Meta Built Threads With Only 50 Engineers and Three Product Managers
Adam Mosseri · Adam Mosseri: Why Video Is Bad For Business; Does Feed Matter Anymore? | E1039 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Jul 24, 2023 · at 1:05:28
Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, details the internal team composition and timeline behind Meta's launch of Threads.
0:00 / 0:15exact quote · 15.4s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“The team really properly formed a little less than five months ago, or five months ago. We started working on it a little before, but the team didn't really form properly until maybe five months ago. Dozens. Fifty-something engineers. Three PMs, three designers. It's pretty lean.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Adam Mosseri
Feed Is Only the Third Most Important Instagram Surface for Teens
“If you look at how teens spend their time on Instagram, they spend more time in DMs than they do in stories, and they spend more time in stories than they do in feed. Yet people think of Instagram as a feed, and it's the third most important Surfers at best. M…”
Instagram Prioritizes Young People and Creators Above All Other Segments
“And for us, we care about young people, and we care about creators most.”
Adam Mosseri Claims Instagram Is Growing Faster Than Any Major Competitor
“We're growing really fast. I think we're growing the fastest of the big players.”
TikTok Is the Most Well-Executing Competitor Meta Has Ever Faced
“They're, 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, I think, at the top of that.”
Meta Adopts Competitor-Pioneered Formats When They Become Industry Standards
“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.”
Video Is Good for Time Spent but Bad for Revenue
“Yeah, and so the thing that I think people don't always realize is video, by its nature as a format, is actually really challenging for all the old social networks. It puts a lot of downward pressure on the ads business, because if you watch one video for 10 s…”