique kind of quirky feature. It doesn't have anything that sets it apart, is what I'm getting at, from other options that are out there for video. So I'm just not that excited by IGTV. And but from a creator's point of view, I guess if they do a great deal for monetization, it maybe it'll kickstart it, as you said. But at the moment, it just still seems a bit kind of bland and meh. So I'm not that excited by it myself.

Yeah, and we should credit Jane Manchin Wong, whose name appears on this show quite a lot. She was the one who tipped off TechCrunch. So credit goes to her for that discovery. Next up, a bit of a maybe embarrassing time around Valentine's Day for Facebook. It emerges, news broken by the Irish Data Protection Commission, of all people, that Facebook was planning to launch Facebook Dating in Europe in time for Valentine's Day. They were gonna launch it on the 13th of February, the day before Valentine's Day. But not so. The Irish Data Protection Commission are rather annoyed with Facebook Ireland because they only found out about this new feature at the start of the month when Facebook approached them about it. And they asked for more information, and they didn't get the information they wanted. So they ended up going to Facebook's offices in Dublin Dublin on Monday to gather documentation. So it sounds dramatic. It probably wasn't that dramatic. But as a result, Facebook Ireland informed us, say the Data Protection Commission last night, that they have postponed the rollout of this feature. So due to data protection concerns, we're not getting Facebook Dating for all those lonely hearts on Valentine's Day.

Matt?

Well, I— yeah, I'm kind of— I'm trying to figure out if it's going to be something worth getting that excited about, because I've spoken to a few people who have been using it in the US and the general consensus from those people, and admittedly it's a small sample size here, but it's like, eh, it's all right. There's nothing exciting. It's not that great, big a deal. Don't get too excited about it. But I am kind of wanting to have a play around with it and see kind of what it's like and things. But, um, but yeah, I think there'll be a few nerds and geeks are a bit disappointed that it's not going to be around to play with them as soon as they thought. But, uh, I think there's plenty of other options, you know, go on Tinder and find some strange, funny, interesting people as I have done recently.

Yeah, very strange people on Tinder.

There's some Seriously, that's a whole other podcast.

I was just about to say that. That's a podcast spin-off. Geek Out Podcast. Geek Out Dating. There's a podcast idea.

There we go. Well, yeah, no, I'll save that one for another time. But what else have we got going on? There's something to do with Ofcom.

Yeah.

So Ofcom, which is the communications regulator in the UK, has been named as the watchdog for online harms. So this is a term that's been going around the UK government for quite a while now. They finally announced what they're going to do for keeping people safe on on the internet. And basically, uh, Ofcom are in charge of regulating all of that. Uh, the problem with this is that at the moment things are a bit vague as to how this is going to work and exactly what Ofcom will be able to do in terms of fining people, in terms of all that kind of thing. Um, and, uh, also even the definition of online harm seems to be pretty vague and kind of left almost to the individual internet, uh, providers themselves. So people like like, you know, Facebook or Twitter or whoever, uh, and even maybe, maybe even news publishers' comment sections and things. It's up to them to decide what they decide as harmful, but basically they've got to keep them safe. It all seems a bit kind of vague. What do you think, Matt?

Yeah, I'd agree with that. You know, I think from the bits of information I've read about it, you know, there's more to come obviously in, in later on in the year. I think spring is mentioned as a time when there's going to be some more detail. But you're right, you know, the terms around what, what constitutes online harm and what, what things they're going to be looking at and, and all sorts of other aspects of this kind of movement to regulate is super vague. And I would have just thought they must have kind of been waiting for people to be critiquing what they've come up with after this. Lots of talk about it. And Damian Collins, we've had on the show, has talked extensively about it and has been pushing for it. So you'd have thought, well, to kind of sort of stave off any of these kind of criticisms, that they would come out with something which was a bit more concrete, at least in some areas, because surely they have that knowledge and information as to how it might work, or they could hold it back a few more months to get those definitions in place. But I think it's a positive step overall. I criticized that, but I think it's a good step that we've been waiting for. But it's now a case of how it works in real life when it comes into play and how effective it is. We've seen before regulation and these sorts of things where it's technical that sometimes people— either too broad that people kind of— it just doesn't work, or it's too narrow and specific that it becomes really outdated very quickly and it becomes quite useless. And also, of course, if they don't have a lot of teeth and fight with some of the kind of things they have to kind of stop Facebook or encourage Facebook and others, not just Facebook, others as well. Um, it might just be quite an ineffective, um, step. So we'll see, but I'm hopeful. Fingers crossed.

