Full Transcript for Why Instagram Changed Its Mind on Long Form Video

We're taking a big risk with this Long Form thing. I don't know if it's going to work. We could be wrong. Today's guest is Adam Masseri. He's the head of Instagram and the man in charge of the app that you open every single day. A lot's changed since we spoke two years ago, and this time he's on the show to talk about one of the biggest updates to the app since it launched in 2010 with photos and filters.

Horizontal videos known as features, which can be over an hour long and watched on your phone and TV. We talked to Adam about their plans for monetization and what this change means for creators. You'll learn how Instagram works today and what content breaks out on the platform. We end by talking about the future of Instagram and the implications of AI on our feeds and in our world.

The trend definitely is like month over month, more anxiety and more frustration and more anger about AI.

Can I start by saying you win best shirt of the day? This is like an amazing vintage tea here. I appreciate that. Like deep jealousy. It's like coming from the guy who won best shirt last time you sat down. Yeah, I felt... Oh, yeah.

I don't know. Yeah, I'm really appreciative of you saying that because I felt competitive with you from the last episode. I feel like in the last episode, we looked like we ran Instagram and you looked like you were the creator. I'll take that. I'll take that as a compliment. I forgot. You were wearing a Zidane shirt. It was a Zidane. Oh, man, I love Zidane.

Zidane. We got briefed by your team prior to this and there's some major updates coming to Instagram. There's always major updates. There's always major updates. But this one to us feels pretty substantial. So I'm curious if you could walk us through like, you know, open Instagram tomorrow. What has changed? So we are going to support long form videos and horizontal videos.

It's going to show up in a couple different ways. So as you're scrolling through feed, if you're seeing a reel or a short video that's part of a longer video, you're going to be able to tap to go to the longer video. We're going to start to show some of those longer videos and explore specifically, which is a search tab or the grid to help people start to discover these types of videos.

And we're going to try and start to nurture a really not quite non -existent, but a very sort of underdeveloped part of the ecosystem, which is long form video creators like yourselves. Like this conversation being over an hour can live on Instagram. Exactly. Hopefully. Well, yes, it can. We need to not just live on Instagram. It needs to be able to be successful on Instagram.

And therein lies the challenge. As a design guy, because we have the new mockups, is there anything you would want to walk us through or you think is significant to talk through? What things are going to look like? Oh, yeah. Let's look at Instagram on TV. So this is what it looks like to upload long form. You basically go create. This is the desktop view.

Yes. You upload the video. And then basically, similar to YouTube, you pick a thumbnail or upload a thumbnail. Yeah. Which, by the way, you can do now for your reels. You can pick the thumbnail. Right. I find that our algorithm seems to– I don't even think there's an algorithm there, but it seems to always pick the absolute word. Worst photo of my face possible.

Here, I'll show you the actual Explorer so you can see some of the long form formats. Oh, you have long form formats in there? Yeah. Well, we always try things. Oh, yeah. I don't know if the content's any good yet. Okay. So for people who aren't watching right now, there is a long form video up top that says, a wiener dog bit my butt.

It's a 15– We don't have a lot of content yet.

It's a 15 -minute long video. That's at the top of the page. And if you scroll– Basically, I can start watching immediately. And then can I turn? Yeah, I can turn and get into– And if you go to Explorer and you scroll down, you'll see there are other– There's more. Oh, yeah. I see them. And they're just two -by -ones, we call them. So they take up two grid spots.

Can I read you some quotes from our last conversation? Yeah, no, I'm ready for this. Well, I'm not ready for this, but I'm excited for this. Connecting friends is an adjacent thing to short form video. Yes. Short form video is an adjacent thing to long form video. Yes. But long form video and connecting friends aren't adjacent. The reason I am not interested in pursuing long form video in a meaningful way is because I don't want to erode our heart, our core reason to exist.

Yes. What changed? I stand by that. So I think the question now is– well, a couple of things. I'll answer your question directly and then explain. So the world has changed, and you're seeing more and more TV being an important extension of all these platforms like Instagram. So that's what's changed. I still agree with all of those statements, though, which is why it's going to be really hard, which is why I'm saying it's going to take a while to get this right.

The idea to start is not to just put 60, 30, 90 -minute videos in Instagram and have that be just live along other side reels, but to try to get more dynamic with the creative format. So the ideas that we're most excited about are long form videos that can also show up or present as short form videos. Right. So for instance, I mean, you already do this a bunch.

Right. You do these podcasts. It's the easiest example. You slice it up. You use platforms like Instagram as the top of funnel to raise awareness, and then you kind of go to a podcast player or YouTube or wherever to watch the full length thing. So if, like, let's say this video you wanted to use and post it on Instagram, we would try to have it show up not just as a long form video, but we try to help you by building tools, clip it up so that it can live like short pieces of video.

And then for the users who want to dive in, they can decide to dive in and get the full thing. The idea being that if we do that, it might be allow the feature to both be adjacent to the short form video and then the short form videos to be adjacent to the front content. But we don't know if that's going to work. How much of this is, like, you obviously mentioned multiple formats.

The first time I heard about this, I was like, this must be about podcasting. Is that like the top of mind format? Matt, because again, you mentioned like the short form to long form or long form to short form, like it's heavily podcasting right now. And then it's like streaming. Those are like the two formats that that exists in where there's like an abundance of clips.

And our intention with our clips is to raise awareness for the show. But I would not say that my assumption is that somebody who watches a clip is going to watch the full length episode, largely because there's also a decent amount of friction. Yeah. Right. On YouTube, you have the ability to connect the video and there's like a link on the bottom to watch the full video.

It's a completely different expectation and behavior. And it's about like the two screens. Like I would have assumed this isn't about podcasting. It's more so about the screen that YouTube is starting to dominate and saying like, OK, this is a place now where a lot of our audience are sitting and watching some longer form versions of shows that we already have, like Subway Takes or Trackstar.

Yeah. And we want to be on that screen. Yeah. I agree with what both of you are saying. Podcast is the cleanest example, but there are other examples, other formats. And yeah, I think it's very much about the TV. You look at YouTube in the US, as best we can tell, their time spent on devices is flat and all their growth is coming on TV. And it's not about the time spent as much as the cultural relevance.

We want to be the most culturally relevant platform. And to do that, we just need to show up where people are. We have to do so in our own way. And so it's going to be a journey. But we do, like I said before, our North Star is actually to be the most preferred platform, people's favorite app. Product question for you on this. Yeah. Are you going to be able to close the app and continue listening? We've just talked about that two days ago.

Like clearly, there's a bunch of stuff we need to do like that. I think we need to be able to close and keep listening. There's some interesting nuance challenges around there. You know, continue browsing your phone or Instagram and continue watching for long form videos. A lot of these things that we never had to build, we're going to have to revisit.

Close and keep listening is actually, I think, an extremely big deal. Because it would change my relationship to Instagram and where Instagram fits in my life. Right? Instagram doesn't fit in my drive or it shouldn't fit in my drive to work. It shouldn't fit there, but it could if I could discover a podcast in the morning, start listening to the long form, and then close the app and keep listening on my drive to work.

It's a very significant change to how I'm engaging with Instagram. Yeah, I think that could be big. I mean, even further out, if you believe that glasses are going to be an important form factor, that's another one where audio becomes very important. I think that when you talk about smart glasses, even when you have displays, if you're using the display, that's a fallback.

