The Exchanges

Q Yeah, like payments for replies. I'm like, where's my fucking payment, Elon?

A Yeah. I think you have to think long. I think paying, and the creators, for a lot of creators, it's a business, and I think we've been trying to figure out ways to support those businesses for a while now, but I think you can't just pay everybody who's a creator, because if there's tens of millions of creators, that just adds up to money that's going to just completely destroy your business model. So you have to figure out ways to give them tools to make money, in my opinion, and so we focus on things like subscriptions, which are relevant to a subset of creators, but that's growing. Um, facilitating branded content deals, that's actually going very well on Instagram, and we do some payments as well, but that's more for bootstrapping, and then for, you know, a segment that's creating real content that's really driving a lot of incremental value and revenue for, for Instagram. So, look, I think it's a, I think it's gonna get a bunch of attention for the next couple days, and, but I think it's hard if it's unpredictable. If you're trying to run a business, you kind of need to know That's roughly what you're going to make ahead of time, and if you're kind of getting these lottery-type checks, I think it gets much more harder to plan. I think that's, that's a common complaint I've heard about how TikTok's payments compare to YouTube's payments, for instance, which are much more pre…

AI assessment note: “you can't just pay everybody who's a creator, because if there's tens of millions”

Q What's the kindest thing anyone's ever done for you?

A Um, professional, ah, I had a, I had a really, really harsh boss when I first started at Facebook, and I thought I was doing, I thought I was just crushing, I was like, I was like working on these projects, high profile, I'd only been in the company a couple months, was doing mark reviews, all this stuff, and she said, you lack focus. And I thought I was so focused, I was like, all my hours were accounted for, and like getting all this stuff done, but I was spreading myself too thin over too many things, And, um, I had never had a boss before, and so, and she was not, like, you know, didn't have a caring disposition, let's say, but she's fucking smart, and she's like, you, she's like, you know, I think she said something like, you're not focused and your, your work isn't, is suffering for it, and I think that was like a real, I think because it's also your first couple months at a company, you're trying to establish yourself. It was like, it hit home in a way that it wouldn't have hit home, like, you know, three months after that. And it helped, I think, a lot over the long run.

AI assessment note: “it hit home... And it helped, I think, a lot over the long run.”

Q Do you think Reels is better than TikTok?

A Eh, for certain segments, and not for others, like, TikTok is amazing at a couple things. They are amazing at, um, exploration-based ranking, so discovering new talent, and helping new talent break, right? You know, we, for a long time, had a strong bias towards showing people things that we were pretty confident they would like, because a lot of other people liked them, and it's easier to rank that kind of content, and that sort of reinforces the existing hierarchy. And TikTok was really good at building the systems from the ground up to be more content first, and to go find things that you might love that you never would have heard of before. And therefore, it was also just really entertaining. Really entertaining. Ah, it's really good. They're, they're the, I think they still are the most well-executing competitor I think we've ever faced. There's a couple others that are up there, but they're, they're, I think, at the top of that.

AI assessment note: “for certain segments, and not for others, like, TikTok is amazing at a couple things”

Q Um, but I- Can I ask just, what did you take from your time at design on problem solving?

A So design, I think, is about Really, um, making sure you're incredibly clear about what problem it is that you're solving, articulating multiple solutions, figuring out how to effectively evaluate those solutions, figuring out how to really take feedback and sift through the noise and find the signal. And I think you can apply that to most anything. Um, and so I really, I really enjoyed that. I really enjoyed structured thinking and iteration, but also some creativity blended in there. But, like I said, I wasn't great at it. Um, wasn't great at it. And then, Brett Taylor was my boss, and I was the director of design for Mobile. This might be in 2012. And then he left.

AI assessment note: “making sure you're incredibly clear about what problem it is that you're solving”

Q Can you, like, is it the momentous decision that I'm suggesting it is? And can you take me to that decision? And was it just like a, we're gonna fucking go for TikTok?

A Yeah, I mean, it was, it was, I mean, Reels has been huge for us. Reels is, I don't know, maybe pushing 50% of time spent in the app at this point. Not quite there. And before Reels, we had short form video, right? And short form video was a big part of Instagram. But I don't think we had designed the format to really embrace the form factor of a phone. And I think, you know, Reels being full screen, um, sound on is more fun and immersive, particularly during the pandemic when you're not bothering anybody because you're home. Focus on creators, first person, all of these things were ways to embrace where the world is going and the platform on which we were building, and we hadn't leaned into all of that, and TikTok's rise was just meteoric after years of struggling, um, to get anything to be retentive, and when you see a competitor do something, I think it's super important to be humble enough to To learn from it, and sometimes that will mean building something that looks a lot like it, and sometimes it means figuring out what needs it's meeting and how you might meet those needs in a way that's more native to what you do, and then a range of options in between. We lost a whole year. I still go back to this. This is maybe one of my biggest regrets. The first version of Reels we built was built on top of stories, and it just didn't work.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, I mean, it was, it was, I mean, Reels has been huge for us.”

Q If you're not great in your middle of the pack, how do you become director of design?

A Well, when I first started, it's better now, and it actually was better in 2012 to be fair, but when I first started, We had this amazingly talented group of designers, I don't know how many there were, eight, somewhere between eight and 12 of us, and they just did whatever they wanted. Like, it was one of those weird things where they were talented, they got really good work done, they worked really hard, and you would ask them to work on something, and they would smile and nod, and they would work on something else. Whatever they thought was the most important thing. Um, this is like, You know, Matt Cahill, and Saleo, and Blaise De Persia, and all these characters. And I was reliable, because I had a job before Facebook. I ran a small design firm. I was, like, used to having clients, and felt like I had a bias towards doing what the client asked for. So when I joined a company, I had a bias towards doing what my boss asked me for. And so, I think that helped me get a leg up.

AI assessment note: “I had a bias towards doing what my boss asked me for.”

Q And then you, you know, you, we look at quite a few of Facebook's kind of innovations, and Threads most recently. Is Facebook just a very efficient copy machine?

A I think we're very good at optimizing things, and I think that we are willing to, when somebody pioneers a new format, to go and adopt that format if we think it's going to become an industry standard. And I think stories is a good example. Stories is like, you see stories everywhere. Stories on YouTube. There were stories on Pinterest for a while. Um, obviously Twitter did it for a while. Uh, so I think that that is part of our DNA is that we are We are, we're competitive. We are always, we are, we are always worried that, and I think this is good, that the world will change around us, and we won't change fast enough to keep up. So we are willing to take risks that sometimes really blows up in our face.

AI assessment note: “when somebody pioneers a new format, to go and adopt that format”

Q Was it difficult bringing in a whole new C-suite and making them gel together? This is hard.

A Yeah, um, it's, it's always, it's always a challenge. Uh, I, I've been lucky. I have an amazing team. Um, I've made a few mistakes in hiring, but for the, for the, The vast majority of those hires I made in that first year are still at the company and still in the positions at Instagram, but yeah, you have to kind of pick the people based on their skills, but also based on does the group end up with the set of skills you need from the group as opposed from each individual, and then you kind of have to also try and build that and pick people for whom they're going to have some chemistry without having them all be alike. And that's an art, not a science. So, you know, it's a, it's a work in project, uh, process, work in progress, but it's, I just think it's important to spend time on. I'm always working on figuring out how to increase the rapport and the trust within that senior-most team.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, um, it's, it's always, it's always a challenge.”

Q And this felt like a importing landed aristocracy. How do you feel when you hear that? And is that right or wrong?

A I don't know about aristocracy, but I do think, I think one of the things that played in our favor is there are a lot of platforms that do amazing work with creators out there. I talked about how TikTok is really good at breaking new talent. I think YouTube is the best at You know, doing sustained, consistent payouts with their ref share program, because long form video is, I think, a lot more conducive to that. Um, but if you look at all the different platforms, Instagram is the, the, it's the, it's the most popular in the creator community, as far as we can tell. So the most creators use it. Now, more creators over time are using multiple platforms, because they're becoming Just more savvy and trying to make sure they diversify their risk, which I think is smart. But it, we have, we have been, ah, you know, we're not always the most loved. Sometimes we are, sometimes we're not. But we've been, ah, the most important platform overall, not for an individual creator, but overall in the community, I think, um, for, for a while now. So we had this very rich, vibrant community of probably tens of millions of creators that we could just tap into with this. Um, in a way that I think was, um, exciting. And then, then, then it ended up taking out an energy of itself. As soon as you get enough big, not even big names necessarily, but like interesting names, then everyone wants to, they'…

AI assessment note: “I don't know about aristocracy, but I do think, I think one of the things”

Q And this felt like a importing landed aristocracy. How do you feel when you hear that? And is that right or wrong?

A I don't know about aristocracy, but I do think, I think one of the things that played in our favor is there are a lot of platforms that do amazing work with creators out there. I talked about how TikTok is really good at breaking new talent. I think YouTube is the best at You know, doing sustained, consistent payouts with their ref share program, because long form video is, I think, a lot more conducive to that. Um, but if you look at all the different platforms, Instagram is the, the, it's the, it's the most popular in the creator community, as far as we can tell. So the most creators use it. Now, more creators over time are using multiple platforms, because they're becoming Just more savvy and trying to make sure they diversify their risk, which I think is smart. But it, we have, we have been, ah, you know, we're not always the most loved. Sometimes we are, sometimes we're not. But we've been, ah, the most important platform overall, not for an individual creator, but overall in the community, I think, um, for, for a while now. So we had this very rich, vibrant community of probably tens of millions of creators that we could just tap into with this. Um, in a way that I think was, um, exciting. And then, then, then it ended up taking out an energy of itself. As soon as you get enough big, not even big names necessarily, but like interesting names, then everyone wants to, they'…

AI assessment note: “I don't know about aristocracy, but I do think”