Peloton's New Spin and Disney's ESPN (Podcast)

changes at Disney. Details on his new steak and why he's urging a spinoff of ESPN, and how Google Maps routinely misleads people searching for abortion clinics, Why and why it's ever more critical in a post grow World War. On our Bloomberg analysis later this hour. To that Disney story, activist investor Dan Lobe urging Disney to make a sweeping set of changes to boost shareholder value, including new board members and spinning off esp the PN. Lobe's third point,

taking what it calls a significant steak in Disney. Here to discuss. Paul Verna of Insider Intelligence in Bloomberg's Leona Baker, Leona some of the changes that Dan Lobe is calling for here not necessarily new ideas. I mean, we've heard talk about spinning off ESPN for years. Um, what is

Dan Lobe suggesting and why? Well that's right Emily. In the letter, if you read it, Lobe actually says Disney might be working on some of these things already, although sources close to Disney's tell me you know, there's not gonna be an espn uh spinoff anytime soon. But some of the other things that Lobe is calling for, like cost cuts and buying a steak in Hulu from Comcast US, these are things that investors have kind of been expecting for years. And this is loped second bye of the

Apple at Disney. Remember, he had also taken a stake and asked for changes like Disney scrapping the dividend and putting all that investment into the streaming product. Those are things that Disney never really did. So we'll see if he has a better shot this time around. Lobe is a big name in the world of activists investing. He's shaken up companies like Yahoo and Sony over the years, but he does have a mixed track record as to

really seeing the changes that he's asking for lobes. Letter to Disney initially starts off, you know, fairly flattering to CEO Bob Jpeg. Then he sort of digs in, saying ESPN is a great business that currently generates significant free cash flow. Despite these advantages, we believe a strong case can be made that ESPN should be spun off to shareholders with an appropriate debtload that will alleviate leverage at

the parent company. Uh Disney responding sort of thing banks not quite but not quite, No thanks, saying, we welcome the views of all our investors. As our results demonstrate, the Walt Disney Company continues to deliver strong financial results powered by world class storytelling and our unique and highly valuable content creation and distribution ecosystem. Paul, what do you make of this? Well? I think it's always got to stir the pot, you know, dialogue is always helpful and

and it's interesting to to put out these ideas. But I don't think if I were bought ta Peck, I'm keeping espn' I'm not spinning it off. ESPN does a lot of things for Disney Sports. For one, it does a couple of things that no other form of entertainment.

Does one is, uh, you have loyalty, so you know, someone is more likely to tune out the next season of The Mandalorian if they don't like a plot twist or something about the casting, but they're not likely to just stop watching Major League Baseball or li Liga or whatever else they watch on esp end. And then there's this whole thing about appointment viewing, which is something that's kind of a vestige to bygone days, but it still exists in sports because the game is taking place when

it takes place, and people want to watch it. So I think there's a lot of benefit to having ESPN as part of that portfolio. It's not an accident that every other media company that Disney competes with has a major sports entity as part of their mix. Leanna, you know, what do we know about lobes track record and how likely it is that he'll he'll be successful here, especially

with a company like Disney, It's hard to say. There was a vaguely threatening line in the letter today where he said that there's a talent gap on Disney's board and that he has good connections and can maybe make some introductions to Disney. Now, I don't know, you know who Disney needs to meet that doesn't know already. But the idea there is that he's floating out with investors to see if they'll support him, maybe in a board fight.

So right now, Disney h their window for directors would open later this fall, so Low would have a few months to see if he wants to do a board fight. He really does have a mixed track record at taking over boards. Um, at Yahoo back in you had a lot of success, although history will tell whether you know Marrissa Meyer was the right move At Southby's the company went private, but it was a really long haul. It took several years, and Sony still hasn't made a lot

of the changes he's wanted. So while he's a big name, Uh, it's not clear that you know, even though he's going after this blue ship company, that's a slam dunk that all of this will come true. Gosh, I remember covering that Yahoo lobed Marrissa Meyer story every day for gosh, at least a year. Um, Paul, what do you make

of some of these other changes? New board members? Uh, you know, full ownership of who Again, as I said earlier, not necessarily new ideas but you know something, something that several investors have been calling for for a while but hasn't happened. Well, I think that Disney buying the share that it doesn't own and Hulu from Comcast is a good idea. So I agree with Dan Lobe on that one.

