Madalyn Sklar 0:03

Hey, this is Madalyn Sklar

Suze Cooper 0:04

and Suze Cooper and you're listening to All Things Audio.

Madalyn Sklar 0:13

You know, the world turned upside down yesterday on November 1, when Elon Musk tweeted about the blue checkmark. And prior to this, he was talking about charging a fee verification incorporating Twitter blue all this into one and talking about this $20. I tell you what was so interesting is that he, Stephen King author had tweeted back like that he was gonna pay that. And then Elon goes, how about $8? And next thing, you know, he made the official tweet yesterday about $8, Twitter blue $8 and includes the blue checkmark. So it is a thread it is interesting threads, I put the first tweet in the nest, it'll be available in the show notes for our podcast listeners. But really, the tweet that caught my attention in your attention was a tweet further down the thread where he's talking about other things you'll get with Twitter blue, and Twitter blues, that subscription service I have it. I'm imagine this is going to have to go global, but for now is US, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. And I've been paying $2.99 They are raising it to 499. But what Elon is talking about now is for $8 a month. In addition to all these perks you get, he wants to add a whole bunch of new ones, which is in this thread plus the verified blue checkmark, but grabbed my attention when I saw it say ability to post long video and audio. So I saw that audio. I didn't catch it the first time I had to read the thread a few times. I was like audio, is he talking about audio tweets, which you and I have played around with lots of times, which nobody really uses. I think the only person I know of that uses it on a regular basis is Jennifer Navarre it and she does a very good job of doing a daily audio tweet, but so few people use it. So is he talking about that? Or does he mean audio like spaces? What is he talking about? What are your thoughts?

Suze Cooper 2:10

Far be it from me to suggest that perhaps he's not being particularly clear, or not kind of doubling down on the features that perhaps Twitter has right now? It's a very kind of vague tweet, isn't it? It's a very vague post. So yeah, ability to post long video and audio, as you say, you know, what could that mean in my head? That is the voice tweets, because he's talking about posting long video and audio, you know, he lumps that in together. If you're posting the audio, then in my head, that is the equivalent of a text tweet in audio would be a voice tweet. So I think he's talking about those pre recorded or longer you mean, you can do it in two ways can't you've spoken about this before, you can either pre record it and then tweet it out. Or you can go live just with audio only. I think he's talking about that. However, he doesn't appear to me in my head to be talking about spaces, and he doesn't appear to mention spaces at all in this thread. And I wonder if that's an obvious omission or just something that he's overlooked or I don't know. It can't get can't be overlooked. There must just be more to it. That isn't coming out right now. Right?

Madalyn Sklar 3:21

Right. That's what I think it is. Because it is very vague. He doesn't say spaces at all, he but he just uses the word audio. And we know that Twitter was recently you know, looking into some like video that would compete, like having adult content, video, long form content video to compete with some of those other sites that do that. And it seemed like they were not going to do it. But now with all this new information coming from Elon Musk, they're talking about you having a paywall for videos. The thing is, I think, is just too much. He's putting so much he has all these ideas. And he's just throwing it all out there to see what's going to stick. I mean, I don't want us to spend our whole hour talk because I mean, we could actually tomorrow for my Twitter smarter space. George Silverman and I are going to do a little bit more of a deep dive as a community chat and talk about this because it's such big news right now. But I just think there's just so much up in the air. We don't know where all this is gonna go. My only concern right now Sue's is that we know resources have been shifted, shifting around, right? Different departments are moving to other departments. I'm curious, the Twitter spaces team, how many people are left on the team? And if space is going to be okay, you know, are we going to start having issues because they don't have enough people working on it and maintaining it?

Suze Cooper 4:47

Yeah, and I've been wondering the same you know, all of those people that we built relationships with in the early days, we don't see them quite so often hanging around in spaces anymore. And for you know, for some of them They have we know that they've moved to other teams, they've left the company or they've been moved around. There's been reshuffled. And you know, this has obviously had a massive impact on who's working where

Madalyn Sklar 5:11

A little concerning earlier this afternoon. Like, literally 30 minutes ago, a tweet went out from Danny Singh. And many of you know that named Danny Singh because he's been like running like in charge of Twitter spaces. He's kind of like the person at the top there, this managing it. And he puts out a tweet this afternoon saying, you know, if you could pay for to DM someone, like he's trying to get people's thoughts on paying for DMS, which means he's definitely shifting his focus from spaces to now this new idea of paying for DMS, which makes me think of LinkedIn right? When you think of like paying for, like in mail. So I don't know, I'm a little concerned about everything with spaces right now just seems like everything is shifting, everything's moving at warp speed, we already know that. They've got team members at Twitter, like living there day and night, and working crazy shifts, to get some of these new things up and running immediately. So just hard to know where this is all going to land, I think week to week, things are just gonna keep changing when we come in here and talk about it.

