Meta’s Prediction Market App, Europe vs. Big Tech, and Hollywood’s Comeback

18:54Kara Swisher:I do. You love the dog. Sadly, sadly, sadly. It's the worst relationship of my life and my finest, oddly enough. Come on. No, it's true. It's true. I do. I have weird affection. Someone literally came up to me. I'm so your bottom. This is what's happened to me here. You're going to laugh. I go, wait, I'm not supposed to laugh. You need to stop. objectifying me, Scott. Someone came up to me last night and literally just went like this. Scott!

19:23Kara Swisher:How do you do it? I was like, I like him. And they're like, so do I. That woman said, so do I. It was weird. Was it Emily Ratajkowski? You can be honest. No, yeah. She's been asking about me, right? Never in your life will that ever happen. She's playing that game, right? You know what? I'm going to do something about red and black. No, she's probably called security on you at this point. Anyway, in any case, but the point I was making was that they had these issues back in ancient times where the oligarchs and the regular people, the equality got out of control in a way that was really significant.

20:02Kara Swisher:And that's exactly when you had pushbacks and pushbacks and push from both sides. And I think we are absolutely at that time. And I don't think it's particularly helpful to say, you know, eat the rich, but there is a real movement in our country that is significant. Again, New York elections are New York elections, but it says something when there's pushback. So we'll see what happens. I'm not worried for them, but they're going to have to armor plate their Teslas at some point if it starts to get ugly. And there is going to be an ugly moment, unfortunately, for them. And I think it's just it's inevitable if they continue to sort of take everything and damage everything.

20:42Like, that's a nice story. I hope it comes true. I hope we see the manifestation of that at the ballot box. But the reality is, I think Donald Trump is going to sleep well and die of Mar-a-Lago. and I think Bezos and all these guys are going to have really nice lives. And I think we've just got to decide what we want moving forward. But the notion that they're going to pay a price for this, money buys you a lot of protection.

21:03Kara Swisher:Well, it does. We'll have to see what happens. But I'm really interested in U.S. elections coming up. All right, let's take a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about Hollywood's record-breaking year.

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24:26Kara Swisher:Scott, we're back. We're live at Adweek House at ConLions.

24:35Kara Swisher:We're officially in the summer movie season, and Hollywood is hitting new heights, which is really interesting. Toy Story 5 just opened to$312 million globally. Total domestic box office of the year is estimated$4.46 billion, the highest since 2019. It's recovered. And you predicted this. Yes, I did. Lots of movies brought in the big bucks, Project Hail Mary, Michael, The Devil Wears Prada, which I'm starring in, plus low-budget horror movies, Backrooms, and Obsession, and they're becoming blockbusters, but it's the first movie since E.T. where the box office has moved up. And I noted my son went to see both these movies, and he's not gone to the movies since I took him to Toy Story 3, I think, at that point.

25:18Kara Swisher:Talk about this trend, because these theaters, it's actual movie theater experience. It's a range of movies. It's not these big blockbusters. It's not an Avenger movie, though there's one of those coming. It's a lot of, I would say, smaller movies in a lot of ways. And they seem to have been really spurring people not just to go to the movies. And, of course, Story Story 5 is five, is the fifth one. And it's apparently why I haven't seen it. Really? It's the fifth? The fifth, yes. Story Story 5, yes.

25:51Kara Swisher:Anyway, what do you make of this and how right was I about this situation? You called this. You went like this. That's ridiculous. Well, the question is, is it a trend or is it a dead cat bounce? So, look, the movie industry, to be fair, some of the best performing stocks in media are actually theater stocks. Cinemark and IMAX are up. Theater is at 40 and 45 % respectively in last 12 months. The theater business is becoming like airlines. There's Southwest and JetBlue, which is streaming. Netflix serves you content for 30 cents an hour. That's an incredible deal. and then there's emirates and qatar airlines in singapore that's imax that's an incredible experience uh the guys in the middle like amc or delta united are getting crushed so people are willing to spend 20 or 30 or 40 bucks to go to imax or have a really like i love ipic although that just went bankrupt but they want an experience or they just want 30 cents an hour and reasonably good content but it the other i mean the other biggest trend culturally right now is irl coming out of covid people probably lost somebody uh people do have disposable income the economy has been fairly strong and people want to get out and touch grass and and i think they're just having a really healthy gag reflex over isolation yeah i do think there's a gag reflex over social media and everything else like all the it's really it's interesting gary vaynercheck here now says analog is in versus, which I was like, no shit, Sherlock, it's really in.

