Our bizarre call with Elon Musk (one year later)

0:00The Colin and Samir Show is supported by Microsoft Copilot. This is something I thought I would never say, but can I share with you my favorite prompt? I mean, like when you say something like that, I have to say yes. Were you going to say no? No, but okay. Just let me hear it. So when I'm researching for a guest or I need to know a lot about a subject matter, I say, make me a podcast about. And when you do that, you're going to get a short blurb about that subject. And then in like two minutes, you're going to get a podcast. So check this out. Welcome to Co-Pilot Podcasts. Picture this, a guy working the front desk at a hotel, making lacrosse videos in his spare time, completely unaware that he's about to become one of the most influential voices in the creator economy.

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1:10Try it for your research. Try it for getting variations of your titles, your ideas. It's one of my favorite tools on the internet right now for our creativity. And now back to the show. So just about a year ago, we were on an impromptu Zoom call with Elon Musk. I know. It was crazy, and we'll talk about it. But he had just bought Twitter, and he was looking for advice on how he could make the platform better for creators. Now, a lot has happened since then. Don't advertise. You don't want them to advertise? No. And as you probably know, the conversation is really heating up right now because Mr.

1:45Beast finally posted a video on X and shared how much money he made from it. Today on The Colin and Samira Show, we're going to tell you what we talked about on that call and share our thoughts for what really matters when it comes to posting videos on Twitter. X. X? X. I can't call it X, Con.

2:05So it was the end of December in 2022. We had just like, you know, broke. Meaning like you went home. We were on break. Mentally. No. Our company was on break. Yeah. You're in California. Yeah. I'm in New Jersey. And on one day notice, we get asked by people at Twitter if we want to join a call the next day with a bunch of YouTube creators and Elon Musk? And yeah, the answer was like, of course, like this is super interesting. It's exciting. There was a lot of promise at that time shortly after Elon had bought Twitter that maybe this could be the next big creator economy platform. And because we were being asked to be on this call that we could have input into how could this become a good platform for creators?

2:50So that day comes, I have a question for you. Yeah. When Elon gets on the call, It was amazing. It just went silent. Yeah, it went silent. Was anyone else in the room with you? No. Okay. I got to be honest. I forgot we had the call. Yeah, I remember that. You texted me right before. Well, I texted you. You weren't on the call. I was like, Colin, you need to get on this call, dude. So I quickly get my stuff together. I go into another room. Yeah. I hop on the call. Elon joins the call. And then I quickly put it on mute, go into the next room and show everyone. I'm like, Elon. Because they had no idea everyone I was with.

3:25Had no idea. Because you had no idea. Because I had no idea that in five minutes I was going to be on a call with Elon Musk. Right. So that was my headspace. Yeah. So the whole call went silent because it is like, you know, that's, it's a pretty unique experience to have a Zoom call with Elon Musk, obviously. But interestingly enough, you know, like when he first hopped on, like he wanted to get caught up in the conversation, but largely he was interested in the difference between YouTube and Twitter. Like how does YouTube treat its creators? is because I think if you zoom out, like YouTube is obviously the leader in creator platform relationships.

4:00And so the beginning of the conversation was largely, you know, Elon asking questions about like, how does YouTube work? Why are you guys all so into YouTube? Yeah, and you started off the conversation by talking about how there is a clear exchange of value on YouTube between creators and the platform. and there's a lot of data transparency. We know what does well and how we will get paid. That's one of the most important things for every platform to recognize. And I think maybe creators know it or don't know it, but when we're on YouTube, we understand how we fit into the ecosystem of YouTube.

4:37And I actually think understanding the ecosystem of the platform, how the platform makes money, even in the most simple ways, there's obviously a lot we don't know, but in the most simple ways, what we understand is we upload videos to YouTube. YouTube sells advertising on our videos and they share some of that ad revenue with us. Like that just clean cut understanding creates an incentive for us to operate the way we operate. And it's a business partnership. We know that we get 55%. Yeah. And they get 45%. And we have a lot of very sophisticated analytics about how that 55 % is broken down, like where the money comes from on the platform.

