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It's time to Geek Out. [upbeat music] Hello, and welcome to Geek Out with Matt Navara with me, Matt Navara. And me, Martin "SFP" Bryant.
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Messenger from Facebook is 10 years old this month, so what better time to speak to the person who heads up the messaging app that's more than just a messaging app, Stan Chudnovsky.
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Yes, Stan joined us for a live Twitter space to talk about the future of Messenger as more than just an app, the challenges of encrypting all your conversations, the way Messenger is following the rest of social media in targeting businesses and creators, and a whole lot more.
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We only had a small amount of his time, but we crammed a lot into it. So here's what happened when we spoke to Stan Chudnovsky. Hey, Matt. Can you hear me? I'm here. I can indeed. How are you doing today?
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[laughs] Doing great. How are you? I was listening to you guys speak. Oh, good stuff. Enjoying your conversation. [laughs] No problem.
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Well, we, we recognize that you're a very busy man and we've got s- tons of stuff that we wanted to chat about.
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So I thought the thing that we'd kick off and chat about is, um, for those that don't know you, can you just quickly, in a nutshell, tell us what your role is there, what you kind of get involved in day-to-day?
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Uh, the... So, so I am, uh, sort of s- r- r- running, helping, supporting, uh, Messenger org. So what that involves is that, uh, the app that you use, uh, hopefully every day, uh, sounds like many of you do.
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Uh, and then there is also platforms that supports, uh, all those, uh, people-to-people, person-to-person group video calling, uh, interactions for the rest of the company as well. Like, for example,
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uh, Mark just, uh, uh, unleashed the, uh, Metaverse vision, and, uh, we ta- Well, we u- unleashed the, uh, Workrooms, the environment where you can collaborate with other people while you're in Oculus, and this is a VR environment.
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But that is, uh, powered by the, uh, platforms that we built over the years.
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It's pretty much the same platforms that powers all the group, uh, calling and group video calling that exists in Messenger, and in, uh, Instagram, and messaging on Instagram also fits into that category.
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So it's fairly broad, but, uh, uh, everyday use is obviously the Messenger app, but then all that, uh, tech that we built is actually used everywhere else as well.
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And Messenger is celebrating its 10th anniversary, isn't it, this month? Um, so that's a, a big milestone for, for the, for the product itself.
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Um, but in that time, you know, Facebook and Messenger has changed quite substantially.
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You know, um, w- so many years back now that Facebook acquired, you know, that group messaging app Beluga and, and since then messaging in general has changed in terms of how we use messaging apps and what people expect from a messaging app.
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I just wonder from, from where you sit in the role that you have at Facebook, uh, c- where do you see messaging ha- you know, where does it come from and what's it changed into over the last sort of 10 years?
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Well, when I'm thinking about messaging, I generally, for me, I, everything comes down to sort of analogies with real life, right?
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Because, uh, we as human species developed over the last sort of, uh, 50 to 100,000 years, and our basic needs are the same.
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Uh, we need to eat, we need to drink, and [laughs] equally importantly, we need to communicate with other people. Uh, because if you can't communicate with other people, you're not really human anymore.
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Uh, you can't really survive. You would go crazy if you don't have someone to talk to, at least from time to time.
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And with us moving more and more into the virtual world, and with us having more and more capabilities in terms of having those amazing little computers, uh, called phones that we are carrying with ourselves all day long, uh, that becomes easier and easier, and that, that nevertheless continues to be the basic needs that we have as people.
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So, uh, with every new flip of every new platform, as a new platform sort of, like, appears, there is more and more communications happening, and that is truth, uh, when it was about the radio, when it was about the phone, when it was about the internet in the very beginning, when it was, or the desktop, uh, when email came on board, uh, obviously with calling on phones, and then messaging is sort of, like, the next frontier.
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So it's just gonna continue to grow. And when I'm thinking about the future, and I'm thinking about what it's gonna be in AR and VR, that's the same thing. Messaging is a killer use case.
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That's what people wanna do, is they wanna talk to other people around them, and they want that more than anything else.
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And if I was to draw Maslow pyramid of needs today, I probably would put communication right there front and center, because in today's world, you can't even get food and water without talking to somebody.
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So how is Messenger's role going to evol- evolve at Facebook?
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It feels like messaging is, and Messenger itself is, moving on from being an app to being kind of a layer across all your services, whether that's VR, the kids services, Portal, et cetera.
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Um, and, uh, indeed, uh, there was a, a Bloomberg story earlier this week about messaging coming back into the main Facebook app. Uh, is it true that Messenger will become less of an app and more of a layer?
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Is that, is that the future? [laughs] Uh, I would say it completely differently. Okay. I would say it becomes, it becomes more of an app and more of a layer- [laughs]... at the same time. Uh, like everything...
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We are ambitious here at Facebook, as you know, and so we are trying to do more than one thing at once. So I think the use cases are generally different.
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When I'm thinking about, uh, messaging Matt, then I'm going to go to Messenger, and I'm gonna send him a message, and then maybe we jump on a call, or we jump on a video call, and everything kinda sort of flows from there.
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But then let's say Matt and I are playing game inside Facebook app, and I wanna continue to play game with him, but I also wanna see him while we are playing a game.
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It does make sense to switch to somewhere else and to have some parallel experience. It makes sense to enable that communication right there in context because that's what probably most convenient for people.
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And so that's what we are talking about aba- uh, when we are saying that we're gonna bring more and more of that functionality, uh, back to, uh, uh, back to the apps.
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And I just think it's convenience when it's contextual, and it's paramount when it's one-to-one, and it's pointed to me having a conversation with you because I just wanna talk to you, and that comes first versus the content that comes first when we are, like, playing a game in my example that I gave.
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So we are trying to do both. Okay. Now, how does that fit into the kinda long-term plan we've heard about to make all Facebook Chat products interoperable?
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Is there still room if Chat is everything across [laughs] uh, everywhere across Facebook? I'm still an app. Um, is there room for, you know, messaging on, on Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger? Um, how does that work?
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Uh, I...
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The way I think about it, frankly, is that we just wanna give you ability to quickly communicate with whoever you wanna communicate, regardless of where y- where you are and regardless of where that other party is.
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And, uh, so if I'm, uh, on Messenger and you right now are on Instagram, and I wanna see you or call you or send you something, I should be able to do that without thinking, "Where are you right now?"
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Uh, it should just work. And because one of the ways I'm always thinking about messaging, it's, uh,
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I'm gonna use the service, uh, that is sort of like most likely is going to be service that I think you are going to use because I wanna get to you as fast as possible, and I wanna make it very convenient to you, and I wanna make it as convenient to me as possible.
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So if you can cross that boundary, and if we can allow people to communicate from wherever you are to other people, regardless of where those people are, that is a real holy grail.
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So of course there is space for all of the services to, uh, connect and work together, and we are trying to build that.
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So yesterday, you, you announced a bunch of, uh, 10th anniversary features, like poll games and birthday cash giving and, uh, and, uh, a few other things like the word effects that are coming soon. Yeah.
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And also Soundmojis, which I still haven't got access to. I'm in the beta version of Messenger. Oh.
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So I always wonder whether that means it limits me from seeing some things when it should be [laughs] showing more of them. I don't know.
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[laughs] But I, I was curious to know how you prioritize features to add because I, I, I can imagine that people must pester you all the time they know that you work at, uh, uh, Facebook and f- on Messenger.
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Like, "Can you just add this? Can you change that?" Mm. And, and teams internally have their own things that they're kinda keen to push forwards with.
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Um, and your role must be at, at some point to kind of make some of these critical decisions. How do you make those decisions?
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[laughs] Well, sounds like one critical decision I should have made but didn't, uh, which is to make sure that you have access- [laughs]... to the word effects. [laughs] Uh, the [laughs]... But, um,
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yeah, it's a good question. Uh, w- what we are trying to, uh, sort of do to help us, us to guide ourselves is just constantly talk to the people who use our services, first and foremost. And, uh,
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uh, and do it in a scientific way.
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Yes, there is a lot of signal from talking to people who are, uh, giving, uh, feedback to you, but there is a user research who are, like, sort of like putting it in more comprehensive way and making more, uh, uh, over- global overview without necessarily, uh, having certain biases introduced into that.
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And so we try to guide ourselves based on what people want, what we believe people want, and we are constantly checking against our own biases in that prioritization.
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And, uh, turns out magically that this is something that everyone can get easily behind.
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Uh, when it's pretty clear what would be something that people would enjoy doing, then, uh, everyone gets in line and really wants to execute on that. So that addresses the question about the team.
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That addresses the question about the people who are, uh, asking me for cer- certain futures.
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As long as I can clearly tell them, uh, what is ahead that I think they're gonna like even more, they're like, "Yeah, that makes sense." Yeah. Awesome.
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Uh, there's a big push in social media across all the platforms, uh, to s- it seems at the moment to serve businesses more, especially retailers, uh, and, uh, creators as well.
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Creators are the, the big buzzword everywhere. Uh, Messenger is no different in that regard.
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Uh, why is it so important, and, uh, how do you see, uh, the kind of push towards creators and businesses evolving in Messenger in the future? Yeah. I, uh, I'm actually, uh, really, uh, excited about, uh,
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everything that, uh, sort of people mean when they talk about creators economy. Uh, because, um, I think obviously to some extent it is a buzzword, but it... I think it's a buzzword that sort of, uh,
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we're just gonna see how it gets filled with substance and more and more and more substance over the many years to come. Uh, I think in the today's world, more and more people, uh,
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sort of will be able to make money because of their brand and because of how they're thinking about themselves and how they're thinking about their place in the world. And I think that is a hugely democratizing move.
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And I think for us, what we need to do, and that's across board, but definitely on the Messenger app as well, is to think about all the tools that we can provide to those people in order to be able to, uh, really, uh- Get to the next level when it comes down to talking to their audience, monetizing their audience, monetizing their fan base, uh, continuing to build their brand, and so forth, so on.
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So, uh, I think that's actually one of the things that's gonna be helpful, uh, throughout all the works that we are doing on cross-app communication.
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Uh, like for example, Messenger is empowering the, uh, DMs in Instagram. And, uh, right now you can start talking about between two networks, uh, from Facebook to Instagram and back and forth.
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And, uh, I think the set of tools that we're gonna build that will allow creators to communicate with their audience, uh,
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that are sort of like lightweight messaging tools, and there are a lot of ideas that teams have in mind around how the whole thing could work.
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It's gonna be groundbreaking from the standpoint of empowering them to take their businesses to the next level. We already have huge success with small businesses across board.
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Over three million small businesses are using, uh, click-to-messaging ads and, uh, general messaging APIs in order to communicate with their customers.
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And I think for us to extend that to creators as a first step, and then build additional tools, the ones I mentioned on top of that, it's gonna be next frontier.
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Yeah, so are you, are you talking kind of g- g- group messaging but kind of broadcast style? Or, uh, uh, how does that look? Y- yeah. I mean, you can imagine all sorts of, uh, products once you start thinking about it.
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But imagine broadcast style where you can react with emojis, for example, or, uh, with likes or hearts and so forth, so on, but don't necessarily will be able to, uh, directly communicate with the creator.
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Or where you can have a chat conversation about whatever is creator is saying with other people who are at the same time watching that live broadcast.
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That live broadcast can in text form, or it can be in video form, or it can be in audio form. It can be all sorts of things that I don't think we fully, uh, even understand right now.
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But I think we're gonna build bunch of tools, and I think a lot of people are gonna enjoy them.
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There's more from our chat with Stan in just a moment, but we just wanted to quickly tell you about goodhelp.co, who have supported this episode of Geek Out with Matt Navarra.
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And thanks to them for their support of Geek Out with Matt Navarra.
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So when we talked to Will Cathcart, the head of WhatsApp, a few weeks back, we talked to him extensively about what is still one of the hottest topics in terms of messaging and, and social, which is end-to-end encryption.
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And, and Will, you know, talked a lot about the work that, uh, it's- they're doing at WhatsApp and how important he sees it.
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And of course, Mark Zuckerberg has talked about Facebook, um, being, you know, all encrypted messaging potentially, and Messenger having, um, does have some limited encryption features.
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Um, why is it so hard to make everything on Messenger encrypted by default? And, and is that the road that you're still going down at the moment? We definitely are going down this road.
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Uh, on the question why it's so hard, um, I, I, I think there are three vectors in terms of why it's so hard.
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The one is that, yes, we do have end-to-end encrypted messaging capabilities, and they are there, and people can use it. And a lot of people are using it every day because they're enjoying it. But
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we are full featured, uh, uh, app. We have so many features. We released 10 more today for our 10 years anniversary. Uh, you talked about some of them. We have theme customizations. We have the awards.
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We have, uh, all these effects. We have, like, all sorts of different features that exist, and they don't all exist in end-to-end encrypted world.
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They need to be rebuilt in end-to-end encrypted world to fully adhere to the end-to-end encrypted principles. So what we are doing is that we are working hard on rebuilding those things in end-to-end encrypted world.
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But at the same time, it's not like we're stopping to release the features in the open world to people. We continue to release, uh, more and more features, and this week is a good example of that.
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So we constantly playing catch up with ourselves, uh, because every single time when we release something new, then we also need to now take that and rebuild that in end-to-end encrypted way, uh, later on.
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So we are sort of like, uh, in that conversation constantly in terms of, like, doing two things at once. But it's not like we can stop it, because we need to continue to evolve.
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We need to continue to give people what they want.
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We could easily sh- uh, switch, uh, earlier, but then, uh, what it would mean is that a lot of people will lose a lot of features that they use, and that's not the user experience that we are wanting to sort of sign up for as well, because people will be unhappy, and, uh, that's not what we do.
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And the last thing to say there, uh, but it's, uh, by far is, uh,
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one of the most important things, is all the work that we need to do to mitigate, uh, on safety side, uh, all the things that we need to do in order to make sure that we are as safe as possible in the full end-to-end encrypted world.
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Uh, and, uh, there is bunch of work that continues to be done there, and we continue to focus on it. But it's gonna take time when you have billions of people using you every month.
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And, and just wanted to quickly pick up also, you know, that Apple has faced a lot of criticism for its approach of scanning, you know, child sexual abuse material on iCloud via users' devices.
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Um, but the approach, you know, continues to highlight, um, things with encryption are, are the biggest problems in terms of it compromising safety for, for certainly for young users and, and for pe- other people as well in other walks of life.
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Um, do, do you have any concerns about shifting to the more encrypted, um, approach? And, and, and what do you... Do you see Apple's approach as one that, you know, makes sense to you? Uh, do I see,
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uh, uh, do I see, uh, what do I see about shifting to this approach?
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Well, what I see with shifting with this approach is that we need to work really hard on mitigating a bunch of those things, and that's what we are spending time on.
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But I also think that there are so many things that you can do based on user reporting that are completely underused and underutilized, that, uh, that's the area where I would be focusing throughout versus anywhere else.
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You can't even easily report anything, uh, um, in, i- in many messaging apps out there. Uh, and so when you can't easily report things out there,
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and you default to other mitigations, then it feels like, uh, that, uh, it's not necessarily the best path for moving forward, especially considering that
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when bad stuff happens, when bad people start to do things, they don't do it in one thread or two threads. There are... They are trying to actually do bad things to many people at once.
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And so you don't really necessarily need all of them to report.
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You need one of them to report, and then you can see who e- who else that person that was reported, uh, assuming the report actually proves that the communication was negative and there was something illegal going on.
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Assuming- Assuming all that, you, assuming all that, you can see who else that person is trying to contact, and then from there you can actually navigate to finding your answer.
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And I think this is a way better way of, uh, rooting out and minimizing bad things that are happening on the platform versus, uh, total surveillance when you are just constantly scanning all the images and everything that's going on on people's phones.
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I think about phone as a little bit as a, as a wallet, right? So I, I, I...
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Whatever I put in my wallet, I assume I'm the only one who knows that it's there and what's that is, and it's not like it's constantly being scanned for new stuff I put in there.
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So the, one of the other things that we wanted to talk to you about as well is, you know, quickly, is this Metaverse, and, and Mark Zuckerberg has, has talked a lot about Facebook's big bets on VR and the Metaverse, and earlier we talked about the evolution of, of Messenger.
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Um, is Facebook's vision of the future for social is one that's a mixed reality or it's certainly not on your mobile phone? Um, how do you think Messenger will look in, in, in that kind of a world? Have you kind of...
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How do you envision it looking in, in 10 years from now for people who use it every day? Great question. I actually think about, uh, two things. Uh, I was thinking when you asked that question.
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Number one is that, as I mentioned, I don't think messaging or need for communicating is gonna go away anywhere.
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Uh, I think with the s- shift with every new platform, it just increases, and I think shift into VR world is not gonna be any different. Number two, I think about Messenger in that, um,
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environment that you are describing as actually bridge between 2D world in which you and I are in right now, and 3D world in which we are when we are putting our devices on our heads and we are entering the wonderful world of VR.
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Um, I don't really necessarily see a world, and, uh, we can argue whether it's for better or worse, where all the people are in VR all the time. That's clearly- [laughs]...
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uh, not something that's gonna happen anytime soon. And so what it means is that most of the people gonna be in VR from time to time, but not all the time.
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What it also means is that you and I very often gonna be walking around with, uh, our phones or something that remind, that looks like our phones, and we would wanna communicate to people, with people in VR.
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And what those bridges look like, because I should be able to, uh, really quickly call somebody or do a video chat or send a message to someone who is V- in VR right now.
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That person needs to be able to accept that message or should be able to see me.
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That person should understand that I'm not necessarily in VR with, uh, her or with them, but I am still available to communicate, and they should understand what mode of communication is actually available to me.
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That bridge needs to exist. That product needs to exist, and that's probably gonna be majority of communication once VR really takes over.
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And I think see our role as being that bridge between these two worlds, 2D world in which we are, you and I are in right now, and 3D world in which we could be right now if we put Oculus on our gla- on, on our heads.
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And is, is a lot of the effort or some of the effort in terms of the development of Messenger also around kind of moving away from the kind of physically typing out messages to being maybe a voice command led or, or o- other forms of interface where it's not necessarily the, the typing of the message, it's gonna be done through o- other means?
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Is that part of the roadmap of how you see people using messaging apps, or do, do you think that's sort of sci-fi and too distant, uh, from here? No, no, I actually think you're right, uh, on.
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I think, I think there is a lot of stuff that is already happening because, uh, again, like video communication and different forms of video communication and one-way streaming video communication where I just like tap the button and you get the instant video of me, but, uh, I don't see you necessarily until you enable your video and then you reciprocate and sometimes you do, sometimes you don't.
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Uh, the, uh, avatar-based communication when, uh, I'm just saying something and then my avatar on another end says that to you, uh, and it looks very natural and that if you're on your phone, then it just, uh, looks like my avatar is talking to you.
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If you're in, uh, VR, then you'll just see that avatar. There are so many modes that are going to emerge.
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And I think there is a lot in between sort of like me typing, me talking to the mic and then that thing being transcribed and sent to you.
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You're communicating, uh, you are getting it via clip or you're getting it via video or you're getting it via avatar as a medium of exchange. Uh, it's a huge spectrum.
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One thing I can tell you is that, uh, video conversations and group video conversations are growing really, really fast, way faster than anything else, uh, on the ecosystem. And I think that's, uh, data,
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uh, proof of, uh, the fact that people want a richer and richer communication to be available to them. And that trend also clearly just starting. Thanks to Stan for taking the time to talk with us.
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We could have talked for a lot longer. Look out for our next episode featuring our chat with Katie Carroll of LinkedIn News very soon. That one is particularly useful if you're involved in journalism or PR.
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In the meantime, don't forget that you can join the Geek Out community by searching for the Social Media Geek Out group on Facebook.
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And why not subscribe to my Geek Out newsletter with all the week's social media news and discussion in your inbox every Friday.
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Or my newsletter, Tech Revolution, which brings you all of the most important tech news of the week if you want to understand the future.
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I make sense of the biggest, most impactful stories to help you understand what's coming next. Links to those are in the show notes for this episode. So we'll see you soon. But for now, goodbye geeks.
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It's time to Geek Out. [upbeat music] Hello, and welcome to Geek Out with Matt Navara with me, Matt Navara. And me, Martin "SFP" Bryant.
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Messenger from Facebook is 10 years old this month, so what better time to speak to the person who heads up the messaging app that's more than just a messaging app, Stan Chudnovsky.
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Yes, Stan joined us for a live Twitter space to talk about the future of Messenger as more than just an app, the challenges of encrypting all your conversations, the way Messenger is following the rest of social media in targeting businesses and creators, and a whole lot more.
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We only had a small amount of his time, but we crammed a lot into it. So here's what happened when we spoke to Stan Chudnovsky. Hey, Matt. Can you hear me? I'm here. I can indeed. How are you doing today?
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[laughs] Doing great. How are you? I was listening to you guys speak. Oh, good stuff. Enjoying your conversation. [laughs] No problem.
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Well, we, we recognize that you're a very busy man and we've got s- tons of stuff that we wanted to chat about.
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So I thought the thing that we'd kick off and chat about is, um, for those that don't know you, can you just quickly, in a nutshell, tell us what your role is there, what you kind of get involved in day-to-day?
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Uh, the... So, so I am, uh, sort of s- r- r- running, helping, supporting, uh, Messenger org. So what that involves is that, uh, the app that you use, uh, hopefully every day, uh, sounds like many of you do.
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Uh, and then there is also platforms that supports, uh, all those, uh, people-to-people, person-to-person group video calling, uh, interactions for the rest of the company as well. Like, for example,
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uh, Mark just, uh, uh, unleashed the, uh, Metaverse vision, and, uh, we ta- Well, we u- unleashed the, uh, Workrooms, the environment where you can collaborate with other people while you're in Oculus, and this is a VR environment.
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But that is, uh, powered by the, uh, platforms that we built over the years.
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It's pretty much the same platforms that powers all the group, uh, calling and group video calling that exists in Messenger, and in, uh, Instagram, and messaging on Instagram also fits into that category.
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So it's fairly broad, but, uh, uh, everyday use is obviously the Messenger app, but then all that, uh, tech that we built is actually used everywhere else as well.
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And Messenger is celebrating its 10th anniversary, isn't it, this month? Um, so that's a, a big milestone for, for the, for the product itself.
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Um, but in that time, you know, Facebook and Messenger has changed quite substantially.
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You know, um, w- so many years back now that Facebook acquired, you know, that group messaging app Beluga and, and since then messaging in general has changed in terms of how we use messaging apps and what people expect from a messaging app.
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I just wonder from, from where you sit in the role that you have at Facebook, uh, c- where do you see messaging ha- you know, where does it come from and what's it changed into over the last sort of 10 years?
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Well, when I'm thinking about messaging, I generally, for me, I, everything comes down to sort of analogies with real life, right?
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Because, uh, we as human species developed over the last sort of, uh, 50 to 100,000 years, and our basic needs are the same.
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Uh, we need to eat, we need to drink, and [laughs] equally importantly, we need to communicate with other people. Uh, because if you can't communicate with other people, you're not really human anymore.
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Uh, you can't really survive. You would go crazy if you don't have someone to talk to, at least from time to time.
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And with us moving more and more into the virtual world, and with us having more and more capabilities in terms of having those amazing little computers, uh, called phones that we are carrying with ourselves all day long, uh, that becomes easier and easier, and that, that nevertheless continues to be the basic needs that we have as people.
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So, uh, with every new flip of every new platform, as a new platform sort of, like, appears, there is more and more communications happening, and that is truth, uh, when it was about the radio, when it was about the phone, when it was about the internet in the very beginning, when it was, or the desktop, uh, when email came on board, uh, obviously with calling on phones, and then messaging is sort of, like, the next frontier.
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So it's just gonna continue to grow. And when I'm thinking about the future, and I'm thinking about what it's gonna be in AR and VR, that's the same thing. Messaging is a killer use case.
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That's what people wanna do, is they wanna talk to other people around them, and they want that more than anything else.
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And if I was to draw Maslow pyramid of needs today, I probably would put communication right there front and center, because in today's world, you can't even get food and water without talking to somebody.
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So how is Messenger's role going to evol- evolve at Facebook?
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It feels like messaging is, and Messenger itself is, moving on from being an app to being kind of a layer across all your services, whether that's VR, the kids services, Portal, et cetera.
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Um, and, uh, indeed, uh, there was a, a Bloomberg story earlier this week about messaging coming back into the main Facebook app. Uh, is it true that Messenger will become less of an app and more of a layer?
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Is that, is that the future? [laughs] Uh, I would say it completely differently. Okay. I would say it becomes, it becomes more of an app and more of a layer- [laughs]... at the same time. Uh, like everything...
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We are ambitious here at Facebook, as you know, and so we are trying to do more than one thing at once. So I think the use cases are generally different.
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When I'm thinking about, uh, messaging Matt, then I'm going to go to Messenger, and I'm gonna send him a message, and then maybe we jump on a call, or we jump on a video call, and everything kinda sort of flows from there.
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But then let's say Matt and I are playing game inside Facebook app, and I wanna continue to play game with him, but I also wanna see him while we are playing a game.
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It does make sense to switch to somewhere else and to have some parallel experience. It makes sense to enable that communication right there in context because that's what probably most convenient for people.
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And so that's what we are talking about aba- uh, when we are saying that we're gonna bring more and more of that functionality, uh, back to, uh, uh, back to the apps.
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And I just think it's convenience when it's contextual, and it's paramount when it's one-to-one, and it's pointed to me having a conversation with you because I just wanna talk to you, and that comes first versus the content that comes first when we are, like, playing a game in my example that I gave.
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So we are trying to do both. Okay. Now, how does that fit into the kinda long-term plan we've heard about to make all Facebook Chat products interoperable?
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Is there still room if Chat is everything across [laughs] uh, everywhere across Facebook? I'm still an app. Um, is there room for, you know, messaging on, on Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger? Um, how does that work?
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Uh, I...
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The way I think about it, frankly, is that we just wanna give you ability to quickly communicate with whoever you wanna communicate, regardless of where y- where you are and regardless of where that other party is.
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And, uh, so if I'm, uh, on Messenger and you right now are on Instagram, and I wanna see you or call you or send you something, I should be able to do that without thinking, "Where are you right now?"
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Uh, it should just work. And because one of the ways I'm always thinking about messaging, it's, uh,
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I'm gonna use the service, uh, that is sort of like most likely is going to be service that I think you are going to use because I wanna get to you as fast as possible, and I wanna make it very convenient to you, and I wanna make it as convenient to me as possible.
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So if you can cross that boundary, and if we can allow people to communicate from wherever you are to other people, regardless of where those people are, that is a real holy grail.
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So of course there is space for all of the services to, uh, connect and work together, and we are trying to build that.
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So yesterday, you, you announced a bunch of, uh, 10th anniversary features, like poll games and birthday cash giving and, uh, and, uh, a few other things like the word effects that are coming soon. Yeah.
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And also Soundmojis, which I still haven't got access to. I'm in the beta version of Messenger. Oh.
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So I always wonder whether that means it limits me from seeing some things when it should be [laughs] showing more of them. I don't know.
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[laughs] But I, I was curious to know how you prioritize features to add because I, I, I can imagine that people must pester you all the time they know that you work at, uh, uh, Facebook and f- on Messenger.
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Like, "Can you just add this? Can you change that?" Mm. And, and teams internally have their own things that they're kinda keen to push forwards with.
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Um, and your role must be at, at some point to kind of make some of these critical decisions. How do you make those decisions?
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[laughs] Well, sounds like one critical decision I should have made but didn't, uh, which is to make sure that you have access- [laughs]... to the word effects. [laughs] Uh, the [laughs]... But, um,
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yeah, it's a good question. Uh, w- what we are trying to, uh, sort of do to help us, us to guide ourselves is just constantly talk to the people who use our services, first and foremost. And, uh,
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uh, and do it in a scientific way.
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Yes, there is a lot of signal from talking to people who are, uh, giving, uh, feedback to you, but there is a user research who are, like, sort of like putting it in more comprehensive way and making more, uh, uh, over- global overview without necessarily, uh, having certain biases introduced into that.
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And so we try to guide ourselves based on what people want, what we believe people want, and we are constantly checking against our own biases in that prioritization.
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And, uh, turns out magically that this is something that everyone can get easily behind.
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Uh, when it's pretty clear what would be something that people would enjoy doing, then, uh, everyone gets in line and really wants to execute on that. So that addresses the question about the team.
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That addresses the question about the people who are, uh, asking me for cer- certain futures.
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As long as I can clearly tell them, uh, what is ahead that I think they're gonna like even more, they're like, "Yeah, that makes sense." Yeah. Awesome.
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Uh, there's a big push in social media across all the platforms, uh, to s- it seems at the moment to serve businesses more, especially retailers, uh, and, uh, creators as well.
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Creators are the, the big buzzword everywhere. Uh, Messenger is no different in that regard.
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Uh, why is it so important, and, uh, how do you see, uh, the kind of push towards creators and businesses evolving in Messenger in the future? Yeah. I, uh, I'm actually, uh, really, uh, excited about, uh,
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everything that, uh, sort of people mean when they talk about creators economy. Uh, because, um, I think obviously to some extent it is a buzzword, but it... I think it's a buzzword that sort of, uh,
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we're just gonna see how it gets filled with substance and more and more and more substance over the many years to come. Uh, I think in the today's world, more and more people, uh,
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sort of will be able to make money because of their brand and because of how they're thinking about themselves and how they're thinking about their place in the world. And I think that is a hugely democratizing move.
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And I think for us, what we need to do, and that's across board, but definitely on the Messenger app as well, is to think about all the tools that we can provide to those people in order to be able to, uh, really, uh- Get to the next level when it comes down to talking to their audience, monetizing their audience, monetizing their fan base, uh, continuing to build their brand, and so forth, so on.
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So, uh, I think that's actually one of the things that's gonna be helpful, uh, throughout all the works that we are doing on cross-app communication.
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Uh, like for example, Messenger is empowering the, uh, DMs in Instagram. And, uh, right now you can start talking about between two networks, uh, from Facebook to Instagram and back and forth.
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And, uh, I think the set of tools that we're gonna build that will allow creators to communicate with their audience, uh,
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that are sort of like lightweight messaging tools, and there are a lot of ideas that teams have in mind around how the whole thing could work.
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It's gonna be groundbreaking from the standpoint of empowering them to take their businesses to the next level. We already have huge success with small businesses across board.
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Over three million small businesses are using, uh, click-to-messaging ads and, uh, general messaging APIs in order to communicate with their customers.
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And I think for us to extend that to creators as a first step, and then build additional tools, the ones I mentioned on top of that, it's gonna be next frontier.
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Yeah, so are you, are you talking kind of g- g- group messaging but kind of broadcast style? Or, uh, uh, how does that look? Y- yeah. I mean, you can imagine all sorts of, uh, products once you start thinking about it.
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But imagine broadcast style where you can react with emojis, for example, or, uh, with likes or hearts and so forth, so on, but don't necessarily will be able to, uh, directly communicate with the creator.
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Or where you can have a chat conversation about whatever is creator is saying with other people who are at the same time watching that live broadcast.
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That live broadcast can in text form, or it can be in video form, or it can be in audio form. It can be all sorts of things that I don't think we fully, uh, even understand right now.
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But I think we're gonna build bunch of tools, and I think a lot of people are gonna enjoy them.
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There's more from our chat with Stan in just a moment, but we just wanted to quickly tell you about goodhelp.co, who have supported this episode of Geek Out with Matt Navarra.
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And thanks to them for their support of Geek Out with Matt Navarra.
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So when we talked to Will Cathcart, the head of WhatsApp, a few weeks back, we talked to him extensively about what is still one of the hottest topics in terms of messaging and, and social, which is end-to-end encryption.
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And, and Will, you know, talked a lot about the work that, uh, it's- they're doing at WhatsApp and how important he sees it.
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And of course, Mark Zuckerberg has talked about Facebook, um, being, you know, all encrypted messaging potentially, and Messenger having, um, does have some limited encryption features.
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Um, why is it so hard to make everything on Messenger encrypted by default? And, and is that the road that you're still going down at the moment? We definitely are going down this road.
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Uh, on the question why it's so hard, um, I, I, I think there are three vectors in terms of why it's so hard.
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The one is that, yes, we do have end-to-end encrypted messaging capabilities, and they are there, and people can use it. And a lot of people are using it every day because they're enjoying it. But
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we are full featured, uh, uh, app. We have so many features. We released 10 more today for our 10 years anniversary. Uh, you talked about some of them. We have theme customizations. We have the awards.
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We have, uh, all these effects. We have, like, all sorts of different features that exist, and they don't all exist in end-to-end encrypted world.
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They need to be rebuilt in end-to-end encrypted world to fully adhere to the end-to-end encrypted principles. So what we are doing is that we are working hard on rebuilding those things in end-to-end encrypted world.
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But at the same time, it's not like we're stopping to release the features in the open world to people. We continue to release, uh, more and more features, and this week is a good example of that.
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So we constantly playing catch up with ourselves, uh, because every single time when we release something new, then we also need to now take that and rebuild that in end-to-end encrypted way, uh, later on.
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So we are sort of like, uh, in that conversation constantly in terms of, like, doing two things at once. But it's not like we can stop it, because we need to continue to evolve.
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We need to continue to give people what they want.
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We could easily sh- uh, switch, uh, earlier, but then, uh, what it would mean is that a lot of people will lose a lot of features that they use, and that's not the user experience that we are wanting to sort of sign up for as well, because people will be unhappy, and, uh, that's not what we do.
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And the last thing to say there, uh, but it's, uh, by far is, uh,
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one of the most important things, is all the work that we need to do to mitigate, uh, on safety side, uh, all the things that we need to do in order to make sure that we are as safe as possible in the full end-to-end encrypted world.
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Uh, and, uh, there is bunch of work that continues to be done there, and we continue to focus on it. But it's gonna take time when you have billions of people using you every month.
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And, and just wanted to quickly pick up also, you know, that Apple has faced a lot of criticism for its approach of scanning, you know, child sexual abuse material on iCloud via users' devices.
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Um, but the approach, you know, continues to highlight, um, things with encryption are, are the biggest problems in terms of it compromising safety for, for certainly for young users and, and for pe- other people as well in other walks of life.
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Um, do, do you have any concerns about shifting to the more encrypted, um, approach? And, and, and what do you... Do you see Apple's approach as one that, you know, makes sense to you? Uh, do I see,
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uh, uh, do I see, uh, what do I see about shifting to this approach?
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Well, what I see with shifting with this approach is that we need to work really hard on mitigating a bunch of those things, and that's what we are spending time on.
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But I also think that there are so many things that you can do based on user reporting that are completely underused and underutilized, that, uh, that's the area where I would be focusing throughout versus anywhere else.
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You can't even easily report anything, uh, um, in, i- in many messaging apps out there. Uh, and so when you can't easily report things out there,
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and you default to other mitigations, then it feels like, uh, that, uh, it's not necessarily the best path for moving forward, especially considering that
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when bad stuff happens, when bad people start to do things, they don't do it in one thread or two threads. There are... They are trying to actually do bad things to many people at once.
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And so you don't really necessarily need all of them to report.
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You need one of them to report, and then you can see who e- who else that person that was reported, uh, assuming the report actually proves that the communication was negative and there was something illegal going on.
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Assuming- Assuming all that, you, assuming all that, you can see who else that person is trying to contact, and then from there you can actually navigate to finding your answer.
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And I think this is a way better way of, uh, rooting out and minimizing bad things that are happening on the platform versus, uh, total surveillance when you are just constantly scanning all the images and everything that's going on on people's phones.
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I think about phone as a little bit as a, as a wallet, right? So I, I, I...
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Whatever I put in my wallet, I assume I'm the only one who knows that it's there and what's that is, and it's not like it's constantly being scanned for new stuff I put in there.
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So the, one of the other things that we wanted to talk to you about as well is, you know, quickly, is this Metaverse, and, and Mark Zuckerberg has, has talked a lot about Facebook's big bets on VR and the Metaverse, and earlier we talked about the evolution of, of Messenger.
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Um, is Facebook's vision of the future for social is one that's a mixed reality or it's certainly not on your mobile phone? Um, how do you think Messenger will look in, in, in that kind of a world? Have you kind of...
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How do you envision it looking in, in 10 years from now for people who use it every day? Great question. I actually think about, uh, two things. Uh, I was thinking when you asked that question.
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Number one is that, as I mentioned, I don't think messaging or need for communicating is gonna go away anywhere.
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Uh, I think with the s- shift with every new platform, it just increases, and I think shift into VR world is not gonna be any different. Number two, I think about Messenger in that, um,
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environment that you are describing as actually bridge between 2D world in which you and I are in right now, and 3D world in which we are when we are putting our devices on our heads and we are entering the wonderful world of VR.
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Um, I don't really necessarily see a world, and, uh, we can argue whether it's for better or worse, where all the people are in VR all the time. That's clearly- [laughs]...
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uh, not something that's gonna happen anytime soon. And so what it means is that most of the people gonna be in VR from time to time, but not all the time.
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What it also means is that you and I very often gonna be walking around with, uh, our phones or something that remind, that looks like our phones, and we would wanna communicate to people, with people in VR.
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And what those bridges look like, because I should be able to, uh, really quickly call somebody or do a video chat or send a message to someone who is V- in VR right now.
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That person needs to be able to accept that message or should be able to see me.
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That person should understand that I'm not necessarily in VR with, uh, her or with them, but I am still available to communicate, and they should understand what mode of communication is actually available to me.
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That bridge needs to exist. That product needs to exist, and that's probably gonna be majority of communication once VR really takes over.
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And I think see our role as being that bridge between these two worlds, 2D world in which we are, you and I are in right now, and 3D world in which we could be right now if we put Oculus on our gla- on, on our heads.
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And is, is a lot of the effort or some of the effort in terms of the development of Messenger also around kind of moving away from the kind of physically typing out messages to being maybe a voice command led or, or o- other forms of interface where it's not necessarily the, the typing of the message, it's gonna be done through o- other means?
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Is that part of the roadmap of how you see people using messaging apps, or do, do you think that's sort of sci-fi and too distant, uh, from here? No, no, I actually think you're right, uh, on.
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I think, I think there is a lot of stuff that is already happening because, uh, again, like video communication and different forms of video communication and one-way streaming video communication where I just like tap the button and you get the instant video of me, but, uh, I don't see you necessarily until you enable your video and then you reciprocate and sometimes you do, sometimes you don't.
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Uh, the, uh, avatar-based communication when, uh, I'm just saying something and then my avatar on another end says that to you, uh, and it looks very natural and that if you're on your phone, then it just, uh, looks like my avatar is talking to you.
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If you're in, uh, VR, then you'll just see that avatar. There are so many modes that are going to emerge.
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And I think there is a lot in between sort of like me typing, me talking to the mic and then that thing being transcribed and sent to you.
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You're communicating, uh, you are getting it via clip or you're getting it via video or you're getting it via avatar as a medium of exchange. Uh, it's a huge spectrum.
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One thing I can tell you is that, uh, video conversations and group video conversations are growing really, really fast, way faster than anything else, uh, on the ecosystem. And I think that's, uh, data,
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uh, proof of, uh, the fact that people want a richer and richer communication to be available to them. And that trend also clearly just starting. Thanks to Stan for taking the time to talk with us.
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We could have talked for a lot longer. Look out for our next episode featuring our chat with Katie Carroll of LinkedIn News very soon. That one is particularly useful if you're involved in journalism or PR.
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In the meantime, don't forget that you can join the Geek Out community by searching for the Social Media Geek Out group on Facebook.
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And why not subscribe to my Geek Out newsletter with all the week's social media news and discussion in your inbox every Friday.
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Or my newsletter, Tech Revolution, which brings you all of the most important tech news of the week if you want to understand the future.
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I make sense of the biggest, most impactful stories to help you understand what's coming next. Links to those are in the show notes for this episode. So we'll see you soon. But for now, goodbye geeks.
