Suze Cooper 0:03

Hey, this is Madalyn Sklar and Suze Cooper and you're listening to all things audio. So Madalyn, where are we going to start? I mean, yeah, last week was an amazing all things audio space. I think we ended up with something like 600 Replay listens. We had a really great vibrant chat going on here in the space. What's happened in seven days? Madalyn, where are we now?

Madalyn Sklar 0:32

Oh, gosh, so much has changed. You know, we could go in all things audio, we were talking about feeling a little more at ease after Elon Musk did that q&a in spaces, that very quickly was listened to by over 2 million people. And I had felt so much better about things. Whereas before that space, I was not. Now here we are a week later, like literally an entire week later. And it's just been this roller coaster up and down. And so my my biggest concern right now that's happened just really in the last several days is that top executives have left people that were on that q&a have left already. In this week. Just recently, in the past few days, some of the top engineers were fired via tweets from Elon Musk, I just find it super disturbing. And it just makes me wonder, Is Twitter gonna survive? There's there's less employees working there. They also fired all the contractors over the weekend. I'm just wondering, Is Twitter going to keep working properly? I've had some issues with Twitter in the past few days. So it's really just concerning? Is it going to keep working properly? Are we going to start seeing the fail? Well, you know, Jennifer, now Varathane, I keep talking about that in the past week, because we've been on Twitter a very long time. And back in the early days, when Twitter was down, you saw this big JPEG of the fail? Well, I'm wondering if it's just going to be an error? 404. You know, like we sometimes see on websites, I just don't know what to expect to so I'm really quite nervous about where Twitter is going, and especially spaces inside of Twitter.

Suze Cooper 2:13

Absolutely. And you know, it was shocking, wasn't it? I mean, Elon had done that q&a to those major advertisers and had finished minutes before we went live last week. And there was kind of an air of reassurance potentially about that. And then, within days, those who would actually hosted the space and been involved in that space were gone. I mean, what a shock.

Madalyn Sklar 2:40

It was a shock. And I was really deeply concerned by that. wondering like, okay, there's so many warning signs, what's going to happen? What's his true intention? I mean, is this just to file for bankruptcy at some point, just bring the platform down, I just don't know. And I'm really concerned about spaces. But then we see this tweet from Elon several days ago, I'm going to put it in the nest. All these tweets will also be available in the show notes for our podcast listeners. He says spaces should be evolved. He didn't say evolve. He didn't edit the tweet. I

Suze Cooper 3:16

was gonna say that. I mean, if ever, there was a case for the edit button, that was it, wasn't it.

Madalyn Sklar 3:21

I think he did that on purpose. But he said spaces should be evolved. We're just gonna say ed on the record should be evolved. It has potential to be truly great. And we knew he had to be thinking like this, especially after being on that space as q&a Last week, when you had over 2 million listens. It was powerful. When you and I were here last week talking about it. It only been like, what maybe an hour or two prior to us going live last week, and had already had so many listens. It was crazy. The numbers. I mean, if that doesn't show the power of spaces, I don't know what else was.

Suze Cooper 3:57

Absolutely. I mean, watching that momentum build literally as we were live over here, and watching that number just tick over and over and over was quite incredible. You know, and this is the thing you know, we spoke a little bit about it last week, reasons that spaces might stay. I mean, certainly since last week was top of the bill was well, Elon seems to be enjoying using it, which has got to be key at the moment. I mean, I don't know what his criteria is for anything, or prioritisation. But, you know, if he's actually using the, the feature, then, you know, he's obviously interested in it. It's a new and innovative thing is, you know, social audio is a new space you think you might be interested in in that kind of thing. And it does keep people on the platform for longer, which if he's looking at, you know, advertisers and you know, being able to pitch this out to people, this is where people are and they are here for a longer period of time than they've ever been before. Then surely spaces is something that he would keep. But then you start thinking well, what he's got lots of reasons to come on it as well, you know, he sacked all the engineers, anyone who was anyone who when you who was building it or working on it or evolving it in any way as gone, then you think about well, okay, so is it then gonna cost too much to evolve it and it is actually this new and innovative thing of social audio such an unknown quantity for him that it's just not worth investing at this stage because he can't see where it's gonna go. So could he change its direction? Could he add advertising into it? Somehow? We've spoken about that in the past, would we be hearing ads before our spaces start up? Or maybe ads appearing in the nest or something like that? Or is it this idea of monetization for creators with a percentage for Twitter that kind of ticketed spacey styling? I mean, my goodness, there's just so much, you know, he could keep it he can it he could change it. And I just, I've no, you know, no one's got any idea where that might land right now.

Madalyn Sklar 5:56

Yeah, and that's what's concerning. We just don't know what's going to happen. Tomorrow, Twitter could be gone. And then we would not be able to have our awesome chats and spaces. It's been such a great way to connect with people build communities, you and I built this community from nothing. Just coming here week after week in spaces is so powerful, and I'm really worried is going to go away.

Suze Cooper 6:17

Well, I was talking to someone today, you know, quite often I'll speak to podcasters, who say, you know, I want to build this audience. And, you know, how can I do that? And how do I go about that, when I've got nothing to, to go on? You know, from the start, I'm literally starting up from scratch and, and I said, you know, at the moment, if you think of your audience more as a community. And what you're trying to do is invite people into an inviting space, make them you know, welcome at your podcast. And one of the absolute key ways that you can do this is to sidestep it with a space or a social audio version, because as we've seen ourselves, that interaction really helps build those proper relationships within a community. And I just think it's such an incredible sidecar to having a podcast or audio content, because it does allow proper conversation and real relationships to blossom. And you know, we've thoroughly enjoyed every minute of, of meeting everybody that's here. And you know, the regular people and faces that we see pop up every single week here on all things audio, I'm amazed and grateful every single week, and I just hate that doesn't stop.

