Adam Mosseri: Why Video Is Bad For Business; Does Feed Matter Anymore? | E1039

Adam Mosseri 0:00 It definitely made me shift more resources towards messaging. Actually, at one point a couple years ago, I think I put the entire stories team on messaging.

Harry Stebbings 0:07 Wow.

Adam Mosseri 0:08 Um ...

Harry Stebbings 0:08 Why?

Adam Mosseri 0:09 Because it was where, take out all the text, there are more photos and videos shared in DMs than there are shared in stories. And there's-

Harry Stebbings 0:15 Huh.

Adam Mosseri 0:15 ... way more shared in stories than there is in feed. So just forget about the text for a second, just the photos and videos, just the media, the rich media, it's a bigger deal and growing faster in DMs than anywhere else.

Harry Stebbings 0:26 Adam, I am so excited for this one. We said just beforehand how many reference calls I've done. I heard nothing but wonderful things. So thank you so much for joining me.

Adam Mosseri 0:33 Oh, well, thank you for having me. You have to have heard some bad things, I feel like.

Harry Stebbings 0:37 Well, I mean, it's coming in question two. I thought-

Adam Mosseri 0:38 Okay. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 0:39 ... I'd start with a nice one. But the nice one and the kind of ease intro, I normally do like, how did you get into tech?

Harry Stebbings 0:44 But I think it was Sam Lessin who said about your first job was a bartender-

Adam Mosseri 0:47 Mm-hmm.

Harry Stebbings 0:48 ... and what you learned from it. I was intrigued to start on that.

Adam Mosseri 0:51 One, yeah, bartending was one of my first jobs, um, just paying for sort of rent and stuff in New York and, and university. I think it's good. I think, I mean, look, I spent a lot of time, uh, as, as a teenager in service. So bartending, um, as a waiter, a dishwasher, you know, like short chef, that kind of thing. And I think service is a really good thing to do early in life because it teaches you, um, some humility, but also how to work with people in a wide ri- range of people, because you end up with all sorts of, uh, clients, whether you're waiting or bartending specifically. And then figuring out how to manage different personalities at a young age I think is also a good thing. And then also, it's just good to appreciate good service. Um, you, you end up being a good tipper for life.

Harry Stebbings 1:41 I totally agree with you. It's funny actually, um, I think it's Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan, the highest rated like point on your CV you can have is if you worked at McDonald's.

Adam Mosseri 1:48 Really?

Harry Stebbings 1:49 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Adam Mosseri 1:49 That's amazing.

Harry Stebbings 1:50 Because of time pressures, difficult customers, lots of different moving parts.

Adam Mosseri 1:53 Yeah, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:53 It's actually challenging in so many different ways.

Adam Mosseri 1:55 I believe it. I totally believe it.

Harry Stebbings 1:56 Um, my first job was selling mobile phones on eBay, so... (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 2:00 Sounds about right. Sounds about right. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 2:02 Yeah, yeah. Um, but then I heard about kind of the transition from like, very young and junior designer to the incredible product leader that we have today. Talk to me about that and the early days of being a junior designer and how you felt about what you needed to do to become a product leader.

Adam Mosseri 2:19 As a designer, I love design. Um, I honestly, if I could wave a magic wand, I think I would be a specialist. I've always romanticized like the amazing machine learning engineer, the amazing product designer, the amazing, you know, data scientist or architect or shoemaker. Uh, it's just not my shape. Um, I'm not, uh, great at anything really. I just have a wide range of things that I can do reasonably well. Um, so my strength is my breadth. And so for me, I loved design, but I was solidly middle of the pack at best. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 2:50 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 2:51 Uh, I made up for lack of natural talent with just, uh, sheer, um, brute force, just hours. And I think that was good and I think I learned a lot that way and I actually took a lot from my time as a designer on problem solving. Um, but I think-

Harry Stebbings 3:06 Can I ask, just, what did you take from your time in design on problem solving?

Adam Mosseri 3:10 So design I think is about really, um, making sure you're incredibly clear about what problem it is that you're solving, articulating multiple solutions, figuring out how to effectively evaluate those solutions, figuring out how to really take feedback and sift through the noise and find the signal. And I think you can apply that to most anything.

Harry Stebbings 3:31 Mm-hmm.

Adam Mosseri 3:32 Um, and so I really, I really enjoyed that. I really enjoyed structured thinking and iteration, but also some creativity blended in there. But like I said, I wasn't great at it. Um, I wasn't great at it. And then Brett Taylor was my boss and I was the director of design for mobile. This might be 2012. And then he left.

Harry Stebbings 3:54 Can I be really rude?

Adam Mosseri 3:55 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 3:55 If you're not great at it and you're middle of the pack-

Adam Mosseri 3:58 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 3:58 ... how do you become director of design? (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 4:01 (laughs) In mobile?

Harry Stebbings 4:03 Yeah.

Adam Mosseri 4:03 Uh,

Adam Mosseri 4:04 well, when I first started, it's better now, and it actually was better in 2012 to be fair. But when I first started, we had this amazingly talented group of designers. Man, I don't know how many there were. Eight, somewhere between eight and 12 of us. And they just did whatever they wanted. Like it was one of those weird things where they were talented, they got really good work done, they worked really hard and you would ask them to work on something and they would smile and nod and they would work on something else.

Harry Stebbings 4:31 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 4:31 Whatever they thought was the most important thing. Um, this is like who, Matt Cahill and Saleho and Blase De Persia and all these characters. And I was reliable because I had a job before Facebook. I ran a small design firm. I was like used to having clients and felt like I had a bias towards doing what the client asked for. So when I joined a company, I had a bias towards doing what my boss asked me for. And so I think that helped give me a leg up.

Harry Stebbings 4:59 Can I be rude and ask, do you think like a really important thing in terms of scaling from, you know, IC to leader is understanding that internal politics? And do you think you kind of understood it in a way that others didn't?

Adam Mosseri 5:11 Maybe a little. I think that it became clear to me that a lot of times for the people who are senior at the, at the company, and I was not senior, what they really wanted was to be able to hand you a problem and then not to hear anything back from you until it was solved. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 5:30 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 5:30 And so I, I kind of made, like I internalized this early because I, that's kind of how I felt when I was a boss running my own design firm. And so I just remember with a couple people, I just was like, "Look, whenever I get handed something..." I didn't tell them this. I was just like, "Okay, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna f- do it and fix it and do it well." And then they'll, they're not gonna hear back from me. Might be a day, might be a week, might be a month, until the answer or the response is, "I took care of that, just so you know."

Harry Stebbings 5:58 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 5:59 Uh, and so I definitely leaned into that, um, for-... a number of years.

Harry Stebbings 6:04 Do you feel you have that today with the people in your team? That sounds like a dream to me as a manager.

Adam Mosseri 6:08 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 6:08 I don't have that. (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 6:10 No. No, I don't. But I don't know if I want it. I love my team. I have so much affection for my team, probably more than is healthy. But they, um... But... And part of it is because I... They're all, particularly my directs, they're all much better th- at me at something and I can learn from them. And so I try and create an environment where they can challenge me. Um, I know that sometimes I take up too much air in the room, so I'm always trying to figure out how to delegate more, how to empower them more publicly so that they don't do the wrong thing even if I ask them to do it.

