Jul 7, 2023 · 49m · more-or-less
#5: Twitter Won't Die! Long Live Threads! · More or Less Podcast
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of More or Less, hosts Jessica Lessin, Sam Lessin, Dave Morin, and Britt Morin dissect the launch of Meta's Threads against Twitter's ongoing crises, evaluate declining consumer engagement with generative AI chatbots, and debate the medical value of boutique full-body MRI scans.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 86.5% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 6.3 Guest teaching 3.1 Guest disagreement 3.0 The hosts pushing back 4.5
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 47:04 Britt rejects Daves broad dismissal of preventative scanning
Britt aggressively interjects and rejects Daves assertion that full-body scans are useless, arguing that combining imaging with biomarker blood panels provides legitimate preventive healthcare.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 46:53 Dave challenges the validity of biohacking scansDave bluntly attacks the entire premise of preventative body scans, calling the hype completely disconnected from medical reality and mainstream health necessities.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 43:59 Britt outlines comprehensive preventive diagnostic protocolsBritt educates the hosts on how preventative scanning actually works in practice, detailing nine years of combining DEXA, VO2 max, QBio imaging, and blood biomarkers.
The host holds their own ▶ 19:24 Dave counters the clone narrative with platform historyDave refutes Jessicas criticism of Metas copycat tendencies by citing his firsthand role building the Facebook platform when Twitters founders initially developed their product as a status updater for Facebook.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Episode Welcome, Holiday Banter, and Agenda Overview | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | The episode opens with casual Fourth of July holiday banter and lighthearted teasing between couples. Hosts establish the agenda covering Threads, Twitter, and full-body scans without substantive debate. | |
| Unboxing Threads: Early Adopter Impressions and Features | 5 | 4 | 3 | 4 | Britt shares insider context from Meta employees on why Threads launched as a text-first offshoot of Instagram. Dave pushes back, calling that explanation trivial compared to the broader strategic landgrab following Elon Musks Twitter takeover. | |
| Social Graphs vs. Algorithms and Failed Twitter Clones | 8 | 4 | 4 | 5 | Sam delivers an extensive historical breakdown of social graphs versus algorithmic feeds and the difficulty of bootstrapping networks from zero. Britt pushes back firmly when Sam characterizes her core audience as mommy bloggers, demanding more precise terminology. | |
| Meta's Social Product DNA and Regulatory Roadblocks | 8 | 2 | 2 | 5 | Dave and Sam leverage their firsthand experience at early Facebook to analyze product DNA and platform history. When Jessica raises Metas reputation for copying rivals, Dave rebuts by detailing how Twitters founders initially built for the Facebook platform. | |
| Twitter's Self-Inflicted Wounds and Platform Resilience | 6 | 1 | 1 | 3 | The hosts analyze Twitters self-inflicted wounds, rate limiting, and paywalled TweetDeck. Sam compares Twitter to Bitcoin, arguing that despite terrible management and destroyed market cap, the platform distribution cannot easily be killed. | |
| More or Less Poll: Twitter vs. Threads Three Years Out | 7 | 3 | 3 | 6 | During a three-year prediction poll, each host details how platform mechanics dictate usage. Sam bluntly calls out Dave, asserting Daves hatred of Twitter stems purely from being artificially promoted to millions of random accounts early on. | |
| Generative AI Hype Cycle and the Interface Dilemma | 7 | 3 | 3 | 4 | Dave introduces the thesis that generative AI is currently stuck in a command-line interface phase awaiting an intuitive GUI. Sam expresses deep skepticism about conversational consumer AI while Britt defends her regular usage of Google Bard. | |
| The Full-Body MRI Debate: Biohacking vs. Healthcare Reality | 6 | 7 | 7 | 8 | Britt shares her extensive personal regimen of full-body MRIs, DEXA scans, and blood panels for preventative health. Dave forcefully rejects the trend as an elite obsession disconnected from mainstream health crises like diabetes. |
Statements from this episode (22)
Britt Morin was one of 2,500 early adopters on Threads before launch
“I did post on the Threads yesterday as one of 2500 early adopters.”
Sam Lessin: Threads will succeed as a platform but won't kill Twitter
“I actually am pretty optimistic. I think this will work. Now, whether it kills Twitter or just becomes yet another place you post things, I think is TBD. Like, I don't, it's hard to see it killing Twitter”
Lessin: Threads will monetize terribly because text monetizes poorly
“Now it does mean it'll monetize much worse, right? Like text monetizes terribly. So it's not like, I don't think it's hard for me to imagine it being financially like deeply meaningful, but I think it'll be a great application.”
Morin: Threads will become a mainstream Instagram community, not tech VC
“No, I don't think I will. I don't think it's going to be a neat, like a techie BC community. I think it's going to be, like, a more mainstream Instagram community.”
Lessin: Twitter is a shockingly unsuccessful company given its early lead
“Twitter is a shockingly unsuccessful company in the big picture. Like, shockingly, right, given the head to where it was.”
Lessin: Meta's 3% pop on Threads launch added $20 billion
“Yeah, I mean, I think that whatever, the three percent pop in Facebook stock this morning was worth half of, was a twenty billion dollar pop on, I believe, mostly this news.”
Dave Morin: Meta needs 18% of Instagram to match Twitter's size
“All they need to do is convert, I guess, about 18% of Instagram to threads, and they'll have an app the size of Twitter.”
Dave Morin: Twitter was originally built to update Facebook statuses
“Jack Dorsey and Ev Williams And BizStone were launch partners of the Facebook platform, and they built Twitter to update Facebook statuses.”
Lessin: Nobody Likes Twitter, So Copying It Has No Backlash
“The nice part about ripping off Twitter, if that's what this is, which it is is no one likes Twitter. So no one's like, oh, you ripped off Twitter.”
Lessin: Threads' Social Graph Will Rapidly Diverge From Instagram's
“And then I think what'll happen is, is like, it'll just evolve in a different direction, and that'll be good. Like, the graphs will rapidly diverge”
Sam Lessin: Bitcoin will never die because network nodes will never all shut down
“The only way to kill Bitcoin is for all the nodes to turn off, right? Like, and that's never going to happen, right? Bitcoin will never die, right?”
Sam Lessin: Crises and competition will prevent Twitter from ever reaching $100B
“I mean, I just don't think it's I don't think it's existential for Twitter. But I do think it's existential for Twitter ever being a hundred billion dollar company, right?”
Morin: Mainstream audience will be on Threads within three years
“I think that the mainstream audience is going to be on threads and it's going to be powerful. And so I think to Sam's point, that distribution, Advantage can't be ignored and it will be very powerful three years from now, no question.”
Sam Lessin: Artificial promotion is the biggest sin for social networks
“The biggest sin to any of these networks is artificial promotion, because you end up with a bunch of people that are actually not interested in your contact and orthogonal to what you want, and it makes the experience absolutely terrible for you.”
Dave Morin: Backchannel reports show AI chatbot engagement is down significantly
“There was a report today that the chat GPT usage or engagement is down quite a bit, which we've been hearing in the back channels, not just about GPT, but many of the other AI chatbots.”
Dave Morin: Generative AI is currently in its command-line phase
“We're in the command line phase of this thing, and nobody's actually figured out the graphical user interface for these AI technologies, and we've got a long way to go before we do.”
Dave Morin: Conversational interfaces are not the right UI for everything AI
“We had this several weeks of everybody under the sun declaring that they must have a conversational interface for everything, and, you know, I just think that's not the case, and that there are amazing things to be built on top of this technology, but it's goi…”
Sam Lessin: Generative AI will never become a consumer app
“There's no way this is a consumer app in the future.”
Jessica Lessin: Leaked documents show Microsoft's cloud business is smaller than thought
“Information also had a story this week that Microsoft accidentally released some documents that showed its cloud business is not as big as people think it is”
Britt Morin relies on an annual $3,000 body scan instead of a doctor
“I don't have, like, an actual doctor. I go in once a year for a 3000 dollar body scan and all these tests.”