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

Well, we've got plenty to talk about today with the latest social audio news. Are you ready to dive right in?

Suze Cooper 0:21

Yeah, let's let's do it. You know, we're gonna start I think with with spaces as we always do now, you know, Twitter. Twitter's got a funny atmosphere around here right now. Do you feel that? Madalyn?

Madalyn Sklar 0:34

Yes, definitely. There's just there's just something in the air. You know, it's a little different. The moment is don't know what's going to happen next. Hopefully all good things. Right. That's that's the hope and hoping that spaces will continue to be here and grow and get even bigger.

Suze Cooper 0:52

Yeah, I mean, it's certainly an air of uncertainty, which is to be expected after, you know, everything that's happened over the last two or three weeks. I mean, I was reading somewhere that Elon hasn't even been in charged for a full month yet. And you know, what we've seen happen, it's just been an incredible pace. You know, we have said that week on week on week. For Spaces, we're still none the wiser though. Madeline, am I right? That really there's there's no word from Elon either, whether he's in support of spaces continuing or whether it's something that's gonna go I mean, we know for certain that there's no team there building it any longer. There's no one to fix any bugs that might come up. But we haven't got like a definitive yea or nay on on this feature halfway.

Madalyn Sklar 1:37

Right. And that's a little concerning, because we certainly don't want spaces to go away. We don't really want any of these features we've come to rely on to go away. But but they could I mean, there's departments in Twitter that are completely gone, that doesn't exist. And I'm just concerned like, what if something happens, and we all just can't get on to spaces? Are they going to fix it quickly and easily? And let us still use it? Or is it just going to go by the wayside? We just don't know. There's just so many things are up in the air at the moment. And it is concerning. And, you know, last week, Danielle Lee, who was part of the spaces team, he had been let go. And he held a special Twitter space discussion. I wish it was recorded. We don't have a recording to share, as it was. I guess there's not or did you take it down? Do you know?

Suze Cooper 2:27

Yeah, it was there. And I then went back to listen to it later. And it just says no spaces no longer available. So I'm assuming that he's gone back and deleted that. Which is a shame, because I would have liked to have listened to it. However, there were some clips around and about from the space, which I could still hear even though the main space wasn't there. I mean, again, maybe this is a glitch. Maybe it's a bug, who knows, there's no one to report it to. You know, so I could hear some clips and someone had clipped what he'd said around spaces. I think it might have even been George that was in that space live that that asked Danieli if he felt that Elon could see the value in Twitter spaces and in social audio for Twitter. And Danielle's answer to that in this clip was not that I'm aware of. I mean, you know, this is one person who's part of you know, all those hundreds of people that worked at Twitter. And, you know, in his his opinion, he kind of couldn't see, one one way or the other, again, you know, still uncertainty around around the future of spaces. Simon bow mains kind of backed that up, though, in terms of the uncertainty of it with that with a thread, which was actually on the future of communities. But I really think what he's saying here about the future of communities could be said for spaces as well, you know, he says, so many of the key people behind it simply aren't with the company anymore. And that makes it even harder for me to see how it moves forward. Since I don't know who is left understands the how, what's And why's of how it was all built? You know? Yes, that comment is particularly about communities. But I really feel like the same could be said for spaces because all of those names and people that we were familiar with and used to see dropping in and out of our spaces aren't there anymore, and surely they were the ones that held all the keys knew all the answers.

Madalyn Sklar 4:17

Right? They kept it running, and they're not there anymore. So we just there's no way to know like, what is going on? Who's maintaining spaces? What if it breaks, what's gonna happen next? We just don't know. I'm glad we're all able to still be here live and do this. I just wish that they were being a little more forthcoming. For those who are still there to let us know, like, you know, is this going to survive? Are we still going to be able to keep using spaces you know, we do this every week here. I co host two other spaces every week. So three total for me. I mean, I'm already kind of thinking ahead like Alright, do I need to just have clubhouse on standby and you and I've talked about Are simulcasting on clubhouse. And you know, like not leaving clubhouse behind, because that might become our new home at some point to continue this discussion of social audio, so I just wished there was more information being relayed to all of us to know more about, like, what's going on behind the scenes is still going to be here tomorrow.