Harry Stebbings 6:42 You said about them challenging you. I, um... (laughs) I, I love Gustav, who's the CPO at Spotify, and he said, "Talk is cheap, and so we should do more of it when it comes to products."

Adam Mosseri 6:52 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 6:52 I thought it was very Swedish of you. (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 6:54 That was... (laughs) Wait, what?

Harry Stebbings 6:56 Talk is cheap.

Adam Mosseri 6:56 It was not... No, no, I understood it.

Harry Stebbings 6:57 (laughs) .

Adam Mosseri 6:58 Just wasn't where I thought the con- that world was gonna go. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 7:00 And so my, my question to you is, like, bluntly, do you agree with that talk is cheap and inspiring that internal debate? Or are you more like my mindset, which is bluntly velocity and get shit done, move fast?

Adam Mosseri 7:15 It's a balance, and, and this will feel like a cop out maybe to you but... So I do think that you d-... We... As a lead, you need to talk a lot. And I think people underestimate this. Um, it's just weird. Even... We do it at our company. Our business model is ads and marketing.

Harry Stebbings 7:29 Mm-hmm.

Adam Mosseri 7:30 If you talk to anybody in that world, they'll tell you it's not just about the message, it's also about the frequency of how often you deliver that message.

Harry Stebbings 7:36 Mm-hmm.

Adam Mosseri 7:36 And then internally, we decide we're gonna do something different. We make a post internally and one out of eight employees reads it and we move on with our lives, and we're surprised when the whole company doesn't move along with us.

Harry Stebbings 7:46 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 7:46 And so I've tried to really embrace some advice I got early. Who was this from? I forget who it was. I... Coming back to me. Which was, if you really wanna move the team on something, you need to say it until so many times that you literally want to throw up in your mouth if you say it again, and then you need to say it again, and again, and again, and again. And it can be tough, because you can feel like you're not being heard or you can feel like you're being predictable or just annoying. But the truth is, people need to hear things multiple times to fully internalize them. And so I do think from the part of (laughs) that quote that resonates is, like, I do think you need to talk a lot. Um, now, I also think you need to be very clear about when you're just gonna make a call and when you're not. And there are some times where it's like, nope, if I don't make this call, we're gonna waste too much time or I have the right occasionally as a leader to just o- use my, you know, veto power, so to speak. But then you have to be careful, because if you ov-... If you do that too much, you stifle creativity, you don't create enough space, you cannot hire or retain the most creative and interesting talent. Uh, so you have to use that sparingly. Um, but that's like a card to play and you can play it every once in a while, but you can't play it every day.

Harry Stebbings 9:00 Mm-hmm.

Adam Mosseri 9:00 At least it's my experience.

Harry Stebbings 9:02 Can I ask? If we were... If you were my mentor and I was a product or design kind of IC and I wanted to make the transition, knowing all you know now, is there anything that you'd advise me in terms of making that transition?

Adam Mosseri 9:15 From, from an IC to a manager-

Harry Stebbings 9:16 Yeah.

Adam Mosseri 9:16 ... or to like a, a more senior leader?

Harry Stebbings 9:18 From an IC to a manager and a product leader.

Adam Mosseri 9:20 Honestly, anybody early in their career is probably just to get a re- a, a range of different experiences. I think it's super important to broaden your skill set even if you don't... Or to even just experiment with different types of work, whether maybe you're still a designer but you're designing different types of projects in the ad space, in the consumer space, in the enterprise space, so that you can figure out in a more informed way what, what your values are, what matters to you, what your aspirations are. Because the most important thing over the long run is that whatever you want to be professionally, that you're clear and honest with yourself about that. And then you need to shape your work to be an overlap between what helps you achieve that, and then if you work at a company, what the company needs of you. And your manager's job is to find that overlap and help you with that, but not everyone's a great manager. And it's... So I think you need to do that proactively. And I think earlier on in the career, if you want to get into management or become a more senior leader, I think range is valuable even if you don't... even if you want to be a specialist, because I think it helps you make a more informed, uh, decision about the stake in the ground you want to place about what your aspirations are. But you also have to be okay picking that stake up and moving it, because maybe you learn something and it changes. But it's better to move towards a goal that you set and change it later than to float through. And large companies and quickly growing companies like the one I work for will just pull you week to week in the fire over the week.

Harry Stebbings 10:50 (laughs) .

Adam Mosseri 10:50 And so if you don't put that stake in the ground, you can really lose a lot of time and then pop your head up and be like, "Whoa, I don't even know how I spent these last 12 months."

Harry Stebbings 10:58 Speaking of putting a stake in the ground, and speaking of advice there, uh, I, I did want to ask, you know, obviously you kind of then became CEO of Instagram. And I think that one of my favorite questions to ask is if you could, with all you know now, call up Adam the night before your first day as CEO of Instagram and give yourself some advice-

Adam Mosseri 11:17 (laughs) .

Harry Stebbings 11:17 ... on what's to come, what you could or should know, what would that advice have been?

Adam Mosseri 11:22 It probably would be more like emotional support. (laughs) Um, it probably would just be, "Be patient." I... The first year-

Harry Stebbings 11:29 Has it been more emotionally challenging than you thought?

Adam Mosseri 11:31 The first year was really tough. Uh, three, four months in, I... My, my take was like, "I've made a horrible mistake." (laughs) Uh, just, just-

Harry Stebbings 11:40 Why was that? Just too much?

Adam Mosseri 11:42 It was a lot. I mean, we lost our, um... We didn't only lose Mike and Kevin, who are amazing product thinkers and part of the reason I joined Instagram was to work with them. We ended up losing pretty much our whole leadership team, uh, a little bit before and a little bit after that. So in my first year, I had to hire a head of design, engineering, product management, data science, research, HR, communications, marketing, and a COO.And so... (exhales) It's just a lot. So there was a period there where I was very alone, and that was what was really hard because I feel like if you have a really strong staff, you c- and they, and they have trust and they get along and they can challenge each other and they bring different skills, you can kinda take on anything. And if you don't, anything can become a problem. And that was f- that trough and that f- you know, four or five months in was pretty, pretty tough.

Harry Stebbings 12:35 Can I ask, who did you talk to? 'Cause that is lonely, and CEO-ship is a really (laughs) lonely endeavor. (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 12:40 Yeah. (laughs) That was very lonely. Um, who did I talk to back then? Um, I talked to some friends who are CEOs of other companies.

Harry Stebbings 12:48 What did they advise you?

Adam Mosseri 12:50 Uh, to focus on things that would pay long-term, pay off longer term. So the, they were like, "Look, you can mess things up in the short term, but get, like get your staff into place."

Harry Stebbings 13:01 Mm-hmm.

Adam Mosseri 13:02 "Aim high. Don't compromise. Because maybe that'll make the next three months worse, but then the next three years'll be better."

Harry Stebbings 13:08 Yeah.

Adam Mosseri 13:08 I talked to th- somebody I, I talked to Will Cathcart a lot, who runs WhatsApp.