Madalyn Sklar 7:28

Yeah, me too. I really hope it doesn't. That would just be a shame if it does stop. Um, also an interesting tweet. I'm sharing from fires Siddiq way, I'm not sure if I'm saying his name, right. But the big news today, on Wednesday, November 16, is that Elon Musk issued an ultimatum to turn the remaining staff at Twitter, telling them that they need to commit to a hardcore Twitter environment basically, like, you know, working crazy hours working really hard. Well, yeah, we want our Bae to work hard, but like it the way this is coming off. Sounds a little intense look, maybe super intense would be better to say, and they have this deadline to sign off on this by Thursday at 5pm. Eastern otherwise, they're going to consider you quitting. And you get three months severance, and goodbye. And it's like, wow, I'm just wondering, like, how is the staff dealing with all this? I mean, can you imagine like, you have a family, you got young children to take care of. But you've got this job you love so much. And now they're putting you in a corner saying, Okay, make a choice is scary.

Suze Cooper 8:41

I mean, who wants who wants to put their hand up for that kind of here, here's a great thing. It's going to be hardcore. It's going to be really hard work. You're going to work every hour and never see your family and never get to do anything else other than work? Who's up for it, guys? I mean, I don't think so.

Michael Sterling 8:56

To what end to like, like, he's already been sort of presenting himself as this sort of, you know, in spaces, he talks, a good talk, but then all of these decisions he makes is just sort of on a whim. And then, you know, they release the Twitter blue thing, and then they pull it back because that didn't work. And he it's like, okay, so you want it to be hardcore. But like, is it hardcore? Just because you're wanting to be a hard ass or I'm sorry to say that, but like, to what end? Do you want these people to just basically drive themselves into the ground for your product? You got to give them more than that something, give him something?

Suze Cooper 9:32

And why would anyone do that with the way that he's treated people publicly? Like we've literally seen tweets go backwards and forwards and someone's disagreed with him and they're gone. I mean, who on earth is going to put their hand up to work in that kind of environment? We just spoke there about building community and you know how relationships and that, you know, humanity between people and surely that was what he wanted for this platform. It was supposed to be you know, this is the right thing for him. ality in the town hall and all the rest of it. Well, I'm sorry. But you know, who wants to work in such an oppressive and Quiet Kind of? Just, yeah, just I just can't believe his language with it really. I just it's mind blowing.

Madalyn Sklar 10:17

And I'm sure there are people that are okay with that language and okay with that oppression that are going to stay, they're going to do this. And shine, which is great. But, you know, it's just, there's just no compassion there. I feel like, and there was a really great tweet, I just had to share. That was a quote, tweet from the tweet from Fosse. And it was from EB Boyd, who is, she writes for different publications. And she just put together a really great thread, talking about in her first week about how painful it is to watch this all unfold in real time. And I have to say, I agree. But she just brings up some good points, talking about having that compassion, having that empathy. That sure there's times where, you know, these companies have these quick changes, and all of a sudden, there's these massive layoffs things are changing very quickly. But there's better ways to do this. When you have the staff, you know, you gotta be thinking of the staff. And I just feel like that's, they're not being taken into consideration.

Suze Cooper 11:16

I think what I love about this is that she's saying, you know, what, what is Elon giving both staff and Twitter users to believe in at the moment? Like, there's no, because everything's being done. So quick fire, and so seemingly kind of on a whim, in a moment, you know, let's roll out verification, let's pull it away. Let's do this. Let's charge $8. Let's not all the rest of it. There's no bigger vision for people to really grasp. And that's, you know, that's not just those remaining workers who, let's face it, I mean, it must be really, really tough to be working there right now with everything that's gone on. But it's also us as users, like we're sitting here watching this, like, it's some kind of sitcom soap opera type thing. It's, it's crazy. And then, you know, the thought that this is, you know, this is a real this is reality. It's, it's just bonkers.

Madalyn Sklar 12:08

Yes, and I know, like, some people have been joking around, I got the popcorn out watching this play out. But you know, these are people's lives. And this is a platform that many of us use to help our business to help grow communities to bring people together to do so many important things. And the thought of it possibly going away because of the way everything is unfolding. People quitting like crazy people being fired like crazy. Some of these engineers have been fired via tweets have been there for like 10 years that have done very important work there. That just simply disagreed with some of the things publicly that Elon was saying. He didn't like it, he fired them. And it's like, it's all playing out for us to see. And it is really turns me off, it makes me not want to be on Twitter.

Michael Sterling 12:57

The other thing that I've noticed is there's a lot of responses to what he's been doing, of people supporting him and just being very callous and like, well, he's the CEO, he owns the company, he can do this. He has the right and yes, that's true. And yes, hard work is important. But we are all humans and like put yourself in the shoes of anybody who's been working at the same place for a decade. They've put their heart and soul into it. You know, they have children, they have this income that they've been relying on forever. It's right before the holidays. Anybody who, who immediately wants to jump to support him, just remember the humanity behind all this. We are all people after all. And we should not forget that people have certain needs and certain desires. And, you know, like, we cannot just treat other people like robots because we want our business to be successful or whatever. So yeah, all good points you're making.

Suze Cooper 13:56

The next thing we're going to talk about is the blue checks. I mean, this was a hot topic of conversation for us last week as well. At that point, I believe, the verification $8 thing had just been rolled out. I didn't have access to it. Then the next day, I did, but didn't have my card with me to sort it all out, went back in a couple of hours later, and it was completely disappeared from everything. What happened? It disappeared.

Madalyn Sklar 14:21

It was very short lived. I knew there was going to be problems. It was rolled out too quickly. I've had Twitter blue for quite some time. You know, prior to this particular rollout, you didn't get the blue checkmark. But you got some really cool features. It was only $2.99 A month here in the US. It wasn't available everywhere, though. It was only available in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. I know they had plans to roll it out to more countries, but initially that's how Twitter Blue has been working just a small group of countries and we know they recently rolled out the edit button and I figured with them doing In that they weren't just going to open up all as many countries as possible, so more people could subscribe. But before all that could happen, Elon decided, let's charge $7.99. Instead, he made that big deal. We talked about it last week, $8 a month. And you get the blue checkmark, in addition to all the features, and I like you Seuss, I couldn't do it either. I is very interesting, because there were people that were Twitter, blue subscribers, like myself, we already had Twitter blue, that were able to do it, it would not let me do it, it would not let me change my account, every time I tried to do it, it kept giving me an error saying I cannot connect to the App Store. So I did not get the chance. But I'm actually glad I was able to do it. Because these tweets from Morgan I find interesting. And it was something I was very much noticing. As soon as this new blue check $8 verification went into effect, where you're insane. One of the things that we thought was cool was spaces, that when you're in here, if you just look on the mobile app right now, the people with the blue checkmarks. And this is now including the new $1 Check mark that were bought, but you would always see who was verified closer to you, right? So like, when I look, I see posts cohosts I'm gonna see the blue checkmark people first in space. So yeah, so basically brings you up higher for people that that you follow, and they follow like you all follow each other. So the people I follow me, follow me back, I'm going to see those blue checkmark people first. And then further down, I'll see the blue checkmark, people of those I follow but who don't follow me back. And I've always always thought I always thought this was interesting that those blue checkmarks like what a great benefit, especially if you're in a big room and spaces, lots of people. If you've got that coveted blue checkmark, you're gonna be way up high for all your followers to see. And now with the $8. Anybody that buys a blue checkmark will now be up there. And I just thought it was interesting. I noticed that immediately. And then Morgan did these really great tweets and screenshots saying that? Yeah, you're getting all these verified people, but he sees it as a very poor signal. They're verified but it okay. It just lets you know, they pay the money. The his second tweet, he says, of these verified accounts, they have all have like less than 10 followers. So people are like, you know, jumping on this, that don't have that credibility of what that blue checkmark used to represent. Especially all those journalists, I feel bad for all those journalists, because now, you know, we need them to have the blue checkmark, we need them to be official and verified. I think all they had to do was, at least for now, keep the blue checkmarks of verified people as is and have this new thing be a different colour, or a different kind of checkmark. There was talk after this quick rollout that, oh, let's keep the verified people calm official. And I've actually seen a few of those now where it just says the word official. But they didn't do that with all of the verified accounts yet. But we you know, what happened was after one day of this, you'll have heard the story of Eli Lilly and what happened to have their stock plummeted because an account, pretended to be them and made this comment about free insulin. And I just knew something like that was going to happen with this new blue checkmark. I didn't think it was going to happen so quickly. I really thought somebody's going to do something really stupid and crazy. And it's going to get everybody's attention. But I did not expect it to be within that first day of the blue checkmark. And what did you think Sue's about that?

Suze Cooper 18:46

Yeah, I mean, it happened so quickly. I mean, what a way to make something that used to mean something suddenly meaningless, like within seconds.

Michael Sterling 18:56

What's so interesting is that during his space last week before your space, a quote that he and I even clipped it, and I've retweeted it, something that keeps coming back to me is he said truth is signal and falsehood is noise. And he had people internally saying that these things were going to happen. And he says that, that he wants more signal and less noise. And yet the very thing that they rolled out created more noise and more doubt and less legitimacy to a lot of these accounts. And so it's it's like he says one thing, but you never know what he's really thinking and it gets rolled out and becomes very backwards from what he says he wants for the platform. It's just, it's mind numbing. Really,

Suze Cooper 19:41

I just cannot work out. Why is this all happening in public? Why is he not able to have a not internal channels? Do they not have slack? Like I'm sorry, I know it's Twitter, but like, do we really need to see all of this? Do we need to see how it's all working? I just, I think it's just such an odd way of Doing things making it so public. I mean, it's, I don't know, I don't understand it's all. And going back to the verified mark, it hasn't disappeared completely has it, Madelyn, you've just put that tweet up in the nest. Elon is now saying the relaunch of the blue verified, has been moved to November the 29th. To make sure it's rock solid. I mean, you would have hoped that he'd worked out whether it was rock solid or not before he rolled it out a week ago. Yeah, what, what does that mean?

Madalyn Sklar 20:28

Exactly. I mean, that's, that's, I mean, we know how he likes to do things fast, you know, super quick, and see what sticks what works. And if it fails, it fails. But if these things are failing right in front of our eyes, and it's looking really, really bad to everyone that's looking bad for the company that it just puts him in such a negative light. Now, going back to that Washington Post article from vas seddiqui that I shared earlier, there was some interesting stats in there about Twitter, Blue has said there were about 150,000 users who were subscribed to Twitter blue, at the time of the pause, and that these verified accounts is really just point O 6% of the Twitter and 50 million people estimated to be using Twitter every day. So it was such a low percent, but they said that this subscriber figure would bring in about 14 point 4 million annually in revenue. So I know it was just for a short time, but you know, we'd have for it to really make a difference, and bring in all that money that he's trying to do. But he's cut off the advertisers. And so every single day, I hear about huge advertisers pausing or actually closing their Twitter accounts. And that's been the bulk of the read, I think, like 90% of revenue or something like that has been from advertising. And I know he wants to switch it to subscribers, but he's going so fast, that it's like everything is falling apart. So I just don't think he's he's really thinking this stuff through.

Suze Cooper 22:06

I don't think there's any thinking through whatsoever I've had, you know, there have been some really big advertisers that have disappeared from the platform. And, you know, surely that's not what he was after at all. I just think a bit more of a measured strategic approach might have worked better. But you know, what do I know, I'm just spaces, Kosta Danieli, who was one of our friends of the show, should we say, who worked for Twitter, and worked on spaces and worked a lot with the the API and with lots of the people that we know and love have created third party apps, things like spaces, dashboard and floating, and all of those kinds of things, tweeted during the week that he's resigned from Twitter, and will now take some time off to just sleep and recharge, but he'd actually sent out a poll, which asked whether or not people wanted him to do a space because he was quite irregular in a fair few spaces. And the answer came back. Yes, so I believe another friend of the show, hopefully mana who we haven't seen for a while, also has kind of jumped on this and will be hosting the space, I believe in a day or so.

Madalyn Sklar 23:18

Yeah, it's gonna happen on Friday the 18th. And that should be really interesting. So I'm going to try to make it hopefully, it'll be recorded, just in case I can't make it live because I definitely want to hear this.

Suze Cooper 23:28

Yeah, me too. Me too. I'm sure hopefully, we'll have that record for the replay. Going so everyone can go along there and, and catch up with it if you can't catch it live. But yes, that should be an interesting one. I mean, a lot of spaces start a lot of Twitter staff, you know, have aren't speaking out aren't talking about things how much Danieli will want to say or be able to say I don't know, but it will be interesting to hear from him. Either way, we are going to just catch up a little bit about what's going on over on clubhouse, you know, all things audio usually covers social audio news from all the different platforms. We think about Amazon amp and what's going on there. There's a little bit going on. But you know, not too much Spotify Live, which isn't doing very much at all. Generally, our main two are the key players, which are Twitter spaces and clubhouse and we haven't thought about clubhouse for a few weeks, because there's been so much going on on Twitter spaces. But Michael, I know that you've been involved in testing out this houses betta over on clubhouse, and it is something that's potentially going to be rolled out a little bit further. Soon. Now houses were the kind of smaller communities within the rooms. If I'm right, you can correct me if I'm wrong, which will popping up in some places, as I say only in beta. I know that we've gone over there and tested some of them out. I know you've got some reservations about whether or not it's ready to roll out but I I guess clubhouse is wanting to move on things, especially with spaces and Twitter being in such a state of disarray.

Michael Sterling 24:57

I mean, they certainly want to come rolling them out and changing over their code base to this new code that they've built houses on the, you know, have rolled out the ability to do token gating with houses, so that people who own particular crypto or whatever, web three stuff can can log in that way, you know, and they've been slowly rolling out more and more features for houses. But some of those features have been buggy for a while. Or as they roll out something one thing, they make something else a little buggy, they've got to fix it. And so, I mean, it's been a good six or more months that this has been in beta. And they're rolling this out. And the latest news this week is that they want to get community feedback about monetization for houses. And so this Thursday, they're going to have a space or a room, in the public hallways, and getting feedback from the community on things like subscriptions, and what that might look like and other ways that people might want to monetize their houses. So right now, we're just in a holding pattern to see, you know, where clubhouse is going with this, because we figured several weeks ago that this was coming in a few weeks. And now here we are in mid November, and it still has not happened yet. So you know, it might be this month, it might be next month, it might be in 2023, before we see houses come out of beta. But there are still features that need to be cleaned up and bugs that need to be squashed. And, you know, it remains to be seen whether or not they're going to launch houses out of beta with or without the monetization features built into them. So if we're just waiting,

Suze Cooper 26:46

what do you think? What are the biggest bugs with it at the moment? Are they things that people could bear with? Or are they kind of quite integral to making it actually work?

Michael Sterling 26:55

Yeah, so one of the big ones has been the house chats. So basically, in the private community of a house, you have what we call the house chat, and people can leave messages reply to those messages, respond to them with an emoji. And when you go into a house to read messages, it, it's very jumpy, so you'll start to scroll the page to read messages, and all of a sudden, the whole thing will refresh. And then you got to scroll again, when you try to reply to messages or poster things, sometimes it'll refresh automatically, or it'll lose it and you got to start over again. And so there's all these little bugs that just don't make it a great experience. Now you can start a room, anybody in a house can start a room at any time. And those conversations are still amazing. But they have been sort of trying to integrate the scheduled rooms where you can do like weekly, bi weekly or monthly with the feature called the Lounge, which doesn't have as many features as a typical room does, even though you can still have a conversation. So there's all these little disparate sort of things that that need to be tied together and the community is trying to give feedback on this is what we want and it remains to be seen when clubhouse. And what clubhouse is going to do with all of that. Yeah.

Suze Cooper 28:20

I think we've clubhouse potentially they're holding their breath to see what's going on over here. I mean that you know, main competitors, aren't they with spaces and with what's going on over here. So it's interesting to kind of have a look and see how they might be responding whether or not that might be impacting any of these decisions and taking stuff out betta. Yeah, it's a very interesting space. The social audio space has always been interesting since the day someone hit go on making it work for me. And you know, all of this that's happening now is beyond anything I could have ever imagined. Really.

Madalyn Sklar 28:54

I want to circle back over to the verification, the Twitter blue that those are paid $8. I just want to make an additional comment on that before we go to our guest speakers. So while y'all were discussing clubhouse, I was looking through the room here. First of all, when I was talking about the $8 people paying that I don't mean any disrespect, because I can see there's at least a few minutes ago, there was eight of y'all here who have paid for Twitter blue, you've got the blue checkmark and one person here has the official blue checkmark, Paul Armstrong. And all I'm gonna say about this is cool that you got it. And when you're in spaces, you're gonna be way at the top for anyone that's following you. So we'll make you stand out more. I'm just concerned about the confusion because we all have this mindset when we see the blue checkmark, we think it's an official account. Maybe it's a journalist, maybe it's a celebrity is somebody that Twitter decided they deserve to kind of be right a little bit higher, and have that blue tick. And so we take them more seriously especially the journalists publications, in companies. And so that's my only concern is that there's going to be that confusion. And so some of you that may only have a few 100 followers, you haven't really used Twitter a whole lot, you haven't been on here very long. There's this misconception, because of the mindset we all have, that you might be something you may not be, or you are presented as something that you haven't achieved, the way it's been achieved. For all these years, you just paid a fee. So just something to keep in mind. Okay, and hopefully, those that have bought the blue checkmark, are not using it maliciously, that is definitely my hope. And so I just wanted to throw that out there. Because I don't mean any disrespect, because I actually see there's quite a few of y'all and friends of mine. So I don't mean anything disrespectful, but, you know, talking about like earlier with the whole, you know, blue checkmark for $8. And it's just we all have this mic. I mean, when y'all both agree, we have this mindset, Susan, Michael, that that checkmark, it means something, that's why I wish they would have done a different colour or colour or something else or done something. So you could differentiate between the two. I mean,

Suze Cooper 31:18

it's historically always been a mark of, you know, a traditional publisher or credibility. Yeah, exactly. So I think I think the thing is, he's sort of changed the criteria for what that meant, without thinking about the fact that those who already had a blue tick met a different criteria to the new criteria that he was bringing out to give the tick, as you say, it just should have been a different symbol, a different colour. Just something to show that it wasn't that that authentication of you know, yes, this is the BBC, that kind of thing, which is what you expect, if you see an account, that's the BBC with a blue tick. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't very well thought through, and it's nobody's fault. I was absolutely, they're queuing up to get my blue tick, like, don't get me wrong, I want to buy blue tick as well. And I didn't get in quick enough before he pulled it again. But it you know, it's, it's just its meaning has changed. And certainly those of us that have been on the platform for many, many years, it means one thing, for others that are that are joining, starting up new accounts and starting them with this eight pound verification, it means something different. So it's, yeah, it's just a mess, really? And Michael,

Madalyn Sklar 32:34

what are your thoughts real quick?

Michael Sterling 32:36

Oh, I agree with everything you're saying. And, you know, at one point when all this was going to be rolling out, don't remember who it was, or on what platform? They were saying, you know, if you would describe what what's going to be happening with the blue checkmark and Twitter blue, in one word, what would you use, and the word I used was backwards. Because, you know, like, why change up what the blue tick means, and has meant for years, and changes to something else, and then add the official when you could keep the blue tick the way it was, and add something else that shows I mean, like, instead of the official word, just have it say blue, then we all know this person has a Twitter blue person. And like, to me, this didn't seem that difficult. And it was done in a backwards way. And it was confusing, caused a lot of issues with a lot of people. And now, anytime I see the blue tickets like, well, I don't really know what that means. It's just you know, they got a blue tick. Okay, whatever.

Madalyn Sklar 33:36

Yeah. Hey, George, thank you for being so patient.

George Silverman 33:39

Wow, where to start? I think Susan used exactly the right word mess. Which is a technical term for multiple problems. I, I'd like to take a little bit of a different side to this, though. You guys are being quite pessimistic, and I understand it. And I share a lot of it. However, I'm very optimistic and I'm loving a lot of what's being done, but not the ham handed way in which it's being done. I think we have to understand that he's on the spectrum, used to call him Asperger's. That term has gone away. We just calling it on the spectrum. So he's not that sensitive and tuned in to other people. He is a wild innovator. He operates on a different principle. If you look at Tesla and SpaceX, they are wildly innovative companies. They innovating daily on a rate 1000 times maybe that's I think that's being too conservative 1000 times or 10,000 times faster than Twitter was. Twitter got kind of old and creaky. And a lot of people, I think there were a lot of reports about people not working all that hard and all that, I don't care about that what I care about is the rate of innovation, for Twitter was appalling, in my opinion, I understand that Twitter was slower, up till two years ago, and then it got its innovation rate got faster. But it's like a turtle doubling of speed, it got a little faster, and something that was ridiculously slow, moving and unresponsive to its audience. I mean, three, three years for an edit button or tenure, you know, however, you want to argue with that. It's the edit button. Alone, what took years and years and years, Elon would never stand for that. So he's operating in a different way, that's upsetting people. And I understand it, because I don't want to be on a on a boat that's being rebuilt as I'm on it. Right. It's kind of dangerous and upsetting, disconcerting. But this is like a startup. And that's why I think he has, he has notified people that you know, it's all a it's an this is an all hands on deck, save the save the ship situation. And he expects them to have a certain attitude. And he's weeding out ruthlessly, anybody who doesn't have that, that attitude. He's, he's he's given a mission, okay to have a the most reliable possible Time Square Townsquare and applicate as to form the basis of, of application x, which will be everything. So he's articulated a vision, not very clearly, but somewhat. And he said, He's saying that people build that. And if you are not highly committed to that, and innovating at a wild rate, making plenty of mistakes. And I do think the check mark stuff was reckless and crazy. But I welcome that kind of innovation. So stop here, there's a lot more to be said. Almost everything that you said, but I just want to inject a note of optimism. And just asking people look at it a slightly different way than ordinary companies. Now, this is an Elon

Madalyn Sklar 37:33

company. I want to throw something out, though, George, when you when you said, you know, yeah, treat it like a startup. Twitter's not a startup. And there's millions of active users. And we don't want to be part of an experiment. And to me that's experimenting. And I had to put this in as Christine gritman. Christine Grimmond did this really great tweet yesterday that I thought really just brings us all home. She said, I think one of the problems is that in all of his other companies, the product has been the technology and in this, the product is community. And he doesn't understand that. And I so agree with that. I mean, yes, there's technology, of course, but you know, the I feel like that it is community here. And you know, is yes, this

George Silverman 38:18

is people's, if they're all three companies, at least Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter are all or will be AI companies. That's what they are. So Tesla is not a car. Tesla is a robot on wheels. So Tesla is a robot. So it's, it's that was just discussed in the Tesla space two hours ago. And it's gonna be looking at a different way. But yeah, he's screwing around with people's livelihoods. He's screwing around with people's lives. And he's doing a very clumsy way. This liquid Johnson thing, you know, the two fake engineers that got fired and the, you know, I looked at that, look at that and say, What the f are you doing? Making jokes like, you know, stupid ham handed, idiotic jokes like that, that our triple X rated pawns. If you don't get it, you're more though you're ahead of us. That's, that's good. But that I must say I was taken in completely until I realised that was a was a hoax. All that stuff. Why is he participating in that crap, you got to? You've got a company to run for God's sake. So I share your consternation about it. And by the way, I was very upset last last week, as you know, that your Roth was he that he resigned right after being on that space. I was very impressed with him with his efforts to try to keep people informed about what was going on in the trust and security part. Have it. And then I found out that he was a does not a political remark, because I say this, whether he was left wing or right wing, he's a, he was a very lonely left wing partisan with some virulent tweets about conservatives. Again, I don't care which side he's on, but they were absolutely intensely partisan. And somebody who was the head of security and safety and that kind of thing, has no business being a partisan. So now I'm quite glad that he's out. But I was very impressed with his initial efforts. I think they should keep up those efforts. But you got to understand he's experimenting. And yes, we're on the boat. It's concerning.

Suze Cooper 40:44

We're on the boat. We just have no idea where it's going. Because he's not giving us any clues as to what the map is.

George Silverman 40:50

He doesn't know. He doesn't know. It's all experimental. But he needs

Suze Cooper 40:53

to know. And he needs to let other people know otherwise. He's losing people overboard.

George Silverman 40:57

Yeah, of course. Yep. I agree. I agree with that completely.

Suze Cooper 41:01

Thanks so much, George. I mean, look at the hands, Madalyn, the hands.

Madalyn Sklar 41:04

We got lots of people here to let's try to keep this briefing. So everybody gets a chance to speak

Suze Cooper 41:10

Smart Joseph. Yeah. Hi, there.

Unknown Speaker 41:12

Hello. Yeah. Thank you so much. Suze. Madalyn. It's good to see you and Michael. Yeah, with that. I think it was in last week's space. And yeah, I think it was just, I think everybody's sort of been through the wringer. I think I think everybody's mental health probably took a little bit of a couple of points. Last week, and maybe this week, as well. But yeah, I just wanted to come in on two points. One to preface is the, the Asperges. And Elon must be in the neurodivergent. Because I'm also neurodivergent. And I know quite a few of us in here and neurodivergent. And then the second one is just the whole platform where to go what's happening next neurodivergent I just want to say that Elon Musk's behaviour him being on the spectrum is not an excuse for what he's doing. At the same time, being neurodivergent is a double edged sword. And I completely understood what George was saying when he described how Elon uses his it's like chaotic creativity, to birth new things or to enhance things. But rightly so as Susan, Madalyn and and Michael express. You can't you can't do that. You can't do that in the open. And as somebody who's done that, you you spook people is what happens because your ideas, your concepts can often be so far out there, that they're not received well, especially when it hasn't had time to sort of incubate and percolate. And you really figure out how that's going to fit in today's social media. Whether it be viable platform or atmosphere. But yes, so he, like he definitely has creative geniuses. No doubt about it, I think. But how everybody grows up is very different. So different influences affect how we use our, our talents and our creativity in different ways. But I'm not I'm not defending Elon. But I just wanted to point that out in case people like, oh, great, he's he's on the spectrum. So that's why Twitter's Gone, gone to hell. That's that's not the case at all. But yeah, to my second point, real quickly, on a wrap up, it's just that I think, with all things in life, you just have to kind of take a deep breath. Twitter has been huge, I think, for all of us in so many ways of building these, these networks, which has become relationships. And we've been able to sort of connect with people who are, we're all like minded, which is why we love spaces, and we love Spaces Spaces dashboard, which I think is one of the most heavily underutilised and heavily promoted. Services. So Andrew, like who I know, you've probably heard it a lot, but it really, really is true. The fact that you get up each day and and still plug out it if, regardless of numbers and all of those things. It's a big deal. So yeah, just just appreciate that. But yeah, I think I think it's an opportunity for us to grow too, because I think in a way, maybe we all got complacent with Twitter. And this might offend people, right. But to me, it felt like the rug was literally whipped out from under my feet and I was just like, Oh my God, what do I do next? Right. Well, have I devoted time into other aspects of my business that maybe I've neglected? Am I active on other platforms? Do I have a website? Do I have a email subscription list to which hearing that drove me like I was pulling my hair out every day? I went into a space and I heard somebody say, get an email, subscribe, let's get and it was like How the hell do you build an email subscription list? Or people that you're trying to keep in contact with outside of social media platforms? So yeah, just I just wanted to encourage everybody to keep, keep doing what you're doing. I think whether or not Twitter lasts longer or not, just do all the things that you know you need to do to keep enhancing your business and stay connected. Yeah. Thanks. That was it.

Suze Cooper 45:30

Thanks so much for those comments. Smart, Joseph, really insightful. And yeah, I mean, spaces dashboard, I realised I didn't actually tell you where you could find it spaces dashboard.com. And also, you can follow spaces dashboard. Andrew is in the space at the moment, his avatar is literally saying spaces dashboard, you can find him you can follow him. You can find out more about it there, if you want to. So, yes, next up, we have Adam. Hi, there. Adam. We spoke with you last week just after the Elan space. What are your thoughts seven days on?

Adam 46:03

So it's definitely been a turbulent seven days in a way. But and of course, you know, the, for people that didn't understand you could click on a blue checkmark to see how, you know if it was purchased through Twitter or blue or, you know, verified by government. That that was kind of amazing to me, actually, I thought that was really well widely known. In terms of I have to agree with George and a couple things here. It is a startup. Yes, it's a company that has been going for a very long time. But as we saw Twitter spaces built, the building public, I went through multiple phones, multiple core, I searched, I tried Android, I tried iOS, I use it on a computer with bluestacks, I mean, so many different things. And I was willing to do that. And I don't know any company in Silicon Valley, that's a startup where employees aren't basically living in the office. I mean, it let's take a look at Google for a second. Still, to this day, people are working minimum 12 to 14 hour days. And you know, it technically, the company's name is alphabet, but just for a second, and more. In a multibillion dollar corporation that was purchased at $45.5 billion. They oftentimes release for iOS first. And many times the what was available for iOS didn't always become available for Android. And so and that's nothing against the spaces team. I think the spaces team did a phenomenal job. And I've enjoyed Twitter spaces tremendously. And maybe if not, for Twitter spaces, we wouldn't even be at this place. Who knows. But we have to look at it in the terms of I mean, you know, the way that we were looking at the next generation of, you know, the web boom, where we're heading, and so maybe I say startup, or it's the next generation of web that we're heading towards, couldn't have been more smooth. Perhaps, don't forget, towards the end there, he did try to stop the purchase. And he was taken to court in Delaware. And was, it looked like it was going to be forced, if not play on quarter years forced to purchase it. So I mean, we can go back. I mean, where do you go in, like, in, you know, like, what do you look at, but he is an innovator. So anyone that can take on the oil industry, and create an electric car, anyone that can launch a spaceship into outer space autonomously? You know, which SpaceX cannot do and has reusable rockets. We have to look at as an innovator now, maybe he's good at hiring people. Maybe he's, you know, just good at recruiting, I will, whatever it is, you know, but I'm in that space. He, you know, which I believe I saw last week, I think he said, you know, he just got something along the lines. I just got the keys to this shop, you know, a week ago. And so we've seen mass firings which had been reported prior up to 75%. I saw on a AP, I believe, and some reported 50% And we've seen people leave. So at that point, you know, you have to the question becomes then You know, where is it heading? And I think that we're going to look, we're going to see Twitter turned into a whole new software stack, in a way into web three. And, you know, I would, I would love to know, the amount of use or if demand or users has increased, I'd love to see equality for all, for both Android and iOS, at the same time, innovation, etc. So I mean, I just, you know, couldn't be smoother. Yes, but who else? I know for a fact that alphabet and Facebook both had the chance at the time to purchase it in 2016, or 17. And they did not. And they had to take on a private equity firm, who put a billion dollars into this company. And that took that private equity firm out and put Ilan back in. So I mean, you know, to whether it's playing out, I guess the main thing is, is this is playing out in public. And we're seeing good people who worked very hard on losing their jobs. That's the tough part. The but the innovative side of it, is the other side, the business side of it. And that by we're also seeing weigh offs around the whole tech industry. So we also have to look at that. But we are here on Twitter, you know, discussing all of this. So I just, you know, all in there. And

Suze Cooper 51:31

yeah, I'm you know, I'm sure he's got plans for the whole web three thing, the innovation, all the rest of it, I, you know, I'd love to see them. But I'd really like to know that that's his plan, rather than just watching all this public horror show. Really? Ariel, you've been so patient. I know that. You know, you've got stuff to say. Yes. Hello. I want to bring you in right here.

Unknown Speaker 51:53

Well, thank you. So So I wanted to say is when you thought like, what, because I've been hearing rumours around the rumour mill that, like Elon is not so interested in Twitter spaces. But I think that's all like, as they say, fake news. Because, you know, like what Elon wants is a chance for, for real communication between people. And it's so much harder to be a fake person on Twitter spaces, where people are actually listening to your voice and hear tone. And it's synchronous communication. Let me let me let me tell you what the importance of synchronous communication actually is. It's like we're communicating in real time. Whereas the rest of Twitter, someone can write you something that you don't like, and you'll see it in like five minutes after that six minutes after that your mood has changed. The person who wrote it, their mood has changed. And the beauty about Twitter spaces is it gives people a chance to clarify, let's say, I said something that offended you and you're on this call, you can open up and say, Hey, is this what you meant by what you said? And I can either say yes, or I can either say no. And we can have a back and forth where as in the rest of Twitter, this back and forth doesn't exist, you'll see a message that was sent to you like a week ago, and who knows what mood you're in and who knows what mood the other person's in, and then it can lead to conflict and unnecessary conflict. And then I want I wanted to say another thing with the whole check system is that it's I think, the beauty of this is that it's levelling the playing field, people who are already known, and people who are already famous, they already got their 15 minutes of fame. But I think Twitter spaces gives a chance for voices that haven't been heard before, to be heard, to be known to be there. And that's the beauty of it. It's like let's find new talented people. Let's find new voices, let's find new ideas, instead of sticking to the same exact people all the time and not expanding our things. And one last thing I'll say about neuro diversity, because I have Asperger's, sometimes we have a sense of humour. That's a little bit strange. But when you tell us to clarify and explain, it's usually not out of malice or hate or anything like that. So I just wanted to make that clear. And if Elon ever does something that we don't like, Let's invite him into a space and let's let him clarify, let's not attack let's not jump to conclusions. Let's let him answer our question. So that's all I had to say. And thank you for inviting me up.

Madalyn Sklar 54:39

Great insights. Thank you for sharing that with us. One thing I want to point out going back to Adam in the beginning, Adam, you were mentioning about the blue checkmark and being able to tell whether it's somebody that that was already verified or somebody that is got it through Twitter blew. It was not super obvious. I did not even know about it till George explained it to me last week. How you can tell. And just for everybody out there that doesn't know, all you have to do is tap on the blue checkmark. And when you do that, it lets you know if it was Twitter blue, or if it was somebody that was already previously verified, but it's an extra step. And I think that's part of the problem. You got them all mixed together, you can't tell sometimes which ones which. And that's why I think it should have been different colour or something to differentiate it. But next time you see the blue check mark, you just tap on the check mark itself. And that's how you'll know well, I

Suze Cooper 55:32

didn't know that I've learned something new.

Madalyn Sklar 55:34

It wasn't obvious now, isn't it again? I didn't know till George pointed it out. Because I made a comment last week about you can't even tell, you know, who was already verified versus those that paid. And George like Madalyn, all you do is tap on the blue checkmark done. And I'm like, Well, I didn't know that. If I didn't know that. That means a lot of people don't know. So. Yeah. So big up to

Suze Cooper 55:57

George for letting us all know,

George Silverman 55:59

oh, you're quite welcome. I think that the the blue checkmark was intended to be a extra level of Scrum only. And he explained this in the space he was in last week, only an extra level of screening, you know, you have to have a payment method. So you can't be a bot. But obviously a lot of people who are going to pay eight bucks to head to met to pull a prank? How will you know people pay hundreds 1000s of dollars to pull a prank. So that wasn't gonna eliminate those things. And I think he'll build in a slightly more verification, you know, a greater verification system. And, you know, it's, I would, and he overdid the verification system, because I would pay eight bucks a month, just for bookmark folders, just that one feature of Twitter blue. And there are several other features, you know, reading threads in the thread reader and a couple other things are very valuable, and they're going to be increasing. And so it was an experiment that didn't work. He said he was going to do a bunch of dumb things. Again, I'm not excusing him. And by the way, I just want to clarify, when I mentioned his neuro diversity, I was not saying he's neuro diversity. He's doing all these things because he's neuro diverse. No, no, I'm just saying it explains some of his insensitivity to people. I'm a psychologist by training. And I would never use that as an excuse for somebody. I think it's an explanation, as Ariel said, of his peculiar sense of humour, which sound which comes across kind of callous, and frankly, weird, which I happen to personally find funny, but a lot of people don't. And so it's just just an additional layer of explanation. But I'm not saying he's doing all this causes. Nor diverse. No, he's doing this because he's a wild innovator.

Madalyn Sklar 58:07

Thank you for sharing that, George. And before we go, one more thing I want to mention, you've probably seen tweets where people say, hey, now it's probably a good time to download your Twitter data, as well let you know is very easy to do, you just want to get to your settings and support, you go into the privacy settings and privacy section through there. And it's in there, you go into your account on the web. And you can also you should be able to get it through mobile as well. There'll be a section that says download an archive of your data. And what will happen is Twitter is going to email you a link, like 24 to 48 hours later, it took me two days to get mine and what you want to do, and then you'll click the link and you want to log back into your Twitter when you go through that process. And go ahead and download it, it would not hurt to go ahead and have that information. Now, because I've been using Twitter since 2008. And I'm a power user I tweet a lot. I have 20 gigs of data. I know most of y'all do not some of y'all have told me you only have two gigs. My computer has been downloading it for two hours now. And it says I'm only at 16 gigabytes, I got a little bit more to go. So it's taking a while so don't get too frustrated. You know, the more you tweet requested last week and didn't get it then request again. I'll do it again. But yeah, I requested last week. It took a couple of days. So just a little piece of advice before we go.

Suze Cooper 59:30

Fantastic. Well, thank you to everybody who has taken the mic we are going to close out now our space is generally an hour on a Wednesday. It's been great to hear from everybody again, all being well, being optimistic in the spirit of George's optimism. We will be here next week on Wednesday. 8pm GMT 3pm et but who knows a week is a really long time in the world of Twitter. Make sure you sign up to mine and Madalyn's newsletters via our profiles. We both got review on there We're on our bios. And if if this whole thing falls over, then we'll let you know where you can find us via our newsletters. Thanks again, everybody.

Madalyn Sklar 1:00:09

See y'all next week. Bye, everybody. Michael, thank you for CO hosting with us.

Michael Sterling 1:00:12

Thanks for having me. See y'all later.

Madalyn Sklar 1:00:18

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 1:00:31

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