TikTok’s Fate: Implications for Advertisers and Creators

[00:00:00] Kelly: the biggest risk thing to me is how good the algorithm is, how ubiquitous the platform is with a certain generation of people gives that platform an immense amount of control to sway the perceptions and the opinions.

[00:00:16] Kelly: Of entire groups of people and if it was ever desired to weaponize, that is tremendous in terms of the risk.

[00:00:51] Kelly: Hey, everyone. Kelly McGuire excited to get into today's topics.

[00:00:55] Todd: Good morning, because it's morning time for us, which we're usually recording in the afternoons, but good morning. This will be the first, recorded and published show of 2025. So I'll just say happy new year, Kelly. well, what's the hottest topic in the news that's coming up in the next couple of weeks, and that is what's going to happen with Tik TOK and wow, what a topic to unpack there.

[00:01:18] Todd: When you think about everything from the masses of wealth that young creators and, all kinds of made on Tik TOK in the last few years. our role as an agency, Advising and managing investments on tick tock, just as if it were a wall street fund. And the possibility that might go away in the next couple of weeks.

[00:01:41] Todd: my gut is, is it doesn't go away. somehow something happens in the last hour and it's. Saved or whatever, but, for people that are not familiar or somewhat familiar. So the legal situation is that our federal courts basically have ruled. It's a national security risk. especially given the fact that it's owned by, bike dance, which is a Chinese company and, January 19th.

[00:02:05] Todd: Is going to be the hard line in the sand. Apparently, when the Supreme Court. could rule on a ban, and what's been described as the band so far, Kelly, is. The app would remain, so I would still have it on my phone. but it would disappear from the app store. So nobody knew could download it.

[00:02:24] Todd: which I wonder if that's going to cause a rush of people downloading it. and then no updates to it would eventually make it not functional. then I've also read that even if there is a transfer of ownership, or some deal done with the U. S. based company that changes to the algorithm would happen anyway.

[00:02:42] Todd: and make it maybe not well, maybe it's going to be similar to iOS 14 update. Right? And it totally handicaps some of the advertising power of the data. That's available in it today, which, there's an argument that that's a good thing and a bad thing with a parallel sort of conversation. I mentioned to you earlier was the idea that states are starting to ban social media apps for users under 16.

[00:03:06] Todd: I have no idea how they're going to enforce that. We're not supposed to be able to advertise under 18 anyway. But, of course, we know that's happening and young kids are seeing advertising within their social feeds. So this all seems to be maybe a big thing that's starting to happen. , so the question to you is, what is your observational point of view on tick tock being banned everything from the application side of it as some people may know, know us, we have a mobile app company, as well as our agency.

[00:03:35] Todd: And so we do play in the mobile app space. We understand the mobile app space. So everything from the practicality of that to, I guess, the advertising side of things, like, how is that going to. Impede us as an agency advising clients. Where to put dollars and TikTok has been a big part of that mix for our advertisers for quite some time.

[00:03:54] Todd: what do you think is going to happen?

[00:03:56] Kelly: Yeah. I mean, it's a really interesting topic to discuss because it's very speculative. It's very, have an opinion a history of, how I've evolved my perspective of tick tock. you know, I have a personal opinion on it. I have a business opinion on it. And a lot of the unknown that I'm going to speculate on here, and then I'm going to give my point of view, it's just based on some inference from what I believe contributes to the uncertainty and ultimately where it is, is because there is so much unknown to the company.

[00:04:26] Kelly: So TikTok is an app is so interesting because, it came on the scene and I won't claim to be 100 percent able to say why it. Became what it is and how it is. But I have my own knowledge base that I believe led to it because TikTok is effectively a newer version of what was an incredibly popular app before called vine.

[00:04:50] Kelly: it's an iteration to it, but TikTok had, a life cycle. It wasn't always called TikTok and it wasn't always successful. And there was different things that it evolved into. And ultimately, as I understand it, again, don't hold me on the exact details, but as the overall picture of it is, it became what it is because whether you want to say it was the Chinese government or whether you want to say it was an entity or maybe from a business perspective, they bought their way to success.