Harry Stebbings 13:12 Yeah.

Adam Mosseri 13:12 I think he was running the Facebook app at the time, uh, but he's been a, he's been a good guy to bounce ideas off of for a long time now. Some friends outside of the company, who had left the company and knew it, but some people who were just totally just-

Harry Stebbings 13:24 Was it difficult bringing in a whole new C-suite and making them gel together? This is hard.

Adam Mosseri 13:30 Yeah. Um, it's al- it's always, it's always a challenge. Uh, I th- I've been lucky. I have an amazing team. Um, I've made a few mistakes in hiring, but for the va- the vast majority of those hires I made in that first year are still at the company and still in the positions at Instagram. But yeah, you have to kinda pick the people based on their skills, but also based on does the group end up with the set of skills you need from this group, as opposed to from each individual. And then you kinda have to also try and build that and pick people for wh- whom they're gonna have some chemistry without having them all be alike. And that's an art, not a science. So, you know, it's a, it's a working projec- uh, proc- work in progress, but it's... I just think it's important to spend time on. I'm always working on figuring out how to increase the rapport and the trust within that senior-most team.

Harry Stebbings 14:21 You mentioned Kevin and Mike there. It's a very difficult thing taking over a founder-led company as a s- kind of new CEO. What are one or two of your biggest lessons, having done it now very successfully with Instagram?

Adam Mosseri 14:33 I mean, one is actually some advice that Kevin and Mike gave me later. So Kevin and Mike, they were very supportive and I'm s- and I'm very grateful to them for a lot of reasons. And I'd had a drink with them, pretty de- like maybe six or nine months in, um, and I had spent a ton of time that year trying to make sure that the team was in a good place. There was a lot of anxiety with the founders leaving. "Are we gonna get swallowed by the big company? Are we gonna lose our identity?" And, you know, I spent a lot of time trying to clarify our identity, to try to, you know, boost morale, team meetings, round tables, Q and As, you know, all this kinda stuff.

Harry Stebbings 15:10 (sighs)

Adam Mosseri 15:10 And Kevin, Kevin, Kevin's advice was, "Look, that's all nice, but really what's gonna boost morale more than anything else is just doing really good work and succeeding in the market, and everything else is kinda noise." And um, I don't think he said it quite that, um, in a bl- in s- quite such a black and white way, but more or less, that was the message. And I think he's right. Like I, I still value investing in org leadership and communication a lot. I spend a lot of time on it. I do weekly Q and As with my whole team. But I really do think that over the long run, the thing that's going to get people the most rallied, the most excited, the most motivated, and the most effective is doing good work and, and, and being successful. And so, I've been trying to balance that and make sure that I don't do too much to, to, to focus on the short-term reactionary and more to focus on how do we really just deliver over years, as opposed to worry about something that s- you know, someone might be upset about this week.

Harry Stebbings 16:13 What's your message to the team when you come in? Is it like, "This is a continuation of what we've done before"? Is it like, "This is a change in how we're doing it and we should be excited"? How did you approach that?

Adam Mosseri 16:23 I said, "I'm gonna be a sponge, and I'm gonna try and learn as much as I can as quickly as I can, and I'm not gonna push for any change for at least a couple months." I ended up breaking my promise in one place, but for the most part, kept it, and I think that helped.

Harry Stebbings 16:37 Where did you break your promise?

Adam Mosseri 16:39 The safety and integrity work. We were running too much of our own stuff and not leveraging the much larger teams at Facebook and in the central teams. I think there were more engineers that worked on safety and integrity at the company at the time that, than worked at all of Instagram.

Harry Stebbings 16:54 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 16:54 And so I was like, "Let's just tap into that." (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 16:57 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 16:57 They're g- they're used to dealing with all of this hard stuff, like... Um, and so that was a big culture shift for that team, to go from defining and implementing and enforcing your own policies to integrating with a much larger-

Harry Stebbings 17:10 Mm-hmm.

Adam Mosseri 17:11 ... machine, so to speak. Uh, but it was also the mid-term elections. It was 2018, and I was like, "We just can't wait. Sorry, guys."

Harry Stebbings 17:18 Can I a-

Adam Mosseri 17:18 So like we said before, sometimes you just have to make a decision-

Harry Stebbings 17:21 Yeah.

Adam Mosseri 17:21 ... and it's okay if it ruffles some feathers.

Adam Mosseri 17:23 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 17:23 But sometimes you make a decision that it's not the right decision. Sometimes mistakes are made. When you think about kind of a fuck-up or two that happened in the process-

Adam Mosseri 17:31 Yeah. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 17:31 ... are there any that stand out to you?

Adam Mosseri 17:33 Yeah, definitely. I mean, look, you gotta make mistakes. I will say, I, like so the, the biggest blowup h- was the press cycle the summer before last around what was called externally Panavision, which actually meant something different internally. And it was a confluence of a bunch of different changes that were happening at once. So it ended up being one of those words that people just projected onto it whatever they didn't like, and so it kinda took on a life of its own. So we were introducing recommendations into feed, so content-

Harry Stebbings 18:02 Mm-hmm.

Adam Mosseri 18:02 ... that you w- is not from accounts you follow. Very controversial. We were leaning into video. Um, and you know, we know our heritage is photos. Also controversial.... creators were frustrated with their reach and I think some of that was for good reason and some of it's because people always want more reach. And we were also experimenting with a pretty radically new f- design for the main tab. It just all was a little bit too much, too fast. And it all kind of blew up in our face and then there was an interaction between the creator community and the media and it kind of ping-ponged. And then, um, I did a video explaining what we were doing and then I became a meme for a week, which was fun.

Harry Stebbings 18:40 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 18:40 The Daily Show did a pretty, pretty funny, actually-

Harry Stebbings 18:44 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 18:44 ... bit biting impression of me.

Harry Stebbings 18:47 Was it funny at the time or were you like, "Oh, no."?

Adam Mosseri 18:49 So I was trying to get cr- I was trying-

Harry Stebbings 18:51 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 18:51 ... I was trying to calibrate. (laughs) Uh, 'cause on one hand, like I d- I do think that if you're not making mistakes, you're not trying big enough things. So if I-

Harry Stebbings 19:00 Mm-hmm.

Adam Mosseri 19:00 ... if I had no big, painful moments in the last couple years, that would mean that we were being too conservative. So I'm, I'm glad even though it was not fun. Uh, on the specific, like all the memes of like a banana, I was wearing a yellow sweater in the video so there were a lot of banana, a lot of mini-me memes, like a lot of stuff. So I was like sending stuff to some friends being like, "Is this mean or is this funny?" 'Cause it, I, like it's hard for me to tell. And like my brother's like, "This is just funny." Uh, but, uh, the best is I sent a bunch to my wife and she didn't respond to any of it. And she just isn't like, she just wasn't interested I guess. And so I'm like, this was all happening for a whole week and then a week later she's like, "Hey, w- what happened again this week? You said something was going on." I was like, "Don't even worry about it." (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 19:43 (laughs) Can I ask a weird one which is like when you have the controversial elements, like I- I love the recommendations actually that are in my feed. They're all highly personalized according to what I have already. It's a great addition. I mostly follow new people because of the recommendations.