That's when the audio only fails and you have to show something. So I don't think people are going to want stuff in front of their screens most of the time. Yeah. But there's other interesting use cases, right? Like the living room, right? When you come home, if you want to continue watching on your TV, that should be seamless. As we start talking about long form video on Instagram, the number one question, I went around here and asked every creator in this building, I'm sitting down with Adam Aseri, what do you want to hear about? Monetization is number one.

Yeah. It's really compelling for a startup creator right now or just a creative person. Yeah. You can find audience. Really compelling. As we convert into long form video, I think now the question goes, is Instagram giving us a place to distribute our show or a business model that supports shows? So, I mean, we talked about monetization a bunch last time, but there's three ways you can get paid at a high level.

You can get paid by the platform directly. You can get paid by a fan and you can get paid by a brand. And right now, the way that it works on Instagram primarily is you primarily get paid by brands. Some people get paid by fans. We have still a small performance based program, but it's still like I talked about last time for video. Anyway, ROI negative.

We spend more money than we make back by a long shot. And so it doesn't really make sense to scale up because we're just burning capital. I think it's worth explaining that again because the last time we talked about it, I found it super interesting that you said like there's no way we can do this where it isn't burning cash. Yeah. And I'll let you explain it.

But basically, it was that like there was a pool of money and you talked about replacement value. Yeah, exactly. So when we pay for content, how much more content is created and how much more consumption does that drive? It has to be incremental consumption. Otherwise, it's just moving videos from one view to another. Do we make enough money from that incremental consumption to pay for the checks that we're writing creators? And the reason why we don't is a couple of reasons.

One, creators don't produce a lot more when we pay compared to what they already create. And what we do find is often, not always, the incremental content they create is not as high quality as what they would have created or what they were already creating for free. Basically, in the most simple terms, the way I read it from our last interview was, if Samir is in the program, he's getting paid.

I'm not in the program, I'm not getting paid. And you remove Samir from the platform, the audience will still be served videos that they enjoy, regardless of whether the creator was paid. Yeah, exactly. I think, though, my perception and my even experience is that, especially as you roll out long form, that I will come for a show I enjoy.

And monetization is more straightforward because of attribution on long form. Right. Yes. So that cuts both ways. So the way, if you come for the content, we should be able to, it's harder, but we should be able to measure that measured as like long term retention. Like people, do people of that group that has access to this content, do more of them use Instagram in a month or six months than would have if they weren't, if they're in the other group? It's hard to measure, but you can try to measure that.

Attribution is easier because the ads are more attached to the creative, right? So, but that also, but the ads are also, I think, much less pleasant, right? Like people are more annoyed by pre -rolls and mid -rolls than they are about scrolling by an ad between two videos. And so we have to figure that out as well. We're open to all of these things.

I don't think of platform payments or performance -based incentives or bonuses as a revenue driver. I'd be psyched to scale them up for any of these formats as long as we're breaking even. I just can't, as someone who's responsible for the business as well, justify just losing money on the investments. Breaking even is totally fine. So for long term, we're going to have to figure it out.

If we want to do performance -based incentives or bonuses, we have to do the measurement to make sure it makes sense. We could do mid -rolls and pre -rolls, which make it easier to do something that might be attribution and attributed payout. But then it's also going to be problematic from a user experience perspective. And we'll figure out how to balance that because we've never done that on Instagram, at least that I can think of right now.

And so I'll get a lot of heat from the other side on that, the consumer side on that.

We've got subscriptions. Maybe that matters. Maybe it doesn't. I'd be curious what you think.

And then obviously there's brand deals, which we're trying to help support through a number of things. Giving measurement to advertisers, building a creator marketplace for advertisers and creators to find each other, and just trying to facilitate those sort of transactions. Here's what I'll say. I was listening to you on DAX, and you had this quote that I wrote down because I think it's relevant to this moment and what we're talking about.

You said, people are great at nuance and tech is great at scale. Yes. And I think this moment, what I'm noticing about this moment in the creator economy is there's now tension between entertainment and technology. And if we replace the term people there with entertainment as an industry, I think the quote still works. Entertainment is great at nuance.

Tech is great at scale. And so as you're describing how you approach monetization, it's describing it through a scaled approach, through how do we scale this. Whereas I think right now, as we're seeing our industry evolve, it is working more in the direction of entertainment and nuance. Oh, for sure. Certain views are more memorable or more enjoyable than others.

And I think that also in the context of the advertising business, marketplaces undervalue nuance. And I think if you took 10 creators even in this building and went, X creator does X amount of views and X creator does same amount of views, they're getting paid differently based on the nuance of their audience, based on the nuance of the quality, time and market.

There's a lot of nuance to it. Absolutely. And so I think the requirement is a level of nuance in how we engage with the platform from a monetization perspective. And you're even seeing that like YouTube has the most scaled monetization approach. But I think what you're going to see in our industry over the next couple of years, especially as Netflix has joined the conversation and joined the creator licensing conversation, original programming conversation, is our relationship to all of these platforms is going to change.

And it is, I guess my question to you is like, do you believe Instagram moves in the direction of participating in the entertainment business? Do you, do you see yourself as this moved along from going, okay, let's, let's launch originals. Let's license content. Let's have exclusivity. let's create ways to monetize that play into the nuance of each of these shows and creators? Yes, but I think the question is really going to be how much, right? Because just by even building features, we are clearly in that space or in that area more than we were before.

Yeah, the sheer nature that I can watch an Instagram show on a television suggests that you are entering the entertainment business in a more significant way. I think a lot about scale, obviously, because we have billions of people who use Instagram and I feel like we're responsible to delivering a good product and service to all of them.

There's tens of millions, depending on how you count, even more creators on the platform. I feel responsible to providing a great experience for them. And one of the most common complaints I get is like, why does this person get paid and I don't get paid, right? And so I think the real prize is to build an ecosystem or an economy that is self -sufficient because that way you can just be like, all right, cool.

If you want to get paid, this is how you get paid. If we're paying you directly, this is how many views you need to average or whatever it is. If we're not paying you directly, this is how brand content works. We can help you find those deals. If it's subscriptions that work, by the way, these are not mutually exclusive. This is how to build up your subscriptions business.

Now, in addition to that, we're going to do bespoke deals as well because we know we need to bootstrap the ecosystem.

But, and we know that there are going to be creators who I think are particularly important to establish legitimacy for the program, to have maybe outsized reach, not necessarily with consumers, but with creators themselves. There's all sorts of reasons why you might pay for content as well. But those bespoke deals, I feel like, are a very different thing than the sort of scaled programs.

And the scaled programs, by definition, can reach orders of magnitude more people. And so what I'd like to do is both, right? But I just think that at our scale, we have to focus a lot on that scaled bit. And we can lose a lot of nuance when you look at the giant numbers, right? Like, I don't think all, I definitely don't think all views are credited with equal.

Actually, I think more valuable than any creator content is probably like a photo or video from someone you love in real life, right? That's really the hook content right now on Instagram. Like, if you looked at how many views are of friend content on Instagram, it's a very small percentage. But it's not a very small percentage of the value.