27:24Kara Swisher:But the idea of, of the, the idea that this pushing away, I have long thought that social media is going to decline rather precipitously, especially among young people and become more of a, you know, because you're starting to see tech companies like Google just invested in A24, which I thought was in, everyone lost their minds in Hollywood. They thought they were going to pull their data. I think they're using it to try to figure out how to do better storyboarding, how to use AI, and how to figure out how to change the movie making process, which isn't such a bad idea to use those tools. Although Hollywood does have a gag reflex to all of these things in favor of these in real life cinema experiences.

28:03Yeah, I think both can be true because if you look at, I don't understand, people go on Instagram to find out about a yogurt store they'll spend 40 minutes in line for. So that's a combination of the two things. The downside of the IRL trend is the following. And that is, I mean, there's a couple of things. You're about to see tables in Mykonos and Ibiza increase 40, 50 % in price this summer. Because there's about to be 12 ,000 new millionaires in the Bay Area through Anthropics, SpaceX, and OpenAI. And if you're a 36-year-old who got a CS degree from Carnegie Mellon, quite frankly, haven't had, you know, didn't have the most social capital in high school, quite frankly, and you wake up and you've been broke and you've been paying your student loans and you wake up after the IPO and you're worth$11 million, you're not going to Disneyland.

28:55You're going to Ibiza and you're seeing black coffee. The flush of douchebag money about to roll over Europe this summer is going to be just frightening. And the other thing that's really kind of sad about this is the reason why these concerts and these music festivals can charge two, three, five grand for VIP tickets is because 20 and 30 somethings, when I was 20 something and 30 something, you know what I was doing with all my money? I was saving for a house. And I worry that 20 and 30 somethings have just stopped saving for a house. They've just given up. They're like, okay, we are not going to save 200 grand for a house.

29:32Houses are 2 million, star homes are$2 million.

29:34Kara Swisher:I'm going to Coachella. Yeah. The smaller houses are a million. Yeah. Your point being. oh my well these are just fascinating trends about in real life cara all right okay yeah um in any case what does that mean because one of the things you know i expose myself to you emotionally and you jab yes i do you jab i was still on douchebags with money in ibiza because you're the only person i know that goes to ibiza um but um he's having a fantasy moment i pay for everything what do you say to like i love drugs i love alcohol we're gonna get questions from you all who would want to roll with me in Ibiza seriously that's right meet you there yeah I absolutely would not um so she literally texts me like where are you where are you what are you no no no I said I'm downstairs talking to Paris Hilton I will not be coming upstairs my favorite actress he just made a Paris Hilton joke that was gross Just try not to ignore it.

30:34Kara Swisher:So. Seen that movie 10, 12 times. Okay. All right. In any case, Instagram, I think a lot of the tech companies really are moving into media, not necessarily in the nefarious ways that they are also moving into media, but Instagram wants a spot in your streaming lineup. The app is testing horizontal video, long form content, episodic series, which I think is really interesting. I just met with some Instagram people recently. They're also reaching out to creators, which they were doing in my case to start making not micro dramas, but what is the stuff you want to make? Short serialized episodes of one to three minutes each, which was a trend many moons ago and didn't really work out.

31:11Kara Swisher:If you recall, a bunch of creators were trying to do that. And obviously Quibi was the other one. Is this sort of back again? Do you think it'll succeed at this point? Well, the clip economy, whatever you want to call it, huge trend. I don't know about you. I'm absolutely, I hate to admit it, I'm absolutely addicted to Instagram Reels. And I think it's become my primary source of information. Me too. Yeah. I think the algorithm is incredible. So do you think they can take it to the next step to create mini dramas? Because it didn't work the first several times. This is the third. I just don't think you ever, I hate to say that, I just don't think you ever bet against Mark Zuckerberg.