5:17And also again, how we become more valuable to the platform. Can we drive more watch time? Because more watch time means we have higher fill rates, meaning more ads on our videos. And that's positive for the entire ecosystem, us and you and the audience, right? So as a whole, we deeply understand the exchange of value between us and YouTube. So that was the first part of the conversation. And we said that also to emphasize how not clear it was at the time on Twitter. Now, I do want to acknowledge, Like, uh, speaking to someone like him was, was one of the more unique experiences of, of my life.

5:54Like, um, he, he was incredibly attentive and like really deeply listened and also very blunt. And I find that the, the, those two traits to be, um, pretty common amongst like just people who do things at large scales. They do a lot of listening. They like a lot of digesting. and say few words, but very like blunt words. And that was the experience in talking to him. Yeah, I mean, I think he said this publicly, but he also said it on the call. Everything is broken. Like he was like, it's not that surprising that things aren't going that great. Because from what I can tell from the inside, a lot of things are broken.

6:36So we talked a lot about YouTube value exchange, really just the frictionless, once you're in the partner program, the frictionless environment of like, we upload videos and we get paid, right? Like that was a very clear explanation from all of us creators. Like this is how it works. So naturally the conversation started to get into advertising, advertising on Twitter. And Elon brought up something pretty interesting I hadn't thought about before. He talked about how the way Twitter works, they're optimizing for session time. They want people to stay on Twitter longer. Now, when you see ads in your feed, the ads that are less engaging will actually keep you on the platform longer.

7:19Because if they were engaging, you would click and you would leave. So he said that we're optimizing for ads that people don't like. And that needs to change. Right. At scale, he shared some ideas with us, which was really interesting. One of the ideas that he shared was, what if we put ads in the replies? So wherever the most engaged conversation is on Twitter, can we understand what that conversation is about and then put ads, right? So if there's a conversation about basketball, can we throw in a Dick's Sporting Goods ad in that conversation? In a more relevant space for that ad. In a more relevant space, which is actually the comments in the conversation.

7:55Yeah. And if the ad is being shown in a more relevant space, the price of that ad can go up, right? Because you're targeting the audience more specifically. So the ad should be more effective. And that was an interesting idea. He was throwing out some new and unique ideas about advertising. But largely, the call was really explaining to Elon how and why the creator economy works. And more specifically, how and why YouTube works. Because it's the best platform for creators, advertisers, and the company. Another thing we talked about was that how on YouTube, we know what success looks like. There have been, you know, almost, there's been over a decade worth, if not more, of creators who have been succeeding, who are clearly at the top of YouTube, whether it be, you know, Casey Neistat, Mr.

8:46Beast. And there's a history of those creators actually sharing their monetization. So we know the style of content they make, and we know that they're succeeding when it comes to monetization. And that trickles down. I think the monetization matters, but I think YouTube does a really good job of amplifying when there is one of those model citizen stories. I would even go as far as to say that some of those stories are more mainstream, like Justin Bieber, right? Like emerged from a YouTube video. So there became this, like, you can be anyone from anywhere. And if you upload YouTube videos, there's real stories of success.

9:26Your dream can come true. And YouTube Studios essentially guiding us to be more, like, better model citizens, right? It's guiding us through ad suitability, monetization, viewership. Like all of the green arrows guide us towards becoming a model citizen. So developing model citizens on a platform is one of the most important things you can do. The first time I ever heard about this was when we were exploring TikTok and how it became this behemoth. and I saw a video from the founder, one of the founders talking about TikTok. Building a community from scratch is like you just discovered a new land from wealth distribution point of view.

10:11You make sure majority of the wealth is distributed to a small percent of people. And then these people became role model for other people. And they say, hey, this is a normal guy and he became super rich. I can do the same. So essentially what he's talking about there, I remember being shocked listening to this, but he's describing a new social platform as like a nation state and like developing new land. And you have to distribute wealth in a way that shows everyone who the model citizens are. That's a wild concept when you really think about it. But you look at TikTok, it's like Charli D 'Amelio, Addison Rae.

10:47Those were early, aspirational, relatable, good stories of model citizens that felt like you could replicate. And that brings an influx of a certain type of content. We've never known on Twitter what a model citizen looks like. We don't know the American dream of Twitter. The person who came from nothing started tweeting and then became successful. Mostly what we know about is very prominent figures who come to Twitter to debate and talk, and they have some pre-existing level of success and come to Twitter. So that rags to riches story does not exist yet on Twitter. And what we suggest to deal on is that we need a model citizen.

11:26We need to know what we are aspiring towards. I think one of the problems that Twitter has had is that being a model citizen has nothing, has very little to do with monetization. It has everything to do with discoverability and your brand and your profile, right? Like YouTube is just hard enough that if If you did it over a number of years and you weren't making any money, you would probably stop or scale back. Twitter is so actually easy to create that you can become a model citizen. And even if you don't get paid, you're happy to get paid in discoverability, in brand awareness. Right? Yeah. That's still the case because people aren't really making money on Twitter.

12:09So people are just happy to continue posting because it's relatively low lift and they're getting some level of brand awareness. The opportunity for the ROI of social currency or viewership currency, it's a low input and a potentially high output. If you just type something and it goes viral, it's low friction for potentially high reward of social currency or viewership currency. So, you know, having this conversation with Elon was a really exciting moment. It felt like, okay, interesting. Maybe we can have some input on where this goes and how Twitter or X becomes a creator platform. Let's talk about what's happened since that conversation over the past year.

12:50I mean, where do we start? I don't know. Where do we start? Okay. Let's start with ads in the replies. That has actually happened. There are ads in the replies. Now with that, there have also been a ton of advertisers who've pulled out because of brand safety concerns, some of which has to do with decisions Elon has made, like things he's tweeted, some of which has to do with content just showing up next to non-brand safe tweets. So this has happened in the past to a platform like YouTube, right? Adpocalypse. One of the most important parts of the creator economy is advertisers. That is, you know, advertising is the foundation of the creator economy.

13:32So having advertisers available creates enough revenue to have cash available to share with people, right? Like that ecosystem is very important. So over the past year, X has lost a lot of major advertisers. And so that's a missing piece to the equation of like, how does monetization work? You know, now there's, you know, Twitter Blue or maybe it's called X Blue Now, which is like subscriptions. there's a bit of like a pay to play. There's kind of confusion around like, okay, we need to be verified to even be able to be potentially monetized. Do we get a cut of subscription revenue? Is that how monetization works?

14:12Is that the pool that Elon had started talking about? And I think a lot of this comes down to that conversation that we just had around model citizen. One of the issues is this is the first time we've ever experienced a prominent creator by the platform. So Elon owns the platform, which now means that no matter what, there's an argument to be made that he is the model citizen. So if you're an advertiser and you come here, it's like, okay, if that's what this platform's about, if that's what being a creator on this platform is, I have to agree with him to continue advertising here, right? In some sense.

14:51And he's not the right model citizen because he's not incentivized by monetization on the platform. If Twitter actually or X actually cares about an ecosystem of creators making money off the platform, he's not the right model because he's not. He's, again, one of those people. He's interested in brand profile awareness conversation, not monetization. But then you have Mr. Beast post. Perfect model citizen. Could be a perfect model citizen, right? Right. Arguably the loudest for creators. Actually, not even arguably. You can't really argue. The loudest. Yeah. He's just the loudest. He's the creator model citizen, right?

15:30Like if Jimmy does something, we look and we go, should we be doing that? Dubbing videos. Should we be doing that? Right. And credit to him. He shares a lot of his journey and a lot of his monetization. Right. So huge opportunity for Elon to develop a model citizen. So in November of 2022, So this is, you know, around the time we had the call in that like back half of the year, Jimmy said he'd be shocked if X creator payouts could compete with YouTube. And Jimmy jokingly asked to become the CEO of X. And he was granted. Right. Yeah. Yeah. If something happened. Yeah. Something happens. This year, a year later, Jimmy still hadn't done anything with X, right?

16:11Had not uploaded any videos. But in December, he said that his videos cost too much to produce, to post on X. He said he'll only post when monetization is really cranking. Golden opportunity. So I imagine he was in contact with the platform and someone told him, hey, monetization is really cranking. Maybe. Or he was just like, hey, let's honestly just try this out. Or he's like, let's just try this out. Yeah, because we had been talking about it for a long time. I like to think someone called him and said, hey, it's really cranking. Yeah, maybe. And then he was like, okay. Who knows? Upload. So Elon then, you know, in January of this year, said that creator rewards will increase significantly this year.

16:51He said that 80 ,000 creators have been paid through X. I don't know many creators who have experienced monetization through X. We certainly have not yet. And then, you know, shortly after, Jimmy posts a full-length video,$1 car versus$100 million car in full on X and says that he'll share the revenue results. So most of you have, you know, are plugged into this story. We know what has happened. here. There's so many important caveats to what just happened, right? A ton. So let's go through the tweet that has the results. Jimmy says, my first X video made over$250 ,000, but it's a bit of a facade.

17:32Advertisers saw the attention it was getting and bought ads on my video, I think, and thus my revenue per view is probably higher than what you'd experience. Now, that's not surprising to me that the first time anyone of Jimmy's size decides to post a video on X, the revenue should not be a model you should follow. This is a Super Bowl-style event. Like, it's the first time he's posting something. The content was not the conversation. The fact that he posted the content was the conversation. Like, this was the moment that the platform was following, which makes it a unique opportunity for advertisers to get involved.

18:12Right. It's not like there is a thriving ecosystem where this has been happening and it's just like every other video. Yeah. It's just a moment. It's, it's also like, you know, it's an old piece of content. So like, you know, hundreds of millions of people have seen this piece of content on YouTube. It's not new, but it's what's novel is that he posted it here. It's hard to take much from this. It really is. We also don't know how it's calculated or how it's paid out. So there's not a lot that we can actually glean from this. You know, there was a lot of conversation around the platform was promoting this and that it was being played as an ad.

18:48And then, you know, there was some conversation from X that like, because there was a dedicated pre-roll that that then surfaced to more people. Whatever happened, obviously the large, you know, macro narrative that we know is that X needs a good story around creator monetization. They need a model citizen. This was a massive opportunity for them. I think the next step for them, my advice to them would be to start really cranking on analytics. Right. As soon as you possibly can. Yeah. So that we actually do know where the revenue came from. So he could share, like, even, is this from the US? Is this from pre-roll?

19:25How much of it's from the Shopify bought spend? You know what I mean? Like, we want to know every single thing about this. Yeah. so that we can benchmark it against the next upload. Yeah. And he's already put out his next upload. And if the revenue keeps going down, there's way less promise. It's a tough spot for Twitter right now because they kind of have to keep those payments up. But if we can just take a step back for a second, like why does this matter? Like why does it matter to post videos here? To creators at large? Yeah. I think it matters because we've spoken about this, but if we are making one piece of video content, most of us are obviously making it for YouTube, but it could be posted on other platforms and generate revenue, that's huge.

20:16We've already made the video. Yeah. But if we could find new audience and new revenue on a different platform. I guess that is the large, you know, macro trend that we're trying to look for. How can we produce one piece of content and monetize it in many ways? The same week, a very small amount of people read the story that Jimmy also started distributing videos on Bilibili in China. That's syndication, right? Translate it into different languages, Mandarin, Chinese, and put it on Bilibili, which is a platform where people do not have access. Like they do not have access to YouTube. Now that's honest new audience on a video platform.

21:02It received millions of views and we didn't talk about it, right? And I think that's the interesting thing is that like Twitter is a very loud narrative right now. Everyone's waiting to see what happens. But if the macro conversation is around syndication, there's much more interesting stories. Like Billy Billy is super interesting with video in China. OTT apps are really interesting, like the Dude Perfect app, or we covered it in the published press, but like what Eric did with Wild Vision to launch his own app. Like seeing people move into TV apps is interesting where they take their content and put it somewhere else.

21:35I struggle to think that the narrative around Twitter video is that interesting. Well, it's interesting because it feels like it is a conversation taking place between two of the most famous people on the planet. Yeah, okay, that's fair. That's why it's interesting. Yeah. You know what I mean? If this was an experiment happening with a smaller creator and a CEO that no one knew. It's not as interesting. Not as interesting. Yeah. This is two incredibly famous, loud people having an interaction. So, you know, from what we just said, syndication is one reason why this matters. You make one piece of content, can you monetize it in two places or three places?

22:15That is a huge chapter of the creator economy right now. If you look at TV, you know, that was a huge part of television too. You make a great show and then you syndicate that show to other networks, right? There's a window where it's, okay, like Friends was live on, I don't even know where it was live, Fox or something, TBS? TBS? No, it wasn't. TBS must have been syndication. TBS is where the syndication was. this does not matter, but yeah, the office, NBC. It's a real like older millennial moment. Okay, okay, okay, hold on, hold on, hold on. Let me go. Yeah, that was too millennial. Let's go here.

22:48NBC? The office. NBC. The office was on NBC and then eventually it was on Netflix. And like Netflix is where it got syndicated to, right? Like that's, you make it once, you can monetize it twice. That's interesting for content creators. That's one reason it matters. But there's some other reasons why video on Twitter matters. and I think one of the most important is discovery and network effects. Network effects is something that we should not take lightly when it comes to Twitter video. When we post something on Twitter and someone like a Mr. Beast likes it, that then gets surfaced into people who follow Mr.

23:29Beast's feed, right? It's one of the best parts about Twitter. It would be incredible if when a... larger YouTuber commented on your video, it was more likely for your video to surface to people that like that creator. Yeah. Especially for us in our early years, because we were speaking to creators. We had creators in our comments and in our conversation, but sometimes those videos were still sitting at like 5 ,000 to 10 ,000 views. Right, right. But that's a marker of your community. And on Twitter, it is definitely one of the best things for creators is that network effect, especially small creators.

24:09Jules Terpak, who's a creator, uploads her videos to YouTube as well as Twitter. Her videos on Twitter do much better because of network effects. Because very prominent people, people of influence on Twitter, watch the videos, like, comment, and that gets surfaced into other people's feeds. So she now has access to hundreds of thousands of people on Twitter because she posts videos there. When we say the videos do much better, I think we need to talk about potentially what that means. Because the same video, the power of TikTok edits, on Twitter has, last time I checked, around like 200 ,000 views.

24:45On YouTube, that video has around 10 ,000 views. So in terms of viewership, that is vastly different. What we don't know is viewing - Just a quick note, that has 500 ,000 views. Oh my gosh, 500 ,000. But what we don't know is viewing behavior. And what a view is. And what a view is. Because my assumption is that even with 10 ,000 views on YouTube, it's more likely that those people watched more of that video. The watch time is probably much higher, and they will remember that video tomorrow. They will remember the brand of Jules Terpak because of the time they spent on YouTube. That's my assumption because of how people watch YouTube.

25:23Potentially, they watched it on their TV. They leaned back and watched the whole thing at 40 minutes. but if you look at twitter 500 000 views that is a huge difference and she's able to tag all the people she talks about in the chapter markers in the tweet so all those people can be notified that they were talked about in her video and can engage with it and then it goes into their feeds yeah that's incredible you brought up a concept that i think is really important again as we look at this i what i want to provide is like some insight for creators exploring if they should upload to Twitter as well.