It's one of the most common reasons people say they use the platform in the first place. So we get that. But if we're going to be spending tens, hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars on content, we have to be operating on more than intuition. I keep thinking about this and like, I'll talk about how I see us adopting this new update, right? So long form video, like what's a win for me in this context? For me, it'd be like, if we can release our podcast on a regular basis on Instagram.

One, if people could close the app and listen, it'd be a huge win. Two, like I will then put that in our media kits and we will go to market and sell additional distribution. Now, if the views are combined clips to long form, likely how I will sell is like, you're starting to see this a lot in business podcasts, like the watermark on top of the show.

I don't know if you watch David Senra, but like powered by ramp is on screen on clips and on long form at all times. And a lot of that is because clips is where the majority of the impressions are. We have a clip of Kareem from our episode with him that has over a million views and we have other clips as well. And like those views are moments from that episode.

So they should, in my mind, come together in aggregate. Basically, the short of it is like increasing our surface area for discovery plus for sponsorship, right? Is what would be a win. And what would kind of be very annoying to me would be if in a year's time, you guys don't care about long form anymore. And there's like a dramatic difference.

I mean, I think back to 2018, IGTV comes out. I remember Colin and I, maybe one of the first people- We made a video that day. We made an IGTV video. I remember us, nothing was working for us as creators. So we were just kind of like trying to figure out how anyone would notice us. And so we wanted to be the first guys to make an IGTV video.

So we like quickly made an IGTV video. But IGTV obviously went away. It didn't, it didn't. It evolved. I guess it evolved to reels. Yeah, it evolved. I mean, I think IGTV, I don't think we understood the nuanced challenges that came with long form at the time. We had the format right, you know, full screen, immersive, et cetera. But we had the length wrong, or at least we didn't, we didn't.

What was the length, three to 10 minutes? Yeah, it was focused on long form. Yeah.

Look, I think that's always a risk. I think we have a pretty decent track record of when we say something, we try to stick to it for a long period of time. You know, we've been, you know, I've gotten a lot of heat for video ever since I started. I started in this job almost exactly eight years ago. And like I got, I've gotten a lot of the heat in the early couple of years.

It was like leaning too much into video. Reels didn't work out of the gate. The first version of Reels we built on top of stories. That failed spectacularly before we pivoted to being distributed through feed and on profiles. But we figured that out. And then even features that are less core to the business, but we know people rely on things like channels or subscriptions.

Like we've kept them going. Now, I'm not going to sit here and promise. I think anyone who promises anything a year or two out in this day and age is probably slightly overconfident. You want to make it work and then you want to make it good and then you want to make it grow. Connor, who runs Threads, always tells me that. So it's going to work to start.

We're going to, we can spend a bunch of time with a bunch of bells and whistles, but we're probably going to focus on the wrong thing. We're going to hear a lot of feedback really quickly from people like you, which is great. We appreciate that. And then we're going to iterate fast. I think that's the key thing is, are you committed to continuing to evolve it forward?

I bet you this is going to go through the same wave that most things go through. Like when we launched Threads, it was wildly successful in the first couple of days. Way more successful than any of us had anticipated. We got 100 million installs in four and a half days.

And then everyone's like, it's replaced Twitter. And I was like, well, easy. Easy, everybody. And then the novelty effect wears off, right? Yeah. And so the numbers come back down. And then you start to build back up. And so then we were a complete disaster. And then now, two, three years later, we've got over half a billion users and it's growing and it's doing really, really well.

So now to get tactical into creators listening right now, we've seen outsized engagement on carousel posts with text on them that read like a magazine. It's our publication, published press. Carousels are having a moment. They're having a moment. Is that because of time spent? On the post. Is that like, is it because I have a couple of theories.

We were talking about it this morning because we're like, this is a, this is a carousel post about our interview with Jack. Yeah. It's like one of the most engaged posts we've ever had. Not ever had, but had in a while. Yeah. And outsized engagement to other types of posts. It's for a couple of different reasons. One is if you add music. I don't know if this one has music.

It should. It's eligible to show up in the Reels viewer now. Right. So it can be in a video viewer because it feels native enough. Two is it gets, it gets at least a second chance. So if you don't scroll the first time you see it, it might show up a second time scrolled to the second position for you. So you can get a second at bat, so to speak.

And three, yeah, depth of engagement. Like this format where you're kind of like flipping through these like slides, it's, time spent, but it's more likely to inspire you to like it, to send it to a friend, etc. It's just a deeper, richer format, so it drives more engagement even beyond time spent. I also think it doesn't, something I'm noticing is like, if I don't really know where the reel is going, you know, maybe I'll press down to 2x speed it, to be like, come on, get there.

But with this format, I control the pace. Yeah, that's actually a really good point. And therefore, it'll work for you if you have the option to see if you're interested, whereas it's much harder on the reel. I also think there's just something to not being a reel right now that we're seeing. And I guess I should say that a different way, just changing the format, because we'll even post 4x3 right now in video and find that it's performing really well.

I think just because it stands out, it looks different. Yeah, that can definitely be a thing. I mean, that is always... Yeah, like this, again, more engagement than typical because it was a square, I think. I'm just having affinity for Jack now. Right. Look how young he was. Yeah, we're playing around a lot. And again, I think, you know, we're seeing more of our friends who like launch specific accounts for a specific brand for a specific show.

We come from a different era of the internet where it's like, we're Colin and Samir, whatever Colin and Samir do is going to be on this account. Yeah, yeah. Versus like, you even look at our brand, it's like, there's Colin and Samir, and then there's the Colin and Samir show. Yeah. Jay Shetty is another great example. Yeah. There's Jay Shetty, and then there's On Purpose with Jay Shetty, right? So like, trying to navigate now, like how focused is the account versus how broad the account is.

Yeah, yeah. No, it's a lot, which is why, again, I think there's a lot of tools. You should evaluate them. You should be really clear about who you want to be, like what your identity is, and what your goal is that you're trying to achieve. And then you got to make sure that you're picking the tools that help you stay true to those two goals.

But there are other examples too, like, I mean, we're talking mostly about more like digital native video type creators, but like in style, you have, you know, on one hand, like the new version of what traditionally was the establishment with business of fashion, which is using a lot of these carousel formats. But those guys are crushing right now, and they are kind of like more relevant than a lot of actual fashion magazines at this point.

Or style .com has a very iconic format. They all look. Oh, wow. And they're all, you know, it's him. Like how much we love consistency. I know. I know, but that's so interesting. We do all love like aesthetic and consistency. Everyone in fashion, you know, knows this account. So, like, he's established a brand for himself. What do you think are the most slept on Instagram features? From a creator perspective or from an average person perspective? Let's do both.

Yeah. I do think for some people, channels are great, but they underestimate their value because they're like, oh, it's like way less. Like I have, I think I have 4 million followers on Instagram. Yeah, 4 .1. 4 .1, thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Fact check. I probably have 200 ,000 or 300 ,000 people who subscribe to my channel, but they are.

So, like, it would be easy for me to ignore that. But they are people who are willing to let me buzz their pocket every time I have a thought. And so, I think, again, like, remember what the number represents. It doesn't, not all numbers, like, not all views are credit equal. Mm -hmm. I love it when creators get kind of, they have fun with the close friends list.

