Mark Zuckerberg on the future of Facebook, Creators, and Dead Internet Theory

25:17So, you know, whether you're, um, from our perspective, you have people connecting with their friends or family or in groups, um, that's going to create an opportunity where businesses are going to want to engage with people on the service that they're using. If you're a creator, I think it's similar. You know, we have channels and things like that where you can engage with, um, with your community. And then once you kind of have that connection, then whatever your business model is, whether it's sponsored content or if you're trying to upsell people to other channels that you monetize and sell subscriptions or you're trying to sell tickets to things or merch, whatever your products, whatever you're making, I think that that should work in messaging too.

25:59too. It'll be a little bit different. It'll take some kind of energy to figure out how to make that work. But fundamentally, I think the really challenging part of it is going to be around kind of building the very engaging experience. Yeah. I think messaging with friends is one thing. Messaging with AI and interacting with AI is another. And that's something that creators talk a lot about, specifically like AI creation. And you mentioned there that your job is to build things people like. I'm sure you have to build a lot of things. People like some things they don't like others. I remember we were at MetaConnect when you launched the AI avatars and it was, you know, Kendall Jenner or Mr.

26:35Beast as an AI avatar. What did you learn about people's willingness to communicate, interact with AI with the lens that I think creators are sometimes concerned and or skeptical, right? Because we're looking for the real human interaction with our content. So we're always curious, what have you learned about how audiences are willing to interact with AI?

27:07That's interesting. So that was a precursor to this product that we built that we call AI Studio, which is basically the ability for anyone to craft an AI experience themselves that both they can use if they want to use it privately, or they're going to be able to share it and make it kind of an experience that other people can use. And I'd say, you know, all these things are still pretty early. And I think it's, you know, there's like tens of millions of people using it. So it's a fraction of what it will be in the future. But one of my core beliefs on AI is that I don't think that there's going to be like one single AI that everyone wants to use.

27:45I think that there's going to be more diversity and interestingness of the content. Um, and this is sort of a different belief that I have than that. I think every other, um, major company in the space has, right. It's like, like open AI is building chat GPT and Google is use is building their thing. And, you know, just the different labs kind of have their main assistant and we're building meta AI too. And a lot of people use it. It's like, okay, there's 700 million people and growing quickly or use meta AI. But my basic view is that there are going to be a lot of different things. It's not just going to be meta AI.

28:20like i think every small business is going to want to have their own ai agent um that can help out with customer support and sales for people who use um who want to interact with them so that's hundreds of millions of agents i think a lot of creators are going to want agents um almost as sort of like a piece of performance art but a way to also engage with your community right because a lot of creators you know what we hear is like um you know especially if you're a bigger creator or a lot of people reach out to you and you want to engage with them, but you're limited by the amount of hours in the day and they want to have some engagement with you, but they'd obviously rather engage with you or your content directly.

29:00But if you craft an experience through some kind of creator AI, then that could end up being like a pretty compelling thing that's maybe not quite as cool as talking to you directly, but better than just sending a message to your inbox and getting nothing. something that there's that. And then I think that there's just gonna be a whole lot of interesting content. Like today, you know, a lot of what the feed experience is, is you're like, you know, some people create a reel or different kinds of content and you share it. And I actually think in the future, there are going to be all these like one-time use AI experiences where people just kind of, just like you put all this time into making, you know, whether it's a podcast or a reel that might be an experience that a lot of people have for, maybe they spend a few minutes with it.

29:52Like I think that there will be a whole category around AI like that, where people will basically spend hours crafting kind of funny or quirky or different kinds of AI experiences that are interesting in different ways, and then they'll share them out. And I think that there's just like, we're really just early days in this, but there's going to be a lot of interesting content around this. But I would guess that in a few years, this will be like another content type, just like video and photos. Like people just create AIs that people use as content that are fun. Are you familiar, Mark, with the dead internet theory?