Yeah.

And there are other questions as well, like what happens to, uh, if people become really interested and really engaged with a social network from, I don't know, Malaysia or somewhere far away that is outside the UK jurisdiction, this company has no presence in the UK. How do they regulate that? It's, yeah, there are lots of questions here and I'm sure there'll be lots of things that'll be going to the courts over the years to try and thrash out how this works. And also a lot of other countries will be looking at this as, you know, as we've talked about in the past on this show, regulation is a big thing for the coming years.

Absolutely. And I think that this year is, as I said in previous interviews, I think I've done this year about regulation, that last year was a lot about talking about regulation and figuring out what to do with it. And this year is going to be a year of enacting it and putting it into place. So let's see, watch this space. So in a moment, we'll be speaking to Ed Couchman from Snap. But first, Geek Out with Matt Navarra is sponsored by Pinterest. Each week, we share tips to help you make the most of the platform.

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Oh, thank you, Matt. Really lovely to be here.

Can you just tell us a little bit about what you do in your role for those that don't know? Because I am an uber geek for these things, but not everybody is. So tell us a bit about what you do and how you do it.

Yes, of course. I'm the General Manager for Snap here in the UK. UK, and that ultimately means I'm responsible for the business performance of Snap, and predominantly that is advertising revenue. So I spend a lot of time working with brands, media agencies, creative agencies, and digital businesses to help them understand Snap as a communication platform to meet their marketing objectives.

Got you. And so what were you doing before you were at Snap then?

I've been at Snap now for 18 months, almost 2 years actually, and prior to that I had a 6-year stint at Facebook where I was responsible for the team that worked with media agencies and agencies. And prior to that, I was at Channel 4 for 5 years working on what's now called All4, but then was the very first video-on-demand platform called 4OD.

I got you. I know. So Snapchat has been fairly consistent in terms of, you know, the experience you get when you go into app and into the app and then play around with Snapchat. But it clearly, it's evolved over time. You know, just what do you think about, you know, how it has evolved and how has it changed in the last say, 5 years or so, do you think?

I think Matt touched on a really important point, though, that Snap, the fundamental philosophical use of Snap has remained constant, that it opens to the camera, which makes Snap pretty unique. That helps people kind of express themselves and live in the moment and take a snap, of course, and then share that with their friends and normally their best friends. And I think that has remained consistent. Where we have innovated and moved forward on products like the AR experience, all those filters and lenses, and you might have seen the Time Machine lens last year, which helped you kind of make yourself look younger or older. Guess which way I went though? Obviously, I went younger. Yeah. And really sort of fun and sort of captivating kind of magic of AR. And we kind of continue to innovate in that space. Snap Maps is another way where, you know, with kind of privacy built in by design. So location's turned off, but users can obviously in our community turn it on, kind of share what they're doing with their friends and where they're at. And then also we've been making some significant investments in the right-hand side of the app, the kind of curated content side, and working with numerous professional content producers on kind of Snap Shows and Snap Originals.

Do you still see Snapchat as being predominantly the app for a younger generation? It doesn't ever seem to have tried to creep outside of those boundaries to be something broader or wider to a bigger demographic. Is that— obviously, I'm guessing that's a strategic thing to some degree, but is that something you've ever thought about in terms of making it more appealing to a different or a wider audience on top of what already popular with?

So Snap across the whole globe is used by about 218 million people. A bit closer to home here in the UK, then the reach in the UK is 17 million people, 80% of 13 to 24-year-olds, that Generation Z, as, as you mentioned, or Gen Z as my American colleagues tell me, and 60% of all 13 to 34-year-olds. But I think it's worth noting that, you know, Snap's 7, 8 years old now and and a lot of people join when they're 13, but they're starting to kind of grow up with the app as well, essentially. I think at the heart of it, though, is that kind of self-expression, that authenticity, kind of living in the moment. And young people, I think, have just kind of got that first. But we are starting to see other demographics grow and use the platform as well as kind of expressing yourself with videos and pictures becomes much more of a common kind of human behavior.

Would you agree to the kind of common kind of thing I'm hearing at the moment is that people talking about not your app particularly here. This is talking about Instagram and TikTok and the differences between the two, that Instagram, the aesthetic of Instagram and that kind of polished and perfected look and vibe is going out of fashion. And the appeal in some ways, not only the reason, but one of the reasons why TikTok is so popular is because of that authenticity and that kind of less polished look. And I get that that's sort of the same vibe you get when you're in Snapchat. Would you say that that's a fair sort of assessment of where things are.