Adam Mosseri 19:55 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 19:56 But it's controversial. When you have two opposing s- kind of not teams, but ideologies almost internally, how do you resolve that?

Adam Mosseri 20:06 I think the key thing is you make sure both sides are heard, then you make it very clear who's the decision maker, and you make it very clear when there's a decision. And you have to remind people that it's important to disagree and commit, because if you're just gonna question a decision upstream, downstream over and over again, you're just gonna do everything poorly. That one is tough though, um, because obviously people always l- not always, but there's a, there's a bias a lot of us have to want things to return to the way they were.

Harry Stebbings 20:33 Yeah.

Adam Mosseri 20:34 Even though that's not possible.

Harry Stebbings 20:35 Yeah. I totally agree with you. I always think about it with like the iPhone, do you remember when they removed the home button?

Adam Mosseri 20:39 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 20:40 And they did the swipe, I was like, "This is just shit."

Adam Mosseri 20:42 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 20:42 Total crap.

Adam Mosseri 20:43 Yeah. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 20:44 Now I'm like, "What the fuck is this button?"

Adam Mosseri 20:45 Yeah, why would I want a giant bezel? (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 20:46 We have this button at the bottom. But I mean, but these are hard product decisions in the moment.

Adam Mosseri 20:51 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 20:51 When you think back over the time at Instagram, what's been the hardest product decision for you?

Adam Mosseri 20:57 That one was.

Harry Stebbings 20:57 That was?

Adam Mosseri 20:58 Th- really leaning into recommendations and feed. That was the hardest.

Harry Stebbings 21:01 And why was that for you?

Adam Mosseri 21:03 Because I just knew there was gonna be so much backlash. It wasn't 'cause I questioned if it was the right thing, it was so clearly the right thing to do. Basically what people don't realize is they think of Instagram as a feed of square photos, sometimes in chronological order. And if you look at how people share, all of the growth has been in, in stories and in DMs over the last five years or so. And to the degree there is growth in feed, it's all in video it's not in photos in a lot of ways, at least in terms of what people consume. And, you know, if you look at how teens i- spend their time on Instagram, they spend more time in DMs than they do in stories and they spend more time in stories than they do in feed, yet people think of Instagram as a feed and it's the third most important surface at best. Maybe fourth now, um, for teens with some of the most important pe- communities, uh, on the, on the platform. Plus all the friend sharing is moving in that direction, but you don't share personal moments in feed today the way you did five or 10 years ago. You share them in stories or in messages more so. And so feed had to evolve, uh, otherwise it would just slowly, you know, die or decay exactly. And so recommendations are a way to tap into this huge, rich repertoire of amazing content that exists on the platform that you might not even know about yet, and continue to make sure that feed is alive and well. And people they say like, "Oh, you don't, you don't show enough of my friends' posts." It's 'cause your friends don't post that much-

Harry Stebbings 22:41 Yeah.

Adam Mosseri 22:42 ... to feed. Um, but it's easier to think it's the algorithm.

Harry Stebbings 22:45 Yeah.

Adam Mosseri 22:45 Uh, so it was so clear they had everything to do but it was so clear that everyone was gonna get, it was so clear that it was gonna become a scapegoat. For anything you didn't like about Instagram, you would just blame the recs.

Harry Stebbings 22:53 Mm-hmm.

Adam Mosseri 22:54 Recs is what we call recommendations for short internally.

Harry Stebbings 22:56 What does that mean for you internally when you see that DMs and messages is number one? Do you then go, "We should move, uh, uh, resources towards messaging." Do you then think, "We're a messaging application."? Like how does that change how you think with the recognition that DMs and messaging is one?

Adam Mosseri 23:11 It definitely made me shift more resources towards messaging. Uh, actually at one point a couple years ago, I think I put the entire stories team on messaging.

Harry Stebbings 23:20 Wow.

Adam Mosseri 23:20 Um...

Harry Stebbings 23:21 Why?

Adam Mosseri 23:21 Because it was where, if you take out all the text there were more ph- there are more photos and videos shared in DMs than there are shared in stories. And there's way more shared in stories than there is in feed. So just forget about the text for a second, just the photos and videos, just the media, the rich media, it's a bigger deal and growing faster in DMs than anywhere else.

Harry Stebbings 23:38 Wow.

Adam Mosseri 23:38 But the thing is, we're not a messaging app. If I'm, was gonna run late to today's podcast, the best way to let you know would probably be to text you on WhatsApp.

Harry Stebbings 23:45 Yeah.

Adam Mosseri 23:46 That's, it wouldn't be on Instagram. What Instagram DMs are great for is they provide you an excuse to start a conversation. We call them conversation starters a lot internally. You can, if you switch universities or you go, you're going to uni for the first time, you switch high schools, you, you, you have a crush. Y- you know, replying to someone's story is socially acceptable in a way that a cold text is not. Sending them a funny Reel you found in feed or more recently notes, notes are, you know, basically aimed status, but-... better looking and at the top of the inbox. Anybody above 20, like, doesn't use them very much. Unbelievable how much they've moved Instagram engagement overall, app level engagement for teens.

Harry Stebbings 24:29 Huh.

Adam Mosseri 24:30 Um, and they're just a- an excuse to start a conversation. Yes, what you're up to, but maybe it's a question. But they're just a reason to give someone a buzz.

Harry Stebbings 24:38 How do you think? Because I think that's, like, a really fundamentally challenging product paradigm to navigate through, though, which is, like, a large portion of your audience doesn't want it, won't use it, but it will ignite a different segment. That's really challenging because you've got this broad swathe, respectfully, and Jack at Snap's gonna kill me for this, it's kind of easier for him (laughs) because like- it's- he's gonna really kill me for this, it's mostly just teens.

Adam Mosseri 25:01 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 25:01 It is an isolated demographic. For you, you need to incorporate it for everyone, knowing that only one segment will use it.

Adam Mosseri 25:08 Yeah. So there's a couple ways to deal with it. The first, though, is you have to be okay, I think, it's super valuable to be willing to prioritize certain segments over others.

Harry Stebbings 25:18 Huh.

Adam Mosseri 25:18 And for us, we care about- we care about young people and we care about creators most. Because young people, I mean, they grow up, but also they are where creators gravitate to over time-

Harry Stebbings 25:31 Mm-hmm.

Adam Mosseri 25:31 ... and they set trends. And they o- they also- they often serve as a bellwether. And creators, I just think, are becoming more and more important over time for a bunch of reasons we can go into. And so the first thing is to be willing to make that prioritization decision and be like, "Look, I'm gonna eat some cost to overall app engagement or even overall revenue in the short term, because I think this is gonna be better and healthier for the company in the long term. Or for Instagram, in this case, in the long term, because either we'll break out of a local maximum or we'll be more defensible or- or, you know, whatever the argument might be." And then two, I think it's super important if you want to keep the experience simple, and I don't think we've done a good enough job at this, to embrace certain ideas like progressive disclosure. So an app should become more complicated as it needs to be and not be complicated if you don't. And so notes is a nice example because if none of your friends posted a note, it's just the active now tray, it just shows you who's on right now. And you might not even know that notes are a thing. But if people start to share notes, then it starts to show you both notes and active now next to each other. That's relatively elegant because you can think of your note as a status and your active now as a status, and so it's sort of seamless. But then if you don't, it kind of elegantly turns into something simpler.

Harry Stebbings 26:48 Is simple always better in design, Adam?

Adam Mosseri 26:50 No. (laughs) And I'm gonna get crucified-

Harry Stebbings 26:53 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 26:53 ... by a bunch of designers for saying. So I have a strong bias towards simplicity. I think we've- Instagram has benefited greatly from being simple. Uh, it's one of the core values we have in our approach. This is back to the Mike and Kevin days, and I- I- I believe in it. But I think to say it's always better is a mistake. I think of simplicity as a means to an end, and you have to be clear about what that end is. Maybe it's usability, maybe it's broad appeal. But I think that it's possible, there are instances where a more complicated thing is going to be a better means to that end.

Harry Stebbings 27:27 There's one portion of Instagram where you need like eight clicks back to get back to main feed and I'm like, "For fuck's sake, Adam." Like-

Adam Mosseri 27:34 Yeah. No, it's a thing. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 27:35 Is that deliberate?

Adam Mosseri 27:36 No. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 27:37 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 27:37 It's too- the app is too complicated. I mean, let's be serious. They are- the- I think it's gotten more simple over the last 12 months or so. We consolidated some of the design patterns and primitives, removed some of the tabs, but we still have more to do. It's just- it's when you manage a large team and they get excited about a new idea, they often want to just build a new thing. And it's tougher and more work to extend an existing pattern or primitive for a new use case than to just invent your own new one because you have to coordinate and you have to- maybe it's not quite as specialized for this thing that you got so excited about. But if you don't do that, you, um, you just slowly add more and more complexity to the app in a way that I think burns you over the long run, sort of death by a thousand cuts. So we actually had- like I was talking to our head of design and one of our product leads two days ago about how do we carve out a certain percentage of the team's time to just unship things that aren't used that much or don't create that much value and proactively look for opportunities to consolidate things to make them simpler and easier to use.

Harry Stebbings 28:42 Okay, this is really unfair of me. What do you think you should unship that doesn't create that much value?

Adam Mosseri 28:47 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 28:47 And which area do you think you haven't tapped that you could or should?

Adam Mosseri 28:52 I don't know if there's one that- I mean, the- one of the things that we did unship was the activity feed. So- so activities, like your notifications, and there was a place you could go to see essentially like all the things your friends had liked. And it was fun, like it was a great way to discover new content, but it's a little bit- a little bit creepy.

Harry Stebbings 29:09 Mm-hmm.

Adam Mosseri 29:09 Just to be like, I'm gonna check out... It's like-

Harry Stebbings 29:12 What's Adam liking? I don't know. (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 29:12 (laughs) Yeah. It's always, "Adam's liking a lot of this thing right now. That seems a little weird." Uh-

Harry Stebbings 29:18 I've told you about OnlyFans before.

Adam Mosseri 29:20 Yeah, exactly. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 29:21 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 29:21 I got so much hate in my DMs about that. It was used-

Harry Stebbings 29:24 What, OnlyFans? (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 29:26 No. No. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 29:28 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 29:28 The- the activity feed. Sorry. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 29:31 Oh my god. (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 29:31 It was, um... It was probably a small- it was- it was less than 1% of the users who used it, but that's still, you know-

Harry Stebbings 29:38 And they DMed you?

Adam Mosseri 29:39 ... millions of people. Oh, you should see my DMs, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 29:41 Really?

Adam Mosseri 29:42 A lot of DMs, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 29:43 I just get dick pics.

Adam Mosseri 29:44 Oh nice. I just get-

Harry Stebbings 29:45 Yeah.

Adam Mosseri 29:45 ... "It's my birthday, all I want for my birthday is a blue check mark." I get, "You disabled my account unfairly," and I get a lot of just whatever the most recent change is, usually complaints about it.I like to go there once or twice a week.

Harry Stebbings 29:59 Do you respond?

Adam Mosseri 30:00 Yeah, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 30:01 You do?

Adam Mosseri 30:01 I like to go in once or twice a week and respond to a couple of people.

Harry Stebbings 30:04 They must be, like, incredibly impressed when you respond, no?

Adam Mosseri 30:07 Yeah. Sometimes they think it's not me. I get that a lot. Actually, I'm, I'm on Reddit and I think my handle is just Adam Mosseri. And every once in a while I'll just go in and, like, respond to Instagram things and they... No one has ever believed it was me before. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 30:20 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 30:20 They always are like, "Look at this wanker pretending to be Adam."

Harry Stebbings 30:24 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 30:25 Like, and they just tell me to piss off. And I'm just like, "No, it's me."

Harry Stebbings 30:28 That is amazing.

Adam Mosseri 30:28 It's why we do this. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 30:29 "I promise it's me."

Adam Mosseri 30:30 Yeah. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 30:30 "It's a real time picture of me." (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 30:32 Yeah, I know. (laughs) Exactly. There's no way to prove it.

Harry Stebbings 30:34 "This is me working." (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 30:35 There's no proof. (laughs) There's no way to prove it.

Harry Stebbings 30:38 Um, Reels was such an important moment, I think.

Adam Mosseri 30:41 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 30:42 I think it was such a, like, strategic, directional decision for the company.

Adam Mosseri 30:45 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 30:45 Can you... Like, is it the momentous decision that I'm suggesting it is? And can you take me to that decision? And was it just like a, "We're gonna fucking go for TikTok"?

Adam Mosseri 30:54 Yeah. I mean, it was, it was... I mean, Reels has been huge for us. Reels is, I don't know, maybe pushing 50% of time spent in the app at this point. Not quite there. And before Reels, we had short form video, right? And short form video was a big part of Instagram. But I don't think we had designed the format to really embrace the form factor of a phone. And I think, you know, Reels being full screen, um, sound on is more fun and immersive, particularly during the pandemic when you're not bothering anybody because you're home. Focus on creators, first person, all of these things were ways to embrace where the world was going and the platform on which we were building. And we hadn't leaned into all of that. And TikTok's rise was just meteoric-

Harry Stebbings 31:33 Yeah.

Adam Mosseri 31:33 ... after years of struggling, um, to get anything to be retentive. And when you see a competitor do something, I think it's super important to be humble enough to, to learn from it. And sometimes that will mean building something that looks a lot like it. And sometimes it means figuring out what needs it's meeting and how you might meet those needs in a way that's more native to what you do, and then a range of options in between. We lost a whole year. I still go back to this. This has been one of my biggest regrets. The first version of Reels we built was built on top of Stories, and it just didn't work.

Harry Stebbings 32:11 Why?

Adam Mosseri 32:12 I mean, it was because Stories was growing, so we thought Stories would be a good foundation on which to lean into short form video. But the thing that's amazing about Stories is how depressurized they are. People share so much to Stories, and there's just way more Stories than anyone has time to see, or most people have time to see. So the read-through rate is very low. You know, I don't know what it is, but it's maybe in the teens. And so to... You can't build a short form video product that particularly focuses on creators if most of the videos they create aren't seen.

