Search Drink With James

For those of you who don't know, Givenchy launched a new bag with FWRD recently. They seem to have gifted it to quite a few influencers. What is shocking and disappointing in this day and age is that I'm looking right here at 28 influencers who posted about this bag within a day. Obviously, no fucking way they bought this bag.

I don't think 28 people that all actually kind of look the same-- There's actually a few problems with this list in general. There's not really a lot of diversity on it either. 28 people all post about the same bag within the same day. How many people disclose that it was gifted for people? Luxury brands sometimes live in a fucking dream world where they don't think the rules really apply to them, and they don't want to be seen as having gifted someone something. So they actively ask for influencers to not disclose those relationships. We 100% will never do that.

We would never work with a brand that asks us not to disclose that something was gifted or that it was paid for in a partnership. There are real potential ramifications for you as an influencer. You could have been part of the Givenchy launch and thought, "This is fun. I just got a free bag. I'm going to post about it, and they didn't want us to disclose, who cares," but when they bomb Instagram like this, and this was as of yesterday, maybe there's 40 or 50 people that have posted about it now, this shit is like blatant cheating. It's like blatant not following the rules.

That's what gets the attention of the regulators over at the FTC, and if they decide to make an example of this campaign, it is you as an influencer that ends up getting impacted. The reason we won't do it, one, it's against the law, two the FTC could tell us that we are not allowed to do influencer marketing for anyone for a number of years. This happened a number of years ago.

There was a campaign of some dress, some retailer, I can't remember exactly who it was, where a lot of people got in trouble for this. So if a brand asks you not to disclose something, walk away, don't do it. If you don't think your audience can handle you telling them something is gifted, then you haven't done a good job building trust with them, but it is not worth risking your career to build a relationship with a luxury brand. If it's gifted, you have to say it's gifted.

Look, we'll keep this one pretty short. The great thing about travel is everyone loves it, everyone loves to look at places they haven't been that they want to go, everyone wants to think about getting away. It's really inspirational, it's entertaining, it's fun to look at, gets great engagement, the really difficult part is there's no money in it. That might change but you have to understand the way that hotels and airlines operate. First of all, airlines make no money essentially, the margins to say that an airline's margins are razor-thin is probably an understatement.

I heard a fact once a couple years ago said that most airlines make eight cents per ticket, that's what they make. Flying your ass from New York to San Francisco, they make eight cents on that flight. Then you ask, "Oh my gosh. Why don't I have better food? Why are they treating me like cattle?" The price of an airline ticket is so low, it's truly shocking that you can fly across the country for $300. They are, again, essentially making no money on that. Airlines don't have the massive advertising budgets that-- Well, let's look at fragrance. If on a $200 ticket an airline makes 8 cents, on a $200 bottle of perfume, that brand probably makes $185.

Who do you think has more money to advertise? The fragrance, right? This is why beauty companies vastly outspend fashion companies in this space because the margins are shockingly good so they have so much money to spend on advertising. Airlines don't, hotels don't. These things have become commoditized and as they became commoditized, the biggest factor in driving bookings and sales is price. They're all competing on price and so they just can't play around with advertising and money in the same way. It's going to be really hard as a travel influencer to make money because there's just not a lot of advertising dollars out there.

All the advertising dollars that do exist for travel are very, very focused on performance, on bookings. The Four Seasons overall might be spending money to try and build a brand, but the Four Seasons in Boston just wants you to book the hotel. Delta is doing things to try and make you think about it as a different airline but what are they focused on next week? Is making sure that their planes are full. There's just not the same brand-driven advertising spend that exists in other markets because to do that they probably have to double the price of the flight and then we'd all complain about that. It's probably not going to happen and I think being a travel influencer, you may live a pretty cool life, but making the kind of money that beauty influencer makes is I would say will never happen, ever. Too long didn't listen. The biggest pitfall being a travel influencer you're probably never going to make a lot of money.

One, people say agent when they're really either talking about agent or manager. That is two different things. An agent should be someone out there bringing you deals. I think that if you have an agent at least Year 1, at least 20% of the deals you close should come from them, not you. I think that should move toward 50% potentially as your relationship with them progresses. An agent you should be able to tell, "In the next year I want to work with Nike, I want to work with the Four Seasons, I want to work with Apple", and that person should go out and make that happen.

