7. The New York Times' Taylor Lorenz

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. So hello and welcome to Geek Out with Matt Navarra, sponsored by Pinterest. I am Matt Navarra.

And I'm Martin SFP Bryant. And we are back. Feels good to be back in the saddle.

Indeed, we're back more in 2020 for loads of great episodes coming up. So we'll talk a little bit about that later. But thanks for everyone for all your support and the great comments you left about Series 1. It was a bit of a throw it out and see what people thought thing, and it did better than we really thought. So it was great. So stick with us for Season 2. We've got some great guests coming up, some well-known companies, some reporters, all sorts of other people. So you can get in touch with us on Twitter, where you can find me as @MattNavarra.

And I'm @martinsfp. So Matt, what's the most interesting thing you've been up to since our last podcast?

Oh my goodness. What have I been doing? I've been doing mostly Christmasy things with my children. So I've been all over the country doing sort of things, meeting Santa. I think I've met him 4 times. He seems like a very busy guy. And then I'm working on a really interesting project for a news company, which is coming up. So that's looking exciting as well. And then I bought myself one of those boosted scooters, the Rev. Have you seen those? So like, I think they're about $1,500, but they go up to about 25 miles per hour. They have a 22-mile range and it only takes 3 hours to charge them. And they are zippy. 25 miles an hour on a scooter. And on paper it doesn't look that much, but I was quite surprised. So I've been zipping around on that and my daughter's got a very much a junior version of that.

Nice. Awesome. Well, I've been working on another podcast. I've been cheating on you, Matt. I've been working on another podcast.

Yeah, I created a—

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Now, our guest this week is a journalist who has really carved out a niche for herself in explaining young people's online culture to the rest of us. She's someone who I've been a fan of for some time, and it's with great honor I welcome Taylor Lorenz from The New York Times. Welcome, Taylor.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's been a long time coming. We were just talking before we started recording about how we've known each other for probably about 10 years or more, and we've never actually met. And you've moved about 3 or 4 jobs since then. So how is life at The New York Times?

It's great. Everyone is so nice. It's so great.

So what led you to move from where you were before? Was it just kind of, it's The New York Times, who could say no? Or was there something specific about that? Yeah.

Yeah, I loved The Atlantic. I truly, truly, truly loved it so much. It was so hard. I just, yeah, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to work with my team. My boss Corey Sika is like a legend and brilliant and amazing. And, you know, I was competing with The Times for a lot of stories and it just seemed like the right move.

Well, I'm really intrigued to hear a bit more about how you find some of your stories, which is one of my burning questions, but we'll come on to that in a moment. But first of all, let's chat a little bit about what's been going on in the social media in terms of the news news this week. Martin, what have we been seeing this week?

Yeah, the most interesting news I saw this week was from TechCrunch. They were saying that ByteDance and TikTok have created a deepfake maker that's actually finished and working, but buried in the code of the Android version of TikTok. And the idea here is you take a photo of yourself and then the app will add you into existing videos. So deepfake style, but starring you. And it's quite a simple product and simple and fun because you can't add yourself any video. You know, you can't fake yourself being, you know, standing next to the President of the USA or something. You know, there will be a very limited set of videos you can be involved in. So it's designed as a fun product. But in the week where Facebook banned deepfake videos, maybe it raises some questions about whether we want to go down a road where reality and our perception of videos is forever eroded and the idea of deepfakes is treated as a bit of entertainment. Whether that's a good good idea or not. Uh, Matt, what do you think?

Yeah, well, to me it just rings true that this year is going to be yet another busy and, uh, challenging year for both the social platforms and, and politicians alike in terms of how they handle some of these problems with the social platforms and with the advancement and, uh, the ease of making some of these deepfakes as well. Um, but it's going to be a busy PR year for, for these companies. And Taylor, you're a seasoned journalist and dealing with these sorts of issues and stories and things. What, what are your take on all this stuff to do with deepfakes and banning of them and things?

I think it's just, yeah, I think it's going to be hard. You know, it's, yeah, I just think it's going to be a challenge for any of these companies. I think that, you know, these companies always have, you know, they come out and they say a lot regarding moderation or extremism or, you know, deepfakes, but then actually implementing it is always more difficult than they imagine.

So. Do you think that these deepfakes are something that we're going to see become a big problem? Or do you think it's a lot of bluster and talking about it and actually in reality it's not going to be a big deal? Do you think it is? What's your thought?

I do think it's going to be a big deal. I think we already have seen a few videos be a big deal. I remember the Nancy Pelosi video that they kind of slowed down her speech. And so, yeah, I mean, that's not a deepfake per se, but I do think that there's not exactly great media literacy in the United States and other places around the world. And so it could be a problem.

Do you think TikTok's sort of relative newness on the scene, if that is even a word, the fact that they're new and they're sort of learning quickly, they've got a fresh kind of brand to present themselves, is a good thing for them? Or do you think the fact that they are growing and having to learn really quickly about these things and tackle them is actually more of a challenge? Which way do you see it for them?

I think TikTok— I mean, TikTok is new in the US, but it's owned by ByteDance, which has been around for a while. I don't think it's the fact that it's new that's working against them as much because they seem to be pretty proactive compared to like Facebook and Twitter and YouTube. But I do think that there's a lot of concern around the Chinese ownership. I, you know, I saw Casey Newton, who's a journalist I follow on a lot of this stuff, talking about how I think they are considering moving their headquarters potentially out of China. And I do think that the Chinese ownership is something that a lot of people are concerned about.