It's very interesting, actually. I totally agree that Snap is much more about expressing yourself authentically, living in the moment and chatting to your real mates, your best friends, essentially. And Snap was born out of an era, you know, when Bobby and Evan founded the app essentially as almost an antidote to social media at the time. So Snap was privacy by design, didn't have this huge kind of data footprint, deleted by default, the kind of notion of ephemerality, but also importantly didn't have any likes, comments or shares. And that's always been at the heart of Snap. And I think that authenticity now is becoming much more the norm, that sort of freedom to express yourself and not worrying about judgment. And one of the reasons why I think TikTok's been so popular is it just really helps surface or promote just really good content. Like, there's some really brilliant stuff on TikTok. So it's less about how many followers you have and much more about, well, what's just great content. And yeah, we're seeing that. It's really encouraging to to see.

Martin?

Yeah, if we look at some of the latest news around Snap and Snapchat, just yesterday Axios was talking about a health and wellness push and a new Here for You feature launching this week. Is there anything you can tell us about that?

Yeah, I'd love to actually, because this is really important to us. Digital wellbeing and keeping young people and everyone on Snap safe and secure so they can have a positive experience is really, really important to us. And yesterday was Internet Safety Day. As it sounds like you've picked up on. And here for you is a range of kind of proactive in-app support for those people that might be experiencing some emotional difficulties and who are curious to learn about issues. So if someone is searching maybe around anxiety or depression, then essentially we surface some content from professional bodies and professional individuals to help guide people through that, essentially. We've also produced a whole bunch of creative tools and games that promote sort of safe safety and privacy, so geo filters and snappable quizzes, essentially. And then again, something close to home, and I'm really proud of this one because it's kind of born out here in London. We partnered with a content producer studio called Bancroft Studios to commission 10 episodes of a program called Mind Yourself. And Mind Yourself, each episode essentially plants an honest, really intimate portrayal of a young person who's either suffering from or recovering from some sort of mental health issue and really using that to empower young people to engage positively and talk and support each other.

Interesting. Um, and, uh, so other news that has broken, uh, today on the day we're recording this is around the news that Ofcom will become, uh, the regulator of online content, a regulator for the internet if you like, including social media. And that kind of feeds into a similar thing around safety online. Uh, so what's your reaction to that news?

Do you know what, we really welcome Ofcom as the regulator of choice Actually, and this is in the UK, I should add, for our international listeners. And if we go back to this kind of philosophical view that we have at Snap is around, you know, we put a great deal of thought into how we enable young people to talk to one another, each other, how they engage in creative tools. And so keeping people safe on our platform is fundamentally important to us. And it goes to the heart of what we do is how we think about everything at Snap. And so we share the same objectives and ambitions of the government that overall that we want to keep people safe online. We think that's a good thing. We think social media can be a force for good. I haven't seen a great deal of detail yet this morning, but the broad-based principles of proportionate approach is really, really important. And that kind of piece around keeping people safe at the heart of it, we totally agree with.

I would say that Snapchat seems to have been very successful at navigating the last couple of years where it's been very tricky for, for the like the likes of Facebook and Twitter and others in terms of things to do with toxicity and data privacy. And, you know, Snap's not been without its own kind of hotspots of issues and things, but it seems to have kind of come out of this period where it's been tricky, relatively unscathed in regards to that stuff. How do you think that's come to be? How has that happened, do you think?

Of course, you know, and I can't say we're perfect, but we are trying to be a positive player and be a force for good and do the right thing. But really at the heart of it, I think it comes back to this piece that actually Snap is different. That is a platform for communication with your best friends and self-expression that we delete by default. There's privacy by design. I think that's been borne out to be the right decisions. And that all goes back to Bobby and Evan when they founded the platform.

Got you. Well, one of the other things that's really popular at the moment with Snapchat and Snap in general is its Snap Kit. You know, TechCrunch wrote recently that Snapchat's developer platform is blowing up as a gateway to teen social app users. So can you just tell those of us who are not as experienced with Snap Kit a bit about what it is in a nutshell and what's going on in that space for Snapchat right now?

Yes, of course. So if we listen, Snap Kit launched back in 2018, and it was a way to help partners and developers grow their apps by kind of integrating with Snap's most popular features. Like all Snap products, though, again, it was designed with privacy-centric approach. So it's really important to note that Snap Kit does not give developers access to demographic info or friends lists. There's a review process as well for new apps and developers. They obviously have to agree to our terms and conditions. And our private policy and community guidelines. But in really succinctly, essentially takes some of the best products and features of Snap and allows other developers and apps to kind of build on top of them in a privacy-safe way.

