Hi everyone, welcome to Mini Tech Scroll, the daily Internet
culture podcast bringing you the biggest stories from social
media, the creator economy and the digital space every Monday
through Thursday. I'm your host, Lauren Meisner,
the founder of the youth digital media brand Centennial World.
Oh, I did my little hand gesture before I said Centennial World.
Yes. So reminder I'm doing Mini Tech
Scroll while Annabelle is away for the next three weeks.
So welcome to mini tech scroll hosted by me.
I also wanted to give another reminder for anyone that doesn't
care about like our little business updates that I
sometimes gave at the top of the episode.
There are always time stamps in every single description.
I can't believe we still get comments about that because
every single description of every single episode that we
have done in the last like 2 1/2 three years has time stamps on
YouTube. It will create automatic
chapters from those time stamps, but it sometimes will take a day
or two. We don't do chapters because I
do the same description for our podcast and also our YouTube
channel and because we publish every single day.
Like I need to be saving some time somewhere.
So I use the same time stamps and description across both.
So yes, before you comment that we should have time stamps,
please check the description. OK, let's get into the stories
for today. The first way that I have for
you guys today is that Sam Altman's World has launched Orb
Mini and everyone is making fun of it.
I know that was just a collection of English words and
none of it made any sense, so let me explain.
Sam Altman, who is the CEO of Open AI has another creepy tech
company called World, previously Worldcoin, and it's a blockchain
verification company where users scan their retinas to get added
to an authentication database. So this is from Wikipedia quote.
Worldcoin's business is to provide a reliable way to
authenticate humans online, which it calls World ID.
It attempts to recruit new users to join its network by getting
their iris scanned using World Coins orb shaped iris scanner in
return for some world tokens. This has caused privacy concerns
in multiple countries. Yeah, no kidding.
This is essentially incentivizing people to give
away their biometrics in exchange for cryptocurrency.
How dystopian does that sound? So there are these like physical
orb stations just out in the wild and you literally scan your
eyes and get cryptocurrency in exchange for this.
And if it wasn't weird enough, they have now launched mini Orb,
which is a physical device that basically looks like a phone.
You carry it around and you scan people like this.
You'll see my phone is sideways. So you scan people like this in
the wild, like people that you're hanging out with in real
life to authenticate their verification.
Everyone's making fun of this. OK.
And to be fair, I don't think that they marketed it well.
Like I don't think there was like great comms around exactly
what the purpose was because people are like what real world
problems is to solve? Like are they implying that
humans can't tell if they're interacting with another
physical human like in real life?
Why else would someone need this tool?
I was thinking there's just no way.
There's no way that they are thinking that a human cannot
tell if they are interacting with a human or not.
Like there has to be another purpose.
So based on some of my research, it seems the point is not to
verify if someone is a real human IRL.
It's more about proving someone is real to the Internet in a way
that can be used at a later date.
So it's giving like alibi vibes. It's essentially adding to your
digital footprint and providing proof that you as the human, as
like the authentic verified human has gone on that date that
you claimed that you were, that your digital footprint has like
proven that you did. Because as I will get to in a
second, they are saying that AI is coming in and making things
very confusing for people online and, you know, making it much
easier to replicate people's identities and commit fraud and
all of that stuff. So let me get into that in a
minute. But World wants to create Quote,
a universal proof of personhood system without relying on
government or social media logins, which I guess is why
it's on the blockchain. OK, so now that we've
established this, the question is still like, why?
Right? I cannot make this up.
I'm going to read several excerpts from the company's blog
post explaining World's mission. Please keep in mind that the
same person who Co founded and is the CEO of Open AI is also
the Co founder of World Quote. The Internet is at a crossroads.
Advances in artificial intelligence have made it
remarkably easy to generate text, images, and even entire
online personas that appear indistinguishable from real
people. In fact, experts warn that in
just a few years quote it will be impossible to know if someone
is communicating with another mortal or a neural network.
AI driven scams, deep fake videos and bot accounts have
surged over the past year signal this shift.
These developments highlight an urgent challenge.
How do we ensure genuine human presence and trust online?
Establishing reliable human verification isn't just a
nicety, it's fundamental to a healthy Internet.
Imagine a future online world where major interactions and
content are verifiably human in origin.
You created this problem. What AI created the problem of
deepfakes and scams? I mean, OK, there were always
scams, but you know, it really amplified problems like scams,
fraud, deepfakes, us being unable to tell if something is
human generated, if somebody that we're looking at is even a
real human, or if this video is just generated by AII.
Feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone reading this because this
is the problem that you created, Sam Altman, and now you are
trying to sell us technology to solve the problem that you
created. This is capitalism final boss.
Like I am shook to my core about how they're talking about AI and
how human interaction and human generated content and like
having a human Internet needs to be the priority.
That's like the key to a healthy Internet.
Like yeah, nobody wanted AI. Like OK, sure, it helps us write
an e-mail. Like other than that, nobody
wants to be scrolling through any of their content, watching
anything that's generated by AI. You created this problem, you
put us here, nobody wanted this and now you're trying to sell us
like this weird phone that we have to like scan our friends
with when we hang out with them and we can have like ID on the
blockchain in exchange for crypto.
Like this actually sounds like hell.
Like we are living in hell. We are living in hell.
I need to finish with this by focusing on proof of human
technology. This is from their blog post.
World is helping create the infrastructure that many tech
leaders and policy makers see as crucial in the AI era.
Yes, it is crucial in the AI era.
But you created this problem like you are the leader of the
most prolific company in the West that creates this problem.
I can't. I can't even.
I cannot, I'm in shock. These people raised $250
million, have like physical scanners around the world to
basically like scan your fucking eyeballs, which seems so
unethical and like I mentioned, definitely is some crazy privacy
breaches. I know it's been outlawed in
Kenya already. I'm sure other countries are
going to start to outlaw it. And it is so wild to me that
they could get by with this, especially when the founder, one
of the founders, is also one of the founders of open AI.
The next right that I have for you guys I've composed myself is
that Spotify has released new podcast metrics called Plays,
which will show you how many views are in each episode.
Spotify is gunning for YouTube's place as the go to video
platform for content and podcasts.
We kind of already knew that, but I think this really
solidifies it. On Tuesday, Spotify announced
Plays, a new metric that will let people see how many times an
audio only or a video podcast have been listened to or watched
actively. They say for plays that they're
using a number of different markers to indicate if somebody
has like actively consumed that content because streams slash
downloads are typically based on just somebody listening to
listening to at least 60 seconds of the episode.
So I guess plays in theory should provide a more accurate
metric. I don't know if that's totally
true yet. There's still some discrepancies
that we found on our back end because we host on Spotify.
So like our plays versus stream slash downloads, like based on
what they're saying in here, like doesn't totally add up.
I don't know if we're just reading it wrong.
There is like definitely some lack of clarity, but I think it
will all kind of shake out. Like I'm sure that we'll all
figure it out eventually. But there are mixed reactions to
this. So on one hand, podcasting
actually has the highest row As for marketers, but the lowest
investment from marketers. And a big part of that is the
lack of understanding and a lack of transparency and podcast
measurement and metrics. So each hosting platform
provides like different types of stats.
And while the kind of industry standard is like a stream slash
download is someone listens to 60 seconds, that's not
necessarily true across the board.
And even the industry standard measurement systems are not
all-encompassing. For example, here in Australia,
they go by a tool called Rancor. But Rancor Australia doesn't
actually count YouTube views or even Spotify video views now
that Spotify has released video podcasts for everyone, not just
their Spotify exclusive podcasts.
So that's a bit of tea for you. That's why a lot of the biggest
podcasts in Australia film their episodes for social content, but
they don't put it on YouTube or on Spotify video.
They don't put full episodes as video episodes because they
don't want to lose their spot on the Rancor listing.
And that's why we've never gone on Rancor because we are a video
first podcast. And if Rancor doesn't count
video views, then what's the point of going on it?
Because it's not an accurate representation of our downloads
of our place in the Australian like podcast world at all.
So there's no point in US going on it.
But yes. So this could be really good for
the podcasting industry. It's obviously much more
transparent. It's like on YouTube, you can
see how many views a video has received.
You can see the comments. Like obviously Spotify allows
comments now to on the other hand, a lot of creators are
freaking out because this will make audience acquisition so
much harder for podcasts that are not really big, not those
kind of like top tier podcasts, because inevitably people, even
if they don't mean to, will grab imitate towards episodes that
have more views. It's already really hard for
independent podcast to make it and to like grow an audience.
Audience acquisition is really difficult.
So now this this could make it harder.
Of course, like, you know, I think now when you're scrolling
through podcast apps, not necessarily YouTube, but podcast
apps, like you can't always tell maybe by the number of ratings,
but you can't always tell how big a podcast is, especially
because some of the rating systems are based on location.
So like our podcast is based in Australia, but we have quite a
big split between like Australia, US audience.
So you know, our ratings on certain platforms are only going
to show you if you're based in the US, like the US ratings,
they're only going to show you the Canadian ratings if you're
based in Canada. So that doesn't give you a full
picture of like our audience essentially.
And if you knew that, then the playing field was a little bit
more level for independent smaller podcast to grow, right?
Because if the content is good, the cover art looks
professional, the sound is decent, like there's no reason
for someone to think that you're like a tiny podcast versus a
bigger podcast. But now obviously this is going
to possibly change that game. Like the discoverability was a
much more even playing field, I would say prior to introducing
this. I also think this could be good
though, for smaller podcasts because one of the reasons why
podcasting is so tough to monetize, like I said, is
there's a lack of transparency in the stats and the metrics.
And a lot of the big podcasts, they are lying.
They are lying about their metrics, their downloads, their
reach. And so this will actually
provide a bit more transparency. Again, it's not going to
encompass Apple listens or any other platform.
It's obviously not encompassing like YouTube listens.
So it's just for Spotify. So it really just shows you like
how many people on Spotify are consuming that content.
The last story that I have for you guys is that Hinge is
launching on Sub Stack. So I actually got this story
from Caroline Albro who writes the Brand Baby newsletter.
It's a Gen. Z marketing newsletter, so
definitely go subscribe because I think it's going to blow up
and I just love Caroline. So Hinge has jumped on the Sub
Stack train. As we know, Sub Stack is trying
to be a bit more of a social media platform lately rather
than just like a newsletter platform.
And I think they're doing quite well with this.
They've poured a lot of money into creators, especially in the
US. They've launched new timeline
and post features that make it feel more like a hybrid, like
newsletter publishing platform mixed with like Twitter.
This has them narrowing in on that, like community based
publishing, which we talked about yesterday when I was
telling you guys about like our journey and how we went all in
on community based publishing about like 2 1/2 three years
ago. And that made such a big
difference. So now this has incentivized
some brands to start experimenting with sub stack and
Hinge is the latest major one to do so.
So Hinge is launching A5 part mini series of essays by
different writers on their real love stories told from the
perspective of both people in the relationship.
The series is called No Ordinary Love, and the Sub Stack will be
managed by Hinge. The writers will be like guest
writers, and it's a miniseries. So after these five essays,
Hinge will stop posting on Sub Stack, at least for now.
But throughout the campaign, they're partnering with other
writers and creators on Sub Stack to kind of spark
conversation, bring their audiences into the Hinge Sub
Stack into that world. And these partnerships will
continue after the essays have finished.
This is from brand baby Caroline writes quote instead of
launching A dedicated newsletter, I like that Hinge is
leaning into short term series full of impactful, high quality
content. I also like that they're
partnering with existing Sub Stack creators as writers. 4 out
of the five participating writers have sub Stack
presences, giving those creators A broader platform while also
cross promoting the no ordinary love stories.
And two of the writers are Jenna Winston and Hunter Harris, among
others. So, yeah, very cool.
I think this is a really interesting way to be kind of
tapping into, like, new media. I know that's a huge pain point
for brands is they want to work with media.
They want to work with new media, independent media.
They want to do cool campaigns. It can feel overwhelming.
There's so many options, and you really don't want to show up in
an inauthentic way when you're trying to reach Gen.
Z. You don't want to just show up
on every single platform and just be kind of like throwing
shit at the wall. That's going to seem really
desperate. We know that Gen.
Z are experts at avoiding advertising, but they really
love when a brand gets them. And that's like the main thing
that I say to our consulting clients is if you have somebody
on your team who is chronically online that can help inform
these decisions, then you will be OK.
Because understanding how to reach Gen.
Z in an authentic way just means speaking their language.
And speaking their language really just means understanding
the chronically online space that they exist in.
Because at the end of the day, for Gen.
Z, Internet culture and culture are one in the same.
Their online worlds are completely blended with their
offline worlds. I mean, for all of us, honestly
at this point, but especially for younger generations who have
not known like life without social media, they're completely
blended. They are one in the same.
So if you can tap into the online zeitgeist and show up in
a way that makes sense for your brand, like Hinge, doing these
like love letter essays, which makes total sense obviously for
a dating app like Hinge, then yeah, like people will be
excited about it. Like people are excited about
this. Anyways, guys, that's it for
Mini Tech Scroll today. Thank you so much for listening.
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OK, bye.