November 16, 2023 • 56 mins
Over the course of their careers, Katie Couric and Kara Swisher have weathered (and thrived amongst) massive sea changes in the news industry–from network TV to streaming; the rise of mobile viewing; Twitter as the global newsroom water cooler; and now AI, polarization, and a serious crisis of truth. This makes Kara the perfect plus one for a discussion with Instagram founder Kevin Systrom. Kevin was the architect of some of those sea changes Kara and Katie documented, and with his new venture Artifact, a “fully machine learning driven, personalized newsreader,” he’s aiming to remedy some of the problems facing news and information today.
Katie, Kara, and Kevin go back to Kevin’s roots at Instagram and draw out what made that app great–its ability to evoke delight; its sense of discovery and community-building. They also discuss how those features, combined with a leadership ethos of responsibility and proactivity makes Artifact something beyond the headline aggregators you might think of when you hear “newsreader.” Can conscientious design create an app that genuinely informs you? Could it even solve the problem of social media echo chambers? Kevin Systrom thinks so!
So come along on a little trip to how we got here, where we’re headed, and what we can do to make sure that the content we see online is vetted and true. Because facts we can rely on are crucial to our entire world.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hi everyone, I'm Katie Couric and this is Next Question.
Hi everybody, welcome. Once again, it's Katie plus one. As
you guys know, just to switch things up, I'm inviting
a friend to co host the podcast from time to time,
and my date today is the one and only Kara Swisher. Now,
(00:28):
Kara is the ultimate multi hyphenate, as they say these days, writer, podcaster, author,
rock conteur, stripper. Oh sorry, you're not a stripper overall
that ass So, Kara, thank you so much. We are
both under the weather, so I think we need each
other today. You've got a cold.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
You sound better than I sound terrible, and I had
to do four podcasts today.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Oh my god, how did you do it?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I didn't know we were dating. This is so exciting
for me as a lesbian that we're finally finally admitting
our deepen abiding affection and really lust for each other.
It's fantastic.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Well, I am very happy to have you here because, seriously,
not to gush, you're one of my favorite people. You're
one of the smartest people I know, thinks, an incredible reporter.
I think everyone in the business respects you so much. Kara,
and you're really fearless, which is what I love about you.
And you know, I thought you'd be the perfect person
(01:25):
to write Shotgun with me, although I can't imagine you're
willing to give up the driver's seat. But we're going
to be chatting with Kevin Sistrom, who you know well.
But before I just want to give our listeners a
little bit about us, Kara. How did we meet? I
was trying to remember when I first met you.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
When I broke the story about you going to Yahoo?
Speaker 1 (01:44):
I think, oh, is that when? Yes? But I was
reading your stuff all the time.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
We sense because you were thinking about going to Yahoo,
you had to, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
But so that was I guess in around twenty twelve.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Yeah, I guess, yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
And who were you writing for back then?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
My own thing, Recode? Oh, that's right, Recode. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
And you were breaking stories right and left, including the
one about me.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
I was and I thought it was intriguing. I thought
it was super intriguing that someone like you, you'd been
at all the broadcast networks. It was a big moment
for people to make that crossover. You were one of
the few and the early ones. Now it didn't work
out quite the way you wanted to, but it still
was pretty brave to do something like that and to
try something out, and you know, you kind of got
snowed by Merissa Mayer.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
I did. And I think in retrospect, not only was
it a bad fit because I don't think her goals
and my goals aligned right in terms of turning Yahoo
into a really major digital news network, but you know,
I also think I might have been a bit too early.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Kara, Yeah, because you're not unlike what you're doing now
with podcasting. You know, you were kind of doing That's
what you were kind of doing, but you did it
in more traditional sense, which was interviews and things like that.
What was your title? It was so big? It was
like global news anchor.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Yes, my husband made fun of me and said, why
don't they call you intergalactic news anchor? I know it
was a blood news anchor. It was a little a
little much.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
But it was early, and it was really important for
people who who didn't understand what was happening in news
on the internet to for have someone like you to
go over and very few people did that. You know,
I'm trying to think. I think it was you and
nobody else. Yeah, there were a couple, you know, but
mostly what happened is later people that were on networks
did podcasts or they did you know, it's different things,
(03:28):
but podcasts and newsletters, which was an impairy thing, or
else ape here has an influencer on TikTok or Instagram
and stuff like that, and so you were early to
all those things. As I recall, you were very early
to Instagram, you were on Twitter early. Yeah, you were
very embracing of the digital part. You didn't make fun
of it the way most media people did.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Well.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
I think I saw early on. Honestly, I think part
from my own experience at CBS. You know, there was
the decline of linear television. It was going steadily declining
year over year, and I realized that, you know, in
two thousand and eight. It was two thousand and eight
when the iPhone came out. I mean that totally changed
the game. And care I remember being at CBS and
(04:09):
having somebody say to me, I forget who he was.
He goes, the future is mobile, But I remember thinking,
what is he talking about? And he was so spot on,
but whatever was going to happen, I knew something was changing.
And meanwhile, you have been on the forefront of everything.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Well mobile, you know Walt and I called Mobile Web
two point zero. I think we were very when we
saw the iPhone, and you know, Jobs had denied he
was making it to us the year before he introduced it. No,
I'm not working on a phone but an interview, but
he was. The minute that happened, the iPhone changed everything,
including you know, for Kevin System, you wouldn't have had Instagram,
you wouldn't have had Uber, you wouldn't have had a
(04:47):
lot of Airbnb. There's so much you wouldn't have without
the apogonomy. And of course that's when companies likeness came
into being, really because of the iPhone.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
It's amazing how much things have changed when you think
about when we got into journalism and the things that
have tanked as a result of the Internet and things
that have exploded. Well, you've got a lot going on
in your life. I'm excited to have you back on
this podcast when your new book comes out in twenty
twenty four. It's called burn Book, Right, you'll like it.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Kaaney, you're in it.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Oh God, I hope you're nice to meet Kara.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
I am. It's a low bar though it's a low
bar for people in the Internet.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Well, I know you're not a fan of a lot
of people in Silicon Valley, but you are a fan
of our guest, Kevin Sistrom.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
I am very much.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
So well, let's let him in so you can talk
about him and he can his ears can actually burn
in person.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Kevin, Hi, how are you guys? How are you wonderful?
Speaker 1 (05:44):
What a coincidence, Kevin? We were just talking about you,
and I was saying to Kara there are a lot
of people in Silicon Valley she's not crazy about, but
one of the people she really really likes Kevin is you.
You're in rare company. Now, what is it about Kevin,
Kara that you like?
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Well, you know, I really do admire you know, there's
a lot of people I had a lot of wrangling with,
like Steve Jobs, who I actually did like too. I
like people who love products. I love people who have
a design sense, have a real tear about products and
designing them correctly. I like someone who's thoughtful and is
willing to change their minds. You know, Kevin was always
open to criticism in a way that didn't It wasn't
(06:25):
hurt all the time.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
And Kevin I mean, it seems like you have a
lot of humility, which is a quality that's probably hard
to come by in Silicon Valley. How have you been
able to maintain some openness, some humility as you've approached
your work.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
I was having dinner with the Promise site and we
were talking about Artifact and my current project and how
it's going and the future of it, and I said,
I think the difference between the people that succeed in
the long run and the people that continue to fail
are the people that do their best to recognize their
(07:03):
blind spots and that everyone has them. And the problem is,
at least in Silicon Valley, that these companies grow to
be so large that if you stay in charge, you
can ignore your blind spots because you've got your moat,
you've got your defense, and you can ignore all of
the things you don't know about yourself because you're successful,
(07:26):
and you continue to be successful, and you have all
this money. The problem is, let's imagine you sell your company.
You're no longer in charge of your company, and you
have to go face the real world. You have to
get in touch with your failings and your weaknesses pretty quickly,
otherwise you get chewed up and spit out the other side.
That's what every entrepreneur has to do at some point
(07:47):
in their life. The problem is that people that cares
talking about, I believe, are the people who get to
the point where they don't have to really think about
those things because they're just riding the wave that they
caused maybe ten or twenty years ago. Have that wave anymore?
You have to create a new wave. And in order
to create that wave, I think you need to understand
where you're good, where you're not good, and sometimes that
(08:09):
can be a painful process.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Well you know, Kevin, it's also a question of maturity, right,
I sort of link I split people between adults and toddlers. Really,
I don't know what else to say, is adult toddlers
who get enabled and coddled. And you know this from
having money. You don't know who's your friend. You have
people in violent agreement with you almost all the time,
and the ability to take feedback is very hard when
(08:31):
everybody is enabling you not to not to do so,
and I think it makes you a lesser executive in
my opinion. And you don't hear let me tell you
who you don't hear from about that who doesn't complain
when you have a good about their product is the
people from Apple. You don't hear Tim Cook belly aching
about anything because he's an adult, and so I think,
and I don't think you have to be old to
(08:52):
be an adult. I think you were an adult from
very early on. I mean that was my feeling at
the time.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Well, let's talk about early on, Kevin, because I know
we have so much to cover, But I do want
to start with Instagram, just because I'm addicted to it
and I've been going down endless rabbit holes, much to
my estegrint. I mean constantly. It's really hard. It is addictive.
But where did the idea from Instagram come from?
Speaker 3 (09:17):
It came from We were working on a different app,
not Instagram, called Bourbon, and it was spelled b u
RBN and the name doesn't matter. It was funny, but
it was a check in app. It led you share
your location, so you could say I'm at a restaurant,
I'm at a bar, and all your friends would see
where you were. And it was kind of riding this
(09:37):
wave of check an app.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Poor Square was the popular yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Or Square Goala Hot Potato there were a bunch of them.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Was looped in.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
There was looped yep, yep. Here's the thing people forget
that maybe they don't forget, but it's easy to forget that.
We see these waves of like everyone's doing generative AI
all at once, everyone's doing Web three. My version of
that when I started was check and apps. Everyone was
doing check and apps. And we started this check and app.
(10:08):
And the one feature that we had that no other
check and app had was the ability to add photos.
And you can attach a photo to your check in,
so you could say, I'm at the beach, here's me
at the beach. And no one really liked our check
and app. No one really wanted to use it. I mean,
we had a small group of people playing with it,
and you know, we took a step back, Mike Kreeger
(10:28):
and I and Mike cofounder, we took a step back
and we said, why and what is it about the
thing we've built that people do love? So we crossed
everything out. We had a whiteboard and we wrote everything
that people used on the app up on the whiteboard
and crossed everything off, and we ended up basically with
one thing circled, which was photos. We said, okay, what
if we threw away literally everything about this app and
(10:50):
repositioned it around photos. So we did that. But that's
not the end of the story. A very quick addition
to the story is we did that pivot. We built
this app, we didn't call it Instagram yet, and I
was I decided I needed a week off because I
was exhausted. I was like, I don't think this pivot's
going to work. So I'm going to go to Mexico
for a week to a little little seaside town with
(11:12):
who would become my wife, who was my girlfriend at
the time, Nicole. And we we're walking along the beach
and I said, do you think you'll use this new
version of this app called Bourbon that's photos only? And
she said, no, I don't think I will because I
don't like sharing my photos. My photos aren't good enough.
I said, why aren't your photos good enough? And she said, well,
because all your friends take these amazing, beautiful filtered photos.
(11:34):
And I was like, yeah, that's because they use filter apps.
And she's like, well, you should probably add filters to
the app. I said, that's a brilliant idea. So we
finished that walk on the beach I went back to
the little hotel room we were staying in and I
researched how to make the first filter. And if you
look way back on my profile, the first photo on
my profile, the first photo ever on Instagram, is a
(11:55):
square photo of a very small dog in Mexico when
we went out to lunch after I built the first
filter on Instagram because of that walk on the beach. Wow,
I'm proud to say she is now my wife and
I love her dearly.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Well did you pay her? Did you pay her for it?
Speaker 1 (12:08):
I was gonna say, but I think I don't think
she has a good prenup.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Well, I think we're both very, very happy with the situation.
I'm very happy to be married to her, and we
just we have this great life now. So it's awesome.
But how do we knock down on that walk?
Speaker 1 (12:23):
I remember I was at Yahoo, you guys when when
Instagram came out, and somebody on my team says, you
need to be on Instagram. You know, it's this great
new thing, and I was like what, But I was
I kind of got into it pretty quickly, and it
just grew so fast, Kevin, to the point you sold
it to Mark Zuckerberg for one billion dollars, which is
(12:45):
a nice chunk of change.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Actually, Katie, it was cheap, you know, are really Oh yeah, really,
Zuckerberg got the bargain of a century getting that fantastic.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Oh, you're right, I've read that. How much do you
think you could have sold it for in retrospect, Kevin?
Or do you hate that question?
Speaker 3 (13:00):
I don't hate the question because I'm so used to
getting it now. I think I hated it the first
couple of times, but now now I feel like I've
come to terms with my answer, which is, at the time,
do you know how many people, Katie, we had at
the company when we sold it for a billion dollars?
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Seven?
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Right?
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Seven? Maybe more?
Speaker 3 (13:17):
It was nine? I think maybe nine or ten. It's okay.
You imagine you have a group of kids in a
room working on a photo app and someone comes along
and says, how about a billion? You know, I don't
know many people that would turn that deal down?
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Yeah, and you.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Know, Listen could have should have would a had we
stayed the course been independent. I don't know. I mean,
how many examples of people, maybe I know more of
them personally have turned down acquisition offers Facebook for one
hundred billion dollars. Well, you know, Facebook's the easy one.
That's the one we all talked about. Let's talk about
the one is that didn't work out. Yeah, you're right,
hundred that turned down one two hundred million dollar offers
(13:58):
saying you know what, we're going to stick the course.
Now you literally never heard of these companies.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
I think my point, Kevin, was that you were making
something that was special and different. Having seen everything, I
think while I think they did help you grow quickly,
I suspect you could have done it by yourselves, because
your product was quite magical in a way that not
a lot of them are. How much do you imagine
they helped you grow? I don't think I've ever asked
you that. How much do you think they being within
(14:24):
the juggernaut of Facebook, which was at that moment still
is really did you think they really did help you?
I assume you did.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
I think they helped us in a bunch of ways,
and we helped them back in a bunch of ways.
And there's a little bit of this dynamic of we
and them, which I find so strange. By the way, Yeah,
because you know, like sure, we had a little building
on campus and had a little Instagram logo on the outside,
but we were all part of the same company. And
(14:53):
I'm bringing this up not to point out the way
you're talking about us, but rather the way we talked
about ourselves internally. When I was there, it was such
an US versus then dynamic, and it was very strange
in my head always because I was like, here, we
are now producing billions of dollars, years in billions of dollars,
but it's as if we're like two siblings fighting over
(15:16):
who gets the remote and we're not.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Well. It sounded like that to me, though, Kevin, because
everything I read it sounds like, and correct me if
I'm wrong that Mark Zuckerberg was kind of threatened by
you and your success and the fact that a lot
of resources were going to Instagram, and I don't know,
it sounds like his ego got in the way. Is
that accurate.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
I don't know that I can speak on his bath
for that. You'd have to ask him directly.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
I mean, is that how you felt.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
The way that I felt was that nothing made sense
logically about the way we were running the two companies. Logically.
It was amazing that we had lightning in a bottle,
and we were producing, you know, a product that was
growing all over the world and you know, double digit
growth rates per month and then on top of that,
(16:08):
producing billions of dollars. Yet for summer reason, internally, the
dynamic was that we were disappointed. Yeah, and that was
very strange. And like, basically the reason I left, by
the way, and I've said this to friends, and I'm
not sure I've ever said it to anyone else, but
like the reason I left is because the more I
felt that I put in and the more that we won,
(16:29):
the harder my job got. The more difficult the more
and not that like not that jobs don't get harder
as things go on, But it wasn't like that's that
success was a good thing. It was almost as if
that success was a bad thing because we had this product,
Facebook Blue, which was going through some tough times. And
I get that I probably, you know, could have been
(16:51):
a better you know, I don't know, sibling or whatever
in terms of understanding how challenging that must be for
those people and for those teams and for the brand.
And at the same time, I found it so strange
that we didn't look at our situation as holy crap.
We are the luckiest people on earth and maybe the
luckiest company on Earth. That feels like a real tragedy
(17:13):
in retrospect.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Yeah, well, I read that you were on I Guess
doing some interviews and Mark and Cheryl said basically you
couldn't do interviews without getting permissioned from them. So it
does sound like a bit of a power struggle. What's
your take on that, Kiara.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
I think they were jealous of I know they were
jealous of Kevin largely because of creativity. And the knock
on them was that they stole ideas, that they were shoplifters,
essentially of other people's theories and ideas. Now, as it
turned out, Instagram became an enormous engine for Facebook. As
Facebook started to wane in usage, in excitement in young people,
(17:50):
being especially young people, it was critical. To me. There's
certain purchases in technology that are critical that really changed them.
I think Google buying you Tube was one of them.
And I think there are certain purchases where it's a
real turning point. I think it wasn't a critical critical thing,
and it's sort of as rich and famous as you get,
(18:11):
it doesn't matter if it wasn't you who did. And
I think Bill Gates suffered from this, you know, probably
more towards Steve Jobs. Is like Bill Gates before he
did all the philanthropy when he if he had died
then it would have been the world's richest man died today.
And if Steve Jobs done, which he later did, the
world's greatest tech visionary died today. And I think Kevin
(18:31):
was more in the visionary part of that. And Mark,
you know, he's like a Henry Ford character. And so
that's what makes it hard. And again let me I'd
love to ask you getting back to the product, and
that's really what you have to get to is the
product itself and the iterations you make around it, including
as I've talked with Kevin about doing stories that was
a snapchat thing that then Instagram did. Now Kevin's quite
(18:54):
smartly and very cleverly. Is said to me, well, they
made a radio in a car, and we just made
a better radio in a car. And I kind of
accept that now. I accept that now, Kevin.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
It's funny, by the way, Kara for a second that
you know you'll say that Facebook or shoplifters, but like
to be clear, story was a very direct. You know,
it wasn't a replica because I think we added some
really neat features to it.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
You did.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
But I do believe that, like you know, as much
as Facebook might have invented the Facebook news feed. Yes,
now you can't see a social product without a news feed,
but that wasn't a given back then.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
That's true.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
So these things are not property the founder. Yeah, it's
about who actecutes best on them. And now we're seeing
that play out with the Twitter feed effectively across multiple products.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Yeah, everyone's doing a version of Twitter, including you and
your new you know, a version of But the idea
of it is a feed, isn't It really is a
feed when you think about it. But one of the
things that I think is important to remember is that
not just from a creative point of view, it gave
Facebook and enormous amount of credibility to own a product
like this, it also was financially enormous, like enormous, and
(20:07):
a safer place than what was going on at Facebook.
I think that was really important, a pleasant place. Facebook
had started to get different right as they got criticized.
But Instagram, even though there are lots of problems on
Instagram around lots of problems. You know, it still was
a place of product of enjoyment. I guess. I don't
know else to put it, but a product of enjoyment
more than anything else and delight. And I think that's
(20:30):
hard to do and sustain. Twitter has never been enjoyable.
It's been funny, it's been vexing, it's been addictive, But
enjoying I don't think so. I don't, you know, I
guess in a broader sense, and that's very hard to do.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
After this break, we dive into how tech companies can
build products that select for something other than outrage. Kevin
has some great ideas on how to do just that.
I want to get smarter every morning with a breakdown
of the news and fascinating takes on health and wellness
(21:05):
and pop culture. Sign up for our daily newsletter, Wake
Up Call by going to Katiecuric dot com. And we're
back with our guest, Kevin Sistrom and my co pilot
Kara Swisher. I wanted to ask you about the negative
side of Instagram, Kevin. Obviously, there are a lot of
(21:27):
negative impacts on girls, on mental health. On the comparison
that it encourages, and is that just part of the deal.
I mean, can anything be done about the psychosocial impact
of some of these platforms, and specifically Instagram, and is
(21:47):
as you saw it having this impact. I'm curious what
went through your mind.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
I think it all comes down to leadership, the idea
that you have a school and that tool take nuclear
energy can be used for amazing things. It can produce clean,
sustainable energy, but also, if used not in the right way,
can create massive destruction. Tools themselves rarely have a very
(22:23):
clear positive or negative effect. It's when you put that
tool in someone's hand and that person decides to start
making rules around it, in judgments about what's allowed what's
not allowed, the way they decide to moderate things, their
community guidelines, the tone they set as a leader with
their own posts. If we're talking social media, and as
(22:47):
a leader at Instagram, early on, I decided that we
should focus on being the nicest place on the Internet.
And nice is like a really lame word, but let's
move past that to maybe dness. So, for instance, we
were one of the first, if not the first, major
social network to use machine learning to detect bullying and
(23:09):
intervene in bullying situations. Most people were worried about spam
at this point. So if you went to any other network,
they'd had spam filters and spand detectors, and we were
focused on interactions that didn't qualify as spam, but were
human to human interactions that were negative, and we would
intervene and try to stop those things. Those are the
types of decisions that I think made Instagram such a
(23:32):
great place early on, because we didn't We used to
have caro. We used to have this phrase internally called
prune the trolls. Yeah, and we used to just get
rid of We used to block accounts of people who
were causing issues very very early on, and that was
getting rid of the negative. But then we would also
host these community meetups called instamets, and we would bring
(23:55):
together people on the platform in person, in a to
meet each other, to put a face to a name,
and those types of interactions very early on, I think
set an amazing tone for the community that lasted well
beyond my tenure. But as you get bigger and bigger
and you get into the billions, the law of large
(24:17):
numbers says that you get just about everyone on the platform,
every type of person, so it becomes much harder to
make these decisions. So maybe in one country something is
well accepted, will in another country it's not accepted. You
have to make these really hard choices about what's allowed
and what's not allowed, and you start to make people
angry with these choices. But it all comes down to leadership.
(24:39):
It all comes down to those fundamental decisions you make
as a human holding that tool in your hand, with
the control which.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
I think is lost for a lot of people. A
lot of tech people try to abrogate. I don't want
to have anything to do even as they built it,
like I didn't mean to build this city.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Right, Well we're a platform, we're not a publisher, right.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Yeah, but they built it in the first place, and
they think one of the things is important Keavn can
talk to this about a new thing is you have
to have a set of rules. And it's okay. You
know this whole canard that it's a public square. It's
not a public anything. It's a private money making company.
I mean, I don't know, Kevin. I think that I
think these are these are companies and you know company
as it's rules and so should this.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Are there any things that you see Kevin when you
go on Instagram today that you wish wasn't happening, or
changes you think, Oh, I'm so pissed there letting this happen,
or if I were there, I would do X, Y
or Z.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
At the end of the day, the question is how
you incentivize people and who's in control? And I think
what we've seen so you asked, you know, what do
I wish was different? Yeah, I'm not sure it's an
Instagram problem specifically, but you know, products like reels and
product like like YouTube shorts or even TikTok, they're so
optimized on engagement that they will show you things that
(25:52):
you are not actually interested in, but they will make
you stare at them forever, and then you wake up
one day and you look around you go, god, I
just spend an hour. Was that like a useful hour
of my life?
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Right?
Speaker 3 (26:03):
And part of why I started Artifact was the belief
that you could use some of the same technology to personalize,
but do it in a way that actually showed people
things that made their life more informed, maybe a little
bit better.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Kevin's talking a little bit. If you want to make
an analogy to sugar, right, isn't this doughnut delicious, what
a delicious done? And you may even not want it.
You may want something healthy, or you might want something different,
but it's hard to resist.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
But it's sitting in front of you.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Well, it's how you architect things. And Kevin's a designer.
If you architect for virality and speed, you're going to
get a different thing. And if you architect for context
and content, like really good what you're looking for right, absolutely,
And so it's a question of what architecture you put
into place and so many of these things, or else
you don't put anything into place. And people generally trend
(26:51):
towards shitty stuff. Look at the shitty stuff, look at
the accent. And that's what's going on on Twitter right now.
He's just removed everything, and so people who are bad
can come in and really attract you in a way
that is just the human brain. It's it crawls down
your cerebral cortex.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
Really, Kara, I have an example. Sure, I love coffee, okay,
and I go to Starbucks and by the way, like
you know people who I claim on a coffee er,
and then I tell people I go to Starbucks and
they're like wait what, But like I do.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
I'm surprised. I'm surprised you went to Starbucks. I'm surprised.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
Listen, I'm a busy guy with like two kids. Sometimes
you need a great, great quick cos.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
He's kind of a coffee snob. You are a coffee
you were.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Here's the thing. I've been going to Starbucks for god
knows how many years, and like, Starbucks is a milkshake company. Guys,
it's a milkshake company. Go into any Starbucks and just
sit there and watch people ordering. They're not ordering dripped coffees,
maybe once in a while a latte. People walk out
of there with huge milkshakes with whipped cream on top.
(27:55):
And yes, there's caffeine inside, but think about what machine produced,
what set of incentives produced that milkshake shop. It's like, well, okay,
if people like our coffee, but like, how can we
have them have coffee during the day, not the morning. Well,
let's blend up some ice with it, Let's add some sugar.
What do people like, Oh, okay, we'll do summer drinks.
(28:16):
And before you know it, like one of the most
original coffee companies in the world now like primarily sells milkshakes, right,
And if you think about it in terms of social media,
that's exactly what happens. You start off about being this
time square and ideas and everything, and then you say, oh, well,
actually what gets people to stay around and what you
end up with is like fight videos and car crashes
(28:38):
and silly animal dances like.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
And dunking and not new. But I would argue though,
that news is important that people are still on Twitter
because news is there. It's the best place to get
the most up to minute news because the people on
it so there are you can move people towards quality
things very easily, even if you can sort of do
this with the jazz hands with the milkshake.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
I think I just I want to be clear that
like I still love Starbucks, I still go there. It's
just you got to look at what incentives produce at
the end of the day in your business, what do
they produce, and if you chase profit, if you chase margin,
if you chase expansion, you will get to a point
where what you end up with are products that are
(29:22):
purely engineered for that rather than maybe the original mission.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
But I think I'm curious Kevin with artifact explain what
it is for people who do know. And also you're
going in a much more vegetable direction. Really, you're going
for full vegetable or full news junkie.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Essentially, I'll challenge that we're going full vegetable, but I'll
get there first by explaining what it is. Artifact is
a fully machine learning driven personalized news reader. So the
idea is that you show up and we're going to
show you a bunch of things. Because you told us
you're interested in technology in NFL and cars, we're you're
(29:58):
interested in fashion, and you're from San Francisco, and we
will crawl the Internet, not the entire Internet, but what
we deem is the trustworthy Internet, and we'll bring all
that content together and then we'll serve it to you
in a feed, and depending on what you tap on
and what you engage with, we'll try to learn what
(30:19):
your actual interests are, and then we'll customize that feed
over time. So what's happened for me personally is when
it started, it was just a bunch of tech news,
and now it's a mix of Japanese architecture and travel recommendations,
parenting tips because I have two young kids, and local
San Francisco politics, and that's great for me. It's a
mix of wonderful publications that I never would have heard
(30:42):
of otherwise and helped me discover local publications like the
San Francisco Standard. Things like this bring content to you
rather than having you get served content because someone decided
to post about it.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Or searching for it across a million different platforms. But
Apple News does the same for me, Kevin, how's this different?
Speaker 3 (31:02):
I'm going to say this and it's going to sound
like a non answer, but you have to see it
to know the difference. Like my pitch would be that
we focus on high quality, non trashy publications that aren't
so intellectual that they feel out of touch, but that
(31:23):
aren't like kind of one of the you know, content
mills that just show you more celebrity photos and that
it's like, thank you, someone finally built a news recommendation
service that understands me as someone who is and when
I say me, I mean someone who loves tech, who
loves things that are on the bleeding edge, wants to
learn about AI, maybe that have a budding interest in crypto,
(31:47):
like those types of things. It's like we go beyond
just the major publications too. We find interesting substacks we
find interesting recipe authors. So you're not going to find
that on a place like Apple News. You're not going
to find that on Google News. And that's okay because
they're focused on different things. But I think we go
a little bit more intellectual, and we go a little
(32:07):
deeper in terms of unique sources, and then on top
of that the competitive angle. I do believe our machine
learning is better than a bunch of these, so we
will personalize better for you, or at least that's our goal.
So that's how we're different.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
You name four areas you're interested in, you know, you
said local San Francisco politics, parenting articles, Japanese architecture, and
I forget the fourth one. What was the fourth one, Kevin? I?
Speaker 3 (32:32):
I remember, I don't either.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
But what about like someone like me and care I
imagine you're like me. I'm interested in probably twenty five
different things. You know, I'm interest I'm a generalist. I
want to know what's happening from Megan and Harry to
Tom Friedman's latest column about the Middle East to what
Richard coss might have written in Foreign Affairs, to what
(32:55):
the economist is saying about Israel, to everything to how
it'll affect you. I mean, obviously I'm heavy on foreign
policy right now, given everything that's going on in the world,
But how can you serve me up over such a
broad area of interest things that I want to see
without completely overwhelming me.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
They're a couple of ways. The first thing that I
think is really interesting to talk about here is you
just discussed revealed versus stated preferences. And if we ask
you to name all your preferences and we put a
piece of paper in front of you, For most people,
that's actually very, very difficult. It's very hard to say
all the things that you love without seeing them. But
(33:42):
if a system learned, and this is called exploration in
the machine learning verbiage, if you can explore potential topics
for someone and then just note Katie spend a bunch
of time on foreign affairs. She loves Thomas Friedman. Whenever
Thomas Freeman writes, she spends a bunch of time reading
this article. But she also loves like the latest Harry
and Meghan gossip. Those things are not mutually exclusive, but
(34:05):
they are on major publications. When you open up a
major publication, you have sections, you have the front page,
Harry and Meghan are not on the front page of
the New York Times or the Washington Post most of
the time probably ever, but for you, maybe they should be.
And that's really the dream here is that via exploration,
(34:25):
we can make that front page sing for you, that
it can feel like it was designed literally just for you.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Which has been an old goal of everybody. Yahoo. You
had personalization, Everyone's tried to sort of create this individualized
news feed for everyone. That's sort of been a long
time goal.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
Yeah, and maybe what I could do quickly is just
talk about where we've expanded recently, because the scope of
the company has changed pretty significantly. And that's some of
what Karen was talking about when she said we're building
our own little Twitter. We've always believed that we wanted
to build this personalized homepage for you that other people
have tried and not done it very well. One of
(35:04):
the realizations through this, I believe is that it's not
that it's necessarily hard to do. It's that I'm not
sure people are that impressed, not necessarily with us, but
just they need more. They need more than articles. They
want spice, they want unique, interesting content, and where that
typically comes from is user generated content when people actually
(35:26):
post something that they're thinking that's unique that you can't
find anywhere else. So we added this thing, this tab
called links, which now will let you. It lets you
post links to things that you find interesting and say
something about them, which could be not from a major publication,
it could be a random blog that you found or
maybe your own blog. But it also lets you post
(35:48):
just on your own so if you want to write
four or five paragraphs about something, you can and post
into it. And this feed has been really fun to
watch take off in the last few weeks. It's really
added a different life to Artifacts. Now you can get
your news, which is fine, but you can get it
to other places. But now you have these really unique
posts and links that you can get basically only on
(36:09):
Artifact on this other tab. But it's all part of
discovering content using personalization. That's the dream here is that
we can create this market where producers and consumers can
get matched and their interests are matched.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
So interest matching. There used to be a company called
six degrees. Do you remember them. Yeah, Amazon ended up
buying them, and the idea of putting interests together has
always been another dream. And what's happened is to generate
it into chaos, which is whatever is whatever bubbles up
in terms of enragement is what wins versus because it's
(36:42):
like a car traffic accident versus your interest. One of
the reasons TikTok is so successful. It does see your
interests and it knows what you like and you know more.
That's more media than social, right, And so the goal
is to be more media than social because social has
become so toxic in a lot of ways. And that's
what's difficult about these businesses.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
When we come back, what in the world is coming
next for news and media online? Kevin and Kara have
some ideas and there's real reason to be optimistic. We're
back with Kara Swisher and Kevin's sistrom. How is business, Kevin?
(37:28):
I mean, are you doing well? How are you getting
people to download yet another app and want to kind
of change their habits.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
I think what we've done is create a beautiful product
for some very passionate people, but nowhere near the amount
of people that use Instagram right, And the question is
how do you go from one to the other? Because
Instagram started off very small at the beginning. I mean,
everyone likes to think, oh, was this overnight success. And
don't get me wrong, the first day of Instagram we
(37:59):
had twenty five thousand people sign up and it was great,
and it continued to grow over time and it retained people.
The question is not can you get attention? The question
is can you retain people with a product that they love?
And we have a group of people that love this product,
and our main challenge is can we be mainstream? And
where's the white space? Where can people succeed? Because I mean, Carot,
(38:23):
what's the last successful consumer startup you have seen? I'm
curious here.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
It hasn't been in a long time, right, Oh, not
by a big company. It's been a long time. Someone's
broken through, Right, it's been a long time. I can't
think of one. You're very good. And also it also
has the law of big numbers. Is that you know
this is something Ben Horowitz of all people said to me.
He's like, no one's going to create a search engine.
No one's going to create a consumer commerce company because
(38:49):
of Amazon search engine, because of Google. No one's going
to create all these various things because of the large players.
And that's the real problem is how do you even
break through. Now. The one example is I gotta say TikTok, right,
came out of nowhere.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
I actually I'll challenge I'll change, which is I think
it's very easy as someone who maybe I was twenty
five at the time something like that Instagram started, it's
very easy to be optimistic and green and just believe
there's all this opportunity and I and then it's very easy.
Now on the other side, I'm about to turn forty,
I'm thirty nine right now to believe that there's no
(39:24):
opportunity or believe that maybe some doors have closed along
the way. But here's the wonderful thing about the Internet
that it surprises everyone. I mean, when we found it Instagram,
could you imagine that anyone would be able to have
found an image sharing social network to compete with Instagram?
And then snap came along, and then after stap do
(39:44):
you believe could you believe anyone could compete with YouTube
Instagram and snap in video and by the way, not
even a US company like this is incredible, Like, of course,
there are always opportunities. So would you have to do
I think in these situations is fite the urge to
believe that all the doors have closed and instead look
(40:05):
out and say, what are the opportunities that have changed
because of some fundamental technology change, like, for instance, generative AI.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Oh, that's full of ideas because there's going to be
general AI for insurance, for healthcare, all kinds of areas,
so you can It reminds me a little bit of
when the mobile phone came right that you couldn't have
imagined Instagram before the mobile phone could do easily.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
Now most people when they see companies start thinking, oh,
that idea is too small.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
And the question isn't is the idea too small at
the beginning, it's what is the ambition of the person
who's running it and what direction are they headed? Because
if you can map out that mark is going to
take it from Harvard to other Ivy League schools, to
every school, to every other college, to high schools, et cetera,
and then take over the world. Like then you say, okay,
this is interesting.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
But I don't know.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
There are a lot of companies that get started and
stay very happy with very small audiences. So it's not
about the idea, it's about the direction.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
I want to just spend a couple of minutes talking
about the media landscape and the state of news, which
is what prompted you to create Artifact, Kevin in the
first place. And I'd love to get your take on
what is happening on Twitter now or X and what
Elon Musk has done to turn it into such a cesspool. Obviously,
(41:24):
people can buy blue checks, so nobody is really verified.
The ad model has changed, there's ai I think that's
creating a lot of dis and misinformation. But I'd love
to ask you, Kara, what has X becommon Why?
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Well, it's interesting because it's still a little necessary because
it's so everyone's there and it's frantic, you know what
I mean. And so if they're like, if there's I
still go on it?
Speaker 1 (41:49):
I do.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
Sure, it's useful. It's because everybody's there, everybody, But it's
sort of like one of those clubs or a place
a downtown that you know you still have to kind
of go to. But it sucks now. It's like it's dirtier,
there's really weird people hanging around.
Speaker 3 (42:02):
No one says that about San Francisco. I'm not sure
what you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
No, no, no, no, no. I love Sirence. Don't insult
San Francisco to Karas for sure. So I find it
really hard to use. I have to turn off comments
now because of the really the flood of really crazy people.
And I'm joking about Elon must but he also you know,
it's really unpleasant, and so it's become an unpleasant experience.
But you put up with it because of the benefits
(42:27):
of getting instant, like there's no other place to go
right now to watch the vote happening.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
And didn't he fire everybody who was kind of evaluating
content and flagging content.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
A lot a lot, Well, they say, not everybody.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
And then I keep getting these ads what doctors don't
want you to do to your coffee? Like why why
do they keep why do they keep feeding me that ad?
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Because they're paying because the check is cashing. I don't know.
I think it's really I think it could go for
a while. These things can go for a while. Kevin
knows that these things can hold on for and he's
the richest man in the world, so he can afford.
It's like having a one of these Megga yachts that's
seeping oil out of it. He can keep doing it
and paying the fines for it. For a long time.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
What was frustrating to you, Kevin about the news environment
and how did you say, Oh, I need to fix
this or I need to fill a hole that's missing.
Speaker 3 (43:16):
I want to be clear that I think Artifact is
much more than just news. Like, of course we're in
the news category in the app store, and that's the
easiest way to talk about what we are. But I
think by frustration actually is that people only think about news.
When you talk about news, they don't think about all
the amazing content out there that has nothing to do
with the day as headlines.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
We should probably call it a content app.
Speaker 3 (43:39):
Really, Yeah, that's right, And I think people are thirsty
for that type of information because they don't want yet
another if it bleeds, it leads story. What they want
is some value in their life, a discovery. Like there's
this guy who just documented his trip throughout Japan in
a photo assay and I found it on Artifact and
(44:02):
it was this moment where I've been to Japan only
a few times. It's one of my favorite places on Earth.
But I scrolled through and I was just like, Okay,
I'm taken back and I'm not reading about some awful
thing that happened in downtown San Francisco today because I
can get that elsewhere. That's the opportunity is not necessarily
the news industry, but rather what are people reading, what
(44:25):
are people being served and why? And if you focus
on these platforms that focus on the most insane stories
being pushed to you, you're just going to get that
type of content I said I wanted to avoid. So
the real opportunity here is and you learn someone's interests
and can you delight them with content that doesn't make
them want to shut the app and anger every single day.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
I think the word delight you're using is absolutely the case.
I mean, that's why I do have a good feeling
about threads. I find it delightful sometimes. I was laughing
at it the other day. They have some astronomy person
right on there, and I'm not interested in astronomy, but
I and I don't know why. Or they had a
video that made me laugh, or cat videos or whatever.
And on artifact just now stuff I wouldn't have found,
(45:07):
Like there's a piece that someone else discovered that then
showed me, which was when was the last time Mark
injuries and talked to a poor person. It made me laugh.
I was like, probably never, you know, since he was
a kid, essentially when he was poor, and that's the
kind of thing you need. I think there's a real
if there's a trend, Kevin, maybe you could answers there's
a trend toward getting sick of crap, like everyone is
(45:29):
sick of crap. And I do think there is a
trend towards And I think it's the same with voters.
They don't want to hear anymore from screaming people, screaming
angry people. They want to hear about things they like
about their family. And I think that's kind of a secret,
silent majority of people being delighted by things or discovering
things that are of interest in them, even if they're
(45:50):
hard stories or whatever.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
But do you think they want to hear things that
are not so partisan too, I mean anything, You know,
I'm desperate to actually have someone explained to me what
is going on with this committee that's investigating Joe Biden
and claiming that his family has made ten million dollars
(46:13):
in you know, it's on some right wing news site
that I actually get their newsletter because I want to
hear what they're saying. But I sent it to a
friend and I said, I'm so confused. Is any of
this actually true? Right?
Speaker 2 (46:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (46:27):
I think verifying information is really hard today. You never
know who to trust, even with large publications. You don't
know if there's some ulterior motive or partisan angle. And
I think one of the reasons why I'm excited about
artifacts and the algorithmic approach is there's all these new
advancements in balancing perspectives. So there's this thing called bridging algorithms.
(46:49):
The idea is like you can kind of lump people
based on their history of reading into you know, right
or left politically, and what you can do is look
for articles that actually resonate with both rather than just
deepen the divide. And this is well studied. It's actually
used on Twitter today on acts ironically Kara for their
(47:10):
community notes product. That's how they decide which community notes
actually get shown, because otherwise you have people on the
right doing community notes, correcting the lefties and the lefties
correcting the righting right. So like, the way it can
be applied in mass to news and information is by
noticing that certain things have a bias not in terms
(47:31):
of content, but who they resonate with yeah, and then
finding content that brings people together. We're far too small
and early right now for a lot of this to
make sense.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
Is anybody doing that, Kevin, I haven't heard of anyone
else even considering it.
Speaker 2 (47:46):
Yeah, it's hard.
Speaker 3 (47:46):
Well, what's funny, care is it's actually not hard, meaning
technically it's not hard. What's hard is to make the
choice to do it. Because you are seen as somehow
trying to push liberal content to conservatives or conservative content liberals.
You violate one of the groups. And I think that's
very hard when you're very large and you know you're
(48:07):
trying to balance whatever party is in power with legislation
against your company and investigations and so it becomes a
very difficult place to be as a large company, but
not a difficult place if you're a smaller you're trying
to grow.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
It's anesthetical though, to what Kara often calls engagement through enragement,
you know, like, if you want people you want to
feed the dogs the dog food and you want affirmation
instead of information, challenging people's worldview to me would work
against the whole visceral connection. You have to content that
makes you stay on the platform, right.
Speaker 3 (48:43):
Well, in this case, I'm explaining something slightly different, which
is you're looking for content that resonates with both sides,
so it actually drives engagement on both sides because people
see some common thread in it.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
It's commonality.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
Years ago a Well started. That's how it started. And
the first thing I ever noticed it was when he
had a group of quilters who had met on AOL
and they had made a quilt of an AOL symbol
and they finally met in person and met him, and
they felt like they knew him. And it was so
positive because these were people so different from each other
that just liked to quilt and they managed to create
(49:21):
it online. And I remember thinking this could be used
for such good things, and it could be used for
such bad things, like I could see the opposite people
that like to make bombs and blow up people they.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
Don't like, or white supremacists.
Speaker 2 (49:34):
Yeah, yoh no it listen. AOL was good for white
supremacists early on too, So connection is what you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (49:42):
Well, I'm excited to check out artifact and use it.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
It's great.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
I downloaded it. Appreciate that, Kevin, Thank you so much
for doing this. It was really fun to talk to you.
Good luck with your latest venture, Tevin.
Speaker 2 (49:54):
I'll call you. I'll be in San Francisco soon. We'll
walk around the Hellsgate, which is not a hellscape.
Speaker 3 (49:58):
Okay, no, actually quite nice.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
I feel like you two speak a whole different language
than me. But I think I was able to keep them.
You kept too, You kept up. Yeah, he's a nice guy,
isn't he? What do you think quality guy? Do you
think artifact is going to be successful? Kiara?
Speaker 2 (50:20):
I think it's hard, Like it's just hard because people
are attracted by terrible things, right, that's the problem. We've
been trained in this. The internet went a certain way.
It's not a good way. But I do believe when
I use that or threads now, I'm very happy and
I like it. And so maybe that maybe you can
change your habits, your bad habits.
Speaker 1 (50:40):
I guess what do you think is going to happen
to the news business. I don't want to start this
whole conversation, but it is a long one. But but
how do you think it's going to shake out? Carara?
I mean, it's just in a really difficult state.
Speaker 2 (50:55):
I think it'll be just fine. You do, I think
there are new economic models that everybody has to get
adjusted to, whether especially in Hollywood for example, around streaming
and cable news. But you know, I just did an
interview with Perry Diller, and I think he's right. These
are worldwide distribution networks of information. Still, you know, television
is everywhere, and so the question is how do you
(51:15):
get people to engage in the content itself? And maybe
we have to stop thinking less about how than the
content itself. And I'll give you one example, which I've
told this story before, but I was just in a
frontline documentary about Twitter, and I had participated in their
previous one when I think they do great work. And
so I was doing it and my phone rang and
my son called and he said, what are you doing, mom?
(51:37):
I said, I'm doing a frontline interview and he goes,
I love Frontline and I said really, And then he
started talking about all the frontlines he watches. I don't
watch it as much as he does, and I put
on the speaker because these people are like, look, it's
a twenty one year old loves frontline. Look at this.
And I said to him, I didn't know you watched PBS.
And he said, I don't watch PBS. Why would I
watch PBS. I see it on YouTube. Well that's a
(51:59):
win as far as I'm concerned, if we become adaptable
to where people are. People are giving up cable for
YouTube TV, and so that's where I'm work like, people
are not listening, they're not watching. It's just it's just changed.
And then the economics have changed, and that's the problem.
That's what's happened.
Speaker 1 (52:17):
And I think if you build quality, they will come,
you know, I do think, yes, I do. I mean,
and they might be in smaller numbers because I always
say mass media is and oxymoron.
Speaker 2 (52:27):
Now I think we started with you going to Yahoo.
You're a testimony to this, right, you have much more
control over your content.
Speaker 1 (52:33):
Well, we have a whole different financial model where we
work with companies and tell stories often in conjunction with them,
because as trust in media and other institutions has declined,
trusting companies has increased and employees are demanding it. So
we actually our revenue model is to work with companies
for you know, for year long or multiple year sponsorships
(52:56):
and partnerships. Really in good storytelling.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
Yeah, but I'm saying you're making as much money. It
may not be the big organizations that are right. Maybe
that's what it is. There'll be a whole bunch of
media entrepreneurs like yourself, Like myself, I'm doing great. I
just am not attached to a big, giant ocean liners all.
I just have a little, speedy, little boat and it
does really well.
Speaker 1 (53:17):
And you love that and you love not being beholden
to these big corporations. Yeah, because nobody tells Kara Swish
or what to do.
Speaker 2 (53:25):
Nobody tells Katie Kirk what to do.
Speaker 1 (53:27):
Is it very awesome though, Kia.
Speaker 2 (53:29):
Yes, we're always like this or not. This is the
way we are, and I think it does appeal to
our entrepreneurial natures. And I think any journalist is not entrepreneurial.
It's going to have a harder time going forward. That's
my definite feeling. You have to sort of start to
think it's okay, like Kevin was talking about, if it's
a small business, it doesn't have to be Instagram, right,
It's okay. You can do very well with a very
(53:50):
small business. You can do very well, and you get
to do what you want.
Speaker 1 (53:53):
I get a smaller audience than I did when I
was at the Today Show. But I also feel like
I'm still serving a need. You know.
Speaker 2 (54:00):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (54:00):
The stuff that I'm doing is reaching people who want it,
the people who find it useful. That's right, And that
makes me feel like I have purpose.
Speaker 2 (54:10):
That's correct. That's correct. It's just different, that's all. I
don't think it's I think people are still desperate for information,
good information, and new good news, and not just good news,
but news done well. And I think this recent situation
Israel sort of underscores it. People are very confused by
bad information and they need good information to make good
decisions about what's happening and what to do about it.
(54:32):
And that's critical. It remains critical, Kara.
Speaker 1 (54:35):
But I'll let you go because if you keep talking,
you're never going to get your voice back.
Speaker 2 (54:39):
No, Katie, I never take a break. I never take
a break like you. I let you know. You're my
year o. Katie. You never take a break.
Speaker 1 (54:46):
Do you I like working?
Speaker 2 (54:48):
I know you do. You're good at it.
Speaker 1 (54:50):
Kara, thank you for being my plus one. This was
so fun.
Speaker 2 (54:53):
No problem.
Speaker 1 (54:53):
Let's do it again anytime. Thanks for listening. Everyone. If
you have a question for me, a subject you want
us to cover, or you want to share your thoughts
about how you navigate this crazy world reach out. You
can leave a short message at six oh nine five
(55:16):
point two five to five five, or you can send
me a DM on Instagram. I would love to hear
from you. Next Question is a production of iHeartMedia and
Katie Kuric Media. The executive producers are Me, Katie Kuric,
and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz, and
our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian Weller
(55:40):
composed our theme music. For more information about today's episode,
or to sign up for my newsletter, wake Up Call,
go to the description in the podcast app, or visit
us at Katiecuric dot com. You can also find me
on Instagram and all my social media channels. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
(56:03):
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hi everyone, I'm Katie Couric and this is Next Question.
Hi everybody, welcome. Once again, it's Katie plus one. As
you guys know, just to switch things up, I'm inviting
a friend to co host the podcast from time to time,
and my date today is the one and only Kara Swisher. Now,
(00:28):
Kara is the ultimate multi hyphenate, as they say these days, writer, podcaster, author,
rock conteur, stripper. Oh sorry, you're not a stripper overall
that ass So, Kara, thank you so much. We are
both under the weather, so I think we need each
other today. You've got a cold.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
You sound better than I sound terrible, and I had
to do four podcasts today.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Oh my god, how did you do it?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I didn't know we were dating. This is so exciting
for me as a lesbian that we're finally finally admitting
our deepen abiding affection and really lust for each other.
It's fantastic.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Well, I am very happy to have you here because, seriously,
not to gush, you're one of my favorite people. You're
one of the smartest people I know, thinks, an incredible reporter.
I think everyone in the business respects you so much. Kara,
and you're really fearless, which is what I love about you.
And you know, I thought you'd be the perfect person
(01:25):
to write Shotgun with me, although I can't imagine you're
willing to give up the driver's seat. But we're going
to be chatting with Kevin Sistrom, who you know well.
But before I just want to give our listeners a
little bit about us, Kara. How did we meet? I
was trying to remember when I first met you.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
When I broke the story about you going to Yahoo?
Speaker 1 (01:44):
I think, oh, is that when? Yes? But I was
reading your stuff all the time.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
We sense because you were thinking about going to Yahoo,
you had to, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
But so that was I guess in around twenty twelve.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Yeah, I guess, yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
And who were you writing for back then?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
My own thing, Recode? Oh, that's right, Recode. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
And you were breaking stories right and left, including the
one about me.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
I was and I thought it was intriguing. I thought
it was super intriguing that someone like you, you'd been
at all the broadcast networks. It was a big moment
for people to make that crossover. You were one of
the few and the early ones. Now it didn't work
out quite the way you wanted to, but it still
was pretty brave to do something like that and to
try something out, and you know, you kind of got
snowed by Merissa Mayer.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
I did. And I think in retrospect, not only was
it a bad fit because I don't think her goals
and my goals aligned right in terms of turning Yahoo
into a really major digital news network, but you know,
I also think I might have been a bit too early.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Kara, Yeah, because you're not unlike what you're doing now
with podcasting. You know, you were kind of doing That's
what you were kind of doing, but you did it
in more traditional sense, which was interviews and things like that.
What was your title? It was so big? It was
like global news anchor.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Yes, my husband made fun of me and said, why
don't they call you intergalactic news anchor? I know it
was a blood news anchor. It was a little a
little much.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
But it was early, and it was really important for
people who who didn't understand what was happening in news
on the internet to for have someone like you to
go over and very few people did that. You know,
I'm trying to think. I think it was you and
nobody else. Yeah, there were a couple, you know, but
mostly what happened is later people that were on networks
did podcasts or they did you know, it's different things,
(03:28):
but podcasts and newsletters, which was an impairy thing, or
else ape here has an influencer on TikTok or Instagram
and stuff like that, and so you were early to
all those things. As I recall, you were very early
to Instagram, you were on Twitter early. Yeah, you were
very embracing of the digital part. You didn't make fun
of it the way most media people did.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Well.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
I think I saw early on. Honestly, I think part
from my own experience at CBS. You know, there was
the decline of linear television. It was going steadily declining
year over year, and I realized that, you know, in
two thousand and eight. It was two thousand and eight
when the iPhone came out. I mean that totally changed
the game. And care I remember being at CBS and
(04:09):
having somebody say to me, I forget who he was.
He goes, the future is mobile, But I remember thinking,
what is he talking about? And he was so spot on,
but whatever was going to happen, I knew something was changing.
And meanwhile, you have been on the forefront of everything.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Well mobile, you know Walt and I called Mobile Web
two point zero. I think we were very when we
saw the iPhone, and you know, Jobs had denied he
was making it to us the year before he introduced it. No,
I'm not working on a phone but an interview, but
he was. The minute that happened, the iPhone changed everything,
including you know, for Kevin System, you wouldn't have had Instagram,
you wouldn't have had Uber, you wouldn't have had a
(04:47):
lot of Airbnb. There's so much you wouldn't have without
the apogonomy. And of course that's when companies likeness came
into being, really because of the iPhone.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
It's amazing how much things have changed when you think
about when we got into journalism and the things that
have tanked as a result of the Internet and things
that have exploded. Well, you've got a lot going on
in your life. I'm excited to have you back on
this podcast when your new book comes out in twenty
twenty four. It's called burn Book, Right, you'll like it.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Kaaney, you're in it.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Oh God, I hope you're nice to meet Kara.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
I am. It's a low bar though it's a low
bar for people in the Internet.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Well, I know you're not a fan of a lot
of people in Silicon Valley, but you are a fan
of our guest, Kevin Sistrom.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
I am very much.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
So well, let's let him in so you can talk
about him and he can his ears can actually burn
in person.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Kevin, Hi, how are you guys? How are you wonderful?
Speaker 1 (05:44):
What a coincidence, Kevin? We were just talking about you,
and I was saying to Kara there are a lot
of people in Silicon Valley she's not crazy about, but
one of the people she really really likes Kevin is you.
You're in rare company. Now, what is it about Kevin,
Kara that you like?
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Well, you know, I really do admire you know, there's
a lot of people I had a lot of wrangling with,
like Steve Jobs, who I actually did like too. I
like people who love products. I love people who have
a design sense, have a real tear about products and
designing them correctly. I like someone who's thoughtful and is
willing to change their minds. You know, Kevin was always
open to criticism in a way that didn't It wasn't
(06:25):
hurt all the time.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
And Kevin I mean, it seems like you have a
lot of humility, which is a quality that's probably hard
to come by in Silicon Valley. How have you been
able to maintain some openness, some humility as you've approached
your work.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
I was having dinner with the Promise site and we
were talking about Artifact and my current project and how
it's going and the future of it, and I said,
I think the difference between the people that succeed in
the long run and the people that continue to fail
are the people that do their best to recognize their
(07:03):
blind spots and that everyone has them. And the problem is,
at least in Silicon Valley, that these companies grow to
be so large that if you stay in charge, you
can ignore your blind spots because you've got your moat,
you've got your defense, and you can ignore all of
the things you don't know about yourself because you're successful,
(07:26):
and you continue to be successful, and you have all
this money. The problem is, let's imagine you sell your company.
You're no longer in charge of your company, and you
have to go face the real world. You have to
get in touch with your failings and your weaknesses pretty quickly,
otherwise you get chewed up and spit out the other side.
That's what every entrepreneur has to do at some point
(07:47):
in their life. The problem is that people that cares
talking about, I believe, are the people who get to
the point where they don't have to really think about
those things because they're just riding the wave that they
caused maybe ten or twenty years ago. Have that wave anymore?
You have to create a new wave. And in order
to create that wave, I think you need to understand
where you're good, where you're not good, and sometimes that
(08:09):
can be a painful process.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Well you know, Kevin, it's also a question of maturity, right,
I sort of link I split people between adults and toddlers. Really,
I don't know what else to say, is adult toddlers
who get enabled and coddled. And you know this from
having money. You don't know who's your friend. You have
people in violent agreement with you almost all the time,
and the ability to take feedback is very hard when
(08:31):
everybody is enabling you not to not to do so,
and I think it makes you a lesser executive in
my opinion. And you don't hear let me tell you
who you don't hear from about that who doesn't complain
when you have a good about their product is the
people from Apple. You don't hear Tim Cook belly aching
about anything because he's an adult, and so I think,
and I don't think you have to be old to
(08:52):
be an adult. I think you were an adult from
very early on. I mean that was my feeling at
the time.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Well, let's talk about early on, Kevin, because I know
we have so much to cover, But I do want
to start with Instagram, just because I'm addicted to it
and I've been going down endless rabbit holes, much to
my estegrint. I mean constantly. It's really hard. It is addictive.
But where did the idea from Instagram come from?
Speaker 3 (09:17):
It came from We were working on a different app,
not Instagram, called Bourbon, and it was spelled b u
RBN and the name doesn't matter. It was funny, but
it was a check in app. It led you share
your location, so you could say I'm at a restaurant,
I'm at a bar, and all your friends would see
where you were. And it was kind of riding this
(09:37):
wave of check an app.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Poor Square was the popular yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Or Square Goala Hot Potato there were a bunch of them.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Was looped in.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
There was looped yep, yep. Here's the thing people forget
that maybe they don't forget, but it's easy to forget that.
We see these waves of like everyone's doing generative AI
all at once, everyone's doing Web three. My version of
that when I started was check and apps. Everyone was
doing check and apps. And we started this check and app.
(10:08):
And the one feature that we had that no other
check and app had was the ability to add photos.
And you can attach a photo to your check in,
so you could say, I'm at the beach, here's me
at the beach. And no one really liked our check
and app. No one really wanted to use it. I mean,
we had a small group of people playing with it,
and you know, we took a step back, Mike Kreeger
(10:28):
and I and Mike cofounder, we took a step back
and we said, why and what is it about the
thing we've built that people do love? So we crossed
everything out. We had a whiteboard and we wrote everything
that people used on the app up on the whiteboard
and crossed everything off, and we ended up basically with
one thing circled, which was photos. We said, okay, what
if we threw away literally everything about this app and
(10:50):
repositioned it around photos. So we did that. But that's
not the end of the story. A very quick addition
to the story is we did that pivot. We built
this app, we didn't call it Instagram yet, and I
was I decided I needed a week off because I
was exhausted. I was like, I don't think this pivot's
going to work. So I'm going to go to Mexico
for a week to a little little seaside town with
(11:12):
who would become my wife, who was my girlfriend at
the time, Nicole. And we we're walking along the beach
and I said, do you think you'll use this new
version of this app called Bourbon that's photos only? And
she said, no, I don't think I will because I
don't like sharing my photos. My photos aren't good enough.
I said, why aren't your photos good enough? And she said, well,
because all your friends take these amazing, beautiful filtered photos.
(11:34):
And I was like, yeah, that's because they use filter apps.
And she's like, well, you should probably add filters to
the app. I said, that's a brilliant idea. So we
finished that walk on the beach I went back to
the little hotel room we were staying in and I
researched how to make the first filter. And if you
look way back on my profile, the first photo on
my profile, the first photo ever on Instagram, is a
(11:55):
square photo of a very small dog in Mexico when
we went out to lunch after I built the first
filter on Instagram because of that walk on the beach. Wow,
I'm proud to say she is now my wife and
I love her dearly.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Well did you pay her? Did you pay her for it?
Speaker 1 (12:08):
I was gonna say, but I think I don't think
she has a good prenup.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Well, I think we're both very, very happy with the situation.
I'm very happy to be married to her, and we
just we have this great life now. So it's awesome.
But how do we knock down on that walk?
Speaker 1 (12:23):
I remember I was at Yahoo, you guys when when
Instagram came out, and somebody on my team says, you
need to be on Instagram. You know, it's this great
new thing, and I was like what, But I was
I kind of got into it pretty quickly, and it
just grew so fast, Kevin, to the point you sold
it to Mark Zuckerberg for one billion dollars, which is
(12:45):
a nice chunk of change.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Actually, Katie, it was cheap, you know, are really Oh yeah, really,
Zuckerberg got the bargain of a century getting that fantastic.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Oh, you're right, I've read that. How much do you
think you could have sold it for in retrospect, Kevin?
Or do you hate that question?
Speaker 3 (13:00):
I don't hate the question because I'm so used to
getting it now. I think I hated it the first
couple of times, but now now I feel like I've
come to terms with my answer, which is, at the time,
do you know how many people, Katie, we had at
the company when we sold it for a billion dollars?
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Seven?
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Right?
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Seven? Maybe more?
Speaker 3 (13:17):
It was nine? I think maybe nine or ten. It's okay.
You imagine you have a group of kids in a
room working on a photo app and someone comes along
and says, how about a billion? You know, I don't
know many people that would turn that deal down?
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Yeah, and you.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Know, Listen could have should have would a had we
stayed the course been independent. I don't know. I mean,
how many examples of people, maybe I know more of
them personally have turned down acquisition offers Facebook for one
hundred billion dollars. Well, you know, Facebook's the easy one.
That's the one we all talked about. Let's talk about
the one is that didn't work out. Yeah, you're right,
hundred that turned down one two hundred million dollar offers
(13:58):
saying you know what, we're going to stick the course.
Now you literally never heard of these companies.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
I think my point, Kevin, was that you were making
something that was special and different. Having seen everything, I
think while I think they did help you grow quickly,
I suspect you could have done it by yourselves, because
your product was quite magical in a way that not
a lot of them are. How much do you imagine
they helped you grow? I don't think I've ever asked
you that. How much do you think they being within
(14:24):
the juggernaut of Facebook, which was at that moment still
is really did you think they really did help you?
I assume you did.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
I think they helped us in a bunch of ways,
and we helped them back in a bunch of ways.
And there's a little bit of this dynamic of we
and them, which I find so strange. By the way, Yeah,
because you know, like sure, we had a little building
on campus and had a little Instagram logo on the outside,
but we were all part of the same company. And
(14:53):
I'm bringing this up not to point out the way
you're talking about us, but rather the way we talked
about ourselves internally. When I was there, it was such
an US versus then dynamic, and it was very strange
in my head always because I was like, here, we
are now producing billions of dollars, years in billions of dollars,
but it's as if we're like two siblings fighting over
(15:16):
who gets the remote and we're not.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Well. It sounded like that to me, though, Kevin, because
everything I read it sounds like, and correct me if
I'm wrong that Mark Zuckerberg was kind of threatened by
you and your success and the fact that a lot
of resources were going to Instagram, and I don't know,
it sounds like his ego got in the way. Is
that accurate.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
I don't know that I can speak on his bath
for that. You'd have to ask him directly.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
I mean, is that how you felt.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
The way that I felt was that nothing made sense
logically about the way we were running the two companies. Logically.
It was amazing that we had lightning in a bottle,
and we were producing, you know, a product that was
growing all over the world and you know, double digit
growth rates per month and then on top of that,
(16:08):
producing billions of dollars. Yet for summer reason, internally, the
dynamic was that we were disappointed. Yeah, and that was
very strange. And like, basically the reason I left, by
the way, and I've said this to friends, and I'm
not sure I've ever said it to anyone else, but
like the reason I left is because the more I
felt that I put in and the more that we won,
(16:29):
the harder my job got. The more difficult the more
and not that like not that jobs don't get harder
as things go on, But it wasn't like that's that
success was a good thing. It was almost as if
that success was a bad thing because we had this product,
Facebook Blue, which was going through some tough times. And
I get that I probably, you know, could have been
(16:51):
a better you know, I don't know, sibling or whatever
in terms of understanding how challenging that must be for
those people and for those teams and for the brand.
And at the same time, I found it so strange
that we didn't look at our situation as holy crap.
We are the luckiest people on earth and maybe the
luckiest company on Earth. That feels like a real tragedy
(17:13):
in retrospect.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Yeah, well, I read that you were on I Guess
doing some interviews and Mark and Cheryl said basically you
couldn't do interviews without getting permissioned from them. So it
does sound like a bit of a power struggle. What's
your take on that, Kiara.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
I think they were jealous of I know they were
jealous of Kevin largely because of creativity. And the knock
on them was that they stole ideas, that they were shoplifters,
essentially of other people's theories and ideas. Now, as it
turned out, Instagram became an enormous engine for Facebook. As
Facebook started to wane in usage, in excitement in young people,
(17:50):
being especially young people, it was critical. To me. There's
certain purchases in technology that are critical that really changed them.
I think Google buying you Tube was one of them.
And I think there are certain purchases where it's a
real turning point. I think it wasn't a critical critical thing,
and it's sort of as rich and famous as you get,
(18:11):
it doesn't matter if it wasn't you who did. And
I think Bill Gates suffered from this, you know, probably
more towards Steve Jobs. Is like Bill Gates before he
did all the philanthropy when he if he had died
then it would have been the world's richest man died today.
And if Steve Jobs done, which he later did, the
world's greatest tech visionary died today. And I think Kevin
(18:31):
was more in the visionary part of that. And Mark,
you know, he's like a Henry Ford character. And so
that's what makes it hard. And again let me I'd
love to ask you getting back to the product, and
that's really what you have to get to is the
product itself and the iterations you make around it, including
as I've talked with Kevin about doing stories that was
a snapchat thing that then Instagram did. Now Kevin's quite
(18:54):
smartly and very cleverly. Is said to me, well, they
made a radio in a car, and we just made
a better radio in a car. And I kind of
accept that now. I accept that now, Kevin.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
It's funny, by the way, Kara for a second that
you know you'll say that Facebook or shoplifters, but like
to be clear, story was a very direct. You know,
it wasn't a replica because I think we added some
really neat features to it.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
You did.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
But I do believe that, like you know, as much
as Facebook might have invented the Facebook news feed. Yes,
now you can't see a social product without a news feed,
but that wasn't a given back then.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
That's true.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
So these things are not property the founder. Yeah, it's
about who actecutes best on them. And now we're seeing
that play out with the Twitter feed effectively across multiple products.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Yeah, everyone's doing a version of Twitter, including you and
your new you know, a version of But the idea
of it is a feed, isn't It really is a
feed when you think about it. But one of the
things that I think is important to remember is that
not just from a creative point of view, it gave
Facebook and enormous amount of credibility to own a product
like this, it also was financially enormous, like enormous, and
(20:07):
a safer place than what was going on at Facebook.
I think that was really important, a pleasant place. Facebook
had started to get different right as they got criticized.
But Instagram, even though there are lots of problems on
Instagram around lots of problems. You know, it still was
a place of product of enjoyment. I guess. I don't
know else to put it, but a product of enjoyment
more than anything else and delight. And I think that's
(20:30):
hard to do and sustain. Twitter has never been enjoyable.
It's been funny, it's been vexing, it's been addictive, But
enjoying I don't think so. I don't, you know, I
guess in a broader sense, and that's very hard to do.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
After this break, we dive into how tech companies can
build products that select for something other than outrage. Kevin
has some great ideas on how to do just that.
I want to get smarter every morning with a breakdown
of the news and fascinating takes on health and wellness
(21:05):
and pop culture. Sign up for our daily newsletter, Wake
Up Call by going to Katiecuric dot com. And we're
back with our guest, Kevin Sistrom and my co pilot
Kara Swisher. I wanted to ask you about the negative
side of Instagram, Kevin. Obviously, there are a lot of
(21:27):
negative impacts on girls, on mental health. On the comparison
that it encourages, and is that just part of the deal.
I mean, can anything be done about the psychosocial impact
of some of these platforms, and specifically Instagram, and is
(21:47):
as you saw it having this impact. I'm curious what
went through your mind.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
I think it all comes down to leadership, the idea
that you have a school and that tool take nuclear
energy can be used for amazing things. It can produce clean,
sustainable energy, but also, if used not in the right way,
can create massive destruction. Tools themselves rarely have a very
(22:23):
clear positive or negative effect. It's when you put that
tool in someone's hand and that person decides to start
making rules around it, in judgments about what's allowed what's
not allowed, the way they decide to moderate things, their
community guidelines, the tone they set as a leader with
their own posts. If we're talking social media, and as
(22:47):
a leader at Instagram, early on, I decided that we
should focus on being the nicest place on the Internet.
And nice is like a really lame word, but let's
move past that to maybe dness. So, for instance, we
were one of the first, if not the first, major
social network to use machine learning to detect bullying and
(23:09):
intervene in bullying situations. Most people were worried about spam
at this point. So if you went to any other network,
they'd had spam filters and spand detectors, and we were
focused on interactions that didn't qualify as spam, but were
human to human interactions that were negative, and we would
intervene and try to stop those things. Those are the
types of decisions that I think made Instagram such a
(23:32):
great place early on, because we didn't We used to
have caro. We used to have this phrase internally called
prune the trolls. Yeah, and we used to just get
rid of We used to block accounts of people who
were causing issues very very early on, and that was
getting rid of the negative. But then we would also
host these community meetups called instamets, and we would bring
(23:55):
together people on the platform in person, in a to
meet each other, to put a face to a name,
and those types of interactions very early on, I think
set an amazing tone for the community that lasted well
beyond my tenure. But as you get bigger and bigger
and you get into the billions, the law of large
(24:17):
numbers says that you get just about everyone on the platform,
every type of person, so it becomes much harder to
make these decisions. So maybe in one country something is
well accepted, will in another country it's not accepted. You
have to make these really hard choices about what's allowed
and what's not allowed, and you start to make people
angry with these choices. But it all comes down to leadership.
(24:39):
It all comes down to those fundamental decisions you make
as a human holding that tool in your hand, with
the control which.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
I think is lost for a lot of people. A
lot of tech people try to abrogate. I don't want
to have anything to do even as they built it,
like I didn't mean to build this city.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Right, Well we're a platform, we're not a publisher, right.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Yeah, but they built it in the first place, and
they think one of the things is important Keavn can
talk to this about a new thing is you have
to have a set of rules. And it's okay. You
know this whole canard that it's a public square. It's
not a public anything. It's a private money making company.
I mean, I don't know, Kevin. I think that I
think these are these are companies and you know company
as it's rules and so should this.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Are there any things that you see Kevin when you
go on Instagram today that you wish wasn't happening, or
changes you think, Oh, I'm so pissed there letting this happen,
or if I were there, I would do X, Y
or Z.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
At the end of the day, the question is how
you incentivize people and who's in control? And I think
what we've seen so you asked, you know, what do
I wish was different? Yeah, I'm not sure it's an
Instagram problem specifically, but you know, products like reels and
product like like YouTube shorts or even TikTok, they're so
optimized on engagement that they will show you things that
(25:52):
you are not actually interested in, but they will make
you stare at them forever, and then you wake up
one day and you look around you go, god, I
just spend an hour. Was that like a useful hour
of my life?
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Right?
Speaker 3 (26:03):
And part of why I started Artifact was the belief
that you could use some of the same technology to personalize,
but do it in a way that actually showed people
things that made their life more informed, maybe a little
bit better.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Kevin's talking a little bit. If you want to make
an analogy to sugar, right, isn't this doughnut delicious, what
a delicious done? And you may even not want it.
You may want something healthy, or you might want something different,
but it's hard to resist.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
But it's sitting in front of you.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Well, it's how you architect things. And Kevin's a designer.
If you architect for virality and speed, you're going to
get a different thing. And if you architect for context
and content, like really good what you're looking for right, absolutely,
And so it's a question of what architecture you put
into place and so many of these things, or else
you don't put anything into place. And people generally trend
(26:51):
towards shitty stuff. Look at the shitty stuff, look at
the accent. And that's what's going on on Twitter right now.
He's just removed everything, and so people who are bad
can come in and really attract you in a way
that is just the human brain. It's it crawls down
your cerebral cortex.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
Really, Kara, I have an example. Sure, I love coffee, okay,
and I go to Starbucks and by the way, like
you know people who I claim on a coffee er,
and then I tell people I go to Starbucks and
they're like wait what, But like I do.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
I'm surprised. I'm surprised you went to Starbucks. I'm surprised.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
Listen, I'm a busy guy with like two kids. Sometimes
you need a great, great quick cos.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
He's kind of a coffee snob. You are a coffee
you were.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Here's the thing. I've been going to Starbucks for god
knows how many years, and like, Starbucks is a milkshake company. Guys,
it's a milkshake company. Go into any Starbucks and just
sit there and watch people ordering. They're not ordering dripped coffees,
maybe once in a while a latte. People walk out
of there with huge milkshakes with whipped cream on top.
(27:55):
And yes, there's caffeine inside, but think about what machine produced,
what set of incentives produced that milkshake shop. It's like, well, okay,
if people like our coffee, but like, how can we
have them have coffee during the day, not the morning. Well,
let's blend up some ice with it, Let's add some sugar.
What do people like, Oh, okay, we'll do summer drinks.
(28:16):
And before you know it, like one of the most
original coffee companies in the world now like primarily sells milkshakes, right,
And if you think about it in terms of social media,
that's exactly what happens. You start off about being this
time square and ideas and everything, and then you say, oh, well,
actually what gets people to stay around and what you
end up with is like fight videos and car crashes
(28:38):
and silly animal dances like.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
And dunking and not new. But I would argue though,
that news is important that people are still on Twitter
because news is there. It's the best place to get
the most up to minute news because the people on
it so there are you can move people towards quality
things very easily, even if you can sort of do
this with the jazz hands with the milkshake.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
I think I just I want to be clear that
like I still love Starbucks, I still go there. It's
just you got to look at what incentives produce at
the end of the day in your business, what do
they produce, and if you chase profit, if you chase margin,
if you chase expansion, you will get to a point
where what you end up with are products that are
(29:22):
purely engineered for that rather than maybe the original mission.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
But I think I'm curious Kevin with artifact explain what
it is for people who do know. And also you're
going in a much more vegetable direction. Really, you're going
for full vegetable or full news junkie.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Essentially, I'll challenge that we're going full vegetable, but I'll
get there first by explaining what it is. Artifact is
a fully machine learning driven personalized news reader. So the
idea is that you show up and we're going to
show you a bunch of things. Because you told us
you're interested in technology in NFL and cars, we're you're
(29:58):
interested in fashion, and you're from San Francisco, and we
will crawl the Internet, not the entire Internet, but what
we deem is the trustworthy Internet, and we'll bring all
that content together and then we'll serve it to you
in a feed, and depending on what you tap on
and what you engage with, we'll try to learn what
(30:19):
your actual interests are, and then we'll customize that feed
over time. So what's happened for me personally is when
it started, it was just a bunch of tech news,
and now it's a mix of Japanese architecture and travel recommendations,
parenting tips because I have two young kids, and local
San Francisco politics, and that's great for me. It's a
mix of wonderful publications that I never would have heard
(30:42):
of otherwise and helped me discover local publications like the
San Francisco Standard. Things like this bring content to you
rather than having you get served content because someone decided
to post about it.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Or searching for it across a million different platforms. But
Apple News does the same for me, Kevin, how's this different?
Speaker 3 (31:02):
I'm going to say this and it's going to sound
like a non answer, but you have to see it
to know the difference. Like my pitch would be that
we focus on high quality, non trashy publications that aren't
so intellectual that they feel out of touch, but that
(31:23):
aren't like kind of one of the you know, content
mills that just show you more celebrity photos and that
it's like, thank you, someone finally built a news recommendation
service that understands me as someone who is and when
I say me, I mean someone who loves tech, who
loves things that are on the bleeding edge, wants to
learn about AI, maybe that have a budding interest in crypto,
(31:47):
like those types of things. It's like we go beyond
just the major publications too. We find interesting substacks we
find interesting recipe authors. So you're not going to find
that on a place like Apple News. You're not going
to find that on Google News. And that's okay because
they're focused on different things. But I think we go
a little bit more intellectual, and we go a little
(32:07):
deeper in terms of unique sources, and then on top
of that the competitive angle. I do believe our machine
learning is better than a bunch of these, so we
will personalize better for you, or at least that's our goal.
So that's how we're different.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
You name four areas you're interested in, you know, you
said local San Francisco politics, parenting articles, Japanese architecture, and
I forget the fourth one. What was the fourth one, Kevin? I?
Speaker 3 (32:32):
I remember, I don't either.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
But what about like someone like me and care I
imagine you're like me. I'm interested in probably twenty five
different things. You know, I'm interest I'm a generalist. I
want to know what's happening from Megan and Harry to
Tom Friedman's latest column about the Middle East to what
Richard coss might have written in Foreign Affairs, to what
(32:55):
the economist is saying about Israel, to everything to how
it'll affect you. I mean, obviously I'm heavy on foreign
policy right now, given everything that's going on in the world,
But how can you serve me up over such a
broad area of interest things that I want to see
without completely overwhelming me.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
They're a couple of ways. The first thing that I
think is really interesting to talk about here is you
just discussed revealed versus stated preferences. And if we ask
you to name all your preferences and we put a
piece of paper in front of you, For most people,
that's actually very, very difficult. It's very hard to say
all the things that you love without seeing them. But
(33:42):
if a system learned, and this is called exploration in
the machine learning verbiage, if you can explore potential topics
for someone and then just note Katie spend a bunch
of time on foreign affairs. She loves Thomas Friedman. Whenever
Thomas Freeman writes, she spends a bunch of time reading
this article. But she also loves like the latest Harry
and Meghan gossip. Those things are not mutually exclusive, but
(34:05):
they are on major publications. When you open up a
major publication, you have sections, you have the front page,
Harry and Meghan are not on the front page of
the New York Times or the Washington Post most of
the time probably ever, but for you, maybe they should be.
And that's really the dream here is that via exploration,
(34:25):
we can make that front page sing for you, that
it can feel like it was designed literally just for you.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Which has been an old goal of everybody. Yahoo. You
had personalization, Everyone's tried to sort of create this individualized
news feed for everyone. That's sort of been a long
time goal.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
Yeah, and maybe what I could do quickly is just
talk about where we've expanded recently, because the scope of
the company has changed pretty significantly. And that's some of
what Karen was talking about when she said we're building
our own little Twitter. We've always believed that we wanted
to build this personalized homepage for you that other people
have tried and not done it very well. One of
(35:04):
the realizations through this, I believe is that it's not
that it's necessarily hard to do. It's that I'm not
sure people are that impressed, not necessarily with us, but
just they need more. They need more than articles. They
want spice, they want unique, interesting content, and where that
typically comes from is user generated content when people actually
(35:26):
post something that they're thinking that's unique that you can't
find anywhere else. So we added this thing, this tab
called links, which now will let you. It lets you
post links to things that you find interesting and say
something about them, which could be not from a major publication,
it could be a random blog that you found or
maybe your own blog. But it also lets you post
(35:48):
just on your own so if you want to write
four or five paragraphs about something, you can and post
into it. And this feed has been really fun to
watch take off in the last few weeks. It's really
added a different life to Artifacts. Now you can get
your news, which is fine, but you can get it
to other places. But now you have these really unique
posts and links that you can get basically only on
(36:09):
Artifact on this other tab. But it's all part of
discovering content using personalization. That's the dream here is that
we can create this market where producers and consumers can
get matched and their interests are matched.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
So interest matching. There used to be a company called
six degrees. Do you remember them. Yeah, Amazon ended up
buying them, and the idea of putting interests together has
always been another dream. And what's happened is to generate
it into chaos, which is whatever is whatever bubbles up
in terms of enragement is what wins versus because it's
(36:42):
like a car traffic accident versus your interest. One of
the reasons TikTok is so successful. It does see your
interests and it knows what you like and you know more.
That's more media than social, right, And so the goal
is to be more media than social because social has
become so toxic in a lot of ways. And that's
what's difficult about these businesses.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
When we come back, what in the world is coming
next for news and media online? Kevin and Kara have
some ideas and there's real reason to be optimistic. We're
back with Kara Swisher and Kevin's sistrom. How is business, Kevin?
(37:28):
I mean, are you doing well? How are you getting
people to download yet another app and want to kind
of change their habits.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
I think what we've done is create a beautiful product
for some very passionate people, but nowhere near the amount
of people that use Instagram right, And the question is
how do you go from one to the other? Because
Instagram started off very small at the beginning. I mean,
everyone likes to think, oh, was this overnight success. And
don't get me wrong, the first day of Instagram we
(37:59):
had twenty five thousand people sign up and it was great,
and it continued to grow over time and it retained people.
The question is not can you get attention? The question
is can you retain people with a product that they love?
And we have a group of people that love this product,
and our main challenge is can we be mainstream? And
where's the white space? Where can people succeed? Because I mean, Carot,
(38:23):
what's the last successful consumer startup you have seen? I'm
curious here.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
It hasn't been in a long time, right, Oh, not
by a big company. It's been a long time. Someone's
broken through, Right, it's been a long time. I can't
think of one. You're very good. And also it also
has the law of big numbers. Is that you know
this is something Ben Horowitz of all people said to me.
He's like, no one's going to create a search engine.
No one's going to create a consumer commerce company because
(38:49):
of Amazon search engine, because of Google. No one's going
to create all these various things because of the large players.
And that's the real problem is how do you even
break through. Now. The one example is I gotta say TikTok, right,
came out of nowhere.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
I actually I'll challenge I'll change, which is I think
it's very easy as someone who maybe I was twenty
five at the time something like that Instagram started, it's
very easy to be optimistic and green and just believe
there's all this opportunity and I and then it's very easy.
Now on the other side, I'm about to turn forty,
I'm thirty nine right now to believe that there's no
(39:24):
opportunity or believe that maybe some doors have closed along
the way. But here's the wonderful thing about the Internet
that it surprises everyone. I mean, when we found it Instagram,
could you imagine that anyone would be able to have
found an image sharing social network to compete with Instagram?
And then snap came along, and then after stap do
(39:44):
you believe could you believe anyone could compete with YouTube
Instagram and snap in video and by the way, not
even a US company like this is incredible, Like, of course,
there are always opportunities. So would you have to do
I think in these situations is fite the urge to
believe that all the doors have closed and instead look
(40:05):
out and say, what are the opportunities that have changed
because of some fundamental technology change, like, for instance, generative AI.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Oh, that's full of ideas because there's going to be
general AI for insurance, for healthcare, all kinds of areas,
so you can It reminds me a little bit of
when the mobile phone came right that you couldn't have
imagined Instagram before the mobile phone could do easily.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
Now most people when they see companies start thinking, oh,
that idea is too small.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
And the question isn't is the idea too small at
the beginning, it's what is the ambition of the person
who's running it and what direction are they headed? Because
if you can map out that mark is going to
take it from Harvard to other Ivy League schools, to
every school, to every other college, to high schools, et cetera,
and then take over the world. Like then you say, okay,
this is interesting.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
But I don't know.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
There are a lot of companies that get started and
stay very happy with very small audiences. So it's not
about the idea, it's about the direction.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
I want to just spend a couple of minutes talking
about the media landscape and the state of news, which
is what prompted you to create Artifact, Kevin in the
first place. And I'd love to get your take on
what is happening on Twitter now or X and what
Elon Musk has done to turn it into such a cesspool. Obviously,
(41:24):
people can buy blue checks, so nobody is really verified.
The ad model has changed, there's ai I think that's
creating a lot of dis and misinformation. But I'd love
to ask you, Kara, what has X becommon Why?
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Well, it's interesting because it's still a little necessary because
it's so everyone's there and it's frantic, you know what
I mean. And so if they're like, if there's I
still go on it?
Speaker 1 (41:49):
I do.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
Sure, it's useful. It's because everybody's there, everybody, But it's
sort of like one of those clubs or a place
a downtown that you know you still have to kind
of go to. But it sucks now. It's like it's dirtier,
there's really weird people hanging around.
Speaker 3 (42:02):
No one says that about San Francisco. I'm not sure
what you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
No, no, no, no, no. I love Sirence. Don't insult
San Francisco to Karas for sure. So I find it
really hard to use. I have to turn off comments
now because of the really the flood of really crazy people.
And I'm joking about Elon must but he also you know,
it's really unpleasant, and so it's become an unpleasant experience.
But you put up with it because of the benefits
(42:27):
of getting instant, like there's no other place to go
right now to watch the vote happening.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
And didn't he fire everybody who was kind of evaluating
content and flagging content.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
A lot a lot, Well, they say, not everybody.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
And then I keep getting these ads what doctors don't
want you to do to your coffee? Like why why
do they keep why do they keep feeding me that ad?
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Because they're paying because the check is cashing. I don't know.
I think it's really I think it could go for
a while. These things can go for a while. Kevin
knows that these things can hold on for and he's
the richest man in the world, so he can afford.
It's like having a one of these Megga yachts that's
seeping oil out of it. He can keep doing it
and paying the fines for it. For a long time.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
What was frustrating to you, Kevin about the news environment
and how did you say, Oh, I need to fix
this or I need to fill a hole that's missing.
Speaker 3 (43:16):
I want to be clear that I think Artifact is
much more than just news. Like, of course we're in
the news category in the app store, and that's the
easiest way to talk about what we are. But I
think by frustration actually is that people only think about news.
When you talk about news, they don't think about all
the amazing content out there that has nothing to do
with the day as headlines.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
We should probably call it a content app.
Speaker 3 (43:39):
Really, Yeah, that's right, And I think people are thirsty
for that type of information because they don't want yet
another if it bleeds, it leads story. What they want
is some value in their life, a discovery. Like there's
this guy who just documented his trip throughout Japan in
a photo assay and I found it on Artifact and
(44:02):
it was this moment where I've been to Japan only
a few times. It's one of my favorite places on Earth.
But I scrolled through and I was just like, Okay,
I'm taken back and I'm not reading about some awful
thing that happened in downtown San Francisco today because I
can get that elsewhere. That's the opportunity is not necessarily
the news industry, but rather what are people reading, what
(44:25):
are people being served and why? And if you focus
on these platforms that focus on the most insane stories
being pushed to you, you're just going to get that
type of content I said I wanted to avoid. So
the real opportunity here is and you learn someone's interests
and can you delight them with content that doesn't make
them want to shut the app and anger every single day.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
I think the word delight you're using is absolutely the case.
I mean, that's why I do have a good feeling
about threads. I find it delightful sometimes. I was laughing
at it the other day. They have some astronomy person
right on there, and I'm not interested in astronomy, but
I and I don't know why. Or they had a
video that made me laugh, or cat videos or whatever.
And on artifact just now stuff I wouldn't have found,
(45:07):
Like there's a piece that someone else discovered that then
showed me, which was when was the last time Mark
injuries and talked to a poor person. It made me laugh.
I was like, probably never, you know, since he was
a kid, essentially when he was poor, and that's the
kind of thing you need. I think there's a real
if there's a trend, Kevin, maybe you could answers there's
a trend toward getting sick of crap, like everyone is
(45:29):
sick of crap. And I do think there is a
trend towards And I think it's the same with voters.
They don't want to hear anymore from screaming people, screaming
angry people. They want to hear about things they like
about their family. And I think that's kind of a secret,
silent majority of people being delighted by things or discovering
things that are of interest in them, even if they're
(45:50):
hard stories or whatever.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
But do you think they want to hear things that
are not so partisan too, I mean anything, You know,
I'm desperate to actually have someone explained to me what
is going on with this committee that's investigating Joe Biden
and claiming that his family has made ten million dollars
(46:13):
in you know, it's on some right wing news site
that I actually get their newsletter because I want to
hear what they're saying. But I sent it to a
friend and I said, I'm so confused. Is any of
this actually true? Right?
Speaker 2 (46:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (46:27):
I think verifying information is really hard today. You never
know who to trust, even with large publications. You don't
know if there's some ulterior motive or partisan angle. And
I think one of the reasons why I'm excited about
artifacts and the algorithmic approach is there's all these new
advancements in balancing perspectives. So there's this thing called bridging algorithms.
(46:49):
The idea is like you can kind of lump people
based on their history of reading into you know, right
or left politically, and what you can do is look
for articles that actually resonate with both rather than just
deepen the divide. And this is well studied. It's actually
used on Twitter today on acts ironically Kara for their
(47:10):
community notes product. That's how they decide which community notes
actually get shown, because otherwise you have people on the
right doing community notes, correcting the lefties and the lefties
correcting the righting right. So like, the way it can
be applied in mass to news and information is by
noticing that certain things have a bias not in terms
(47:31):
of content, but who they resonate with yeah, and then
finding content that brings people together. We're far too small
and early right now for a lot of this to
make sense.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
Is anybody doing that, Kevin, I haven't heard of anyone
else even considering it.
Speaker 2 (47:46):
Yeah, it's hard.
Speaker 3 (47:46):
Well, what's funny, care is it's actually not hard, meaning
technically it's not hard. What's hard is to make the
choice to do it. Because you are seen as somehow
trying to push liberal content to conservatives or conservative content liberals.
You violate one of the groups. And I think that's
very hard when you're very large and you know you're
(48:07):
trying to balance whatever party is in power with legislation
against your company and investigations and so it becomes a
very difficult place to be as a large company, but
not a difficult place if you're a smaller you're trying
to grow.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
It's anesthetical though, to what Kara often calls engagement through enragement,
you know, like, if you want people you want to
feed the dogs the dog food and you want affirmation
instead of information, challenging people's worldview to me would work
against the whole visceral connection. You have to content that
makes you stay on the platform, right.
Speaker 3 (48:43):
Well, in this case, I'm explaining something slightly different, which
is you're looking for content that resonates with both sides,
so it actually drives engagement on both sides because people
see some common thread in it.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
It's commonality.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
Years ago a Well started. That's how it started. And
the first thing I ever noticed it was when he
had a group of quilters who had met on AOL
and they had made a quilt of an AOL symbol
and they finally met in person and met him, and
they felt like they knew him. And it was so
positive because these were people so different from each other
that just liked to quilt and they managed to create
(49:21):
it online. And I remember thinking this could be used
for such good things, and it could be used for
such bad things, like I could see the opposite people
that like to make bombs and blow up people they.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
Don't like, or white supremacists.
Speaker 2 (49:34):
Yeah, yoh no it listen. AOL was good for white
supremacists early on too, So connection is what you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (49:42):
Well, I'm excited to check out artifact and use it.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
It's great.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
I downloaded it. Appreciate that, Kevin, Thank you so much
for doing this. It was really fun to talk to you.
Good luck with your latest venture, Tevin.
Speaker 2 (49:54):
I'll call you. I'll be in San Francisco soon. We'll
walk around the Hellsgate, which is not a hellscape.
Speaker 3 (49:58):
Okay, no, actually quite nice.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
I feel like you two speak a whole different language
than me. But I think I was able to keep them.
You kept too, You kept up. Yeah, he's a nice guy,
isn't he? What do you think quality guy? Do you
think artifact is going to be successful? Kiara?
Speaker 2 (50:20):
I think it's hard, Like it's just hard because people
are attracted by terrible things, right, that's the problem. We've
been trained in this. The internet went a certain way.
It's not a good way. But I do believe when
I use that or threads now, I'm very happy and
I like it. And so maybe that maybe you can
change your habits, your bad habits.
Speaker 1 (50:40):
I guess what do you think is going to happen
to the news business. I don't want to start this
whole conversation, but it is a long one. But but
how do you think it's going to shake out? Carara?
I mean, it's just in a really difficult state.
Speaker 2 (50:55):
I think it'll be just fine. You do, I think
there are new economic models that everybody has to get
adjusted to, whether especially in Hollywood for example, around streaming
and cable news. But you know, I just did an
interview with Perry Diller, and I think he's right. These
are worldwide distribution networks of information. Still, you know, television
is everywhere, and so the question is how do you
(51:15):
get people to engage in the content itself? And maybe
we have to stop thinking less about how than the
content itself. And I'll give you one example, which I've
told this story before, but I was just in a
frontline documentary about Twitter, and I had participated in their
previous one when I think they do great work. And
so I was doing it and my phone rang and
my son called and he said, what are you doing, mom?
(51:37):
I said, I'm doing a frontline interview and he goes,
I love Frontline and I said really, And then he
started talking about all the frontlines he watches. I don't
watch it as much as he does, and I put
on the speaker because these people are like, look, it's
a twenty one year old loves frontline. Look at this.
And I said to him, I didn't know you watched PBS.
And he said, I don't watch PBS. Why would I
watch PBS. I see it on YouTube. Well that's a
(51:59):
win as far as I'm concerned, if we become adaptable
to where people are. People are giving up cable for
YouTube TV, and so that's where I'm work like, people
are not listening, they're not watching. It's just it's just changed.
And then the economics have changed, and that's the problem.
That's what's happened.
Speaker 1 (52:17):
And I think if you build quality, they will come,
you know, I do think, yes, I do. I mean,
and they might be in smaller numbers because I always
say mass media is and oxymoron.
Speaker 2 (52:27):
Now I think we started with you going to Yahoo.
You're a testimony to this, right, you have much more
control over your content.
Speaker 1 (52:33):
Well, we have a whole different financial model where we
work with companies and tell stories often in conjunction with them,
because as trust in media and other institutions has declined,
trusting companies has increased and employees are demanding it. So
we actually our revenue model is to work with companies
for you know, for year long or multiple year sponsorships
(52:56):
and partnerships. Really in good storytelling.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
Yeah, but I'm saying you're making as much money. It
may not be the big organizations that are right. Maybe
that's what it is. There'll be a whole bunch of
media entrepreneurs like yourself, Like myself, I'm doing great. I
just am not attached to a big, giant ocean liners all.
I just have a little, speedy, little boat and it
does really well.
Speaker 1 (53:17):
And you love that and you love not being beholden
to these big corporations. Yeah, because nobody tells Kara Swish
or what to do.
Speaker 2 (53:25):
Nobody tells Katie Kirk what to do.
Speaker 1 (53:27):
Is it very awesome though, Kia.
Speaker 2 (53:29):
Yes, we're always like this or not. This is the
way we are, and I think it does appeal to
our entrepreneurial natures. And I think any journalist is not entrepreneurial.
It's going to have a harder time going forward. That's
my definite feeling. You have to sort of start to
think it's okay, like Kevin was talking about, if it's
a small business, it doesn't have to be Instagram, right,
It's okay. You can do very well with a very
(53:50):
small business. You can do very well, and you get
to do what you want.
Speaker 1 (53:53):
I get a smaller audience than I did when I
was at the Today Show. But I also feel like
I'm still serving a need. You know.
Speaker 2 (54:00):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (54:00):
The stuff that I'm doing is reaching people who want it,
the people who find it useful. That's right, And that
makes me feel like I have purpose.
Speaker 2 (54:10):
That's correct. That's correct. It's just different, that's all. I
don't think it's I think people are still desperate for information,
good information, and new good news, and not just good news,
but news done well. And I think this recent situation
Israel sort of underscores it. People are very confused by
bad information and they need good information to make good
decisions about what's happening and what to do about it.
(54:32):
And that's critical. It remains critical, Kara.
Speaker 1 (54:35):
But I'll let you go because if you keep talking,
you're never going to get your voice back.
Speaker 2 (54:39):
No, Katie, I never take a break. I never take
a break like you. I let you know. You're my
year o. Katie. You never take a break.
Speaker 1 (54:46):
Do you I like working?
Speaker 2 (54:48):
I know you do. You're good at it.
Speaker 1 (54:50):
Kara, thank you for being my plus one. This was
so fun.
Speaker 2 (54:53):
No problem.
Speaker 1 (54:53):
Let's do it again anytime. Thanks for listening. Everyone. If
you have a question for me, a subject you want
us to cover, or you want to share your thoughts
about how you navigate this crazy world reach out. You
can leave a short message at six oh nine five
(55:16):
point two five to five five, or you can send
me a DM on Instagram. I would love to hear
from you. Next Question is a production of iHeartMedia and
Katie Kuric Media. The executive producers are Me, Katie Kuric,
and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz, and
our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian Weller
(55:40):
composed our theme music. For more information about today's episode,
or to sign up for my newsletter, wake Up Call,
go to the description in the podcast app, or visit
us at Katiecuric dot com. You can also find me
on Instagram and all my social media channels. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
(56:03):
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Katie Couric
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