And so what's some of the kind of highlights you've seen of people using Snap Kit in the last year? You know, can you give us any examples to kind of bring that to life for us?

Yeah, absolutely. So one of the interesting things is from a dating app called Hily and using just people and it's really helped drive additional engagement. So the dating app space is obviously very competitive, especially as we head into Valentine's Day, of course, on Friday. It's super competitive and actually integrating with our Snap Kit for young people allows them to have a much deeper engagement and allows them to kind of target their ads in a much more refined way as well. So essentially they're gaining new users who are using the app much more often.

And so where's Snap Kit heading now then? Is there anything on the horizon that's new or what's the kind of roadmap for that? Is there anything you can tell us about that?

It's essentially, it's around us kind of reaching out more to the app developer ecosystem, both here in London and across the country and in other markets as well.

Got you. Well, there's one of the features of Snapchat that I really love. Martin's got a question about because I love this feature.

Yeah, people seem to love Snap Maps and I love the map as well. I think it's such a great way of exploring what's happening around you. I was having another look yesterday and just looking at, just exploring the lives of people around me is just really interesting.

Martin, I totally agree with you because all your other map experiences are all the same, aren't they? Essentially open up to a map and it's based on your kind of geographical location and roads and kind of common features all the same. Snap Maps is obviously very different from that because again, it's privacy by design. You have to turn the location features on. You can choose who sees you. And because you often choose your friends to see you, you kind of have this kind of view of the world about, well, who's doing what around you? Who's, you know, having a coffee, maybe who's having a pint, who's at the cinema, et cetera. And I think it's a really great way then, and this was brought to life for me actually just the weekend just gone. I was out shopping in my local town with my two daughters. Jess, age 17, and Grace, age 13. And obviously they don't want to hang out with their dad because I'm really, really uncool. So when we arrived in town, the first thing they do then is kind of pop up their Snap Maps, see which of their best friends are around them, and then send them a quick Snap to say, hey, you're in town, let's meet up at Shake and Cow and have a milkshake or whatever they did. And I thought that really to me brought to life just some of the excitement around Snap Maps.

There is something kind of old school and mashup in a way about it, in a way that never really made it into other things. There was a few years ago people used to put social media data onto maps all the time as a mashup, you know, when, when API mashups were the big thing. And, uh, but nobody really built that into many official platforms. So it's interesting to see Snap really make something out of that in a way the other, the other platforms haven't.

Yeah.

I think it goes back to this place that it's privacy by design. It's really easy for you to kind of do any in-app reporting. It's your best friends. So that's what I think it makes it much more potent, essentially, and much more richer experience.

So one of the things I also wanted to talk about, um, is Snap being more than just, you know, uh, it's a, it's a camera company essentially. It's the way I always forget that it's Snap and Snapchat. I always just use Snapchat as the kind of my default naming of, of Snap as well. But Spectacles really excited everyone when they launched and there was around, you know, we're on your third incarnation now, I think. And, and, but it's been a bit more lowkey, I would say. That's my perception anyway of, of Spectacles. Um, so what's going on with Spectacles Spectacles now?

Yeah, Matt, it's a very good point actually, because you're right, because Snap Inc essentially has kind of 3 businesses: Snapchat, which everyone's familiar with, a software AR product to help people develop AR, which I love to talk about as well, called Lens Studio. And then obviously Spectacles as well as a kind of third business arm, if you like. It's a hardware for your listeners that might be a little bit unfamiliar with it. And essentially this is much more of a kind of long-term play for us and it's a long-term vision of the future. And that vision is around how the digital world and physical world are going to merge into just one world. This kind of notion of digital duality, essentially. And so we layering on the digital world onto the physical world through a pair of sunglasses, and it enables those people that have them to kind of capture the world around them. So you don't need to fiddle in your pocket to get your phone out or grab it out your handbag. You can just simply tap the sides, record something, or take a snap and then share that via the app with your friends. Essentially, though, it's— we're taking a kind of R&D, a research and development journey with our users as we kind of move from version 1, version 2. And right now in all good retail outlets, version 3 is available. But really, it's an R&D journey around the long-term view of augmented reality.