Suze Cooper 6:15

Elon is going to want to stamp his mark on Twitter in one way or another. And you know, where audio is concerned at the moment in the wider scheme of things in terms of content creation with podcasts, you look at podcasts, everyone, everyone, YouTube is certainly talking about video podcasts. So it is all about audio that comes as a video audio package, and what does that look like? And what does that mean? All of that is still being figured out by content creators, people are having a go at it, these platforms, these remote recording platforms that give you the ability to have, you know, high quality audio, but also great video at the same time and making it easier for people to do that. So you know, if you purchase a social media platform that you know, has the ability to do both of those things, what are you going to do with it? Are you just going to run with one, you know, audio offering? Or are you going to bring video kind of very much back into the mix? And, and you know, see what sticks, I guess like you say, it seems unlikely to me, that video isn't going to feature heavily because we're not hearing anything about Spaces, we're hearing very little about audio, but video seems to be floating to the top all the time, you know, at all the different tweets, the different conversations around this. I know Morgan commented on the the tweet that you've just popped in the in the nest, which was the Washington Post story that I read earlier. And you know, he's kind of saying about how Elon has already instructed engineers to assess vines old code. And that might be fast track during this time of those constrained engineering resources, which may well displace other projects. And I think Morgan's got a very, very valid point. It is very much up in the air and we're not quite sure where it's going to land.

Madalyn Sklar 7:57

Right. And you know, I think going all in on video right now is a mistake, because, and I've been I've been trying to get people to use video on Twitter for years, I'm always pushing it. I always remind everybody like, why is it that you don't see more video on Twitter because nobody thinks that they think to go to tick tock they think Instagram stories and reels. When you're thinking of video and you want to go share it on social media. You don't think a Twitter? I do, but most people don't. So you got to get people using Twitter for video more before you start going this whole big direction of like, paid videos and trying to get long form videos going I think, I think it's gonna take a little time. I don't think just overnight, people go, Oh, let me just start doing all my videos. Over on Twitter, you have people that are too established on Tiktok and Instagram to just give that up? Or do in addition to you know, because because you could do in addition to as well just also take your videos, put them on Twitter.

Suze Cooper 8:57

Yeah, absolutely. And I think I think the thing is Twitter started as the microblogging site. That's what we knew it as it was all very text based audio comes in. And you know, as we've said, with the audio tab is Twitter somewhere that people are going to come to listen to podcasts. You know, already there's this leap between, we're used to scrolling Twitter and reading it. You know, asking people to listen is a different mode, asking people to watch is a different mode again. So it is all around this kind of user experience and behavioural stuff, Spaces has taken. Some people quite you know, a long time some people still won't have even tried it. But it will take people a while to get used to the fact that they can listen here on Twitter, it's whether or not they want to push the fact that they want you listening to things or whether they want you watching things or whether they're going to try and be a jack of all trades and offer all of it all at once. I have no idea what the answer is and I have no idea where they're heading with it. But as I say, you know keeping my My eyes and ears open for it, that's for sure.

Madalyn Sklar 10:02

Right. And last week, I did read that Elon Musk was saying he wanted to turn Twitter into an all in one app like app X, and just make it be everything kind of like a WhatsApp, where it's just everything. And

Suze Cooper 10:13

that's what worries me because you know, you become the jack of all trades and master of none. And that's the fear, isn't it? We're watching and wait and see.

Madalyn Sklar 10:23

Oh, I'm sure there's gonna be between now. And next week. 20 more emails from Elon for us to talk about. I mean, it's just amazing, like, how many pieces of content he's putting out on a daily basis right now with with all of these ideas, and not to say that they're all bad. I mean, he's got some great ideas. I'm just concerned like, is he trying to really push the limits and just do everything all at once? So yeah, we'll have lots to talk about next week, I'm sure. I love this tweet from Morgan talking about Twitter spaces, stats. Did you find this interesting?

Suze Cooper 10:57

Yeah, another great thread from Morgan. I can see here in the space. Hopefully, you can come and chat to us once the mics are open in a bit. Yeah. So that these Twitter spaces stats, Morgan's pulled out that Twitter has more than 237 million daily users. But less than point 5% have started a space in the last year or so. He's talking about kind of US growth being flat 203,345 English language spaces in October, it's slightly less than the previous month. Now we have been watching Spaces, dashboard stats and sort of seeing them either be consistent or or grow slightly each month. So So that's interesting to know, that September kind of dip down again. So yeah, I mean, more than two looking here as well, at the follower growth rate for the official Twitter spaces account, and showing a graph that shows it trending downwards. Again, you know, a people thinking to follow the spaces account. Now I know, we're all trying to follow it in the first place, because everyone was trying to work out what spaces was, and see whether or not the Twitter spaces official account was going to be a good source of information for us. So potentially, it's more that people who wanted to find out what spaces was already following it. And, you know, the fact that they're not pushing it as much anymore means that people aren't going there to find it. But yeah, really interesting thread, once again, really detailed and well laid out. So yeah, we'd love to chat with Morgan, as I say, when the when the mics open?

Madalyn Sklar 12:23

Yeah. And I also put in the nest a tweet from Andrew Spaces Dashboard. He did a tweet, he's doing this, like every month, like showing like, what are the stats for the month, so for the month of October, he says there were over a million Twitter spaces created, which is still mind blowing to me, and then 75 million participants. And we know there's going to be a much smaller percent of of creators and people starting spaces. So Morgan's tweet, stats, information. I wasn't too terribly surprised. I mean, I wish more people would start spaces and do it. But I think a lot of people were like you and I were were the ones is a smaller group. And we're the ones doing most of it just like how much there's a small percentage of people who do the bulk of the tweets, right. There's been stats that show that it seems like that's the case here as well. There's like a group of us that we are so into spaces, a lot of us are doing multiple spaces per week, if not already doing at least one once a week. And so we're the same people generating the bulk of them.