Suze Cooper 5:20

Yeah. And I mean, having seen how quick fire some of these decisions have been, you know, I've literally gone to bed and it's been one way and woken up the next morning and whole departments have disappeared. You know, it's, it's quite, you know, it could really happen that we just all log in tomorrow, and it's not here that said social audio as a thing isn't going anywhere. And I still feel like it, you know, clubhouse is is still there. LinkedIn audio events are still there. Spotify live is still there. Does anyone remember that? One? I mean, it's, you know, tumble weeding. I think I went on that the other day. And I think there were there were two rooms happening over there. I don't know. Not much. Not much going on anyway. But you know, the different standalone apps. We've got a story later on regarding one of those that they're they're still doing their thing as well. And yes, we did talk about simulcasting this and and in fact, I was hoping to do a test between last week and this week, to see whether or not I could hook it all up and go live on clubhouse at the same time as being here on Twitter. I know it can be done. Michael Sterling, I'm looking at you. I know you have done it. And I'm hoping for your help in setting this all up. But the other thing is, you know, I'd quite like to see whether or not I could do it over on LinkedIn. Because the thing with the simulcast is that we're having the road caster, I've got a connection out to the phone, which is where I'm talking to you from on Twitter, because obviously, it's mobile only, we can't expect any desktop version anytime soon, I think that can be sure. But I can then use the desktop version of LinkedIn via a USB connection, or club deck, which allows me to connect to clubhouse via the desktop. So there are those different connections. But as we've said before, there are 1,000,001 things when you're hosting a space that you need to think about, particularly when you know we've got a kind of agenda and a bit of a plan of what we're going to talk about. I'm trying to record it for the podcast. And so to add that in, I'm definitely going to need to test that stuff out before we go live with it. But equally, I also know that all things audio was born out of us experimenting with this and experimenting with the tech and trying to work out what worked and what didn't. So I also know that our community will be generous in terms of if I'm testing something out, and it doesn't all go straight forward. We'll all learn from that experience. Right? Absolutely, for sure. So audio on Twitter, kind of as a as a whole. We've got this next tweet from Alex Heath, which talks about the possibility of having voice calls in DMS. Now I kind of link that as in audio. Obviously, we had the audio tab we were talking about podcasting. We're wondering what's happening with social audio. Now this video and voice calling potentially, in DMS. Madalyn, what do you think of this one?

Madalyn Sklar 8:06

Yeah, this is super interesting. The article is talking about making DMS, encrypted and then adding video in voice calling. You know, we're all for anything with audio. And I think that would be pretty amazing. To be to be able to utilise it that way. You can certainly make a video on your phone and then upload it in your DM I've done that many times. But I would love to be able to just record an audio right in the DMS you know, with text messaging, at least with me on my iPhone, I can easily do that. Sometimes if I'm in a hurry, and I just don't want to type out my my text, I'll just tap on the little microphone and record the audio and, and I really liked doing that because you're really able to get your voice in front of that person, the inflection, the everything behind instead of them just reading text, which is very, very easy to not understand where the person is coming from. And sometimes you take something the wrong way just by reading the words because you don't hear the voice behind it. So I love the idea of this. But what's interesting legion had a tweet come out right after this one I just shared, saying that. voice notes and DMS have been there for a long time now. However, it's only limited to some countries. And a simple VPN may do the trick as well. And he he quote tweets, his original tweet from February, saying Did you know you can send voice notes and DMS on Twitter, but it's only available in five countries. And he mentioned mentions Argentina, Brazil, India, Japan and the Netherlands. And then in that tweet, somebody had asked him, like, you know, is this iOS as well, and he says he's on an Android. So it might just be an Android thing we don't know. But I've never seen because he has screenshots of seeing the little microphone but to be able to record the little audio button to be able to record, but I've never seen that before, but it makes me think of how I can do that in my text messaging on my iPhone. Yeah,

Suze Cooper 10:13

I mean, and this is voice notes as opposed to a voice call, isn't it? So this would be sort of asynchronous, leaving that sort of voice text message, if you like voice text messages, that doesn't make any sense at all. But like a voice message, a bit like the voice tweets that we've spoken about before, but in the DMS instead, yeah.

Madalyn Sklar 10:32

Right, right. But when they're talking about in this, the tweet from Alex Heath of The Verge, talking about actual voice calling, so that to me sounds like it's gonna be like real time, like I could you and I, even though I'm in the US, and you're in the UK, it sounds like we'd be able to have a live voice call between us in the DM, which would be amazing. It'd be kind of like using WhatsApp. And we know Elon wants to turn Twitter into a more all in one type of app and incorporate, I think voice pay a payment system. Like he has a lot of big ideas that I think could make it amazing.

Suze Cooper 11:11

Oh, yeah, he wanted to do all the things, all the bells and whistles. I'd, you know, he needs to find the people to help him out to do that. Yeah. I'm not so sure about this whole at one app to rule them all. You know, I'm, yeah, I'll sit and watch that one. I'm not sure that's, that's gonna do it. But yeah, I get that. That's his plan. And, you know, I don't know, does anyone want to make a phone call on Twitter? It's a bit like with the audio tab? Does anyone want to listen to a podcast on Twitter, especially a podcast? They can't choose? Sorry, I'm still banging on about that. And I know it's not going to change anytime soon now. But yeah, I'm just not sure. They're kind of going through the whole product. 101? Like, do you know your user? Do you know what they want? Those kinds of

Madalyn Sklar 11:57

things. Right. Exactly. Exactly. My thought exactly. on that.