Harry Stebbings 32:47 Mm-hmm.

Adam Mosseri 32:48 And... But we were trying to keep Instagram simple. We were trying to double down on the momentum of Stories. We were trying to lean into how younger people use Instagram and they use Stories way more than they use Feed. And we lost nine to 12 months. And we ended up getting it right by leaning into Feed and making a couple other strategic changes, our own recommendations in unconnected content that were right.

Harry Stebbings 33:11 That's a really hard decision after nine months of work. Like, the sunk cost of you saying, "Just fucking keep going."

Adam Mosseri 33:17 But this was all pre-COVID-19. If we had a solid foundation before everyone was at home and just spending a whole bunch of time on their phones, the whole trajectory of the app would have been completely different. And instead, these, these things all landed, you know... Some before, but a lot after, in, you know, mid-2020, late 2020.

Harry Stebbings 33:38 What has it been... Like, how did it change the strategy? Was is just slower? Like, if you were to replay this, if you got it right the first time.

Adam Mosseri 33:45 I think how big we are relative to the competition would be super different. Would be super different. And we're catching up. We're growing really fast. I think we're growing the fastest of the big players. Um, but it's, um, it's very hard. Uh, because when... If you're gonna try and compete, and we do, right? It's a... The competition has become fiercer every year since I've been at the company. You can't just make something as good as the competition. You have to make something that's better, because why would I bother switching if it's just as good, or even if it's only 10% better? Um, so it's-

Harry Stebbings 34:15 So do you think Reels is better than TikTok?

Adam Mosseri 34:17 Uh, for certain segments and not for others. Like, TikTok is amazing at a couple of things. They are amazing at, um, exploration-based ranking. So discovering new talent and helping new talent break, right? You know, we, for a long time, had a strong bias towards showing people things that we were pretty confident they would like, because a lot of other people liked them and it's easier to rank that kind of content. And that sort of reinforces the existing hierarchy. And TikTok was really good at building the systems from the ground up to be more content first and to go find things that you might love and you never would have heard of before. And therefore, it was also just really entertaining. Really entertaining. Uh, it's really good. They're, they're the... I think they still are the most well-executing competitor I think we've ever faced. There's a couple others that are up there, but they're what, they're, I think at the top of that.

Harry Stebbings 35:09 Are they the fastest moving competitor?

Adam Mosseri 35:11 They're the, um... In the video space, yeah. The other folk who are really fast and really good, and I respect a lot, is Telegram.

Harry Stebbings 35:20 Huh.

Adam Mosseri 35:20 Telegram is just the... That team is just really good. They built something really well and they can pivot quickly. And when they decide to do something, they get it out.

Harry Stebbings 35:31 You know how before I was like, "I'm friendly. I ask nice questions. Don't worry about it"? Um, this might seem

Harry Stebbings 35:38 unfriendly-

Adam Mosseri 35:38 No, no, I'm down.

Harry Stebbings 35:39 ... but I'm sad with love. (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 35:40 I spent, I spent five years running News Feed. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 35:43 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 35:43 Everything in Instagram has seemed infinitely more friendly. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 35:47 Well, then this is gonna be great. But like, you know, when you look at Stories and you look at its origins with Snap and, you know, then Alex or Tim Schultz told me that, um, it was actually held from Kakao. Um, they disagree. But, um-

Adam Mosseri 36:00 I'm sure they do. (laughs) That's okay. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 36:01 And then you... You know, you... We look at quite a few of Facebook's kind of innovations, and it's Threads most recently.Is Facebook just a very efficient copy machine?

Adam Mosseri 36:12 I think we're very good at optimizing things. And I think that we are willing to, when somebody pioneers a new format, to go and adopt that format if we think it's gonna become an industry standard. And I think Stories is a good example. Stories is like, you see stories everywhere. You see stories on YouTube, there was Stories on Pinterest for a while.

Harry Stebbings 36:30 Yeah.

Adam Mosseri 36:30 Um, obviously Twitter did it for a while. Uh, so I think that, that is part of our DNA is that we are, we are, we're competitive. We are always, we're, we are always worried that, and I think this is good, that the world will change around us and we won't change fast enough to keep up. So we are willing to take risks that sometimes really blows up in our face. Um, without s-

Harry Stebbings 36:59 What was the biggest risk that's blown up in your face? 'Cause they all seem to have worked in hindsight. (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 37:04 (laughs) Well, I do think that the, the PandaVision thing t- a year and a half ago was a pretty rough blow.

Harry Stebbings 37:08 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 37:08 Maybe it was more of an emotional response from being ridiculed by like my favorite comedy show. Uh, but that one did feel like it blew up in my face. Um...

Harry Stebbings 37:18 Can I, can I ask you a hard one as well, which is like, how do you determine between an innovation that is sustainable and you should learn from and-

Adam Mosseri 37:26 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 37:26 ... incorporate, versus one that I don't know if it's sustainable? You know, we've seen the rise of BeReal.

Adam Mosseri 37:32 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 37:32 People have very, uh, strong opinions on whether it's sustainable or not. As an investor in BeReal, I will decline to comment.

Adam Mosseri 37:40 Yeah. Yeah. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 37:43 (laughs) Um...

Adam Mosseri 37:43 As you should.

Harry Stebbings 37:44 But, um, uh, how do you determine between the two?

Adam Mosseri 37:48 I mean, I think you try to make sure that you're understanding what is the fundamental human need that's being met, and is that need gonna probably be persistent or not? I mean, look, Instagram has changed a ton over the years, but we, but a lot of it's stayed the same. You know, we've always been focused on inspiring creativity. We've always been focused on bringing people together. And how people share and how people entertain themselves has changed a lot. And so how we do those things needs to change with it, but those fundamental needs are the same. And so when you're looking at either a trend or a competitor or how someone's abusing or if the community is abusing the app, that you can learn a lot from how people abuse your app. Um, you can try and make sure that if there's the- if there's- if you can explain it not only as based on some sort of viral mechanic, but also based on it meeting a need in a better and a fundamentally richer or better or different way, then you wanna play in that space.

Harry Stebbings 38:45 What have you learned from how people abuse the app? I didn't ever think about this before.

Adam Mosseri 38:49 Uh, what's a good example? Early Facebook days, before we had photos, people just kept changing their profile picture.

Harry Stebbings 38:55 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 38:57 (laughs) Like every day, multiple times a day. I'm like, "Oh, sounds like people want to share photos." (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 39:02 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 39:02 "Maybe we should build that." (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 39:05 I love that.

Harry Stebbings 39:06 Now, are you ready for Threads?

Adam Mosseri 39:08 Yes. I mean, no, but yes. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 39:11 (laughs) Uh, if we start on Threads, the numbers and... it's just been insane.

Adam Mosseri 39:16 It has been insane.

Harry Stebbings 39:17 Uh, so first off, and this is the worst interview question ever. You know when it's like someone wins Wimbledon and they're like, "How do you feel?" (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 39:25 (laughs) I actually, I watched the Wimbledon yesterday and they asked the, one of the winners of the, someone said, "How do you feel?"

Harry Stebbings 39:32 Yeah.

Adam Mosseri 39:32 She's like-

Harry Stebbings 39:33 She's like, "Happy." (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 39:33 She's like, "Good." (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 39:36 You'd love it if they were like really depressed and they only got 100 Likes on their Instagram. (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 39:39 Yeah. It's like, "My cat is killing me." (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 39:42 (laughs) But one never knows when they launch a new product. You can get a lot of hate. I mean, fuck, a lot of hate.

Adam Mosseri 39:48 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 39:49 Did you expect the speed of adoption for Threads?

Adam Mosseri 39:52 No. No. I mean, I thought we had something. Um, I, I think I, I did an, I did a pod with Kevin and Roose and Casey, and Kevin was asking questions about like, "You guys have launched a lot of separate apps and they usually don't go so well." In fact, I can't think of any, I think he said. And he's like, "Wh- what do you think of this?" And I said like, "Look, when you're launching a new app, it's, it's always more likely to fail than succeed." The median number of new apps, I read this somewhere, installed a month is zero for the average person. So you're just, you're, you're swimming upstream. But I did say I was more excited about this one than I had been about anything in a while. But yet, but I did, but I did want to recognize, it was a big risk. And look, the, the numbers are staggering, but it's just signups. It's, it's way easier to build something that people are willing to try than build something that people want to continue to use in a month or a year from now. So this is the best, this is day eight, this is the best first eight days I could have ever possibly imagined. But what really matters is how well do we iterate, how well do, how quickly do we improve the experience so that it is compelling enough that people will continue to use it over the long run?

Harry Stebbings 41:04 We're gonna get to retention. I, um, I have a group with like 10 of the best product leaders in the world, um, in it, and, uh...

Adam Mosseri 41:12 Uh, should I be offended on this? (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 41:14 Yes. (laughs) You actually have to be on the show first. (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 41:18 That's fair. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 41:19 Um, but, uh, one of them, uh, said, "The most important question for me is..." Can you get him to talk about what went into bootstrapping the Threads graph-

Adam Mosseri 41:29 Mm-hmm.

Harry Stebbings 41:29 ... from day one?

Adam Mosseri 41:31 I mean, this is one of the key reasons for the success, is that you sign up and you can not only import your... You sign in with your Instagram account, it's not a separate account, and you can import your identity, but you can also essentially import your graph by just following everyone you already follow. And you can follow people who are not even on Threads yet, so that when they do join that you automatically are connected. And so that we can even tell you, we can be like, "Hey, you've got 10,000 followers on this app already. You haven't even installed it yet. Do you wanna try it?" It's a pretty compelling value proposition.

Harry Stebbings 42:06 Sure.

Adam Mosseri 42:07 And so I think that was, that was key. Now look, I do think...... the public conversation graph, interest graph isn't necessarily the one you're, th- the same in terms of your interests as what ch- you follow on Instagram-

Harry Stebbings 42:20 Mm-hmm.

Adam Mosseri 42:20 ... which is why we allowed the graphs to fork. We will build, over time, I think, a graph sync option. So if you want just to have the same graph, you can, and we can make sure that stays in sync for you. But I think it was also very important, particularly to the team, to allow people to choose a different experience or a different graph if they wanted one. And so I think we've found a really good balance between making it really stupid easy to just pull everything in on day one.

Harry Stebbings 42:47 Mm-hmm.

Adam Mosseri 42:47 But also, if you cared and you wanted to curate, you could go do that.

Harry Stebbings 42:51 How much of an overlap do you actually think there is? I think of it as like my brain and my body, if I'm being totally honest. Body on Instagram. Uh, uh, Tw- Instagram's my body. I've got like recipes, personal trainers-

Adam Mosseri 43:01 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 43:01 ... and like any body stuff.

Adam Mosseri 43:03 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 43:03 And then Twitter's like where I gain intellectual advancement.

Adam Mosseri 43:07 Yes.

Harry Stebbings 43:07 And so if I go to feed of like Gordon Ramsay (laughs) -

Adam Mosseri 43:11 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 43:11 ... I'll be like, "Uh." So-

Adam Mosseri 43:13 He's on there.

Harry Stebbings 43:14 Yeah. I'm sure he is. I know he was on the set. Yeah. But how, how should we think about that overlap actually? And how do you actually think about it?

Adam Mosseri 43:22 I think it's gonna be a very personal choice. I think for a lot of people, it's just gonna be easier not to have to think about it and just be like, "It's 80% the same anyway."

Harry Stebbings 43:31 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 43:31 "I just want you to keep in sync."

Harry Stebbings 43:32 Did you think about starting again from no followers?

Adam Mosseri 43:34 Yes.

Harry Stebbings 43:35 What was that discussion like?

Adam Mosseri 43:37 We talked about it, but we thought that for enough people, probably the majority, but not everybody, that e- there would be enough overlap that it would make a lot of sense to just allow you to quickly do it. Now, you can also select. You don't have to select the whole group. It just seemed like it would be the majority use case. We also... I mean, look, when we first started building separate experiences, we, you know, we kept building... We built... The first two were Facebook Home, which it was a, I was, my first PM project, spectacular failure, and Paper. And they were essentially just a repackaging of the Facebook app. So it wasn't sufficiently different that you would really give you a reason to switch. So then we're like, "Oh, we can't just make the same thing again. We gotta make something different." So we had this Facebook Labs team, and we started building all these different things. But they didn't really, there wasn't a reason we should succeed in any of them. They were ch- they were just like startups, which is great, but, you know, y- in your world, you know this more than anyone, like, y- the odds of success are relatively low. But if you do succeed, it's wildly amazing. But we weren't, we weren't leaning into our strengths. We weren't integrating into our products. We were just kind of just throwing ideas out. And with Threads, I think, is, is a really nice balance where it's different enough that it's, there's a reason for it to be separate app, though we debated that a lot internally. But because you're, there's a heavy overlap in, in terms of the interest graph between who you want, what conversations you wanna be privy to, and what, you know, photos and videos you wanna be keeping up with, that it really allowed us to lean into that. And, um, and I think that's, it does no way it would have been as successful if you had to bootstrap the graph from scratch.

Harry Stebbings 45:18 Tough and direct one. Um, someone on the show said once that bluntly the social graph is terrible at predicting what you like. And just because your friends like it doesn't mean you like it, and that we have totally moved away from the friend graph and the interest graph is the future of social. Do you agree with that and that binary nature?

Adam Mosseri 45:37 No, I think it's too black and white. I do think there's tension. Uh, there's a lot of tension between, you know, who you care about and who you wanna hear from are not the same. What you want your Instagram to be experienced to be if I ask you about in the abstracts over the long term is probably pretty different than what you like and interact with on a daily basis in the app. That's the tension between sort of first order and second order preferences. And so things are always a bit more complicated. The thing that's really working about Instagram right now with Reels is the connection between the two. So you can see a bunch of amazing videos from people you know or don't know, um, but aren't necessarily (laughs) your friends. And then you can share them with your friends-

Harry Stebbings 46:24 Mm-hmm.