[00:05:16] Kelly: They pumped billions of dollars into the user acquisition and the marketing and the customer acquisition and, It didn't really blow up on its own. It was heavily and I mean, heavily invested in to

[00:05:31] Todd: profitable? Just as a side note. Do you know? I don't know.

[00:05:34] Kelly: I don't know. I don't think so. And again, I'll get into a little bit more of that, later in terms of why not, but from the original standpoint of pushing it out there, it Again, it was invested to such a degree, such a billions of dollars of degree, which again, personally, I believe that came from a, again, a well funded place that had a motive to be willing to take that big of a risk on who knows if it would actually ever return that.

[00:06:00] Kelly: And again, I'll circle back around to that opinion, but again, it was pushed out there to the tune of billions of dollars of customer acquisition. And then Obviously, that's the one side of it that I have the opinion. The other side of it is it's stuck and it worked and it's evolved because it is a wildly effective algorithm.

[00:06:19] Kelly: Even I have experienced it and I'm not a social media person, but having a needing to go in when I say not a social media, I mean, personally, I know I don't personally go on social media all that much. even when I've had to explore it and go on to it, you can easily and quickly tell that the algorithm is incredibly good at, understanding what grabs your attention, what matters, what you're going to dwell on and interact with, as a side note, if I could interrupt for a second. It's almost too good because I've noticed that I have to be careful dwelling on any sort of content because if I dwell too long on one piece of content, then the next 10 things I see will be that same kind of content. And I didn't want to see that over and over

[00:07:00] Todd: and I don't want to see it that many times.

[00:07:02] Todd: It's just, oh, I. didn't want to watch this video about something for 10 seconds and now everything after that is. Similar stuff. I'm like, it's overly sensitive in my opinion. And just another interjection to your point. So I just looked up 2023 estimated revenue for Tik billion. 1. 5 billion monthly active users, , expected to grow to 1.

[00:07:26] Todd: 8 billion. So there are 2023 estimated revenue is a 67% Increase year over year

[00:07:32] Kelly: but again, that's revenue, right? Because again, there's a whole nother side to that because, again, I'm going to go down step further than I want and I'll circle back around to some of the foundational stuff, but I believe a lot of that revenue is coming in the form of TikTok shop, which is another iteration of, they put so much money Into growing the app and getting it. And then that worked. And now they're doing the same thing again to essentially turn the commerce factor in there. The reason that they're essentially training their user base. To shop and to make that first purchase, because there is a psychological effect in the mobile app space where getting someone to make the first purchase is the hardest barrier to overcome in the mobile space.

[00:08:17] Kelly: But once you do that, once someone has connected their payment information or gone through the behavior of converting that the barrier of entry of getting them to continue to do that is tremendously low. So what they've done is they've once again, pumped An insane amount of money into essentially training that behavior.

[00:08:35] Kelly: That's why you get the 40, 50 percent off the free shipping, all these promotions, all these things that get in there. I envision that they eventually want to probably take on Amazon to a degree, in a full ecosystem and again, control that, but, and it's training behavior. And so, I mean, kind of put a pin in that idea.

[00:08:52] Kelly: As we go back on the overall picture of why this is valuable, if you were to take a lens of if it's not purely business driven, which is speculative, but one of the things we're talking about and why I think it could get banned,

[00:09:05] Todd: don't adjacent to that real quick is did you see the class action lawsuit or whatever? It was a lawsuit against minecraft when you talk about training behavior Minecraft I forget the name of the mobile app company just got ordered to pay like 67 million dollars and fines back to consumers because of the behavior They created that kids continued to buy in app purchases And that, and they got sued for it and they lost and they have to pay consumers back something like, I don't remember what the number is on a 67 million or whatever it

[00:09:36] Kelly: in the bucket from what they made from

[00:09:38] Todd: and tens and tens of millions of dollars based purely on the fact that they got sued because they trained users so well, behaviorally to make in app purchases that it was deemed.

[00:09:49] Todd: some problem.

[00:09:50] Kelly: again, this is a really good theme that I think start to try and work my way back to connect the dots here because so we're talking about again, my understanding of the history of how I believe the app became successful, how I believe they train user behaviors on the commerce side and the way that it goes in.

[00:10:10] Kelly: And then we go into, well, why is it potentially getting banned or what is the risks to it? Because you see a lot of the arguments of. People being like, well, I don't care. They can have my data. Like, I love this. Don't take my tick talk away. Like it doesn't matter all of that. And you mentioned it, people make a tremendous amount of money being a creator and putting time on it.

[00:10:32] Kelly: And , it does enrich people's lives. I mean, obviously people enjoy it. It's one thing. It is a good is giving you content that you want to be. That's why the algorithm is so good as you dwell on it. It's entertaining. It serves the needs of a generation and it's even growing outside of those generations.

[00:10:49] Kelly: It is a good app. I mean, all things being equal, it's only as successful as it is on top of spending the money because it's very, very effective and very good. And so you have this interesting thing. We have to show up where people are spending their time and where their eyeballs are and things that are advertising supported.

[00:11:08] Kelly: And so for us as an agency working with our clients, we have to look at how effective the channel is to reach the people that our clients need to be able to reach and create that communication vehicle that advertising supports. to deliver messaging in a very targeted, very measurable way to be able to understand what happens after that.

[00:11:28] Kelly: It's a great lever for us to be able to pull, for a very particular generation of users, but also it is growing outside of that as well. so there is an element in what we do that this provides that losing it would not be great. You know, again, because it's a good company , that is building good platforms and they're really investing in their, advertising ecosystem, the sophistication there.

[00:11:51] Kelly: so that's

[00:11:51] Todd: the contrary to popular opinion right there, I said, Hey, my Kelly might be, it's a good company. I mean, that's the whole debate, right? It's a Chinese based company that people believe are spying on us and using that data for not good things. So I don't know that

[00:12:05] Kelly: so when I say good company, I say it's, it's a good company in the lens of giving us a platform to do what we get, hired to do for clients. It's a good platform for, it's got a good, solid advertising, it's got good targeting, it's got good measurability, it's got. You know, good reach has got good attention span.

[00:12:22] Kelly: It's impactful when you serve a good ad matches someone , it actually moves the needle from a, an

[00:12:28] Todd: it's a good advertising platform. I don't, I, people would debate if it's a good company or not.

[00:12:32] Kelly: , so it becomes very important for us to understand that. And. And quite frankly, there, I would say in our experiences in working with them as a company from the advertising perspective, they're actually pretty good on that front. They have good reps. They are responsive. , they understand what it takes to engage and kind of where some of that bread and butter from the advertising standpoint is we get a lot more communication, a lot more responsiveness.

[00:12:56] Kelly: They've done a lot more in terms of teams and humor interaction where I would argue we see a lot less of that with say meta and Google and things these days that have evolved further. Where it's hard, sometimes can be hard to reach someone. They move around teams. They're very rigid in their ways.

[00:13:09] Kelly: and that might just be a maturity level thing. tick tock is still acting more like some of those platforms would have been in the early days and now they've gotten so big that they don't feel the need to show up in that way , to quite the same degree. but that's the advertising perspective that we have to take of, of how to leverage that and have the value.

[00:13:26] Kelly: But then we go back around to, is it a good company overall? And this is where. I'm conflicted, right? Because it's valuable for me and what we do and what we do for clients. But I do fall on the side of knowing what I know about the money that was put in to make it work, knowing what I know about, or what I believe I know about the.

[00:13:47] Kelly: Connections to the certain governments and certain entities. That is the way that the data is leveraged and used and put into the algorithm. Again, this is a belief of mine. I don't know this. I wish I knew the algorithm better. , and the way that I kind of see them make the investments to train the behaviors.

[00:14:03] Kelly: And I do think it is dangerous. All things being equal, especially if I didn't need it , from what we do for a living, I'm not against the ban from a good of, the structure that it is because I'm against the band because I do think people should have the ability to do this Like I said, I think vine should have existed, right?

[00:14:21] Kelly: So the divestiture of moving it to another entity that isn't connected in that way, which I don't even know it's possible I've read articles about billionaires that are interested in trying to go and buy it But i've heard them say things like it's a difficult sale to do because no one knows what you're actually buying No one Under like, it's such a black box of understanding of what it is.

[00:14:41] Kelly: You would even be bidding billions and billions of dollars to buy that it makes the sales so hard. And, you know, candidly, I've been around entities of Tik TOK and the security levels that I've been exposed to has been like nothing I've ever seen. I've been on every campus to on every major tech company that there is.

[00:14:59] Kelly: I've never seen anything like the security that exists there. Take that for what it is. That may or may not mean anything. you know, it's just a lot of interesting things that you have there that they kind of add up to what to me, where the biggest thing that moves over is okay. Fine. If you're like, okay, how important is the data?

[00:15:15] Kelly: Data is collected everywhere. All of that. That's not the biggest scary thing to me or the biggest risk to me. The biggest scary, the biggest risk thing to me is how good the algorithm is, how ubiquitous the platform is with a certain generation of people gives that platform an immense amount of control to sway the perceptions and the opinions.

[00:15:38] Kelly: Of entire groups of people and if it was ever desired to weaponize, that is tremendous in terms of the risk. I truly

[00:15:48] Todd: from a propaganda standpoint?

[00:15:50] Kelly: I mean, I true, like I, again, I don't want to go down the rabbit hole of like, you know, election interference at all, all those types of things. But there is a vehicle that I believe exists that if there was malicious intent, if there was, you know, A desire to use it in that way, you absolutely could very effectively with that platform pretty easily.

[00:16:10] Todd: think about the passionate commitment and belief that most younger people I'll say have put into what they consume, what they see, what they watch, right? Imagine now Sora and the AI tools that can create, it's getting to the point where in another year you will be able to create a video of you or me with our voice saying whatever somebody wants us to say.

[00:16:32] Todd: And it's not actually you and me, it's whatever some, so that right, that's the fear, right? You could take, you could create a video of a president of a country or a terrorist organization or whatever it is. Recreate it to a degree in which nobody can tell the difference and then distribute it on a platform like that.

[00:16:50] Todd: And billions of people will see it. And of those billions of people, I hate to say it. There's a large percentage of them that are going to believe what they see.

[00:17:00] Kelly: Yeah, and again, \ I'm not making the argument that I believe this is going to happen. This isn't a conspiracy theory thing.

[00:17:05] Todd: But I think that's the fear that people have.

[00:17:07] Kelly: right. And what I'm pointing out is the detriment of that possibility being potential, even reasonably potentially tied to combative foreign government that historically we are not always getting along with it and has shown.

[00:17:26] Kelly: The ability to use these things. It's a risk reward issue where I do think trying to create more of a firewall more of a distance from that enforcing the divestiture is not the worst thing to go through because there is a high enough possibility and maybe even a probability that there is connected tissue that is risky there to make to kind of be on the safer side of that.

[00:17:51] Kelly: And I also have a struggle with. Again, if the option to sell and to divest into to move away exists, and that is Resisted to a certain degree where it's literally, if you don't do it, you will go away completely. And it goes up to kind of playing that game of chicken and you still won't cross the line.

[00:18:13] Kelly: I have a hard time believing that that's purely a business decision at that point then, because yes, maybe you want to dig your heels in and say, you know, we've built this, we shouldn't be forced to sell it, but if it comes down to it going away or you lose the value of it and you still won't do it, It kind of leans towards the, well, why, like, what is it that you're not wanting to let go of in terms of the algorithm or the connected, like what is not behind the curtain that you want to, again, I hesitate saying these things because it can be so kind of conspiracy theorist and I'm not saying it's true, but I'm saying that there's enough.

[00:18:46] Kelly: Concern where do you draw the line? Where do you play it safe versus take the risk? And in this case, I fall on the side that the, if we were wrong, that it is in fact has that connective tissue, the detriment and the outcome of being wrong about that is greater than the other way of being wrong.

[00:19:05] Kelly: And that's, it's not the best way to make decisions, but this is a very hard thing to know what the right thing to do is. When there's so much unknown and so much possibility at scale, it's not a small mistake to be wrong about. It is a huge, huge possible risk if you are in fact wrong about it, because it is. It's an interesting thing where the, I do think the possibility of a ban is legitimately backed in and could happen. I personally don't think it will at least not anytime soon. I think it'll follow more about this Drawn out cookie deprecation thing that gets pushed and gets argued and gets fought and you know There may be different things come through I I don't see an entity this beloved in this big and this sort of ubiquitous with a generation just completely going away It's it's just Not impossible, but that's not the outcome that I anticipate.

[00:19:55] Kelly: And so I go back to all things being equal on what it is as a platform. What is we as an agency who are responsible for using this platform potentially on behalf of clients to achieve the objectives that we get hired to? I think for now it continues to be business as usual. you know, it's there, it's available, it should be leveraged, it should be considered again.

[00:20:17] Kelly: It is a good company in terms of the advertising perspective. So working with them and growing it and leveraging it. in great ways is something that can be done, but I do think there should be an air of going in with the eyes wide open and a preparedness to pivot and understand in a worst case scenario, if that, if it did go away, that audience isn't just going to give up and go do something else, they're probably not going to then put down their phones and go outside , like it was 30 years ago, right?

[00:20:41] Kelly: They're going to find something else, right? They're going to go to YouTube shorts. They're going to go to reels. They're going to go to. You know, something else that so diversifying your platforms, being able to pivot and follow them where they go and know how to use that, I think, is really important and really valuable.

[00:20:55] Kelly: and again, I think it's there's a lot of learnings that come out of it. So. For me, how it impacts us and the agencies and the clients is I don't see anything changing now, other than just knowing what the alternatives are being diversified, not putting all your eggs in a basket and really knowing kind of what that migration pattern likely is going to be and being able to capitalize on that quickly.

[00:21:17] Kelly: and also just following along and, ebbing and flowing with what's going to happen with tick tock. I don't know, like if they do sell. To your point, will that change the algorithm? Nobody knows what someone's getting. Does that change something? , does anything change in the experience, even if it gets banned, how long before it starts to have even a negative downturn?

[00:21:36] Kelly: So of all of the billions of people that are on there right now, how long before their experience even changes from what it is? Is that next month? Is that next year? it's just so unknown. So you can't make huge swinging decisions, but you can go in with the eyes wide open and be as prepared as possible, to be able to be nimble and flexible to adapt to what does happen.

[00:21:54] Kelly: I

[00:21:54] Todd: Well, we had to do the same thing for iOS 14, right? Like when that changed everything, it caused a pretty radical.set of circumstances that we had to account for shift and change. Every advertiser that was used to putting a dollar in and getting 4 or 5 or 9 or 10 back out of the meta machine. it's probably going to be the same thing.

[00:22:15] Todd: So let's step away from all the conspiracy theory side of this. Cause that's what everybody's thinking. It's not just what you're. Saying that's what everybody's

[00:22:24] Kelly: just want to, I just, I'm super cautious about this because there's just so much unknown is so opinion.

[00:22:28] Todd: yeah. Who

[00:22:28] Kelly: And again, I like to be mindful about when we're talking about possibilities that, you know, I do the calculation of, I'm not certain about this, but I weigh the, what is the percentage likelihood that it is true and where does that cross the threshold of , it's risky enough that it's cross that threshold to where you should go.

[00:22:47] Kelly: Probably make other actions because it's worse to be wrong than it is to be right. Like I try and be as practical about as possible versus just being like, for sure, this is it. And it definitely has to go away.

[00:22:57] Todd: Well, so let's talk about that sort of doomsday scenario. So let's think January 19th, maybe, nothing happens, and so hypothetically, there's some motion put in place that it's going to start winding down. I just, whether it does or doesn't, I don't think it really matters. I think us as, again, as advisors. Of media knowledge, if you will, we still have to think about our advertisers that are currently investing a lot of money in that platform. And where would those investments go if we had to make a change? And that change could be because the platform does change and the advertising on it is no longer worthwhile, or maybe it's just more of a political reasoning, right?

[00:23:41] Todd: Maybe advertisers just start to pull out because. You know, they don't want to be supporting a Chinese backed company, although it seems like nobody cares about that necessarily right at the moment, but let's just assume those, any number of things happen, does that mean we put all that money back towards Instagram, YouTube?

[00:23:58] Todd: Like what's the alternative in your mind? If right now, today on January 19th, if Tik TOK did not exist, what would we do?

[00:24:05] Kelly: I mean, it's not a direct answer because I don't think on that day, the entire universe of people

[00:24:12] Todd: I understand, but

[00:24:13] Kelly: something. So we'd

[00:24:13] Todd: I understand.

[00:24:14] Kelly: we have to be prepared to follow the, you know, read the tea leaves and follow kind of the, the, the progress for it. And so again, that preparation is really important.

[00:24:22] Kelly: But my estimate is the I mean the big winners are meta and google, right? It's youtube shorts and instagram reels, right? Not that there aren't others but those things explode right now, particularly youtube shortses You know, the closest to the tick tock

[00:24:34] Todd: But why didn't YouTube shorts and Instagram reels? Why do you think they, this is a side question. We may not have time to get to this because we have a hard out today in about six minutes. why do you think quickly those platforms didn't catch on and do what TikTok did? Like, why didn't Instagram was already there with millions and millions and millions and hundreds of millions of users?

[00:24:55] Todd: Why didn't it not become TikTok?

[00:24:58] Kelly: Well, I told you there was a tick tock before tick tock. It was mine and it was bought by Twitter and it existed and it

[00:25:04] Todd: Why didn't that?

[00:25:04] Todd: It couldn't, it couldn't survive. so I literally did exist. and it was huge. It was wildly popular. They just couldn't monetize. All right. Well, anyway, what do we do

[00:25:13] Kelly: I don't know. I mean, I, I, again, part of my answer, I do believe goes back to what creates my skepticism in the first place is I think tick tock succeeded because they success.

[00:25:22] Kelly: They put an insane amount of money to make it work. And there's an element in a younger generation with apps in particular. Like why, you know, the, the question, like, why couldn't you just go recreate Instagram or, you know, do, do the next Facebook or whatever it is.

[00:25:37] Kelly: And I don't know this to be true, but I believe that generations don't like the corporate side. Like, you know, those things usually grow grassroots. Initially, people will buy in and participate. And then eventually someone comes in and buys it. So like, why does Facebook buy Instagram instead of having the engineers that rebuilds Instagram for a cheaper than the billions of dollars they have to buy it for.

[00:25:59] Kelly: And it, I think it's just because getting that initial traction, the same reason I think. Google circles didn't work out that well, like it's hard to get that grassroots adoption when you're that corporate entity and you're kind of uncool and you're on those sides of things. It can be really hard on those sides of things.

[00:26:14] Kelly: They just tend to grow better from a grassroots perspective and then sort of explode versus one giant entity being able to just say, I'm going to just build this and make it happen and everyone's going to believe and adopt it. I don't know why it works that way, but that We've seen it time and time again, where it is hard for a huge entity, even with the resources.

[00:26:31] Kelly: if they have the reputation of the name to just make it happen

[00:26:34] Todd: Yeah. All right. What do we do as advisors of advertising investments with

[00:26:38] Kelly: again, I, I would be diversified right now. I would already be looking, you know, make sure you have presence on YouTube the other platforms where they are likely to migrate. And you have a sophistication level to know what it would take if you had to rapidly scale those and understand them. and again, I would make sure that whatever your strategies are, you are investing and continue to invest in Tik TOK.

[00:26:58] Kelly: You have a clear line of sight of what migration would look like. What would it take to take that campaign and those concepts and what's there? And put it onto Instagram and put it onto YouTube shorts and put it onto the other platforms that people would likely be migrating and being too. I wouldn't want to, I wouldn't want to be scrambling after the fact to be like, Oh no, what do we do?

[00:27:17] Kelly: We have to learn really quickly and make it work. I would be looking ahead as I build things as I make strategies. What would this look like if, yes, I'm building it for Tik TOK, but what would it look like on YouTube shorts? What would it look like on Instagram? What would it look like on? on really any other platform from that side so that it wouldn't be that painful of a movement and you would understand the bigger picture just to kind of have that safety net and that expertise and that understanding I would have already spent dollars on those platforms to know what is my brand presence.

[00:27:43] Kelly: I would be building up my organic presence on those platforms so that if I have to migrate, I have an organic presence that supports the paid presence, which always works really well together. I would just try and be a little bit proactive and forward at least to a degree. So that again, you're not shocked on that front.

[00:27:59] Kelly: If it does happen.

[00:28:01] Todd: Well, I would agree. , well, let's wrap up because we got a hard stop. Got a hard out here. that's going to be the hot topic for the next couple of weeks. It's going to be really interesting to see where this goes. I wonder also what the creator community sort of how much shaking in their boots they're going through right now for these creators that, you know, probably have lots of them have very lucrative.

[00:28:23] Todd: businesses, what they're thinking about the, I mean, gosh, could you imagine, can you imagine being a creator? That's making six figures or more on this platform solely on this platform. And, and the fact that it could.

[00:28:35] Kelly: And again, this is, that's not unprecedented. We've seen it before. I keep referencing, there were people who made and blew up on vine and it died and they had to move. And a lot of them ended up

[00:28:44] Todd: Hide on the vine, no pun intended.

[00:28:46] Kelly: people from YouTube migrated over a lot of people from Instagram. So like, this isn't unprecedented in the migration.

[00:28:52] Kelly: It is disruptive because it's at a different scale than those happens, but things like that have happened before in the translation types of things. But yeah, I'll be very fascinated to see. Where it goes and how it plays out because of how much unknown there is and how much my opinion is based on, I would say educated speculation, but it's still speculation because it will be fascinating to me if it does get banned and shut down and they still refuse to sell it, that will be illuminating to me because I'm like, well, how is that?

[00:29:22] Todd: Unless you were protecting something other than pure business, why would that happen? Well, where there's smoke, there's

[00:29:28] Kelly: that because it sounds so bad, but yeah. or the same thing, like again, if a big group comes in and offers 20 billion to buy it, can they even get that deal done because they don't know what they're buying?

[00:29:38] Kelly: Or do they get the whole algorithm that is the whole value of it? Or You know, what if a big end, you know, what, not saying they would, but like, what if meta tried to buy it with the generation that use it rebel against that and be like, okay, well, it's not cool anymore. I didn't even want to be here. Even if it is the same, like I, it's so interesting, all the directions it could possibly take.

[00:29:57] Todd: Well, their paychecks coming from there. That's supporting their lifestyle. They can't afford to walk away from it.

[00:30:01] Kelly: Well, but their paycheck is based on the users consuming it. So if the consumers don't follow them and want to consume there anymore, then that's an issue in and of itself.

[00:30:08] Todd: yeah. But it would take both things to happen , for that to fall

[00:30:11] Kelly: Oh, the other example that I had on the company's just making things happen. Do you remember when Meta tried to do threads and make it Twitter and it was popping? And for some reason, it's just really hard for, even with all the resources and the bandwidth, although I have a whole theory as to where they fell short and they could have made that work, but they made bad decisions.

[00:30:27] Kelly: But it's just, you know, Google circles, threads, all these, it's just hard for them to just make them happen.

[00:30:33] Todd: yeah, but history has taught us that the giants can be toppled because I can go back and date both of us back to the days of my space. And my former. com darling company, that I was employed at mp3. com. You know, those giants toppled, you know, my

[00:30:49] Kelly: I mean, you had the globe before that. I mean, look, Facebook was not the first social network by any means. I know I worked on one in parallel towards those things. you know, how and why these things work is, you know, it's not always linear and insensible.

[00:31:01] Todd: Well, here we go. It's going to be a kickstart to January for sure to see what happens. everybody's going to be eyes on. So, , let's see where we go with this. Thanks for, sharing your conspiracy theory speculation, because it's fun to talk about. Everybody's talking about it. we'll kick off January with this.

[00:31:18] Todd: Conversation. and I will talk to you soon for our next show. Thanks.

[00:31:22] Kelly: Sounds great. Happy new year, everyone.