There's a lot of tension within Disney because, on the one hand, you know, there's a deadline to execute this deal by so obviously it's in Disney's best interest for the price of that chunk to be as low as possible. So it's almost like a weird motivation to drive down the value of Hulu. And that's just a very tense situation that's going to unfold for the next couple of years. Disney already has a controlling interest in Hulu, and in

my view, they're doing a great job with Hulu. I don't see that they should fold it into Disney Plus necessarily. I think it's a very strong brand on its own. So I see a lot of value in basically Disney executing on this earlier, even if, as Dan Lobe says, they have to pay a little bit of a premium for it. All right, well, we're going to continue to follow this evolving story. We'll see how long it lasts.

Boomer's Leanna Baker, Paul Verna insider intelligence, thank you, and more changes for Peloton after last week's layoffs and price hikes. Thank d I y. The struggling fitness brand is retooling its bikes for self assembly. Yes, that means customers will be able to put them together themselves. This is part of a wide ranging turnaround for Peloton by its new CEO, Barry McCarthy, who's also planning to launch a rowing machine

this year. Bloomberg Smart German covers all things Peloton for us. So, uh, let's get this straight. Peloton just raped prices for the bike. Now it wants customers to put the bikes together themselves. Yeah. I wonder if Dan Loebe is going to try to get his hands on Peloton as well. But there's clearly, uh, they have a lot of changes to implement here. So yes, one of the initiatives last week is part of the layoffs, was really changing their costs and dropping them significantly when

it comes to distribution and warehouses. Right, so laying off over five people that work in distribution. Now, if you ever bought a Peloton before this is how it works. And you know this already. You order it online and they show up to your house a White Glove service, they bring it in, they unboxed it for you, and they set it up for you. That's a four dollar fee to consumers, and that's very expensive for the company to release, supply and make happen. That's why they're winding

in the ware houses right now. They're going to start moving to third party companies, logistics companies to do that White Glove service. The next step is having consumers set these devices up themselves, so they're in the process right now. The CEO told me an interview last week of redesigning its equipment so they can ship it via ups, via fed X, whatever you want. You take it home, you it arrives at your doorstep, you open the box, you

put it together yourself. And like you said, d I Y, that's obviously not a great customer experience compared to the White Glove service, but that would be cheaper for the customer, no longer paying that four set up fee, be cheaper for Peloton. And if they have redesigned it in such a way where it's a fifteen minute process, right with just a few parts. It's actually pretty convenient rather than having people come into your house. We've covered some of

the safety issues with Peloton products. I mean, are there any safety issues with this? Yeah? I mean I have to tell you obviously, if you set up a bike incorrectly or the rower or treadmill incorrectly, right, and that thing falls apart because you didn't do a good job, you know, setting up the device, that's a clear liability issue. So that really comes down to their engineering, their supply chain, their operations to figure out a way to make these

devices work reliably and set up reliably right. So if you have to have the equipment to do it, the right screwdriver, the right screws, that could be a complicated situation. So that is definitely a consideration, and I guess we just have to hope that Peloton has engineered these things so they could be set up quickly and safely. All right? Interesting? What will continue to follow your reporting on Peloton? Bloombergs

Mark German as always appreciate it. Meantime, Monday is the deadline for hedge funds to disclose their US equity investments for the second quarter. This is one of the few ways that we get inside into how hedge funds and some large family offices actually invest hedge fund Ducane bought Eli, Lily, CrowdStrike, Maderna, and Dated dog Me Time. Tiger Global took new positions in Alphabet and Zillo. According to a new thirteen F filing.

