The Potential of Twitter Spaces
Good morning.
Yesterday, Donald Trump became the first United States president to be impeached twice. Trump was impeached for a second time because he and his supporters (including spineless senators and representatives like Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Kevin McCarthy, Paul Gosar, among so many others) tried to stage a coup on the United States government on January 6, 2021.
Like most of you, I’ve barely been hanging on over the past week. Each day I try to follow every new development, but there are so many new developments. What has emerged from January 6, 2021 are multiple stories that are going to shape the next decade and beyond of American life—such as the coming regulation of social media platforms.
I could go into how I’ve been processing it all or how the attempted coup of January 6th and the resulting fallout have been covered, but we are all still living through it. And, honestly, smarter people than me are writing about and talking about it in other places.
So, here, I’m going to try to stick to the day-to-day media stories that have continued or developed over the past week.
Your Weekly Roundup
Last Thursday, Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post published a piece looking at the responsibility of Fox News and other pro-Trump media in the attempted coup that occurred on January 6th, 2021. There’s not more context I want to add. It’s a classic Margaret Sullivan piece—both big picture and sweeping as well as particular and specific. Sullivan followed that up with another piece yesterday about the media’s failings during the Trump administration.
The Monday edition of Today in Tabs had a good, succinct rundown of the fall of Parler over the weekend, as well as some of the more recent organizations and figures to step away from Donald Trump after he and his supporters staged a coup against the United States government on January 6th, 2021.
Last Thursday, Digiday ran a piece looking at how publishers expect advertisers to come back to running ads alongside news coverage once the Donald Trump presidency ends on January 20th, 2021 (or sooner, since he should be removed from office for leading a coup on the United States government on January 6th, 2021). I’m a bit skeptical of this piece since Digiday gave lots of space to the notorious braintrust over at G/O Media who have ruined respected publications and driven away plenty of talent. However, there are some good data points and nuggets from IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) CEO David Cohen such as, “This past spring, the IAB began convening monthly meetings where publishers could discuss issues they were having with monetizing their news content, specifically their coverage of the coronavirus. And at each meeting, when the IAB asked publishers which topics or keywords were getting blocked the most, ‘Trump’ was the first- or second-most blocked term every time they asked the question. (‘Trump’ was the top keyword on advertiser block lists when the coronavirus first began spreading through the U.S. last winter).”
Meanwhile, last Thursday, the chief content officer of Forbes, Randall Lane, published a piece declaring the following: “Let it be known to the business world: Hire any of Trump’s fellow fabulists above, and Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie. We’re going to scrutinize, double-check, investigate with the same skepticism we’d approach a Trump tweet. Want to ensure the world’s biggest business media brand approaches you as a potential funnel of disinformation? Then hire away.” Look, I’m not really a Forbes reader and I’m not sure how this will actually take shape in reality or reader discretion, but it’s an interesting approach and stance for a publication to take in the wake of Donald Trump and his supporters enabling a coup of the United States government.
Following up on last week’s “What I’m Engaged With” segment, The Verge reported last Friday (two days after Donald Trump led a coup against the United States government) that Substack will be soon rolling out a new “multipub” feature “that will allow writers to aggregate multiple newsletters and podcasts they manage under a single publication.” As I said last week, I’m inclined to believe that the next phase of Substack will be the rise of the mini-publication as writers pool their resources to build publications...after leaving publications. Another interesting note in The Verge story: Substack will be allowing users to segment their lists to build out more targeted email products. Lifecycle marketing baby!!
Next up, we have a suite of three deep media business news items:
First, last Wednesday (the same day Donald Trump and his supporters attempted a coup of the United States government), Meredith announced that Wyndham Destinations would be acquiring the Travel + Leisure brand and all its related assets from them. Travel + Leisure is one of those media properties that was once a bigger deal but still somehow exists and reaches a lot of people even though you never hear anyone discuss it. Per the Meredith press release, Travel + Leisure reaches 35 million followers across platforms. What’s notable here is that Wyndham is changing its name to Travel + Leisure Co. and will “expand its portfolio through various branded products and offerings.” This seems, on paper, to be like a healthier version of The Maven’s acquisition of Sports Illustrated in 2019.
And also last Wednesday Talking Biz News reported (also on the same day Donald Trump and his supporters attempted a coup of the United States government) that Bloomberg News and the newly formed sports business site Sportico (owned by Penske Media) reached a syndication deal where Sportico would provide Bloomberg News with content. This is an interesting content aggregation move from Bloomberg (and presumably a test of their audience’s appetite for wonkier sports coverage) and a nice visibility win for Sportico already.
And last Thursday, a day after Donald Trump and his enablers attempted a coup of the United States government, Reuters reported that Bustle Digital Group is pursuing a deal with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) to go public. I’ll follow up on Bustle Digital Group and SPACs in a coming edition as this story develops.
Meanwhile, on Monday (as we learned more about Donald Trump’s attempted coup of the United States government), over at CNN in Brian Stelter’s “Reliable Sources” newsletter, Kerry Flynn has a bit of news out of Condé Nast. The company’s CEO, Roger Lynch, apparently said in an internal memo that Vanity Fair, “now has the largest audience globally of any single title” as well as stating that it’s audience was up 89% year-over-year that that its “loyal audience” (people who visit the site at least four times per month) was up 184% from 2019 to 2020.
In other Condé Nast and Kerry Flynn-reported news, Flynn was following the mysterious case of the Vice President-elect Kamala Harris (who will help guide the country after Donald Trump and his enablers attempted to overthrow our government) on the cover of Vogue. Shouts to my former co-worker Jacqui Palumbo (hi, Jacqui if you’re reading!) for getting a hat tip in Flynn’s piecing together of the story.
Man, there was so much news this past week (on top of the fact that Donald Trump and his enablers attempted to overthrow our government) that I can barely fit in a pair of big stories that Nick Quah covered at Hot Pod. The first is the ongoing controversy over the New York Times podcast Caliphate and producer Andy Mills. And the second is an open letter former Condé Nast audio producers published documenting the company’s mismanagement of their audio department.
What I’m Engaged With
Last week, I spotlighted a story at TechCrunch that reported the news that Twitter had acquired Breaker, the podcast broadcasting and discovery app.
The purpose of the acquisition for Twitter was to add the Breaker team and technology to Twitter’s new Spaces feature, which “lets Twitter users chat in real time using voice instead of text, as they do today,” per the TechCrunch story.
I spent the last week thinking about this news and looking a little further into Twitter Spaces. Per Twitter’s help center, Spaces are, “a place to come together, built around the voices of the people using Twitter, your Twitter community. Spaces are live for as long as they’re open; once ended, they will no longer be available publicly on Twitter.” Spaces have been rolling out in beta to small groups of users since mid-December. And yesterday, per Twitter’s Spaces account, another group was added.
It appears that Twitter won’t roll Spaces fully out to users until the end of 2021. So it may be awhile until we see how users on the platform begin to incorporate Spaces into whatever they are doing on Twitter. But just searching Twitter for “twitter spaces” indicates that there are users that are excited about the prospect of Spaces.
The main thing I’ve seen people talking about is the possibility of using Spaces for live commentary—such as during a seismic event in American politics that we witnessed yesterday or on January 6th. Periscope was first a revelation for newscasting during major events back in the 2010s, but slowly evolved as a way to create the Twitter-native “post game” show. You can look at The Ringer’s Talk the Thrones post-show broadcasts or at Rob Perez’s “Late Night with Wob” immediately after a night of NBA games for some shining examples of the form.
Spaces, it seems, don’t archive the way Periscope broadcasts do so it could give audiences a sense of urgency to tune in. And I could see it easily translating to sports and pop culture.
These days, for a lot of sports fans, watching a game often consists of watching the live action on one screen and checking Twitter for commentary on another. The people you follow on Twitter are, most of the time, more insightful and more likely to be the voices you really want to hear than the actual broadcasters on a lot of games. With Spaces, you could have your favorite sports writers or podcasters go live during a game and provide you with the audio broadcast you want to hear while you have the visual broadcast on mute.
Appointment TV like Game of Thrones is rare these days. But there are still examples, such as The Last Dance last May or The Undoing this past fall. Your major pop culture outlets could set up a broadcast to immediately follow the show’s conclusion and could either serve as a major TV critic’s first word on the latest episode as opposed to the “quick turnaround review piece” that devoted fans wait for on Twitter (C’mon, I’m not pathetic. You know you had at least one show you did that for!). Or you could have some other staffers get a platform for quick takes, while the lead TV critic delivers the full written review the next morning.
And there could be a bunch of innovative new ways people use the feature. Or, it could flop. Or, as TechCrunch points out, “it remains to be seen if Twitter—a service that has publicly struggled with online toxicity and moderation failures—will be able to make audio networking a safe place for users to chat, or if it will amplify Twitter’s existing challenges in these areas.” It’s an interesting play by Twitter to give its users more tools to engage with each other and with audiences. And it potentially gives media outlets another way to generate content.
A Little Bit of Culture
This Week: Soul (2020)
This was going to be my entry for last week’s newsletter but I honestly wasn’t in any mood to talk about this movie after watching Donald Trump and his supporters lead a coup against the United States government. A week has passed, and I don’t feel that much better or any less stressed out, but I do want to talk about Soul.
MILD SPOILERS AHEAD
For those that don’t know, Soul is Pixar’s latest animated feature. The movie has been met with mixed responses. There are some that have questioned the film’s decision to transform its Black protagonist into a blobby soul and then a cat for a large part of the film. Others have questioned the actual poignancy and power of the film’s philosophy. Me, I mainly questioned some of the forced jokes: See the running gag of the “new soul” 22 (voice by Tina Fey) driving a series of notable historical figures to exasperation with plenty of groan-worthy one-liners—Bill and Ted this is not!
Soul may not be a Major Pixar film on the level of Wall-E or Up or Toy Story 3, but it is a moving film even if you don’t find it’s overall message that powerful or original. (As my girlfriend’s father pointed out, it’s kind of just It’s a Wonderful Life.) When the main protagonist, Joe, sees his life played before him in the afterlife it’s hard not to project yourself into that moment. What am I spending my time doing? Why does meeting that next goal, achieving that next thing, mean so much to me? What will I be remembered for? What was the point of my life? As someone who has put a lot of his life’s worth in publishing a novel through the traditional agent-publisher process, not having anything happen yet has been painful for me at times. But it’s also let me think more about the fact that achieving that goal won’t necessarily make me whole, won’t give my entire life and existence meaning.
So whether or not the movie is original or actually a great or powerful film, Soul will still be a meaningful movie, I think, to most people. Plus, it has a soundtrack with killer compositions from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (so, so, so, good!), an amazing character named Terry, and the beloved “quiet coyote” bit (read the comments!), which I swear teachers did to me during school—either that or I Mandela Effected a memory.