Twitter's New CEO, Streaming Wars Are Over, Traffic's Lessons

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1:19Welcome to Big Technology Podcast, Friday edition, where we break down the news in our traditional cool-headed and nuanced format. We are joined today by Ben Smith. He is the author of Traffic, Genius, Rivalry, and Illusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral. And he's been on the podcast circuit, but we're going to break down the week's news, including some really interesting stories about the new CEO of Twitter, the latest on Google's new products at Google I.O. We're also going to cover Tucker Carlson moving his show to Twitter and CNN's interview with Trump. And at the end, we'll round out with some discussion of Ben's book.

1:54Welcome to the show, Ben. Thanks so much for having me on this broadcast. And we're also joined, as always, by Ronjan Roy. Welcome, Ronjan. Hey, Alex. Happy Friday. Listen, I have a bit of a crackly mic today, so I just want to apologize in advance. We'll have it fixed by next week, but definitely want to post the audio. And I think we should just get started by talking about the big story of the week, which is that Twitter finally seems like it's going to have a CEO other than Elon Musk. The Washington Post has reported that Elon Musk has selected NBC Universal's chairman of global advertising and partnerships, Linda Yaccarino, to be the new CEO of Twitter.

2:34Ben, I'm curious, what do you think is the case that Yaccarino can be successful inside Twitter? Someone from a big network coming over to a social network. I mean, in some sense, she's the best imaginable hire for him. And, you know, if the first thing he had done was hired her and turned the company over to her, like the ad industry and the markets would have totally fallen in love with the story, probably. She's, you know, the advertising world is like a real kind of like community where people know each other. And she is just a total pillar of that community. Somebody described, I actually don't know her politics.

3:08There's been lots of speculation about her politics based on like her Twitter followers and things or who she follows. she's certainly perceived inside the industry as like the one Trump supporter who everybody in that industry loves. Again, I've never talked to her about it and don't know her actual politics, but the perception of her like among her friends is that like they forgive her, her deviations to the right because she's such a pillar of that community. And so to the degree that, yeah, I mean, they had a really big ad business and their costs, were swallowing every dollar they brought in.

3:47I mean, in a kind of normal world, you'd be like, wow, maybe she could bring back that huge multi-billion dollar ad business that Elon trashed, and the costs could stay low and good for Twitter. I mean, it sounds like her title is CEO, but she's actually the head salesperson. And Musk is going to continue to run product. And actually, even pre-Musk, the knock on Twitter was that the out-of-control product people ran the place and would never listen to the ad side. And the core problem with its ad business isn't that they didn't have well-liked salespeople. It's that Musk was doing things that advertisers hated, like bringing Nazis back onto the platform.

4:29And promoting Tucker Carlson is something advertisers hate on Fox, and it's something they'll hate on Twitter. So I think that if she actually gets input on the product, maybe it'll bring advertisers back. If she's just going out and sort of selling what Elon is doing to the market, it's hard to see how that really works. Yeah. Do you guys think, one, this is actually going to happen? Or do you think this is another Elon Musk grab the news cycle and try to put some kind of positive spin on Twitter as a company? And I guess, and the second thing, what would she have to do to actually gain the trust of advertisers back?

5:11I mean, is it like Elon stops tweeting? Is it they actually have to come up with some kind of new innovation around their ad products? Because I think Elon, I mean, his Twitter feed obviously is a negative for advertisers anyways, but Twitter's ad product was not very good for so many years. Like, I mean, it never came close to where Facebook and Instagram and all these other, even TikTok got to. Yeah, I mean, let's see. I mean, I think, I actually picture Elon's personal tweets. Like, you know, if she can say, look, the chairman of our company sometimes tweets weird stuff, but lots of people tweet weird stuff, and he's not making, and he's not the one making decisions about what gets shown next year ads, that's probably fine.

5:54if you know but if they're getting complaints from customers and employees that their ads are turning up on neo-nazi with adjacent to neo lots of neo-nazis and that the platform or just that the platform is fox news like that's sort of probably an unsolvable problem like not that fox doesn't have a good advertising business but you know she's coming from nbc one of the world's great advertising companies that just, you know, rakes in billions and billions and billions of dollars by selling Morning Tell, you know, The Today Show or, you know, a range of primetime dramas that are like profoundly inoffensive, basically, because that is ultimately what advertisers want.