Do you subscribe to this belief that some of the big tech giants are kind of seemingly on the track to kind of making a reality, which is that, you know, AR is a stepping stone into more widespread use of VR. And in terms of the next 10, 15 years, maybe or sooner, maybe a bit later, we don't know, people's use of, of social and its way people consume content is going to shift dramatically from being a device that's in your hand, such as a phone, to being something that potentially could be spectacles that kind of augment that experience. Is that, is that where you see it heading? Is that where Snap thinks it's going?

I definitely think in the long term that's one possible path, essentially. But what I am encouraged by is thinking through that actually some of the rules and how how we live our lives in the real world will actually then move into the digital world as well. Because I think at times we think we can be two different rule sets, but actually having one and people behaving and acting the same, the same respectful and all the things that come with that, Matt, is really important. And I think AR is a great way of kind of, you know, some utility aspects like guiding you from A to B, for example, instead of pulling out your phone. I can definitely see some kind of versions of that as well.

So what kind of things do you think we can expect from Spectacles in the years ahead? I'm guessing that some of this stuff is, like you say, you're learning on the go, internally, you must have had conversations about wouldn't it be cool if Spectacles could do this, or maybe we could make them do that in the future. How do you see people using them beyond the obvious things, which are taking pictures and, you know, the stuff that we already can do on some of the other similar products?

So I think firstly, we really want them to make them look cool as well. So you don't feel embarrassed wearing them. Some of the other products are quite clunky, they're heavy, they're bachelor. So I definitely think these are kind of fashion straight utility piece that we're kind of working on. So, you know, so you don't feel a bit— and I know we are on the Geek Out podcast, but you don't feel too much of a geek for wearing your hardware. And when you look at most kind of wearables, they tend to be more periphery, if that makes sense. They're like an old peripheral back in the old 1990s, 2000 computer world. So make them more central functioning with that. They don't— aren't dependent on the phone as well. I think it's important. I am— I do think there's this utility aspect though, as well, that I said help maybe guiding from A to B, maybe giving you some kind of train times, for example, if you're about to jump on the tube or catch a bus. And so kind of helping you live your life and navigate the world around you, I think is going to be really exciting as well as hopefully just some fun features as well.

And do you think there's going to be a broader, wider range of frames for these things? At the moment, it's— how many frames have you got now for Spectacles version 3?

We have two. Niko is one of my favorites, but I do think they'll become more of a style fashion item as much as they are a hardware item because I think we do want to make it comfortable for people to wear so they don't feel they're sort of sticking out or standing out.

Yeah, because my experience with Spectacles that I had had done the first version of them and I played around with the second version of them. And I still think now on the third version, it still feels that it is gimmicky, but not in a bad way. But it's just, it's a novelty thing that I found that I played with for a while and then there wasn't enough utility in there. And probably, to be honest, they weren't built for someone like me in terms of my age. But I just wonder, how do you get from the place where we are now, where it is seen as kind of a novelty gimmicky thing to something that's more mainstream? Because that's the bridge that still no one's really crossed.

Yeah, I also have a pair. I have a pair of V2. I've been tempted to use them when I'm on holiday with the family and it's been, it has been quite useful for me then. You know, when you want to take a family shot or capture the moment that I have that, oh, everyone pause, I'm going to take a photo. You know, you can just simply tap. So, and I agree, that's kind of relatively, you know, obviously don't go on holiday all the time. So kind of ad hoc basically. But I think it's just we carry on in this sort of R&D process with the users and just kind of hear from them and keep experimenting with different features and different frames et cetera.

Martin?

Yeah, you mentioned the Lens Kit product earlier and you mentioned that, but it's not something that's on my radar as far as Snap's concerned. So I suspect it won't be on the radar of all our listeners as well. So yeah, it'd be good to hear a bit more about that.

Yeah. Thank you for coming back to that. So it's Lens Studio, which is actually a software product that really helps anyone create lenses, AR essentially. So you can simply download it and it really democratizes. So imagine kind of like Photoshop, but for AR. And what we're seeing are everyone from kind of bedroom creators, but right through to professional studios creating some really great AR experiences. And, you know, Snap is the world's largest AR platform. That's a fact. And think how we democratize that then is really, really important and giving people and studios and professional content producers ways of doing that. And we're starting to see what we're calling OLCs, Official Lens Creators, create some really great work and gaining lots and lots of traction on the platform as well with the wider community.

So what are some of the examples of how that's been doing well?

Yeah, most recently, this is a campaign I was really close to, was actually for a movie studio called Charlie's Angels. So it came out back in the last year and we partnered with different official lens creators to kind of create lens experiences where it's essentially kind of those angel wings that come out from behind behind you in kind of bright colors or kind of different variations and to have a much more kind of local nuanced experience, essentially. And that was some work we did with Sony Pictures.

Okay, that must be really exciting the marketers out there. And another thing that I know is exciting the marketers out there around Snapchat is Bitmoji TV, which is one of the, one of the new features, and it builds on the success of Bitmoji as a personal avatar within the app. Can you tell us a bit about that and where it's going?

I'd love to, actually, because I'm such a big fan of this. So for me, as a man in my early to mid-40s, you know, I remember the joy of kind of waking up on a Saturday morning, going downstairs, having my shreddies, and watching Saturday morning TV. And I used to always watch Tiswas. I'm not sure if you used to watch Tiswas. So you used to have this segment, then you used to have kind of regular cartoons, which I, I used to absolutely adore. Kind of Bitmoji TV feels like that, but for 2020. So as you mentioned, Bitmoji is a kind of cartoon avatar of yourself. And instead of watching other characters every Saturday morning, I and my friends appear in our very own version of a cartoon, essentially. So it's a fully animated series, features the viewer and our friends. So it could be around a detective story or a sitcom or saving the planet, essentially. So yeah, it's kind of fun, personalized storytelling.

So in terms of From the brand platform for advertisers now, is Snapchat kind of concerned in any way that TikTok is the shiny new thing, the cool thing on the social media block that advertisers and brands are all clamoring to kind of find a way to kind of use or leverage in some way? And arguably, you know, there's overlap, substantial overlap between the sort of person that might like to use TikTok and the sort of audience that would play around with Snapchat. So from Snapchat's point of view, do you see that as kind of a complement in terms of the of the fact that people use both at the same time? Do you think it's going to take away some of the activity that goes on in Snapchat? How do you see that kind of change in the marketplace with TikTok's arrival?

Yeah, it's super interesting. You know, our view on TikTok is they are our friends and we work with them. So they also use Snap Kit, which we mentioned earlier, obviously, and they advertise on our platform as well. So we're fundamentally friends and feel we're complementary. I think this goes back to what's at the heart of Snap. So at the heart of Snap is self-expression, living in the moment, and then chatting to your best friends, essentially. And TikTok is all around kind of content production, essentially. And I think we have— there's obviously room for both of us.

Got you. And so Snapchat's had, you know, a mixed few years, in my opinion anyway, in terms of its kind of the platform, the growth of the platform, and some of the challenges that, like other platforms, it's had to navigate. And, you know, we know it wasn't so long ago that there was a redesign of the app and there was all sorts of furore about that. And then we've just talked about the fact that TikTok's come on the scene as well. But Snapchat seems to have turned things around, I would say, certainly in the last year. I was this morning, as we record this, I'm at an event where we were talking about some of the rising platforms in the last 12 months and who's been successful and which ones have struggled this year and things. And there was a lot of talk around that Snapchat, it kind of was kind of sort of a bit in challenged times, I think, in terms of growth and where it was going as a business about a year or two ago. But certainly in the last 12 months, the stats that we were looking at this morning show a remarkable turnaround of events and people are back in the vibe with Snapchat. So kind of, you know, what can you attribute that to and what is the roadmap for the next few years for Snapchat? What is it wanting to be and do?

So I do really believe that 2019 was a transformational year for Snap. Some of the kind of personal highlights for me, the community growing to 218 million million people, the business growth to 44% year-on-year revenue growth. And I said, just building some great products, some great AR experiences that the community just really, really loved. So when we look forward to 2020, I'm really excited and optimistic about the year ahead, actually. So I think there's 4 things that we are looking to build on. And I just want to unpack a little bit more in detail for your listeners. So firstly and fundamentally, supporting real friends. I said, Snap's used by 280 million people to communicate with their best mates, and we want to continue to build products that enable that community to really continue to grow and really maintain that kind of relationships they have. So that's fundamental. Secondly, we really want to continue to lead in AR, in augmented reality. We are the world's biggest AR platform, and we think we've got lots of new ways to help people express themselves and live in the moment and have lots of fun at the same time. We then want to continue to build a sustainable advertising business. And then finally, we're going to be investing in quality vertical content. And we actually haven't talked too much about this, and this is on the right-hand side of the app in what we call Discover, where we have content from, uh, talent, so celebrities if you like, from publishers, and also from professionally produced content, uh, like say Channel 4 or other independent studios. And one that I'm really proud of is a show, uh, born right here in London, uh, from a studio called Brave Bison, um, and it's a show called Slick, and they really wanted to kind of reach young people, of course. And it's a show that's focused on male grooming aimed at a really young audience. They actually had 40 million unique views in less than 2 months.

Wow. And what—

whilst we're talking about examples of things, one of the things we didn't ask you about was like lenses and filters and things that are coming up related to that, because it wasn't so long ago that everybody was using one or two of the specifically popular lenses. You mentioned the aging and making yourself younger or older things. Are there any of those on the pipeline that we can look forward to or anything you can tell us about kind of interesting stuff to do with the lenses and filters?

Yeah, absolutely. So I said one of the key focuses we have for 2020 is how we continue to lead in AR. The Time Machine lens was obviously loads of fun, but equally we think we have lots of other ideas around how we can bring some sort of fun and joy moments to the community. Some of the interesting stuff we're doing though is actually with brands and marketeers, and there's a piece of work work I want to call out because it's launching on Valentine's Day, actually, and it's around Sonic the Hedgehog. And I used to play Sonic the Hedgehog back in the early 1990s. So I'm thrilled that the, the movie is being launched. And what we've done is we've working with some specific kind of landmark locations across the world. So if you're in London, that'll be Tower Bridge or the Natural History Museum. If you're in Paris, the Eiffel Tower. If you're in Germany, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, in New York, the Flatiron Building. And essentially, if you're at that famous landmark, you pull out your phone and Sonic will appear and you play a really quick little game with Sonic and kind of collect the rings. I think that's a great way of how we can provide that sort of fun moment for people and kind of do that digital real world all coming together. And so we're seeing some brands do some great work on the platform.

Good stuff. Martin?

Yeah, we've talked about your plans for the year and we've kind of talked about some of the things affecting social media this year, particularly the regulation element. But what's on your horizons for social media more broadly this year?

There's a shift towards messaging apps, isn't there? We've seen this movement towards the private sharing, the ephemerality people still love, and also the fact that, you know, Facebook specifically has made it very clear that they see, you know, the future of social media being far more geared around communities and private sharing and messaging apps. I guess it's part of what Martin was also adding there was around how does that affect Snapchat and its kind of product development and how people might use that if that's the way that the industry is going?

Honestly, I just think we continue to focus on what we do really well. It's the philosophical heart of Snap is around cementing and building on real relationships, giving people the— or enabling people to help express themselves and live in the moment. Snap's always been about that. It's never had that kind of pressure or vanity metrics. And if we keep doing that, that's where we kind of bring value to our users. Essentially. But I just want to build on that more broadly because I do feel that the platforms have a responsibility to kind of be a force for good as well, actually. And I'm really passionate about this. And that's why I was pleased we managed to talk about Internet Safety Day and some of the work we're doing for mental health. The other thing that I'm really focused on as a leader in Snap's business is around how we build a diverse and inclusive and equitable team here at Snap, actually. So I think it's important that the team working in Snap that kind of reflects the wider community. And this is diversity not just for kind of moral reasons, but really for business reasons as well, that actually it helps us be more creative, it helps us make better decisions. And I really want to use our position of privilege here at Snap to kind of really drive that agenda.

So what specifically can you tell us that Snap has done in that area to achieve that so far? And what plans has it got then in terms of doing these things that you say that the business is keen to kind of, you know, work towards or develop further?

Yeah, so we have a whole range of ERG groups, employee groups that kind of each has a kind of represents a minority, be it Snap Pride or Snap Wah, and we're working really close to them, think about how we can make sure that the team working here feel that they have a voice and they're heard. That's one thing. We're working on a program with our head of VP, Una King, who's our head of diversity, inclusion, equity, around a program called Allyships. And that's how leaders and everyone across the business can really make sure they're an ally to that minority group.

So thinking about 2024 for brands, and one of the things that some of the advertisers here today at We Are Social where I'm at have talked about is that the constant concerns of picking platforms to spend ad spend on and being sure that they're not going to be aligned with activity that basically it doesn't look good on them. And so the risk of a social associating themselves or having their advertising tied to something else that's been put up by somebody, a user or another brand. You know, how does, how does brand safety and then giving brands that confidence that when they are using the ad product that they don't feel that they can have to have concerns about these things?

Well, I think fundamentally Snap is a closed platform. Our ads appear on the right-hand side of the app in Discover, which is curated by human beings. And the only content in there either from your friends or from organizations and people and content producers that actually have gone through a vetting program beforehand. And that's how they get onto the platform. So we're really confident when we talk to advertisers about expressing them and giving them reassurances that doesn't happen on our platform.

