27.9 C
New York
Thursday, July 25, 2024

What Snap’s Liftoff Means for the Social Media Company

The social photo-sharing and messaging app Snapchat is bigger than you probably think it is. According to its parent company, Snap, the app has more than 330 million active daily users—that’s over 100 million more users than Twitter.

Since the Snapchat app is all about sharing photos, Snap likes to come up with innovative and unique hardware designs that give its users more interesting ways to take those photos. You might remember its camera-bedecked Spectacles from a few years ago. Now Snap has unveiled a “selfie drone” called Pixy. The $230, palm-sized gadget lifts off, takes a sharable photo or video of you, then lands. It’s just a bit of whimsical fun, which is very much the point of the whole Snapchat experience.

This week, Michael and Lauren talk about Snap’s new drone, as well as the company’s place in the larger social media landscape.

Show Notes

Read more about the Pixy drone in Lauren’s latest story for WIRED. Read about Snap’s first Spectacles, the second ones, and the third ones. Also read about the augmented reality glasses the company released last year.

Recommendations

Lauren recommends the episode of the Verge’s Decoder podcast with crypto investor Chris Dixon. Mike recommends the YouTube channel Fault Radio for streaming electronic music DJ sets.

Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

How to Listen

You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how:

If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts, and search for Gadget Lab. If you use Android, you can find us in the Google Podcasts app just by tapping here. We’re on Spotify too. And in case you really need it, here's the RSS feed.

Transcript

Michael Calore: Lauren.

Lauren Goode: Mike.

Michael Calore: Lauren, when you eventually quit Twitter, are you going to take all of your talents to Snap?

Most PopularGearThe 15 Best Electric Bikes for Every Kind of Ride

Adrienne So

GearThe Best Lubes for Every Occasion

Jaina Grey

GearThe iPhone Is Finally Getting USB-C. Here’s What That Means

Julian Chokkattu

Gear11 Great Deals on Sex Toys, Breast Pumps, and Smart Lights

Jaina Grey

Lauren Goode: This is a loaded question, because you're making the assumption that I'm quitting Twitter, but then you're asking about Snap. I would say Snap might not be my first platform of choice, but it's not a bad option after Twitter.

Michael Calore: Do you feel as though your particular gifts at social media engagement don't translate to the platform?

Lauren Goode: I'm generally a little bit more pithy and clever with words than I am at bunny ears. What about you? Are you going to quit Twitter and bring your talents to Snap?

Michael Calore: I don't think so.

Lauren Goode: All right. All right. That's it. That's today's show.

[Gadget Lab intro theme music plays]

Michael Calore: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Gadget Lab. I am Michael Calore. I'm a senior editor at WIRED.

Lauren Goode: I'm Lauren Goode. I'm a senior writer at WIRED.

Michael Calore: Today we are talking about the biggest social media story of the week, the thing that everyone online is talking about, which is Snap. The company formerly known as Snapchat. You probably thought I was going to say Twitter.

Lauren Goode: I did.

Michael Calore: Yes, the Twitter board and Elon Musk did reach an agreement this week for Musk to buy Twitter and take the company private. It's huge news in the Web 2.0 world and potentially marks the end of one era and the beginning of another. We talked about Twitter on last week's show, and we do have plans to talk about it again next week, with a very special guest coming on the show by the way. There is also news out of Snap this week.

It's important to note that the company's main app, Snapchat, is actually bigger than Twitter. Snap also makes funky hardware, and, Lauren, you had the chance to talk to the company's hardware folks and get some early looks at the latest Snap gadgetry this week. Please tell us, what did the Snap kids dream up at Coachella this time?

Lauren Goode: Yes, I think they did come up with this at Coachella, just a couple weeks ago, and they really expedited the hardware process and here we are. OK. This week was Snap's annual Partner Summit, which they hosted just one year down in Los Angeles, where Snap is based, and then the pandemic hit. They've been hosting this virtually ever since, but it's their version of an app developer's conference.

It's where they typically make software announcements that are relevant to the people who build apps or as Snap calls them, lenses, for the Snapchat app and stuff like Snap's AR glasses. But sometimes amongst all of the software announcements, there's a hardware nugget in there as well. This year it's a flying camera.

Michael Calore: Get out.

