Welcome to the technium ride home for Wednesday, March 3 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today Google says it's getting out of the ad tracking game. Kinda. I'll explain what's really going on here. headline wrap up from Microsoft Ignite conference includes some AR excitement. Brave is launching a privacy search engine, and why Amazon's app icon redesign reminded people of Hitler's mustache. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. We are hopefully going to get some interesting and in depth analysis of this soon cuz I could use it. Google has announced it is getting out of the ad tracking business. Basically, Google has promised it will not build alternate identifiers to track users after phasing out third party tracking cookies. Quoting The Verge, Google is slowly phasing out third party tracking cookies and today, it's making clear that it won't just replace them with something equally invasive despite the impact that change will have on Google's lucrative advertising business. In a blog post. Google explicitly states that it quote, will not build alternate identifiers to attract individuals as they browse across the web and quote, after the third party cookies are gone, quote. Instead, our web products will be powered by privacy preserving API's, which prevent individual tracking while still delivering results for advertisers and publishers rates Google advances in aggregation and optimization on device processing and other privacy preserving technologies offer a clear path to replacing individual identifiers and quote, third party cookies have been blocked for a while in Safari and Firefox. Though the browser's differed in how far they go. And Google plans on doing the same in Chrome. The cookies allow advertisers to track you as you move between different websites, which gives advertisers a better idea of what your interests are. These hyper targeted ads are very valuable, resulting in the creation of an ad industry whereby individual user data is proliferated across 1000s of companies. According to Google, for all the talk of privacy, Google makes clear it's not trying to get rid of targeted advertising in general. It just wants to replace the more invasive methods of old with a new one of its own design, which it calls privacy sandbox, part of privacy sandbox, his job is to hide the individual inside a large crowd of cohorts with similar interests, it will then target ads toward and quote. So antitrust scrutiny mixed with competition is a hell of a drug, isn't it? In this case, the competition comes from Apple's upcoming ad tracking changes, am I reading this right? quoting the Wall Street Journal, the decision coming from the world's biggest digital advertising company could help push the industry away from the use of such individualized tracking, which has come under increasing criticism from privacy advocates and faces scrutiny from regulators? Google's have means that its move is also likely to stoke a backlash from some competitors in the digital ad business, where many companies rely on tracking individuals to target their ads measure their effectiveness and stop fraud. Google accounted for 52% of last year's global digital ad spending of $292 billion. According to John's media, a digital ad consultancy if digital advertising doesn't evolve. To address the growing concerns people have about their privacy and how their personal identity is being used. We risk the future of the Free and Open Web. David Temkin, the Google product manager leading the change said in a blog post Wednesday and quote, so might this be sort of a classic case of doing the thing you were pushed to do. And then acting like it was your idea all along just to reap the benefits. As Benedict Evans tweeted, quote, number one, inevitable and already happening. So get ahead of the story. Number two, regulation is good for incumbents who loses most if we only target on first party data and quote, yes, that is the key insight. I think Google is not going to stop tracking us. They're just going to track us in new ways. What this really means is that Google can use its own data to target ads, Google's not going to stop doing targeted advertising. They're just gonna target us using their own data that they already have collected on us over the years. That's what you can do. If you're as big as Google. That's the competitive Big Data moat that the incumbents have. This is the definition of pulling up the drawbridge after you walked across it. As Paul Graham tweeted quote, what this news tells me is that Google has found a way to target ads just as effectively without using this data and quote,
brave the web browser I use every day has launched a privacy focused search engine as it acquires an open source search engine developed by the team behind the clicks anti browser loading TechCrunch. The tech acquired will underpin the forthcoming brave search engine, meaning it will soon be pitching its millions of users on an entirely tech free search and browsing experience. Quote, under the hood nearly all of today's search engines are either built by or rely on results from big tech companies. In contrast, the tail cat search engine is built on top of a completely independent index, capable of delivering the quality people expect but without compromising their privacy. Brave writes in a press release announcing the acquisition, quote, tail cat does not collect IP addresses or use personally identifiable information to improve search results and quote, clicks which was a privacy focused European fork of Mozilla's Firefox browser got shuttered last May after its majority investor, Uber Berta media called time on a multi year effort to build momentum for an alternative to Google, blaming tougher trading conditions during the pandemic for forcing it to pull the plug sooner than it would have liked and quote, brave again is the privacy focused browser co founded by ex Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, who tweeted quote, brave search is coming waitlist sign up for early testers and users who will help us make it sing. Then alternative engine in brave a slash syrup any browser can use. We will innovate on both sides browser and service to make search great in time that adds to and quote, we'd love to be an early tester of this. Microsoft is warning of a new Chinese state sponsored threat actor that it says is exploiting for previously undisclosed zero days in Exchange Server. sounds bad but patches are already available quoting TechCrunch. The technology company said Tuesday that it believes the hacking group, which it calls hafnium tries to steal information from a broad range of US based organizations including law firms and defense contractors, but also infectious disease researchers and policy think tanks. Microsoft said hafnium use the four newly discovered security vulnerabilities to break into exchange email servers running on company networks, allowing the attackers to steal data from a victim's organization such as email accounts and address books and the ability to plant malware. When used together, the four vulnerabilities can compromise vulnerable on premise servers running exchange 2013 and later hafnium operates out of China but uses servers located in the US to launch its attacks. The company said Microsoft said that hafnium was the primary threat group it detected using these four new vulnerabilities. Microsoft declined to say how many successful attacks it had seen but describe the number as quote limited patches to fix these four security vulnerabilities are now out a week earlier than the company's typical patching schedule usually reserved for the second Tuesday in each month. And quote. Speaking of if you'll remember at the end of the year, I said that we should keep our eye on the fallout from the huge solar winds hack, the biggest hack of our government of all time, the biggest state sponsored hack of all time, a digital Pearl Harbor, if you will, for various reasons of timing and politics. This whole story got swept under the rug just a bit. But it's worth keeping our eye on because again, it's so huge. For example, Brandon Wales, the acting director of the CIA, NSA says that fully recovering from the solar winds hack could take the US government as long as 18 months quoting MIT Technology Review, I wouldn't call this simple well says there are two phases for response to this incident there is the short term remediation effort, where we look to remove the adversary from the network shutting down accounts they control and shutting down entry points the adversary used to access networks. But given the amount of time they were inside these networks, months, strategic recovery will take time and quote, when the hackers have succeeded so clearly and for so long, the answer sometimes can be a complete rebuild from scratch. The hackers made a point of undermining trust in targeted networks, stealing identities and gaining the ability to impersonate or create seemingly legitimate users in order to freely access victims, Microsoft 365 and Azure accounts. By taking control of trust and identity the hackers became that much harder to track quote, most of the agencies going through that level of rebuilding will take in the neighborhood of 12 to 18 months to make sure they're putting in the appropriate protections well said and quote.
I am going to cut in here to remind people that what this is a quasi live. It's not really live because it went out earlier today. But a broadcast if you can think of it that way. The technium ride home podcast And we have two more segments to go about another five minutes. And after we air these next two segments, Chris and I are going to open up the room and talk about the science. So, here are the other two news items of the day. Thanks for listening, talk to you in a second.