Yeah, I know, I agree. Well, we've got some really interesting questions, I hope, about TikTok. I know that you're a big fan of it and also you've talked about it a lot in some of your stories. So we'll come back to the discussion of TikTok in a little bit. Also in the news this week is about Snapchat, who have quietly acquired AI Factory, the company behind its new Cameos feature for, I think it's $166 million. So this is kind of blurring the line between digital avatars and deepfakes again. And Snapchat, really one of its kind of mojos for a long time has been these kind of filters and lenses and things. But now they too are coming up against some of these questions around the appropriateness of some of the features they've got there. And are these filters kind of part of the problem? And Taylor, what's your take on this newest development with Cameos and then acquiring this AI factory?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting. It'll be interesting to see what Snapchat does. I mean, I don't think it's a problem. I would assume they're using it to develop more lenses.

Do you use Snapchat at all nowadays, or have you kind of moved away from it? Because I know for me, it's not my age bracket that really should be playing with it. But what about yourself?

Yeah, same. I mean, I, I do still use it. Um, a lot of people chat on that. I, I would say I use it as a messaging app, which is probably pretty close to how a lot of young people use it too. Um, but I'm not really on there all the time. I mean, all my friends abandoned it as soon as Instagram Stories came along.

Uh, so, you know, but yeah, do you still see it as being very much a niche for that younger generation and it's always going to be like that, or do you see that there's an opportunity for Snapchat to be more for more people? Because at the moment, the one feature that a lot of people suggest they should do more with, and I think they are doing more with, is the Snap Maps. But I still get the feeling it's very hemmed in by its kind of people thinking of it as a very young person's app. Is that kind of how you see it progressing, or do you think they've got more opportunity they can broaden the appeal?

Yeah, you know, I do think they could. I, I think it would be very hard to broaden the appeal now. I think they were in a stronger position a couple years ago. I don't think they really communicated, you know, all the different interesting ways to use the app. And most, you know, older users seemed to use it to publicly post stories, which, you know, was an amazing innovation, but Instagram cloned. So, you know, I think they're going to have a really hard time scaling to older users. I don't think older users need another messaging platform, but, you know, they could just kind of stay small forever. They also are always doing weird things. You know, they constantly call themselves a camera company. I think they rolled out version 3 of their glasses. So I don't, you know, I, I don't really know sort of what their plans are and what they plan to move into. I don't think that they should be totally written off, but I don't think they're ever gonna scale to like a widespread open social network.

Yeah, no, I would agree with that. And I think that they seem to be making most of their efforts around the AR stuff and the lenses as well as the use of glasses, which is what a lot of people are suggesting is the next kind of movement between here and getting to virtual reality is the use of augmented reality. And I think we've heard that Apple and Facebook are making AR glasses, and Snapchat kind of in some ways you might argue ahead of the curve in some ways with the fact they've had theirs for a while. But do you own a pair of these Snap Spectacles or have you played around with them? What do you think of them?

Oh my God, I own a pair of the version 1.0, the original ones. I haven't played around with any of the newer versions. It's fine. I mean, I believe it's still the case with the most recent version, it's basically you record video to post to Snapchat. I, you know, I just didn't find it that useful. I can post a Snapchat with my phone. I don't really need it on my face, but it's a cool idea.

Gotcha. Well, I think Snapchat, uh, I've got a lot to offer in, in the next 12 months, particularly around this and the AR glasses stuff. And I'm keen to see which of the big tech companies come out first with a product that does seem like it could be a mass market AR glasses, whether it would be Apple or Facebook. But we'll— maybe we'll see later in the year. Maybe it's too early to say. We're not sure. But, um, and another thing that we saw in the news this week was also about, uh, Instagram and growth for older users, the number of older users that are using the platform and for the first time and adding to the total number of users on Instagram is somewhat flatlining. And it seems from the kind of figures from one of the reports that that's going to continue for the next few years. What's your take on Instagram at the moment with its kind of usage and the fact that it's got TikTok, it's snapping at its heels? Is Instagram got issues there or is this kind of just part of the kind of way that people are moving from different platforms as they grow older into different generations?

Yeah, I think like one of the reasons that user growth slowed is because they kind of have reached a saturation point among, you know, a lot of certain demographics. I do think, though, they need to be worried. I mean, TikTok is an obvious competitor. I think that Adam Mosseri even said on stage at this Instagram summit that they had a couple of months ago that he considers, you know, ByteDance's product team to be the best in the world and a very worthy foe. So So, you know, I do think that that type of stuff is something they need to be worried about, particularly the way that people use TikTok in other countries like India and Asia. They use it in a little bit more of an Instagram way where they use it to capture life moments. They use it to chat, like they use it to connect with people. Whereas in the US, it is very much more like an entertainment-driven platform where it's more like YouTube, I would say. So yeah, I think they need to worry about that. I also just think that Instagram has just reached this big, bloated point where there's so many features, there's this culture of sort of negativity around it, you know, people talking about, oh, I feel so bad that, you know, like I've been on Instagram for an hour, it just makes me feel worse. So I think they need to kind of figure out how to stave some of that.

Well, it would be bad if I didn't ask you a bit about the Instagram likes discussion that's been going on at the tail end of last year.

I think it's great and fine. Yeah, oh, sorry to interrupt. I think removing likes is great and fine. It's literally like people aren't even going to notice. I mean, first of all, you're still going to be able to see who liked a photo. You're still going to be able to see who liked your own photos. And yeah, I mean, you're just not going to see a number. I really don't think people are even going to notice the change. I mean, already people are spending less and less time in the feed and more and more time on stories. So stories have no public metrics.

Well, yeah, I think— well, I also was going to say that, um, that there's been a lot of misunderstanding from a lot of people, surprisingly from people that I would expect to have a fuller understanding of what this change is with the likes, that people's not understanding of that the— it's not removing all likes and, and what they can and can't see once this change is made. So that was quite surprising to me. But, um, but I did see a story from Adam Mosseri before Christmas where he posted saying that it's— I think he was indicating that it's likely to be rolled out globally later, later in the year 2020. So it does seem like it's, it's here to stay, this change. So I think we'll wait and see what happens in the next few months with that one.