Tiger Global also exited positions in DocuSign, Zoom, and Salesforce, reducing its stakes in Snowflake and Microsoft. This back world continues to unravel. At least four planned mergers to go public have been canceled since the market closed last Friday, bringing the years tally to two. Those concerns have pushed eighty nine backers to withdraw plans to raise fresh capital for blank checks. Here to explain that Bloomberg's Bailey lip shoalds So, Bailey, just how many of these are we

talking about here? And why are we seeing so many

of them? Yeah, So, as you saw the in the chart that we've seen kind of a growing number that has only kind of shot up since the start of the year, and that's really coming as we've seen over six hundred blank check companies on the hunt for deals um that are racing against deadline that either really are built up at the end of the first quarter of next year, some going into the second quarter of next year, but really just over seven hundred SPACs either with signed

deals or chasing to find new target companies to bring public. When you look at some of the breakups that we've seen in the last few days, those are either in things like electronic vehicles, cryptocurrencies, so a lot of high growth technology companies that are ways away from generating any kind of EBITA, and that's really something we've seen fall out broadly across the actual public markets. So that's part of the reason that these plug has been pulled on

some of these deals. So talk to us about the broader market for spacks and how this what this bodes for the rest of the year. Yeah, so we've seen more than sixty actually closed their deals so far this year and another hundred are live deals. No, So that means that there actually is a partnership between the sponsorship team and the target company, So you can you can expect to continue to see some of these getting across

the finish line. But the way these despects are trading class is down to media and percent this year, so markedly under performing the market, markedly under performing those who went public via the traditional I p O. So you can expect to see some deals getting across the finish line, but there is expectations for liquidations like we saw with the Bill Ackman's back, like we saw Sam Zell announcing um last week, in addition to expectations that we will

see some of these deals being broken just because these terms were agreed to back in December, even through April, when the market was in very different shape compared to where it is right now, where there are so many concerns about a potential recession and what lies ahead with expectations for the Fed to continue to hike interest rates. So question does this trend pick back up when or if, hopefully the markets get better or longer term, our investors

just souring on this as a means of doing business. Yes, sponsors are really optimistic that they can get deals done. That's why we saw hip its High announcing that they planned to push back to deadlines to sometime next year. Kind of the reading of the room from talking to investors is the idea that as the market rebounds, there will be some demand for some of these back deals to get across the finish line. For some of these

experienced sponsors to find and bring private targets public. But the expectations from the people that I talked to is that the future iteration of spacts in two or four will really look what like what it did back in twenty nine team, where you've got fifty to sixty spacts filing to go public. They're taking some of these smaller target companies public that maybe don't have the following to get a bank like a JP Morgan or Goldman Sex to underwrite their I p O. And we'll find ways

to get deals across the finish line. But broadly speaking, the expectation is that the go go days that we saw in one is very much a thing of the past and more of an anomaly. Alright, uh, really interesting, Bailey lips Sheltz, thank you for covering that story for us. All right, Coming up, how conspiracy theorist Alex Jones made even more money after being taken down from major social media platform. We're gonna have more on that next. This

is Bloomberg. In the summer of Apple, Facebook, Spotify, Twitter, and YouTube all banned the media company of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, that is Info Wars that means taking down many of its recorded broadcasts. This after Jones threatened then special counsel Robert Muller. The platforms all sided some sort of unspecified content policy violation for their decision to d platform the controversial host, which was supposed to relicate Jones

to relative obscurity. As it turns out, Jones's audience didn't quite disappear. In fact, his big business became more lucrative than ever. Bloomberg Smacks Chafkin took a deep dive into this for us Max. How is this even possible? Well, so, there are two things that are going on. One is that although the big tech companies banned uh info Wars pages and in some cases eventually banned Alex Jones, they didn't take down you know, they didn't stop the circulation