So let me give you may a culpa. I shared some headline announcements with you yesterday from Microsoft, but it did not dawn on me until I had finished recording that the reason these headlines were dribbling out was because Microsoft Ignite conference kicked off yesterday, which I should have known. It was literally right there on the calendar at the bottom of the technium homepage. So let me round up some of the announcements from yesterday that I missed. For example, Microsoft power automate desktop and enterprise tool for creating automated desktop centric workflows is now free for all windows 10. Users. Microsoft at launch leisure percept, a hardware and software platform to implement its Azure AI services for various use cases including object detection at the edge. And more interestingly, they announced power FX a new open source, low code language that takes its cues from Excel formulas. You know how the whole no code low code movement says the promise of their movement is programming made so simple. It's like just using a spreadsheet. Well, there you go. Microsoft says this will become a standard for Microsoft's power platform, quoting TechCrunch says power platform itself targets business users more so than professional developers. It feels like a smart move to leverage their existing knowledge of Excel and their familiarity with Excel formulas. To get started, Microsoft says the language was developed by a team led by vj Mattel, Robyn Abraham shone Katzenberg and Darrell Rubin. Beyond Excel. The team also took inspiration from tools in languages like Pascal, Mathematica and Miranda, a functional programming language developed in the 1980s. Microsoft plans to bring power effects to all of its local platforms. But given the focus on community, it'll start making appearances in power automate our virtual agents and elsewhere soon, but the team clearly hopes that others will adopt it. As well low code developers will see it pop up in the formula bars or products like power app studio. But more sophisticated users will also be able to use it to go to Visual Studio code and build more complex applications with it. As the team noted, it focused on not just making the language Excel like but also having it behave like Excel or like a rebel for you high code programmers out there. That means formulas are declarative and instantly recalculate as developers update their code and quote, and finally, some augmented reality news Microsoft unveiled Microsoft mesh, a mixed reality platform on Azure that demoed a meeting service that will allow users to join virtual rooms using devices like the HoloLens two, quoting Tom Warren at the verge. Last week, Microsoft Alex kipman, the inventor of Kinect and HoloLens appeared in my living room to hand me jellyfish and shirts. That might sound like I had a weird dream, but it was a meeting made possible through Microsoft's new mesh platform, I donned a HoloLens two headset joined a virtual meeting room, and kipman immediately appeared next to my coffee table ready to demonstrate Microsoft's vision for the future of VR and AR, or as Microsoft calls it mixed reality. It all felt like a Microsoft team's meeting set in the future. mesh is a collaborative platform that allows anyone to have shared virtual experiences on a variety of devices. This has been the dream for mixed reality. The idea from the very beginning explains kipman you can actually feel like you're in the same place with someone sharing content or you can teleport from different mixed reality devices and be present with people even when you're not physically together and quote, initially mesh will present people as virtual avatars taken from the alt space VR social network that Microsoft acquired back in 2017. mesh will eventually support what Microsoft calls hollow portation, allowing people to appear as themselves in a virtual space. During my hour long meeting in Microsoft mesh, I constantly felt like this could be a far future version of Microsoft Teams. kipman appeared next to me as an avatar and started handing me virtual jellyfish and shirts, I could reshape the animals, pass them back, or just place them down in front of me. Although we weren't working on the same grand design or 3d model, it's still
more immersive than the zoom video calls I have to attend on a near daily basis. You can completely imagine a mesh enabled Microsoft Teams where the key thing there is think about colleagues from across the globe collaborating as if you and I are in the same physical location says kipman. mesh enables teams to allow organizations to essentially do mixed reality gatherings with everyone in the same room. And so you should think about that in a mesh enabled teams type of an environment mesh isn't Just an app for holding virtual meetings though. It's an entire platform built on top of Azure that Microsoft hopes developers will tap into. Microsoft is hoping architects, engineers and designers will all see the promise of mesh, particularly during a pandemic when it's difficult to work with 3d physical models without all being in the same room. Microsoft is also making mesh available on a variety of devices including the HoloLens two, most virtual reality headsets, tablets, smartphones and PCs. A preview of the Microsoft mesh app for HoloLens two will be available today, alongside a preview version of all space VR that is mesh enabled, Microsoft is planning to integrate mesh into teams and dynamics 365 in the future, which might help bring the unique meeting experience I had into a reality for more people than quote. So I'll try to look that up on the Oculus store. But maybe we need to invest in a HoloLens two, for research purposes, I would but $3,500 is a bigger ask than just buying an Oculus quest to so we should see. Finally, today, a bit of a non story, but in case you're interested, you might have heard that Microsoft recently launched an app icon redesign. And then you might have heard that they had to change the appearance of the icon redesign because it reminded people of Hitler's mustache. See it had this strip of perforated tape at the top that when you put it above that swooping arrow of the Amazon logo, which has always looked like a smiling mouse, well click through to see the pics for yourself. Quoting The Verge, Amazon's ads have portrayed the sweeping 80 to z arrow that adorns its packaging as singing mouths. And in that light the ragged edge and width of the blue tape on the previous icon design looks uncomfortably similar to the tonsorial trim. The updated icon looks to avoid the issue entirely swapping out the moustache style adhesive for a two tone folded piece of tape that alludes to the presumed join of tearing open an Amazon package instead of one of the most brutal dictators in modern history. Amazon's design team can take some consolation though, in joining the storied annals of modern companies that have been forced to digitally shave controversial mustaches. Plus, the new icon is already getting much more favorable comparisons. Apparently the angular tape now makes it look like Avatar The Last Airbender is anchor instead and quote.
So I'm not sure, but I might have just meant it the first podcast episode NF T. If you check the very last link in today's show notes, it points you to an option for that recent weekend bonus episode interview with Gary tan that I turned into an NFT
I'm not sure it's the first podcast episode to do this. And I mean, I was informed last night that we were actually not the first podcast to
broadcast into clubhouse that had been done months before but who knows? This might be the first podcast episode NFC. So if you're so inclined, check it out. And bid on maybe history. I don't know. This is totally a lark and I'm sure I did everything wrong. But hey, I think it's their cost me 100 bucks and gas fees. worth an experiment right. Talk to you tomorrow. And we're back.
Hello, everyone. is good. We
got we got a couple reports of the dings going off as Yeah, very authentic. Which which is exposing some of the scenes of how this is actually working. But yeah, I think we'll get what we'll figure out Do Not Disturb for the future. attempted this. So there was a ton soil what was appendage what was the word that phrase? mustache? Tom, Tom soul, you're constantly like, that's actually legit. I got 800 on the verbal on the sap. That's a word I never know. So it is something it must be it must be hair that you have above your mouth. Oh, I mean, tonsils right. Obviously that makes sense. So I've just never I was like that's a really spot on way to describe people's facial decor. Yeah, no, that wasn't that was a new word on me
like that. So
I don't know if I saw that the stache in it, but I guess I can see how people I totally did. I actually, you know I do this. I have this running Twitter thread. where I post new app icons, because I'm just that kind of weird of juice person, I'm going to actually append the specific Amazon app icon to today's threads. If you go to my profile, you'll see it pinned, probably the third one down in the thread. I have threads of threads now. So
where do I start? I
gotta I mean, I think we have to start with the Google
the Google piece at the top. What do you think? I want to
say one more thing, before we get started. So Simon is the same as not here, but he did us a solid. Basically, if you do go to my profile, and you scroll down to the second thread, you can actually get the live transcript as it's happening right now of today's experience, coming through otter.ai. So if you want to see that technology in action, it's happening. It's happening now.
So okay,
let's get back to it. Google,
Google promises, it will not build alternative identifiers. And you know, it's not gonna like, you know, like, cradle replacement for, like, cookies, basically. Right. Right. Right. And I think that what you said, you know, whether it was like crossing that bridge, and then you know, throwing it off or whatever, what would you say that was? The metaphor, there was many metaphors, if you if you're right, if you're, you're pulling up the drawbridge, you've already moved all your soldiers over it, and like, all the competitors are sort of like running up the same Gangplank. Then Yeah, that's, that's sort of the competitive advantage that you have, which I think is definitely the case here. It just seems to me and actually, I tweeted something. Also in the thread, I know, I'm just like plugging my own horse here. It's not a horse, I don't know, whatever it is, like, in 2016. There was alphabet, which, of course, you know, is Google's owner had a project called Project Abacus. And this didn't really, as far as I know, really hasn't, you know, been discussed very much recently. But what it allowed for and designed for was what I would call probabilistic or algorithmic identity. And so I think these two concepts being brought together one is, are they called flots? Or clots? Or the hell they call them? flock? Yeah, and slsc. It's like a flock like a flock. Basically, a flock is a I don't know what it's called. But it's really a cohort of people who look for like, this sort of in part of a conversation. Right, right. Right now, like the thing that I think is important for folks to be digesting about what's going on, especially visa V, the privacy conversation, and Apple's positioning in this is that it kind of really doesn't matter anymore. And the things that humans on an individual level worry about, sort of make sense of the scale of individual human drama, but really don't make sense or really don't matter that much to like, massive agriculture, like advertising businesses. Well, that's the that's the whole controversy with Facebook, and what was it Cambridge analytic? Like, you don't have to be they don't have to track you exactly. You're in this view, is you're eating grains, or there's, there's, there's all these little pots of identities, that once they get you close enough, they're like, Alright, she's in this pot. He's in that pot there in this pot. And so, like, yeah, essentially, what the argument would be is like, you know, Google is like, you know, what, we're waving the white flag, we're not gonna track you based on your things, but they don't need to anybody knows they have enough pots. And then, especially, basically, they drop the flag, you know, like, on the other field, and they left that field and they say, jog back and run back to it to pick it up to say, oh, we're gonna put this flag down, and then they, you know, their running backs, like, you know, where they actually are now, in current state of affairs. Well, and then, you know, dare or dari, I always call him Daria, but I'm sure it's there have sanchow. One of the things that he said after I did the show today that also made me think differently about this. And and obviously, if you heard what I said, was, like, you know, Google's, Google's still gonna have a great business. It's not like they're, they're turning over anything. But he's like, you know, if everything's transitioning to subscriptions, in app payments, like, so maybe this sort of like advertising is less effective anyway. So again, they're waving the white flag and be like, yeah, we can't, we're not gonna do this anymore. And they're seeing that three years down the road, this is not going to happen anyway. Or it's not going to be as profitable. Yeah, I mean, that's exactly like what I'm what I'm pointing out, and there's tension that I'm seeing between what was the previous kind of, you know, broadcasts and approach with advertising, where you did have a bunch of controls, and at least you know, Facebook would allow you to target down to something that was almost representing the individual and I don't know I've never actually used Like Google's, you know, the expensive advertising tools what I imagine they get you pretty far down that path as well. But again, like it doesn't really matter. Like, there is actually one thing that I don't know. And I'm bringing this up because I just listened to Alex Kantrowitz his interview with what's his name?
The current person that's,
that's running WhatsApp, cow, right? Yes. Oh, yeah, I saw that too. And I don't know his name. But yes. In any case. So it was really useful about that conversation was there's on the one hand, there's that surveillance aspect of advertising, which obviously, is sort of like the creepy part, you know, you, maybe you think that, you know, Facebook is listening to you and your mic or something like that. And things just like pop up in your internet experience that seemed like you didn't really do anything to cause it to talk to you in this way. And something is being targeted. But what was brought up in this conversation about WhatsApp was the way in which consumers are now expecting to be able to interact with and conduct business with businesses. And one of the points that he was making was about how, especially in India and other countries, consumers expect to be able to send a message to a business and carry on a conversation over time, right. And the moment that you interact with a business through one of these platforms, you're identifying yourself to that business, you're asking for information about, for example, your order, like, Where is my delivery, and there's no way that that business can interact with you in any way that makes sense, except if they know something about you. And you have to essentially validate or authenticate that you have the proper information to be asking about, you know, the status of an order or doing a refund or anything like that. So what this allows them to do, like these big sort of, you know, gross, and micro, semi large advertising platform companies is to move towards this kind of broad demographic targeting, while the industry is moving more towards these individualized relationships that are facilitated by the platforms. And so that gets them out of this, like, you know, privacy thing where they were not the ones who are targeting you, it's the businesses, and then they can point at those guys that were just like, you know, I don't know if they want to become common carriers or what, but I just like, I think that it's really, really important to sort of see through, like the rhetoric and kind of think about what actually is probably going on here. If that makes sense. I mean, I think that what's going on here is again, that there, they saw the writing on the wall, it's easy to sunset, a product, or a style of doing business, that is more trouble than it's worth, especially if you've already figured out the way to do the same thing. I don't know that they're actually like leaving that type of what that line of work, right. They know, technical approaches for the algorithms, you know, might be different. I might be operating on different data. Oh, no, no, no. I don't know that I maybe I didn't underline that enough. Like, that's kind of the point that I wanted to say is, because they already have all the data on you. Then again, if they're already putting on putting you in these pots and things like that, like, essentially what they're saying is third party tracking, right? And in a way, what we mean by pulling up the the drawbridge is, all right, screw you guys. It's almost like they're going to it's going to be more valuable to advertisers to go to them. Because if if they're going to cut off the third party ability to do it, the Labour Party's basically then you. Right, he's right. There, the only one will have the data, because they're the only ones that will be that will have known your behavior for the last decade. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's super interesting. You know, just to sort of like be parsing that while we're on the same page here. And, by the way, by the way, will Cathcart. Thank you. Yep. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, so and I also recommend that interview is like really, really useful, really enlightening. And one thing that I would also maybe point out in terms of how to think about how this world might shape up, you know, is simply to just think of the experience that you have on tik tok, where you really don't have to do that much. And suddenly, you're getting a very personalized feed. And if ads are the same way, and it's, you know, essentially powered by Google instead, that's the type of advertising experience that you're likely to see, even without authenticated. And I think that's, that's the important thing about the different experiences that you can use Tick tock, you get a highly personalized experience and never sign in, or you can sign in multiple times and multiple accounts, and they really don't care. They are really not an identity or sort of, you know, real name centric network. I think both Facebook and Google are kind of although identities is useful in many respects, from their business model perspective. It's becoming less relevant based on all the machine learning and all the ability that they have to actually track and create kind of cohorts of users and then to model them in a certain way to make them better to, you know, whether to advertising or other types of business purposes. So yeah, and then of course, you dovetail that with the brave search engine, which I think is also very interesting.
You know, I, I do tend to use brave from time to time, but it's not my primary browser. And I wonder how that's gonna shake out, you know, because I mean, brave kind of has to like go this alone for a long time. I don't think that I mean, unless you know, Microsoft or like to acquire them or something which, you know, who knows, but I guess I bring this up, because to me, this seems like looking at what brave does, will or possibly could inform what happened might be its own experience or a search engine. And so that's it, like, brave is going the other way and actually acquiring a search engine, which if you think about the money that Mozilla and Firefox made from Google, over all those years, from a business model perspective, it only makes sense that brave has to basically buy their own search engine and do it themselves. DuckDuckGo is just too expensive for them. And I, you know, I've said, I've been open that, like I switched over to brave, because listeners pointed me in that direction. And I have not regretted it, it's been more than a year. Because rave is built on chromium. And it's, it's you won't notice a difference at all. Except for that actually will. Because the weird thing is, is that occasionally websites won't work. And then like you'll submit a form and it won't work. And it's because it's like, Okay, you got to put shields down because they weren't too aggressive about blocking the tracking and things like that. No, I wrote though, that I do have sorry, where it runs, like break out. But
like, I will say
that I have increasingly seen spammy ads, and crypto ads within brave, like there's little notifications that appear? Well, that depends on what you do, if you sign up, because remember, the way that they're kind of making their money is that if you allow them to do it, they will that's how they'll they'll do pop up ads, right. And then if you view those ads, you can get that brave token, which is bad, right, referencing a token. Exactly. So like, that's their whole gig. And that's never bothered me, and you can straight up, turn it off. And I'm like, you know, I don't know, I just I love to, like throw shade at these guys. Because like, they take this like holier than thou attitude about how what they're doing. So, you know, blessed by above. And I'm just like, like your browser and you might be doing might not be doing the exact same things that lots of people complain about, but you're doing other things that are also so well. And the quote that I ended that segment with from from Brendan Eich was, you know, you know, brave searches coming into alternative search engine where it'll be SERPs that any browser can use. We will innovate on both sides, browser and service and make grade search. Oh, and also in time that adds to now. Yeah, okay. What I've said, a million people have said this, like, if if Google sucks now, because they constantly have to move the goalposts in terms of like how much they can spam me with ads and search, as as the argument is made a million times, right. Don't give me 10 ads and SERPs Give me three. And if you could be competitive with Google, like that's a pretty friggin good business. So here's, Okay, I'm gonna throw this idea out there, because it's an idea that was added around like when we were at working on Google Plus. And I think that actually, this could be a super fascinating direction for all this stuff. Right? You take Gary's point. And more and more of the web goes under lockdown, paywall, etc. Right? One of the things that becomes very interesting is how you identify a person who has access or is entitled to access content. Now, if I can go to Google, and I could put it all my credentials, like I can actually add on my television services, my streaming services that I use, and it'll actually inform the infobox on the right, which services like content that or which streaming service I use, the content is available on imagine doing the same thing going to Google. And now having access to you know, like, some stacks that I'm paying for, or other like, super follow, you know, content from Twitter, or podcasts that I subscribe to that are premium. And now that content is actually available in an authenticated way, in the Google search index index. Now, that makes all the other efforts, you know what, you know, Brandon, I can start with a brief search somewhat less relevant, right, in a way, because or at least or and or if the brave browser sort of also does that, but does it for sort of crypto power, you know, identity or as I mean, it does seem that they're in the crypto world. So I mean, what I'm saying though, is like, I feel like Google is kind of, of the web to era, and brave is obviously in the crypto era. And I guess where my mind sort of switched it a little bit as they don't quite have the words to describe this. But like, as I attempted to buy your podcast and fit with my meta mask, like extension, which is some, you know, random, you know, address and I've been signing all these things that I've been doing with a meta mask, I'm not going to get like too into the weeds here, but like, I'm using a decentralized identity system to interact with and by NFT content. And if I can do the same thing within the brave browser, and I'm completely anonymous to brave, then that actually is privacy preserving. Whereas in the Google Chrome world, I have to log into the browser, and then I log into search. And that gives me access to all of my privately, you know, provisioned content, then those are two different ways of solving the same problem. Does that make sense? I mean, a little bit and and I kind of, I kind of want to punt, because we can talk about the knowing the nmt thing. So it if like, literally punt, like if you want to do one more topic, and let's like, let's hit it, and then let's go back to the experience of today. Okay,
because I did I did want to talk about, I just like the Microsoft mesh stuff. Yes, yes. And I think like, this is something that's like, very interesting, because, I mean, as I, as we talked about yesterday, actually, you know, with Microsoft Teams, it is like an enormous, or at least I think they have an enormous footprint. And Microsoft is one of the weird companies that is like, kind of so deep in its nerdiness, that it kind of does stuff that makes sense inside of sort of like the Microsoft in universe is sort of like, you know, if you work on the Death Star, like you kind of everyone dresses in black, and it's just kind of like the culture, you know, it's like, that's the thing. Whereas if you go on to the real world, anyways, you get the metaphor. The reason why I say that is because of two things, you know, one? Well, I know like Jaron Lanier has been doing a lot of work with Microsoft for quite a while. And he of course, is the Godfather and the inventor of virtual reality. And one of the things that they produced I believe, last year, in the midst of all the zoom fatigue was a crowd like view of your kind of Zoom Room, right, which I think was built. Either way, they're on top of Microsoft Teams. So in other words, you would background right, yeah, about the background of each person who's on the zoom call. And then you layer them on top of each other and analyzing forums, sort of like what they did with like, you know, baseball, where they have, like, all the fake state, like, fans in the stands, what's basically that view? And so it's almost like you're looking at an audience of people. That's the kind of weird that like Microsoft does that you're like, huh? But okay, sure, like, whatever. And I feel like this mesh thing might be similar, right? Where they were talking about, was it hit like, gummy bears, and sharks or something. And like, it was so immersive and like, you're in this like, combo, but I mean, I mean, that's the table stakes of AR stuff, where it's like, oh, you hand me a shark, and I can manipulate it with my hands, and I can put it down on a table. It is. I mean, listeners of the show know, we've been trying to dive into the space a little bit, it kind of kind of left me cold again, where it's like, okay, Tom Warren, had the Microsoft guy come into his living room, and he stood there and he handed him a shirt that he could put down on the coffee table in front of them. And they talk together, like like a holograph. Like from, you know, Star Wars and stuff. Keeping in mind that the, you know, the HoloLens two is a 30 $500 product. And that's a that's an AR product that's not even a VR product, although they're they're supposedly releasing it to all of the VR channels and things like that. But I mean, this is sort of what I'm kicking around in terms of like, Are we really there yet? Everybody? Geron, God bless you, like, Are we really there yet? Because it's still like, again, my wife is an architect and in the future that they're talking about, where you can where you can, like, be in a room and like, do not just whiteboarding, but like actual model building in the same space that could be game changing. But what I what I keep seeing, and even what this article is talking about is just like, Hey, I'm here, you're here. Isn't that cool? Yeah. Well, it's not really that cool. Like, we could do that over a zoom. Or we could do that over a phone call. Or we could do that over an email. Like, it's not that cool, right? It's not game changing. Right, right. I mean, it's kind of what I'm saying. It's like, I guess they sort of fixated on those little, like, use cases, but it just, it feels just again, slightly off and not quite there. And it's not quite the thing that people would prefer to do unless like you kind of live in like that Microsoft and universe where you just are sort of in awe of the technologies and like capabilities. You're like, oh, like dope, it's like really cool thing guys. Like, let's go play. Like it's like fun. It's like that's, I mean, it's cool. Yeah. Cool. So this ties into something that I talked about also on the show recently in terms of, I've been this drum about drones and things like that, and how there should be way more industrial uses for drones. And that's the sort of thing. It's a combination of this.
Where, if you, you know, you could, there should be, it should happen right now, we have the technology right now that you could send drones out to a bridge, or to a job site or whatever. And like it could 3d map the thing and not only 3d map it and then come back and report to you, it could be doing that. You could, because remember, drones don't care, that you send them out, you can have like a whole fleet of them that they could be monitoring, whatever you're working on 24 seven right. Now, that is something that could happen right now, that hasn't happened yet. But I feel like we're on the cusp of that. And that's going to be a revolution. Now, you combine that with the ability to design those things where if you were in a VR or AR space, and you're like, Well, here's what we're looking at this bridge, or this building site, or this, whatever. And we can see in real time, this is what we need to change. This is what we do. Like that's this this Oh, it's, you know, Obi Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope, sort of holographic stuff. That's not useful. Just like seeing someone to talk to them is not useful. Doing that sort of like, Can you see with me in real time, if I if I you know, Minority Report sale, twist this with my head and you see where this bolt is missing in the bridge, and the bridge is about to collapse. That is what's going to be game changing. And it can happen right now. It's just, it hasn't happened yet. Well, one one solid use case for this actually. And maybe you're referring to this or maybe this is the story that I don't know if I discovered this, like independently or something is powerline inspection. You familiar with this area? Oh, yes. No, sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Because I'm in my sleep timer. So I always have to, yes, no, no, by the way, no, this is what I'm talking about. You send you send the drones down the line as opposed to the guys that literally have to walk down the power line. Yes. Like so this is this is like a very like clear cut use case. It's actually happening now. Until I agree with you. That the complex basically it's the combination of like drone technology, augmenting the ability for an individual proceedings. Actually, Toby, what's what's his last name? Toby is the CEO of Shopify. Toby, looky, looky, looky, if you go to, let's see what is a recent one? In second, okay, if you go to twitter.com, slash t o bi, he has an amazing video of this new series called flightline. I don't know, it's this new drone tech that blends in sort of like an augmented or virtual reality view, which wraps you know, again, I'm speaking on a 10 year because I don't have a drone, and I haven't really used them, but we're the ability to kind of use him gestures to almost, you know, fly the drone. And then to get like real time video coming back in and like the rig that you put on your face with the antenna, or like, it's crazy, you know, like, Oh, you know, what, also didn't someone just raised around, I don't think I did it. But it's in my it's my thing where basically, first person drones. And by the way, if anyone's listening and knows this stuff, like someone just raised around, where it's like, first person, drones are a thing. And maybe it's like, sort of a hobbyist thing still, but like it even like, you know, you fly them to like you put on an AR or VR rig, and you fly your drone through things like that. Where if you were in Twitter spaces, I can just pull up the tweet. And then we could like go into like a movie watching mode. And like I could show everyone and then it'd be like this amazing virtual reality experience. And we go back to just having like a voice mode. And it was continuing, I cut you off. I that was my point. I think that what you're talking about, though, is like even that, what I'm saying is, and this is this is straight up sci fi stuff, which is like if you watch the expanse, I've been watching it actually. Yes. So there are drones flying around all the time. Right? That's true. Yeah. They're doing inspections, anyway. Well, it's not inspection. It's just that like, why wouldn't you because that I'm in there. But yeah. But the point is, is that you would have a fleet of 10,000. And then every time one runs out of batteries that comes back to the mothership, and recharges. And so my point is is a story that you posted the other day. We're working on the new set, and there was an MIT Media Lab thing and like he's got like, what dragon fly version of this? Yes, yes, yes. So the point being, when i'm saying is 20 years from now, maybe not 10. Any job site? It's not like, well, we fly a drone up to look at is that girder? Has that been connected to right here? The bolts in the right way? You think that's
what they're gonna do on the moon and on Mars before then yes. Oh, yeah. Forget about the Moon and Mars, what I'm saying is, is that that it would be, it wouldn't just be you, you fly up there when you need to double check the work that is done going all the time. 24 seven. I mean, this is not that different from basically what's going on inside everybody. They just got called drones are sort of like, you know, white blood cells, red blood cells, like, you know, complex systems have these little inspectors go around, and like not really, we weren't able to put intelligence into them. And the way they were able to do these, and we didn't really have like the network. So 5g, also is going to be a huge enabler of this. Right? We got to use that network for something. It seems like that would be well, they
say they always say,
Okay, what else have we got? And we should open it up. Are there any other things we did? We did we did the Hitler's mustache, but, you know, some things you have been talking about that I think are very important, but they're kind of like background radiation, you know, of some, like atom bomb that went off, you know, a couple years hence. It's like, it's like, sort of like the solar wind thing is like the Chernobyl of like, you know, our age. And it just kind of like, you know, continues like the Geiger counter, you go near it, and it's still like, tripping and bubbling or whatever. To me, I do feel like that's, like really significant in ways that we really don't understand. And so I don't have to think about it, except like, there's just more and more stuff keeps coming out about it. Yeah, I don't know that I have anything to add to that either. Except for the fact that I am going to keep peppering that into the show. Because, again, like I said it through a confluence of historical factors. It wasn't as big of a deal as I think it should have been. I think it should have been an ad pocalypse sort of like, Oh my god, this is this should rethink how we do things. Can you believe how bad this was? And it's already going on behind the scenes. But yeah.
Can you make me mad?
Yeah. I never remember to do that.
Sweet. Sweet. All right, we got stuff up here.
And not much Brian just invited me out. But uh, I haven't heard everything I came in a little bit late. But I completely the for any future where we're in VR spaces together. But yeah, the technology's got a little bit yet. Are you using anything right now to sort of have an experience that you think is joyful and pleasant? I know, Brian's been like, you know, trying these the technology. Well, so. So Seth, is is the listener that as your grew, right? Yes. He's my, you should give a little background, you know, about about the experience that you guys have been having? Well, so I have been trying to figuring that. If Apple is doing it, if if everyone's investing in these spaces. I knew nothing about it. And so I needed to get learned a little bit. I bought Oculus quest two. And, actually, bizarrely, one of our most downloaded episodes, was that episode, where it's just like, yeah. Here's what I've learned about the VR space. And Seth was the person that apparently has been doing this longer than I have and, and helped walk me through it. So yeah. By the way, Seth, I haven't touched my two in two weeks. Like I said, we were gonna do but that's what we're worried if I were to buy one of those. Yeah, yeah. Sweet, you know, and then the friction would just be like, every time I would think about putting on I'll be like, but I have to, like, do this and do that. And like,
okay, continue.
Oh, nothing. And Seth. Go ahead and make the argument for why I should be playing beat Sabre everyday, although I did, I did purchase the pro headset that apparently will help me not have a headache as much. But yeah, Seth is is someone that is, you know, a VR gamer. At least whether or not the VR, in terms of other things is more interesting. But yeah, Seth make the argument for beat Sabre at least or something. All right. So as far as VR goes, I'm heavy on certain games beat sabers, one that I really really think is just perfect for the platform as it is. You don't have to move around so there's no motion sickness No matter if you're sensitive to it or not. Except that your arms and you get even get a great workout with it. I've gotten to the point I'm doing everything on expert plus now but I mean, I haven't had the device that long. I just spent like a half hour to an hour every morning playing and It's at that level like you get sweating after two three songs. One song and by the way, Chris, that's the game that Jane always post your video. Yeah, okay, I was doing this episode. Yeah. And I was like, yeah, that's the one does like the killer app? And it's like, yeah, yeah. So then like, if you get into the more advanced gameplay, my favorite game I've played so far is Subnautica. That one I played before I played it on VR on my PC. And it's this underwater game where you're just really free reign to explore everywhere, and the scenery is really, really great. I've become a bigger fan of like sandbox type games, where you kind of can build architecture inside of the world you're inside of and then had a nice little storyline with it. But exploring that game in VR was all the better because just all of this underwater life around you. And it's also a little bit scary at times, because certain things will jump out at you. But even the downside for that game, which I thought is about one of the most well refined ones I've played outside of a lot of the first person shooters, it's just even for vehicles right now, you're still having to resort to your mouse and keyboard because they haven't fully developed the controller base for it. Yeah, and that's now like half life Alyx, the controller fully there for that game. One of the things that came out, like in the conversations that I think you and the other guy that was also on the show, and talked about which is like, there are still moments where it seems like the Oculus rig is still something that you connect to like a beefy gaming PC. And, you know, Brian has another piece on Not, not the note as well. So the quest to is a standalone. Right? But if you want to get the better best experience, right? Usually. I'm trying to understand like, what the kind of lay person because I think one of the things, Brian, that you were asking was like, when does you know, the the Oculus quest experience, you know, what is it something you can recommend your cousin or you know, your brother in law or like whomever. And it just sounded like a week long. And you know, maybe you're a little more sort of advanced than what some people would experience. But if you need beefy gaming, you know, PC, to really get the best of it. Hopefully, it's not really ready. And some of the other experiences that you might have on it, I don't know, like maybe a little more like pedestrian or like besides beat Sabre, one of the things that you would need to be coming back to on a daily basis that or I don't know, if you'd call it like casual game, like you really want to get this whole headset on for a casual game. There's a lot of small experiences, I would say it's hard to find a lot of the well refined ones, because a lot of the major companies haven't jumped into the space yet. But like my mom played it one time and fell in love with it bought one for that house, and now my siblings are loving it.
So
what do they play, which games,
I don't even know they play a little bit. The crazy thing about like, like, these headsets, it's like, it's so private, that you don't even know what the people around you are playing. So there's none of that sort of like social discovery, right? That's what my friends told me a dozen plus games, honestly, I just haven't been able to do it myself. Because I know how the platform is, I know where I'm at. For me, the big thing, that's the line, that's going to make it that thing that you want to recommend to everyone is just a matter of input. It's like right now when I get in there, and sometimes if I could just see my keyboard inside of that space, that would unlock so many new experiences, because of my ability to input into my keyboard way quicker than I had any means of doing with the Oculus controls currently. And when when that becomes streamlined, I think that'll get your hardcore people and even the less hardcore people on board. So do you do you think I don't know if you're very familiar with control labs, but that was obviously a company that Facebook acquired, which allows you to essentially you wear something on your on your wrist and is able to detect kind of like the neuro the neurological input or inflammation that essentially, you know, you would have been, let's say typing on a keyboard. And so by being able to get grabbed that information, you have sort of a direct manipulation path into like a headset. So with that sort of addressed that problem. Potentially, I'm a little bit skeptical. The only one that I'm aware of right now that like brain interface had to deal with shapes and it wasn't extremely defined. But I'm not the most experienced Yeah, this is not a brain interface. This is more like it is able to detect the way in which you would move your your hands and fingers and so so they already have that and like they I think Seth and I talked about that like they just kind I have introduced that recently where I was like, I was like did the fact that I can like move my hands? Did they just do that because they do have like sort of joysticks. It's not joysticks, but it's like little controllers that you hold the champ. But literally, the second week that I had one, all of a sudden, it's like, No, you can like, put your thumb and forefinger together and manipulate things like that, because they do have these outer facing cameras. And when you hear about the apple thing that they're supposedly developing, that's one of the things that they always talk about when they talk about the LIDAR and things like that, like, it's not just the screen that's in front of your face. And like, you know, the eye tracking and things like that. It's also about the there are tons and tons is that there are there are outer facing cameras. And that's how they know what the controllers are doing. And so when you do beat Sabre and you, you you hit the saber, like that's how it knows it. And so in even you can do a thing where I think I talked about this, when they were talking about, like how Apple could do a VR rig that was sort of an AR and VR mesh. So like on the Oculus, you can tap it, and it like you see a grayscale sort of field in front of you. And so like it takes away the VR thing, and you can see the room that you're in. And they normally do that so that you can set up like your play area and stuff like that. But that's because they have these outer facing cameras that are sensing the room around you. So you have to create a play area, you're either sitting down or you literally map out the area that you're in. And so the headset is aware of the space that you're in, and like so that's where we're talking about, you can combine these two things, and mesh them in ways that could be interesting. I also turned on a mode just today where you can overlay all your menus on top of reality. So instead of it being like two separate interfaces, it kind of combines the two.
And that was that
I kind of liked it, it makes me a little bit more aware of like, my wife and daughter whenever I'm not handled well. And so as I said when I went to HoloLens, right, well, so when I went to CES, not this past year, but the year before, when, before the pandemic, literally, months before the pandemic, I was going there, and I tried everything that I could get a rvr demo, and oh, I can't remember the name of the company now. But the one that was the most impressive to me, was a one where it, it felt like and Chris, I don't know if you remember this, because I or even Seth, I did a segment about it. Where it's like the closest thing that you could get to, you know, glasses as opposed to a headset. Right? Right. But it was only for Android, because I think it was Qualcomm or Samsung, that's doing it right. And so the concept was, is that, like, imagine that you're sitting in your living room, and maybe the TV's on, but you don't want to watch what your spouse is watching. So you can put a TV to the side of the TV, right. And then also on the other side of the TV, you could put your Instagram feed, and it would be scrolling down. And so you could still be in the room interacting with people, like augmented reality plus object detection. So in other words, like you'd like to essentially have a screen and then it would automatically right, but it would just sort of like Yes. Because the whole Minority Report thing, right is like you're walking down the street, and then all the ads are basically different, you know, that are being projected to your retina. But yes, you just be blank. Otherwise, because there's liens everywhere. Because what they were saying is like, we'll throw this against the wall over there, or put this on the table over here. So again, it is it is those outward facing cameras that has the sense of the room that you're in. So it's not just it's floating your Instagram feed, just in the middle of the room like you can, you can place it where you want, you could put it on the wall over there behind the TV, you know what, so I want to make sure that if anybody else wants to come up and you know, shoot the about, you know, tech stuff doesn't have to be about this topic or whatever, feel free to raise your hand. You know, this is one of things that I guess I want to like, pivot a little bit in this. This part of the conversation, though, is about because I noticed all these podcasts, listen to this other Podcast, where I think was I might have mentioned it yesterday, but Daniel noonim as started a new podcast that just got a bunch of interviews, basically from a UX like design perspective. And I think I did mention this one yesterday, where she interviewed Philip Rosedale from second life. One of the things that I guess like, as you're describing this, Brian, it's sort of, I don't know if it was the demo that you saw or the use case, but I'm kind of, I don't know, I, I feel this sense of closet dread slash, like, like reluctance and imagining a world where you're in the same room, let's say with your partner, and you're looking at a screen, and you're not watching the same thing. And you also have like your Instagram feed. And I'm kind of like, and what are we living for anymore? In a way? Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. And like, the reason why my mind goes to the Philip Rosedale conversation, because he was so much more focused on giving people the tools to go into a virtual space, and then to create together and to have a shared sense of reality, and then to collaborate and to like play in that space, as opposed to be mere passive consumers. And what I really don't know if I would say that I worry about it. But when I hear about, like, what you just described Seth, with your family, getting these devices, and suddenly being locked into this, these virtual worlds, which are no longer shared, and are completely idiosyncratic, and, like, I mean, as it is, we're not really getting real eye contact anymore. We're not really having face to face interactions, we're probably losing the ability to have, you know, in a personal conflict, increasingly, at least, the Facebook world, and the world that Brian you just described, feels like it's being designed by antisocial engineers to have increasingly less interaction with other humans. And so I don't know I just like I liked what, what Philip was talking about. Because it seemed like it was it was, he was more interested in building worlds like that but Minecraft, or Roblox, where it's really about creativity and expression, as opposed to just consumption. So am I wrong in a concern? Even the good thing about that, is that, you know, the Matthew balls of the world that talk about how the metaverse is being built right now. And the classic metaverse is the jacking into an AR VR headset sort of
wasn't no originally a one though, but it's actually a social space. Right? That is the metaverse where you sort of joined with us and maybe that's happening within your Oculus Facebook account. No, no, no.
In fact, that's
what I'm saying is that the metaverse in that sense, where you go to hang out with your friends is happening in the analogy I make is is the way that the web happened. It was just good enough if they didn't wait for broadband and things like that. So like, obviously, like the kids that are on Roblox that are on, you know, fortnight and things like that. They're not waiting for the, you know, high fidelity, AR and VR rigs, because they're doing the metaverse right now, in that non fully immersive space, so they don't need it. And the thing that bothers me about it, and this is why I've been trying to pull up about this as I just wanted to know,
I'm not
sold on the fact that one of the things that said turned me on to is like when when I teach my kids to play games, video games, like we're on the same screen, and we're doing it collaboratively. And and until he told me that Oh yeah, pull up the Oculus app on your phone, and then you can see what you're seeing inside the thing. Like think about that on a basic level. Yeah, if you've got a six year old, and they're like, Papa, I don't know what to do next. And you're like, well, I don't know what to do next, either. Because I can't
imagine,
imagine an entire mind shattering, like where we're like dead fix this. And it's like, I can't see what you see. Everyone is it has their separate headset on. And yes, the the perfect conception is is that we're all in this virtual space. But in the, in a way you're not because you're all in your own separate cocoon, right. And so that even if the virtual space is avatars, and like, well, the the representation of pop is over there representation of moments over there, you know, that's still you're still segmented off. It's not the same thing, as even as, as dumb as this is to say, you know, people playing games on the big screen TV in the living room, you know, that everyone can see what's the shared context, right, you're sort of in the same canvas. Even if it's a virtual Canvas, you know, there is that coherence. And there is that, you know, when I do something to your player, and you get mad, like, and you make a noise, I have instant, like understandability of why you made that noise as opposed to you being in this, you know, headdress. Like yelling at a thing or doing your beat saber thing and I don't know what he's doing like he's, I mean, that's just something that could also evolve. I'm not saying that this is an unsolvable problem, but as it exists right now.
In the way that
you FaceTime with your parents, because you want to, you want to show them video of the kids. But if you actually want to have a conversation with your parents, maybe you'll just call them audio style, right? So maybe I mean, and this pertains to like, our other conversation about mediums, you know, like, what is this medium going to be best for? Is it hopefully going to be an anti social media, or there's going to be social, I mean, Facebook keeps pushing it a flat, you know, I brought this up in the context of the Microsoft mesh thing, because there was, and I posted, again, to my thread on my profile, like the GIF of the shark, and like these two dudes, kind of like standing there awkwardly, kind of like pointing at the thing. Like, you know, monkeys from that movie 2001, you know, like, in your head, like, what are they doing? And anyways, yes, like, what will happen, and especially if you look at, look up the Facebook codec, avatars, we will get hyperreality realism in reality, and these virtual spaces, and then we'll come together in those spaces, and we'll interact. And there might be amazing and crazy things that you can do in those spaces. And that, you know, could be cool or interesting. But I guess I'm still trying to figure out like, what is the maybe maybe, again, going back to this question of culture, what is the culture of the space? What are the rules, and I used to, because Brett showed up, and so therefore, My mind went instantly to culture. That that that's sort of like an interesting thing.
One thing, okay, so
I'm going to, I'm going to pause this, this topic, I'm going to shift a little bit, reset the room. So again, this is the technical experience, we're sort of in the the part of the conversation where we just kind of open it up. And we're just kind of like talking about the news of the day. But the thing that I kind of wanted to bring up next, and Eric is in the audience, and I don't know if he's willing to come up, I did invite him up. Eric actually works on review, the email newsletter product that Twitter recently acquired. The reason why I'm calling him out not to put him on the spot, if he doesn't want to come up fully respect that is because Twitter has been doing hack week, this week. So while Microsoft had their ignite event, and they're coming out, and like showing the world, all the products that they've been working on over the last year, Twitter, meanwhile, has been doing something very interesting. And I guess I wanted to share about it, and, and relate this experience that I had yesterday. And today, that, you know, there's been a number of conversations lately about how Twitter is kind of getting a play product mojo back. And part of that is the way in which it seems to be embracing one kind of design in public, as well as kind of iterating and just sharing ideas and things that are partially baked and it feels very different. Like it feels like I am inside of And granted, they're not sharing figmas yet, even though I've asked them to but like it feels like being inside of Twitter's like figma library and kind of walking around. And just like seeing gouache stuff, it's like half all there is. So Eric,
will come up.
And so like, in particular, one of the experiences that I had yesterday, and today was there's a woman named Christine who works on the, the Twitter team, and they're working on something that is like an auto block feature, where and and sort of exploring this concept that if Brian creates a list of people who are you know, dipshits or something on Twitter, that then I can either follow that list, or I could copy that list into like my lists, and then I could use it as a block list. And so essentially allowing and, you know, granted, there's all sorts of interesting social dynamics that come from this, which is why I brought that culture piece. But the fact that they're doing this work out in public, I think is really significant. And hopefully lead to, you know, better and more inclusive products. So anyways, with that, I will, as Eric comes up here, I'm gonna go share a link to the tweet with the superblock designs that ended up being discussed in a Twitter space today. But you know, I don't know if you got a chance to participate in the hack week. But any insight you know about your experience so far, or just what it's like to be at Twitter right now, you know, any thoughts that you have? Or where review is going? All that stuff is fair game? We'd love to hear from you. Yeah, thanks so much. Yeah, we are in the middle of the chaos that is hack week right now, which is, which has been super fun. I don't know. It's It's always like a unique opportunity for us to collaborate with other teammates that we don't get to work with on a day to day basis. Some people kind of shape shift and take on roles they don't otherwise fill, or don't necessarily have a title for but it's just fun to be a little scrappy, and see what we can build fast and sometimes work on things that we hadn't otherwise prioritized. But I don't know, to your point. We are. It's been so rewarding from an internal perspective as well that we are doing so much billing in public and sharing so many designs early on, of course, you know, it's just mutually beneficial. We just get so much feedback early on. And that saves us some effort and guides us and it's been really rewarding. How long have you been on Twitter now? personally? Two years. Oh, wait, I'm confused. Wait, so you were okay. Fill in the blanks for me,
what is your
time to review? And what happened with time? And
okay, yeah, please. I,
so I joined Twitter through acquisition of our sort of highly are we quarter and I were matching the highlighter for the web. I remember is that in touch with you was like, Where's my data? And you're like, yeah, and then highly, highly was very tool for highlighting it was a Chrome extension. And you could highlight, you know, like the right text, and then you could share it. Typically, I remember that. Yeah, it was super useful. And I swear to God, everyone that I've ever talked to about building a Chrome extension that like, I'm going to build a highlighter for the web, and I point them to highlight and they'd like, and then,
you know, that's,
you know, you got acquired, it got shut down. And now there's copious amounts of possibility now for Chrome extensions, so please, yeah, it will build again. Okay, continue? No, indeed, I mean, still a really important use case, it was tough to make a business out of it. You know, starting a business and kind of reader service, the reader reader app space was doubly difficult. And then, like you said, the Chrome extension as a vehicle for user interface for user experience. And, you know, invoking it kind of consistently across the internet and across HTML and all that stuff. Yes. Is that not fun? But what was still a wonderful experience, it's still something we talked about a lot. at Twitter, I mean, it's a it's a pattern, right, that we notice in tweets being well, well, especially the sharing of snippets, right? The screenshots of text, extracting ideas from stories to be really specific, like what resonated with you? And what you what do you want to start a conversation about? So? Sorry, like, that's a draft, like, there's no indexing of or like OCR of the text, for any number of purposes, one of which, you know, sort of straightforward, positive use case would be for accessibility, right. So if I put a screenshot that I've taken on my iPhone, and I've highlighted the text, Twitter doesn't do anything to make that textbox testable, right? That's correct. But I love what you're talking about there. And that's really something that we could work. So tell us about this experience. Right. So this was not your first hack week? Because clearly, you actually arrived at Twitter before then? And I don't know, how are you confused with being on the review? team? Are you working on what you are? Not at all? Yeah, for sure. So we have been been working on that process of bringing the team in for quite a few months. And yeah, we all we all work together and kind of a larger group here. That's that's focused on this space on helping creators monetize through text. So for us for Twitter, right, it's a it's a, it's a nice evolution for us to get into this format to beyond the beyond the on to AD and be thinking about newsletters is, of course, you know, also just a different delivery space, and a different place where people are building their audiences. Yeah, super interesting. And so I want to, I'll let Brian, maybe ask some questions in a second. But so just any other, you know, anecdotes or experiences, or can you share anything about what you're working on? Or things cool things that you saw during hack week?
So
you'd have to ask me next week? I haven't seen I haven't seen. You know, I will, I will get to see a lot of the other projects. until until later this morning. I think I was the final ones on a Twitter space. Oh, no, that wouldn't be we totally should. We should wait. Yeah, no, we use periscope before sunset. It was kind of fun. And I wish this could be a more public experience. But you know, we used to do is gather at a cafeteria and have kind of a booth style setup and walk table to table and ask questions in the teams. But now of course, virtually, we just opened up, you know, Google meeting rooms, and people jump in and jump out of them. But but so you never know who's gonna drop in. And it's fun to discuss those conversations, but an explorer ability into done. Yeah. So nothing to share there. But the stuff we're working on, you will we will see you soon in public.
That's exciting.
what's what's what's, what's
your vibe, like? How are you feeling about this? I mean, like, correct me if I'm wrong, you know, when people ask me, like, why did like Twitter, like, you know, lunch and other stuff? Like, one of the things that jack said, which you know, now I kind of believe it was just that there was a huge sort of rewrite that happened internally, to unblock and to increase velocity. And I don't know what visibility you had into that. I don't know if there was like internal API work that was being done. You know, I've been in touch with folks on like, the Twitter API team for a while. But like, is that something that you saw for a while? Or is the culture and leadership actually shifted with regards to wanting to launch or seeing sort of existential threats on the horizon? Like, what does that feel like? Like, I guess, like, why I'm bringing this up is because, you know, I was there, you know, prior to Google Plus, when Google was working on buzz, like I joined the day that Google Buzz launched. And when Google Plus was started and announced, basically it was like a skunkworks project that the entire company like turn on a dime and became laser focused on basically and so I just like wondering if this was more of like a gradual kind of like, you know, turning the battleship, or whether this was guys were gonna wake up and like launch some, because like suddenly, you know, there's lots of competitors out there, and we're gonna start losing the creators. Yeah, to your point, I think it was more of us, it felt like more of a slow shift internally, right. It's definitely a lot of that foundational work that was invested in over time to help us move faster now. But as everyone's noticed, too, that I think, you know, the last piece of this has been to really make a big effort to be building in public and to share more stuff early, that that's just, you know, evolved over the last couple of months, which just feels great. It's been really rewarding. The public stuff is really interesting to me, but I feel like, I feel like it was before the pandemic. Maybe Chris remembers where I was doing those. Oh, my God. Twitter is actually, no offense is actually iterating on products held is freezing over and things like that. So like, to what Eric is saying, like, this wasn't an overnight thing. What Chris just said is like, you know, using his turn on a dime scenario, I'm curious to what degree what you're singing about right now, whether or not it's like, oh, my god, there's competition. And so we have to have products to meet this competition? To what degree? are you guys thinking about it the way that those of us outside of it or thinking of it as a strategic strategy strategy, thinking about it, like where it's like, okay, leverage the graph, what we have is the distribution that these upstarts don't have, like, are you guys thinking of it in terms of that, where we, let's play to our strengths, let's just build off of what we know, Twitter is great at, and then iterate off that. I would say it's all guided by some very common principles we've held for a long time to just toast public conversation, right. And it's just, it's more responding, I think, directly to our customers than just asking us for more seamless ways and sharing with us maybe their annoyances, right of building audience in many places, but then trying to let let all the things that are producing
a lot of conversation.
I don't think it I think it's all just still driven by a pretty common theme and something deeply rooted in our DNA. for hosting public conversation. You say? Like, I think it's super interesting, again, like, I'll take what you say, as mostly true. And then what I'm curious is, from a product design perspective, I just like I remember, you know, I, I was, I'm not like, give myself too much credit. But I feel like I was in the avant garde at Google, in many ways of breaking down barriers between the inside outside, you know, the company, like I felt like a porous membrane, that kind of put a lot more stuff out there into the world, in order to get that type of feedback and to build in public. And that this was at a time when most of the Google Plus team, I mean, partially because they were like, I wouldn't say looking over their shoulder there was more like they were, you know, looking at the assets, Facebook as we were running after it, but like, like, there was a fear that if we put things out there that were pre baked, that we would sort of like pre announce features, and then the press would get all over it. And then they'd like, blow it up. And then you know, we wouldn't get to like own the narrative. And it feels like something has changed, it feels like and, you know, I recognize that this isn't in that context, and moment when Andreessen Horowitz is starting up their own kind of, let's say, you know, PR agency or press or whatever, because they want to have a more direct conversation, you know, with their public. And so it feels like we're no longer in the what I mean, yes, the the press media is still very important. And it still shapes a lot of the conversations around things.
Now,
I just I don't know, I've been noticing that there were so many more people that are working at Twitter, and that are, you know, imprinted? Yes, I appropriated your profile photos, which I Oh, you're not using it here. But I think you have
on Twitter. And
that's why I'm wearing clubhouse attire in clubhouse. That's, that's how I will anyways. And so my question is kind of about what it's like to to be working in public, what makes it feel safe or unsafe? What is it like to sort of be on the receiving end of lots of people who are maybe are confused by the product and you know, throw a lot of stuff around. Like, I guess I kind of imagined that I can put yourself out there as a Twitter employee, that you're going to get a number of people asking for verification, and eventually, you just kind of like, learn to tune it out. Whereas in an earlier era, it kind of felt like, you know, employees of these companies really want to make themselves as accessible or visible to the outside world. So how do you feel about that? And is there any conversation about that internally, or like you said, it's like, it's part of the genetics and so it's just It's normal. It's fine. Yeah, not a ton. I don't know it to me honestly, it just feels kind of pure. It's all pretty honest. And it's just a connection. Like, it's all good feedback, right? Like cheers to two points. There's releasing things early or without kind of controlling the narrative. leaves it open for interpretation. But I don't know, we love and learn from that interpretation, too. So it's all good signal for us. And yeah, I mean, I think it's great, right? Like, I'm not, I'm not trying to, like, be critical. It's more like, I'm just, I'm trying to sort of get myself into the headspace into the experience you're having, and sort of working through a lot of the inhibitions that I experienced, you know, when I was at a big tech company, and what that was like, and how hard it was to get people to work in public. And suddenly, I'm seeing a generation of Twitter designers, I'm just like, yes, like, this is amazing. Like, this is so great. And also, that sounds like there's a lot of pressure, especially these days, but then again, you know, maybe there's, I don't know, maybe it's just normal. So well, I'll say this to, you know, I think it's obvious maybe what's happening in the media to everybody in the room and to most people and of course, that's a piece of what we're listening to. But I think maybe more more more competence comes from just want to give a lot of credit to our design and research or to daily key and all the all the other leaders there that they've just done a wonderful job deciding or guiding us, you know, to just do a ton of, to talk to customers often and to do a ton of research at a time. And I think that's where that's where more of a process kind of originates from, it's almost the it's almost the the time investment. I mean, I listened to kayvon for an hour again today with with Kara Swisher on a space. And you know, I've seen the entire team, I've seen Lee, I've seen all sorts of people like, so I almost am thinking about the fact that like you guys are committing to, we're gonna go in and listen for hours at a time for people that are like, you know, what I'd like my feature is this, this is what you need to build.
Totally. So
on that note, what should newsletters newsletters and Twitter be? And how do they integrate with Twitter even better?
So, so good.
Wow, now my brain is like overloading? Well, what I want to understand a little bit about division, right? Like, one of the things that I've noticed is that when I go to create a thread, there's a little, you know, ad on the bottom, which I think is where I pointed you to the bug that I was seeing the other day, that's like, you know, learn more about creating a newsletter. Okay, so that's kind of interesting, I guess, you know, one of the questions that I have is about maybe order of operations, because it seems like super follow would be an obvious, maybe I don't want that barrier, per se, but it's like, for people who are super followers of me, you know, and are putting in some extra dollars a month or something, and getting access to like my longer threads. And to, like topical things could be like, really interesting. One of the ways in which this breaks is how, at least this is okay, this is very interesting. Let me let me try to like work this out. And this is the point that I made about podcasts yesterday. So what I was saying is that podcasts have similar characteristics of email, and email, and podcasts were kind of popularized in an era of kind of, you know, fetch and retrieve where you kind of, you know, go online, and then you download a bunch of stuff, and then you go offline, and that was kind of like the mode. And so that's why those platforms, and those formats were designed that way. And so email is designed that way. And so, you know, newsletters, you know, substack was standing, were designed to sort of be, you know, put into a collection of related content, and then free to consume them, you know, kind of episodically. One of the things that I've been doing with threads, and this is I'm kind of getting to my question, with threads is like, I have long running threads, where, for me, I'm trying to demonstrate or show consistency, or the development of a story or narrative over time.
And, you
know, like I mentioned before, one of my examples of that is the hashtag new app icon, another one that hashtag release notes. One is hashtag avatar, the end, I kind of use those as actual tags, you know, as hash tags are intended. So they can go back and continuing developing literally like a thread I conceive of as being like a collection of either highly related content, you know, all platformer or things like that, where it's like, here's what's going on today. And then here's a grab bag of links at the bottom, which is composed as kind of a single unit of content. So help me understand like the dynamic between what Twitter newsletters, especially Twitter, you know, wanting to be kind of like the current now public conversations of what's happening in the moment, relative to newsletters, which I think are intended for somewhat longer form content, which is content that I otherwise might have, you know, spend time developing on, let's say, medium and publishing it as this like, beautiful thing. So which, like, what is the intuitive feel that you have about the content, both in the creation of the content as a newsletter, and also the consumption as a newsletter? Yeah, I, one, I think you highlighted something important there that there are quite a few use cases for news. And so we tend to, of course, a journalist, anything and then the understanding maybe about the needs around them, but but the format itself, the length of it, especially like the ease for which you might reference a lot of other things, right, through hyperlinks that don't exist in tweets as well, or kind of similarly.
I don't know.
I guess I would point to,
when I tweeted
a couple weeks ago, or week or whatever that was, that footer that you're referencing on the thread, composer footer. But I treated it with a prompt to try to learn about that. So learn about when do you use threads. And when you use newsletters, there's quite a few really interesting responses there and a few quote, tweets, that started conversations and shed some light on, you know, maybe a use case for threads versus newsletters seemed like threads were definitely used a lot more for spontaneity, or kind of the earliest the thoughts, you're using it very differently, though, to to try to keep something, keep something going and to iterate on it. But yeah, I don't know, I think there's quite a bit of variety there. And of course, just things that are just for us is there, there are a few kind of core distinctions that do enable some new use case was what so one interesting aspect of this could just be that, like, one of the things that I see quite a bit is the kind of unroll or like, you know, threatre type approach, where people are obviously creating threads for a number of reasons, you know, one is for sort of addressability. So it's like, I want to like make a statement. And then I want people to be able to like respond to it as though I mean, if you remember earlier in mediums, history, you had this, you still I think have the ability to highlight a section of text, and then to add a comment. And that was so game changing, because you could actually talk about a specific part of the text, as opposed to here's my comment. And you know, on paragraph three, you know, Section two, you know, this is what I'm talking about. So that cardinality or addressability is, I think, a really important aspect of threads, but the reading experience of it is not, and although I don't want to blow up all of the, you know, threader apps that are out there, and many of them are going to hate me because I've hunted their products, but like, it seems like there's a almost like reverse experience where if I read someone's thread, I might actually want to take that thread and put it into a newsletter that is sent into my inbox for easier reading. So that's like a related function.
Like,
have you thought about that side of it, where it's less about, you know, the super follower and the creator? part where it's more about digestibility. And readability of content that people encounter on Twitter? Yeah, absolutely. We're talking a lot about that reader, customer, and the needs associated, especially if you are trying to kind of time delay and save for later, or, you know, just be able to easily reference things that you've read recently as they as they come up in the future unexpectedly in a new conversation. So yeah, I think I think there's quite a few use cases there for for that customer. And we're very open to that and exploring some ideas. Awesome. I want to give Brett a chance to jump in if he's got any questions or thoughts in this room. So sorry, I gotta, I gotta run here pretty soon. I have a question for you. Back. A minute. Yeah. Good. Last one. Last one. Yeah. So I'm really interested in review, because I think it's a logical extension of what Twitter does. And Twitter's really biased towards the text based creator. And so many of the tweets we have are just, they just linked to someone's long form. Short Form. What I'm what I'm one of the things I'm interested in, though, is, and this is related to what Chris just asked, Is, it's easy for us to do a tweet and understand the excerpt and how that takes you into a newsletter. I'm also really interested in how it how it provides a potential for a back and forth conversation where someone goes into the newsletter, and then highlights, you know, as we were just talking about, and then they can just capture that into a tweet and make a comment on that
potentially
in the same thread, or it could be a new thread, but then automatically tags the author, so that you can keep that conversation going just as if you were in Twitter, but there's a little bit of back and forth. And, you know, having used the I've been playing with reveal a little bit on the side, there's a number of nice features, I think from a reader standpoint and a creator standpoint, and I've, I've had a newsletter for a long time. Now. That would be a really compelling feature, because then you would actually create the context for the interaction in a much faster way, kind of like some of the tools are doing with podcasting now. Yeah, I think that's spot on. We We hope that this format, that long form that newsletter delivery, leads to conversation, and a few points about kind of the specificity for which consumer might amplify an interview. Part of it I think, you know, it feels to me too, like an opportunity where the readers are becoming the creators as they remix that content even. Which is really exciting. Awesome, guys. Well, I know you guys gonna go I know Brian's gonna go totally appreciate everyone showing up again today. This was the testing experience we do this on a semi regular basis. We let's see, I'm not gonna I'm going to be out of town on Friday so we won't be doing it then. And I don't know about tomorrow night but we will be back at some point soon. I think that's it for now. Brian, you got anything else? No. Thanks, everyone for joining in. And yeah, great. Cold thanks for one of the came up and thanks for Eric and I we dropped but that was super helpful. And I will talk to you guys soon. Thanks. Bye.