30:29Yeah. So for those who are unfamiliar, basically there's a growing theory that like, you know, AI agents, automated agents, bots make up a large portion of internet traffic. and that there's a reduction in how much we're engaging with human-generated content. Do you feel like there's truth to that? And in this world of increasing AI content and AI agents, does that get more and more true? Well, I think it goes back to one of the things we talked about earlier, where a lot of the more intimate and authentic connections are moving to messaging. So if you look at like the kind of public content that you would see on, you know, if you're searching for Google, for example, on Google, then yeah, I mean, I think that like the quality of Google search results for a lot of things probably has gone down.

31:24I don't know if that's primarily or all because of AI. I think a lot of it is also that a lot of interesting content is moving to private services that aren't necessarily indexed in Google, but I think that that's a thing and a lot of stuff is like behind paywalls now so it's like you can't just search for it and get it um but to me and I would guess that this is probably you know resonates with with most of the people watching this I think most of your interesting online experiences with friends at this point are in messaging and group chats right and it's like to me that's where both like group chats and one-on-one obviously but um you know that's where i get kind of the funniest content the most insightful stuff um you know a lot of the stuff that it gets post onto um onto social feeds is sort of workshopped and and like you know even if it's not formally workshopped it's like people first are talking about it and like you know coming in like honing ideas um through debates and things like that in group chats.

32:26And I think that that's just, to me, that's like the core of internet culture today. So that's very much alive. And I think that, you know, I mean, obviously I think people are going to talk to AIs a bunch there too, but I would guess that that volume will still remain primarily, you know, a lot of people. Yeah, I think I'm so fascinated to see how that plays out. I wanted to go back to something you were talking about in the beginning around bringing more creators to Facebook. Yeah. And I just wanted to say, like, for me, I think right now, especially in the context of video, right? Like, we create video.

33:06We make long form podcasts. We also make some behind the scenes content. I think for me, I can close my eyes and imagine what a YouTube video looks like, what a TikTok video looks like, what a reel looks like. But it's harder for me to imagine what a Facebook video looks like. And so I think that would be like, you know, at least something in my eyes of in this next chapter is kind of defining what the right Facebook creator looks like or what the right Facebook video looks like. Does that make sense? So do you think that, yeah, do you think that that's something that we need to do? I think, I mean, because I don't know that the other services defined that i think it's almost the creators yeah i guess i actually think in my opinion like a facebook video uh at least as far as i can tell is a video that is probably shorter it's incredibly visual right from the start and it can be consumed without language i think for us as long-form podcasters we just haven't seen as much success with long-form video uh and don't know that many creators that are making a long-form video i think that would be the push is to show creators like who is the model citizen, who is succeeding with really long form video on Facebook.

34:14Yeah. Well, I mean, my point before was just that there's sort of a vacuum here because there are a lot of people who want content. And I think it's somewhat underserved today. It's like they're spending a lot of time on Facebook, right? There are billions of people. And a lot of the content that they're seeing is stuff that has been shared primarily on, you know, whether it's Instagram or TikTok or YouTube or other places, and then reshared to Facebook. So it's, it's good content that that that's there. But I think that there just is an opportunity, a very big one for creators who want to make investing in Facebook as their primary home.

34:46Um, like, and, and want to basically explore what, what is the native content that works well, that is different from that. I mean, I, the thing that I really agree with and what you just said is it's going to be somewhat different from, from, um, these others. And yeah, like, so a Facebook primary creator will create content that fits really well there. And then they'll reshare it to the other places, just like people reshare stuff today. But yeah, I just think that there's a huge opportunity here. I think if we're going to be talking about what the future of Facebook video could look like, the world of creators, we have to add in another perspective.

35:17And I think there's no one better than adding in our friend, Jimmy Donaldson, Mr. Beast. Oh, there he is. Welcome to the show. What's up, man? How's it going? How you doing, man? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. We're kicking around right now talking about ideas for Facebook video. I felt like we couldn't have this conversation without you. Also, because you posted on threads on July 5th, 2023, you said, like this, if Zuck should make me CEO. So it feels like we're in a good moment right now. We're here. We're all together. What would you do if you were CEO of Meta? Well, before we jump into that, fun fact.

35:56when I talked to Mark one time, it was over like a random Zoom. This was years ago. And he was, it's just a funny story people might enjoy. He invited me to his lake to like train and do MMA. And I was like, what the fuck? This is before he made that like public and people even knew he wrestled. I was like, what is, really? I was like so shocked because I was expecting him to be way more nerdy. And I remember just being so confused because he wasn't public with all this stuff back then. I was like, people were like, how'd the conversation go and i was like well honestly he just kept talking about like mma and wrestling and that kind of stuff and i was like it was just not what i was expecting so what you don't you don't you don't ask people to fight you the first time you know i wrestle everybody i meet for the first time i mean it's my my joke if i ever had a podcast it would be hard conversations where it's like first you fight and then you have a conversation ludwig did this thing where it's like chess boxing so you you play chess and then in between your moves you box like some version of that like coding and mma man that's good yeah i mean yeah mark anyway it's back to your question uh what would i do if i was ceo yeah that was the question basically that's the question um i mean one thing i i think really sucks is like uh on youtube you can do different audio tracks so 70 of my audience on youtube they don't speak english so i upload videos and then you just upload a bunch of different files and so if you click on my video in Mexico at autoplays in Spanish.

37:28And we get like 20 million views of video in Spanish. We get 10 million views of video in Portuguese, et cetera, all around the world. And what's brutal is when I post those same videos on Facebook or any of your platforms, I can't import the dubs over. So my viewership is always just infinitely lower because people from Mexico and people from Brazil and things like that, they can't watch it with dubs. So I mean, I know the teams are working on that kind of stuff. But if I was CEO, that's one of the first things I would fast track because it's such a, Like, obviously, everything you do, you know, revolves around the creators and people who use the platform and you want to help them get more views and more engagement and stuff like that.

38:04And it's pretty crippling. Like once it clicks in your head and you're like, whoa, only like 15, 20 percent of the world, you know, or whatever the number is consumes content in English. And if you're not double, you literally can't reach, you know, majority of the world. It's like brutal. It feels almost barbaric to use a platform where you have to like pick a language. You know what I mean? Yeah, no, that's definitely a good one. And I think this is a good example of where AI is going to be very helpful, too, for auto-dubbing into basically every language. But yeah, I mean, I think that there – historically, I do think that there have been a number of tools like this that we've needed to add.

38:39And our team is, especially on the Facebook side now, is really prioritizing building out all the tools that creators need to make Facebook their primary home. Yeah, the auto-dubbing, I think, will be it. We actually, in one of our 16 languages, we swapped out the voice actors and started doing AI dubbing. And the retention is actually 1 % higher in that language. Because when you do AI dubs, you can use my voice. Instead of it sounding like a voice actor, it's me speaking. So even though it's marginally worse, because it sounds like me, people are watching a little longer. And it's getting so much better every month that I wouldn't be surprised if, ideally in a year, I just post a video on Facebook, check a box.

39:17And then it's like you said, just AI dubs it in 20 languages. That would be ideal. what's yeah what's move two jim if that's move one uh oh um well i mean i'm just gonna go down the list of things i complain about a lot uh i think in general something i think every platform it's like another thing that feels archaic is when i'm on amazon i just one tap buy i just like you know tap and it just shows up on my doorstep but when i see ads on other platforms so many times like even on youtube like if i hold up a product in a youtube video like go buy this pin And it's like, you would think you could just tap on the pin and then just go same address as normal.

39:53And you just say yes. And, you know, and same thing on Facebook. I always, especially because you guys have our cards saved and things like that. So I always wondered why it was, it's not more frictionless just to buy stuff, you know, because all the time I see things, I'm like, oh, I'd buy that. But I'm kind of lazy on content. I know Instagram shop and things like that. It's a lot less frictionless, but I make videos. So particularly on videos, I'm like dying for some platform just to figure out where if I just say, hey, buy this, it should just be super frictionless without even leaving the video so it doesn't kill retention.