6:41And I don't know. I mean, and the real problem, I mean, I think the ad products on Twitter were always a mess, But also the appeal of Twitter was that you were, as an advertiser, sort of plugging directly into the culture and into the sort of, into the conversation. But if the conversation is a nightmare, you probably don't want to do that. And I think there's just a question of whether she's empowered to move the product back to a place where advertisers want to be. Because they actually, like, people complain about the advertising product. Maybe, you know, what was it, a$7 billion advertising business that Elon has knocked down maybe 50 or 60 percent.

7:15But like that's that's a big business. That's not I would I would be I would like to have a seven billion dollar advertising business. That's some of four dot com, which all your viewers should sign up for. Yes. So look, it does. It does seem kind of impossible, though. I mean, if there's no way to shift the Twitter product, in my opinion, to something that's going to actually appeal to NBC advertisers. Right. The whole thing is Twitter has tried to appeal to these brand advertisers, but it's been a direct response platform measured against the type of advertising you would do on Facebook or Snapchat and hasn't been able to deliver.

7:49I think that's an unfair comparison. Facebook is the world's best advertising mousetrap, but measured against the New York Times or any other news publisher. Because ultimately they have the downside of being kind of in the news business. I think they built a huge, you could say they were the biggest news advertising business in the world. Like, I think they, you know, they managed to lose money on that quite large business. But, you know, they had, I think, like, they had advertisers who liked them, advertisers who were sick of them, you know, whatever. But their biggest problem was that they were losing money, not that they weren't selling ads, I think.

8:23Yeah, that'll be the task. I mean, if you're going to try to bring someone in to change the advertising business, she definitely makes sense. But it's also interesting that Elon has been strongly opposed, not strongly opposed, but been trying to shift the company away from advertising. Maybe this is an admission from him that he does need those advertising dollars and is bringing in a heavy hitter from a network to do it. Yeah, what's most interesting to me is that he could have brought in a CEO whose real experience was in building subscription consumer products or building linear television for a network that was based around Tucker Carlson or someone who had worked on the creation of Alipay or WeChat or one of these everything apps he talked about.

9:08But he really brought in, you know, like one of America's leading ad salespeople. And so like suggests that they think the ad business is where they're going. Right. In which case you would have to have almost like a, you'd, you'd, if you're Elon, you'd probably want to wipe clean the first six months of running Twitter and try to start over. Are you telling me that it's not going to be a payments app and an everything app and a subscription service and all of the above? I mean, I do hope Lindy Acarino got some kind of paperwork that gives her recourse and gets her paid if tomorrow he decides, actually, never mind.

9:43Because his description of what she does as CEO in a tweet was not what a typical CEO does. Typical CEO runs the company. He sort of said, well, I'll run the company and she'll sell the ads. Well, she's going to have some inventory to run against because Tucker Carlson this week announced that he's going to be bringing his show to Twitter. and it's going to be interesting to see because this type of stuff, as you noted in Semaphore, doesn't typically work on Twitter. I think you had somebody who had used to work at Twitter talk about what the problem is with programming on the app and they refer to it as doom scrolling versus doom staying, right?

10:22And he said the notion, or this person said, the notion that Carlson could build a significant video business on Twitter was stupid. So what do you think the prospects are that this app might actually be programmed, you know, like a cable network and have more tune in programming? I mean, Elon also reached out to Don Lemon told him told him to do a show on Twitter as well. What Elon's doing is he is sort of speed running through everything Twitter's already tried, which doesn't say maybe it was early. I mean, who knows? But there was a sort of a thought in, gosh, I think in 2015, maybe when Anthony Noto was there, that they could, that linear television, that they could basically develop a slate.

11:03And one of the ways to access Twitter was sort of as an on-demand video platform or as a live video platform. And AM2D on this show we produced at BuzzFeed was part of that strategy. And it was pretty good. And so I think it kind of survived past having a strategic logic for them. But I think, yeah, the big problem is, I mean, I as a Twitter addict have never probably watched more than a minute linear on Twitter. Like, it's just, it's not the behavior of the user to lean back and you know, it's a lean forward doom platform, not a lean back doom platform. And maybe there's some experience or subscription service where you would go to Twitter and do a thing that's just totally different from the thing you usually do on Twitter.

11:48But I think that's just like a challenge. Like, I don't know how, I don't know how Netflix shorts are working. I think Netflix has this TikTok-like product, and maybe lots of people go to Netflix to use a TikTok clone, but I just think it's harder than people realize. It's just hard to get people to totally change their behavior on your platform. Elon said, just to remember, that he did engage with Tucker Carlson directly to bring him to the platform, or was he trying to deny that he actually was... pay him in any way or try to come up with some exclusive deal? We don't know. I mean, I think it's, I think Musk had said there's no deal, but it's, I'm not really sure what that means.

12:28Okay. Yeah. No, I mean, it is interesting in terms, especially with like blue sky now being the hot new place and where Twitter is trying to go strategically, but I guess it just reminds of any other kind of Musk, Musk business. Do you guys think is Tucker Carlson, would he be reneging on his contract with Fox News or would, what would be the monetary impact on him? to make a move like this i mean i think the thing with carlson is he's one of these folks who can probably make even more money than he made at fox selling his services to the highest bidder you know somewhere like rumble or newsmax or the daily wire where where does rumble get the money they're publicly traded oh okay okay because i saw yeah the 20 million 30 million out of nowhere Yeah, they've been throwing$10 million deals at like much less famous people.

13:24And so and they're, I think, probably quite desperate to break through because they're clearly not breaking through. And so he'd be worth a lot to them. So there's this trade off, though, where it's like, does he want to make a bunch of money? And like, no, you know, I'd have much, much less influence. I mean, that's kind of the trade off, right? And there's nowhere that he can go like Fox where he's going to work. I mean, the crazy thing about Fox, he was talking to people who were kind of persuadable. He's basically talking to elderly regular Republicans and pulling them into this kind of populist crusade that's a different thing from the Republican Party.

13:58He can now, I think, go out and talk to his own followers, but it's less influential. And there's, you know, I mean, I think Glenn Beck, in his day, had a lot of heat and didn't really manage to preserve influence, although I suspect he made quite a bit of money. You know, Ben, it was kind of interesting in your story because you referenced Carlson as the leader of the populist wing of the Republican Party. And, you know, to me, I always thought that that was Donald Trump. So I'm curious why you put Tucker in that position and whether you think that part of what he might do is think about running for president in 24.

14:34Yeah, I mean, I guess that's sort of how I think of him. Yeah, but he could run for, he could certainly run for president. There's certainly a logic to him, like, just cynically, like, it would keep and make him hyper-relevant, basically, and keep him in the game just to float the speculation. Although it doesn't seem like he really has been. He's also been very, I think part of what sort of radicalized him is a sense that his enemies were sort of threatening his family and violating his privacy. And obviously, if what you want is sort of to keep your life private, running for president is a really bad way to do that.

15:10Do you think that was real or is that just for show? I mean, there were protesters banging on his door at his home in D.C. and his wife was pretty freaked out. I mean, I think that was real. But how people, you know, but he certainly is out there saying super inflammatory stuff and driving protesters to other people's homes. I mean, I don't know. Yeah, I know. But I mean, I do. Yeah, I actually do think that part of his current fairly radical politics is driven at least by his own sense, that he is personally embattled and threatened. Yeah. So we're seeing right now also this move of lots of network TV folks to digital, some by choice, some not exactly by their choice.

15:53It's kind of interesting because there is this momentum for digital, but you are also looking at what's happening in the streaming wars, and it's ugly. So Disney reported earnings this week, it lost 4 million subscribers. And there's this new narrative that's taking place that the streaming wars are over right you had disney netflix amazon the list goes on companies trying to program online and thinking that there would be endless growth there for their streaming businesses and now like you're seeing a real tail off with netflix you're seeing this i mean a massive loss of subscribers for disney so i'm curious ben if you agree with this idea that the streaming wars are over and if so doesn't it just leave digital in a much more diminished place versus narrative television?

16:38I mean, I guess I don't really buy the distinction anymore between digital and narrative television. I mean, Disney is, I mean, the sort of, the moment when the markets would let you dump unlimited money into streaming for growth certainly is over. And I think it's just a much more mixed picture. I think I'm pretty, I'm pretty sure Disney's losses came in part because they lost the rights to cricket in India, which is a huge, you know, which is a very traditional television fight. Like some, an Indian broadcaster got the rights and, or a streamer and Disney lost them and a bunch of people canceled their subscriptions, which is like a totally normal reason people changed the channel.

17:18And I think it's sort of, I mean, to me, it's more just that this sort of convergence between the different platforms is competing, is completing the notion that there's this totally different thing called streaming that has totally different economics and that you can invest in infinitely. I mean, I don't think it was bad. I mean, it obviously was not a mistake of NetWitFlix to invest a lot and grab a lot of market share. But clearly that moment has now passed. and so but yeah i i think this is not the worst thing in the world a part of me even feels i know i joked around with john who i write margins with that ozark the latest season should not have been done but was one of the last vestiges of zerp and that there's just too much capital so they'll just make anything i mean i feel there's so many series that could be movies and just two hours but instead get stretched out to eight to ten episodes just because they had to produce that much so i think from a quality control perspective it's not the worst thing that uh streaming services will cut back um but i think what who's gonna win in this like it feels like right now everyone is losing billions of dollars and bleeding money but still you know everyone's behavior even my parents now watch streaming services and watch movies on streaming like every it's become so ingrained in our behavior that who's gonna win like someone has to right i mean it seems like right now everybody's losing right um but i guess i actually feel like for if you're like i think nbc is a very interesting element here which under invested in this stuff is now trying to play catch up with Peacock, which feels like it's not particularly catching on.

19:06And if you want to stream something amazing, that show Mrs. Davis, which is on Peacock, is fabulous. But I don't think anybody's watching it because it's on Peacock. That said, they built all this in the context of this huge advertising business, of Lindy Aquarino's giant advertising business, in fact. And it sort of remained a television company in a fairly fundamental way, did not transform themselves into a company, like didn't transform the logic of their business into this subscription business, hedged all over the place. And I sort of think that that's what we'll see more of is mixed business models and complicated businesses and movies getting theatrical releases when that makes sense and less sort of ideology and more kind of calculation.

19:54I think when you look at big media businesses like Disney over time and you say like, hey, what business are they in? Like, what's their secret? The answer is often pretty confusing. It's like, well, they're in like 14 different businesses and like the margins on cruises are pretty good. But like they manage them all really well. And like they're these executives like Bob Chapek sort of like wandering around the mid-senior ranks of the companies with 200 ,000 people reporting to them. who's running businesses that we don't really understand that well, like cruises and parks. Alex, who do you think is going to win?

20:28I don't know. I mean, I would have said Amazon. I think that they just have much more incentive to invest the money that the others don't have, and they can lose more, and that still works for their business. So I'm on team Amazon on this one, but I don't know. It's tough. You have to just keep churning out hits and their ability to do so has been kind of limited. So what do you think, Rajan? Yeah, Amazon's an interesting one because at a certain point, though, as their e-commerce business starts taking a hit and losing money, as their margins on cloud start to compress and the business that has been growing, you know, insanely over the last decade starts to slow a bit.

21:11Where do they look to cut? And I think video might be that place. Because again, having video is just an add-on to Prime that everyone's going to subscribe to anyway for two-day shipping. I don't think is the most compelling place to invest so much money. But I mean, they still certainly are with the NFL and everything else. So I mean, they're still making moves. But yeah, I like I think I'm team NBC. I think I'm in for I don't know why Linda leaves when you're potentially at the winning place. but yeah and it's kind of interesting right that nbc which looked like it was a laggard now looks kind of like it didn't over torque toward it streaming although yeah although it's now frantically trying to catch up so who knows i actually converted to peacock for eurovision myself so go figure one of a peacock i i'm a proud peacock subscriber as well and uh i mean they even they're the first place I saw they have like when you pause a show an ad comes up which I think is actually like a good smart ad innovation so I think Ben's point makes sense is that it's like a commercially driven organization so they're actually smart about the entire business rather than a pure content first you know business that tries to tack on a business model afterwards yeah I'm with you I think building well maybe this is it that if you start building late but that late coincides with the new economic environment where you're not in the ZERP world anymore, you might actually have a chance to build something sustainable.

22:43Okay, let's do, why don't we do one more media story, then take a break and then talk a little bit about your book, Ben. All right, did you guys watch the CNN interview with Trump? So there's been this big debate about like whether CNN should have done it in the first place. Some people are like, you know, it's effectively serving as a campaign platform for Trump. and others are just like, well, you interview newsmakers. That's the job of a journalist. So, Ben, I'm kind of curious, first of all, what you made of the interview and second, what you think about that debate. I have three thoughts.

23:17One is I think that Caitlin Collins did a very good job. That is a very hard thing. And she sort of held her ground and really pushed him. The second was that the audience was sort of a mistake, I think. It felt and sounded like a homogeneously pro-Trump cheering squad, which did. I mean, there's a reason they have laugh lines on TV, right? It conveyed a sort of sense of support for him. And they could have avoided that. But the biggest problem is just that Trump was always going to turn it into a sparring match between heroic Donald Trump and evil CNN. And so CNN is trying to rebrand itself as a neutral platform.

23:58that is as open to Republicans as Democrats. But Trump comes on and doesn't treat it like the platform. He treats it like the antagonist. And Caitlin has to push him, and then he lies a lot. And then at the end, Jake Tapper comes on and just sort of eviscerates him for lying. And if you're a viewer, you're either on Trump's side or against him. And Trump forces that dynamic. And if CNN's goal is to sort of, which is totally understandable, to sort of reclaim its brand as a neutral news platform, like Trump just isn't going to give you that. Like that's not why he went on. He went on to show he could go into the lion's den and that requires CNN to be the lion.

24:40And so I don't really know how it serves that brand goal. Like they got a modest rating bump, not as much a bump as they got when they got Joe Biden on. But like that goal of reclaiming CNN's old brand is just, it's very elusive, I think. Yeah, I do not understand what the purpose of it was. And the CNN CEO, I think it was Brian Stelter, was tweeting about how he talked about how they made news. And again, like the idea is they're supposed to cover the news, not make news. But it's a reminder that he's proud of the idea of actually CNN as a network making news. And I think I like that point that like Ben made that, you know, CNN has to be the lion if he's going into the lion's end, because it is.

25:24If you watched it, it was just nonstop back and forth. And then afterwards, again, it felt like we're back in 2016 where Jake Tapper comes on and says the word falsehood, which is the most ridiculous word, instead of saying lie and saying that he made falsehood over and over again. And again, yeah, it's all it's just like deja. But okay, but the thing is, nobody, I mean, I actually didn't even notice that. I thought he did a pretty good job fact checking Trump. But like, there's no Trump supporter who is like, oh, I'm glad he said falsehood rather than lie. And then there's nobody who dislikes Trump who's like, well, I'm glad they fact checked him afterward.

26:00Like there was no constituency. And I think we all learned that fact checking is not an effective way to deal with Donald Trump. Like that's just almost irrelevant to the whole like, you know, the idea like we got him. We caught him and we showed. Maybe I'm the only one that feels this way in the group. I don't know. I'm curious what Ben thinks. But I think it was actually good to interview him. I mean, he is the front runner in the Republican field. He is likely going to be the nominee. The idea is if you're in journalism, you're going to ask this person questions. And I think that what Chris Lick said afterwards was pretty interesting, which is like America has a better understanding of this candidate now than they did in the first place.

26:47Like everything involving Trump, this was mutually assured destruction. This was bad for CNN and bad for Donald Trump. Congratulations, everyone. Well, why bad for Trump? because he's out there talking about abortion most of all exactly and by the way like i mean that's what isn't i mean i think that what journalism should do is also like get these people to talk about the things that they might not want to talk about have them clarify their positions oh for sure i think it was good journalism actually that may be as much as i should say i think it was good journalism unfortunately like the reality of cable news is that it's television like that's its deepest reality and it was not affected like it wasn't good television it was just good journalism i think oh i thought i i don't know it was entertaining television i mean i guess i just mean like it didn't i think cnn was trying to do a thing with it and it did not do that thing right then i'm curious there's some oh go ahead but maybe that's too cynical i like i do think it's good that they that i mean of course you sort of have no choice like if trump were downstairs and wanted to like join this podcast i would let him in and you know we would talk to him all right let's take a break and come back and talk about your book, Ben.

27:54We're here on Big Technology Podcast, Friday edition with Ranjan Roy, the author of Margins on Substack, Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of Semaphore, and also the author of Traffic, Genius Rivalry and Delusion in the Billion Dollar Race to Go Viral. It's out in all bookstores available now, so you can go pick it up. We're going to talk about the book and some more media stories, including, well, and some more tech stories as well, including Mark Zuckerberg's recent Jiu-Jitsu championship, coming back right after this. these days it feels like every dollar should be working a little harder but figuring out where to put your cash can be confusing that's where wealthfront comes in wealthfront is a tech-driven financial platform built to help you grow your savings into long-term wealth their high-yield cash account through program banks offers a 3.5 percent apy on your uninvested cash as of november 7 2025 and there are no monthly fees no minimum or maximum balance to earn that rate and you can even make free instant withdrawals to eligible accounts in just minutes, 24-7.

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