Well, there's been loads of stuff in there that certainly for me, because I must admit I'm not a huge heavy user of Snapchat, but then again, I'm of an age where probably that isn't the app that I would spend most of my time I mean, anyway, but nonetheless, I've picked up a load of pieces of information that have been really useful.

So yeah, it's been really good.

Yeah. Excellent. And where can people find you if online they want to kind of follow what you're doing? Is there a space other than Snapchat where they can find you?

Yeah, of course. I'm on LinkedIn.

On LinkedIn. And you, do you have a Twitter account?

I don't actually.

Ah, okay. Fair enough. Well, Ed, thanks so much for joining us and have a great time.

Cool. Thank you both. Matt, Martin, thank you very much. Really enjoyed it.

Thank you. No worries. Cheers, Ed. Bye.

Right, mamma mia, here he goes again. My, my, how can you resist him? Mamma mia, does it show again? My, my, just how much you've missed him. It's Matt with the latest tests and updates from social media companies in Quick Hits.

Matt, I don't know if I'm going to miss these things or whether it's going to be something that I'm just glad is over for a little while when this— when we have a little break.

But, um, when we're on the break from the podcast, I, I'll I'll ring you up every week and just read song lyrics that I've changed the words to down the phone to you, and you can hang up on me.

I just wonder how you come up with them as well. Every week I kind of fear what the next one's gonna be. But anyway, quick hits. What have we got? Let's go through it. So TikTok now lets you upload videos to your account via the web. So this is something that I think a few people on Twitter who follow me have said they've seen themselves in the last month or so, but I only kind of caught up with it in the recent weeks. So yes, desktop TikTok is available. WhatsApp dark mode. We've talked about this a couple of times, but I think it's just getting close now to rolling out that sort of more people are seeing it. So people on iOS and Android, I think in the beta app and maybe even in the, in the main app, are starting to see dark mode creep out. So those dark mode fans, it's coming, it's not far away. Instagram will now show you the people you follow who you interact with least, and also who appear most often in your feed. So if you want to do a bit of management and a bit of cleaning up of, uh, of who you follow on Instagram, this is quite a handy little tool to see, uh, which people you're engaging with the most and those that you're kind of ignoring as as well. Facebook has added a shift cover feature to its work type groups. So this is basically one of the group types you can choose on Facebook, whether it's, you know, community group or work type group. On the work type group, you can now do posts about getting a shift covered, simply as it sounds, basically handy for those who are in shift work. But beyond that, I think it's a very niche feature. But for those that like that kind of thing, that's available now as well. Another bit of TikTok news is also they've launched a TikTok Tips account. Very easy for me to say if I think about it, for safety and well-being advice. So this is a trend we've seen with a lot of these social networks where they've got an account or some sort of hub for information to help the well-being, digital detox, safety kind of thing. So TikTok's jumped on this as well, and they have their own TikTok Tips account, which is now available as well. And then one today that I've just spotted is about YouTube. So they're testing a new applause feature. And as soon as I saw applause, I was thinking of Medium, which is the clapping for things. Well, they're, they're testing a feature so you can buy applause, which you can give to creators and give them credit for the work they've done and also give them an income as well. So YouTube applause feature coming to a screen near you soon.

Yeah, that sounds, sounds familiar from, from other streaming platforms. So I'm sure that'll, that'll be popular with a certain kind of creator. And that's it for today. The podcast is taking a short break now, so there'll be no episode next week, but we will be back with more episodes in a blink of Mark Zuckerberg's eye.

Guys, so well phrased. Brilliant. Uh, that's right, we're going to be hitting pause and we're going to chat amongst ourselves over the next few weeks to plan out what's next for Geek Out. But we will be back and we won't be long. But for now, make sure you hit subscribe in your podcast app of choice so you're notified the second a new episode is available.

Geek Out with Matt Navarra is a Big Revolution production. Find out more at bigrevolution.net/podcasts. We also have a daily newsletter to help you keep up with the tech and media news each Each weekday edition has a big dollop of analysis of a current trend or story from me too. Visit bigrevolution.net/newsletter for more information and to sign up. You can find me on Twitter as @martinsfp.

And I'm @mattnavarra on Twitter. So don't forget to tell everyone about the podcast, get them listening to the old episodes that they haven't even heard yet, and also join the Facebook group. It's nearly like 15,000 people now. If you're not in there already, you're missing out. It's, it's really useful for sorts of stuff if you're into social, uh, like we all are. But for now, it's a goodbye from me.

See you soon.

Goodbye, geeks.