We'll talk to Taylor some more shortly, but first, Matt.

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So you mentioned now you're back at the New York Times, Taylor. Tell us a little bit about what your role is like day to day. What do you get up to and how is it different from your previous roles? It seems quite an exciting job to have.

Yeah, it's honestly not very different than my previous role. I do a lot of sort of, you know, the same stories. I'm still a reporter, but I have a great team. I mean, I really just love having so many coworkers, you know, that sort of also write and care about the things that I cover. So that's been really cool to kind of collaborate, you know, with other people and, you know, my editor who's like extremely plugged in. I think he probably knows more about TikTok than I do.

Well, one of the things that we, I think a lot of people know you for or kind of think of when they hear the name Taylor Lorenz is that you, you come out of left field with these really fascinating articles about what internet culture and how people are using the products like Instagram and TikTok in ways that maybe we didn't realize people were using it, ways maybe they weren't first intended to. And I just wonder, without giving away your secrets or anything, how do you even come up with these story ideas? What triggers you to think there's a story there, and where do they come from?

Yeah, that's a really good question. Um, I, you know, I, I worked in social media for so long, um, that I feel I as a social media editor and head of social media at various media companies. And I feel like it definitely helped me realize like what's a story and what's not. You know, I will sort of see something going on and be like, oh, that would make a great story. Or like, oh, that could be a good headline. But at the same time, I'm also really bad at identifying stories. I think sometimes I really don't, like I really need help with like an angle. It's really valuable for me to have other people around that I can brainstorm with on a day-to-day basis. A lot of times I'll be like, oh, I'm noticing this, or I feel like everybody's doing this now, but I just need somebody to kind of like bounce ideas off of and, um, to, to sort of help articulate the idea. Um, so in that sense, I'm so grateful to my coworkers, um, because they do that with me on a daily basis.

Which of the stories that you've covered, have you done, that you found the most, the most surprising to you when you've been researching it, or when you discovered it? Which, which of all the things? Because like, for example, you did something about Google, um, the use of Google Docs by teenagers, and you've done things about how Instagram was being used for sort of staging parties and getting people to come to parties and things. Out of all of those stories in recent years, is there one that stands out to you that was quite fascinating to, to discover?

Oh my God, it's so funny. I, after I write a story, I feel like I black out or something, and I can't remember what I wrote about like 3 weeks ago. Um, I actually totally forgot that I wrote that Google Docs story, uh, for some reason. Um, that was a funny one too because I I felt like everybody knew that. I mean, I remember that being a thing a while ago, even like as a couple of years ago. So I kind of did it as just because I wanted to write a post and yeah, so it was, it was interesting to kind of read other people's reactions to it. I would say the stories that I love to do are, are usually the offbeat ones that don't have anything to do with teenagers. I wrote a story about how Twitter became the number one platform for nudists and the nudism community. And sort of it was a conversation about, you know, terms of service and what kind of communities different terms of service facilitate. And that was one of my favorite stories. There's like a few others like that. I wrote about how pineapples became this powerful symbol and kind of a meme in the IVF world, women undergoing in vitro fertilization and infertility. Treatment. Um, that was another favorite story that I wrote. Uh, so yeah, it's kind of just things that— I guess my favorite stories are ones that, um, I, I'm genuinely surprised by and, um, feel like are interesting.

Well, I— for those that don't know what the Google Docs story was, I should say this is where it was teenagers using them in the classroom and kind of a way to kind of communicate kind of behind the teacher's back about tests and things in the background. But all of the stories that we mentioned today, we'll, we'll stick the links in the description of the podcast so you can go and have a read them yourself if you haven't, um, already.

One thing about your stories, Taylor, is I often see people say, uh, mainly kind of older adults say, oh, I didn't know about this at all. Why do you think internet culture is so poorly covered? Do you think tech journalists are generally too old?

No, I actually disagree, and I don't think age has anything to do with it. When I think about the reporters that I look up to who are phenomenal, um, you know, internet culture reporters, it's a lot of women, um, as— who are all moms, who are all much older than me. So, um, you know, I, I mean, I don't have to be like much older, but I mean, definitely in the generation above me. I mean, Katie Rossman, who I sit across from at the Times, is absolutely legendary and has covered, you know, a ton of just incredible internet stories. She's the one that found the— there was this viral bikini and she found the original woman in Brazil who designed it on this beach. It's insane, some of her stories. Julie Jargon at the Wall Street Journal, Katie Notopoulos at BuzzFeed. I mean, just all of these people that I look up to are older than me, so So I don't think age has anything to do with it, but I do think that in order to cover the world that I cover and just like any beat, you really need resources and you really need to kind of allow people to dedicate time to it. And so sometimes, not every news organization has had that, I think until recently. I know that because I couldn't get a job doing this a few years ago as a full-time reporter. It was always kind of hard, I think. A lot of the things I cover were still not hitting mainstream culture in the same way. So it's also funny because recently people associate everything I do with teenagers. And that's been an interesting change because 5 years ago when I was writing about YouTubers or caring about Instagram influencers and stuff like that, it was very much still associated with millennials. So that's been an interesting shift that's happened. I think now, definitely in the past like 2 years, everyone is like, okay, what are the teens doing? Like, what's this next generation up to? So I think people are staffing more reporters. There's this amazing young reporter named Amanda Perelli at Business Insider who I think has only been reporting for a year and a half. And she's been a full-time reporter just since last year, but she covers the same stuff I do and is absolutely phenomenal. And so I think you could be any age.