Suze Cooper 13:27

Yeah. And I think you know, all the while that there's this uncertainty around what's going to happen with the platform, anyone that hasn't already dived into Twitter spaces might be hesitant to start creating content regularly here, rightly so really, you know, no one wants to start another content channel that may well be pulled from under them, I guess. So. I think while there is uncertainty about the future of it, we probably will see those stats go down month on month, which is unfortunate. So let's just hope there's some exciting announcements about it some reassuring announcements. And you know, maybe that will reassure people and ensure that there are more spaces in future and we can start you know, hearing new stuff again, hear on spaces.

Madalyn Sklar 14:15

Yeah I hope so. I hope people don't get discouraged from being a part of spaces. as big of a spaces the spaces Twitter account. Last week was asking people in a tweet, have you used the soundboard in which sounds? Are you using the most? I'm not a huge fan of the soundboard. I don't use it myself. And I was reading through a lot of these comments. It seems like a lot of people feel the same way I do. They're just not using it or you get Android users who don't even have the ability to use it.

Suze Cooper 14:45

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I kind of picked up on this one that the Twitter spaces account hasn't tweeted anything massive in recent days and weeks. I'll be surprised. I mean, there was a nice Halloween tweet from them which was which was in keeping with the season but yeah, the soundboard tweet that came out I guess I copied this one into our notion board, Madalyn because we were talking a few weeks ago about the soundboard. And you know about the fact that we don't really use it. And I think this bit is potentially spaces kind of mining for some feedback in terms of, are they going to reduce the sounds that are available to people on the soundboard? Are they looking around to? I'm fairly sure they're not looking around to add any sounds to it. But I wonder if it's just something they just don't need to work on. As we've said, you know, they've been cuts there. This was only something that was rolled out to iOS at the moment. So rather than roll it out to Android, if no one's enjoying it, and you know, no one wants it, the likelihood is they might kill it right instead. So I think, potentially that's sort of the the tweet that's that's gauging interest and trying to get them some some feedback there. And you know, it's had quite a few comments on it. So they'll have they'll have heard some feedback from it. But yeah, I sort of thought that LinkedIn quite nicely with the comments that we had a couple of weeks about ago about the soundboard.

Madalyn Sklar 16:06

And surprisingly, that's it for spaces news. We've got clubhouse news to discuss next. I'm actually kind of glad we're moving through this kind of fast because I can't wait for our community to request the mic and a little bit and I just looking forward to hearing their thoughts on everything going on with Twitter right now.

Suze Cooper 16:22

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, our first bit of clubhouse news feeds on from the soundboard news on Twitter. It's actually a tweet from Michael Sterling. And it is a sort of mocked up maybe screengrab of clubhouses Paul Davidson in his little profile picture avatar bubble showing lots of different emojis in the corner. And what it says is that when clubhouse releases it soundboard, which is incoming effects will simultaneously trigger an accompanying emoji reaction on the user's profile picture. So that's pretty cute. It's a pretty neat thing to do. I guess if you're already there, you know, on screen tapping away and therefore triggering the sound you're there to see the reaction appear. I quite like the fact you can tap and hold your profile picture and share a gift with people over on clubhouse and you know, I think again, this is just kind of a fun addition. If you're going to have a soundboard hey, why not make the most of the soundboard so yeah, following on from Twitter soundboard news. clubhouse soundboard news, because, you know, we wouldn't want one to do something that the other doesn't.

Madalyn Sklar 17:30

Exactly. And so there's also in the nest a tweet from Alessandra bluesy. He had done a tweet a last month and was talking about, you know, they're working on this and that there are currently a sound effects, but it could change before the official release. Well, his new tweet that came out today is threaded to the other tweet saying there's now 14 sound effects, but then also saying it may change before the official release. And then I noticed there was a response from Siena. It's interesting, because when you go to see nose profile, it says telegram and clubhouse professional beta tester, which I thought was super What an interesting title, and was responding to this tweet saying, you're talking about how it's going to work, you know, when you hold your own profile, is how that's gonna actually work and shows the reaction emojis and the sound effect. So there's a few more tweets saying that the sound effects are controlled by the moderators, which I think is a great idea. And that everyone on stage can use the soundboard sound effects if it's enabled in the room from the moderators. And then there's another tweet that says is going to get released on iOS tomorrow, which will be November 3. So it'd be interesting to see, you know, see it in action, right.

Suze Cooper 18:53

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it's, it's interesting that they're, you know, they've got a reduced number of sound effects from what we see over here on Twitter. I don't know for sure how many we've got on the sample, but I'm fairly sure it's more than 14. It's yeah, interesting to see them having their own take on it and, you know, combining it with those little emojis. And I like the fact that moderators have got the control over it, you know, that's something that we've spoken about at length really around having it here on on spaces, we, you know, we'd quite like to either be able to curate it, or turn it off completely. You know, I think it's right, that the moderators have the control over what people are going to hear in their room, whether or not that is the people that are speaking you know, we've got the mute all button all of those kinds of things, or it's sound effects and background noises. So yeah, I think all of that is it seems very well thought through.

Madalyn Sklar 19:53

Certainly, most definitely. And then you have a tweet about another clubhouse tweet, token gated houses.

Suze Cooper 20:00

Yeah, so the token gated houses story that Morgan's spoken about over the last couple of weeks. I don't know anything more than the fact that John Milanovich over here on Twitter has tweeted to say he was excited to say token gated houses are now in beta on clubhouse. And he basically run his first house for an NFT project. And had heard used to that. So if you've been following that story that Morgan has so eloquently put across in the last couple of episodes of all things audio, that is now in beta. So yeah, it's one that's taken off.

Madalyn Sklar 20:35

Yeah. And then you've got some Amazon Amp news to report.

Suze Cooper 20:39

Yeah. So the link here is actually from Geek wire, but I think it was Business Insider, potentially, that broke the story that Amazon were making staff cuts at amp, which is the Amazon amp, the social audio offering that they were they were giving. So it was launched earlier this year. The idea was that it was going to reimagine radio, it allowed hosts to create their own radio show, making use of the Amazon Music catalogue. And we did a lot of chat around the fact that surely this is what Spotify live was meant to be like, and where was this gonna go? And it was interesting that it was coming from Amazon. So yeah, but these cuts basically suggest that it's kind of really winding down for them now. And I feel like it's one of those things, again, that's winding down before it's even really wound up. I mean, I say it in the tweet that I've sent out today, which is, you know, who has actually had access to this, either as a creator or listener? And, you know, they're suggesting that these cutbacks on the team are due to lack of use. But if you don't give someone the ability to actually use the app, how on earth can you assess its usefulness or whether people are going to use it, as far as I know, Amazon app was only ever open to those who were invited to use it and create shows over there. It was us only. So I know, me and George had a discussion about how I might be able to access it on the web, when they made it available on the web, via VPN, because it is only us. So I was just seeing a blank page over here in the UK, they had a creative Fund, which only a few weeks ago, they were kind of shouting about getting college students to create their own radio shows using Amazon amp. And I really hoped that we might see it progress on to Alexa in some way. And really bring social audio and voice together. Although, you know, Amazon is a pretty big company, and they are quite siloed. So you know whether or not that ever would have come to fruition, I don't know. But that was kind of my dream that I thought I might see. And now it feels like it's finishing before it's even started, which is a bit of a disappointment.

Madalyn Sklar 22:48

It really is I've had access to it being that I'm in the US, I was not terribly impressed with it, I spent a little time on it, when it was new, I didn't really care for it. I've been on it a few more times since but it's just not for me. But But beyond that, as Amazon, you know, you would think they you know, they have the resources given a little bit more of a chance give more people access. So it's not just us only. So I was really surprised by this news, I just didn't think it was going to happen.

Suze Cooper 23:19

It really feels like you know, a big company giving a nod to the latest thing, which is upsetting really, because it doesn't didn't have to be that way. You know, if they really thought they had something there. It's not like Amazon doesn't own, you know, various audio outlets, they've got Amazon music, Amazon podcasts, all of those kinds of things. And as I say, I really feel like there is potential for Alexa to be brought into the fold. And for people to be able to interact in that way, you know, you speak to these devices. And the idea that someone's live on the other end of it, you know, how could that work? I mean, you know, my my brain just go bonkers with creative thinking around it. But yeah, I just I don't I don't know, I don't understand these companies. Clearly.

Madalyn Sklar 24:02

I don't understand either. And, you know, in reading this article, is says that roughly 150 people or half of the division were let go. And it's like, they had that many people working on Amazon. Yep. That's that's like a lot. 150 people and that was half the divisions. Yeah.

Suze Cooper 24:19

And you have you have that many people. But you're not you're probably only letting equal to that many people actually create on it as far as I could tell.

Madalyn Sklar 24:28

Right. Exactly. That's such a great point.

Suze Cooper 24:32

So what's the point? Like, right, mind blowing?

Madalyn Sklar 24:37

Yeah, I mean, if you had 300 team members on this, like, ramp it up, give it a real go before just like, we don't want to do it anymore.

Suze Cooper 24:46

Yeah, it's like a kid fed up with a new toy.

Madalyn Sklar 24:49

Yes, exactly. Great point. Yeah.

Suze Cooper 24:53

And then I found this last article, which is actually so jam packed with the fringe things that made me think that I haven't actually finished thinking about it completely yet. But I definitely want to bring it to your attention. It is a long form read, it's from protocol.com, it runs through a whole heap of things. And rather than being, you know, the kind of social audio is dead type article, this, while it's headlined, why audio will never capture the hearts of social media users is written very much in the vein of the wild yo doesn't go viral type essay, though, that went crazy on the internet a few years ago, it's so thoughtful about what it's trying to say about the different platforms, you know, runs through pretty much everybody, and talks about why audio might not be the right, the right mode to get, you know, messages across on social, it really has made me think there are a couple of bits in it that totally kind of leapt out at me, if you like one of them was Christmas, seen his comment, where he says that the success of social audio shouldn't be defined by what we've seen before. And I like the fact he described it as its own small suburb of social media land. You know, I think that's true of quite a lot of things. I think, you know, we're trying to define things by the number of people that listen, that kind of thing, whereas in fact, for me, social audio is more about the actual, full on proper human relationships that I've built through social audio over the last couple of years, totally outnumber the the number of followers I might have got through doing it. And those connections are far more valuable to me as well. So he's right, you know, we need to think about how we define what success looks like for social audio. So that definitely got me thinking. And there's also a comment in there from Matt Navarro. And he kind of suggests that social audio has arrived at the wrong time. And I wasn't too sure about that, to be honest. I mean, when Twitter spaces and clubhouse were released during Daris, hate the pandemic, and COVID. And everything, people thought it was a great way of getting in touch with people on the other side of the world when you literally can't leave your own four walls. That wasn't the wrong time. I think he's trying to refer to the fact that, you know, Elon has now bought Twitter and it might all be turned on its head. No one could have predicted that. I mean, maybe maybe a year or so ago. But beyond that, you know, I don't think you can kind of put that in that context. If you see what I mean, it's an easy at the wrong time. It could go either way. Still, as we started at the top of the show, talking about so Yeah, another interesting one that's got me thinking and as you can hear, I'm still thinking it through while I'm talking. But lots of things if you're interested in social audio in any way, do go across, read through this article. And I would love to hear your thoughts on it. So do tweet me at me. You know, comment on the on the tweet that I've sent out that Madalyn's popped in the nest because I would love to hear from you. But yeah, so that that was our last piece of news, piece of news for today. So we've got George up as a speaker, Madalyn Hey, George, Hey, how are you?

Madalyn Sklar 28:07

Good. Glad you could join us.

George Silverman 28:09

You're quite welcome. I have a few comments I'd love to make raises the whole issue of people going more toward video and looking at video and all of that. As many of you know, I've been doing social audio for 51 years, I invented the telephone focus group. And what happened with the telephone focus group is very instructive here.

George Silverman 28:36

What happened was, I did it for about 10 or 15 years, I was probably the highest paid moderator in the country, because I could get people other people couldn't get. But then as I moved on to become a marketing consultant, using that as a major tool. But what happened was, as I wound down a little bit on it, other people got the idea that video is better. So video conferencing was just coming in at the time. And there were all these audio, these video rooms set up so that remote moderators could moderate local groups, and then groups in various locations. And the clients thought that video was better than audio, for obvious reasons, and it is obvious. Video has to be better than audio, because you see facial expressions, body language and gestures, but it's just not true. Those are distractions. And I proved that I did parallel groups. I did a lot of experiments. I had a huge number of demos. People wouldn't have any of it. They just wouldn't even listen to me. And I moved on to consulting. I was fine. But other people who were doing telephone focus groups kind of went out of business or their business wound down because people thought video obviously had had to be better. So it flies in the face of common sense. And I think that's going to happen again, I think I hear a lot of people saying, Oh, wow, if if Twitter only had video, if we could only see each other, know, if we could see each other, the psychological safety would be destroyed. And we'd be back, you know, this whole idea there's never been, you know, there's never been a better time for social audio ever. You know, every every time has been a great time for social audio. And telephone focus groups never went out of style. They were used for experts that you couldn't get together. And so my, my business went toward, you know, instead of ordinary homemakers and working white collar work, blue, blue collar workers, things like that. I became the guy who went to fax but because by audio teleconferencing, I could get together, people who you couldn't get to a face to face group, like Nobel Prize winning economist, I did congressmen regularly did see fortune 100 CEOs regularly. I could get them nobody else could get him. But why can I how can I get them because they only pick up their phone, no makeup, no hair, no nothing, no rehearsal. And above all, a great deal of psychological safety. So I could do all kinds of patients age groups and stuff like that. So that's the first thing be so there's going to be a great temptation to go to Video In summary, and it's going to be a false hope. And it's up to us to explain why actually audio, paradoxically, is better than video, despite the fact that audio has less, quote, information, unquote. But it also has more videos less as more distraction. Also, moving on. I think I'm worried as Madalyn is that Elon may have too many things on his plate. But more than that, I'm worried that Twitter has more than too many things on its plate. It is possibly headed, I don't predict that this will happen. In fact, I predict the opposite will happen. But there's a significant risk, I'd like to say that Twitter becomes one of these companies that tries to be a Swiss army knife. He tries to be everything to everybody. And let me point out that Swiss Army knives are terrible at each of the things that it does. Swiss Army Knife is a lousy knife, and it's a lousy corkscrew, and it's a lousy all in it's a lousy now file, etc, etc, etc. It's great to have all these things in one place. And so Swiss Army knives are fairly popular, but they're not as popular as hunting knives are not as popular as pocket knives, regular ordinary pocket knives, etc. So at any rate, if it tries to be everything to everybody ain't gonna be nothing to nobody.

George Silverman 33:17

But on the other hand, if it positions itself as the only real time idea swapping app that you can see ideas developed in real time and have a lot more to say about this tomorrow and Madalyn's group, because I gave myself the assignment, promise to report back on doing a week of TweetDeck with no Twitter, no regular Twitter. But so I don't want to summarise that. But just one point of that is that what TweetDeck showed me is that, and Robert Scoble has talked about this a lot to TweetDeck as the only real time social media medium, so I can post a tweet, and actually watch the reactions to that tweet happening in real time. Well, and, and reply to them in real time. And watch your developing news story in real time. So it's the only real time. So if it positions itself as the real time one, or the great idea swapping app, how do you swap ideas? Well, you need short form, you need long form, in a thread, you need tweets, you need audio, you need video, you need articles, you need atomic essays, and on and on and on and on. And those were just different forms of the same fundamental thing. They would do incredibly well. And I, my prediction is that this will happen. There are plenty of us who are going to point this out to Elon, and I think he's going to get the message eventually. And I predicted that Twitter is going to be the largest social medium. By far it's going to be a company that rivals Google. If they do this, if they follow and make themselves the Town Hall, the world town hall, or something like that. So that's my, that's my shot.

Madalyn Sklar 35:08

That's an interesting take Georgia law. I like all that that was really good. And I just want to like totally validate the whole conference call thing. I was doing that like 20 years ago, and that was social audio, it was just, you did it on the phone.

George Silverman 35:21

Aside from the experts, especially the business experts, 95% of all people on my telephone focus groups, were people who had never been on a conference call before, they've never even heard of a conference call, until we called them up and invited them to be on it. We literally had to explain to them what a conference calls, they're probably people on here who are too young to even know what a conference call it was, basically, a big party long, you know, 1015 people jumped on the same phone call. And they could all talk with each other all way, no hand raising, no, nothing.

Madalyn Sklar 35:54

Well, the way I used it was, I would bring on a guest to interview and I keep everybody muted, but me and the guests very much similar to how we use spaces or clubhouse. But I mean, this was available by calling you know, you can have either an 800 number or long distance number. And you know, 20 years ago, it was like a long distance with a big deal and expensive. But like you just have this phone number you give it to people and they could call in and listen or you could allow them to speak and, you know, so it's not a new concept at all

George Silverman 36:23

A national one, or an international 100 national one, cost me $400 and telephone company fees to get the company to get the phone company to hook me all up. So I'm gonna we were trying I was we were charging present day equivalents of $10,000 per per call, but for 50 bucks, went to the phone company. Now it's all free. Um, oh, by the way, I did want to mention the last Friday, I ran a space called Welcome Ilan, what US tweets want, or something like that. I'll put it up in the nest. And it caught. I have a question for Andrew here. At my, the thing I'm about to put up in the nest says that it let me look again, is this four or 599? people tuned in and on. Let me just put that in there as well. I've got it on there. Okay. And, uh, but tweet, sorry, spaces dashboard, says 370 or 470? I'm not sure what it is. But 470. There it is. So there's a discrepancy one says 471 says 599. I'm not sure what it was. But I put that up with no announcement. I looked I looked for I figured this is the day, the day the first day, Elon took over Twitter. And so I figured, oh my god, I gotta be like 20 spaces, discussing this. I want to discuss this and see what other people think about Elon taking over Twitter. So I looked and I couldn't find it. Of course, they had this wonderful irony alert, wonderful. Ability to discover spaces on Twitter. So I went a little nuts. They of course, went over to spaces dashboard found nothing. So I could reliably established through Andrews app that there was nothing going on. I said what that's impossible. So I instantly started a space welcome, Elon, here's what we Twitch want or something like that. Here's what we Twitch would like impromptu focus group. That's what I called it. And it died for the first 10 or 15 minutes and I was literally a thumb push away from from shutting it down. And then people started flooding in. We had 600 people in total. Lots of replies. And my hope is that Elon and his team will get to listen to get to listen to it. There was a full there's a flood. upshot of it is there's a flood of pent up demand. If you get any Twitter users together, you can get 100 feature requests, and you can sort them out rather quickly. Because people will tell you what they're really passionate about needing on Twitter. And they listen to their customers. Wow, do they have something here? Assist? It's going to quadruple in a year. If they only listen to the customers. And this past listening to the customers doesn't count. It's just pathetic.

Madalyn Sklar 39:40

Well, I tell you this this room this this space you hosted thank you for sharing the NES really shows you the power of social audio. You create a town hall created a town hall to give feedback and to just discuss it. I love it. I can't wait to go listen to the replay.

George Silverman 39:55

Yeah, and if Twitter had spent 10 $15,000 I'm not fishing for them. Do Because I'm retired, I'm not, you know, I'm not looking for the business. But if they had gone to one of my leading focus group colleagues, that focus group would have cost him I don't know, 10 $15,000 to run, I ran it for him for free. And I'm one of the top moderators in the country. So that, you know, my feet would be up that up up in that level. To run it, I ran it for free, and I'm going to run many more of them. Because I want selfishly, because I want Twitter to become what I want it to become. And we have the power to do that now.

Madalyn Sklar 40:35

Well, a free focus group is spaces are clubhouse social audio. I mean, that's that's the power of social audio right there. Well, thank you for sharing all this. George Morgan's next up.

Suze Cooper 40:47

What a week, indeed!

Madalyn Sklar 40:49

A lot going on. Yeah.

Suze Cooper 40:51

Where are you going to start Morgan?

Morgan Evetts 40:55

I don't know. bracketing out what he may or may not do. I think one of the things that I've been surprised by is just potential speed of execution here. It might be that lots of ideas have been thrown at the wall. We've been told that Elon has told engineers to contact him directly and just pitch any good idea they have. But it does seem like he wants to and has the ability to push things through quickly. Now, this might also be at the cost of the work life balance of their engineers. We've seen pictures of people sleeping on the floor and Twitter's office at the moment. So the other part of that is remaking the company culture. He has. I've lost the tweet. But he's basically gone through and gutted the leadership ranks. Anybody who was I think there's some very good people there. The head of a thing is being removed. So this is going to be quite a culture change not only in the way they work, but But what they do. And I hope we've also heard this as a positive thing. mentioned twice now of Kayvon, who was the former head of product being cited in the Twitter headquarters with the what they're calling the War Room people. And Kayvon is much loved. Twitter, you saw that when he was unceremoniously dismissed one on paternity leave by Parag that the tweets from his fellow tweeps were heaping praise on him. And I think if cave on is kept on, that's a really, that's, that's a silver lining here. He's also, as I think we know, the person who spearheaded the spaces problem project within Twitter, as well as some other things, communities to create a content sort of stuff. So keep on having him as a well loved person as a figure of continuity in that team would be, I think, a strong point. So if that happens, I think that that's good. But just on the whole, we don't know what's going to happen. I do think there's talk about him really wanting to get serious with competing with tick tock and becoming a super app, we should take that seriously. But it feels like Twitter are pushing through, and we'll be able to execute things much faster than they've done before. So things will change around here. But it could be that some of those are good changes. So I wanted to just drop in that positive spin on it too, with with some caution.

George Silverman 43:32

I want to totally agree with Morgan.

Madalyn Sklar 43:35

Yeah. And I want to mention Kayvon. If people don't know this, he was a co founder of Periscope, which Twitter bought many years ago. And then he was head of product at Twitter. So when I was mentioning Danny Singh earlier, who was like over spaces, Kayvon was his blog. Kayvon was over all of that stuff. I mean, he was over a lot of very good positive features that we all love. So I'm glad you brought that up. Morgan, such a good point.

Suze Cooper 44:01

I'm interested to know Morgan, like we went through that Elon thread and sort of picked out the fact that he only really mentioned audio in the same line as video and doesn't pick out spaces anywhere. I mean, what's your kind of take on that is, is that just them waiting to decide what to do with spaces or? Yeah, well, I mean, what what do you think?

Morgan Evetts 44:24

I'm not sure yet. It goes two ways. So I'm beginning to think it's clear. This isn't number one priority. The number one priority is increasing revenue right now and reducing costs. So cutting, headcount is going to be one of those. The other one is cutting capital expenditure, but also everywhere that he can find where he can introduce a paywall or a reason to subscribe to something that's going to happen is stated longer term ambition is to reduce Twitter reliance on ad revenue from a t nine for sent, I think it is of the current revenue to 50%. So that's a lot of things that will have subscription or paywalls attached to them. Potentially, that's really good for creators, if you can do that in the right way, because one of the other things was sharing revenue from those with creators themselves. But there's a question about what it is we'll be creating, it could well be that I don't, I don't imagine spaces, it's going to disappear. But it's just not number one priority now, but may well be worked into all of the creative stuff that they do. So that's, you know, that's fine. As far as it goes. It does sound like if he's talking about Tik Tok and basically ByteDance is that the final, final boss of this of this game, taking them on will mean a much bigger push into short form video, and then potentially live streaming video, which is a place that tick tock is beginning to move. And for tick tock, this is linked with commerce. So they, they wanted people to sell things through that. And it's an open question for me, I ended my my thought is, is this good for all things that are live? Or is if live video to take another run at it? Obviously, Kayvon? was the man behind Periscope, live video is his background. If they take another run at that, where does live audio fit in? Do we? Do we start getting more comfortable talking to video we're doing this? Or does it just mean that it's it's another part of, of life? As George said, Twitter is this network about what's happening now? And we shouldn't worry about the audio part. It's just not the thing. They're going to be pushing hard in the next six months.

Suze Cooper 46:50

Very interesting thoughts as ever. Thank you, Morgan. Yeah, lots for us all to think about. They're amazing. George, I have an answer for you about your spaces dashboard discrepancy from Andrew. He says, spaces dashboard shows live numbers. Only we don't have access to the replay numbers. That's why there's a difference

George Silverman 47:11

in the replay. So it's 600 is the total. I didn't know 600 was the total?

Madalyn Sklar 47:16

Yeah, 600. Because when on desktop, it shows for me it shows 604, which would be the total. But you as the host on mobile, it will give you that more of the stats, and it will show you the breakdown between replays and live whereas spaces dashboard is only how many showed up live not replays.

George Silverman 47:35

Thank you, I wanted to expand on what Morgan said about something, speed of innovation. I've been tweeting some of you've seen buckle up helmets, on goggles on gloves on a strap in or in for a ride. And we are because people like Elon Musk, those kinds of innovator, entrepreneur engineer types are innovate at 100 times the speed of most other businesses. And just look at SpaceX, Tesla, boring, neural link, etc. Look at all his companies look at the speed of innovation. Number two engineers engaged in something called destructive testing, which is basically put a lot of stress on something, make it break, see where it breaks, strengthen that part that breaks, do it again, strengthen, etc. So when Elon had a rocket that first rockets missed the barge, he tweeted, we had a successful test. Why do you have a successful test $100 million rocket falls over and blows apart. Because he figured out why it happened. And they fixed it. And they did it again and again. And again. He had repeated quote failures, unquote, in order to get it to reliably go onto the barge. And that's the way an engineer entrepreneur thinks. So you will see the relevance here is you will see a lot of things implemented, you'll see a very fast development cycle that is going to cause us all to say how could they have you know, et cetera. And you'll see a very rapid rate of innovation innovate drop innovate drop like Google does. And that's absolutely what you're going to see so be ready for a very fast cycle of this kind of try and drop experimentation which you should love Madalyn because you are the poster girl for experimentation.

Madalyn Sklar 49:41

Right but he's moving too fast and with all the people that have quit and been let go and so it's a smaller staff and they've had a hiring freeze. It's a little concerning how you know how much they can do at warp speed. Let's go and move on. We got one more speaker left Michael. Hey Michael. How's it going?

Michael Sterling 49:59

Hello. Friends, I came up to the stage when George started talking because I just wanted to reinforce and, and add on to what he was saying about audio. Because I think about the the quote from Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park, or he talks about, just because you can doesn't mean you should. And I've been producing content, video and audio content since 1998. And I can tell you that audio, even though it's one half of the audio visual experience is probably the more important half. Because think about it. How many times have we had the TV on in the background while we're doing other things, we're still listening, but we're not always glancing at the screen. Or we listen to a podcast, we don't have to see what people are doing. I mean, there's so much information and communication you can convey through just audio. The wind video is really not necessary. We're not seeing each other right now. And yet, we're carrying on a wonderful conversation. So I guess I would just say, to wrap this up, since this is about social audio news, and so on that, you know, don't, don't feel like video is the end all be all, and that you always have to show something on some screen because there's still so much value to audio and so much can be conveyed and communicated and improved upon just from sound. So yeah, I guess I'll just leave it right there.

Suze Cooper 51:23

Yes, Michael? Yes. Yes. And yes, again, and it brings me back to this protocol article that I was talking about. And I've actually found this while I've been listening, but which proves the point, doesn't it? I was listening, but I could still be doing something else. Michael McDonough, who is the founder of I've lost the thread, founder of anchor anchor, has actually commented in this article that I was talking about how one of audios down points is the fact that it doesn't require all of your attention, the quote, he says many people listen to podcasts while running errands, working out or cooking. Now for me, that has always been a benefit. The fact that you can listen to something and do something else at the same time. Definitely. And he's totally calling this out as a reason why this is an uphill battle. Apparently, for audio, he says that people don't give it their full attention. Whereas I feel like that's totally its USP. It's the fact that I can listen to something while I'm driving while I'm making the kid's lunch. You know, while I'm scrolling the internet, that's the whole reason why I can consume so much content, because I can do it with my ears. And it doesn't require my eyes. Yeah. And his whole point here is he says the reality is you can consume content more quickly and efficiently through your eyes than you can through your ears. I don't know, I just don't agree with that at all.

Michael Sterling 52:45

Yeah, yeah. The other example, the other example I was thinking of, while I was waiting is, you know, parents can tell when one of their children is coming into the room just by and which child is coming into the room just by listening, somehow hearing the footsteps or whatever behind you, you know, that's my daughter, that's my son, or my child or whatever, you don't have to see everything we can learn and in and taken so much about the world just from listening, I can listen to somebody on the other end of the house and what they're doing and almost have a visual in my brain of them moving the dishes around, and where they're putting things and so on just by listening. So don't slip on audio and don't feel like because videos, the big thing and everybody's tick talking and video YouTubing and all this stuff that you have to do video. Now if it adds something to the experience, that's fine. If it expands your audience, that's fine. But be intentional about why you're doing video if you're going to do video, and if it's really necessary. That's that's what I would say. Thanks a lot.

George Silverman 53:47

I agree with Michael. But I agree more than that. I think that there's a trap that we could easily fall into, and a lot of people fall into. And that is that audio is just the audio track of the audio video video experience. No, no, no. If it's audio only, that is not just the audio track of the video. What happens is people translate their facial expressions and gestures into what I call audio gestures. So people will say aha, instead of nodding their head knowing that they're on video, see on Zoom, they might nod their head or they might wiggle their fingers, you know, in that deaf applause gesture. But when their audio only they translate their voice into these audio gestures. Yeah, got it. Yep. Right. That's why I like open mic. And so it's a different experience. If you listen to me on a video call versus an audio call. My voice is completely different. Because I throw everything into my voice on audio. Just learn to do that. And everybody does that to some extent. Yeah.

Madalyn Sklar 54:59

Excellent points. I mean, this has been such a great conversation today. Thank you to all of our speakers who came on and shared so much great stuff. And we're available and all of your favourite podcast apps were out there all things audio, you can also go to all things audio podcast.com as well.

Suze Cooper 55:21

You certainly can. And you can catch us here on Twitter and use the hashtag all things audio, and we'll pick that up throughout the week. So that's it for this week. But thank you so much to everyone that's been here in the space with us and those of you listening, and we'll catch up with you next week. Bye, everybody.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai