Interview
Adam Mosseri: Why Video Is Bad For Business; Does Feed Matter Anymore? | E1039
- Resource allocation is shifting toward messaging as DM photo and video volumes are predicted to outpace all other formats, while the app is expected to evolve from the third or fourth most important surface for teens to prioritize young people and creators despite potential short-term costs to engagement and revenue.
- Reels is projected to capture 50% of time spent in the app, driven by a friend-to-friend flywheel, though this growth may exert downward pressure on the ads business and requires managing the tension between increasing video consumption and monetization efficiency.
- The strategy involves progressive disclosure to manage increasing app complexity and a plan to proactively "unship" low-value features to prevent the product from becoming too complicated, with specific focus on consolidating products to avoid "death by a thousand cuts."
- Adam Mosseri anticipates keeping a temporary moratorium on product changes for at least a couple of months after his tenure as CEO begins, barring urgent safety issues, while acknowledging the need to balance short-term reactive team needs with long-term delivery of quality work.
- The recommendations feature is expected to face significant backlash and become a scapegoat for user dissatisfaction, even as it is viewed as a necessary strategic move to prevent the app from decaying, following a lesson learned from the nine to 12 months of development time lost by building Reels on top of Stories.
- The social graph is expected to transition toward an interest graph, which is viewed as the future of social, though the friend graph will remain relevant with a sync option likely introduced to keep connections identical for users where the graphs overlap by approximately 80%.
- Threads launch success depends on achieving a critical mass of content and users within the creator community over the next year, with specific risks regarding initial empty engagement and the need to iterate quickly beyond the first eight days of the launch.
- Threads development team size is currently small with dozens of engineers and a few product managers, facing an opportunity cost as they grow, while the team must plug obvious missing features including feed editing, Europe-specific support, and functionality to support the continent.
- Regulatory compliance for the European rollout of Threads support for the Fediverse and ActivityPub is targeted for February, a delay of many months required to address legal requirements regarding data separation and verification coming next year.
- Monetization for a text-based feed like Threads is expected to be easier and more efficient than video-based feeds due to seamless ad integration, though the strategy must address the challenge of unpredictable "lottery-type" creator payments seen in competitor models.
- Generative AI is predicted to accelerate workflows for marketers, designers, and executives, potentially doubling or tripling success chances, with the technology advancing faster than initially anticipated and being utilized for summarizing feedback and articles.
- The company plans to focus on specific verticals like athletes, musicians, and fashion to build cultural relevance, citing figures like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, and aims to make the platform culturally relevant through sports like football and F1 to compete with a fast-moving competitor in the video space.
- Resource consolidation includes relocating the speaker back to the US to balance family time, anticipating that the primary need for maternal presence will last at least seven years, while the company remains aware that new app launches have a high failure rate with zero new apps installed monthly for the average person.
- Competitor analysis indicates TikTok remains the fastest-moving competitor with superior exploration-based ranking, while Twitter's future direction remains uncertain with potential attempts to pay creators for replies, which are viewed as hard to plan for business predictability.
- Internal morale is expected to improve more through market success and doing good work than through internal communication alone, with plans to maintain the app's dominance in the creator community despite potential temporary drops in overall engagement metrics.
- The activity feed saw usage from less than 1% of users, yet represented significant volume given the app's scale, while Notes is expected to function primarily as a conversation starter for younger users with lower engagement among those over 20.
- The company anticipates being a "competitive" entity constantly worried about failing to evolve fast enough, with Mark Zuckerberg expected to set increasingly high goals to ensure long-term health, even as the app faces the risk of reputation damage if new initiatives like Threads fail.