40:22Just tap and then just a notification in my head should pop up and just go, same address, you just hit yes, and then it just, that's it, and then the video just keeps playing. You know what I mean? Conversions would be so much higher and people would enjoy it so much more, so that's another thing. I don't know. I don't even know if that's realistic, but... I mean, I think we're always trying to make it easier to do that stuff. most people probably want to consider purchases slightly more than just doing it right in line but um but jimmy would prefer if it was just yeah right away yeah i know well it's like brutal too and again i don't even know if this is what people want just from my perspective i hate what people have to like leave the video it makes sense i do think that better better kind of understanding within content of you know segmentation of what the different things are so you can engage with the different things.

41:12I mean, this is all stuff that's kind of coming. It's not long-term research. It's just stuff that needs to get built into products. I mean, I'm curious, how, how is your, uh, short form video monetization on Facebook going? It's actually pretty good. Uh, weirdly, it's like over two times higher than every other platform. So I don't know what you guys are doing, but, uh, that's the arbitrage I was talking about. I actually think, I think that there's a thing here that that that's not that abnormal of a result. I mean, our monetization on Facebook is quite good. I mean, our ad system is quite good at basically being able to recommend content to people and be able to.

41:51And like you said, I mean, a lot of people are buying things on the platform so we can make it frictionless. You have the credit cards on file. Yeah. Historically, I think, you know, in some ways, the monetization tools have been more mature than even a lot of the creator tools on the Facebook side, at least because we focused early on, on, on friends. But as the creator tools kind of get better and better, or if you're an experienced creator who just knows how to do this stuff, then like there just is this big arbitrage opportunity of being able to come reach the billions of people who are on Facebook and monetize generally better than almost all other social platforms out there.

42:27Yes. And hopefully within a year have dubs and you can reach even more people i think that's i i think your um your request of getting that within a year is very reasonable like i'll like i just want to harp on this because i'm telling you it will change everything i agree i agree all my most viewed my most viewed reels on your platforms my most viewed just short form of your platform are ones where i don't speak like when i try to go viral uh on instagram or facebook with short form content i literally uh like here i i don't know if you saw this one but uh and also if i'm going too hard you just cut it out but i'm with you on this we actually launched the the uh look at this so this is my this is my most viewed video it's just me running with progressively more and more money and there's a reason why i don't say any words so like it's i'm running with 40 grand and then 50 and i just go until i literally can't move anymore it's pretty funny uh and i'd love to be able to talk in this but the problem is if i say a word Boom.

43:25Like the viewership's going to get cut by more than half because, you know, then it's like only going to recommend it to people who speak English. Yeah, no, that's super interesting. I mean, because it's, you know, obviously most of the people on our services don't speak English, right? I mean, if you have three billion people, there's, you know, it's like maybe half a billion people or so. You know, it's, you know, maybe a bit more than that. And then of the people who do speak English, how many is it their first language where they actually want to consume content? Yeah, totally. Totally. But it sounds like from what you're saying, I think the opportunity for the AI dubbing may be even bigger than what I thought, because I kind of viewed it as just, OK, create content in whatever language you want to start and then you'll get it in all the other languages.

44:05But I hadn't even considered what you just said, which is that it's not just about kind of taking the content that exists and spreading it to other languages. People aren't even creating content in some cases because language is going to be a barrier. um so yeah and i i think that you're you're absolutely right on that so it's not just taking the current inventory and making it like much more kind of efficient in terms of how it's shown to the right people but there's gonna be all these things that don't even exist today that should so yeah i think i think within a year we'll we'll have that it'll be exciting yeah because we we had a big resurgence on our content globally even if we add it to older videos just because you know a lot of american content here is very high budget and stuff like that and people in lower RPMs in other parts of the world.

44:49They don't have that kind of stuff. So when you finally get the dubs, people in other parts of the world are like, what the fuck? Someone spent a million dollars on a video. They're used to seeing videos where creators spend$500 because people make way less, obviously, in other parts of the world. And so it's like a whole resurgence. But anyways, I won't harp on it. I got my two cents out there. I've probably hounded 30 people on your team about this. I call them all the time and I'm like, hey, let's get some dubs going. I love it. They'll find it. We're on this. We're on this. Yeah. I think we probably have to offer Mark the opportunity to to go, Mark, what would you do if you were CEO of Beast Industries?

45:24Oh, God. I don't know. He's like, delete the YouTube channel. Come over to Meta full time. I don't know. How's the D's nuts business going? Yeah. The chocolate stuff. It's going really well, actually. We are, as far as I know, we're the largest ethically sourced chocolate company in America and just, you know, selling chocolate, getting kids out of child labor. Yeah. I don't know, man. You're pretty creative.

45:58Would you run with larger bags of money? Let me ask a question, actually, Jim. How many views does that video have of you running with large bags of money? uh on on instagram i think has 250 on youtube probably three four hundred on tiktok another probably 200 wow that one did really well but that's that's the the thing is when i don't speak like i can get it to go super viral on these other platforms um but it's hard because it doesn't really build much depth so it's like obviously i want to talk and i want people to fall in love with me but you know um then i just like you don't you have no idea how big of a problem this is for me.

46:33Like, it's like crazy because it's also it's not just you guys. It's also the same thing on TikTok and other platforms as well. So like a lot of people know what I look like, but don't know what I sound like because I don't talk on these other platforms, which is like kind of weird. The monetization piece is really interesting because we also have friends who post not only short form content, but long form content on Facebook. And, you know, we have friends who at least tell me that their number one monetization platform for long form video is Facebook. You post long form as well, right, Jimmy?

47:05Yeah, yeah. I don't even know if you know this, Mark, but we gained more followers than anyone last year on Facebook. So that's a little fun fact. I don't know if you get little summaries on that. Yeah, no, I mean, you're doing great on all the platforms. Yeah. It turns out you know what you're doing. You know, it's good. Yeah. I think if you got into MMA content, it would be even better. Oh, yeah. You would watch it? I already watched some of your stuff, but, um, but yeah. Yeah. We'll, we'll do a video of me versus Zuck MMA, but his arms are tied behind his back and he's not allowed to kick me because that sounds like it would hurt like hell.

47:46I don't know, Jim, I think you should just go for it. Yeah. You gotta just go for it. Just go even. So I guess, I guess last question for you, Jimmy, just as we, uh, paint, paint the picture of like, you know, a lot of what we're talking about is the opportunity on Facebook to post content, as Mark described it as like an arbitrage of opportunity right now. Like what does the future of Facebook video look like to you outside of the lens of dubbing? Well, I mean, obviously it has, I believe, the most users out of any platform. So it's just the place to reach people like crazy. And I think more people just need to you know, make original content.

48:26And there's just, there's so many different platforms. It's so, so easy just to make content and repost it everywhere else, but just like taking it more serious because like we've been going pretty hard on it. Like I said, we gave more followers than anyone else last year. And, you know, a lot of it was just like actually taking it serious and being like, damn, this is like a place where you can reach hundreds of millions of people, you know? Cool. Last question for both of you. You know, it feels like every era of human history is, is defined by how information travels, right? Like, like there's an era that we can talk about around the printing press.

48:57There's this era that's, you know, defined by the radio and movies and television. And I think as I think more about this era, Mark, you're kind of like the, the originator of this era of the era of like us being able to communicate information through, through the internet. And I'm just curious if we look in the future, like what, what do we believe is the next era of how humans communicate with each other. Like if we're having this conversation in five, 10 years, how have things evolved?

49:29Jimmy, you want to go first? Well, I assume he's going to say we're all going to be using meta glasses and talking virtually, right? Just pop in the same room with each other. I mean, I think that's part of it. I mean, because I do think that one part of the last 20 years that's still pretty interesting, right? It's like we got this whole portal to be able to communicate with people online, right? And kind of mapped the real world to online. And that was a lot of what early Facebook was, was like, you weren't just like some random person online, you're yourself, your real identity. And that was the first social community that really did that, that was very powerful.

50:08And now that's an idea across most of the social platforms that exist. But one thing that's still kind of interesting, So we're 20 years later. And when we want to access the internet, you know, we basically have the physical world all around us. And then you just have this like tiny little rectangle that you use to, um, to access like all the digital content that's out there. So, I mean, to me, the thing that's going to be interesting about glasses is it's not just that, yeah, you're going to be able to feel like you're there with someone, even no matter where you actually are physically. It's the kind of complete merge between the physical and virtual worlds, right?

50:51The idea that the digital content that's going to be created isn't going to be confined to only being consumed through this six-inch phone rectangle that you have. It'll be that you can kind of have holograms and content all around you. And that's going to open up completely new opportunities for content creation that historically we probably would have thought of as software development, like an app. I mean, maybe you have a hologram or you have some object or you're creating some game or something. Maybe like a TV that's on your wall in the future. It doesn't need to be a physical thing anymore.

51:26It'll be a hologram, but it can display any content. And maybe in the past that would have been, okay, like a software engineer or someone like that building it. But I think with all the AI tools, it's not going to take a software engineer to build it. It'll be more like a content creator who's basically using AI tools in order to create all this digital content that will basically just be able to populate and we'll be able to bring around with us all wherever we go in the world. So I think that that's going to be pretty compelling because today, even as important as the Internet is in our lives, it's still just quite odd to me that you access it through this very small portal and it's just not fully integrated with us physically.

52:07And that's definitely going to change. How many years do we live in that life? When I'm walking home, I don't have a TV on my wall because your glasses are so good. It just like puts it there and all these things digitally. Well, that's an interesting question. I think we're going to have glasses and we have the Orion glasses as sort of the prototype now. We're aiming to have the first consumer product version of that within the next few years. and that includes making it at a price point that would be what people would pay for a computer. I'll pay whatever. Can I just get a pair? If you haven't played with it, you should definitely come to our office and I'll show it to you.

52:50But one of the issues with it for the first version was we didn't want to sell something that was many, many thousands of dollars. We wanted to wait until we can get it down to about the cost of a computer or a high-end phone. And, um, and then sell it once it could be accessible to more people, but that's coming in the next few years. Um, to your question, when are you going to not have a TV on your wall? Um, that's an interesting question because, you know, typically new platforms haven't fully made it. So old ones disappear. Right. So, you know, when we got phones, we didn't completely stop using computers.

53:32It's just that the phone became primary. Right. So now it's like I find all the time I'm sitting at a desk, I have a computer in front of me, yet I want to send someone a message. I like pull out my phone to do it. I don't like type them the message on my computer, even though I have WhatsApp there too. I'll just do it on my phone. I think in the future we're going to keep on having our phones with us, but we're going to just do more and more stuff with our glasses and our phones will just kind of stay in our pockets. So maybe over time, fewer people will have TV or maybe you just won't watch your TV as much because you'll just kind of like snap your fingers and bring up a screen wherever you are, wherever you want to watch big content.

54:12But there are a bunch of – I think physical stuff is going to continue being valuable for a while. And obviously in this world too, a lot of the point, we're talking about content, but a lot of what I get excited about this, like you were saying, is about the connecting with people thing. I mean, bring it back to where we are today and it's like, all right, we're launching the Friends tab on Facebook. We've always been about connecting with people as kind of our primary thing. And I think in the future, this is going to enable like, there is something that's just very special about this feeling of presence.

54:45Like you're there with another person, you can make eye contact with them. you feel like it's a very different kind of experience than you're sending someone a message or even you're doing video chat. It's like the feeling of being with a person is pretty magical. And that's just something that no product has been able to deliver so far before AR and VR. So yeah, I'm very excited about this. But yeah, no, next few years. I think it's going to be, yeah. More importantly, is it going to have an annoying little battery with the cable I got to plug it into it that I got to keep on my hip? Well, I think the glasses.

55:18yeah no cable um i mean and the glasses i think are gonna have to um i mean so they'll they'll have a battery they'll they'll use compute from your phone they'll have external compute if you want to grab more i mean the orion prototype has has that um no it's uh yeah it's gonna be it's gonna be i think we need to get jimmy up for a orion demo because colin and i did that and i would say that that was a pretty uh pretty amazing and pretty like holy shit experience yeah that's a good one you got to come out but in the meantime i think i've got to run guys i got to go build ai dubbing and he's got an ai dub so he can then wrestle someone tonight and snap their fingers or something oh all right okay well it was fun mark thanks so much and jimmy thanks for joining us um this was awesome no problem thanks guys yeah yeah see you guys later man take care boys yeah awesome uh do do i have to hit stop recording before i leave uh We'll stop the recording, but thank you guys so much.

56:16Yeah, thank you guys. You can just exit out. That's funny. I only remember asking you about MMA at the end. I didn't want to, I wasn't going to bring this up live, but you were telling, you were talking about how you felt like your videos would do better if you were in better shape. And you were talking about how you were getting into better shape. And I suggested that MMA would be a good way to get in shape. I don't want to call you out on this, but like. No, you should have brought that up. That would have been funny. I mean, even then I was just so caught off guard because you're, I could just tell you're very passionate because obviously as an entrepreneur, I'm like, oh, he's probably like a nerd that just talks about business all the time.

56:54Like, um, and I was just like, so cause this, you weren't public about any of it. I got it right on the cusp and I was like, wow, he's like how he is towards this is what I, I was just expecting him to be like that and only talk about money and things like that. So you're just like way more rounded than I thought you were. I was just trying to help you get in shape, Jimmy. you make it seem like i'm some kind of barbarian it's like like

57:20i mean it's good for you who tries to fight people they've just met and the other thing too you're like didn't you you you fly your helicopter right yeah no that's that was the other thing that i was like yeah damn he's gonna that just seems like you know a disaster waiting to happen i'm surprised they let you do that Well, they didn't for a while. The security team convinced me for me to let them drive me around for 10 years. And then finally, I just rebelled and was like, you know what? Not only am I going to drive myself, but I'm going to fly a helicopter. I think your insurance policy went through the roof after that.

58:00I don't know. I do think we had to disclose in some SEC filing that I have extreme hobbies or something like that. I don't, there's some filing out there, but it's so funny. All right. Good seeing you guys. All right, Likewise. Take care. See you guys. All right, man. Initial reactions. Can't believe he's only watched the social network. That was crazy. Such a good movie. That, that was surprising to learn about that. He's only seen the movie once. Cause like that, that movie was so influential in, I feel like in our relationship to work, like what, what work looked like for a young man. I mean, I'll never forget, you know, Justin Timberlake or Sean Parker saying, you know what's cool?

58:43A billion dollars. Or drop the the. Like there's so many just unbelievable moments for that movie that I feel like dictated how I thought about what I was doing in my life. I thought the conversation around cultural relevance was interesting because there's a big difference between using an app to DM someone and message and something that actually has cultural relevance. Sure. And his answer to maybe why Facebook lacked some of that cultural relevance or fell off a bit is because he said creators don't consider it their primary home. Right. Which I thought was interesting for him to acknowledge and say, yes, there may be a lot of creators on Facebook, but across the board right now, they are the most influential and maybe they don't consider it their primary home.

59:25I don't think we have a strong grasp on what it means to be a user of Facebook right now. I totally get it. I just think it can mean so many things. Like I use Facebook right now primarily for marketplace. Right. Yeah. And that is not, that has nothing to do with myself being a creator or consuming other creators. The first question is like, I think the first thing is we have to all become users of Facebook, right? In a more regular fashion. And then we can, I don't think so actually. I think like, I think a lot of us are already users of, I won't say Facebook, but meta, right? With Instagram and DMs.

1:00:02Yeah. I think the way to get creators to Facebook, and we started to talk about this a little bit, has to do with length of video that you can consume. Because I think short form content does not necessarily lend itself to deep connection, deep fandom affinity for a creator. That's what long form content does. And what we were saying and what Jimmy was talking about with dubbing was like, people don't even know what I sound like. the only thing that works is a short video that's incredibly visual but i think if people are going to uh really lean into facebook you need to be able to watch long form video and connect deeper and right now you can't really do that does that suggest though that like facebook has to own the the tv as well in a similar way that youtube does or at least participate in in connected tv or yeah 100 because i think that's that's how people are consuming long form right Right.

1:00:59Yeah. So that then brings back up the question of like Facebook, you know, tried that with original shows at one point with Facebook Watch. I think every platform moved on from the concept of original shows and wants to just allow creators to make the content. But, you know, I do think that if the world of depth is moving into like long form video content, then the medium right now is connected TV, which is so interesting. Or podcast audio platforms. Because when he's talking about creators gaining trust and having influence, he's talking about long-form podcasters. He's talking about Joe Rogan, Theo Vaughn, and those are not experiences you consume on Facebook.

1:01:46Yeah. And I mean, look, just again, to zoom out, Mark came on our show to talk about So that is the thing that we're talking about is this world of long-form conversation. So maybe that's a world they step into. But yeah, I think they do have to dictate what type of creator. When he asked us the question, is that the platform's responsibility to tell creators what type of video to upload? Not exactly, but it is the platform's responsibility to highlight what type of video they want on the platform. Do you agree with that? Yeah, I think how they build the product dictates the content that succeeds.

1:02:26Sure. Right? So it's almost like whether they want the responsibility or not, it's there.

1:02:34So for them to, like, even not making a choice is a choice, right? For them to have a platform that prioritizes short form, highly visual language, agnostic video, that's a choice and it's going to lend itself to certain creators who succeed. Yeah, I guess right now. So changing the product would change the type of creator who would succeed. Right. If they announced, hey, we have essentially a place for you to upload your video podcast and that place will also push it out to other RSS feeds. Then you go, oh, okay, I guess it's a podcasting platform. I guess it's where I can do that. So yeah, I do think that that's interesting that like whatever product they build would dictate which creators it attracts.

1:03:13And right now, the short form vertical video is the major product that they have that creators go to. Yeah, it is interesting that like long form content is basically just YouTube now. Like it's YouTube and everyone else is in another place. But YouTube has this history of the partner program and compensating creators via ads that other platforms don't have till the same degree. but I wonder I don't know I wonder if like Facebook had a more built-out TV app yeah if you could actually you know transport some audience there I do think just zooming out and going like like his his idea for connecting like a local directory of students in his own community that really like pulling on that thread really created where we are today which is which is an interesting thought of like, if you go back to what he kind of alluded to, like, hey, maybe phase two is building college directories and actually a more personally curated internet to your local surroundings.

1:04:21Where do we net out, you know, if we come back to that and like the younger generation gets that experience again of, oh, whoa, the internet used to be actually pretty localized because the current, you know, group of like, you know, 20 year olds or college students, like their experience with the internet is you produce something for a lot of people. You don't necessarily like produce something for your friends unless it's in the context of a message. So I think you do it though, if it feel, or you did it at least if it felt private or if it felt exclusive. Yeah. Like when we were on OG Facebook, it felt private.

1:04:56It felt like adults didn't actually know what we were posting, the photos that were going out. And it felt like an exclusive opportunity. Okay. Our school now has access. That's true. And I wonder, how do you recreate that for younger generations where they feel like their experience is exclusive and unique again? That's a really good point. Because I think back to the photos I was willing to post at that time on Facebook, it's pretty wild. That was under the assumption that no one was going to find them. Which is probably why Snapchat took off. Right. Right? Here's photos that will disappear.

1:05:32Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. Well, I mean, look, that was such a unique opportunity to sit and talk to someone like that who was such a major figure in building the infrastructure for the way our career works and also the way that the world is connected today. I would say it felt very intentional that he wore that shirt. Clearly, it was intentional. Clearly, that was very intentional. I think it's very interesting that he's pushing on this nostalgia play. Very interesting to see if he aggressively goes, hey, you know, I can also empathize with him a little bit and I don't want to put, suggest that I'm like Mark in any way, but I can empathize with the fact that he made a brand and like Facebook was his brand that really first took off.

1:06:21And I'm sure he's kind of like, whoa, Facebook's not a part of this conversation anymore. Like that's my brand. I want that to be a part of the conversation. Totally. All right. Well, that was an awesome episode. That was an awesome experience. Thanks, everyone, for listening. Thanks so much to Jimmy for joining us on that episode. That was crazy. And we'll see you next week.