So why do you think TikTok has taken such a hold of, of companies? Of people's interest and excitement and use of social media? Because there could be an argument to say that TikTok spent billions of pounds for a sustained period to get people to be aware of it and to download it and to know it exists. And there's also arguments about kind of it was something that Instagram has always been known as the polished and kind of perfected version of everybody's social lives, real lives. And TikTok's that kind of more quirky, fun, kind of don't have to be perfect kind of style of things. But is it more than that? Is there something else that's kind of really core to why TikTok has taken off in the way it has?

I mean, I think the product is so vastly different than Instagram. I mean, Instagram also has been moving away from a more polished look. It's a little bit harder to like turn a giant cruise ship, you know, like which I consider Instagram. It's like this big behemoth. So, you know, even though people, I wrote a big piece last year on like the end of the Instagram aesthetic and kind of how people want this messier look. That stuff performs better on Instagram now. But TikTok is just a very unique, very compelling product that was hugely popular around the world. So, you know, ByteDance had time to kind of refine it. ByteDance has one of the best product teams in the world. So yes, you know, they spent a huge amount of money acquiring users in the US. And at the time, I don't think that their retention rate was super high. When I saw people talking about it last year. But I do think that it's an interesting product that fills a very specific need.

A lot of people talk about the algorithm, the algorithm, the algorithm. It's just something about it that seems to serve up things better in a more timely way in a very short space of you at first using the app. Do you see that when you've been using it or when you first started using it?

I first started using it, I think the first week they announced it. So there was really nothing on it except old people's old musical.lys. It was a weird time on TikTok. But yeah, I mean, I think the, the For You algorithm is so unique. I think also the fact that it opens on the For You page and just that the For You page is a primary experience on the app as opposed to something like the Instagram Explore page, which is a secondary experience for a lot of people and I don't think tailored as well to their interests. You know, I think, yeah, I think also just the fact that it opens on full screen video is very engaging. Engaging. You, you know, you kind of want to pay attention and watch another video if that one was funny. So yeah, I just think that, that they're, they're very advanced and adept in that way. I noticed that the comment communities on the TikToks are also thriving. I mean, there's just a lot of commentary and discussion and fights and, you know, that stuff happens on Instagram too. But I feel like maybe it's just because the user base skews more very young on TikTok. The comments are a draw too, especially for a lot of young people.

Now, wherever audiences go, marketers are quick to follow. How do you think TikTok's going to evolve as a marketing channel in 2020?

I mean, I think there's been a lot of big successful campaigns. You know, I can't think of Chipotle without thinking of the Chipotle lid flip challenge, which is like this stupid TikTok trend that they totally bought. And they like announced their channel, they had like David Dobrik do it. I don't know what it is, but just something about watching so many of those videos on TikTok like broke into my brain. So congrats to them, I guess, on that. You know, I do think that there's other successful campaigns that have run. I would say TikTok is kind of like YouTube in a way where I think probably the place for brands is, you know, through these paid channels and like buying, you know, sponsoring videos. You know, sponsoring hashtags, things like that, as opposed to setting up an account and posting every day, you know, like if you run social media for Miracle Whip or something, you don't necessarily need to start a TikTok and create content every day, but you could buy a hashtag to announce the launch of a new product and it might be successful.

Well, the question that I get asked quite a lot by social media managers around the world is things like, you know, should I have a TikTok strategy by now? And is it gonna be here in a year or two's time? And you know, what, what should I just wait? You know, what, what, what would you be saying? You've, you know, you've got experience working for a news publisher and you know what the world is like when you're trying to think which platforms should we be on? Where should we focus our energies? What would you be sort of doing if you were now working for a publisher or any brand and thinking about TikTok?

If I, yeah, I think if I was working, and I did work in the branded world for a long time before I got into journalism, I'm familiar with those types of conversations. I mean, I would say, you know, I would say with TikTok, I think we don't, you're right in the sense that it's only a year old, it's still a young platform, but it's a highly engaged platform. And, you know, at least when I talked to marketers around VidCon last year, which was at this point quite a while ago, 6 months ago, but it was much cheaper than activations on other places. So I think, you know, if you're getting a good deal and it makes sense, like it's a very highly engaged, highly young audience there. So, you know, is it worthwhile? It could be. It totally depends on your goals and the campaign. I would say like setting up a profile on there and investing in creating content the way that a lot of brands have done on Twitter, for instance, or Instagram, is not necessary. You know, there are a lot of ad units on TikTok. There's interstitial ads, there's, like I said, sponsored videos, sponsored hashtags. That's really the place, the better place for brands, I think, than trying to set up an account and waste enormous resources trying to go viral.

Do you think TikTok influencers or TikTok stars are now, you know, surpassing the kind of excitement and interest that we had for many years and still to this day in terms of YouTubers? Is that— is TikTok the new YouTuber kind of community, or do you think they can coexist equally and it's, you know, they're separate things? How do you see that?

I think they can totally coexist. I mean, a lot of people obviously obviously compare TikTok to Vine, which is like my pet peeve, but it is sort of true in the sense that it's a launching pad, you know, for fame. And it introduces people to new personalities like Charli D'Amelio, for instance, one of the fastest growing girls on the— people on the app ever. She's just a 15-year-old girl. So, you know, it introduces new personalities in that way. In terms of monetization, it's not there yet. You know, YouTube is still the gold standard because you can monetize. But that said, a lot of TikTokers are essentially going onto TikTok to gain a big following and then push those followers over to a YouTube channel. So I think it's created sort of a new pathway to gaining a large audience quickly.