If you're not ready for that, they should tell you what you need to do to get ready for that. An agent is out there as your agent. If you just think about the word, they are like an extension of you out there trying to grow your business, trying to bring you more deals, bring you more attention, opportunities, et cetera. A manager, in my mind, is more taking inbound requests, trying to negotiate up for you, trying to get you a little bit of money, helping to manage your inbox, helping to manage your brand deals, et cetera. Unfortunately, I think both manager and agent take the 20% out of what you make.

I am shocked that influencers give 20% of their money away for someone to check their fucking email. Truly, I don't understand it. I understand being bad at it, but I don't understand giving 20% away with no cap. If you bring in a $200,000 deal, you're going to give them $40,000 to answer your email and negotiate that. We are not negotiating major motion picture deals with licensing and action figures. These things are-- they can be complex but for most people, especially if you're under a million followers, they are not that complex.

I think that a lot of influencers are flushing a lot of money down the toilet because they don't want to answer their email and they feel icky negotiating. Now, an agent can be incredibly helpful when they're good. Something that I think is really important, whether it is an agent or a manager, that person works for you not the other way around. You need to train them how to operate inside of your universe. You should have standards for how do you answer an email? How quickly do you answer an email? What tone do you use? How do you turn people down? How do you relay bad news? How do you relay good news? What does your reporting look like?

How do they speak about you? Do they bring you deals before they answer or do you want them to negotiate before they bring you-- try and get the negotiation to a point of a number before they bring you the deal? These are all important things that should come not from your agent, but from you. You are giving your money away for them to work for you. You are their boss. I think that if I had an agent here, I'm happy to have this conversation in future episodes, they would say it's more of a partnership. I think that's kind of bullshit. I do think it is a partnership but at the end of the day, as the influencer you're the talent.

If they are making over 50%, over 50% of the money is coming from you, from inbound brand deals, they work for you and they need to operate in the way that you find effective and you need to make sure they're not out there giving you a bad name. I've said this before, I will say it until I'm blue in the face, there are influencers that we love, that we love working with, that we can't work with because their agents are so incompetent. It's a really sad thing when it happens and I always wonder if influencers are auditing their agents, if they're looking at the emails they send, if they look at how long it takes.

If your agent takes 36 hours to get back to a brand with big money that wants to pay you, I would fucking fire them instantly. I don't put up with that shit in here if I hear of a client trying to get in touch with one of our employees, I lose my fucking mind. You can answer an email, it is your job and influencers need to be auditing these relationships because while there are many great agents out there, there are people ruining their client's reputation in the space. I don't think enough people talk about it and I don't think enough influencers think to check it. Get in there, look at those emails, ask to see the chains.

If you hear of anything negative feedback about the agent, I would be like, "Hey, I want to look at every single email you've sent on my behalf in the last two months and audit that stuff." I would get very, very serious about it. End of the day, what we want is this thing to be great and to be a great relationship but it is a relationship. You have to train your employees and again, while this isn't a traditional employer-employee relationship, you need to train them. How do you want them to sign off on the email? Is it cheers? Is it regards, regards and cheers or regards and XO are two very different vibes. I think as an influencer, you need to be setting those standards.

The short answer to the question of what should an influencer agent relationship look like? It should look how you want it to look. You are paying them and again, it's different than a traditional model to agent relationship where people come to the agency and then the agency says, this is who I have and then they book the model. In that relationship, the agency has more power than the talent but people, if they're coming to you, you have the power and you should set the standards.

Facebook is in the news again. What do I think about the $40 million fine Facebook got for inflating video views. First of all, it's a total fucking joke. For those of you who don't have the context, Facebook just got fined $40 million which for them is literally probably their serial budget for their staff every year so it's nothing. They got fined $40 million for inflating video views. Here is why that is such a sad depressing story that I think isn't getting enough play and that the fine is not nearly high enough for what happened.

Facebook knowingly inflated the number of views their videos were getting. They had it so that if you watched a video for three seconds which is essentially just scrolling over it, it would count as a view. That seems innocuous enough. The problem is that once they launched native video, the views that brands were getting, people were getting, were absolutely staggering. I saw this guy who is the head of video content for Vox talking about it. He was saying they were consistently getting videos that were getting a hundred million views.

I don't really know what hugely viral videos on YouTube do but a hundred million views is staggering and Vox not known for incredibly viral video, was getting consistently being able to pull in over a hundred million views. What happened was all of these companies shifted their strategy to Facebook video. I'm sure if you all follow digital marketing news you heard this idea of a pivot to video, you know how all these news organizations were pivoting to video. This was 100% driven by Facebook native video.

Facebook was pushing people hard to invest in their platform. They were co-branding videos with people, they were courting money behind this, they were actively courting brands and for a lot of news organizations that were already on the brink of destruction, they invested huge amounts of money into teams, into studios and pulled resources away from editorial, pulled resources away from their own website and went a 100% in on Facebook native video. Months later, it turned out to all be a lie and Facebook came out and said, "Oh so sorry, yes, we are completely inflating video views." Those videos that were getting a hundred million, the guy from Vox was like, "We were lucky if we could break a million now."

These entire teams that they had built, all of a sudden, it just wasn't a viable business and it completely destroyed a lot of companies. I think it's a big reason Mic, M-I-C, that news organization, they recently shut down. A lot of companies have gone out of business, declared bankruptcy or had huge layoffs and a big part of that story is the failed pivot to video. A big part of the story of why people pivoted to video was because the numbers that were coming out of Facebook were so unbelievable that it felt like the silver bullet that was going to save them and so they put all their eggs in that basket just to have it fuckin destroyed.

Facebook plays dumb a little says, "Oh, it was a mistake, we didn't mean to. When we caught the bug a few months in, we changed it. I think it speaks to a darker and scarier side of the platform. It's something that we've talked about with IGTV. I know that YouTubers have been frustrated with the views that they're getting on YouTube and then they start posting to IGTV and they were seeing much higher views.

I talked to YouTubers and they're like, "We're thinking about leaving YouTube and going to IGTV." I was like, "Fuckin do not do that. That is a terrible, terrible idea because I can almost guarantee the only reason that you're getting these high view counts on IGTV is because the way they count a view is substantially different than Facebook's." That turned out to be the case. IGTV you had to do 5 or 10 seconds for a view. Facebook, you got to do 30 seconds. These things really, really matter.

A lot of people don't make it past the 15-second mark on a video, they make it past the five or 10-second mark and that is not a view but influencers are seeing that and you're so focused on chasing growth and chasing those numbers that you might follow that to a place that doesn't really make sense to you. I was just trying to look up what TikTok counts as a view. In my very quick search, I couldn't find it.

When you see these insane numbers coming out of a platform, it's important to make sure that we are judging it accordingly and we're making sure that we have an even way to judge these platforms to see how effective they are because you don't want to put your-- One, no matter what, you need to diversify. You don't want to put all your eggs in one basket. You can't just blindly trust that these platforms are telling you because they're not to make the world a better place, not to make you money, not to make you feel warm and fuzzy, they're there to deliver value for their shareholders. Facebook is one of the best companies in the history of mankind to do that thing, to provide value to their shareholders.
That is the one and only driving force of their business. If you need proof of that look no further than the fact that they're allowing politicians to run ads with lies in them. Something you could never do on cable, you could never do in a newspaper. Facebook just says, "Fuck it, we don't care. Run an ad to lie." I have yet to see a reasonable cohesive coherent reason why they do that other than it's too hard to fact-check this stuff. So fuck it and we make a lot more money if we let the lies through. I think it is a huge problem. I think that Facebook has changed my life and many other people's, essentially my whole business is based on it.

I sometimes worry about its impact on democracy and y'all are not only complicit but big drivers in this space. I think that something we've been talking about over the last few weeks is just what is your responsibility to understand the impact that we're having on the world and to potentially change our behavior to change that impact in some way.

Short answer, yes and no. It is the brand's job to deliver a brief that gives the influencer the flexibility to inject their voice into that post to tell their story and how that story intersects with the product. How their life has been improved by the product. How their skin has changed. How it makes them feel. Whatever it is. The brand has to give them a brief that allows them to inject their personality and their point of view into it. That's why we follow them.

We follow them because we respect and in some way, crave their point of view. It is 100% a brand shop to do that. A lot of the work that we do is helping our brands craft strategies that are going to be flexible enough to give the influencer the space to spread their beautiful wings and fly around but constricted enough that they don't fly off the rails and talk about the product in a way that the brand doesn't want. The way I think about it, a lot of times, is bumpers in a bowling alley. That lane is yours. You can do it with it what you want but if you start to veer off into a place that doesn't make sense for the brand, we're just going to pop you back into the middle and make sure you're protected.

For the influencer, it's great because it gives them the chance to be creative with constraints and the brand, it's great because they're getting great content but they're also getting the safety, they're getting the peace of mind that they're going to get the kind of content they want and it's going to be safe for their brand. When a brand briefs influencers and sends them the captions and tells them exactly what they want them to post, tells them how they want the photo to look exactly, I hate that shit. I think it's terrible. I think it is stupid. I think it's just bad business but, end of the day, it's the brand's money.

If they want to say, "Meet us at Montauk, Sunday at 6:00 PM." And they want to start a bonfire with $150,000 and that's the way they want to promote their launch, that's their right. It's their money. It's then the responsibility of the influencer to either push back on a bad brief or walk away. Stat that was on Instagram recently is 34% of influencers accept over half of the deals that are sent their way. That sounds about right to me and I think that any time an influencer turns down a deal, not because they didn't think they're getting paid enough but because they don't think it's a good match for them. Their clout, for me, goes up a level. I just respect that much more.

I'm that much more willing to push the team to work with them. That's not to say, don't say, "My new strategy is I'm going to just say no to all these four campaigns." But, when you believe in something and if something doesn't align with your beliefs, no matter how much money it is, it's okay to just walk away. And so, it is your job to stay relatable, real and relevant. It's the brand's job to allow you to advertise for them while doing those things. Nobody's forcing you to take this money. No one's forcing you to take the deals. If you're walking into a deal and it stinks and you feel like this is not going to be good.

As I've said before, if you're at least a week or two out, respectfully bowing out, I think is better than doing a half ass job. Actually, just real quick story then we're going to end this episode. I was on a trip once with an Influencer. They were like, they had this brand deal that they were supposed to do when they got back. They were going to be really tired. They were like, get back in the morning from this trip. That afternoon, we're going to have to leave and go somewhere else. They were really dreading it. It was like four or five days out. I was like, just email them and say like, "I'm so sorry. I overestimated the amount of energy I was going to have. I don't think I can do this.

I don't think I can bring the energy that I know you guys are expecting and that I expect of myself to this deal. I really respectfully have to bow out of it. Please, let me know if I can help you find anyone else. I can make intros if there's any Influencers that I'm friends with that you think would be great. I'm really sorry, again, let me know if you want to jump on a call." That is always going to be okay. You can do that. Now, ghosting a brand and just deciding not to post about them and then never fucking emailing them. I'd do a whole episode on that. That is not okay. Being respectful and bowing out early enough to allow the brand to fill your spot is okay. That's probably a long episode and well, I got nothing else to say. I'm out.

This on the back of Danielle Bernstein from we were launching Moe, which is an assistant/productivity tool for influencers. Jenny from Margo and Me is launching a social shopping app. Look, it makes sense. One of the great things about technology is, there's no sizing. You don't have to worry about skin. It's not like a foundation where you worry about skin tone, you don't have to worry if someone's allergic to it.

You can make money while you sleep. You don't have to ship it. There are no returns. Technology is a beautiful thing if you can get it right. I applaud Jenny and Danielle for going out and trying to do something different. Running a technology company, being seven years into this is certainly a difficult thing. I was interested to talk to someone else who had run a technology company as an influencer because, well, for me what is interesting about this isn't that they're launching these new apps. That's great and wish them the best of luck. What's interesting is that when Danielle launched swimwear, we talked about that and that made total sense. She posts about swimwear a lot. She's had a good relationship with that brand. She designed something for herself so that it did incredibly well. Awesome. I'm interested in people moving into technology because, while the tools they build are helping or made for influencers or made for social. It's not exactly a one for one in the same way that designing a capsule collection of clothing is. Instead of me pontificating about why someone would do this, I wanted to talk to Tezza, who had been running the Tezza app for a little over a year now.

She just hit two million downloads on that app. I thought it would be a good time to bring her in and ask her what it's like to run a technology company. Let's cut to her. You guys know I am always looking for an excuse to drag Tezza into the office, found another one. You just hit two million downloads on your app. Congratulations.

James: Two million downloads on the app. Absolutely incredible. What we're talking about, as I mentioned, is influencers creating and launching digital products. You were one of the first that I remember that had an app that has now become quite successful. We'd love to hear a year in, some of the things that you've learned in creating digital products.

Tezza: Yes, for sure. I mean, I think, one who was our first digital product and we definitely didn't set out like, I think some other people I know who hire a team and really go through all of these things you need to do before you launch, we just were like, this sounds fun-

James: You didn't raise money.

Tezza: We didn't raise money.

James: You didn’t hire a team

Tezza: We didn't hire a team.

James: Cole did the development.

Tezza: Yes, and for like a year of building it, we almost gave up probably 100 times, it was really hard. We had no expertise in this specific area. It was shooting in the dark and I think the first thing we learned was, I mean, one the coolest part about being an influencer and having an app is that you get immediate feedback. People are just going to tell you what they think, whether you like it or not. In that case, I think we marketed in our heads building the app to a specific customer when we launched and we quickly learned that that was not our customer.

James: Who did you think it was you were launching for?

Tezza: We were really going for like the premium people that already were using our presets and really wanted to be able to also use the app and go Asian-- on the go not for like, every single person, but people felt like, I was literally pulling their wallet out of their pocket and taking money from them because I was like charging them for this app and we actually did a whole price restructure and we changed the whole goal of the app. I think probably two months in, we were already like re-working on the new plan.

James: You felt like customers said, wait, sorry. You felt like initially, you got pricing wrong?

Tezza: Pricing wrong, and customer wrong.

James: What was wrong about the pricing? It was too expensive?

Tezza: Too expensive. I mean, it's-- People don't understand that when you build an app, I mean, it was a full-time job for every single night, we'd stay up till 2:00 AM, whereas we have another job and-

James: Quite a few jobs honestly.

Tezza: Quite a few jobs and people just expect like apps to be free. That's like the mentality of apps. The second you charge people are obviously going to care but that's okay. Like I was prepared for that. I've done other products, but I just think that was the quickest learning group. The second we really did just pay attention to what people were saying, we thought, "Okay, let's just involve them in this process," and so we were open about it, our mistakes and everything.

James: How did you do that? Was it going out and saying like, “Hey, I want feedback”, were you emailing customers, was that happening mostly in your Instagram?

Tezza: Mostly on Instagram. The hardest part about apps, you don't necessarily capture someone's email unless you're doing a login and that whole thing and even still, you have to be careful about how you're using those emails. It's not like my email list where I'm just blasting and I can talk to people, so mostly over Instagram. Truthfully, if it wasn't for like the App Store reviews, I would have never known how bad it was because in the reviews, people just went like, it was like a YouTube channel where people just say what it was like, I like literally, I never get like that much negative feedback. I was like, “Oh, my gosh, like what have we done?” We're like, “Cancel the app, it's over”.

James: Pull it from the app store.

Tezza: Yes. We quickly just changed everything and we responded to every single review, we were like, “Hey, thanks for your feedback, we've actually now changed it please let us know what you think.” Quickly, that really started to build our community because they felt like she listened to what I was saying and so, they really became our biggest users of the app in the beginning.

James: I mean, I think that like something that is overlooked and it's hard as an influencer, you already have this big audience. You feel like everything you put out has to be perfect. You're a perfectionist. I know, I’ve seen your photos, I know how long you spend editing them. If you guys haven't heard A Drink for James episode, you should. A long time. To put something out into the world that wasn't perfect, when you released it, were you like, “This is God's gift to apps,” or were you like, “This is pretty rough, let's see how this goes?”

Tezza: I wouldn't say I felt like it was rough, but I definitely didn't-- We had so many plans were like the App would just constantly be like, we'll release updates with new features and all this stuff, so I knew it was always going to be growing and changing but I didn't think it was as rough as it was. One thing I did not really understand about technology is that, the amount of bugs that happen. People would be like, "I saved my photo three times, re-imported it, did this." I'm like, "Why would you even do that?" It's crashing. I'm like, "Oh my gosh." We're trying to figure out all these bugs.

James: I'll put a 200-megabyte TIFF file into it and I won't edit it. What's going on?

Tezza: Yes. I was just like, "This is crazy." That was why we were able to make it better quicker, I would say.

James: Looking back on it now, two million downloads later over a year after, if you could go back in time, would you have waited two more months and polished it or would you have launched it as is? Would you have launched it even earlier? To everyone watching who's maybe thinking about an app idea or a business idea, should they be trying to just get it out in the world as quick as possible?

Tezza: I would say, if I did it again, I might find some people and have them help do testing with me. Involve people in the process that I know would be using it. I guess, really, when we did it, we just thought, this is a cool idea. Let's see if we can do it. Once we did it, we were like, "Let's put it out there." But I would probably do more testing and talk to people. I'm now becoming more business-minded but I would say, I'm really good at creating stuff and that's my jam. I'm not the best of the business or I'm getting better at it but I think you're going to learn so much as you launch anyway.

I think most apps from what Coulson's school teaches me all the app stuff, guys but like most things break. That's just the nature of tech. You have to just constantly be updating it. I wouldn't say I would have done it sooner, yes, if I could have but definitely, now, it evolves so much. It's been one year. It feels like it's been five.

James: I guess that's the fun part about technology is every week, every day, you can make changes. I think that, for those of you who are not as in this world, there is something called an MVP, which is the minimum viable product. The idea is to get something as barebones enough to test the idea. Do people care about this idea before you invest a hundred grand into building this very complex thing or six months of your life into it? The key is, I think, what you've learned and maybe what you would do differently is that that MVP has to work.
Scale it back. The design doesn't have to be perfect, doesn't have to have every feature you want but getting bug testing, making sure it actually operates in the way it should will keep people from being too upset and then just asking for more features. I hear that's when you know you have product market fit is people are asking you for new features all the time. I'm sure you get people constantly that are like, "Can I get this? I wish I had this. I love the app but I wish it did this."

Again, I feel like in the last month, you have had skincare, you've had sunglasses, you've hit a million downloads on the app, then two million on the app. You have a lot going on. How do you see technology fitting into the overall stack of what Tezza Inc. is putting out into the world?

Tezza: It's a good question. I think it's something like we're currently trying to figure out, is it something that's completing our full circle in the long run or is it a separate thing? Because the app, I always thought it would be people I knew using the app but now, it's gone beyond me and it's actually bigger in Indonesia than the US. I don't even know why. Love you out there?

James: Do you know have a big Indonesia shirt yet?

Tezza: No. I'm going to get one. I just think, overall, I would probably, for me, the tech aspect is so exciting because the overhead is just so much easier than products and if that's something-- The future of that, I think, there's so much potential. I think you can always combine fashion and tech. I think we're learning that so much. So many people are trying to do that, so I see potential there for the future. You can have so many ideas for one little thing but you also don't want to over-cram something that's working. That's the balance we're trying to figure out.

James: Last question. I think technology is really intimidating for a lot of people that aren't technically savvy. I run a technology company. I can't write a single line of code. There's this idea that if you don't understand technology, you can't run a technology company. Any word or advice to non-technical people watching this who have an idea for an app or a website about launching?

Tezza: Yes. I would just say, find somebody and have a conversation. For example, I know nothing about coding but I'm always talking about the functionality, the way things move and that's a huge part of tech, even just visually, the way, if things are animated in the app, and I feel like we're all creative-minded. That's something we're all always thinking about. I think there's so many people entering the tech space.

Young people looking for a job. It's one of the best things you can have for a career right now. I would just find somebody that's also looking to team up and build the product because it can get expensive to hire a developer. If you can actually just find someone that you're teaming up with, that might be a better solution.

James: Yes. I think it's a great way to frame it is like, if you looked at the world's best designers, I bet they couldn't make their designs. They could never sit at a sewing machine and actually make those probably. You don't have to be the executor of your vision. To have vision, you don't have to understand technology to tell someone how you want your app to work.

Tezza: Exactly. Such a good point.

First of all, there is some new stuff that just dropped on Instagram, I'm sure you all have seen it. I don't know if you use Instagram that often but there's new stuff on there, and then we've got a bunch of stuff I hear that's coming down the pipeline. First of all, let's talk about what's new, Threads.

Downloaded Threads, it's essentially taking your DMs off of Instagram into its own app and then allowing you-- It's very similar to Snapchat. It makes it very easy to send photos and DMs to specifically, your close friends. This is part of Instagram and Facebook's drive towards more private messaging, more one-on-one messaging. This is something that Mark Zuckerberg came out and said maybe a year and a half ago, he was going to start to be a focus with them as they started to focus on privacy. For me, Threads isn't that interesting. Young people use these social platforms in a very different way that we do, and I'm sure it is an attempt to steal some of that young business away from Snapchat.

Another is removing the following tab, which for the stalkers out there is super depressing. I used to love to see my bro-y friends from high school and be like, "Bro-y friend one liked eight photos," and it's just like eight thirst traps, not realizing that his wife could also see that tab. We also used to use that back in the early days before we built Follower Health. It was an easy way to see if someone was using a bot to engage because you could see them engaging and then you would go into the photos they engaged with and it was a Russian with 14 followers and 2 photos. That is gone. I imagine some of it was probably pressure from celebrities not wanting their activity to be public. That is gone.

Those are really the two big changes that have come out. There's a couple interesting things that have been rumored that I've seen screenshots of, let's run through them really quick. One, Instagram stories is going to get gridded layouts so you can do two, four, six photos and a single Instagram story is going to essentially try and replace Unfold. Sorry to the Unfold founders, but as we know, Facebook is going to try and destroy all of us, so a good reminder for us.

They're ripping off TikTok. I told you guys a few months ago, they hired one of the lead designers at Vine. They're rolling out something that is similar to TikTok. It's a camera, it's got some editing features to create short little videos. We'll see how that goes. Seeing screenshots for being able to share comments with friends. I think this is in response to some of the, again, to this idea of like people loving to share celebrities' comments and things and just start conversations around the engagement, so sharing comments. A screenshot for desktop messaging.

This is something they've said for years that they've been working on and is 100% in their pipeline. Desktop DMs seem to be coming in the not so distant future, that will be awesome. There's a stop motion camera, for Instar stories, for creating easy stop motion movies. If you're still in 2010 and you're in the stop motion, that will be exciting for you. IGTV series, so you can create a series in IGTV and I think those-- All of the videos in that series will be nested inside of that.

Our friend Jesse Kirby does weekly outfit videos on IGTV. She could name that series and it would all live in one place. There is two new types of boomerangs. There's one that's going to pause at the end of the loop and one that's going to like wiggle at the end of the loop. I don't know what that's going to look like. Apparently, that's coming down the line. Notification filters, so for all y'all who actually have a big following, not me, you're going to be able to filter your notifications, I think, to maybe be able to see just people you follow or close friends, so you don't miss notifications that I know could get lost if you get tens of thousands of notifications.

Lastly, they are testing out some layouts, some new layouts for Explorer. I haven't really seen screenshots for it yet, but Explorer as it is. The way that content gets pulled into Explorer has changed quite a bit in the last few years. I don't think the general layout or design of Explorer has changed much other than including video and IGTV and now stories. Interested to see what they do with Explorer. That is new stuff that is coming down the pipeline on Instagram. As always, important to stay on top of this stuff. If you've seen our interview with Taylor Lorenz who's now an internet culture writer at the New York Times, who also writes about influencers, she's a good Twitter follow. She's on top of all this shit and is a good person to keep an eye on if you are wanting to know what's coming down the pipe.

Yes, it does. Next question. No, it's a funny question, but I understand and I approve of influencers being, "Hey, this isn't sponsored." Also, if you're really diligent with your disclosures, you shouldn't have to say, "It's not sponsored."

Just saying, it's not sponsored is enough. "I genuinely love it," I think to anyone paying close attention, it does make it feel like you don't genuinely love your sponsored content. I know I talk about Erika, Retro Flame, a good amount. I think she does disclosures really well. Like she was recently gifted a stay at a hotel in Ireland, where she's from, if you can't tell from her bright red hair and her very thick Irish accent, she's from Ireland.

Before she covered the hotel and her stay, she said, "Hey, guys, I'm really excited to stay here. I've actually paid to stay here before, this time they gifted the room. Anytime I talk about the hotel, or if they gifted me an experience, I'm going to put, hashtag gifted there, just so you guys know." Then she went through her stay and always had that disclosure. I thought that was a really upfront way to deal with it. Following her for years now, she's always super transparent with her disclosures. When there's no disclosure, I know it's not sponsored. She's built that trust, I think over years.

I think the best way to delineate your sponsored from organic content is not to be like, "Hey, guys, this isn't sponsored. I actually just really love it," because it does undermine your partnerships. Instead, to just be very upfront, don't be embarrassed, don't be ashamed. Don't try and hide that it's an ad, don't try and hide that it's sponsored with a little hashtag in the bottom right-hand corner of your story, be upfront about it.

In conclusion, the best way to separate your sponsored from your organic content is, to just be super upfront about what is sponsored. You should be excited about the partnerships. You should say, "I am super excited to be showing guys this. I've been using it for weeks. It's really worked. I love this brand. I think you guys are going to love it. These posts are sponsored, I'm going to be really upfront about that."

Then your organic content will stand alone because it will be different, and you're not trying to hide what is sponsored and what isn't. Don't be afraid of putting out there that something is sponsored. Also, just so we remember, don't also make 50% of your feed sponsored, that also does not work at all.

Is Instagram ruining the world, specifically the natural world? There was this article about how Instagram is ruining all these national parks because people are going to them specifically to get photos. There was the article when the super bloom was happening in California about people laying and the poppy fields and ruining those. If you've been to Venice any time in the last two years, you realize what a fucking nightmare it is in the summer.

Instagram has certainly increased travel and I think that when people travel, they increasingly want- they think about the photos that they're going to take. If they're going to Yosemite, they definitely look through the location tags and they look at the photos they want, and they find the ones that really do quite well and they want to replicate them.

I actually saw my friend who works at Instagram, Christie. I'm not going to give her last name because you guys will fucking hound her and she doesn't need that. I saw Christie recently was at Yosemite and she was commenting on this and saying that she was shooting that rock, that ledge that people take photos on. She was saying that she clicked on the location tag and it just made her really sad to see the risks people were taking with their lives to get content.

Recently a couple died in that exact spot, a newlywed couple died trying to get an Instagram photo. It's easy for people to poke fun at that maybe because it is ridiculous. As an influencer, you have to understand that people will probably try and replicate the things you're doing. Just look at the bend it like Tezza hashtag. Now, the worst that can happen there is if I tried, I'd throw my back out or I pull a hammy or something, but people will try and replicate things that they see doing well on Instagram.

If you are doing dangerous things, especially if you're someone like- one of those parkour freaks or something and you're jumping around on shit and hanging off the sides of buildings, I don't know that many people hanging off buildings are watching this show, but I do think that you have to understand that those things are going to try and be replicated by your audience and that those are dangerous and you might be responsible for somebody getting hurt.

Another side of this other than crowding European cities or national parks is just promoting this jet-set life where you're constantly traveling. That feels to a lot of people that is what success looks like, a life where they're constantly on vacation and constantly traveling. I just saw an influencer, cubicle. I think she is on the Instagram Park & Cube she used to be. She just recently said that she is going to try and cut down to three flights a month.

She's like, "That may seem like a lot, but I was doing 10 or 15 flights a month a lot of times," and she is saying to try and be more sustainable, she is going to try and limit herself to three flights a month and only going to go on trips that really are impactful, and that she really feels are going to bring her joy. I think that this concept of endless summer and constantly traveling feels really glamorous, but it does have repercussions not only on those places and fucking up the ecosystems of our national parks, but also on the environment in promoting jumping on a plane and pouring tons and tons of pollution into the air every time you do that. I think it is worth thinking about, and thinking about your responsibility, and thinking about the things in the lifestyles you're promoting.

We keep talking about hiding likes. Now Facebook is talking about hiding likes, Twitter is talking about hiding likes, everyone's hiding likes. This is the new fucking cool kids thing to do. We're all hiding likes. I don't know if I could hide likes. Maybe I'll just like start-- I already don't like many people. I'm way ahead of the curve. I've been hiding my likes for ages. Everyone thinks I hate them, like most people do, I digress.

Facebook hiding likes, I don't-- Honestly, who gives a shit? Twitter hiding likes, I think is stupid. I do not think that's the play. I think Twitter is so much about virality, and about getting things to go viral that I pay attention more when a tweet has a lot of likes. Because it's not as much about followers, but I think about your ability to get something to go viral on Twitter, that hiding likes will really make the platform significantly less interesting.

It's also much less of a like a FOMO thing on Twitter, it's much more about being funny, being smart, articulate, or if you're in Republican, being a troll. Not all Republicans are trolls. Don't make me fucking caveat this shit. It's about those things, less about like, "How great I am, look at me, look at how beautiful I am, look at how beautiful my life is." I think removing likes would really be terrible and make the platform much less interesting.

Look, old Jack Dorsey doesn't really seem to give a shit what people on Twitter are interested in. As all they ask for is, "Please stop letting people say that they're going to chop my head off and put it in a garbage disposal." They seem to do nothing about bullying, he probably will do it. Look out for that. I'm sure the dumpster fire, that is Twitter, will continue to devolve. Caveat, I love Twitter and I use it constantly. If you are a heavy Twitter user, you know it's a dumpster fire that is ruining your life, but you can't get away from it.