Almost on every street in most towns and cities across Nigeria, one can find POS agents in small kiosks, shops and sometimes under umbrella shelters, armed with POS machines and smartphones, making cash withdrawal transfers, bill payments and other kind of financial services available to people. Now the COVID-19 pandemic further popularized the activities of these mobile morning agents as big financial service providers adopted the concept, creating several partners and agents across the country who run outlets where people can walk in and carry out most of their financial transactions at a small fee. We will focus on key issues concerning operations, regulations and more on the show. Welcome to Business Insights. I am Justin. Welcome back. First off, the Committee on Public Accounts sprayed the House of Representatives through issue warrant of arrest and governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Gardwin Emefili, the Group Managing Director of the Najin National Petroleum Corporation Melekyari, the sole administrator of the Najir Delta Development Commission and Fiong Aqwa, and the Chairman of the Revenue, Mobilization, Allocation and Fiscal Commission Elias Mbam and five others. Well, that's just one story making round. Let's take a roundup of other stories in the world of business this week still with us. Oil prices rose on Wednesday, extending gains from the previous sections. As improved, risk appetite provided support despite data showing an unexpected rise in U.S. oil inventories last week and a weaker demand outlook due to rising COVID-19 infections. Brent crude against which Nigeria's crude is priced rose by $2.99 to $72.34 per barrel at 7.20 p.m. Nigerian time, having hit a section low of $68.63 per barrel. U.S.-West Texas Intamidate crude futures rose by $3.17 to $70.37 a barrel, after falling to $66.44 per barrel earlier on Wednesday. Power generation in Nigeria dropped below the 4,000 megawatts mark on Tuesday amid the Ideal Kabir celebration. The total generation in the country stood at 3,958.7 megawatts as of 6 a.m. on Tuesday down from 4,270.7 megawatts on Monday, according to data obtained from the Nigerian electricity system operator. On Monday, the peak generation stood at 4,611 megawatts, while the lowest generation was 3,732.1 megawatts, the NESO data showed. The total energy generated on Monday was 100,974.45 megawatts, out of which 99,272.98 megawatts were sent out. The gross monthly distribution by the Federal Account and Location Committee, FAAC, totaled three tiers of government and public agencies amounted to $733 billion Naira, which is USD $1.78 billion in July from June revenue. This was an increase of $127 billion on the previous payout. Petroleum profit tax, company's income tax, import and excise duty, and oil and gas royalties recorded substantial increases over the previous month, while receipts from that were significantly lower. State governments received a total of 143 billion Naira, including 51 billion Naira, representing the 13% derivation for the few oil-producing states. The Senate has called for the sanction of officials in the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation who made Nigeria lose 274.2 million, which is about 54.1 billion Naira on external loans. The upper chamber approved the report of the Senate Committee on Public Account before proceeding an annual vacation last week. The Senate in its resolution asked the Accountant General of the Federation, and met Idri to identify the officers and sanction them for mismanaging public funds in accordance with rule 3,115 of the financial regulations and for gross misconduct. Rule 3,115 of the financial regulations reads, an accounting officer will square it for his failure to manage or spend public funds effectively, or who spends public money without due regard to economy contrary to financial regulations, 415, and fails to reply to the query shall be removed from the shadow and be disciplined in accordance with the public service rules. The President, Major General Mohameda Buhari retired his confirmed determination of the appointment of the embattled managing director of the Nigerian Post Authority Hadizah Bala Usman. Buhari disclosed these in July 12 in an affidavit file that the Federal High Court Legals in a suit brought against him by the Chief Executive Officer of Maritime Media Ltd. Assobex and two others. The affidavit which was filed as Buhari's preliminary objection to the suit was signed by Agand Tabitha of the Civil Litigation Department of the Federal Ministry of Justice at Bujaran behalf of Buhari's Council. A welcome back, those were some of the stories to trend in the world of business this week. Now the emergence of mobile money operators in Nigeria has simplified the everyday financial life of an average citizen who can simply walk into any of their centers to perform a wide array of transactions previously restricted to banking halls. Now stakeholders in the telecommunication sector have disagreed with the central bank of Nigeria on its new regulatory framework for mobile money services in Nigeria. They said that mobile money services should be driven by telecoms companies as against what is prescribed by the CBN. Joining us today is the national treasurer of Amban Olou Babs Aziz. Many thanks for joining us on Business Insight and Plus TV Africa. I thank you very much, it's a pleasure being on here. All right let's talk about the emergence of a mobile money operation in Nigeria. It seems to have gained traction during the COVID-19 pandemic and almost every street you go you just find the presence of kiosk, umbrellas and shops where these operations go through. Is it an all-commerce affair? Wow you see when we have something that is an emerging industry you know mobile money is an emerging trend in the whole world. So on Nigeria I've not really embraced it. We are still lacking and lacking behind but we are really putting things in place to make sure that Nigeria really embraced financial inclusion. That's why during the pandemic you have seen agents out there in news and corners of the of the state are just because the financial institutions are not open for service and people need to carry out some kind of financial services. So and the agents are there most at the last mile so to render some services so that's why you see not that they are just emerging but these have just brought them to the limelights and for people to get more aware that oh there is what we call agent banking mobile money or a operation going out there. Okay you said Nigeria has not actually gotten to the extent that it should be getting you know what would actually say that things have changed over the past five years ordinarily I can't remember the last time I went to the banking hall you know to to make withdrawals or to do some transfers when I can actually just do from the comfort of my mobile phone or if I don't have access to my phone I could just easily walk into one of these you know kiosks and do transfers you know withdrawals and even you know make payments for other financial services. So if you say Nigeria has not really gotten there where are we right now and where should we be going? Yeah if you consider the Nigeria population we have about all about 200 millions so if you look at the number of agents we have out there and the operators you know that we're not really getting there and also we don't really have much financial services like product and services on the mobile money platform as such so to really embrace financial inclusion you know when you talk about financial inclusion just trying to bridge the gap between those in the last mile and those in the city so that they can have access to bouquet of financial product and services via their phone. Okay but looking at it right now one would say that the average mobile money agent or the operator is seemingly taking the place of the average bank do you agree? Oh well since we have we have bank-led operators we have a non-bank-led operators and the techos also are now coming techos we have techos led by the telecoms you you you agree with me that it's it's much more convenient for banks to run because banks cannot be in every way they can't penetrate into every way like the last mile you know the cost of erecting a mobile htm machine the cost of erecting it the maintenance as well so it has a long way to go but let's assume they are going to incur about let's say 1.7 million on erecting a purest a purest machine where people can a htm machine where people can withdraw at a particular location they now look at it okay instead of incurring such amount of money and that will only serve those people within that community if such amount could be invested in agent banking whereby give agents terminals and those terminals will go to the news and clinics of the of the of the community so it's it's go further and it's go to the last mile than just having this htm a machine at a particular location are you getting it because when i'm talking about the htm machine we have people out there to have access to various products and financial products and services and erecting htm machine could not really do that but we need the agents all right okay talking about them these agents right now how do you ensure regulation and to ensure that you know it's not just an all commerce affairs that i said in the start so at least there'll be some sort of control and there'll be some sort of checks i know there's an association you have this amban so what exactly what role does amban play in all of this yeah good you say amban was being incorporated for far back 2015 and we've been incorporated to see how best we can facilitate organize and speed up the agents the operators and regulators okay let's go on before you go for that so just get a bit of clarity so our audience can actually follow you mentioned agents operators and regulators can you break it down who are the agents who are the operators and of course the regulators should be the cb and or fintech exactly just explain so agents are the common man you are seen out there on on the street promoting or projecting the image of the bank or mobile money operators those are the agents those are the ones you are seeing which uh in kiosks uh with spewers and stuff those are the agents then the the operators are the licensed mobile money operators either bank led or non bank led or telco's led you mentioned several names so you have to break it down bank led now telco led and non bank led should break those three down okay the the non bank led are the likes of op baga okay and the likes okay i got it then the bank led we have uh first money we have stomach those ones are under various commercial banks exactly so those are the bank led then the telco's led we have this uh uh uh mimo from the from mtn okay momo and all of that momo from mtn then we have also from 80 salads and also from a the network service provider half gerrym operations as well yeah okay we now have okay let's talk about regulation right now so you mentioned the bank led non bank led and telco led so are those regulators yeah they have been the the regulatory framework is from the from the cbn so cbn regulation this is an ecosystem okay so we are talking of uh mobile money agent banking is an ecosystem that has to well route through the cbn the names the telco's because you can't do it with telcos because all you are doing you are doing from your phone forgets about the pure s are you getting it and the bank also most of these operators they have a an account to be signed a particular bank okay they have their a the miserable where all those transactions route through okay and also the nipsing so nipsing and the cbn are the major resolution in this industry okay so basically now for your association which is amban you regulate just uh the agents yeah what what amban does as i as i explain earlier that okay what we are trying to do to facilitate and also to organize and speed up is speed up the the the the efforts of the cbn towards financial inclusion okay then amban also uh represent the interest of their members through uh through collaboration through synergy interaction on matters related to financial inclusion okay so and our our major focus we focus on agent banking mobile money fraud and security then advocacy and awareness okay tell us about some of your success stories so for have you been able to ensure some sort of sanity you know uh you know financial inclusion is relatively still new in Nigeria and we have not gotten to the level that we should get so tell us some of the things that have happened and how amban has been able to ensure sanity in the system yeah i sincerely when you talk about financial inclusion in Nigeria uh you can't do without amban okay because all this survey being carried out by various organization operators are being done through our platform so they come to us because we are the one that interface with the last mile so they are just an operator so we interface with the last mile so they come to us for the for for all this question and then we tell them this this what they need to do and based on that they formulate their policy so in in verbally now amban is actually like the go between uh you know the last users and of course uh operators and agents but just for the sake of understanding for people who would really want to get into some sort of a maybe agency bank you know uh mobile money um operation is it something that uh would still be lucrative in the next 510 is is it the future of uh you know financial services not just in like maybe globally yeah yes because a lot a lot of uh a lot of uh a financial product and services are still coming are you getting it but what we have out there now we have just a kiko just cashing cash out deposit or withdrawal then build this payment but there are some other services that's when we are talking about financial inclusion that will make people to feel that's feel the impact can you mention some of these services that you're talking about okay good like the other time uh okay let me mention of a particular operator like op for distance you know we have something like all ride are you getting it whereby i want to make a ride use your application okay so it goes beyond just to go for payment of other services we are talking about people having access to bouquet of financial product and services so that we are talking about financial inclusion just to build the gap between those are the last ones that they can also have access to it okay i get it and so that way we have mobile money and agent banking as we all know that agent banking is just like someone representing or projecting the image of the bank out there doing what the bank are doing and what are the major things people understand about do bank are into deposit withdrawal transfer transfer things like that but agents are only limited to that okay you know you cannot do a lending as an agent but as time goes on these are the services we have on the platform okay and even some operators now they have it on their platform okay so operators they wouldn't go beyond just the regular transfers making payments and collections they also do uh you know loan services and of course uh maybe so then again you know for for the sake of those who are really very interested and just may want to get into this you know what exactly do you need i just want you to give you some sort of advice now to start start as a young man who just left school and has not got a job and feels that he should be independent and do something for himself what do you need on the average to be a mobile agent or money agent or an operator well uh if i'm to share with you it's beyond what you have seen out there okay all those people just there with umbrella we call them accidental agents accidental agents yeah why accidental good because they don't go through the proper channel they might just acquire p u s from their banks you know all this uh uh what they call it the the bank uh sales person the market house they go out there they're on targets okay so you just go about and they just go and give out the p u s machines and all but that is what we and asia we are trying to achieve want to want to come on board as an institution that anybody coming to this industry have to be tutored we have to give them orientation is beyond what you are looking out there and i must comment what legal states have just done the legal state empowerment trust fund all right uh most men most of our members facilitates for this project they are doing now they are trying to see how they can empower people on this industry agency banking so there is a syllabus for it we train them for all we is it a whole we got two ways different facilitators so those are the process it's not just you having a p o s no it's beyond that it's a business it's also behind you sit on his own like we have a ocean of bankers we have these uh insurance as well so we are now working towards having such in the industry and that sanity that's what i was trying to do all right fine so basically now although you you answered part of my of my question i just wanted you to because each time on the show we try to give advice you know for startups and those who really want to get insight on how you know to start some sort of business what should they really be doing what's the right thing to do well for anybody that want to start should identify or should be first identify with a reliable operator and also because operate the operator when we started far back 2012 we have been trained but now no training okay and that's why we are having series of issues out there with agent that they can't control but without session we don't have such okay because we train ourselves we have a this conference every year okay to ensure training and retraining of members so that's how many people about the industry all right so invariably what you're saying as we wrap up now is that once the identified you know agents there should be training and so they can actually understand the terms and of course the future of the industry all right thank you so much we have been speaking with the national treasurer of amban or low buffs as these many thanks for joining us look at the issue of financial inclusion in nigeria thanks for the opportunity to share that all right it is still business insight and plus tv africa i trust you have actually gotten one or two tips on how to be a mobile money agent and of course maybe an operator but then we'll leave you with useful insight on how to write an informal proposal that's the size of the show i am justin akademi let's do it again next week bye for now writing an informal proposal the thoughts of writing a proposal overwhelms many people but the task does not have to be daunting informal proposals are written when people need to ask permission to make a purchase undertake a project or write a paper this type of proposal is a way of persuasively putting forth an idea and asking for action to be taken on that idea when writing a proposal consider who will read the proposal and what that person may or may not already know about what you're proposing follow these steps when writing a proposal one state your purpose do this clearly and concisely so that the reader knows immediately why you are writing two give some background information explain why you are proposing your suggestion so that the reader has a better understanding of the problem three state a solution to the problem this is where you give specifics about your suggestion four show costs lay out any costs that will be involved five conclusion wrap it up by restating the problem and the proposed solution


Hi everyone, I'm Allison Whelan and I'm Buffy Herakides and we are 10 days away from Data Cloud USA and counting down our top 10 things that we're most looking forward to. Yeah, we're so excited Data Cloud is just 10 days away and at number one we are most excited about JSA TV. We will be filming JSA TV live from the floor at Data Cloud USA. On number two the I Am Women's Tea Party hosted with Broad Group on Sunday, September 10th at 4.30pm. We'll be there, we hope to see you there too. And JSA TV will also be filming short videos with the talent in tech crew. This is a new initiative started by Data Cloud USA that will be launched at this event so we're super excited to meet all the emerging up and coming stars in our industry. So stay tuned for that. And of course we're looking forward to being back in Austin at the beautiful Four Seasons Resort. Last year was over in Barton Creek, this year we're heading downtown. No better place in Austin to be than downtown at the Four Seasons with a luxury resort for us to host this wonderful event with Data Cloud and one of the top things that we're looking forward to coming in at number five courtesy of our friend Katie O'Hara from Stream Data Centers is meeting five new faces at Data Cloud USA. And number six, walking the exhibit floor. We will actually be located on the exhibit floor at stand seven so make sure that you build out time to stop by that floor and come see us at stand seven. And on September 12th I will be chairing a panel unleashed, empowering the connected future through Data Center Interconnectivity. And number eight might be our favorite, seeing all of the DSA community that's on site in Austin with us. And at number nine I am wearing my green today and I will be wearing my green at Data Cloud USA in honor of our greener data movement and awareness so we will be officially kicking off the countdown to greener data at Data Cloud USA. And last but certainly not least, tacos, Tex-Mex and of course all of the networking parties and receptions that will be taking place during Data Cloud USA. Be sure to check out that agenda and add all of those to your schedule. Yeah, can't forget about all the parties that we will be at Data Cloud USA. And if you didn't register yet, be sure to save on our exclusive JSA discount code, Allison. Yes, JSA 10, 10% off registration. And be sure to check us out on LinkedIn, X, you formally Twitter, all of the fabulous channels to stay tuned for more information about JSA TV live at Data Cloud USA. And we'll see you there. Happy networking. Happy networking.


Um, so yeah, I'll go ahead and do that. Call the meeting to order at 549. Um, and sorry, I was just looking at the other agendas and not the agenda for tonight. Um, any adjustments to the agenda? Nope, just that we have a couple of motions that you'll have to do just prior to the morning in informational meeting that allows you to do those things. That's all. Um, and we have all received the the warning for the annual school district. Votes and the informational meeting. Warnings any discussion on that. I just have those open. I thought they looked good. Just a point of clarification because I didn't realize it. In the informational meeting agenda, I had that we would have a discussion about the officers. And then Dina had me take that out and said that wasn't part of the discussion. So that's why that article isn't on the agenda for the informational meeting. The officer by officers. Do you mean the people running for. I think what we did do last last year, though, under other is we allowed folks to speak and we should still. Yeah, I think that worked well. Yeah, I think it's great if we can let people introduce themselves in case they're like unknowns to the community, et cetera. Particularly where we're in this like hybrid model and people. You know, can join from home even if they don't make it out to a meeting. Can I make a motion that we approve the warrant? No. Sure. I think that we have to make a very specific motion. So moving on to action items. Tara, did you have the language we need to use to make those motions. Tara just put it in the chat. So I would entertain a motion. Okay, hereby move that the board holds its informational meeting on February 21 2022 by electronic means pursuant to s 172 of the 2022 legislative session. And then just include also in there Lisa that February 28 meeting as well. Okay, so February 21 21 and February 28. Okay, any seconds. I'll second it. Chris, any discussion of the motion. All right, all in favor. I. Okay, there's an eye. There's only four of us here at the moment. Correct. We don't have Peggy. I haven't seen her yet. Right. So there's four of us here. So the motion passes and we also have another. We need to look at the annual school district. That vote warning. Yeah, so now you'll now that you've made that motion, you can make the motion to accept. The notice I'm going to copy it in the chat. Okay. Tara is giving us some language script the one I just posted that's for after. Okay, so here's a comment about it. And I just put in the motion to accept the notice and agenda. So you want to have a motion. So I moved to accept the white river unified school district remote public and. And agenda for February 21 2022 and February 28, 2022. I'll second that. Any discussion. Hearing none. All in favor? Aye. Rodney says aye. I think that was. Motion passes. Taking that in the affirmative. So then we need a motion on the district annual meeting warning. I just put that one in there. Thank you Tara. I'll move that we accept the white never unified school district annual meeting warning. I'll second that. All in favor? Aye. Aye. All right. Any opposed? No. That motion passes as well. And then Tara was there this one more we have to do? Yep. So the second chat that I put in there I moved pursuant to S223 to not co-mingle the ballot. So that motion needs to be done so that your ballots can be counted in each individual town and then it will be reported to PAM to report. Okay. That makes sense. Any discussion on that? So I'll move that pursuant to S223 the ballots for the 2022 annual meeting are not co-mingled due to concerns regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. I'll second that. Okay. Any discussion? Hearing none. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. All right. And it looks like Peggy just joined us. That's why I didn't vote. Okay. So Peggy is abstaining from that last vote because she joined us in the meeting. Okay. Thank you. And the last thing we have is like I said earlier, I just need to know we have to have wet signatures on the warnings. So I just need to know what your preference is. You can come to my office and sign it or I can send it to PAM. And then each of you would just need to stop at the Bethel town clerk's office to sign. Okay. Yeah, I can do that. Excellent. So I will have them all printed and ready to go tomorrow morning. So just feel free to stop by whenever it works for you. And what are the hours that you guys are open? We usually have someone in the office from 7 30 to 5 36 o'clock. All right. Sounds great. All right. Any other business? Thank you. Thank you. And during none, I would take a motion to adjourn. So moved. Great. I hope to see you guys over in the full board meeting that happens in three minutes.


Welcome back. I'm Jay Fidel. This is TinkTek. We're talking about community matters because the Twitter community, which is a global community, is nevertheless a community. We have for this discussion a senior engineer at TinkTek, Eric Calander, and he's going to help us do that. So it's Will, Twitter, Recover. The machinations continue, and now we're going to discuss that. Yeah, welcome to the show, Eric Calander. It's nice to see you smile and face. Hello. Good to be here. So I guess the operative question is Will, Twitter, can continue and recover.  I don't.  Well, ultimately, Twitter's not going to go anywhere. It's too big of a social media platform, way too many users for it to just disappear, I think. But it's people are losing faith in it because, you know, Anderson's Musk took over. He had the rise in hate speech, misinformation, violent speech, and people just are going to, some people will tune out, but ultimately, Twitter will stick around. You know, the politicians are going to need it. You know, businesses are still going to need it. Trump is probably going to need it if he decides to come back and continue it as a 2024 campaign. He hasn't done that yet, though. That's really a cliffhead, isn't it? You know, Musk offered him that possibility and he still is doing it. I guess he's waiting for what he thinks, Trump is waiting for what he thinks is the opportunity moment. But let me ask you. Well, he's also got, well, he's also got Truth Social. He has to worry about a move to Twitter would mean it would decrease the value of Truth Social. You know, what's special about Truth Social is the exclusivity of Trump's tweets or truths or whatever you want to call them. So if he goes to Twitter, what does that make Truth Social? Oh, it's the end of Truth Social, I think, if he moves. Maybe it's just a matter of old fashioned dollars for him. He cares about that. So when he is trying to make it public, he's trying to merge Truth Social into a, I don't have the name of the other company, but he is trying to merge it to get it publicly traded. And if he's got those plans in it, I don't see how a move to Twitter would help that out. Yeah. You get a trading card when you join? That's a joke. Maybe we should make those. $99 trading card. Yeah, we should have think tech trading cards, I think. Absolutely.  I want you to develop another word, another social media that's like Twitter. I mean, there's a lot of things in social media platforms that are really not protectable. You know, the copyright trademark protection, you can develop a new one. Patent protection, you can develop a new one, maybe a better one. So I come up with another word, say, flitter, for the lack of anything else, comes to mind. And I make a flitter type platform. And I make it smarter and better, because you know this, you know this, there's always the possibility of innovating something better than what you're doing now.  And now you got another one. Why doesn't that happen?  Somebody, you know, who will, you know, keep bad content out and so forth and not do the kinds of bizarre things he's been doing. So if I get, if I take my, say my $20 million and I create flitter, then I could have a platform that is similar in functionality. And I could advertise it really well. And I could make it very appealing. And I could take all these steps to make it very engaging for people, for my market, if you will. Why can't I beat Elon Musk at his own game? It's just a matter of, you know, all these companies, all these social media platforms came up from nowhere in no time. They were all almost immediate. What makes Twitter a long-term play at this point? Well, when Twitter came out, there was nothing else like it. So no competition, they, same with Facebook, they had no competition. So they soared to popularity. And the problem, if you had $20 million to make your own Twitter account or flitter, as you call it, the problem is you're not going to have users. And that's what Twitter has. And you do see, there is a company called Mastodon, which is trying to do exactly what you're talking about, and making a competitor to Twitter. And they're getting more traction. I don't have the numbers, but they're getting more and more users, but it still just pales in comparison to what Twitter has. There's a kind of boundary there. It's like, if I hear the name Mastodon 10 times in a week, if I see ads and I get email and people send me messages from Mastodon, all of a sudden I'm going to pass, I'm going to pass a certain point, the Rubicon, if you will. I'm going to be really interested and I'm going to join. I might subscribe and maybe they're going to offer me benefits discounts and other products. Who knows what? Some smart stuff, right? Smarter than Twitter ever did. And in better faith, once you find a software company is not dealing in good faith, you really shouldn't hang around. We've learned that, haven't we? And so if this was clearly in good faith, doing the right thing for you as a subscriber and a customer, then at some point you're going to say, this is the successor. They have crossed a boundary. They are in the same space. They may not have all the hundreds of millions of installs that Twitter does, but they have, say, 50 million or 100 million and they're on the way and I like them and everybody tells me about them and it's in the network. It's in the mesh, the social mesh, if you will. And so I'm going to take Mastodon and I'm going to drop off Twitter. I think it's possible, but you're right. It's a long way to go. And the question is whether he can ever recover in terms of getting a CEO who really understands what we're talking about here and appealing to people in a way to hold them. Just right now I think his fringe membership is probably dropping off pretty quickly because the word is out on him. And I think that's always the case. It's not only Twitter. Somebody could do a job on Facebook too. They just have to find new innovations. Think about Facebook. Think about all of them is that they're trying to innovate too. They're trying to change and the question is who changes best. Facebook is always dynamic, always coming up with new stuff. I suggest that social media is a platform for change. It's all about change. That's what it should be. Absolutely. That's where you should start seeing change. It's how you get your messages out to the entire world. So that's what you'd like to see. But to go on with the new Flitter or Macedon thing, hopefully that Macedon or whatever, Jack Dorsey has been rumored that he's going to come up with a new Twitter, but hopefully that whatever new social media would be successful.  We have the tools and the audience in Twitter already. Just bring it back to how it was. One of the things that fascinates me is spam. I get tons of it. It's wasted my time and sometimes it's really destructive and malicious and all that. My mission in life is to keep it out of my system. And until now, I haven't been able to really do that. I looked at the rules, functionality in the Apple Mail and didn't do anything. And if you unsubscribe, they don't care. They do not care if you unsubscribe. It's like asking for more trouble to unsubscribe. But I did talk to somebody. Actually, it was in Apple and he pointed out that all the mail goes through Google, all the mail. So whatever Apple is sending you, it's going through Google. That's a little scary. That Google has the servers and Apple signs up for those servers and that's how you get the mail. And Google also has filters. So you can say, I don't want to get any mail from Joe Blow. And you can put that in a filter and you will never get any mail on any system, including Apple or Google Mail or anything, because you filtered it out.  It could create filters, sort of the way Google has created filters on email. And you could lay the filter on top of Twitter and say, filter out all these kinds of bad things. And then you could have Twitter without the bad things. Is there a future in that? I think there could be. I mean, the technology definitely exists there to do exactly what you're talking about. Will Musk want to do something like that? Probably not.  He's being very adamant about that stuff. But it goes to the screaming fire in a movie theater. What is allowed under free speech? What are the limits of free speech?  What good does that do to have people doing that all the time? I don't see a benefit to it. You know, the artificial intelligence at this point becomes relevant because I could create a filter using artificial intelligence and I could be really smart about excluding things by way of a filter. And I could put rules in that are much more complex than the rules available under Apple or Microsoft or even Google. And I can exclude, you know, it's always better to exclude too much than too little. That's my view of it, because I don't want to get trash either on email or on Twitter. And so I could have my other company, Mastodon, or the other name that I came up with, whatever it was, Flitter, at work as an overlay. And it could have the artificial intelligence. And I could pay for that because I want to have a greater level of confidence. You know, the artificial intelligence, since it first came up in, I guess it came up after 9-11, essentially. It was a network social analysis. I think they called it originally. And it would look through large volumes of email, for example, and it would pick up the names of terrorists, for example, who were at the same meetings. And then the intelligence agencies would be able to connect the dots on those people. Social networking analysis, it was called. And it started in the corporate world and it wound up in the government. So the question is, using AI, I might be able to create either A, a much better Twitter, or B, a filter that wrote on top of Twitter and helped me get, you know, a more curated subset, if you will, of what Twitter is offering. You think that's in the future? Yeah, I don't see why. Again, it's up to debate if Twitter or Musk is going to use any technology like that, or AI like that. But I think it definitely, you know, you see a lot more automation, AI stuff, and everywhere, not just social media. So I can't see social media being any different. Yeah. So what about Musk? I mean, we have learned a lot about him.  So how does he look right now? What kind of a person is he, according to all the news that comes out about him? He's still popular among his ardent supporters, but he's not looking very good as a social media weird. You know, he just hasn't been doing well. And meanwhile, his Tesla company, now they're down 65%, I think this year lost like $20 billion, the first person to ever lose such a sum of money. He's not doing so well. So it's about time he picks a new CEO, he does it. There's been a few rumors, as far as Jack Dorsey and also our good friend Jared Kushner. He's been rumored as a possible head. But whoever he does it, Twitter poll or selecting someone, he should probably do it soon. Did you say Kushner? Well, he had. So to be fair, Musk and Twitter, yeah, he hasn't been named at all. This was just a rumor that was out there. Oh my God, I would turn my back on that whole operation. I would never utter the word again. But yeah, I remember that first he said, you guys don't like me as a CEO, and we're going to have a vote. And if the vote turns out against me, I'm going to get another CEO and I'm going to quit. And they voted him out. They voted him out. But then he said, I was only kidding. Jokes on you, right? I was only kidding. But then I think he was under a lot of pressure for only kidding. And then he said, I'll look, I'll look for another CEO, which is ain't easy. No, it's not easy. I can't imagine it being a very, I don't see a lot of people wanting that job. It's going to be a hard job to do. Twitter was never really that financially successful back when Jack was running it. So it's kind of looking like a job where you're going to be set up to fail. People are already, it's very unpopular in a lot of people's minds. You got to listen to Musk and pretty much do whatever Musk tells you. I can see it being not a very popular job. Yeah. Yeah, he's the kind of micro manager type of guy. And he's not going to let you just do your thing. You're going to tell you step by step what to do. But what is it, though, to be the CEO of a big social media platform? What kind of a job is it? Because you have to keep off the misinformation, disinformation out. You have to keep the hate speech. I think that can be either mechanized or you hire a ton of people to look at everything. What else is the challenge if you're the CEO of Twitter? I should ask Jack Dorsey. He happened to do a pretty decent job with at least the content on Twitter. So it goes back to like what I was saying, with the policies that they had. They already had these policies in place. The Twitter was being run fine before Musk came in. I just don't see why he can't just go back to what it was. Why? I really don't know the answer to this. Why did he make all those changes? It doesn't sound like it was a good idea. I think he's trying to find any way to come up with money. Again, Twitter is not very financially successful. How do you save money? You cut half of your employee, half of your workforce, which he did. Now we're seeing the ramifications of that. There's these issues about how you have to rebuild your workforce. If you want to rebuild the functionality that you had before. But the people who left and the people who read up on the people who left, they're not going to be too excited about coming in. You were saying that it's hard to find another CEO. It's probably hard to find a lot of people who got fired summarily by Musk. Why in the world would you work for a company where you can get summarily terminated? He's still going to be the de facto CEO anyway. Why in the world would you do that? I wouldn't do that. Furthermore, I wouldn't want to be associated with a company with a reputation that he has created for it. Yes, I totally agree with that. Totally agree. Let's extend this out. If he can't find a CEO with some real kutzpa, who can come up with new ideas and innovate into a new, more profitable zone. If he can't find people who will replace all of those information vetting employees in Twitter that he fired, what happens? What's the ghost of Christmas future on this? Where do you extend that? How does that wind up? They can see Twitter is becoming more of a free-for-all out there without any moderation. He's got the whole blue check mark thing. It's hard to tell who is a real journalist or not. So it would be really kind of the wild west. I think that's what he wants with a complete free speech on any amount of paid speech, whatever you want to say. That's I think what he's going for. You think it'll work? Let's assume he gets there. You think it'll work? I do. Because again, I don't think Twitter is going to go anywhere. It's too big of a presence in everyone's lives nowadays. So I don't think Twitter is actually going to go anywhere, but I think its credibility will go. It might not be used as such a serious news resource. Does that change the complexion, the demography of the members, of the people who look at it and read it? It sounds like from what you said it does, that over time, if he makes a complete free-for-all out of it, it'll be a different group, a different community. Especially if news sources and purporators go to something like Mastodon or something like that where you can expect it to be reliable and real information. Yeah, people are going to leave Twitter for that reason. As a news source, I can still see Twitter being around as just a fun social media kind of thing or attempted coups. But I think most news sources could go another way. So how does that affect the advertisers? Because he can't make this work. He'll never get to profitability or the profitability that he wants to have without advertisers. Already, he's lost a lot of advertisers. And I'm sure in terms of opportunity cost, there's a lot of potential advertisers out there that wouldn't touch them. So this is a two-part question. Will the advertisers come back, do you think, in a free-for-all? And will the members who quit him come back in a free-for-all? Well, they could. It just must cast a, now, bring those policies back. Moderate Twitter. Moderate the content on Twitter. Do what people do with the users. The majority of the users want Mastodon with the platform. It seems like he's just kind of doing whatever he wants to do. And that's pleasing some people out there. But overall, he's going to have a lot of unhappy users. Yeah. Somehow, I feel we're at an inflection point. And I know in many ways, it's too big to fail. But whenever something is too big to fail, I personally would like to see it fail. Just as a lesson, a lesson to the people who think it's too big to fail. I mean, the CEO, the owner. So what's the time frame, do you think, Eric, by which we'll see this work out one way or the other? We'll see in this election cycle. We'll see. There's going to be a lot of big moves that happen between now and November 2024. And Twitter is going to be right in the middle of it. Yeah. We're going to see a lot of Twitter. We're going to see a lot of the big changes coming up. That's a really interesting way of looking at it. Between now and 2024, that's what, less than two years. And that means in the middle of the election cycle means, may I say, political ads, which are very lucrative. Maybe that's what you are talking about here. If he wants to earn a lot of money, and now in the election cycle, and he's got all these people who may not be all that akamai about what's true on Twitter and what's not true on Twitter, but they'll stay with it and well enough to continue as members. And therefore, even if his commercial advertisers don't return, his political advertisers will pay him big bucks. Maybe that's the plan. Absolutely. Maybe that's the plan. You'll always have the audience is still there. And the tweets, if you're running for president, and you have to tweet something out, it'll be covered on the news. So the political benefits will still be there. And they have the money too. So Musk knows that. Why am I kind of sad about this? It makes me despondent to think of a guy coming in and wrecking the truth. He's working against the truth. That's what he's doing. And through his efforts and through this company, he is misinforming the American, the global the global public. It isn't just the U.S. He's letting them be misinformed. Yeah. Well, yeah. And he knows that it's misinformation. So my final area of discussion with you, Eric, is regulation. We wouldn't have touched the First Amendment with a 10-foot pole five years ago. Now here we are, wondering how much damage Elon Musk can do to the truth in our country and our world. It begs for regulation. What kind of regulation could we do? I mean, we have the First Amendment. This is going to be a problem in terms of any content regulation from the government. But what can we do with an ideal approach, an ideal world? How can we clean it up through government? Well, it's hard with bringing government into it because then people are going to say, okay, well, now is that the government's message? Or are they letting people be saying their own opinions? And I think a lot of people would say, oh, this is just the government trying to get their whatever message they have out. I mean, maybe the answer is nothing, not a thing. On the other hand, a part of that question assumes that somebody has to do something because this has a big effect on public opinion, on a well-informed electorate here and elsewhere. It's not just the US. And I suppose the first part of that question is, can we in this country and other countries that have Twitter followings, can we afford to have Twitter who are free for all on political issues and for our discussion a minute ago on political ads? Can we afford to do that? Or is that creating a kind of hole in the democratic vote? Well, now, yeah, we need some sort of regulation. I don't know if it needs to be a government regulation or just having the resources and teams at Twitter to handle it, which is what they did before. But look at Brazil right now with the attempted coup the other day from Bolsonaro's supporters. People down, researchers down there are linking a significant part of that is because they got rid of the moderation for violent speech down there. And so they're seeing a lot of the messages. A lot of the reason why that coup attempt happened was from Twitter. And so that's the second time in two years we've seen something like this. And I just hope it doesn't spread to any other countries. I didn't know that. Which it could. That's really scary. And what it suggests is that if you want to organize a conspiracy and an insurrection and a coup, Twitter is your baby. You can communicate with people. You can lie to them. You can do incendiary things with them for them. It's quite the mechanism. Yeah. So, wow, that is a huge affront to democratic government. And it goes back to the question I raised earlier. And that is, can we afford to allow him to continue this way? If Twitter was free for all in Brazil, and the Brazil insurrection was a result of that, then we have a kind of a proof of the correlation of the relationship between the one and the other. And it could happen again. You know, I maintain that the insurrection we had on January 6 did not end on January 6 that the conspirators are still out there. And the wish to conspire, the benefits of conspiring are still out there. Not only in this country, but obviously in others like Brazil. So we need, let me pose this as a, we need to have regulation not only on a national basis, but on an international basis because Twitter and companies like Twitter are international. And again, these teams and policies were already in place, not just for the United States, but Brazil had their own team.  So it's not like a mystery of how do we do this. It's the answer we had it already. One last thing before we run. And that is this, you know, one troubling thing about the internet is that it's anonymous. You can have a Twitter handle. And it's really hard to find out who you are. I mean, by somebody watching or receiving your messages. Could we, would we be better off if we required validation of who you are when you send that email or send that message or make that Twitter post. So we know that it's you and that if you are being irresponsible, if you are talking conspiracy and insurrection and all that, we know and we can prove it up. They should do that. That's how Facebook is pretty much set up now. You can't go and make a fake Facebook account. You got to verify who you are and there's several steps to make sure that the person who makes an account is who they are. And so Twitter could easily do that. But it's again, it's not, it's not a mystery of how to do it. They could easily do it. But who knows if they will. Well, he won't. I don't think every, every thing he says and does suggests that he won't. And I guess one other thing, and I'm really not familiar with this, but, you know, YouTube has an extraordinary following now. And we'll have another show on this later this week about how YouTube is innovating so many things and it's becoming so popular and competitive with TV and cable. But Twitter can also deliver video. So Twitter could get more heavily involved in video just like YouTube, couldn't it? They could, but I think, I think YouTube has that, has that section of the internet pretty locked down. Twitter could, and there are videos on there, but I don't see it going the way that how YouTube is set up. And what about, you know, the marginal platforms? You know, I was looking at my own list of platforms that I signed up for at one time or another. And a number of them aren't there anymore. They come, they go. They're all done. And so what you have is a kind of evolution that at a certain point, if their subscriptions, you know, drop past a certain level, they fold. And they don't write you an email and say, Eric, we just fold it. They just fold. No courtesy. No. There's not a whole lot of courtesy on social media or on email for that matter. We're on the net in general. I mean, a company could go out of business and the website goes away. That's the end of that. But, you know, I really, I really wonder, it's sort of like, sort of like the big banks in this country in Canada, where at the end of the day, they all consolidate. And they're all, they're all too big to fail. Facebook, arguably too big to fail. And you have a smaller and smaller group, all the ones that were marginal have dropped off. And now you have these huge behemoths of social media. Is that where this is going to go? I mean, time will tell. I don't see, I don't know how friendly Facebook and Twitter are. I don't see a merger happening anytime soon. But maybe that's, maybe that's the failsafe musk as, you know, someone, someone like Facebook can go and buy them and turn it around for the good. Yeah. Well, it just doesn't seem to be this, this Facebook and its subsidiary Instagram has linked in, I suppose, new business social media programs are coming online, but they're nowhere near as big as Facebook or Twitter. And so you could probably name all the meaningful social media platforms now on one or two hands max, right? Yeah. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and now TikTok. Yeah. So you've actually done it on one hand. You've actually done it on one hand. And that makes each one of them all the more powerful. And you're right to raise the question about, suppose Facebook and Twitter get together and have a beer one day and decide they're going to merge, you know, and during the Trump years, there was not a lot of antitrust at the Department of Justice where they stopped mergers just didn't happen very much, although the law would presumably allow them to stop the merger. But suppose they got into a deal where they were going to merge and it's sort of like Instagram, right? You can still see them separately, but they were together. Sort of like those conservative radio stations in the Midwest, they're all owned by Sinclair, you know, hundreds of radio stations and they will have the same news, the same editorial policy. So if those two had a beer and decided they were going to merge and decided they were going to have the same editorial policy, news sources, whatever, content management or non-management, what would that mean to us? I'm not sure, Jay. It would probably, I don't think I have an answer for you, Jay. That's, I'm not sure. Yeah, well, you could, you could consolidate it right into one pyramid and then we'd all be subject to the same information all day, this would be, and if it was all- And all come from the same place. Misinformation, I wouldn't want that to happen. Okay, last one, last question to you. Twitter is blemished. Twitter, the press has reported so many things about Twitter that it makes you wonder about A, their truth and B, their internal organization, you know, how they filter things and C, their future because of the, you know, disenchantment of advertisers. Advertisers, yeah. So right now today, let's make you 18 years old, just out of high school. Would you become a member of Twitter? Yeah, probably. That's just, if I was an 18-year-old going into college, I would have a Twitter account probably. I wouldn't be using it for, you know, paid speech or politics or news or anything. I'd be using it for, you know, fun. But as I got older, I would probably distance myself, which is pretty similar to what my real life experience with Twitter. You know, I did it for a little bit, and I've kind of backed away, and now I don't have any interest in going back. Okay, I'm sure there's going to be more. You know, there's $44 billion at stake here, and Elon Musk is not going to just try up and float away. He's going to do stuff. I don't know what. So we have to watch this, and I hope I can catch you again for an update on what's going on on our unfavorite social media platform, Twitter. Thank you, Eric. Thanks, Jay. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktecawaii.com. Mahalo.


Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners. Thanks to all of you, including Dale Mulcahy, Matt Zaglin, the sponsor, Kelly Cook, and brand new patron Nigel. Well, everybody, welcome Nigel. Hey, Nigel. On this episode of DTNS, how is TikTok dealing with the disappearance of UMG music and its Apple Vision Pro launch day? So now we can stop speculating, and I don't know, maybe start seeing if it's good for anything. This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, February 2nd, Groundhog Day 2024. Friday, February 2nd, Groundhog Day 2024. In Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Animal House, I'm Sarah Lane. From the edge of Atlanta, I'm Nika Monford. Also from the suburbs of Atlanta, I am Terence Gaines. Drawn the top tech stories in Cleveland, I'm Len Peralta. I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. And joining us, producer and co-host of the brand new Apple Vision show, starring Sarah Lane and Eileen Rivera. Welcome, Eileen. Hello. I have also been told that it is Groundhog Day. I don't know how many times on my phone, on the same calendar, like 10 times, Groundhog Day. Is anybody, yeah. Is this happening to anyone else? I have not had that happen to me. Yeah, I don't know. That's wild. We're emphasizing meme of some kind. Indeed. Well, we are obviously gathered such a big panel today because we wanted the folks from the brand new Apple Vision show, which launches Monday. To meet the folks from Snobo S-Cast, who are our in-house Apple correspondents, and talk about the big launch of the biggest product. Is it fair to say it's the biggest product Apple's launched since the iPhone? Oh, it's certainly the biggest best. In anticipation anyway. Yeah. Probably the one with the most questions. I would say the most expensive. Certainly the most expensive. Yeah. Like the Mac Pro would be the only thing that passes it up. Right. Oh, jeez. They're neck and neck. Maybe the thing with the biggest box. I would assume. Yeah. Big box too. So we're going to talk about all that and more, but let's start with the quick hits. Meta earned a net income of $14 billion on revenue of $40.1 billion with a whopping 96% of that from advertising. So Meta's still doing the advertising thing. That's up 25% in the quarter that ended December 31st, 2023. Meta's metaverse biz, Reality Labs, saw $1 billion in revenue. That's up 47% year over year, which sounds pretty great, but that was also against a net loss of $4.6 billion. Basically, Reality Labs has never made money. Meta's other revenue accounted for $334 million. Did you see Zuckerberg was like, oh, and we're going to lose more money next quarter. Don't worry. Like, we're just going to keep losing money on this. We're going to test. Yeah. Online. Google has removed links to the cached versions of web pages. You may have forgot that that was even there. They were originally launched to provide a way to access information when internet reliability from websites was lower, like websites might go down, but you could get the cached version. That's not that big of a problem anymore, but the cached version did some other things. It let you see the way Google's system saw a site. And so search engine optimization folks used it to understand how to construct their pages to improve rankings in Google, to kind of see how the competition was ranked in Google. And it could also show information that might be altered for your region, similar to using a VPN, because you're seeing how Google saw it in different regions. The cache links have been disappearing since December, and the cache operator that you can use in the address bar to make it show up is going to be discontinued soon. Now archive.org is a good alternative. If you want to see what's changed on web pages over time or see how it shows up in different areas, but there does not appear to be a replacement for seeing how Google views a page. Back in 2017, somebody leaked multiple terabytes of classified CIA data to WikiLeaks, known as Vault 7 and Vault 8. The documents detailed surveillance and cyber warfare activities, but were mostly instruction manuals for older hacking tools. So generally at the time, not considered to be consequential. On Thursday, the US Department of Justice announced that former CIA software engineer Joshua Adam Schulte has been sentenced to 40 years in prison for his convictions on charges of espionage, computer hacking, contempt of court, making false statements to the FBI, and child pornography. Yikes. Reviews for the Samsung Galaxy S24 are out. Nice move, Samsung, putting the NDA expiration on the day of the launch of the Apple Vision Pro. That is an interesting thing. Not a whole lot of surprises here. Reviewers praised the hardware, most like the new design. It's not that big of a change, but they have the flat edges. A lot of people praised that. Also getting praised for a brighter screen, better battery life, faster performance, and even the camera, which was already great, seems to have even improved more, especially for telephoto. The promised seven years of upgrades of your software got high praise as well. Reaction to the AI features seems to be mixed, though. A lot of people praising some, but not all of those, and pointing out that a lot of those features are coming to the Galaxy S23 anyway, so you wouldn't need to upgrade if you own last year's Galaxy S. Overall, though, positive reviews for Samsung's flagship phone, which everyone says is very expensive, but in general, if you needed these features, considered worth the price if you could afford it. Amazon reported ad sales rose 27% on the year, and its AWS cloud division rose 13% on the year. Amazon earnings overall beat expectations, and revenue rose 14%. Amazon forecasts first quarter sales will be between 8% and 13%. Now, while AWS revenue rose, it has slowed down from last year at this time. At of its earnings, Amazon announced a chatbot assistant for shopping. It calls Rufus. Oh, so Alexa has a friend now. That's cool. Meet Rufus. All right, let's talk about TikTok. All right, so after Universal Music Group, known as UMG, and TikTok failed to reach an agreement on licensing music from UMG artists on the app, some creators are singing the blues, or I guess they can't really sing the blues because they don't have any music left. In fact, some creators say that alternative versions of the official songs might be the only way to salvage what was already a carefully curated video that now has music stripped and now doesn't make sense unless they pull the post altogether. UMG and other labels have built marketing strategies around getting songs to go viral with the TikTok algorithm, but artists of those songs have also complained that that strategy doesn't always benefit them as much as they had hoped. Younger users see TikTok as a way to discover their next favorite song, I mean, even some older users see it as a way to discover their next favorite song, and build out your playlist. So right now, UMG is losing out on that exposure. TikTok told Wired in an email that current changes only impact music from UMG and confirm that videos with previously licensed music will not be pulled down, but they will be muted until another deal is closed. And then hopefully if they close it soon, they would be unmuted. But TikTok could also take steps to remove songs in the Universal Music Publishing Group catalog, which is a little wider and would increase the number of impacted artists. They're not saying they're gonna do that, but that's something people have speculated like, oh, it could be a leverage tactic. Yeah, so licensed music from UMG artists gone from TikTok for now, but it is still unclear what's going to happen to unofficial remixes and mashups as the catalog is for now wiped from the platform. Viral sounds on TikTok, sometimes warped versions of an original song type stuff, vocals sometimes sped up. Some of those sounds remain on the platform as of yesterday. They might not for very much longer, depending on what is actually getting scrubbed. Now Eileen, losing music from somebody as popular as Taylor Swift could be seen as a potential win for maybe a smaller artist to gain traction on TikTok. You need a song. Let's do something fun. But is TikTok the place to hedge that bet? And as a creator, what do you do? Yeah, I mean, I've been thinking about this a lot. I'm on TikTok every day. I have an account and there it is, Facebook. And like, luckily I haven't really been affected because the artists that I usually profile in my small niche, my K-pop community, but the artists of BTS, they were not affected. So most of my stuff is up there. And coincidentally, I had a Halloween video that had the monster mash gone. So I just decided to replace it with WAP because they asked me to replace the song. I'm like, okay, fine. Yeah, they're very similar. The W-O-P, W-O-P. That's an important question, yeah. Yes, the one that everybody was doing the latest TikTok mashup with, not the Megan Lee Stallion and Cardi B song. But anyways, my point into your question, I do think smaller artists can win through this because we have regular habits. We are using the app to discover music. We are using the app to create. The sad part is that you want to be able to create with as many things in your arsenal as possible. So there are creators that are affected that have edits or they just wanna celebrate their favorite artists, which is really sad because it was just, the way TikTok is being used, to me, I love it there. And I love learning information. I love people celebrating their fan, their art, their creativity in general. And it's just been a really great place to find your community. But yeah, music creators, I hope the indie artists can make a big win on this and be profiled and launch their own careers even more so than some of them already were. Well, in true TikTok form, many creators have tried to bank on the fact that a lot of their previous videos are now muted because there was music behind that that they no longer can play. In fact, we have an example. Universal, my boy, what's going on? Camila, figure this little situation out, you know what I'm saying? Cause you got me looking a little crazy right now. You go to my page and half of it is. This guy is great. No sound, half of it muted, gone. I didn't realize that you guys control so much music. Sincerely from Adrian, let's work a little deal out. You know what I'm saying? With TikTok and.  And one of the videos I saw recently muted was he was singing How to Save a Life, but I forget the artist, but you know that song How to Save a Life. Anyways, he was just like the words, you know, he's translated the lyrics and it's just muted. Literally, I watched it. I'm like, I feel so bad for this guy, you know? And he's got millions of views on it, but he's just a small sample of all the other creators make tons of really cool edits and, you know, to the beats of their favorite songs and people love them and those are muted. And now they're replacing them ironically with comedic sounds, which is really funny too. Which is, you know, I mean, shout out to the creators. You know, I think a lot of people are sort of like, I don't know, there was a song playing behind you, just like choose another song. Is it that big of a deal?   Yeah, as we said, I'm sorry. As we said earlier in the week, this is a battle in public to try to get everyone to pressure the other side to give. They will come to an agreement and then all of those muted videos will be turned back on. And I'm curious what happens to the ones that got where they did replace it when that happens. Yeah. I think the creators are just gonna reupload their videos with the right songs. They have it saved, hopefully they have it saved. Like that was the whole thing on, you know, online days leading.  Otherwise, if you replace your song, then you have to do all that work over again. And hopefully this is a learning lesson real fast. Future, for going forward, if you don't own the content, you have to be cognizant of how, when, and where you use it. Only content that you know for sure is gonna work is your content, so you have to be careful with music. You gotta be careful with people stitching videos. You gotta be careful with all that stuff because you never know how these businesses work. Yeah, word to the wise, exactly.   So, yeah, I'm lucky. All right, big day for Apple, of course. But before we get to the Apple Vision Pro, a few interesting tidbits came out of Apple's Q4 earnings report. Don't worry, this isn't just gonna be, you know, a list of EBITDA and other acronyms, none of us understand. This is stuff that kind of illustrates how things are going for Apple. Services revenue, that's Apple Music, Apple TV Plus, Apple Health, anything you subscribe to, anything that's content, not hardware, rose 11%. It is easily the second biggest revenue generator for Apple behind the iPhone. It's about a third of the iPhone's revenue and more than double any other category. So it is on track. It is not replacing the iPhone revenue at any stretch right now, but it is on track. And it is expected to grow 11% next quarter as well. Sales rose in every region of the world for Apple except China, where it fell 13%. But keep in mind, Apple's the top selling iPhone or phone maker in China. It's the Chinese market that's down. It's not just Apple. So that's not just an Apple problem. It's a problem for Apple, but not one that's them falling while everyone else is rising. If you're wondering what the status is on Apple's patent dispute with Massimo over the blood oxygen sensor, you know, the one that's on the Apple Watch or no longer on the Apple Watch, CEO Tim Cook told CNBC, we're focused on appeal. There's a lot of reasons to buy the watch even without the blood oxygen sensor. So at this point still indicating they have no interest in negotiating over that. A couple other notes here, CFO Luca Maestri noted that the EU App Store markets account for 7% of Apple's global app store revenue. In other words, don't expect third party apps and app stores to have too much effect on our bottom line. So throwing a little shade on the controversy there. And then Tim Cook mentioned that the company will share details of its ongoing work in artificial intelligence later this year. He used the word artificial intelligence and he said they will share details later this year, which may sound underwhelming if you don't follow this closely, but previous statements about AI from Cook have been even more vague. Sometimes not even using the word AI or saying they don't like to use the word AI. So kind of significant that he's like, definitely gonna talk about it later this year. Everybody expects that to be WWDC when they talk about the various operating systems and how these smart generative models might be worked into that. Terrence, any overall impressions from what Apple was saying out of this report? Nothing necessarily overall, but of course we're gonna get into it in the next segment. I'm curious as to how Apple is going to categorize, air quotes, the Vision Pro. Is it going to be an other category? Is it gonna be a wearables category? I'm curious to see especially if it does well or not so good according to Apple's projections, how they're going to categorize the Vision Pro as far as earnings and things of that nature. I mean, I would think that Apple would fold it into overall wearables. And if the Vision Pro does well, saying our wearables category better than ever, which is the watch, the Vision Pro. I mean, the Vision Pro as a wearable, you have to wear it. So I mean, what other category would it be in unless it was in some other AI category that has yet to be determined? I see what you're saying there and it probably would be smart of them to do that because other products is the name of that category. And it's like you said, it's the watch, it's the AirPods. And if you're wanting to hide sales numbers, that's a great place to do it, right? Just kind of stick it in there with the other stuff, make that category go up so you can be like, ooh, other products took a big jump without having to admit what the sales are. I don't think they will though. I think they will give Apple Vision Pro its own spatial computing line just like they give the iPhone a line, they give iPad a line and they give Max their own line. I think they will know it's gonna be small now but we want it to look small so that when it gets big, because they are betting it's gonna get big, it looks even bigger later on. But I mean, how long did it take before Apple did that with the iPad line specifically? Didn't do it at first. I thought it was already broken, always broken out, am I remembering that wrong? I don't know. I thought it was sort of like the other bets type thing for some time before it became a obvious cash cow for the company. I think I agree with Tom. I think it's going to be its own separate lanes, specifically because Apple was intent on saying this is not this meaning the Apple Vision Pro is not a VR headset, don't call it VR. They were telling developers don't put VR, XR and I think another acronym in your design. I think they're building out a whole new swim lane, so to speak, for this type of device. So under whatever they call it, it could be the Vision Pro line then they could have an actual VR line of products as well. So I think they are going the revolutionary route when it comes to this Vision Pro to basically create a new way of documenting and categorizing their products. I think it's going to be something completely different. Terence, are you suede? Well, no, you can mention the new swim lane, just don't put the Vision Pro in the water, that's all. Please don't, yeah. Not until it gets, you know, the Vision Ultra. What, IPv4 or whatever it is, you know, we're saying, just in case you go into the shower, we're in your Vision Pro, you're fine. That would make it go in the water, so it'll be the Vision Ultra. Yeah, no, Ultra makes sense. Absolutely. Swim lane is what just what we call Sarah in the ocean. That's yeah, if I only were a better swimmer. All right, real quickly, folks, reminder that Roger has revolutionized our top five series. If you've been watching it, YouTube.com slash Daily Tech News Show. We streamlined it, you know, that's the thing these days, these tech companies are all cutting costs and getting efficient. And that's what we did. We brought it down to 60 seconds. And honestly, that sounds like, oh, so you're not doing as much. I feel like there's even more in there somehow, the way we're doing this. So this week, I am counting down the top five Apple Vision secrets. These are things that you may or may not know, but I'm guessing probably don't know about the Apple Vision Pro. So go catch that right now at Daily Tech News Show on TikTok, DTNSPIX on Instagram and YouTube.com slash Daily Tech News Show. All right, you're probably wondering why we've gathered you all here today. The Apple Vision Pro is now on sale in the US and even got the traditional line of people at certain Apple stores in some locations. CEO Tim Cook made an appearance, greeted the crowd at the Fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York City, one of the big ones. Walmart, Nike, Vanguard, Stryker, Bloomberg, SAP, all experimenting using the headset for customers and workers and have made that public. And as we mentioned on the show yesterday, there are now more than 600 native apps for the Vision Pro, including a Star Trek one built for spatial computing and a YouTube rapper called Juno from independent developer Christian Selig. He is the same guy who did Apollo for Reddit before Reddit raised its API rates and essentially shut down Apollo. So what's fun about this is it's sort of just a playground for developers. We've all been following the launch. So, Nika, what do you think? It's hard to say really. Normally, you know me, I'm an Apple enthusiast, an Apple snob, if you will. And I think this launch, it hasn't really swayed me so much.  So I think this particular product for me at least is going to have to grow on me. All right. Well, I mean, I think that's very fair. I think a lot of people, even if, you know, Apple fans, I consider myself one as well. You know, I want to make sure that this is great before I tell other people this is great. Terrence, where do you fall on this? I'm interested to see, it's interesting to see how prior to the Vision Pro came out, everybody, and everybody meaning tech journalists, websites, things of that nature, not necessarily try to pick it apart.  And, you know, all these other things, but it seems like at the launch, the tide has kind of turned a little bit to where the excitement. I don't know if that's just an Apple Day thing. Or is that a Vision Pro specific thing to where the tide is kind of turning to where, oh, it's great. I've seen some of the videos, I've seen some of the reviews. They say this is mind blowing. Yeah, you may get a little vertigo after, you know, a certain, elongated amount of time on it. But everybody seems to be impressed by what the first impressions of the Vision Pro. My concern or I'm interested to see is what the people, the consumers, the people who are using, buying the Vision Pro are going to do with the Vision Pro versus what Apple has kind of put on the Vision Pro as far as what it's supposed to be used for. We've heard spatial computing and the convention. This is not VR, but Apple is kind of throwing some entertainment things in there. I'm curious to see how Apple says this is what the Vision Pro is. This is what it does versus it gets in people's hands. And people say, oh, this is great for Netflix or oh, this is great for NBA courtside seats. You know, and then once that takes off, I'm interested to see if Apple kind of changes his tune as what the Vision Pro is, or will they kind of double down and kind of point people in the right direction? Well, I think part of the, I don't know, Apple marketing challenge that they have right now is Apple saying, it's not VR. It's spatial computing. Okay, great. But what are you touting as the coolest experience? And what do people who have been lucky enough to try this out already say is the coolest experience? It's watching movies in 3D. That is VR. That's VR. I mean, you're not going to watch a movie and try to do other things. Well, I guess you could. But that's not what the Vision Pro is for. So yeah, I think Apple has a little bit of a challenge on its hands, figuring out how to make sure that the Vision Pro is seen as a productivity device. VR, sure, but so many other things. But like the only thing that people seem to say so far is that the VR experience is pretty great. And everything else is, well, a little bit of a harder sell. And it'd be definitely interesting to see if Apple sticks their guns or do they say, all right, you got me. You got me, VR. And I really think where the contrast is for previous Apple products, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, they had a directive as to what they're for, what they do. Now, granted, users have learned to use them in different ways, but they pretty much had a dedicated purpose with the Vision Pro. It doesn't seem to have a dedicated purpose. So I think it's one of those products that as time goes on, like Terrence mentioned, where people say Apple says, this is what it's for, then people find their own use cases for it. I think it's one of those things that's going to have to really grow on people. And once it gets out in the quote, unquote, real world, it's virtual, so to speak, spatial computing. I'm sorry. It's one of those things where the longer people have it in their hands, they can find ways that this is useful to them as an individual, then which I think will lead to broader usage for the overall usage of this device. Eileen, what do you think? I think as you wait for USPS to drop something off any minute now. So I have purposely refrained, apart from a few Apple propaganda videos that they made, I have purposely refrained from watching any reviews. I've seen thumbnails. I've seen things in passing. I'm actually very interested in the cooking. I know that there was a Joanna Stern, but I didn't watch it. So I'm trying to do my best to have an unfiltered lens of a consumer that's going to get this box and is going to put it on and then go through the motions of setting it up and then like, oh, what are the suggested apps? And then the next step is then I'm going to do that very thing and like, what are the apps that there's no YouTube apps of the Juneau, all of those things and progress that way. So I'm trying my best to be unfiltered and kind of walk in unbiased, kind of walk in with open eyes in this and then I'll watch everyone's reviews. But I'll also hopefully have my own opinion. I'm hopeful. I am skeptical at best, but I'm very hopeful that there will be a use case. I like hearing the thought about, well, what are the people really going to use it for? And let them tell Apple what it's actually going to be useful for, even though Apple is saying this is what it is. But guess what? This is what it will be. And that's pretty monumental for me because this might be that one piece of equipment to where the people say, this is what it is. And then does Apple kind of cater? Or do they, again, do they double down and say, no, no, no, we're going to reach out to Slack and we're going to reach out to all these other things to prove that this is what we said it was, or is Apple going to say, you know what, you're right. Let's forget it. Let's do it. My answer is both. So very quietly, Apple has been touting the fact that, and Sarah mentioned this, all these big companies, Vanguard, Walmart, SAP, are corporate clients of the Apple Vision Pro. While in public, they tout like, hey, yeah, you, you, this is pretty much meant for sitting down. And when you're sitting down, everybody thinks gaming. We think it's great for entertainment. I think they are going to make sure they sell enough of these to keep it going to corporate. And that's where they're pushing Slack and productivity. And then they're going to push the entertainment aspect until people decide whether that's the thing it's great for, or there's something else it's great for, then they'll jump on to something else. And the next version will be lighter and maybe two versions down the road. It'll be like, this one's great for standing up and doing exercise. And now we've brought Apple Fitness to the Apple Vision Pro. And so the corporate clients fund this until they can get the technology light enough and easy enough for it to do all the things that consumers wanted to do. That's a good point. At least that's where I think it's going. And a quick aside, the guy that did the YouTube rapper Juno. I didn't know he was the same guy who did follow for Reddit. Is that good a glutton for punishment? What is he doing? He also, he was like, by the way, the YouTube API is no slouch. Like this is, this isn't any easier. But, you know, I just figured why not? Let's try it. So I guess if you got some talent, you just like, forget it. I'm just going to do it until it breaks. And if it breaks, I'll just move on to something else. For sure. All right. But before we get out of here, let's check in with Len Peralta, who has been busy illustrating today's show. Len, what have you drawn on this momentous day? It's Vision Pro Day. Yes. So I'm like Eileen. I didn't really see a whole lot of stuff on it, but I did see the current commercial that's running. I don't know if anybody else has seen the current commercial. But at the very end of the commercial, this guy sticks his tongue out. I don't know. Have you seen this? And this is what I drew. This is your spokesperson for the Vision Pro. And I'm thinking, I watched the commercial before I drew this, and I'm like, it's just so weird. It says, mama, daddy's scaring me. It is. He sticks his tongue out. He looks, it just is really strange. So I know I'm among, I'm the voice of dissent here, as far as what this is. It's, I think it's going to keep a lot of, the price is going to keep, obviously, a lot of people out of the team market, right? They're not going to be buying this. But I just thought that was just so strange. That was like the button at the end of that commercial, and I was like, really? That's how you're going to end this commercial? Is this guy sticking his tongue out? I want to remind you, it doesn't block your mouth. That's why. Oh, there you go. And that's why I was going to ask, can the camera see your tongue? Because if it can, that's a whole different action. So if you, if you want to celebrate Vision Pro Day, you can go to my Patreon, patreon.com forward slash Len. You can back me at the DT and S lover level, and you get this immediately, or you can go the old fashioned way, go to the online store, purchase it for yourself, hang it up. You know, hopefully it won't look as, as odd as this guy does when you get your Vision Pro. But, but there you go. Thank you so much, everybody. Uh, Nika Monford. So glad to have you on the show. One half of the snob OS podcast. Where can people keep up with your work? You can find me at tech savvy diva everywhere. And Terrence Gaines, the other half of snob OS. What about you? Yeah, sure. You can find me all over the internet at brother tech. That's B R O T H A T E C H. Again, me and Nika are snob OS cast, where we talk all things Apple and then some, you can find us at snoboscast.com. I also one third of the group that we call the tech john, where we talk all things tech from a black perspective. And you can find us at the tech john.com. Excellent. Eileen Rivera, one half of our upcoming show called Apple vision show. And I'm the other half, but let folks know where they can keep up with your work, including your tick tock. Yeah, everybody. If you're into K pop, K dramas or K beauty, come find me at face of E on tick tock. That's also an Instagram account that I have. But yeah, happy to be a cohost to applevisionshow.com, which officially launches on Monday. We will definitely be talking about the vision pro and our initial response to that because I'm going to get it. And then I'm going to hand it off to Sarah. And on Monday, we're both have thoughts. And Terrence and Nika, hopefully you will be on our show soon. If you go half with me on a vision pro, we can talk. What's in it for me, says Terrence. Ship position pro to Atlanta. It's like a time share. A community vision pro, if you will. We'll work it out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Man, I'm telling you, like the perfect way to get the 360 degree view on Apple would be finish your week with snobboastcast. Enjoy Allison Sheridan's Nacilla cast on Sunday to get the geeky perspective. And then Apple vision show on Monday. It's the best way to stay informed. And you are exactly the apple trifecta. I like that. If you're a patron of this show, you're not done yet. We got more fun stuff for you. Stick around for the extended show, Good Day Internet. It's Friday quiz time and Roger outdid himself. Time to test your Apple fan cred. Do you have the right answers about less notable Apple products? We're going to do that in just a few seconds. It's going to be fun. Just a reminder, everybody, we do the show live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern, 2100 UTC. And find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. Speaking of Allison Sheridan, she will be joining us on Monday. We hope you all have a real nice weekend. Talk to you soon. Captain Kipper, Steve Guadirama, Paul Reese, Matthew J Stevens, aka Gadget Virtuoso, and JD Galloway. Modern video hosting by Dan Christensen. Music and art provided by Martin Bell, Dan Looters, Mustafa A, Acast, and Len Peralta. Live art performed by Len Peralta. Acast adds support from Tatiana Matias. Patreon support from Tom McNeil. Contributors for this week's shows include Chris Ashley, Scott Johnson, Justin Robert Young, Nika Monford, and Terence Gaines. Our guests this week were Charlotte Henry and Eileen Rivera. And thanks to all the patrons who make the show possible. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.


I want to introduce this concept of light marketing and all of us who are business owners, if you have a service or a product to provide to the world, you know you have to do some marketing and starting today you get to have the decision of whether to do marketing from the light side of the force or the dark side of the force, which unfortunately is how most marketing is taught from is the dark side of the force. So let me explain. Well, you might say first of all, why does anybody go to the dark side of the force when it's clearly, clearly the light side is good and the dark side is bad. Really, I'm curious. What do you think? Why do you think people go to the dark side versus the light side? Because that same answer or the answer you give to that is probably true for you because you're making that decision in other areas of your life between the light side and the dark side. And the answer you give is probably applicable to how you think and how you're going to do marketing to spread your message and bring your offers to more people. So for example, and this is speaking from my own experience, okay, I found that sales funnels are typically from the dark side. A sales funnel is where you might see a see a social media ad which brings you into an email sequence or a webinar.  And yet it is a non-transparent, cleverly designed process to manipulate you from being a stranger into a buyer. And you say, George, isn't that what marketing is? No. This is why I try to teach the light side of a force type of marketing as often as I can. The dark side essentially does things that are, they believe it will convert someone from a visitor to a buyer in these particular sequence. If they read this email and they come to this webinar and they watch this video and they read the sales page, then they said they're supposed to buy. And well, gosh, have you met a human being? Are they, are they one dimensional like that? No, of course not. But the dark side believes so because the dark side wants it easier to be able to control a pipeline or a particular journey. Whereas the light side, the light side is very much respecting of free will and of diversity of thought and of type, type of person. And so the light side says, well, what we know, what, what the light side says this, it's harder to track your marketing than you believe you can do so. If it was that easy to track marketing, marketing would be figured out for every company by this point, but it's not. Okay. And for every businesses, no, the light side says there is, there is an X factor, there is a, you might say a divine timing or, you know, sort of like destiny type of thing where all you can do from the light side is to bless, is to serve from the heart, is to care genuinely for the person in front of you. And yes, to do it diligently, right? Through content and through humble offers that have no attachment to whether people buy and through also market research to find out what people want and what people are buying. Because market research is basically the light side says market research is understanding how to meet people where they're at to serve their wants, because that's what they want. We want to give them what they want, but also giving them what they, what we believe they need as well. So the light side says, listen, we're going to think of our content as mostly a ministry, whether people buy from us or not, we're going to deliver this content with our heart and with non attachment. And we're also going to diligently, consistently do market research so that we can provide humbly offer a product or service that we believe meets their wants. But if it doesn't, that's okay. We are not attached. We're not going to make them buy. We're not going to use any kind of tactics that shortcut their free will so that we can control them better because this is mainstream marketing. Mainstream marketing wants to control you, calls to action should work. It should be a higher conversion rate. And the light side says, screw the conversion rate, not really completely disregarded, but the conversion rate shouldn't come as a result of high persuasion and clever copywriting. The conversion rate is higher if the market research is good and if the product or service is so excellent that it has natural word of mouth and that you have high trust with the audience because you've been serving them with content as a ministry for years or months, at least, usually. So this is just a brief, brief, some thoughts about the light side of the forest, dark side of the fourth with as regards to marketing, which all of us solopreneurs particularly must do if we're going to have a livelihood. So I really do look forward to seeing your comments below. How does, how, how might you apply this to your own business, to your own marketing, because you have to make the decision about light side, dark side, almost every day that you work, you're making that decision. So I hope that this is inspiring in some way. And thank you so much for joining me on this journey.