Suze Cooper 12:02

And a lovely tweet here. We're gonna big up we do you love Andrew Lyons, the way that you promote different spaces and the visuals that you use, this was one that I absolutely loved. Look who's talking on spaces. This tweet came out earlier this week really caught my eye. It's just pure gold, I think Madalyn in terms of being eye catching and letting people know that spaces are going on, don't you think?

Madalyn Sklar 12:32

Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's great that Andrew has really keeps a pulse on everything through you know, he has spaces dashboard.com, which is phenomenal. And I'm so glad I saw this particular tweet, because I did not realise they were these hosted spaces from NPR, NASA, Forbes and HootSuite that were going on just a few days ago. Or maybe it was yesterday. So big names with lots of followers are using spaces. And I think that's just something that really screams I'm hoping to Elon, like, don't mess with spaces is powerful. It brings people together. Great conversations, and we're seeing the shift with the bigger names. Starting to use it finally, after almost two years.

Suze Cooper 13:21

Yeah, I mean, NASA have always been a big supporter of spaces. They've done quite a few large spaces that people have joined MPR equally, but to see, you know, they're obviously still using it, they're seeing the value in it. And yeah, hopefully this is something that, you know, might might make you long realise that there are these big names using it. And, you know, it's worth keeping, please keep it.

Madalyn Sklar 13:47

Exactly, yes, please don't let it go away. But But yeah, bit, we're seeing big profile accounts. I think HootSuite has only used it a few times before and it's nice seeing them embracing it. I think this is just something we're going to start seeing more and more, as long as spaces continues to work, and we don't have issues with it.

Suze Cooper 14:09

Sure. Yeah. Yeah, I think so too. I do think so too. I want to scoot back round, we were talking about Danieli space and how saline has dipped into the DMS with some information that I think is important that we we cover around Danieli space. He said Danieli left on his own terms, which I should have said earlier, the space was recorded and Danieli deleted the account. So that's why the space isn't available. So yeah, anyone who was going back to try and find that as well. That's why it's not there because the account has gone which makes sense.

Madalyn Sklar 14:43

Interesting that he deleted his account. I wonder how many former Twitter employees have done that have actually deleted their their accounts and are like okay, I'm done. Moving on.

Suze Cooper 14:55

Yeah, yeah, it does make you wonder, doesn't it? How many people have I've just kind of disappeared, I did actually go into my DMs to try and just send some messages to some of the Twitter staff that I've been in touch with over the last year or so just a kind of general thinking of you type message. And I think out of the five that I had in my DMs, two of them have completely gone, so I can't reach them at all. I was quite sad about that.

Madalyn Sklar 15:21

Interesting. Yeah. Well, what what one thing that popped into my notifications earlier today was Danny seeing who was, you know, running spaces on the, you know, as, through Twitter, on the Twitter team, and he liked one of my tweets after he was let go, he had done a really, you know, heartfelt tweet, and I had responded to it, I know, he's been getting back to every single person that tweeted him on there, you know, when all that went down, and it took them a little bit of time. But he finally like he saw mine and hit the like, and I was glad to see him in my feed. So I can understand that some of the former employees would want to just be like, I'm done with this, delete the account, not look back. But not everybody is going to do that. And it is always nice to still see some of them on Twitter, maybe they're not using it as much, maybe they're not communicating much, but they're still there, we can still reach out to them, we can still DM them, it is hard to move on without seeing them all the time. Right? Because I mean, we really relied on them for so much information with what's happening with spaces them hosting the regular q&a days, and always wanting to hear from all of us as the users.

Suze Cooper 16:41

Well, yeah, this was the thing, you know, I was giving feedback on the audio tab to a couple of them. And, and different things like that. And, you know, messages were always usually felt like me grumbling about a load of stuff, and then going thanks very much do tell us if there's anything else. But you know, it still felt like a connection. And I guess it's that reminder for all of us really, whether or not it's someone working at Twitter, or whether it's just someone that you feel you've built up a rapport with here on on Twitter, or on any social media site, you know, is to ensure that if that relationship is only on that one platform that perhaps you follow those people in other places as well, because these social media sites, you know, they're not, they're not infallible, they could they could fall over, they could disappear, all kinds of things could happen. And then you'll lose those connections and those those relationships. So you know, it's worth thinking about who it is that you would truly miss it should the should the whole thing fall down.

Madalyn Sklar 17:39

Exactly. And that's just a great reminder for everyone out there who does use Twitter, for business as trying to get people to join your mailing list, get people to your website, because those are things are not going to ever go away. Twitter could go away tomorrow, Facebook, all these social media sites could go away. Don't think they can't, we never thought MySpace would go away. And it did a billionaire bought it and ran it into the ground. It's happened before, something like this could possibly happen. Again, we hope it doesn't. Because we've all worked so hard to build communities to connect with people on these awesome platforms, but they could go away. So try to get people to join your mailing list, find other ways to connect with them, because it would be such a shame to lose touch. Back in the MySpace days, I used it for business, I had built up so many followers, so many great connections, and went and didn't think it would ever go away. And when it did, I had nothing to show for it. I had no way to reach out to any of these people. I had build amazing relationships with unless it you know, I had their phone number or their email address. But many times are we doing that on social media now? Unless you get them to come join your mailing list that you know, Hey, you want to stay in touch with me. Be sure to join my mailing list. And I send out you know, weekly newsletter we can stay in touch, you know, something to think about if you're using this for business, like don't forget the power of your website and your email list.