It's a way to, like, sort of. I love close friends. I love close friends. Close friends is, and it's, I think. I love finding out I'm on a creator's close friends list. Oh, yeah. It's nothing better. It's a way to just spark so much joy. That's like a warm hug. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's like calling out someone's name in a nice way when you're on stage.

It's like, whoa. Who was the celebrity recently that everyone was on Close Friends? Selena Gomez? Friends Keep Secrets. Friends Keep Secrets. Yeah, yeah. We did the Secret Friends Only hack where we had everybody. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But, like, it was amazing how exciting it was to see the green. Yeah. And go, I'm on Benny's Close Friends.

Yeah, yeah. I was like, what? It's great. It's such a fun thing. I think we should be doing more fun hacks like that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think other things are interesting where you connect things. Like, I met a creator once who followed a different set of accounts every month based on a cause they were trying to evangelize. Oh, that's super cool.

That's cool. I like that. Yeah. And I told them, make a video explaining it. Yeah, yeah. You know, because actually who you follow is definitely something people look at. It's valuable. They go look there to find other people to follow. So, if they were unfollowing everyone and following a new set every month, they were already doing that.

They should make a video about it. Yeah. These sort of, like, creative hacks, I think, is where the good stuff happens. That's cool. So, for the rest of us who might not be creators, I mean, there's a couple of things that I feel like most people I meet don't fully understand.

So, one is that way more photos and videos, if you even get rid of text, are sent in DMs than posted to stories or reels. So, DMs are much bigger. They're the primary people share on Instagram every day. For teens specifically, notes are huge. Like, most people don't even know what notes are when I talk to them, but they're those little status updates at the top of the DM tab.

They remind people our age of the aimstats. Yeah, away message. Yeah. They're massive conversation starters. People use them to give updates on where they are. They do these kind of, like, fun, cryptic emoji talk or whatever. And then, the last one, which is, again, skews young, but more young adult and teen, not just teen, is instants are massive.

Instants are, like, I'd like, instants is that little pile. It's a dedicated app, but you don't need the app. It's just a quick way to get to the camera. But in some of the countries where we launched instants first, there's more media for teens sent to instants than to stories in a given day. And, like, if you meet anybody, I'm in my 40s.

None of my friends are, like, actually have, like, three friends. Instants make you feel really old. I have cousins who are in college, and, I mean, for them, Snap is the primary way they communicate with each other. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's amazing. I didn't really realize that, but it is the primary. Yeah. Snap is interesting because they do really well with teens.

They seem to often, at least in this country, age out in college. Yeah. You know, in instants are, you could, they're kind of like Snap in that they are images that you send, but you can always send images in lots of other ways. Um, what's fun about them is that there's, like, there's no gallery upload at all. That's all, like, shoot and go.

You can add a filter before you shoot now, but that's about it. Right. Um, but basic, it's kind of like the most non -AI thing you could do. There's, like, no ranking. There's no filters. There's no gallery. There's no pre -capture. I sent one by accident once. Yeah. Well, that's why we have an undo button. I was like, I was trying to look at how tired.

Colin's a geriatric millennial. It's like you and me. We have the undo button. Colin is a geriatric millennial. I am, too. I've sent instances where I'm trying to look how tired I look. Yeah, I sent that one out. And I also, I retweet or repost. Colin, repost everything. Everything. It's crazy. And I'm not even needing to. No, it's because I think where his thumb is, where he's scrolling.

And then people will jam it to me and be like, why did you repost this? Like, why are you even looking at that? When you're on a FaceTime, it's like the bottom half of your face off the... Yes. Yeah. I'm bad. It's getting worse. It's bad. Yeah. Um. You're a dad now. You're a dad now. Yeah. My favorite feature maybe on Instagram is barely used.

It's called blends where you, in a DM thread, you can have a reels feed for just for both of you. And you can see who's reels for who. I've never heard of that. I've never heard of that. Exactly. Yeah. But think about a world in which, like, this was your living room and we had a TV over there. And we could start one and we could just browse it together.

And I could see what you're into and what you're into and you could see what I'm into. It's a pretty fun, surprising experience. Yeah. It's very Spotify inspired. I have those playlists with friends. Yeah. Yeah. It's Spotify inspired, but it feels super different because you're, I mean, I don't know, like everyone's Instagram is different, right? Um, and music, we, you know, we all, we have a different takes, but there's a lot of common.

Um, I think there's more shared, uh, in a way that's probably good and not necessarily saying that with any judgment. Whereas if we looked at each other's Instagrams, it might be a bit more surprising than if we looked at what each other listened to. Should we? Yeah, let's do it. Have you ever used your Argo? Your Argo is the easiest way.

I have. Okay, mine says, lately you've been into pro tennis action, artisan timepieces, and global food finds. That feels like you. Yeah, it's me. Mine says, lately you've been into catching waves on the West Coast, behind the scenes music stories, and the hilarious side of raising kids. That also feels pretty appropriate. It is. Lately you've been into Olivia Rodrigo, LA City Life, and artisan coffee runs.

Olivia Rodrigo is your number one. I love Olivia Rodrigo. I have to tell you, man.

I really love Olivia Rodrigo. Wait, hold on. I want to talk about coffee later. Because I was like, after this, I definitely want to get a coffee. You got a recommendation around here? Oh, yeah. Don't worry about that, Adam. I got you. Can we talk about what else you're watching on Instagram right now? Yeah.

There's a lot of stuff. I really like the throwing fits guys in the fashion world. Yeah. I mean, I really like comedy.

What's her name? Laura Romano, I think is her name. Her mom is German, and her dad is Italian. And she does these really funny skits. You might have seen her, because she was on the Brooklyn Coffee Shop recently. Oh, yeah. I did see that. She does this whole bit about an Italian airline employee at the kiosk, just being as unhelpful as possible.

It gets me every single time. I always like to give Xander a shout -out. The Real Professor X, I still think, is maybe my favorite men's fashion I think he's a substitute teacher in Portland but he just has great hot takes and great eBay finds and great style

I see a lot of comedy though I'm a big fan, make me laugh The world is tough, there's a lot going on and I spend most of my day in serious conversations about serious things and it's nice sometimes to get a little bit of a reprieve How important do you think exclusivity is right now for Instagram in terms of people looking at certain creators and going I know that's an Instagram creator so Kareem Rama, Subway Takes, every day I open up Instagram, top of my feed but I go to YouTube and Subway Takes, Uncut, the longer form version with celebrities is up there and I watch it there How important is it to you as you look to long form now and especially on the TV to go, you

know what, I actually think Kareem Rama should be an Instagram creator or Jack Coyne and Trackstar should be an Instagram multi -platform creator Yeah, so we try and create a lot of value for creators to give people a reason to post more to Instagram or only to Instagram but it's definitely, you're swimming upstream because the creator community is getting more and more thoughtful about diversifying their risk not being beholden to any one platform and therefore using more and more platforms The reason why it's valuable though is what you would think you want to give people a reason to open up Instagram to your framing of your question before So we do want to have

exclusive content on Instagram People think we rank just to drive engagement but we actually rank for a lot of other things Originality is a really key one So we try to show content from the original content creator We try to give original content creators more distribution than aggregators Breakouts is another key one We try to give every piece of content a chance so a brand new account can get millions of views which was impossible two years ago Recency is another one If you want to be culturally relevant you need the ecosystem to ebb and flow with what's happening in the world right now You do those things and you will find more creators who are culturally relevant and

original will break out and find an audience and it's easier to be to, I think, earn not necessarily loyalty but affinity from a new creator who's an up -and -comer than from an established creator and eventually that up -and -comer might and probably will increasingly diversify across platforms but there's a period where they came up on Instagram and so they use Instagram more or they use Instagram only for a period of time, etc.

