Everything is social, whether you like it or not
TBPN & the end of boring media
Hey everyone – welcome to the 22 new subscribers since my last post!!
It’s suddenly become very cold in NYC. I’ve been writing + reading more, but also a lot less likely to go outside. I ordered a new blanket and binge watched Black Rabbit over the weekend.
This week I finished a book that’s quickly become one of my favorite reads of the year: Flesh by David Szalay. I found it through Dua Lipa’s Book Club (yes, really). What I love about the book isn’t necessarily the topic — it’s basically about the life of a traditional, masculine guy from Eastern Europe — but how well it’s written. The story moves through different periods of time so naturally and the characters are built in such a way that got me completely hooked.
I’ve already bought David Szalay’s other book, All That Man Is, and will start it this week. After that, I have Flashlight by Susan Choi on my reading list. It’s a good time for my bookshelf. If you have any rec’s similar to these let me know — I always love getting tailored reccomendadtions.
Things I found interesting this week
Is the Social Media Manager the evolution of DevRel? OpenAI is hiring a Social Media Manager for developers, and the role looks a lot like a developer relations (DevRel) one. The person will run their developer X account, turn model/product updates and API changes into easy-to-digest posts, respond to devs, and explain new tools in simple language.
As someone who’s been doing devrel for the past 3 years I have some ideas on it — to be fair its kind-of a strange role, somewhere between marketing, community, and engineering. The goal is to help developers understand and use a product, but in most cases its not clearly defined. In crypto especially, it often ends up meaning: writing docs, running events, answering support questions, tweeting memes, and being the face of a protocol.
I like the fact that OpenAI is looking for a specific part and have it more clearly defined. Companies connect with developers directly through social platforms. And there’s clearly a superpower in explaining things simply and ideally quickly, the salary for the role is $240K + equity, which pretty much says it all.TBPN crossed 100 episodes 🎉 I like seeing independent media take off.
TBPN (formerly Technology Brothers) is a daily live show hosted by John Coogan & Jordi Hays. They started last year and just hit 100 episodes. They go live every weekday, stream on YouTube, X, and Spotify for around 2/3 hours. They cover business/tech like it’s sports news — reacting to news, inviting founders, drawing on whiteboards and literally just reading tweets. Since the streams are very long they make short clips out of it, and that’s what really takes off. The clips get a lot of engagement on social and are often how most people come across the show.
They’ve had guests such as: Sam Altman (just this past Friday), Marc Andreessen, Mark Cuban, Mark Zuckerberg.
As a long time viewer + a chronically online person, I attribute the rise of TBPN (and perhaps independent media) to the following:
Live + super fast. They react to stories the same day, not even same week.
Simple and human. No jargon or PR language. They joke around, literally have a gong, spin a Zyn in their hand.
Culture, not news. They treat business/tech news like sports: the format of the show is like a sports show, they have a series on X where they post senior employee transfers as “trades”, they have fun reaction voice-overs during the stream. Overall they really get the internet meme culture, which traditional media doesn’t seem to.
Founders as hosts. Skin in the game + their takes on startups feel more grounded.
People say there are so much content, but in reality there really is not enough good content. TBPN shows there’s real demand for fast, independent, and simply fun tech coverage. The NYC Times just published a post about them — at first I couldn’t read it because its behind a paywall, but then I was able to view thanks to this link.
Are Prediction Markets the new meta (or is it too late to call them meta?).
ICE (owner of the NYSE) invested $2 billion into Polymarket.
Kalshi, Polymarket’s biggest competitor, announced a $300M+ raise at a $5B valuation from Sequoia, a16z, Paradigm and others. The Chainsmokers quoted their tweet.
Sam Altman said on TPBN that he’s tempted to make a comment that would effect a poll on there.
Seems the Nobel committee is up-to date with Polymarket! The Nobel Prize organizers are investigating possible insider trading after traders on Polymarket placed last-hour bets correctly predicting the Nobel Peace Prize winner. I suspect we’ll see more of this as prediction markets expand to cover all kinds of real-world events.
Can you be extremely online AND professional? Erik Torenberg is hiring. Might be a dream job for the right person. Seems that its a hard role to hire for.
Offline is the new online. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Last week I wrote about the Claude pop-up in West Village and the event (+my post did pretty well). People are tired of scrolling. They want to actually meet the creators they follow, connect with communities who share their interests, and be part of something in-real life.
After analyzing our results, we narrowed down the following five main findings:
41% of U.S. social media users ages 18-65 reported attending at least one in-person influencer event in the past year, highlighting the growing demand for offline creator-led experiences.
Interest in future influencer events among non-attendees is strong, with two-thirds of respondents open to attending (34% yes, 33% maybe).
From casual hangouts to live shows, fans are eager for in-person creator moments of all kinds. Meet & greets ranked #1, followed by product launches and workshops in the top three. Pop-up shops came in 4th, with live performances close behind in 5th. Sporting events and live podcast recordings rounded out the list at 6th and 7th, showing that every format offers exciting ways for creators to bring their communities together.
The majority (46%) of respondents reported that they are excited about Creator IRL events and love real-life interactions with influencers. Only 2% of respondents reported they believe IRL events are overhyped, signaling the dominant forward-thinking sentiment of creator fans.
Our survey results show that $10-$50 is the “sweet spot” for events like sporting events, workshops, and meet-and-greets. -from in Creator Economy, Influencer Marketing
The Comments Section. I religiously follow Emily Sundberg’s Newsletter: ReadFeedMe, and in her recent newsletter she wrote about how hard it is to find good cashmere. She asked readers where they buy theirs, and the comments section filled up. The next day she compiled the answers for that days post. I think this is a perfect example of how to engage your readers, and its cool to see how close creators + readers can be on this app.
Logging off for now. See you next week.