Suze Cooper 19:05

Yeah, important message there for everybody. We've said this pretty much every week since Elon took over. I think it's worth saying every single week. Because none of us wants to lose lose touch. Certainly the community we've built around all things audio. I think almost I can I can still feel myself, George I am not being as positive as you want me to be. I know that the optimism is not there. You can probably hear it and I'm trying really hard to be optimistic about it. But yeah, it just feels like so much has changed so fast. that anything could happen and that uncertainty I'm I'm not a this is the beauty of being live on social audio. You can hear the uncertainty in my voice. You can you can hear those pessimistic thoughts. But there you are. That's that's, that's what's real about it, isn't it?

Madalyn Sklar 19:57

Absolutely. We start some other news clubhouse news, we still got things to talk about with clubhouse this week.

Suze Cooper 20:04

Yeah, just a quick thing on clubhouse, rolling out houses to more users globally. We did discuss this briefly with Michael last week about how houses are still in beta. And was it ready to be given two more users there were, you know, Michael, and Morgan, particularly I know, have used houses in beta and have been testing it out, and have successfully kind of built up a mini community within the community, if you see what I mean, where, you know, sort of drop in and chat to one another, invite only being able to really kind of hone and shape that community by only giving invites to people who then invite people they know, but then perhaps, you know, keeping it small, if you see what I mean. And there were some reservations there that Michael had about whether or not the tech was really ready for it, whether it was generally ready to be rolled out. But it seems this tweet from Sajad says, you know that they're thinking of rolling out to more countries. Looks like all non US users can now create one house in app. That was something Morgan was was talking about as well. So perhaps if Morgan's free in a bit, he could come in and embellish a little bit on that. We think perhaps a US release scheduled for early next week, potentially. So yep, more to come from clubhouse houses is definitely something they're leaning into those smaller, more intimate groups of people, I would say the difference there is that generally, people in there are already connected by at least one other person that's in the house. And that makes for a very different atmosphere when you're then in there having a chat with the others that are there. I've really enjoyed houses more than I've enjoyed diving into rooms from the hallway. So I do think it's something that they should hang on to and roll out and it looks like they are leaning into it. So that's exciting. Michael has also tweeted this week about the nation flags because there's some football happening. It's the World Cup everyone and clubhouse has got on board. And they have got these nation flags that can now be shown in a user's profile. So you can kind of go along, pick your flag and have it showing on your on your profile picture. So yeah. Michael says here, they introduced the feature for the duration of the Summer Olympics in 2021. So this is kind of a dip back into the archive if you like and pulling that one out again for the World Cup. So good for them kind of tying into what's going on. And coming up with a little fun feature there that I'm sure people on clubhouse will will be enjoying. So yeah, a bit of clubhouse news.

Madalyn Sklar 22:54

Yeah. And also because we have this interactive chat on mobile at the bottom right, you see the little purple bubble pull Armstrong replied in there just a little while ago to the discussion. He said he just opened clubhouse seems like a ghost town, lots of rooms they follow has less than one room a week despite having 1000s of members. So that is interesting.

Suze Cooper 23:17

That is interesting. I wonder if they're all in houses? Are they all gone and like syphoned off the people they really actually want to talk to? Who are the people that have engaged with them elsewhere? Because that's the thing, that's what could happen. That's what what I could see potentially happening. And you know, Morgan, do definitely correct me or come up against me on this one if I'm wrong. But potentially if you've got a group, a room that you're you're running a public room that you're running, but you see the same 10 people in there every week, then you're gonna give those people the invites to your house. Right? And eventually, surely, that's the group of people that are engaged and loyal and are therefore there, but they're, they're part of the house. So do you then run a house and a room? You know, it's I guess it's different content for different things. It's all those things that I'm sure people you know, creators over on clubhouse will be thinking about? Certainly, that's what I would be thinking about if I was trying to juggle it. And again, it's time as well. Like if you got time for content for two rooms into house, two rooms, and sorry, I reminisce and a house and yeah, I mean, there's lots there's also think about that.

Madalyn Sklar 24:26

Right, exactly. And then one last piece of news you have on Wisdom.

Suze Cooper 24:30

Oh, yeah. Yeah, this was so wisdom is one of the standalone apps that I've got on my phone and it's one you know, I've tested out lots of them over the last 18 months. This is one that has continually saved on my phone and actually this one Soundwave and Racket, they're the they're the three that have stayed I've tested out others and they've been deleted. But yeah, wisdom has launched this voice answers, which is short form audio, you go into the app and you You can either click on the Ask tab or the Live tab. At the moment, it does load up in ask mode, I guess because this is it's new, it's new thing. And there'll be a question at the top of the screen. And someone will have asked a question. I don't know, for instance, what's been the podcast you've been listening to most this month, something like that? You'll hear a little short voice message from whoever's posed the question, it will be there up on the screen, and you can then reply with with your answer. And people are going in, it's a kind of very quick way, you know, you give an answer. And then you can listen to other people's answers, if you want to the live wisdom version, the original, if you like, he's still there. But you click on the Live tab for that, and wisdom had positioned itself as you know, somewhere to go where you would learn something new, hence the name. It was all about having experts who would then talk and kind of give their answer questions from people on their topic. So this is sort of the shorter form version of that. For me, it reminded me of the Alexa answers feature that was available on smart speakers, which was sort of crowd crowd sourced answers if you like. So, you know, Alexa would need an answer to a question. You could join the email list, find out what those questions were and then record your answer. And it could potentially be used as the answer to an Alexa question that's often asked. So it does sound quite similar to that. But yeah, just something extra that they've added over there. Again, you know, it's taking the core of what they want that platform to be, but just doing it in a slightly different way. So yeah, interesting to see them bringing out a new feature as well.

Madalyn Sklar 26:49

Yeah, definitely. Is Alexa. Still a thing or not as much?

Suze Cooper 26:55

Well, it's still on my desk! Yes, you're right to say I mean, my goodness, I think Paul Armstrong's the one to ask really about Amazon and what's going on over there. But yes, the Alexa Alexa, but by all accounts, the Alexa teams have been cut, Amazon's teams have been cut. Yes, there's, there's a change of direction, there's in the voice industry, I really feel like there has been over the last three months, six months or so a kind of change in direction, around those platforms that we might have expected to, again, be around forever. It started really a few months back when Google announced that they were going to sunset actions, which were their version of apps for the Google Assistant smart speakers. And now we hear that, you know, Amazon's Alexa teams have been cut. And you know, like Twitter, if you cut the engineers and you cut the devs, then you you don't have anyone there building thing. So yeah, it's kind of see where that goes. I mean, the Amazon amp was what we've really been talking about here on all things audio, because that was their social audio play. And again, a few weeks ago, we'd said that, you know, their staff was cut by, by an awful lot wasn't it was a larger number than we thought I can't remember off the top of my head what it was, but you know, they were left with a very, very small team. And potentially, I felt that amp and Alexa at some point should should marry and pair up and be useful to one another amp, almost being like the big sister big brother to flash briefings, which, you know, Alexa and Amazon kind of pushed as their own version of a podcast that could be reached by or a smart speaker. And then amp sort of being the grownup version, if you like being a radio station version of that, that perhaps people might want to tune into every day and listen to content from their their chosen providers. But yeah, I mean, I'm not sure that the general feeling at the moment is that voice is really becoming the way that we will interact. It's becoming the interface. Or it's always been the interface, I guess. But it's more about optimising the content that we've got on the internet. And the stuff that we search for for voice search, then it is creating new stuff, specifically for voice so things like skills, actions, all those kinds of things, but again, you know, it's all in flux. It feels like the whole tech world is in flux. And no one's quite sure or certain but but yeah, I mean, I could I could have a whole second podcast about voice so Don't tempt me. Bez, hello, welcome to the to the space.

Bez Rengifo 29:42

Hello. Hello. Happy Wednesday and I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday coming up. What I wanted to share and Madalyn you you spoke to this just recently here just a few minutes ago is the important As of, you know, you know, all of these platforms like you, you mentioned my space you, there's been other platforms that have come and gone. And it takes us back to the basics is that all of this, all of these are tools that we don't own and there are rented land and the importance of getting people on an email list or maybe paying for a community that you can curate them and take people to, you know, also, you know, hey, maybe now discord becomes an option, you can set up your own Discord server, and you move the conversation that way. And, and people will complain about LinkedIn audio, you know, it's lacking some of the features that Twitter or clubhouse has. But I tell them look, when clubhouse or Twitter lacks some of these features, we figured out a workaround. And at the end of the day, the magic happens when you take people off the platform, and you have a one on one conversation with them. And that's where you, you deepen and strengthen relationships, and you decide where that relationship is going to go? Is it going to be a friends? Is it going to be a connection, and you don't know how it will turn out in the future? Is it business you're going to do right now or business that you may do in the future? I mean, it's so contextual, but you know, what's happening with Twitter just takes us back to the basics. And, and we just need to act accordingly. If we, we value the connections we've made here. And we still want to them to keep in touch within whether Twitter succeeds or not. I mean, it really shouldn't matter, we should go back to the x's and o's and the blocking and tackling that we do when we when we do business. So those are my two cents.

Madalyn Sklar 32:01

I love that because that was so well said. So earlier, I don't know if you were here earlier, but I talked about how I got to go have lunch with George Silverman today, because he's here in Houston visiting family for the holidays. And that is the power of utilising the internet, digital marketing, social media, and especially Twitter. Because we can take these relationships, we build online, and move forward with them in so many different ways. I see AC Hart's here, and her and I met on Spaces recently, and then we had a phone call afterwards. So awesome. I mean, it's the power of these connections. So such a great point because that you bring that up. And that's why earlier I brought up, if you're using social media, for marketing for business, just don't forget about getting people to your website, getting people to your email list, because of the things you own that are not going to go away tomorrow. Twitter could go away tomorrow, but your email list and your website is not going away. Unless you want it to go away. You have the control. But great having you here bez

Suze Cooper 32:59

Yeah, absolutely. This is where social audio, you know, that conversation, you can take that conversation and have it in real life somewhere else too.

Madalyn Sklar 33:07

And audio was just so powerful. That's why I'm just so attracted to Twitter spaces and using this platform to have these great conversations like with you Sue's and all of our listeners here, and, and becoming friends with so many people through this, you know, usually it's just from networking going into normally like Susan, I wouldn't be meeting at a conference in real life, right? But we, you know, through Twitter, we've built a great friendship, right business relationship, started this space grew into a podcast, we've done so many. And I know one day we're going to definitely meet in person. It just hasn't happened yet. But this just shows you the power of using all these things that we have at our fingertips. And I know not everybody is interested in social audio, that's okay. But just using these tools to connect with more people around the world prior to the internet, it was way harder. And that was why I jumped all in. On the internet. I mean, I got stuck. I was telling George earlier at lunch. My story in 1995 is when I first used the internet saw the potential of like, wow, I could connect with people all over the world. Instead of just people in my local community in person, I could just do it through a computer and look at all these years later, is just it's just mind blowing to just look at that technology and how far we've come and how these days we love utilising social audio to just have these awesome conversations. And we all get to know each other so much more on a deeper level.

Suze Cooper 34:45

Yeah, I mean, I thought being involved in a Twitter chat, which is where I'm at you Madalyn Abu Twitter smarter. I thought that that was a great way of connecting with people I mean, and then this is just another level. And you know, you actually combined the two but By having your Twitter smarter after chat right here on spaces, so not only have you made that connection within the chat and, you know, shared answers to the various questions that you're putting out on the topic each week, but you're then listening and you know, hearing from people that have been in that chat, it's, you know, it really does form a very strong connection,

Unknown Speaker 35:19

Real quick, you know, before 1995, and I remember 9095, because that's when my office got its first shared email, right? And I was like, Oh, the World Wide Web. And we even called the World Wide Web, or some people calling it the information superhighway. You know, we don't call the Internet that anymore. But what happened before we had the general public had access to the internet. How did we learn about that party? How did we learn about I'll give you an example. Like, I'm half Peruvian, my dad's Peruvian. And as a kid, he was always trying to teach me how to play soccer or football. And that's what they call it in Peru. And he had a passion for it. And for he was a, he was passionate about soccer. I mean, when the World Cup rolled around, it didn't matter what hour he was watching it, and I would watch it with him, you know. And he and, and the Peruvian team came to do practice with the US men national team in Mission Viejo, and I was working in the city of orange. They're in Orange County, California, and how did I find out that there was a little practice and it was at a high school? And I'm like, oh, yeah, you know, when my proving friends let's go, we're gonna be the only ones nobody else knows. I show up. You can't even get into the whole field is surrounded by Peruvians watching them play or practice with the US Men's National Team. And we didn't have the internet. And then you think about everything you how you moved in your world, and how you new events happen. We didn't have the internet. But you know, what was the awesome thing that we need to get to like how you did with George is we need to have connections, we need to break bread with each other. And and this is the beauty of social audio and the tools we have. We need to take that those schools and take it backwards and get deep in our relations get tonight I'd love to get to know many of you in real live one day if I'm in in Texas somewhere I'm going to try to hit up Madalyn and if I'm in the UK, Susie or anybody who will have because I love people, you know. So anyways, and George and Tom, tell us about George, I'd like to know, you know how nice he really is.

Madalyn Sklar 37:54

George is awesome. In real life. I just have to so we had such a nice get together today. I went picked him up. He's staying in a home that I used to live like less than five minutes away from so I knew exactly where it was. And it's such a great area, a suburb of Houston. And we had a nice lunch and we just had dinner when George has had just the best time today.

George Silverman 38:17

Like just a big hug. You can't do a hug on. I've requested that feature several times. They seem to be ignoring me.

Madalyn Sklar 38:26

Elon is not listening to you, George, then you have the power to make that happen. You would think?

George Silverman 38:31

I don't know. You know, it's really interesting when we first experimented with social audio in 1969-70 people we had gourmet cooks, photographers and army cooks, photographers and international travellers. And that was all New York area because we couldn't afford the phone chargers otherwise. And they all every each of the groups not at our instigation, but they all spontaneously decided they had to meet. So we had all these things at restaurants. So there's a strong draw for people to come together and meet new each other face to face. But the connections made in the connections that are made here are deep.

A. C. Hart 39:18

You know, I've got to mention, I've only been on Twitter since mid August. So it's funny to me, you know, that it might suddenly evaporate? You know, I guess we'll find out. But, you know, I deliberately wasn't on social media for like the last 10 years. And when I wasn't engaging in social media, what I was doing was I was you know, studying real connection and communication. I was studying how the voice moves through the tissue and organ systems of the body because I'm really interested in how understanding between two people actually occurs. And I think of social media, you know, I think of things in terms of like yin and yang. You know, you Yang is more of like a masculine principle. So it's, it's radiant. And union is more of a, you know, feminine principle. So it's Invitational and I genuinely believe that the future belongs to people who are willing to be more Yin in their communication, which means to open a space to listen, to take one thing and you know, go really, really deep with it to take care of it and nurture it for, you know, 18 years. But you know, the masculine approach, I call the spray and pray approach, where you basically throw a lot of seeds out and you hope something lands and takes root. And both approaches are actually necessary for life to happen. But in the world that we live in today, with this info glut and the social media and just the absolute amount of ideas that are being thrown at us, there's an overwhelming amount of the spray and pray approach. Everyone's got something to say they're desperate to be heard, but people are closing off. They're listening, because they're feeling overwhelmed. And so those of us that are really willing, you know, like some of the people in this room that I happen to know of like rose and George and Madalyn because you don't have to be male to have, you know, a yin aspect. Everybody has both. And those people that are willing to really soften and open and listen, to be patient to go one on one and deepen those relationships are the people who are going to be successful. So I feel like even if Twitter evaporates I'm going to be okay because I've been practising the skills that's so I chose to do instead

George Silverman 41:43

We'll all go somewhere else if we have to.

A. C. Hart 41:45

Yes, we will, we will all go somewhere else.

Madalyn Sklar 41:50

But there's something so special about Twitter, I've been on social on all the social media platforms and they all started and I liked the other platforms but it's just not the same as Twitter there's something special about Twitter for connecting for networking for her even though is short form content, which is which seems interesting, right? Like that we could have these build deep relationships with short, just short discussions, but then social audio comes along. And like spaces for I felt like was such a game changer. I know many of us here dramatically increased our followers connected with way more people once we got active on spaces, just by showing up and having conversations.

A. C. Hart 42:37

I think this space is is the game changer too. Because it's about the human voice. It's actually about real conversation and connection. You know, and I guess I wonder Madalyn, you know that you you must have invested, investigated Mastodon already.

Madalyn Sklar 42:52

I actually have not, I actually have not know, because I haven't heard enough good things about it to make me want to go over there. But I have signed up for the waitlist for post because post does sound interesting to me. It just got information just got released today that Kara Swisher is actually one of the people behind it, which I was wondering if she was because she's a journalist. But it sounds like there are people out there. I think there's quite a few people trying to build the next Twitter right now. But you know, the odds of one becoming the one. And that's that's even if Twitter fails, we still don't know what's going to happen with Twitter yet. I'm just not ready to go jump on every single one. Because it's a lot of work to sit here and go sign up for every new platform. And do you want to invest time and then you feel like you should? And then who else is going to be on there? And is it worth my time? But I'm just this is like the first and usually I do usually I'm the one everybody's like, Oh, yeah, I've heard of that mandolin you're always talking about, like, I'll just go sign up for all of them. And just but I don't know something's changed in me. I'm just surprised. And I'm not running to every single one right now to check them out. But something about messaging because when that came out years ago, I did not hear enough good things about I just heard a lot of negative things about it. And it just did not grab my attention. So it's not to say I'm not going to sign up, but I just haven't yet. Sorry, George, go ahead.

Unknown Speaker 44:21

Yep, yep. And I'm still as optimistic if not more optimistic than ever, about what's going to happen with Twitter in general and spaces in particular, I'm either going to be the the guy who is the wrongest of the wrong about Twitter, which we will not be able to tell me about because it won't be here. Or you will be the guy who can give the biggest I told you so. But I think it's going to be unrecognisable in a good sense. And probably the biggest thing and all of our intimate.

Unknown Speaker 44:56

I Yeah. And real quick Um, but you know what one thing Twitter can't take away is the connection in real life that you and Madalyn had, right?

Unknown Speaker 45:09

Yes, exactly. Yep. We'll do it again next next Thanksgiving when I'm back in next Thanksgiving. So yeah. Yeah, Tomas,

Unknown Speaker 45:16

see your hands raise. Yeah, because I wanted to like to put like mustard on that surfing. But I found like, I'd say most interesting, at least from my perspective is how much it's easy to import your data to Mastodon because basically other platforms like Twitter make it I'd say easier to export your data that to import like there are some like harsh limits around importing data, like not only like following, but for example route like adding people to list on Mastodon is pretty much like, you import the CSV and you got like all of the following.

Unknown Speaker 45:51

How do you decide on the on the instance they call it the the server, you're going to be on? That that was the daunting thing for me. I was faced, like 1000 servers to choose between. And I know you can move from one to the other. So just pick one. But I don't I don't know. I just had an uncomfortable to do that.

Suze Cooper 46:11

Yeah, I've signed up and I'm on kind of a general server, but I don't feel like I'm in the right place. It's not it's not my tribe. It's not my community. Like I found my people over here on Twitter. And now I've got to do it all over again over there. And I haven't found them yet. So

George Silverman 46:28

No, you don't know. You'll be you're gonna be pleasantly surprised.

Suze Cooper 46:33

Well, I did think about setting up an audio server for Mastodon because I couldn't find one. I'm sure someone's already done it now. But there wasn't there didn't seem to be a dot audio. And I thought, oh, yeah, you know, I'll have a look and see like, where am I podcasters there's huge podcast, Twitter over here. Like the community is huge. And I couldn't really see people over there. So I did think about doing that's typical me though. Oh, there isn't a thing. Let's jump in and just do the thing. Is it hard thing to do? Dunno, let's try and work it out. Typical me. Let's just try and work it out. Paul, Hello, welcome to the space. How are you?

Paul Armstrong 47:07

Hey, I'm doing well. How are you guys glad to glad to be listening. As always. George, you said something that just put shivers down my spine. And it was to do with just rampant freedom of speech and that sort of thing. I'm 100% behind the ability for freedom of speech. But when I start seeing the owner of a massive, multi million, hundreds of millions of people platform, really saying like, Oh, should I bring back all of the people that we blocked for various reasons just to have like everybody back freedom of speech? What not okay, we can't have that. It's just, it's just crazy to have this open. Freedom of speech. And I put in the chat, freedom of speech is fine, but freedom of speech is not okay. And that's my issue. And if he's being transparent, saying, Here's what I want to run Twitter as, then we've got problems. And I think people will start to just, there'll be that pop on pop off. And in fact, I think Twitter's much more important. Yes, no, absolutely. But he's not. He's not living by.

Unknown Speaker 48:11

Well, he's, he's developing stuff yet. It's got to be developed, but it's not going to be pride. I said, it's wonderful, but I didn't say it's prettier.

Paul Armstrong 48:21

I would agree with that. How much of the rope are you giving him George? How many years?

George Silverman 48:26

I don't, I don't Oh, I think it's going to be unrecognisable within a year. I think it's going to be unrecognisable within a few months. It's going to have he's gonna implement so much stuff. And people says he has gotten no programmers left. That's nonsense.

Paul Armstrong 48:45

He's got about 2,000 employess left so far.

George Silverman 48:45

Yeah, and he's bringing in people from Tesla and other places that are passionate about creating this is a startup was all a mess of a startup. It's a total mess. And it's gonna be worse.

Paul Armstrong 48:58

I would agree. It's a mess but I don't think it's when you're making millions of pounds.

Unknown Speaker 49:02

Well, it's done making he's losing money now over and he's losing a lot of money over it. And I was bleeding a three to $4 million a day.

Paul Armstrong 49:13

Yeah, but mission management more than a lot of other things that was on it. Really? I don't know I feel I'm with Madalyn, I'm with Suze and you on a lot of different things. I just feel like there needs to be more transparency over if he's going to act like an adult and say these are the rules, because there are no rules is chaos. And that's ridiculous. That's just pointless.

Suze Cooper 49:33

Yeah. And it's a lot as well like your your question about like, how many years like, Is he just going to do this? And actually, in a year's time, he's not going to be around. He's just going to do some stuff, throw it all on the fire and walk it walk away from it, you know, or is he actually in this for the long haul? Like it's, it's hard to tell.

Paul Armstrong 49:52

I get that he wants to make a super app and amazing apps. You know, get them out. He's got to make money somehow. Right? We get that. We just need a little bit more guidance. So I think just, I need to see him as a steady hand, not as a slash and burn guy, as we've seen another. What do you call it businesses that he's run, which are some have been successful. So I've been wildly successful, some haven't. And we have to stop saying, Oh, he's a genius. He's doing this. He's doing this. And they see some results. I've seen him do it twice really well. And I've seen him do it three times really badly in other places. And that's the issue of where I'm sort of at the moment with him. This is something that's more important than or you could argue either the other companies that he's done, potentially, and that sort of thing. But yeah, like you say, everyone's very protective of Twitter. So I will step down from my soapbox now.

Madalyn Sklar 50:39

Thank you for sharing with us, Paul, love hearing from you. Glad you're here joining us 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 51:00

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