of these Sandy Hook related conspiracy theories. They didn't um stop other people from posting Jones videos, either in support or in criticism of him. And as a result, even though UH he was banned, you've still seen quite a lot of Alex Jones on social media, either in the form of him appearing on podcasts. You've seen a bunch of these kind of contrarian edgy types like Joe Rogan have Alex Jones on on on on their shows and

as well as just people out there criticizing him. And then the other thing that happened is that, you know, Alex Jones used this and turned into a storyline where he became this order. Um. He does not make money through uh like a traditional media company does. He makes

money by selling products. So there may be a situation where although his audience he's not getting the huge numbers, he's making more money off of the audience that he does have because he's been able to activate them by by spinning this narrative of martyrdom, which, as we learned during the trial, it simply isn't true. He's doing uh really well financially. You mentioned the trial, of course, uh, the judge awarding um the parents of one of the

Sandy Hook victims tens of millions of dollars. There's also a Texas verdict another one coming up. Are these verdicts, these penalties actually changing the narrative around him or are they making him potentially more powerful? Well, it's hard to know. I mean, what you have you have a jury award in Texas that's the fifty million dollars you mentioned. You

also have this case in Connecticut. Um. In both of these cases, Jones has been found to have fame to the families, and you have trials to decide on the damages. Um and and and the thing is, it's very tempting even now to say, Okay, well, this is probably the end of Alex jones career. You know, he's gone too far. But but people have been saying this for a long time. And you know, as I point out a column, you still have lots of people, lots of companies basically enabling

and and and making money off of this stuff. Alex Jones has a book that's coming out. It's it's near the top of Amazon's bestseller list. Um, there's a there's a documentary, a very sympathetic documentary, uh that that that has just come out. So you have lots and lots of media types still kind of, like I said, eating off of these conspiracy theories in one way or another. Uh. And it's it's pretty depressing just because the cruelty as we saw during the trial of these conspiracy theories towards

the parents, UM was you know, it's it's disturbing. Yes, well, you can read more on that in Max's story. Max, thank you for bringing that issue to light with us, and we'll be following the verdict from the upcoming trials. We've been covering the changing digital privacy landscape in a post rural world, issues with access to information on abortion and the power that tech companies have to safeguard that information. Well, it turns out that even Google Maps regularly misleads people

searching for abortion clinics. This according to a new analysis by Bloomberg News. Let's take a deep dive on this with Bloomberg's Jack Gillum, who went through all of the data for us. So tell us what you found, Jack, So Emily, we wanted to just start out as if somebody wanted to find an abortion clinic, right, a very straightforward search that you could put into Google Maps. And when we did that for all fifty states and the

District of Columbia, the results were pretty surprising. About a quarter of the cases returned not abortion mix but instead what are called crisis pregnancy centers. These places that are often you know, are encouraged to encourage women when they come in to uh not get an abortion and even though they often will masquerade themselves as a as a

bona fide abortion clinic or some sort of doctor's office. Um, you know, this is very different than if you maybe type in a certain maybe fast food chain or type of restaurant, it will give you alternatives. In this case, post row, it's led to some confusion among folks. So we've spoken with who believe Google, they see the result, they assume that it's an abortion clinic, they go there, and in some cases they're in for a pretty alarming surprise.

What does this practically mean for those seeking an abortion? So, what it means is that if somebody is in need of this procedure and they go to one of these places and it's a crisis pregnancy center, they can be sort of drawn into this process and be told, sometimes with very erroneous, erroneous medical information, that they don't need one.

We spoke with one woman who in fact googled an abortion clinic, ended up going to Prices crisis pregnancy center and then quickly realized that it was not it was not an abortion clinic, was given a rubber fetus, what you know, confided in them that in fact she was in an abusive relationship and they try to convince her that if you just stay in this relationship with the baby,

things will get better. So, I mean, it's unclear what sort of emotional and damage that did to that woman and other people who are seeking UM, particularly if they are seeking an abortion UM. There might not people who are up to date on this post row world, And it really sort of raises questions in a quarter of these cases that we found, what happens when somebody is in need and when they search and get a wrong result.

What's Google doing about this? So they say that they have extra layers and verification in place, they have policies they say that prevent this, and people can report these erroneous results. Um. You know, there's still the critics we've spoken to ask, well, is Google doing enough given that they to index the world's information and that some of these websites are pretty clear that they do not provide abortion. Is their way to modify that algorithm and take those

erroneous results in new account? All right, Jack Killen, thanks for bringing that story to life. Appreciate it well. For more on the implications and the power of tech in a post ROW world and the impact on tech, telehealth, tech investing at large. I want to bring in Susan Line BBG Ventures managing partner formerly and executive with a O L and Guilt Group, just to name a few.

So Susan, you know, as we were talking about tech platforms have incredible power UM in a post row row world and obviously have some decisions to make about how they lose that use that power. UM. What are you most concerned about, UM, from the perspective of an investor, UM, as we see these issues play out. That's a really good question. I actually think about it more as opportunities that that exists. UM. You know, it's it's really clear that uh that women are not being served UH, certainly

in the twenty states that have banned abortion. UM. But additionally, I think that there's going to be just a huge impact on on business overall, and so that always creates opportunity. There there will be founders out there who are looking for solutions that UH enabled companies to really address the retention issues, the recruitment issues, UM, and the challenges in

a post row era. I mean this is there are two million fewer women in the workforce today than there were before COVID so a lot of women left for multiple reasons, remote learning, daycare centers closing, and just the overall caregiver issues that fall to women. UM. Those women have not come back. This new ruling is going to just exacerbate that. We're going to see fewer women in the workforce. We're going to see fewer women advancing at companies UM. And we all know that gender diverse teams

perform better. So until unless UH companies find a way to begin to mitigate this, I think we're gonna have big challenges. So how is this impacting your own investment thesis? You know, we back female and diverse founders who bring new thinking to sectors where a lot of changes overdue. So it's healthcare, work, finance, education, climate UM. And they're all areas where diverse founders have been traditionally over looked.

But one of the things we've learned during now the eight years nine years we've been doing this UM is that people with lived experience as well as learned experience, people who really understand the end users of a tech platform, the people whose lives are going to be better for it, are generally the people who are going to come up

with better solutions. So it's really for us, it's always looking a little bit ahead of where things are right now, UM to identify where the opportunities exist, and and I think we're seeing them in multiple areas. Certainly telehealth that's a UM really interesting arena right now. Look in UM the restrictions on medication abortions which used to demand that you go to a hospital or or healthcare provider in order to get prescriptions UM that was lifted because of

COVID UH and those restrictions are still gone UM. So that opens the way for a whole new stream of of telehealth solutions companies that are are both serving UM women in their own states, but also women nationally. You mentioned the women that we've lost in the workforce post pandemic, and there's been a big concern about female entrepreneurs also

backsliding in the pandemic. You know, for example, in a tough market conditions, investors might go back to what they know and you know, continue to back the sort of stereotypical idea of what a founder should look like, which is not necessarily a woman. Are you seeing evidence that female founders and entrepreneurs are you know, at more of a disadvantage than they were at the start of You know, I would say no, Um, we have seen more female founders pitching this year than we did last year. UM,

more last year than we did the year before. UM. I think part of the reason is that we invest early, We invested seed stage, even sometimes precede. UM. Those rounds have been far less impacted by the market changes. UM. And that's where you find most women playing. To write, they have not been doing this for long enough to have you know, seen hundreds and hundreds of I p O s at this point. UM. So I think for the time being, women are slightly advantaged um by what's

been happening nationally. In fact, the the early part of two saw increase in the percent of rounds that were led by women. All right, Uh, well, lots to continue to watch, Susan. Good to have you back on the show. It's been a while. BBG Ventures managing partner, Susan Line, thank you. Coming up. Galaxy Digital wants to end its acquisition of Big but bit Go is fighting back. We'll tell you how next. Mrs Bloomberg, Elon Musk isn't the only one walking away from deals in the crypto world.

Mike novo grad says. Galaxy Digital now says it's terminating its acquisition to Bitco one point two billion dollar deal. They're citing bit Goes failure to deliver audited financial statements by a deadline. Let's get all into this with our chryptic contributor, Chanale Boss and Channa. Bigo is fighting back. Oh, they certainly are. And it's a really interesting deal to look at. Emily, this is one of the largest we've seen in the crypto universe. Galaxy Digitals one point two

billion dollar agreement, and they have been waiting. The industry investors have been waiting a long time for this deal to close. Now we know that Galaxy is looking to terminate this deal and Bigo wants them to pay that termination. See if you look at the statements here by Bit Goes lawyers, they're saying that it's pretty audacious that Mike Novagrats and Galaxy would go blaming bit go on this merger. They call it absurd. And this is according to the

Quinnum Annual partner from Big Goes legal team. Here. Both Galaxy and Mr Novograts have been distracted, they say by the lunar fiasco either Galaxy os big go a hundred million dollar termination fee has promised, or it has been acting in bad faith and faces damages of that much or more so Again, Emily, kind of like Twitter here,

it's not easy to terminate a deal. While Galaxies shares have been under pressure, they are up on the day, So you do see investors really applauding the decision to let go of what would have been much more expensive last year than this year. All right, hang on, Chenali, I want to get into this and more with Caveta Groupta, general partner at Delta Blockchain Fund of venture capital firm that focuses on blockchain tech, def I, n f T S player to earn and more coveted drama, drama, Um,

what do you make of this latest development? And no regrats trying to get out of this tale. I generinely feel like if anybody who is in the VC space would look at the deal and say, hey, the valuations are different from the time the conversation started. Took longer than for it to close. Also, after the Luna fiasco, do we really have cash on the balance sheet to do it? I mean, of course they blamed that for

sec filing. They needed some certain more documents, which is very easily provable by the exchange of emails, so could have never been reached here if there was ever an intention of actually doing the deal. I generally feel as the market sentiments than anything else where the Galaxy can afford it, does need it at the same valuation, or does it even make us with the business they're going forward with. You know, I'm so curious about what you

think this means for deal making and moving forward. This was such a massive deal on the space A lot had to be said about confidence with the deal like this getting broken up. On the other hand, you look at the investment banks, including Galaxies, and they seem to be busy. But are these deals born out of a market that is trying to restructure or deals born out of a chance to build a stronger market. At the end,

I feel like it's everywhere right. So you have deals which is like coin bases making with institutional accounts to be able to help them have their private wealth. Managers do direct crypto ownership. So I feel like the infrastructure play is going on with respect to crypto companies which are going which exists at the very big level but acquisition offers. If the offer, if the valuation is still

the old valuation, people are backing out. We have been seeing that since the Luna fiasco, even at the smallest level. So many funds who have committed the money into early stage investments have also asked money or disappeared, or backed out or asked for lower valuations. So we have been seeing it for the last couple of months. Continuously. We have seen the shift in the valuations in a massive way.

But I think this is one of those cases where the valuation is still the old built and the deal has to be done in the market where you can get a bit of another deal on the market that is worth talking about. Is this idea that you can pay through Reddit for a way to purchase etheroryum through an integration with f t x. You know, f t X is in the stacks. F t X is in the crypto, but what is something like Reddit do for them. Do we think that more social media platforms or partner

with companies like this to get the job done. Yeah, and I think this is not the first one. Twitter did it already, They just did it with bitcoin. I think we're going to see more and more web to adoption. When you say fintech, there will be an extra layer of payment through blockchain if you directly want to go there. And that is also the idea of the cave I seen and exchanges come and getting new customers like how

are you going to get them? And I think it's a very smart way of the exist coming and not only working with social media platform but any payment any place where you have an e commerce option to be done up. Just add another crypto payment system out there. All right, Commedia, thank you so much for joining us. Always great to have your take on the latest gramatic

twists and the crypto business. Uh Commniota Delta Blockchain Fund along with our very own snap says it's paid subscription plan is a hit with more than a million users across the globe. The company launched snap Chat Plus back in June, a plan that gives users early and exclusive access to features for month, including changing the app icon and seeing who we watched your story. Let's bring in our own Alex Barrinka for more on this. So kind of surprising that Snap was able to rack up this

many paying subscribers. What exactly are they so excited about? Yeah? And and doing it in just six weeks UM since this product has launched, so a lot of these subscribers are You can probably assume the younger users that Snap has brought onto the platform and try to give them interesting, exclusive,

new ways to monetize a million Emily. It's a number that surprised me, but it will also probably be a surprising but important number for Snap as they move forward and look for revenue streams outside of kind of their beleaguered ad business. How quickly and how much do you think Snap can expand this? I can tell you this is what they're focused on right now. If you remember their last earnings report UM just over a month ago,

they got hammered in the markets. They basically came out and said, our advertisers aren't spending money on the platform. We're seeing a lot of softness on that side of the business. When you think about Snap, there's two places they can we make money. It's the advertisers and then it's users like this with Snapchat Plus now in the social media industry, we know historically it's been pretty tough to get users to pay up UM, so this seems

to be kind of an early win for Snap. Historically, This is a company that's been really good at rolling out products that they know their users would love, and it seems like they're they're finding a little bit of a winning ticket here, which, again, as advertisers tend to be a little bit pocketbook shy right now, will be a potential important revenue stream for them going forward. Okay, so our other social media company is going to try

to do this and is it gonna work? I mean, Roger mcnabie, early Facebook investor, has been pushing for a subscription model at Facebook three years. You know, could Instagram do this or TikTok? I think the question will be what value can they provide? So Snap is giving people like uh the ability to get to the front of the line in a celebrity's d MS when you direct

message them. When you look at Instagram and Facebook and TikTok talk right now, it seems like they're rolling out some other user focus things that are not monetize able, like um algorithmically driven feeds or focusing on different types of content. So I do think this is a place

where Snap is unique. It's smaller, it's a bit of a different platform than those other names that you mentioned, and again, they've been laser focused on kind of doing things maybe zagging when everyone else is zigging, focusing on peer to peer messaging when everyone else is focusing on broadcasting messages to the world. So probably a unique case here.

We've seen the likes of like Twitter flirt with this a little bit um, but we haven't seen any news really of somebody getting to a million users paying for something within a social media platform. So this is my next question. What is going to continue to differentiate Snapchat in a see of other options. Yeah, so Snap has been focused around kind of this idea of a camera company, and that seems to be kind of um, where are

sitting ways to create content? Their filters and their lenses continue to be differentiated, even though you see TikTok kind of creeping up on them. Also, they spend a lot of time really focusing on person to person communication, which again is not necessarily the main feed or the home feed on a lot of other apps. Snap also again kind of is winning over this younger market. Now, Emily will remind folks that Snap is a much smaller user

base than what we see out there. Their revenue is a lot smaller than giants like Meta and Facebook and Instagram. That being said, it does seem like they are kind of really zeroing in on what that younger eighteen to twenty four year old demographic wants and catering to how they want to talk and spend time with their friends one on one instead of just broadcasting content to the world. So one million in two months, does that mean twelve

million in a year? We'll see back of Knack and math, that's like forty eight million a year at the current number of everyone's paying every month one percent of revenue there, Emily, But we'll see if those numbers shake out and if folks stick around on paying for it dollars a month

for these extra features. Okay, Alex Barnka, as always, thank you for stopping by, and that does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology Tuesday, we're gonna be talking about investing in clean energy with Jason Kelly Ginko Bioworks, as President Biden signs the Inflation Reduction Act. And don't forget to check out our podcast wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Emily Changing in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg