David Pierce

Editor-at-Large, The Verge · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

journalisthost@piercedavid ↗LinkedIn ↗theverge.com/authors/david-pierce ↗

David Pierce is a consumer technology journalist who co-hosts The Vergecast and writes The Verge's weekly newsletter, Installer. Over his career, he has served as editorial director at Protocol, a personal technology columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and a senior writer at Wired.

7statements → 3claims → 1claims resolved → 4/5average certainty → 2/5average debate potential →

1 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 2 not checkable as stated how the 3 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

3 assertions · 1 opinion · 3 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 3 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, and 2 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how David argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported

Pierce: Mobile devices are the sole internet access point in China

“For so many people in China, the mobile was and is their only access to the internet.”

David Pierce Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 1:55 a16z Podcast | Messaging As the Interface to Everything

How they sound: speaking style how? →

284 words/min while actually speaking · 7.2 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for David Pierce: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 5,292 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

What they said7 Episodes1

Everything David Pierce said on the a16z Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Pierce: US apps attempting WeChat-style social discovery have all failed

“I can't think of an app in the U S that's anything like that. And everything that has tried to do even pieces of that has kind of failed.”

David Pierce Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 7:45 a16z Podcast | Messaging As the Interface to Everything

Opinion

Pierce: Facebook Messenger lacks the network leverage of WeChat

“Facebook Messenger, which is probably the closest US analog to WeChat because WeChat in the US is nothing like WeChat in China, which is really interesting, but Facebook Messenger has this payment backbone. They have sort of an app store. It's not quite the sa…”

David Pierce Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 18:23 a16z Podcast | Messaging As the Interface to Everything

Insight

Pierce: Replicating friend messaging mechanics for brands gives platforms immense power

“If you go where people are already talking to their friends, and then you just, like, replicate that mechanic, but you're talking to something other than your friends, and You can go anywhere.”

David Pierce Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 11:18 a16z Podcast | Messaging As the Interface to Everything

Insight

Pierce: Social networks force users to play curated, performative personas

“Social networks kind of necessarily become performant, right? Like, you're playing some sort of character, whether it's business character on LinkedIn, or you want to seem like you have a really fun life on Instagram, or, you know, your kid is adorable on Face…”

David Pierce Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 34:28 a16z Podcast | Messaging As the Interface to Everything

Insight

Pierce: Super-apps are highly resilient against partial-feature competitors

“It's really hard to unseat because if you're doing 12 things well and somebody comes along and does, you know, six of those things, even if they do all six better, you're not going to leave the thing that does 12 things well.”

David Pierce Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 38:53 a16z Podcast | Messaging As the Interface to Everything

Assertion Supported

Pierce: Mobile devices are the sole internet access point in China

“For so many people in China, the mobile was and is their only access to the internet.”

David Pierce Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 1:55 a16z Podcast | Messaging As the Interface to Everything

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Pierce: Retailers resisted Foursquare's physical store push due to adoption doubts

“I remember Foursquare tried to do this forever ago, where they were like, they tried to put the symbols in every store, and then half the stores were like, well, we don't know if you're going to take off, so they didn't Play along.”

David Pierce Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 5:48 a16z Podcast | Messaging As the Interface to Everything

Appearances (1)

Episode	Date	Speaking time
a16z Podcast \| Messaging As the Interface to Everything	Jan 2, 2019	23m

David Pierce

The record, in short

Their most notable supported claim

How they sound: speaking style how? →

Appearances (1)

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