Lauren Goode: Oh, yes. Also known as a drone. Don't call it a drone, et cetera, et cetera. It's called PIXY. It's spelled P-I-X-Y, and it's this small yellow plastic pancake, or maybe a waffle. I'll call it a waffle because I like waffles. That rests on the palm of your hand and it takes flight to take a photo or a video of you and your friends. Isn't this the thing you've always wanted, Mike?

Most PopularGearThe 15 Best Electric Bikes for Every Kind of Ride

Adrienne So

GearThe Best Lubes for Every Occasion

Jaina Grey

GearThe iPhone Is Finally Getting USB-C. Here’s What That Means

Julian Chokkattu

Gear11 Great Deals on Sex Toys, Breast Pumps, and Smart Lights

Jaina Grey

Michael Calore: I can only imagine. It's a Snapchat drone. It flies around and takes a picture of you? Does it just fly up, take a picture and then fly back down? Does it land on your hand?

Lauren Goode: Yeah. It takes these very short flights. I haven't personally used it yet. All the briefings that I got were virtual. I don't know exactly how it works, but I've seen videos of it. There are four modes that you can use. First, you wirelessly pair this PIXY drone to your Snap mobile app. Then you press a button on the drone to turn the drone on. Then there's the silver dial on the top that you can turn to one of the modes.

Like, for example, it can zoom out from you and then take a photo of you and your friends and zoom back towards you, or it orbits around you. Those are just two out of the four modes. Then you hold out your hand with your palm open and supposedly it lands in the palm of your hand. It captures 12 megapixel photos. Pretty standard still photo capture.

The video is a little bit low res, it's 2.7K resolution. This is not super high def or 4K video. Then those media assets get wirelessly sent to the Snap apps. Then you have to go into the Snap app to interact with them or use them. Then you can save them to your camera roll if you want to share them elsewhere. The whole idea is it's bringing you back to the Snap app.

Michael Calore: I see. How much does it cost?

Lauren Goode: There are going to be two options. There's a base pack that starts at $230. Then there's a bundled pack that costs $250, which comes I think with some more accessories. Then there are additional batteries that are available for 20 bucks. You probably would want to buy some of the additional batteries because when you're measuring the battery life on a product like this, it's so variable.

It's not just like a phone. Of course, phones are very variable as well when it comes to battery life, depending on how people use them. With this, it's being measured in flight bursts. Snap is saying it can take five to eight flights per charge, but a lot of that is going to depend on how long each flight is, and also the movement that you are programming it to do.

Something that requires a big burst of energy such as zooming out from you and zooming back might actually suck up more power than some of the other modes. It's all going to depend on how you use it, but getting five uses out of it per charge is really not much. By uses, I don't mean it's following you around for half hour. I mean, it just zooms out, takes a photo and zooms back.

Michael Calore: That's actually a good point because one of the great advancements in drone technology over the last few years has been all of the flight automation features, right? The ability for the camera to see you and follow you, or the ability for the camera to fly around your head without banging into a wall and to keep you centered in the frame. Does it have any of that stuff going on?

Most PopularGearThe 15 Best Electric Bikes for Every Kind of Ride

Adrienne So

GearThe Best Lubes for Every Occasion

Jaina Grey

GearThe iPhone Is Finally Getting USB-C. Here’s What That Means

Julian Chokkattu

Gear11 Great Deals on Sex Toys, Breast Pumps, and Smart Lights

Jaina Grey

Lauren Goode: I don't think it's quite that advanced yet. I know exactly what you're talking about because I've seen some friends who are skiers, much more accomplished skiers than I am. I'm thinking of my friend Vjeran in particular, where I see some of the footage that he posts later on Instagram and clearly it was shot with a drone and the drone is following him down a ski slope.

It's really, really cool. I think we've reviewed Skydio's drones. One of the primary features of that drone is that it does that, right? It's designed to actually follow you and track you?

Michael Calore: Yeah. The follow me feature.

Lauren Goode: For an extended period of time. Yeah. I mean, it's pretty cool stuff. I think the drones we're describing too, are a little bit more expensive and just is high powered in general. I don't think this is designed for that. I think this is really designed for these little bursts of activity. These short interactions and very much social features.

Like you're with a group of friends, you're at Coachella, I'm just going to assume. The thing you're like, let's take a selfie but there are 20 of us and no one has a six-foot arm. Let's send this thing off into the sky and I'll take this great photo of us and send it right back.

Then also I could imagine some 'creators', video producers, influencers, that kind of thing, using this to get maybe an additional angle on something that they're shooting with another device.

Michael Calore: It seems like this is something that pretty much only Snapchat devotees are going to be buying because for $230 if you're looking to get a drone that can take your picture there are other options if you spend just a little bit more money. Something more high powered, something that can stay aloft more than three or four minutes.

It's interesting to me to think that this obviously an experiment. It's just something that's strange and fun and sort of fits in with the company's branding. The company has a history of doing this, right? Making devices that are kind of impractical and kind of expensive, but also just fun and fit into the Snapchat aesthetic.

Lauren Goode: Yeah. I would say that's exactly right. Let me ask you a question, Mike. Have you ever purchased any of Snap's hardware?

Michael Calore: No, because the thing that they made in the past is the glasses, the spectacles, and they don't necessarily fit me. I have a large head so they just look really small on me, and also I wear a prescription and I haven't bothered to put a prescription in Snap Spectacles. I put them on and I'm basically just walking around blindly shooting things. No. I have not purchased any of their hardware. I have seen it and held it and used it though.

Lauren Goode: Yeah. We had some of those Spectacles floating around the office for a while too. I mean, I think you're right in that Snap's history of hardware is that it is largely weird and experimental. They have this area of the company called Snap Labs where they develop some of this.

Most PopularGearThe 15 Best Electric Bikes for Every Kind of Ride

Adrienne So

GearThe Best Lubes for Every Occasion

Jaina Grey

GearThe iPhone Is Finally Getting USB-C. Here’s What That Means

Julian Chokkattu

Gear11 Great Deals on Sex Toys, Breast Pumps, and Smart Lights

Jaina Grey

When you ask Snap, I had the chance to talk to co-founder and CTO, Bobby Murphy, earlier this week, they say that when they develop and design these products, they develop them with scale and mind. They want to reach as many people as possible. Even with that said, I think they do have a different approach with their hardware than they do with the software.

I mean, just look at the Spectacles, right? The first pair of those glasses were launched back in 2016. They were initially distributed only through this Snap-branded popup vending machine called the Snap Bot. I mean, eventually they became more widely available, but you could only get them if you stumbled upon this vending machine in the middle of Coachella.

Lauren Goode: I'm just going to keep referring to Coachella, but they were in different places in LA. I think there might have been one in like … Do I remember one in Joshua Tree? Anyway, they were-

Michael Calore: Yeah. They were all over the coast. Yeah.

Lauren Goode: Yeah. Yeah. Not many of those sold and they didn't have any augmented reality. They were really just capturing videos and then eventually photos. Now they did release another version of these Spectacles back in 2018, which our colleague, Arielle Pardes, and I, literally took on a rollercoaster. We wore a pair of these Snapchat spectacles version two and pressed record on our frames as we were going down a very, very steep rollercoaster.

[Audio cuts to sounds from a roller coaster in motion, followed by people screaming in excitement.]

Lauren Goode [on roller coaster]: Oh my God, oh, oh my God! I'm trying to take a Snap. I'm trying to take a Snap!

[There is a long scream that cuts off abruptly.]

Lauren Goode: So that was a lot of fun. Then last year in 2021, Snap did finally roll out AR glasses, which to their credit came before any kind of Facebook or Apple AR glasses, but they're super clunky and they were only for app developers. They weren't for consumers. They too had a short battery life. Sometimes it just seems like Snap's end game with its hardware experiments are just, how can we get people deeper into Snap, the app? How can we get people deeper into AR? It all comes back to their AR lenses and selling people on those. Then there's a little bit of also, and how can we beat Facebook to market? AKA Meta, so that Facebook can inevitably copy them.

Michael Calore: Yes, absolutely. All of these hardware experiments, they do … We keep calling them experiments and maybe that's a little bit derogatory, but at the same time, these are things that have been rather inaccessible, rather limited and have not really stuck. I can't remember ever seeing spectacles in the wild.

Lauren Goode: Right. Even the AR glasses, I think I've only seen them in the wild once. It was at an AR-specific conference that I went to last November. It was a developer who was wearing them. I was interviewing her on stage with Bobby Murphy from Snap. It was a very specific scenario in which I saw those AR glasses.

Most PopularGearThe 15 Best Electric Bikes for Every Kind of Ride

Adrienne So

GearThe Best Lubes for Every Occasion

Jaina Grey

GearThe iPhone Is Finally Getting USB-C. Here’s What That Means

Julian Chokkattu

Gear11 Great Deals on Sex Toys, Breast Pumps, and Smart Lights

Jaina Grey

Michael Calore: It doesn't count. That's like spotting Google Glass at Google I/O.

Lauren Goode: That's right. It's like spotting Google Glass at Sergey's birthday party.

Michael Calore: OK. Let's take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to talk about Snap in the broader context of all the social media apps we use today.

[Break]

Michael Calore: Let's talk about Snap's place in the social media landscape. We mentioned earlier that Snap is actually bigger than you probably imagine it is. It has more than 330 million active daily users. That makes it bigger than Twitter, which has somewhere around 215 million. Lauren, please enlighten us. Who are these Snapchat users?

Lauren Goode: First of all, thank you for my promotion to post-collegiate field reporter on all of the Snapchat users, including myself. I think Snap users are probably my 13-year-old niece and all of her friends. But seriously, users tend to be young or young-ish. 

The thing about Snap users though, is that they're also very active. They don't just fire off a tweet or two, or post an Instagram photo and move on. In some cases, Snap users are messaging all day long. I've seen different numbers on this. In some cases it's an average of like 34 messages per day. In other cases as many as a hundred and they supposedly 'interact' with an average of, collectively, 6 billion AR lenses per day, right? Which is Snap's special sauce. You apply this lens to your face and you send a photo of yourself.

This all happens really quickly. The app is really easy to use. Part of the dark pattern or stickiness of the app is that people are encouraged to maintain these streaks, which shows that they've been keeping up their messaging. Their streak number gets longer and longer. 

The thing about the content on Snap too, based on what I've observed, is that it can be really unpolished. It's less glossy and less curated than Instagram. In some ways it's more like TikTok, though TikTok actually has some really great productions on it that are just made to look raw but are actually very produced. A lot of people just use Snap by just firing off a really off the cuff photo of themselves and blasting it out to a bunch of friends and messages and not really … Yeah. It just doesn't feel as curated, I guess is the right word, as you might get from Instagram.

Michael Calore: What you're saying, and I've also observed this, is that it's primarily just a messaging app. We often think of social media as posting and broadcasting, but I think Snapchat's real strength is the one-to-one relationship between its users. Because if you open up the app and you look at the only thing that's there, other than one-to-one messaging, which is discovery, it's a lot of just lowest common denominator junk. It's a lot of tabloid-style stuff, stunts, stupid human tricks, weird hacks, beauty advice. It really reminds me of the types of things that you would see at the bottom of a story on a not-very-good blog, like that chum box where it's just sort of clickbait type stuff.

Most PopularGearThe 15 Best Electric Bikes for Every Kind of Ride

Adrienne So

GearThe Best Lubes for Every Occasion

Jaina Grey

GearThe iPhone Is Finally Getting USB-C. Here’s What That Means

Julian Chokkattu

Gear11 Great Deals on Sex Toys, Breast Pumps, and Smart Lights

Jaina Grey

There are publishers on there. I know the company recently allowed publishers to put their RSS feeds into Snapchat so you can follow the Washington Post, for example. Then basically just read one story a day from the Washington Post by tapping on a Snapchat feed inside the app. 

It's like, unless you follow a lot of people and follow creators, there's not really a lot for you to engage with there. It seems like building a friend network and interacting with those friends, that's their real strength, which is funny when you consider that the things that they have done with that have been copied elsewhere, right? Like they've come up with all these innovations. The thing that they popularized in the beginning was ephemeral posts, images that disappear after 24 hours.

Lauren Goode: That's right. Yeah.

Michael Calore: That now is on all of the major platforms. Everywhere. Stories. It's a huge on Instagram, less so on Twitter and Facebook and YouTube, but they're everywhere. That's Snapchat DNA all over the internet.

Lauren Goode: Right. Well, I think you touched on two really important things. The latter is that Facebook does have a history of copying Snapchat, borrowing from them quite generously. The other thing you touch on is — I think what you're describing is Discover? Is that Stories? I'm looking at the app right now as we're taping this pod, or the Spotlight tab.

Michael Calore: Yeah. I mean, discovery on the platform in general.

Lauren Goode: Oh, just discovering it. Yeah. I think they used to have this section of the app that was, I think, called Discover. This is going back some years now where they had official partnerships with media brands and with really big stars. I think the Kardashians may have been a part of it. And that just sort of didn't work for them, which I think brings up important questions about where their audience goes as their current audience matures. At some point, are they going to be looking for things other than maybe beauty ASMR or people are popping pimples or-

Michael Calore: It's so bad.

Lauren Goode: It's really spammy. There are some celebrity-related stuff. Like I see something about Miley Cyrus and a weird outfit and something about the Hemsworth brothers, but then it's like, this is what happens when you stop wearing a bra and some dance videos that are somewhat a little bit suggestive. Then there's this weird video about what happens when your tongue is really long and a woman who's making a hack out of her Victoria Secret underwear. Then there are a lot of ads too. There's just something, a sneaker ad I'm seeing right now, or zip line ad. It feels very spammy.

The primary, the most impressive … Oh, my nephew just sent me a Snap right now. He has put an AR filter of a crow on his face. I mean, that's a more joyful experience for me right now, just receiving that DM from my nephew, than going through the stories or discover.

Most PopularGearThe 15 Best Electric Bikes for Every Kind of Ride

Adrienne So

GearThe Best Lubes for Every Occasion

Jaina Grey

GearThe iPhone Is Finally Getting USB-C. Here’s What That Means

Julian Chokkattu

Gear11 Great Deals on Sex Toys, Breast Pumps, and Smart Lights

Jaina Grey

Michael Calore: Of course, you mentioned this briefly, but the other thing we have to talk about is the lenses, right? The AR filters, which is another thing that Snapchat popularized that again got picked up everywhere else. Of course, no matter how often companies steal from Snap, Snap still makes a lot of money. They have those active users. Those active users, as you mentioned, are very active. They've had a couple of rough quarters lately, but things are still pretty rosy for them, right? They're still continuing to grow and they're still bringing in a lot of revenue. They have all these innovations and they have all daily active users and they are continuing to grow and make money. How are they monetizing this?

Lauren Goode: Yeah. That's an important question because ultimately Snap is an advertising platform. They just reported first quarter earnings last week and it wasn't a great quarter for them. They reported that revenue fell short of expectations, which the CEO, Evan Spiegel, said was partly because of a pullback in advertising due to the war in Ukraine. He blames it on macro-economic factors.

Interestingly, their daily active users still went up about 18 percent, but revenue, the money they're making per active user, also fell short of expectations. Like a lot of other social networks, Snap has said that Apple's changes on iOS that changes that ATT, that limit ad tracking and targeting, has impacted them. They keep getting these new users, but they still have to figure out how to continue to make more money off of each user.

Michael Calore: About that growth, I have a sensitive question.

Lauren Goode: OK.

Michael Calore: Do people age out of Snapchat?

Lauren Goode: I mean, I would think that that's got to be a real concern for them. Yeah. Because like we just said, I mean, we're a little bit older. We are millennial or post-millennial English majors as we've established on this show before, but we're going through it and we're looking at some of this content and just thinking, "This doesn't really appeal to us." Right?

I am wondering what they're going to do. I think that's one of the things that Facebook has been tremendously effective at. Not necessarily building new products, but acquiring new products and anticipating where people are going to go next. Buying properties like Instagram and then WhatsApp and then Oculus. They've got a lot of eggs in their basket.

Snap, the dancing hotdogs and crow filters and bunny ears are awesome, but I'm really curious to see what the next iteration of that technology is. By the way, I think I've seen glimpses of it. When I tested the AR glasses last year, I saw some really cool use cases for lenses.

They're doing some really interesting stuff with points of interest in cities like London, where you go and there's a sort of geo tagged location-specific experience where you hold up your phone and you see this really cool AR lens. Or you might be able to go to a concert in the future and like through a partnership with Live Nation, you hold up your phone at the concert and you see this really cool experience layered over the in-person concert.

Most PopularGearThe 15 Best Electric Bikes for Every Kind of Ride

Adrienne So

GearThe Best Lubes for Every Occasion

Jaina Grey

GearThe iPhone Is Finally Getting USB-C. Here’s What That Means

Julian Chokkattu

Gear11 Great Deals on Sex Toys, Breast Pumps, and Smart Lights

Jaina Grey

I could see where they're trying to make AR happen, but does that necessarily mean that people much older than 34 or whatever that demographic is, are going to be hooked on Snap for years to come? I'm not really sure about that.

I mean, Mike, if you had to leave Twitter right now, if you did opt to leave Twitter, we already talked about how you're probably not going to migrate to Snap, but what other social network would you opt to spend that time on?

Michael Calore: I think honestly, I think it would be TikTok because the thing that I keep coming back to with Snapchat is that there's not really a lot there for the passive user, right? TikTok is like TV. You turn it on and there is literally just something for everybody. Immediately within the first five minutes, you can find a bunch of things that you just want to watch over and over again.

I don't have that experience when I open the Snapchat app. I don't know if that's just the quality of the content that is on offer as a user who doesn't have a lot of activity on the app. I'm sure if I used it more, it may show me things that are more interesting to me, but I have been using it and I'm still not seeing much that's interesting. TikTok on the other hand, you use it for 30 seconds and there's a bunch of stuff to look at.

Lauren Goode: Yeah. I know.

Michael Calore: If I'm going to spend time on my phone just staring at it and scrolling, which I really should stop doing, then I think that's probably the place that I would go. Also, I'm not going to quit Twitter. I've been toying with it for like last week, "Oh, I'm totally going to quit Twitter." But I really just don't see that happening. What about you? Are you going to dump Twitter and go Snap?

Lauren Goode: Yeah. I think what I would do is I would go to one of the social networks that's not owned by a billionaire.

Michael Calore: Mastodon?

Lauren Goode: Right. Yeah. If you let me know what some of those options are, I'll get back to you.

Michael Calore: Yeah. Really, I don't know if there is one. I think maybe you could download WordPress and run your own blog or something.

Lauren Goode: That's right. Back to RSS.

Michael Calore: Never went away. All right. Let's take another break. When we come back, we'll do our recommendations.

[Break]

Michael Calore: Lauren, you made it all the way to the end of the show. Congratulations.

Lauren Goode: Thank you. Yeah. The time it took to take this podcast, I've actually aged out of Snapchat. Sorry.

Michael Calore: You were on it at the beginning? I mean … OK.

Lauren Goode: Yeah.

Michael Calore: Tell us, what is your recommendation for our listeners this week?

Most PopularGearThe 15 Best Electric Bikes for Every Kind of Ride

Adrienne So

GearThe Best Lubes for Every Occasion

Jaina Grey

GearThe iPhone Is Finally Getting USB-C. Here’s What That Means

Julian Chokkattu

Gear11 Great Deals on Sex Toys, Breast Pumps, and Smart Lights

Jaina Grey

Lauren Goode: My recommendation is another podcast. I just had the chance to listen to a Decoder interview with Chris Dixon. Decoder is a Verge podcast hosted by The Verge's editor-in-chief, Nilay Patel. They taped this in early April and so I'm a little bit behind the curve on it, but I finally had the chance to listen and it's as good as a lot of people said it was.

Chris Dixon is one of the most prominent crypto and Web3 boosters out there. He's a longtime entrepreneur. He started a company called Hunch a long time ago. He's got his hands and his investments in a lot of different interesting technologies. I think eBay and Kickstarter.

I mean, I'm not doing it any justice, but anyway, now he's at the very well-known venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, leading their crypto team, their crypto fund. He very rarely, I think, grants these kinds of interviews. Nilay asked him a lot of really smart questions about Web3 and crypto and NFTs and the promise of the blockchain and the environmental toll of these emerging technologies, relatively new technologies.

I shouldn't say emerging because they're pretty much out there, but it's great. It's a really good interview. I think it helps demystify some of the crypto world and the Web3 world while Nilay, I think also injects the appropriate amount of skepticism into the conversation.

Michael Calore: Awesome.

Lauren Goode: Have you had the chance to listen to that one yet?

Michael Calore: No, I have not. It has been many a moon since I've listened to The Verge's podcast, I must say.

Lauren Goode: Oh, is that because they're competitors?

Michael Calore: No, not at all. I do enjoy a good Nilay convo, just like any other red-blooded tech report. It's just I have gotten into this habit lately of really checking out when I'm not working and not listening to things that remind me of work in my weekends and my evenings and my mornings and my spare time.

I've been listening to a lot of audio books and just listening to the normal BS that I listen to, which is interviews with artists and musicians and stuff.

Lauren Goode: Well, if you're into audio books, might I recommend the audio book version of the metaverse book by Matthew Ball, which is also … I'm just kidding. You clearly don't want to listen to this. I haven't read that one yet so I'm not recommending it. I'm just making a joke, but no, I expect nothing less of you, Mike.

I expect that you're like, "Have you heard about this new book from Lou Doillon or something?" I'd be like, "No, tell me about this." Then … Yeah.

Michael Calore: It's got four limbs and a head.

Lauren Goode: Did I say her name right? I think that's how you say it, right?

Most PopularGearThe 15 Best Electric Bikes for Every Kind of Ride

Adrienne So

GearThe Best Lubes for Every Occasion

Jaina Grey

GearThe iPhone Is Finally Getting USB-C. Here’s What That Means

Julian Chokkattu

Gear11 Great Deals on Sex Toys, Breast Pumps, and Smart Lights

Jaina Grey

Michael Calore: I think so.

Lauren Goode: Doillon. Yes. OK. Well, what is your recommendation this week?

Michael Calore: My recommendation is Fault Radio, which is a nonprofit organization here in the Bay Area that broadcasts DJ sets and live music sets by underground electronic music artists.

Lauren Goode: Is it called Fault because it's on the fault?

Michael Calore: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Lauren Goode: It really is.

Michael Calore: We live in a seismic activity zone here in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Lauren Goode: Yes, we do.

Michael Calore: They chose that to name their radio station. I am specifically recommending the YouTube channel, which does live streams. Each DJ set, or live set is usually around an hour, an hour and 15 minutes. It's really interesting stuff. They have people doing techno, drum and bass, acid house, weird avant-garde music.

It's a mixture of all different kinds of genres of electronic music, artists from all around the world. Not just Bay Area people, but of course heavily rostered by Bay Area people. If you watch the YouTube streams, you can watch the video, which is just a person twiddling knobs usually and dancing a little bit. Or you can just leave it in a tab open and listen to it, which is what I do.

Yeah. I'd highly recommend it. They're also on SoundCloud and you can find their streams there. They post more on the YouTube channel, which is why I'm recommending the YouTube channel, but it's a vast library of really excellent electronic music. Yeah. Definitely check it out if you're into the dance-y stuff. I like to work to it.

Lauren Goode: Nice. Nice.

Michael Calore: I like to put it on while I'm working.

Lauren Goode: That sounds cool. I'll have to listen to it. I don't often listen to dance music while I'm working. I like more chill stuff. But it sounds like there's a wide range of genres on this channel.

Michael Calore: It works great for deadlines, let me tell you.

Lauren Goode: Oh, is that a hint?

Michael Calore: No.

Lauren Goode: All right. All right. Well, let's wrap it up. I'll get back to writing.

Michael Calore: Yes, yes, yes. That is our show for this week. Thank you all for listening. Lauren, thank you for being the guest week. It was delightful to host you.

Lauren Goode: Oh, Mike, thanks for being such a great host. This was really fun. We asked so many people to join us this week and everyone was busy so we're like, "You know what? We're going rogue."

Michael Calore: Yes.

Lauren Goode: It was a lot of fun.

Michael Calore: Yes, we'll do this more often.

Lauren Goode: We should.

Michael Calore: If you have feedback about the show, you can find all of us on Twitter. Just check the show notes. This show was produced by Boone Ashworth. We will be back next week again, talking about all of the latest Twitter news with a very special guest. Join us then.

[Gadget Lab outro theme music plays]

Michael Calore: But if-

Lauren Goode: I'm sorry, the cat's pawing at me again. Please continue.

Michael Calore: Drum and bass, acid house, weird-

[Michael's cat yowls over the top of him.]

Lauren Goode [laughing]: Weird cat mashups.

[Lauren and Michael laugh, then the cat lets out another soft meow.]


More Great WIRED Stories📩 The latest on tech, science, and more: Get our newsletters!The takedown of the web’s biggest child abuse siteGet ready for a decade of uranus jokesHow to use BeReal, the “unfiltered” social media appShould all video games be replayable?The fake agents case baffling US intelligence experts👁️ Explore AI like never before with our new database📱 Torn between the latest phones? Never fear—check out our iPhone buying guide and favorite Android phones

Related Articles

Latest Articles