That is a much more practical audience to serve than trying to get YouTubers who have been on YouTube for a decade plus to move to another platform which is a very, very hard proposition Well, I think we should talk about the journey of a new creator right now or even legacy creators because I think as YouTube has dominated connected TV and YouTube has entered more of the entertainment business there is a relative barrier to entry that's higher on YouTube right now Now, the actual barrier to entry you can upload content, of course Basically what I'm saying is we talk to a lot of creators right now who struggled to find audience in YouTube long form because you do have a

click and watch barrier there it is challenging to get someone to click on your long form video on YouTube So they move to short form and they find success across YouTube shorts, Instagram, TikTok and then they we host a show called Creator Support where we sit with creators in their journey and try and solve their problems I would say out of the thousands of people who have submitted the number one problem is how do I go from short form to long form Yeah Because it's hard, right? Once you've built the flow in short form it's very hard But those two systems on YouTube are very separate It's not just the nature of the formats of the media It's also how the systems work Can

you explain that? What do you mean by that? We look at things like alright, what is the percentage of followers or subscribers you have that you reach and what's the floor for that? And how does that compare across the platforms? We want to make sure that having a follower count on Instagram means something even in a recommendations first world And so we look at the competition all the time as well and we try to do our best to estimate and index how we're doing rather than the competition YouTube seems to be very different in long form and short form where long form seems to be

like much just optimized very differently where your existing base really matters and short form seems to not be so it's easier to grow not just because it's shorter but because the way the ranking system is optimized it's easier to find an audience in shorts This is a real oversimplification but do you think it is easier for Instagram to become YouTube or YouTube to become Instagram? I don't want to become YouTube because then I think we lose the friends but I think it's easier to go in that direction than for YouTube to grow on the friend side YouTube has tried they had messaging they got rid of it they've sort of re -added it they had stories they got rid of it they've

struggled to move from that original framing from long form to short form to friends now but you know we're taking a big risk with this long form thing like I still am I don't know if it's going to work right? I still really believe that short form and friends are very adjacent and long form I'm trying to figure out a way to like reshape it so it's adjacent but you know we could be wrong it would be great because I text Colin podcasts regularly and I think he probably listens to like 1% of what I text him I think that's generous I think that's generous yeah I was going to say maybe 0% I read the title and I go okay I assume I get it I assume I get it yeah but I think it's

a hard ask to like DM someone a 2 hour thing and expect them to engage with it it's a huge commitment it's like here's a book to read it's like 14 hours of your life it's like a big deal but I want to talk about like I just want to spend some time on the journey of a creator today yeah on Instagram to go from okay I'm throwing out reels yeah and I'm experiencing some discovery or you know some relative success like paint me the picture of you know what it means to go to long form what it means to build a career on the platform yeah so I mean here's the thing because the other thing I want to be conscious of is like your audience I think is probably more focused on video

creators specifically but we have a wide range of creators on Instagram I'm sure a lot of them watch this show but not all of the creators that we have and care about even create video at all and so one of the most common criticism I got a lot of criticism but one of the common I don't know if it's one of the most top 10 definitely from creators is like stop building new tools like I like I can't use all these things there's too many things there's like channels and stories and now there's instants and notes and there's reels and regular videos and carousels and you want me to put music on my photos and now you're going to do features like you're giving me a heart attack

the thing that I want to make sure I say is you don't have to use all the formats you should we want to build a suite of tools that might be useful for you because if we build eight then maybe there's two or three that are useful to you and a different two or three that are useful to you and then we're more likely to be creating value for you and have you be a happy customer

so I want to start by saying you don't have to do anything you have to figure out what is your business what is your creative identity what is your business what's your content strategy that is aligned with your creative identity and can be a business right and so all your decisions should be evaluated through that lens now for a video creator who has long form content maybe the podcast is the easiest example I think right now you probably are using a third party to clip it up or maybe you're editing it yourself you try to raise awareness you do the link in bio thing you curse me under your breath for the fact that you can't make a hyperlink in the caption and you sort of

do your thing. I think with features, ideally we're creating it in a way that you can actually grow your reach by also posting the full length feature on the pod in this example on Instagram. But you should just experiment. You should figure out, is there a strategy that makes sense? Given the tools we have. And if there is, great. And if there's not, that's also okay.

How will watch time play into ranking? Like if we put an hour -long pod up or 90 -minute pod up and people watch all of it, does that change how we rank? Does that change how that piece of content ranks? We focus way less on watch time than all the competition does, but we do care about watch time. But I think for YouTube, if you go all the way to the streamers like Netflix, watch time.

And then for Netflix and the subscription businesses, subscribers are like the two top tops. But we already look at watch time. We look at things like how likely you are to watch most of the video, how much of a video we think you're going to watch. But we also care about sends and comments and likes and story shares and the rest of it. So with long -form video, it'll be successful if it grows the pie in more ways than just watch time.

I'm sure long -form video can grow how much time people spend on Instagram. But if it does so at the expense of all the other things that we care about, then that's not a success. We need to find a way for it to sort of contribute back. So Reels is a good example. Reels, when we started, maybe it was a version before Reels. But there was a period where bringing more video into Instagram, bringing more video into Facebook drove up watch time, but it was bad for everything else.

Bad for DMs? Bad for what? Yeah. Literally pick a thing. DMs, stories sharing, original photo sharing, original video sharing, revenue, revenue per hour. Because if you watch one video for 20 minutes, that's maybe 100 things that you could have sent to a friend or liked from a friend or commented on.

When Reels became very accretive to Instagram was when we started to make them more social. Particularly, you see a video and then you send it to a friend and then you connect over that video and then they maybe watch something else. So it became symbiotic. So it grew watch time, yes, but it also grew messages. It also grew retention. It also grew the number of people who use Instagram in a given day.

So we have to find a path like that for long form for it to be truly successful. Yeah, it's interesting because I think, I mean, of course I think like, when I think of like an Instagram show, I think about Subway takes, especially this year. Yeah. He's crushing it. He's crushing. And like, when you open Instagram, you see it and it works so well because the nature of it is you are ready to engage with it immediately.

Whether you agree with the take, disagree with the take, most likely it reminds you of a friend or, you know, like you immediately want to send it. Like Colin's take was like highly shareable about men having too many options for handshakes that he does not know what to do. I'm sure you guys had a– I intentionally shook your hand second to see what Samir did so that I could follow his lead and make sure that it was a smooth Greek.

Can we talk about– You know what I mean? After his question, which is actually a very good one or– sorry, his point, so I don't want to derail too much. I also want to talk about man hugs. I want to talk about hugs. Sure. Because like, do you go in? Do you not go in? We had man hugs on our list. Okay, good. Sorry, please go on. Just to answer that question, I always hug.