31:47I used to think TikTok was going to disrupt Meta. Now I find myself spending less time, I don't know about you, this is post-marketing on TikTok and more time on Reels. I think they look at it and said, I think Mark says, he looks at some of the, that's amazing. Steal it, steal it, and then make it better. And then point our billion and a half person fire hose at it.

32:07Kara Swisher:So if you're marketers here, where do you start to point stuff at entertainment? It's there, right? It continues to be there. That's going to be entertainment. It's a hard one because any business dependent upon Alphabet, unless you're the creator, if you try and get in the middle, your margin is their opportunity. 10 years ago, some of the biggest firms here and houses were SEO companies. And then Alphabet said the whole point of our technologies, we eventually make you obsolete. So I'm very reticent. If you're a creator and you can displace Comcast or ABC or A &E with one of these platforms that will give you a greater share revenue.

32:49I think YouTube does that pretty well. But any business banking on, you're interviewing Mariethe Levin tonight, the CEO of New York Times. I don't know if you know this host from the board of the New York Times. But we owned something called about.com and it was worth a billion dollars. And then one night our revenues were down 60 % because Google did some panda thing and basically just crushed our traffic. So a decent test anyone should ask themselves is what percentage of our revenue and margin is dependent upon one of these platforms because they'll keep you in business just long enough until you get real margin and then they'll come for you.

33:27So anyways, I'm droning on here. I think it's situational, but I think these guys are basically in the business of just finding, except for the creators, they do some there, but I wouldn't want to be in a business focused ever on these platforms.

33:42Kara Swisher:On these platforms, but that's exactly where it's going. This is the first time I've thought about creating stuff. I just did this television show, but now I'm thinking, how would I do it not with any of the regular TV entities? What would be the way to make, say, if we decide to make a pivot television show, for example, what is a television show going forward? And that's something I'm thinking about a lot. Well, it would be on, yeah, you're right. It would be on YouTube with clips. But if you look at, why is podcasting drawing so much talent right now and growing so fast? It's not your looks, but go ahead.

34:17When we first started our - That was an easy one. So I'm very, that was a layup. So when we started this podcast almost eight, nine years ago, and I'm very transparent about economics. I think rich people not talking about their money is nothing but an effort to suppress the middle and the lower class. Rich people talk about their money all the fucking time. Start talking about money. Anyway, when I first started on Pivot, I got 15 % of the revenue. because the means of production, a company with capital and a studio, I used to go into that lame studio on Broad Street, and they knew how to do podcasts, and it was technology and union people.

34:52And so the means of production, whether it's MSNBC or CNN or podcasts back then, meant that the talent got 15%. You probably got more, you were the star. But now talent on podcasts gets 70 % because the means of production just doesn't have the power. That's effectively the arbitrage that's taking place across all media. is the means of production is being arbitraged and getting people out of the middle such that creators with great content and the end consumer can enjoy. Podcasts are 80 % of a television show for 5 % of the production cost. So there's opportunity for advertisers and creators.

35:29And the example I always use is Colbert, 60 million in revenue, 100 million in costs, a band, a theater, unions everywhere, makeup artists, five people on the guest booking team. made$60 million, was not economic. He's going to go to a podcast. He'll take six people and make it onto the podcast arc. He'll do$20 million his first year, and it'll cost$4 million to produce. So that's a pretty good deal for Stephen.

35:53Kara Swisher:Yeah, if that. Absolutely. All right, we're going to go on a quick break. We have one more thing to talk about when we're back.

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38:07Kara Swisher:Okay, Scott, we're back with more news. World Cup right now, as you said, there's going to be a lot of gambling and the markets are a worry. But what do you imagine the effect of World Cup will be going forward? What is your thoughts on where, what are the takeaways from doing that? because it really is, I think, the most important, as you said, economic story right now across the globe. I don't have any real insight other than what I said. I think the world and the West needed a reason to like each other again and recognize that Americans, distinct of our leadership, are an interesting, loving, kind people with really fattening but wonderful food.

38:51And that Europeans and all these nations have incredible cultures and they bring a little taste of that culture.

38:57Kara Swisher:Yeah. You're going to see the prices of teams go up. And even I go back to the wealth creation of these companies that just went public. That probably took the price of these companies going up because sex drives everything. And if you're a 45-year-old who, quite frankly, never got laid in high school, you're trying to figure out a way to become the sexist man in Cleveland. And the way you do that is by buying the Cleveland Browns. And so all of a sudden, there are a ton of people who want to own sports teams right now that have capital. So you just saw the price of every shitty football, cricket team, whatever, go up 20, 30%.

39:31SpaceX went up 20%. The price of most sports teams globally went up 30 or 40 because you're going to have midlife crisis money, which is irrational, chasing trophy assets.

39:41Kara Swisher:Very excellent. All right. Last thing, prediction, and then we'll get questions from the audience. My prediction is the following. The biggest tech IPO of this month in terms of first day pop is not SpaceX. It's actually a European tech media company that's pricing next week. This is a test. Any guesses? Bending Spoons. Bending Spoons is essentially the Berkshire Hathaway of beloved but forgotten internet brands. Evernote, Eventbrite, AOL, Vimeo, WeTransfer, Meetup. All of these companies that were supposed to be the next Airbnb or - They were all the unicorns of the Europe. All the unicorns, super fat.

40:27And then this company out of Italy comes and buys them, consolidates the backend, which is a polite way of saying cuts costs dramatically, increases their prices. A lot of these companies have very strong margin power and consumer loyalty. Q1 2025, 270 million, 120 million losses this quarter, 625 million, 28 million in profits. They're getting a ton of momentum. It's essentially -

40:57Kara Swisher:It's orphans brought together in one. It's orphaned internet companies with a lot of margin power that have been forgotten, and they're rolling it up. And this is a callback to the most profitable, disruptive company that used to own Cant. This is a callback to WPP that used to buy companies for seven times EBITDA, cut costs on the back end, reduce key man risk, so to speak, and then take it to the public markets at 12 times EBITDA. I think this is an incredible company. It's out of Italy, which is interesting, really good human capital. And there's about a thousand of these companies that never quite made it across the goal line.

41:34And the most fascinating thing about their numbers is 88 % of their revenue is recurring revenue. All of these companies are subscription. So basically this is SaaS meets Berkshire Hathaway. I like the fact that it's out of Italy. I like the fact that it's not AI.

41:51Kara Swisher:So it's just a simple cleanup. Two and a half billion, two and a half billion in revenues. It'll go out at seven to eight times revenues. I think this company will have the largest pop of any internet tech IPO of the month. That's pricing next week. It's a classic is what's happening here. Well, it's essentially, there's a value in these brands. They still have very loyal audiences. Yeah. And they also grew up in a time where capital was cheap. So quite frankly, there's a lot of fat to cut. And these guys are executing like crazy. And once they have a public stock, think about how big the list is of companies that were once hot and they're still good companies.

42:31Yeah. And they spent billions of dollars of venture capital aggregating audiences.

42:34Kara Swisher:Yeah, like Red Envelope, for example. Oh, sorry. Why are you so hostile to that? Jesus Christ. No, that was a good company. I sort of got that one. Yeah, thanks for that. It was. No, no, no. It was a good idea. You can have the kids every other weekend. No, but there are a lot of value in a lot of these companies. I'm teasing. Anyways, my prediction is the biggest IPO in terms of first day pop is going to be a European, the Berkshire Hathaway, I've forgotten, internet brands. And that's this company called Bending Spoons that I had not heard of until two weeks ago. I'm kind of fascinated with it.

43:05Kara Swisher:Anyway. All right. Questions from the audience. Where's the thing? Here we go. We're going to go around. Keep them tight so we can answer as many as possible. Hi. Kim McKenzie from Ladies to Strategize. So you guys often talk about Hawley Market. Do you think that it's going to be used as a legitimate polling data and predictions for the new U.S. election? And should it? Legitimate? How so? I mean, people are on it. So you can't really stop it. I think people pay it. It's one of these things during elections, US people go and stare at them for a minute and then they go away from them. I think it's being used more as opposed to going to all the, there was a bunch of others that people would go to, all the different polling accumulation sites.

43:46Kara Swisher:I think Scott's been very negative on polling. I think a lot of these prediction markets are easily gamed. And so I worry about their reality, but they often do reflect a sentiment, right? So I think it's just one of those other signals you have to get. But I definitely pay attention to them more than I should. And I know they're gamed in some fashion. I think they're also easily manipulated by a wealthy person, say, named Elon Musk, who has enormous amounts of funds that he's going to put towards the midterms to create all manner of confusion. And so that's the real danger in it. I'm not sure voters pay attention to it.

44:20Kara Swisher:Like, I just don't. I don't know if voters spend a lot of time. I think a lot of the pundit class certainly does. I use CalShea all the time for, and I find, I think polling firms that are non-qualitative are basically out of business. CalShea has never gotten an interest rate cut wrong. They have predicted every single Fed action 100%. I totally rely on the prediction market, specifically CalShea for, because there's something about pundits saying what they think is going to happen and then looking at where people actually put money. that if you really want to know how someone feels, see where they're spending their money.

44:57So I think they're, I think they are, and I'm fascinated by the data. I think they're incredibly accurate and on.

45:04Kara Swisher:But they have to self-govern themselves more because they're, because the government's coming up, you're seeing all these different arrests. And so if they don't self-govern sort of the gaming that goes on, I think it's going to be, they're going to sort of shoot themselves in the foot in that regard. Yeah. Because there's case after case of someone doing something funny. I hope you're right. That's the right thing. The internet is littered with companies that were supposedly going to be regulated. Yeah. That we're doing... I mean, we'll see. I hope there's regulation. But states tend to want to go after these companies.

45:34Kara Swisher:You've noticed a lot more action very quickly as opposed to bigger social media companies right away. With the amount of... Back in, the amount of money... We're going to find out in two weeks. The amount of money being wagered on these markets around the World Cup. Yeah, huge. Staggering. Staggering. Billions. It's going to be bigger. than what was gamed in Vegas during the same period. Yeah, I think more than$5 billion that had been traded on the World Cup outcomes across those two platforms, enormous. Next question. Hello. Hi. Hi. Great episode. Ted from the agency, advertising agency, Park and Battery.

46:07Quick question. I love your unvarnished opinion on this. Do you see a big next act from some of the CEOs that were pushed out? I'm thinking Adam from WeWork, Travis from Uber, and they've gone on to do their own thing. But given all the dynamics and excitement that we've been seeing and talking about today, do you see a big next act from them and similar former CEOs?

46:32Kara Swisher:I mean, they've tried. Like Adam's tried with that rental weird fucking thing. I don't know what that is. It's actually doing okay. It's doing okay. Yeah. I mean, they're fine. And Travis has done his ghost kitchen thing. And now he's doing - Robotics. Robotics. Something around robots. They're going to try. I think most of these people don't have a second act. They just sort of wander around and pontificate. That's been my experience. They had one great moment, often fueled by anger. And then they don't really, there's very few that have double acts that I've seen. I can't, can you think of one?

47:03Someone who like got sort of turned around and then came back.

47:07Kara Swisher:I think they get rich, happy. They surround themselves by enablers who violently agree with them at all times and saying you got you know you got screwed you know or caris wish it was mean to you like or something you were right the whole time and i think they just don't they're most of them don't learn from their mistakes and they don't and that's the way you develop the next thing to me but that's the good money is on no because a couple things happen one one out of seven companies works is so much has to go right for the company. Just probability that if you nailed it and so many moons lined up for your success, you're kind of due for them not to line up.

47:50It is really hard to repeat, really hard, because so many things have to line up. And the other thing is, the majority of great artists stop, can't, you know, they slip in the shower when they're 24 and they have a hit song, and then they hit 30 and it just all stops. Because you have kids, because your brain changes, because you start evaluating risk, all of a sudden you stop thinking crazy and you have the guidelines of societal norms. You're not working 18 hours a day because you're rich and you don't need this shit and you want to spend time with your kids. So the mojo and the creative genius that's fucking, I mean, who told Michael Jackson to grab his crotch with a glitter glove?

48:33I'm telling you, 40-year-old fathers don't think that way. it's just so you lose that creative craziness you lose some mojo and just statistically speaking to repeat i've started nine businesses i'm generously three four and two and all of them seemed like great ideas at the time and more of it than anything was just luck and timing and it's very hard to hit the lottery twice so the good money is usually on no yeah i think most of you who

49:04Kara Swisher:succeed or the like Zuckerberg continues to excel like or Cook whatever you think of the golden statue continued to excel the people that stay at the companies tend to like um uh Sachin Nadella like you've seen like that kind of thing I don't see a lot of new rebirth there's not many rolling stones out there I would say right here uh g'day the name's David I've got a question for you US related. There's a lot of news about redistricting, voting rights, voting machines, yada, yada, yada. Yeah, we've noticed that. Yeah, I've noticed. So what's your prediction of how that will impact the elections?

49:43I'm asking on behalf of the world.

49:45Kara Swisher:Well, I think a lot. You know, it's, I would agree. I have, I read a lot about it. I'm not an expert in this area. But from what I understand, the Republicans have vastly overreached in this area and it's not working and they may live to regret their efforts. I don't think people like it. I don't think voters like it. That said, they've done a lot of, like, we've created all these partisan, like, there's a chart of partisan, you know, purple areas and blue and red. And it's like, there used to be a lot of purple. Now there's not a lot of purple. They've managed to do it. And then, of course, the Democrats reacted correctly to try to mute it in California and everything else.

50:28Kara Swisher:But that's not the way you want to go, right? You want these districts. And so I think I believe in Scott. I don't know how Scott feels about that. I believe in voters. I think they ultimately push back. And I think the Republicans have started to see some real losses in some of these redistricted areas. And you're seeing a lot more. There was a story in the Washington Post this week about the enthusiasm of Democratic voters. Even if they're not enthusiastic about Democrats. They're turning out more. And Republicans are kind of, they are disgusted with Trump. You know, they really are. He's losing base after base after base.

51:01Kara Swisher:And so it's finally Kid Rock and that lean Greenwood guy. Like essentially, he can't get entertainers to go. He's losing Latinos. He's losing all vast young men for sure. He's losing all the stupid comics. So I don't know if it's going to work, but it's not a good thing. There's three things I think have hurt our country more than anything. One is gerrymandering. Two is Fox News. And the third is social media, if I had to pick the three things. Yeah, I would add Citizens United in there. Look, the vibes are really good right now for Democrats and for pushback on Trump. You know, he's, I think, the least, second least popular president at this point.

51:44Kara Swisher:No, he was the least. He was the least effective. Least? Yeah. So things look good. Gerrymandering and just taking a grid and placing it over America or de-gerrymandering is a great talking point. It won't happen for this election. The X factor is the following. This is what I think happened in the last couple months. I think Elon Musk called President Trump and said, if you lean on the SEC chair and the NASDAQ to include me in the NASDAQ 100 indices, which will create an incremental$10 to$30 billion in demand for my float, which will take my net worth up$20 to$40 billion, I'll spend$1 to$10 billion on the midterms.

52:23And there's nothing to stop them. So I think the X factor is Musk, because the reality is, as much as we like voters and Americans are smart and da-da-da, the elections are kind of won and lost in a 10 % in the middle. And those people are busy and have things to do and they're influenced by media and the good work you do. And if you increase your net worth by 100 or$200 billion because of SEC and NASDAQ anomalies that have never been granted to any other company and you have a direct line to the president who can make this shit happen, why wouldn't you say, hey boss, I'll spend$10 billion? dollars.

53:03$10 billion is going to win a lot. He influenced the last presidential election with $250 million. And this is the power. This is the problem. This is why throughout history, a known known is the following. Power corrupts and absolute power absolutely corrupts. And in a democratic society with network effects, money and technology create power on a level and a reach we've never seen before. So a combination of Citizens United, a very smart guy who understands technology and a willingness to spend one, five or$10 billion in the election. Look out below.

53:35Kara Swisher:The only thing is the quality of their candidates is really quite bad. And that's, that's a really, and some of the democratic candidates are very compelling, I think has a better bench. And there is an element to that. They've managed to pick really unattractive, horrible people. And in the Musk case, I do agree with him. He's got enormous amounts of power. The thing is a lot of reporters and others are onto him. And the more you expose him, the more people are repelled by him. And so there is an element to take advantage of there. The more he looks like he's manipulating the elections, the more people push back against it.

54:08Kara Swisher:He and Trump, the brand has gone down. I think he more than Trump than anything. Okay, last quick question. We're right here. I tend to get my news from Blue Sky, but following dispersed creators and media like Heather Cox Richardson. Who you just had on. Yes, she's amazing. And substacks and things like that. Is there enough reach there to actually make a dent and get in front of people? Or is that just kind of like a losing model? It's subscription-based and it'll probably go nowhere given it's a lot of collections of little voices. The answer is yes. I think, what is it, Blue Note? Blue Sky, I'm sorry.

54:52I think it's a cute and adorable and it's going to die a slow death. um i just don't think it's got i think it got some early traction this is just vibes i don't look at the day i haven't seen the data but a sub stack i think is a winner um and i do think that these platforms there's just too much creator content the most encouraging thing about creator content right now it's 50 of the ad spend on creators is in nano or micro creators and that is people doing little niche things and so trust from institutions is leaking to trust to people who go after varying the specific crowds out the narrow.

55:26I've been watching this dad who, Wally Cooks, talks about universal healthcare, and I just find it fascinating. So I think some of them will win. The one you brought up, Blue Sky, I'm not, I think it's a better brand than a business right now. But yeah, I think there's gonna be a ton of cool little niche platforms that will likely be swallowed up by the big players.

55:47Kara Swisher:I'll make the final comment on that. I think the increasing power of all these smaller things are really becoming very strong at this point in terms of not just, but numbers too, and people listening and everything else. And I do, but I do think we can't abandon certain central institutions like the New York Times or CNN or all these things. They have to be owned and run by people with responsibility towards actual journalism because you can go on and on about the Lincoln Memorial all you want. I mean, what was happening in the Reflecting Pool was just a flat out lie by President Trump, But it took the New York Times to actually go and find all the data and do the reporting.

56:26Kara Swisher:And so all that depends on a thriving journalistic community. So it would be really great if we could have owners of these real journalistic institutions that aren't incompetent. And you know who I'm talking about in this case. But we support those and at the same time push all these creators. I have helped a lot of people leave big journalistic institutions, but they're doing great work. And the thing is that it's very hard to do investigative work. It's very hard to do the really hard reporting without the support of institutions. And there are economic models, if we do it right, that will continue to protect that.

57:04And so I'm hoping there'll be a combination of big institutions that figure out their economics better, which they can, with owners that aren't incredibly idiotic, and then these smaller ones that are sort of spurring

57:19Kara Swisher:them to do so. And a collection of them, I think, is incredibly powerful. I think Scott and I have a lot of influence that we never thought we'd have. But it's beyond influence. It has to be informed influence and reported analysis. And so it's not just people doing takes, hot takes all over the place, because that doesn't tell you things. You need real reporters on the ground, understanding what's happening and bringing it back to people in a fair way. And so I think I do, I'm very pro on media right now. I think it's one of the most undervalued stocks. I think it's undervalued in a lot of ways.

57:52Kara Swisher:So I'm hoping that at some, I know there's this worries about these billionaires taking over and quashing them. Let them, as Mel Robbins likes to say, because we have lots of options and we have lots of choices. And I do think everybody is very open to new ways of getting information. So they can try their best, but they're not going to be able to quash really great reporting over a long period of time. I don't think that. And I believe in that. Okay. All right. Thank you guys so much. Okay, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. Read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Neiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Todd Wiseman.

58:32Ernie and Todd engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Bres, Miss Saveria, Laura Stark, Will Lee, and Jenna McGill. Nishakr Kerr, Vox Media, Executive Producer of Otto. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot from Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Go Team Scotland. It could happen. Yes. It could happen. Thank you, Cam. All right.

58:56Kara Swisher:Thank you.

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