And my last question about TikTok I also want to touch on is that, do you think that this year is gonna be a year for a renaissance sense of the short-form video, because you mentioned Vine and the comparisons that some make, rightly or wrongly, to, to TikTok for Vine. And the creators of Vine are imminently going to release Byte, which I'm on the beta test for. I'm really enjoying using—

oh really? I want to use it.

It's really good. It's really slick. It's smooth. You can just see they're taking their time. They're putting the pieces together. They're taking the best bits of what people expect from a video platform like this and then putting their own spin on it. And it looks really slick. Um, and then we've also got Firework, which talked about last year because there was a rumor that Google were going to acquire it or something, wasn't there? But I just wonder, what's your view for the next 12 months? Are we suddenly going to see now an explosion of short-form video apps, or just that short-form video will be a flavor of the year or not?

I think we've been moving towards short-form video for a while. I mean, Stories is obviously a short-form video format in a way, and Instagram offers slightly short-form video, you know, in a sense that you can post on the feed. So I think like the— oh my God, not to use this word, but like bit to video in terms of like, you know, what users want to create is true. I, you know, with Byte, I'm interested to see, I think anyone is gonna have an extremely hard time competing with TikTok. I mean, ultimately Facebook and Google have a monopoly in this country on kind of social stuff. It's hard for even a company like Snapchat, which got in early to compete with them. I think for anyone to kind of come in with a cool new short-form video app and try to compete with Facebook is hard because they'll just buy them out or clone them or try to kill them in some way. So that's challenging. I want Byte to do well. I really love Dom on Twitter, who I think is like one of the creators or the main creator. Yeah, that's right. So, you know, I want it to do well, but I think they don't have a billion dollars to spend in user acquisition.

But Facebook has got billions of dollars.

Right.

Efforts at this space has been pretty lame. Like Lasso is—

I say Lasso. That's how we say it in America.

Yeah, I think that's right. Well, I played with Lasso.

We say Lasso and beta test. So we're rebels.

Well, exactly. But I played with Lasso and a few other apps. But Facebook's efforts, it always just seems literally that they're grabbing a load of app ideas, throwing them at the wall, seeing which sticks, and then moving on. But they don't stick very often. So I don't know what your thoughts— why is Facebook finding it so hard to create a competitor to TikTok, a younger person's cool app?

Well, I mean, it's the problem that all these big tech companies have, is that it's very hard to innovate when you are a big legacy massive, uh, tech conglomerate. It's just very hard to innovate. Um, that's usually— innovation and cool new things do not come from giant companies like that. I think they also just, you know, I think that they probably just need to focus on it in a different way. I really don't know. I don't know. I don't really report on the corporate stuff at Facebook, so I don't know the whole structure. There are a lot of amazing creative product people at Facebook, so it is surprising. But I don't know. I also think that China has a lot of different— I've never been to China, but I do think that the apps and technology there are slightly different than ours. And I think that with, um, you know, with ByteDance, they, they found sort of like a worthy competitor, um, and, and that, you know, is doing things slightly differently, which seems very innovative. I— the Lasso was so bad. I mean, it was literally just a rip-off, and they even paid TikTokers to promote Lasso, and it didn't—

oh yeah, so geez.

Well, we missed the culture on it too. Like, they launched Lasso— the part of the reason that TikTok was so compelling is because it had launched in all of these— you know, it had been out for quite a while in other areas of the world, so there was all this like backlog of hilarious content on there from Asia or, you know, like places in India or Turkey or whatever. Um, Lasso, there was just like nothing on there.

Well, I'm hoping that they come up with something interesting for this space in the year ahead for Facebook, but we'll, um, I'm not going to kind of hold out for it because it's not been shown so far. But with all of these apps though, there's, there's, there's the talk of influencers, and I think Martin, you were going to ask a couple of questions around that because it's quite an interesting space again because it's just so huge at the moment.

Yeah, so You've got influencers, you've got micro-influencers, even nano-influencers. But there's maybe some dispute as to just how effective influencers can be when it comes to advertising. And some people have been saying that maybe we'll see the influencer bubble, if there is such a thing, bursting. What do you make of that, Taylor?

I think that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. I really, I don't know what people just like love to hate on influencers. Um, I also think it's a complete misunderstanding of like of influencers. Um, I do think that there will be a correction in this sense. I mean, there has been, right? Like over the past year. Um, you know, I think a lot of marketers were like in 2017, 2018, like, ooh, influencers, like let's pay this person with a million followers to you know, talk about my product. And I think that they're, you know, realizing that that's not always very fruitful. But I think so. I do think that, you know, people are going to be smarter about their campaigns, but often that just means they're directing their money into other forms of influencer marketing. So, you know, I don't think it's going away. I think that sort of influence— we live in an attention economy and people who can leverage that attention are in a very strong position. So yeah, you also see a lot more influencers moving away from ads as a monetization strategy. I think they realized how volatile ad deals can be. And so a lot more influencers now are launching their own product lines and, you know, moving towards things like subscriptions or podcasts or other things that they can make more money off of directly.

Do you think that this is the year that we're gonna see a proper clamping down of influencer marketing? And the rules and regs around it in the US or abroad? Or do you think it's going to drag its heels again?

No, I don't think the regulators have even the slightest idea how these people monetize or how their deals are structured. So no, I mean, they haven't even enforced the rules that they put in place a couple of years ago.

Well, what must it feel like for someone, for someone who lives in the US and watches this stuff that's going on in the political sphere around regulation. And we had those famously, those hearings with Mark Zuckerberg. And, and I've said this a couple of times in, I think in this podcast exactly, but where one of the senators was saying, you know, when I email on WhatsApp, blah blah blah, and then people around the world are just kind of collectively putting their hands on their eyes and thinking, what are they— these people have no idea. Is that kind of how you view what the regulators are like, or do you think there are some smart people in there that are able and capable of regulating this industry?

I think they're smart people. I don't know if they're capable of regulating this industry. Evolving so fast. I hope that they are. I think that unfortunately with politics, and this is why I don't cover politics, is it just, it's all so performative and fake and they want to get their soundbite for the news. And yeah, I'm skeptical as to whether, you know, there'll be any kind of real regulation efforts. I mean, I definitely think there will be regulation around some of the big tech companies. I just think with influencer stuff, it's probably so far down on their list. You know, these congresspeople are worried about bigger things, like, or they should be, right? Like, you know, misinformation in our elections and stuff like that, not whether, like, you know, some influencer is selling Fit Tea. Um, but they should, they should worry. I mean, there's a huge— there's huge problems with the lack of regulation on Instagram right now.

Well, I'm going to shoehorn a quick political question in here while we have the moment. In terms of, like, You know, seeing the likes of Donald Trump and the way he's using, uh, Twitter and social media at the moment with the stuff that's going on in Iran, and, uh, and then, then you look at Facebook in terms of what their view is on what they will allow and not allow for politicians and their view. You know, what, what do you make of all of this stuff? Do you think that politicians should be reined in? They shouldn't be doing some of the stuff that they're doing on social media? Do you think that Facebook and other platforms should be stricter, harsher with some of their rules around what they allow and not allow? What, just what's your general view on all of this stuff?

Oh my God, I don't follow any politicians on the internet. I've hopefully successfully blocked all politics from my feed. I just read the New York Times in the morning, and I, I don't even keep up with a lot of that sort of political stuff just because it's not relevant to my beat. I'd rather just kind of like read about it at the end of the day, like a lot of people. Um, but I do think that these companies have failed to moderate their platforms. I mean, you mentioned Twitter. Twitter has repeatedly failed moderate its platform and get a handle on its community. I mean, abuse is rampant, misinformation is rampant. I mean, Facebook also I think has struggled to moderate, I mean, and taken steps to actively not moderate. So, you know, I hope that, you know, I hope that these companies can kind of figure that out and take it more seriously in this year.

Do you think that sometimes though that the tech companies are, just playing devil's advocate here, beasted all the time by the different newspapers around the world and media publishers about what they're not doing, or they should have done differently and should have done better. But with social media, there's a huge part that's played by us, the users, and what we deem acceptable, or we're happy and comfortable doing or not doing, which impacts other people in terms of harassment and abuse and all that toxicity. I mean, there's a role for us to play in that as well, isn't there?

Well, obviously there's bad actors, and there's all these people, you know, millions of people who are bad actors around the world, right? That will abuse these platforms. But I'm not very sympathetic to these companies. You know, they are very much capable of moderating, you know, moderating their platforms and fixing this experience. And, you know, they've just sort of not done that. So I, yeah, I mean, I don't really wanna give them too much credit 'cause I'm on Twitter every day and I see the experience. I think that, you know, what probably will make them ultimately invest more in those areas is user backlash. So I mean, just the fact that Twitter won't ever scale, I think, much larger than it is now because, you know, unless they more proactively deal with harassment issues because it's a terrible place to be for users, you know. And so, yeah, I think also people, you know, the backlash against Facebook holding them accountable, like in sort of the public court of public opinion. I do think that that has an impact on the stuff they prioritize. But yeah, I mean, it's just, it's, you're never going to eliminate negativity from these platforms. But I do think it's, it's important to kind of set the culture and the tone and, you know, go after some of these bad actors. I will give Instagram some credit. I wrote a huge story about Instagram harassment, like almost a year and a half ago, it was right before Mosseri took over. And It actually, I will say, like, harassment is still rampant on Instagram, but I do think that he has made a proactive effort to try to staunch some of it just by rolling out comment filters and the ability to put restrict on so somebody doesn't know that they're blocked and things like that. We just need more of that.

Just building on what you were saying there, it's users that makes Twitter particularly bad rather than design decisions around the platform. Gosh, I think last night, last night, um, uh, as we record this, when the, um, when Iran was hitting the, uh, the bases with the US troops in— I hate to think what might have happened by the time we published this podcast— but, um, the hysteria among users for during that time made it unbearable. It was impossible to find any news on there because there was so much made-up rubbish and people talking about World War III and people talking about nuclear weapons and, uh, going really over the top on this stuff. When I actually woke up in the morning because it was about 2:00 in the morning when this was really happening, after midnight, and I was staying awake and it was keeping me awake, keeping me really anxious. In the morning when I finally got some sleep, I woke up, so little had actually happened in terms of news and it had been built out of all proportion by users.

Oh my God. Wait, I'm sorry to interject. It is not users, it is a product problem. The fact that you're encouraging that type of annoying behavior on the app, that is a product problem. The product facilitates different behavior on a certain platform. So the product is incentivizing that type of annoying use of Twitter where it is just kind of out for these quick hits. You're out for retweets. You're trying to spread misinformation. That is a— those are product design decisions that lead to that type of behavior. And it's the lack of moderation that leads to that type of behavior.

So it's also on the users to realize that that's bad behavior and it's not good for people.

Oh my God, no, it is not. Humans are, I mean, there are millions of humans on the planet and, you know, there will always be bad, annoying people. People are never going to police themselves. And it is up to, you know, product designers to build certain features that can kind of rein in certain, you know, bad actors or encourage different types of discussion or thought. And Twitter just rewards the worst of the worst.

In terms of that, Taylor, though, so do you have, in your mind, particular features or things that you, you think that Twitter could be doing or should have done? What are those things? Because they listen to the show, they've been on the show, and they're coming on it again maybe, maybe this season. So what do you think?

Oh good, I have a lot of thoughts. I mean, I tweet about this a lot. Um, I, I— look, Twitter, I don't know what's going on with their product team, but they spend all their time like fiddling, you know, doing these like tiny stupid changes, like redoing threads and stuff and making it harder to find conversations. Meanwhile, um, you know, they need to roll out more protection measures for users. So I think that things like, you know, restricting the replies on certain tweets from being shown publicly are good. I think that they absolutely need to roll out better protections for when people are being brigaded and harassed on a mass level. I think the whole retweet as the primary sort of way to spread information on Twitter is bad. It encourages people to kind of just, you know, say things that will get them amplification over everything. So yeah, I mean, I think that they need to have ways to engage in a smaller closed community on Twitter. Right now you have default public, default private. Um, I think that they need— yeah, they need to change that. They need to make it so that there's— it's a safer experience to engage, and it's not just this big one open forum where they're rewarding the worst of the worst.

I would guess that they're not— their comeback, but what maybe others would say to that is that their product is so, so built around, um, you know, one or the other, the binary of the two, that it would make it very hard, or this can be difficult to make a product or change Twitter to have kind of some semi-private or forums or rooms or anything else. Would you say that's a fair—

No, I mean, it's going to be difficult. Well, congrats. They're like a million zillion— they're a massive tech conglomerate with tons of resources. So it's your own product. You need to fix it. And you need to prioritize things like user safety and user experience, especially for marginalized people. I think that the leadership at Twitter is overwhelmingly male. And I think that they would do well to hear from some of the people that suffer the worst harassment. There's amazing product managers, male and female. But the point is, is you want to hear from your marginalized communities that you want on your platform. You don't want only the white supremacists and the bad actors making bad faith arguments. So yeah, I don't know. I, yeah. For that—

You're not a fan of Twitter right now. That's what you're saying. I think that's fair to say. Well, no, I think Taylor makes some really good points.

I mean, Twitter is amazing. Like, Twitter is responsible for a lot of my— I get story ideas there. It's an amazingly valuable platform. It just, it hurts me as somebody who really does like love tech to see the product atrophy the way that it has.

No, I, I think that your view is, is one shared by many, many people, and I've heard similar comments from others. So, um, I think, uh, well, we can hope that this year is a year of, of innovation from, from Twitter.

Yeah, and there's a lot of amazing people there. There's a lot of amazing people there. So I, you know, fingers crossed.

Fingers crossed indeed. And I think we've got— we're coming, coming up to the time when we're gonna have to let Taylor go, but, um, I think we've got a couple of quick questions. Martin, You had one first, and I think I've got one last one I want to squeeze in as well.

Obviously, we're at the start of a brand new year. What's exciting you most about social media in 2020?

You know, I was asked to do a bunch of predictions at the end of 2019, and I was just like, I don't have any predictions. I just wait till it happens and then I report on it.

That is the intellectually honest way of doing it, rather than most journalists who will say, oh, predictions, okay, I'll just make up a bunch of things very quickly based on some ideas I I had in a bar the other night with some friends, and, uh, and then none of them happened. But the good thing is at least nobody ever reads those articles.

It's true.

Well, one of the things I just wanted to finally wrap up with really is that the community that I sort of hang around in online is built around social media managers, and my first role in social media, like many, is as a social media manager. And I think that you've had experiences with various roles like that as well. Um, I wonder, do you think being a social media manager in 2020 is a much harder job than it was, say, 10 years ago? And also, what, you know, is it a difficult job? Is it an easy job? Because I think people get, social media managers get a hard rap some of the time, and then people mock some of the job work that they do. What's your view on social media managers in 2020?

Okay, first of all, it's such a harder job now than it was in 2009. I remember, I, it is impossible to describe. I mean, sometimes I think that I wouldn't get a job as a social media manager today because you have to know so much stuff. I mean, when I started, I started as a social media manager, it was, you know, 2010. Facebook had just added brand pages. I think that was like the big thing. And I remember, I mean, I ran a bunch of social accounts for big Fortune 500 clients at this ad agency and companies just wanted to say that they had a Facebook page, say that they had a Tumblr. I mean, Twitter was still like so new. A lot of them didn't even really care about Twitter that much, even as far back in 2012. And so, you know, I honestly, the analytics were were not a big thing. A lot of the analytics stuff was not built in. Um, you know, Facebook Insights hadn't rolled out in a meaningful way for pages. Um, yeah, so there was just no accountability. Like, I just think back to a lot of the campaigns we did, and I'm just like, that bombed. But the client didn't really know better at the time. Now I think clients know better. I mean, clients always think that they know better, and bosses always think that they know, you know, how Facebook works But I think it's so hard now. There's so many different, you know, options and sort of like competing forces. So, and there's so many, there's just a lot more analytics too. So, which is great. It's good for social media managers, but it also makes things harder. I think that, you know, there's a lot more expectations. People have seen other people's big campaigns on social media. And I know a lot of people want that. You know, you have a lot of brands being like, we need a Twitter account. About like Denny's or whatever. Um, you know, when I was doing social media, there weren't those big wins. It was pre-Oreo moment or whatever at the Super Bowl. Like, real-time marketing was barely a thing. So, um, yeah, so I do think it's, it's different and harder. Um, what was the second part?

No, and I think what that feeds into— I was going to sum up with was that, um, I put a tweet out, um, yesterday, which was, uh, which was about social media managers and what, what it impacts in their lives. How does social media— being a social media manager affect their lives? And it had a phenomenal amount of response, but the overwhelming was, what do you mean affecting my life outside of work? What life outside of work? Because it's just constant, endless streams of being— needing to be on the pulse, checking things. And I, I can't imagine, you know, 10 years ago when I first started doing social media, I— even then it was a bit like that. I can't imagine now as a social media manager, it's like, it's just crazy. It's crazy.

It's crazy. I mean, it's so stressful, and it is a very thankless job. I mean, a lot— they don't— it's— yeah, people don't give it credit. I think smart people give it credit. Um, I think smart people understand and, and people that are like with it, but I do think, you know, it's in— social media is still a relatively new platform. It's sort of a new thing. I mean, it's definitely in the past decade that it's really exploded. So, um, yeah, so people, you know, people need to learn. There's a lot of marketers that just don't get it yet.

Well, I think, uh, finish up on this, I think my own stake on this is that I would I would never get a social media manager job, um, if it was 10 years— and if I was doing it now and I was applying for a job as a fresh going into it, the skills that you need in terms of video editing and journalistic kind of sense for what people's interest in content is and the different platforms and analytics, it just goes on and on and on. I don't think I would ever have gotten a job. So, uh, I got in.

I feel that way. Same, same. I feel that way every day. I mean, I like think back to, um, you know, what I considered like a really sick— I was so into Tumblr, and like I think back to like what I considered a really viral Tumblr, and it was like 2,000 followers or 5,000 followers or 10,000 followers. And that was like, oh my God, wow, this is huge. And now, like, I mean, every 13-year-old has like, you know, scaled like 19 different Instagram accounts to a million and sold Twitter ads. And it's just like, it's crazy. And like you said, they're expert video editors, photographers. Like, it's, it's so much harder now. So yeah, it's a really hard job. And anyone who does it in 2019 deserves a raise.

Well, I think if you know a social media manager, buy them a beer or three. They deserve it, is what we're saying here. But Taylor, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you here and chat to us. I've been really excited to get you onto the show. And hopefully, we will finally meet face to face in real life, not in this kind of virtual world, soon. Where can people find you online? Or where would you like to push people to see some of your stuff?

Follow me on Instagram or Twitter, if you must. I'm just @TaylorLorens. So just my name.

Thank you so much. And we'll stick a couple of links to some of the stories of Taylor's that we talked about earlier in the show in the podcast description. But thank you so much for joining us, Taylor.

Yeah, thank you for having me.

It's time now for Quick Hits. Here's Matt with a bunch of tests and updates from social media companies that might not all be wondrously world-changing, but they're certainly worth your time. Every time I get these little— I get the thesaurus out and I get these little alliterations in, like wonderfully world-changing and worth your time, and you always grown, Matt.

I— well, to be honest, I'm just glad you're not writing them for me because I would never get them out. We'd be here recording it again and again and again. Um, yes, so couple of quick things. So Twitter is killing Audience Insight page from January 30th. So this is a page that was— if you logged into analytics.twitter.com and you had a tab on your profile there for audience, uh, analytics and insights, and they're getting rid of that. And I think they're trying to say that there's, um, you'll find this data and find these insights in other areas of Twitter. So that's coming to an end on January 30th.

Uh, WhatsApp's testing a reverse reverse image search feature.

So this is all kind of ties in with kind of authenticity and, you know, accuracy and fact-checking and all those things that people kind of want now from, you know, knowing if anything's fake. They've kind of added a feature where you can— if someone forwards you or sends you an image, you can kind of quickly tap and do a reverse image search to see the origins of the picture. So that's really easy, really useful. I can see a lot of journalists finding that quite useful. Um, TikTok is testing a music tab for artists. So this isn't really groundbreaking, but it's kind of something you've seen on Instagram profiles with music and other things as well on other platforms where an artist is also on the platform, but because their music's used a lot, you can now go to their profile and it lists them in a separate tab for them, for those artists or their music, and you can add them to a new TikTok. So that's coming out for some people as well. And, uh, Twitter, just breaking news, and, uh, as we were recording actually, that Twitter has announced that they have new tweet reply settings that are coming soon. Uh, effectively it means that you can put a tweet out and before you hit publish, you can choose from one of 4 settings to control what happens in terms of the replies. So So the new settings are firstly global, so anybody can reply. And then you have group, where only people who you follow and mention can reply. And then you have panel, and only people who you mention in the tweet can reply. And then finally, the one I think Donald Trump will probably use the most, which is where nobody can reply. So we'll see. But I think that it's going to lead to people just ultimately just quote retweeting to get their point across more.

Yeah.

But I do think it's a good move to make. It's a good direction to go in. And it's probably one that we'll discuss in a news item next week when it's settled and we can see what's going on.

Absolutely.

Sorry. Yeah.

As one person I was, um, I saw on Twitter earlier said, uh, how will anyone explain my jokes to me? The reply guy is going to really struggle in future to, uh, uh, send really bad replies to mainly women's tweets. So that can only be a good thing.

Good stuff. Well, I think it'll be used a lot by a certain type of person, but we'll see which, uh, see what happens when it comes out.

And that's it for today. Next week, we've got an exciting guest. We're going to be talking to Instagram. Instagram's head of product, Vishal Shah, and I'm sure we've got lots of very interesting questions to ask him.

Oh yeah, I'm very much looking forward to speaking to him. There's loads of things I want to find out, see if we can get him to reveal something that we haven't found already on Instagram and what their plans are for the, for the year ahead and more besides. So that'll be a good one. But yeah, make sure that you hit subscribe in your podcast app of your choice so that you're notified as soon as the next episode is available.

Geek Out with Matt Navarra is a Big Revolution production. Find out more at big solutions.net. You can find me on Twitter as @martinsfp.

And I'm @MattNavarra on Twitter. So don't forget to tell everybody about the podcast. Don't forget to join the Facebook group, which is the Social Media Geek Out on Facebook. Search it out and you'll find us there. And there's much more of what we discuss here, um, with many more people joining us in the discussion.

See you soon.

Goodbye, geeks.