I'm a hugger. Yeah, I always hug. I will only hug, again, if the person in front hugs. Yeah, yeah. He watches. But it's an issue when he hugs and I can tell on the person's face they don't want the hug because now I have to hug and I know they don't want it. This is the thing. Is it worse to hug someone who doesn't want the hug or to miss the opportunity to hug a hugger when you're a hugger yourself? I think a missed hug is a tragedy.

I'm with you. I think a missed hug is a tragedy. I'm going to take the opposite approach. I think it's worse to hug someone who would not prefer to be hugged. Yeah. But– I don't fully remember where I was going, but I think it was– I think it was basically just like– what I'm trying to get to is like creators who are watching this understanding the mechanics of what makes a great Instagram show today.

Oh, yeah. Right? And a lot of it to me is– you said this on our last episode of sends per reach. Yeah. That still seems to be– That matters a ton. That still seems to be the thing. Particularly for unconnected reach. Right. So there's like really– how do you do better reaching the people who follow you and how do you do better reaching people who don't follow you? Sends per reach is particularly important for that unconnected reach.

Is there a metric for that now? I remember last time during the episode you were like, I mentioned to the team we should make a metric. We now do– in edits, we now do the math for you so you can see it. And we're bringing some of that goodness to the insights in Instagram now. So if you're a new creator, that's probably one of the most important metrics you could follow.

Sends per reach, likes per reach, and then watch time or average watch time. Does repeat returning viewers matter? Like let's say unconnected. I don't follow the account. Yeah. But I come back to it regularly. You come back to the account? I come back to– like it shows up in my Explorer in my Reels tab and I always sit on it when it comes.

Indirectly. So we use your interaction history to predict the likelihood of what you're going to do in the future. Got it. So if you tend to always watch a video from Subway Takes, we're going to predict that you're going to probably watch the next one. So yes. Yes. Yeah, because I noticed there's this graphic designer that I love on Instagram, Alan Peters.

I don't know if you're– Dude, he's so good. He's so good. Samir just showed it to me. I can watch them forever. And I could see this becoming long form. Yeah. I don't know if it needs to be. I think it's– But I think it's partly good because it's so tight. Yeah. I think I could see him though. If I'm talking to Alan and he wants to go into long form, I would say give me a design principles tutorial or course type thing.

I would want educational content about design principles. I don't need you to do the Delta design thing longer than you already do. Or I need a deeper history in the design of this logo. If I really care about design, give me a 10 to 15 minute journey into the design of the Delta logo. A hundred years of logos. Or behind the scenes. Like what is your real process? Because like you literally print out and cut these things in paper.

It's so good. Or like what does your studio look like? Like, you know, there's a lot of different things that you can imagine being excited about hearing from him. I brought him up mostly because I realized the other day I don't follow him. But I get his content all the time. And I always look forward to it. But I realized I didn't follow him because I wanted to show it to Colin.

And I was like, what's his name again? And I just searched like Delta redesign. Yeah. But another show, Connor, if we could bring up is Brooklyn Coffee Shop. Yes. I think they- This one's hard for me. Why is this hard for me? Because I went to NYU. Because this is you? You are the caricature of- No, but I went to school with a bunch of them.

Okay, I see. It's a little close. It's a little close though. It's like, I can't watch the show Girls either. I see. Yeah. I think, you know, we look at right now, there's this emergence of like the Instagram show, which is like well produced, well written, well thought out. If you look at the engagement on Brooklyn Coffee Shop, it's incredible.

Yeah, it's insane. And it's scripted and it's fun. I wouldn't necessarily immediately define it as like the same type of shareability as Subway takes, but it is- It's pretty up there though. It's pretty up there. I'm starting to look at like, is their path or Alan's path, like now let's add longer form content here. Let's add the uncut version of this.

Yeah. But how do they monetize that? Do they put like a brand on top of it? Do they go like Brooklyn Coffee Shop Uncut is sponsored by blank? Like, what is that? There's different, I mean, like I said, there's going to, we're going to try all the things and we'll see which one works, right? So there's us paying directly, but then it has to be a creative in some way.

There is branded content, which by the way, it seems like YouTube is moving towards, like mostly YouTube creators I talk to say that,

I don't think it would work as single show unless it's podcasting. Yeah. I think you'd have to have Instagram premium. Yeah. And then you get access to Longroom. But that's such a different philosophy. Yeah, that's a whole other thing. I do think in principle, creators will want and expect an ad revenue share. Yeah. Because there is context and history that it does work on YouTube.

It's been very successful. I think my concern with it is it's nominal in most of how you're going to do it or how it would happen. And the second thing that you mentioned of how YouTube's engaging, I think, again, there's nuance to as we get into the show business where what YouTube does well with top creators is actually support and saying, hey, we're going to help you pair with brands.

Yeah. And I think Instagram as one of the largest advertising platforms, I think that would be an interesting one. I say it more in principle than in practicality. I think in principle, there will be a grouping of creators who are like, wait, this is the same format. It's on TV. It looks similar. I would expect it. Yeah. But I agree with Samir that I think there is a lot to like, hey, if we do our job right, yes, you need to get paid.

But there are multiple ways to do that. Yeah. And if we do our job right, you are relevant enough culturally and within your community to make monetization possible. Yeah. I just think that's the more scalable thing if we can do it. But again, we have to try all the things and figure it out. It's in our incentive to figure it out. If we don't figure out a way for creators to get a sufficient amount of value, whether it's dollars or something else, out of posting features, they won't post features.

Right? So I do want to be clear about that. Especially when we're shopping new, we're late to the party. We're going to have to figure this out. Otherwise, it will fail. So we are trying to be open -minded and humble as we sort of embark on this new path. And like I said before, we're going to not only try a couple different things, we're probably going to fail a couple of times and iterate.

But ideally, you come up with a couple of different things that work, not just one or two, because maybe what works for you doesn't work for the other creators out there. So the two things that come up with creators, right? Again, ask everyone, hey, we're sitting down with Adam. What do you want to know? Yeah. Monetization. Yeah. AI. Oh, yeah.

I mean, we should definitely talk about AI. What a wild time we live in right now. What a wild time. Can we pull up the Gene Phil account? This was sent to us from a friend, because this is also a new Instagram account. Yeah. So character, you know, bizarre -looking character, straight out of like almost a Wes Anderson movie. Yeah. Almost a cartoon.

Yeah. Almost cartoony, but also real -looking. Yeah. Like on first glance, you're not fully sure what's going on. Yeah. But a lot of engagement and a lot of real engagement. Yeah. I, you know, obviously you look at this for long enough, you're like, okay, this is an AI -generated character. Yeah. And the question from a creator was around how Instagram views that account versus a human -generated account, right? Yeah.

And are they ranked differently or not if they are entertaining? Yeah. In a similar capacity. Yeah. So we don't rank them differently, but we think it's important that people have information. And so we're now actually starting to require AI accounts that are AI -generated characters to label themselves as such. Because we think it's important that people know what they're looking at is real or not real.

That sounds easier, or that's easier said than done, right? Because these models are getting better and better. It's getting harder and harder to detect. We have technology to try to detect ourselves. But one of the big risks there is, let's say we start adding labels to things automatically. One of the ways to really get a lot of people angry is to label some real creators as AI creators by mistake.

Because any classifier has what we call false positives. I posted a carousel recently, and it's classified as AI content. Yeah. It's probably because something in the metadata from one of the tools you used. I took it as a compliment. I took it as a compliment. Yeah. Well, you are more open -minded than most. I've got a lot of hate in my DMs about whenever these things happen and we mess it up.

So we're trying to find the right balance. Not just how can we use technology, but how can we create incentives to label? One of the things I'm getting a lot of complaints about right now is stand -ups having their bits stolen and then delivered by AI characters. Oh, interesting. And it's like, oof. It's like, all right, rights management for jokes is a thing that isn't a thing.

But also, I want to make sure that we're a platform that rewards the original content creators. How do we tell the difference? Maybe we could treat it as unoriginal content because we're not going to be able to censor content for saying the same joke. I think that's what it is, unoriginal content. I've been seeing a lot of these characters are running off of scripts that just pull what are the most viral reels of the past couple months or year and then recreating them with these characters.

Yeah. But this is not making it more difficult for us to classify originality. So historically, what we would look at is like, all right, this account's name is Colin and all the videos are the same guy. It's probably original. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Where it's like, if you create a fictional comedian who steals bits from a bunch of different comedians, but every video looks like the same woman or the same man, the same comedian, then now we need to figure out, oh, can we find the bit? Can we match that? So I'm actually not trying to make any excuses.

I think originality is probably the principled answer to this problem. And this isn't the only challenge that's coming up. But these are the kinds of things that we need to wrestle with as the content ecosystem changes, as the technology becomes more ubiquitous. What are some of the other challenges?

There are, okay, so stolen bits right now is very top of mind because I've been getting lit up in my DMs this week about that. I do read them, by the way, for those of you who think I don't. I don't read all of them. There's too many, but I try to read them. Another is just like ranking quality. You know, there's a lot of great AI content.

There's also a lot of AI slop. You know, do we rank AI content as well as we rank non -AI content? Probably not. Is that subjective? Yes. The definition of slop? I think slop is too, we use that word too liberally because like my slop might be really into, et cetera. But if you just take a look at any new content group, any new group of content that didn't exist and then all of a sudden exists really quickly, our ranking systems aren't going to be as good at understanding what you're interested in and what you're interested in because we're not used to that kind of content.

So if you look at things like for AI content, what are the like rates if you normalize for position? What are the worth your time scores, which is a survey we run and normalize for position? Like I'm sure we're not where we need to be yet. So we just have to figure out how to rank more effectively. Um, what else is happening right now? These AI characters, like, you know, an AI monk selling you supplements and stuff like that, that we need to be really careful about.

This is one of the ads. You're telling me that guy's fake? Yeah. I got a beware of scams, uh, notification this morning. Yeah. When I opened Instagram. Yeah. We're trying really hard to try to clamp down as, you know, and give people good information. I also, when I went to follow this account, got a card of information about when it was created.

Yeah. Where it's from. Yeah. It was just like stats basically. Yeah. It was really interesting. I really want to, I really, I don't know if you should get a full interstitial when you follow someone, but in general, I just think we want to give you context. But I assume that's because this is an AI account. It's not anybody that you'd get that context.

No, but I think over time, maybe. The version I like is if you go to Instagram on mobile, you see the two lines in the top right. That's called the context menu. We're just getting started on it, but it's trying to give you context about what you're reading. So, you know, I want to show things there, like if it's likely AI that we believe so and why.

If it's verified that it's captured, because there are now ways to fingerprint captured media that we show that verification. Obviously, we're giving you context with MetAI about what's in the video. But you can imagine other things, like how long has the account been around? How many times did they change their name? What country are they in? It doesn't have to be judgmental, but just to give you more information and make more informed decisions about what you believe and what you don't.

There's kind of two sides of this. There's like the safety side of it, of like making sure you know who you're following and who these people are. But I actually think there's a bit of a storytelling value to also giving us context on these accounts. I think a lot of what we miss today, especially with the short form feed, is the origin story of the creator.

Because we're coming in late, we don't know what we're seeing. And I enjoy a lot of what I see, but I actually don't know much about these people. So I think the more that Instagram can do to make sure that I'm getting served or being told a little bit of the origins. A lot of times I don't know, I'm like, where is this person? I'm sometimes more likely to trust someone in my feed who I don't know than someone that I do know with information.

And yet, I don't know anything about them. And one idea I love is not just the origin information about the individual, but about the idea. Like, when did this trend start? It doesn't have to be like chasing some piece of fake news. It could be like, this dance has sort of spread over the last three days. It started with this creator in Atlanta.

And not in a way that's even throwing shade, because maybe the new creator put their own spin on it. But I think it's also interesting to see if you can pull that through. These are all things that weren't really possible at scale a couple years ago. Without being, I think, just unreasonably expensive, but now are possible. So there's a lot more I'd want to do in that space.

What else do you think is coming? When you just look at the future of Instagram, future of social media, I can't stop thinking about all these announcements about AI agents. You know, an agent doing something on your behalf. Do you see that playing a role in social media, in creation? Yeah, I think so. We're already seeing it with creators.

Actually, we're seeing a lot of news usage by creators right now for pulling things that are interesting. It's actually not as good as it should be, so we're trying to catch up quickly. But what interesting... What are examples of things? Ask your muse. This section doesn't give you a great answer, so I'm going to regret saying this, but hopefully it will by the time this pod gets out.

Ask your muse for the most interesting or influential people who follow you. Got it. Right? Like, you can go and do that work on your behalf.

You know, people are organizing their saves a lot right now. Creators, obviously, you save a lot for inspiration. The team has a bunch of interesting ideas about insights. So using a combination of content understanding and insights to be like, hey, you know, when you smile more, like, people like the thing more. You know, you don't have to do anything with that if you don't want to, but giving you more nuanced insights on how your content is doing, what the patterns are.

Being able to start seeing your algorithm. Like, there's a lot more we can do there now. You can imagine talking to your algorithm, asking it, why did I see this? And giving it feedback and having it actually get factored in first class. Last sort of maybe next step idea throughout there is you're seeing these UIs now. You're seeing AI now be able to generate UIs on the fly.

Like, so in Muse, you can create a space for certain things, like a dashboard for your kids or your health or whatever you want. In a world where AIs can, or technology can create a bespoke UI for you, what does that mean for apps like Instagram? When we can personalize not just the content you see, but the interface itself. What does that mean for a sense of shared experience or shared space? You know, there's a bunch of really interesting questions there.

You have described Instagram in the past as a city. And, you know, your job is to put up the traffic lights and, you know. Yeah. To create the rules of the road, right, of the city. It's not a perfect metaphor, but it's definitely how I think about things. Yeah, but I think it's interesting. And I think it's, I think when I think about it like that, and like, obviously the predisposition of everyone in our audience is negative towards AI, right? Yeah.

Even when you say like, you want AI to support creative people. Yeah. I think the predisposition is like, oh yeah. You say that line and it's like, no. Yeah. Like, what's he talking about? Yeah. And I was trying to think about it. You know, we've, we've had a lot of debates about AI in, in our studio. We've actually done it on our show because we have team members at different age ranges.

And all of us have different relationships to the early adoption of technology. And our suggestion of like, like Colin and I at 37 years old, like we have lived our life being like, if we adopt technology early, it can give us an upper hand. It can support our social life. If it can, you know, we, we watched all these platforms come about and we wanted to work at these companies.

It was exciting. It was very exciting to the younger audience. It's like, or especially a younger creative, like AI is the, the base assumption is there's some nefarious purpose behind it. There's some, you know, like you are imposing it on us or, or meta is imposing it on us. Yeah. And it's just really interesting to, to watch. I think the, um, the best way I can think about it, if we think about Instagram as a city is like the emergence of AI content is the equivalent of like the, like more Waymos on the road and more like.

Cocos that deliver food that are just like all over our city. I think the fear is like, there's more of those than there are people to run into down the street. Right. Like that is, that is, if I'm to understand the base fear of it. I think people are concerned about a lot of things. I think they're concerned about owning their content and models getting trained on their content.

I think they're concerned. There's people who are concerned about safety. I think there's concern about job displacement, having AI displaced, whatever it is that they do. If you're a content creator or an engineer or a mathematician. I think there's concerns about, um,

I mean, fundamentally what I think it comes down to when you really have like a heart to heart with someone is a fear of being left behind in some way. There's this idea that there's like this crazy tech class and like there's trillionaires in the world now and like, I'm just going to get left behind. So fuck that. I've already gotten left behind.

Yeah. And like, that's, that's human. That's real. Yeah. Which is why, again, like I want us to embrace the technology in ways that empower people so they don't feel like they're left behind or not getting any value out of the technology. Of course, when they, when this core sort of fear manifests, it manifests about a specific thing. It's like this account I don't like, or this piece of content I don't like, or this behavior I don't like, which is totally reasonable.

Like, but I think it really comes down to that sort of core fear. And so I just think more of us in the industry need to be shaping the technology in ways that give people power. And for Instagram, the version of that, that I'm excited about is giving creative people power. I want to get, unless you have more on AI. I just was going to say like, how much do you sort of track and worry about public opinion on AI right now? Considering, you know, it was sort of surprising for Samir and I to see all the graduation speeches and to see everyone booing AI.

I think it's been like a process for us to sort of understand sentiment about AI. And some of that is, you know, people in our office, but it's just, it feels like it is, it is actually getting worse with younger generations. And younger generations are obviously super important to the future of the platform. I think it is. So I've met a lot of young people who are really leaned in and a lot of people who are really anti.

So I don't know if there's a correlation between young and anti -AI. I do think overall, the trend definitely is like month over month, more anxiety and more frustration and more anger about AI. I think that's true across in this country and the US. That's true across. You know, age ranges and across industries. It's the most acute and creative industries, is my experience.

It's less acute in other industries, but it's still there. But you know, there are other industries out there. Right now, math was kind of into it. Now math is like, what? You know, finance has always been leaned in. So, you know, it depends. That's not true everywhere. You know, like China is a really good example of a country where it seems to be like, it's just a popular technology with, you know, the broader population as best we can tell.

But here, I just think it's not only getting worse, it's going to continue to get worse. I think we're going to see more and more frustration and anger. Some of it founded, some of it unfounded over the next couple of years. And I think that's going to make it hard for a lot of people, not just in the industry. I wanted to get back to some more tactical stuff with creators right now.

You want to talk philosophical about AI sentiment? I actually always want to talk about that. Every conversation leads there. We'll do it after the microphone is on. Yeah, every conversation leads there. I know, I know. I'm sorry The last thing I'll say on it I think is there's this assumption and fear that there's an undervaluing of human -to -human connection, right? Of just like connection I think that is like a fear There's a lot of people who graduate and want to go into management consulting or business operations And they love what AI has done for them We engage with a lot of creative people And they, young creative people, I think there is a correlation to some

Now, Karen Chang Yeah Every morning Writes her Writes like the emails she got, her schedule, like a fun quote Like this is so cool This is rad And she's like an adopter of technology I think she's so cool But this is one of the coolest uses of AI I've ever seen It's such a cool thing And it's also tactical, which is kind of the opposite of AI in a lot of ways, right? Yeah The thing is actually like printing these pieces of paper out Yeah Which is just a rad way You know, of course it's nice to start the day without looking at a glowing rectangle Yeah Instead of seeing a personal newspaper What have you learned from your journey as a creator? Over the past couple years?

You mentioned empathy to other creators Empathy to other creators is one What's the empathy you feel? What have you learned? What's going to be your first long form video? Oh, that's a good question I haven't thought of that What should it be? I'll tell you what I learned Well, you think of that I'll tell you what I learned I think it should be day in the life of the head of Instagram I don't think anybody cares You don't think anybody cares? I don't know I think you should go through all your interests Like start with how you get dressed, your style Drive to the office Show me what it looks like when you get a coffee there Yeah, yeah I think people care I think people

care We all open this app every single day But we don't get access to what you like inside the walls I know, but I'm a suit You guys are creative You're not wearing a suit right now No, I know You're wearing loafers, but you're not wearing a suit Yeah, it's true It's true You don't think day in the life is going to work? I mean, I can try it I can try I mean Or make fashion videos Pick something totally different Yeah, get ready with me Get ready with me would be funny That would be pretty funny Get ready with me Get ready with me to launch My team would love it Because they'd feel like they were finally appreciated Okay, get ready with me and roast me in the comments We

do these prep readings for him And he doesn't even read them I think it's get ready with me to launch long form on Instagram Yeah, yeah That would be funny That would be funny I would like that We could do that That's nice and meta Yeah I've learned a bunch of things I think that Okay, one of the most acute things is What works today might not work in six months I've had to re- Some things have stayed true and kept working Like I do this thing called AMA So ask me anything every Friday I've been doing it for I think seven or eight years now It's consistently the thing I get the most positive feedback on That has just worked Almost nothing has changed about it I went from

taking a picture of my face and writing the answer To just saying the answer And that was like seven years ago And seven and a half years ago I started But other things really stopped working So I used to do these creator spotlights I still do creator spotlights I highlight these creators I think I might have done one this morning Was it yesterday or this morning? You did do one this morning All the days are blurred together I used to do that as a story Then that kind of stopped doing well Then I used to do it as a green screen With a video of the person's profile behind it And me just calling out what was rad about them And that did really well for like a month And then

it kind of like tanked And now I do a carousel And I just basically say Send me a selfie I'd love to highlight you And you know sometimes Most people say yes And then I say What content would you like me to highlight? And they send me a bunch And I pick five -ish And it's the carousel And that has worked really well For the last year But I've had to reinvent the same idea Which is to give creators Up and coming smaller creators their flowers In three or four formats Over seven years I think I'm forgetting one of them That was like a very interesting thing Because I was like Why isn't this working? This worked Like did ranking change? And I looked and I get access to that

information It was like no, no, no, no It's just like What resonates with people changed What sticks out changed And so I think that has been I think one of the most

Empathy building Sort of pieces of Trying to create my own little audience Okay, well we gotta get you out of here Oh yeah, sorry Adam It's always wonderful This was such a pleasure We could do this For like We could keep going Forever We could keep going We haven't even talked about it You got boys I got boys Like We didn't even have coffee Yeah I know, I'll tell you Okay Yeah I need a good one We got multiple spots Well Adam, thanks so much for joining us again Thank you so much Really, really appreciate it I think you guys are doing amazing work And it's just kind of fun to be here Alright Cheers Thanks for coming Cheers Cheers Cheers Cheers Cheers Cheers Cheers Cheers

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