Adam Mosseri 46:25 ... in DMs. And that brings people, your friends back to the app, and then they discover something, and then they might share it with someone else.

Harry Stebbings 46:31 I do the send separately a lot to a lot of people-

Adam Mosseri 46:34 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 46:34 ... actually, and it's great.

Adam Mosseri 46:35 Yeah. And so the thing that, the thing that I think people don't always realize is video, by its nature as a format, is actually really challenging for all the old social, social networks. It puts a lot of downward pressure on the ads business, because if you watch one video for 10 seconds, you would have before, you know, scrolled through four posts-

Harry Stebbings 46:57 Mm-hmm.

Adam Mosseri 46:57 ... and probably seen an ad. And so it's, it's a challenge. Actually, video tends to be good for time spent and bad for everything else, bad for revenue, bad for comments, bad for likes, bad for sends, et cetera. What works about Reels, because we have the inbox integrated into Instagram, is this sort of flywheel where you s- consume things, you send them to friends, then they start a conversation. Maybe they use Instagram more. They wanna check out what's, uh, going on today. They discover something, they send it back to you or to another friend. And so the fact that video, growing video has massively grown sends, which is a pure friend-to-friend interaction, even, not even, even if you take out the Reels shares, because it's, they start conversations. I might send you a funny, you know, football clip, and then we talk about something else.

Harry Stebbings 47:41 Mm-hmm.

Adam Mosseri 47:42 Um, is really, really exciting because everything that we did in the video space before that I was involved in, at Instagram and Facebook, came at the cost of people's connections. And, and Reels is the opposite. Uh, and I think that's... So I do think there, like, these things can be symbiotic if you design the experiences thoughtfully, but there, that doesn't mean there are no tensions.

Harry Stebbings 48:04 So do you think Threads and Reels is kind of the integration of the interest graph and the social graph coming together in both of them actually-... you know, in one single platform?

Adam Mosseri 48:16 I think it's p- I mean, I think it's too early to tell on the Threads side. I think the, uh, I think Reels is embracing that people wanna consume video, even though they don't share as much video, and giving people a way to connect with friends that embraces that preference. Um, and be- and I think recommendations also help with that. So I think that's sort of, that's sort of an inter- intersection of, of entertainment and connection or friends, I think is what's kind of working there. With Threads, I mean, we'll see, we will see its... (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 48:49 It's f-

Adam Mosseri 48:50 I'm just refreshing the dashboard-

Harry Stebbings 48:52 Dude, come on. It's a, it's eight days in. You've got a lot-

Adam Mosseri 48:54 Making sure lights are on. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 48:56 Still working. That was quite an influencer strategy around this. (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 49:01 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 49:02 We mentioned Gordon Ramsay. Um, the influencer activation, I saw it and I was like-

Adam Mosseri 49:07 Yeah. (smacks lips)

Harry Stebbings 49:07 ... "Adam."

Adam Mosseri 49:07 Oh my God.

Harry Stebbings 49:08 Sensational. (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 49:09 Such a shout out to the partnerships team. Oh.

Harry Stebbings 49:11 Yeah. Yeah. Th- This, my product group was going like-

Adam Mosseri 49:13 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 49:14 ... you know, emoji like this.

Adam Mosseri 49:15 (laughs) Sorry.

Harry Stebbings 49:15 Um, my question to you is like, how d- how does that plan go with the influencer activation strategy?

Adam Mosseri 49:21 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 49:21 I'm just fascinated.

Adam Mosseri 49:23 So when you boos- so it was very clear, or at least our opinion, or maybe it wasn't clear. But when you're starting something new, there's always a question, which is like, do you need to get people on it so that the creators will come? Or do you need to get creators on it so the people will come? And my biggest fear, specifically with Threads, and I, I think the team had the same fear, was that people would show up and there'd just be nothing there and be like, "I'm out."

Harry Stebbings 49:45 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 49:45 "Seems nice." And so we, and we learned this actually from IGTV a lot too, which is we should focus on the creator side, 'cause also feeds are very head heavy, uh, in general and so is text. So basically, that's to say that you have to assume that Twitter and other feed products in general tend to have most of the content is consumed by a small number... Sorry, most of the content consumed is produced by a small number of people.

Harry Stebbings 50:11 Yep.

Adam Mosseri 50:11 So even more so than Stories by a lot, actually, and certainly with their messaging. So we're like, okay, how do we get there to be a critical mass of content early? And we were trying to create something that was, you know, a less angry space. And so we, you often, I think, in a way you can't measure, can set the tone for a product with some of the decisions you make up front. So we had always known early that we wanted to get a bunch of creators into the app early. So we actually, and we actually wanted to do it for longer. We only did it for, I think it was like 40 hours before.

Harry Stebbings 50:46 Wow.

Adam Mosseri 50:46 And then the partnerships team did a really, really good job. Part of, part of-

Harry Stebbings 50:50 I'm sorry, I'm super naive here. Did you just like choose like J.Lo and Gordon Ramsay?

Adam Mosseri 50:54 Oh yeah. No, no. I mean, it's not, it's not me.

Harry Stebbings 50:56 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 50:56 Um, we have a great small lean mean partnerships team, and so we, we picked verticals that we thought would be important because they, mostly we look for verticals where they already did well on Instagram-

Harry Stebbings 51:09 Mm-hmm.

Adam Mosseri 51:09 ... and there was a vibrant commentator or commentary community around that. So, you know, we do great with athletes, and also sports commentary is its own sort of genre in a way. And-

Harry Stebbings 51:22 Should I be a fan of this?

Adam Mosseri 51:23 Yeah. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 51:23 Denise.

Adam Mosseri 51:24 Yeah. You should be sle-

Harry Stebbings 51:25 She is.

Adam Mosseri 51:25 Well, we weren't, uh, we weren't focusing on tech.

Harry Stebbings 51:27 Don't call me in my product, will you?

Adam Mosseri 51:28 We were focused... (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 51:29 That's fair.

Adam Mosseri 51:30 I'll earn it one day.

Harry Stebbings 51:31 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 51:31 I'll have to ship a couple more things that work. No, we weren't going after tech, we weren't going after news, we weren't going after politics. Um, we were focused on musicians, we're focused on fashion, we're focused on, um, sh- athletes, we're focused on beauty, we're focused on... You know, because they, actually all of those have these amazing, you know, creators and personalities that people are interested in, and all these amazing commentators who talk about that world. Uh, and look, everyone's gonna come, like we're not gonna try to be an exclusive club here, but that's what we leaned into for the launch. And so the partnerships team did a really good job. We ended up-

Harry Stebbings 52:06 Did you pay them?

Adam Mosseri 52:07 No.

Harry Stebbings 52:08 You didn't pay them?

Adam Mosseri 52:09 No.

Harry Stebbings 52:09 Wow.

Adam Mosseri 52:10 We talked about it, but no. It's not scalable. And as soon as you start, it's a very slippery slope. You have to build a platform that provides enough value to someone that they want to share if it's really gonna be sustainable over the long run.

Harry Stebbings 52:23 Mm-hmm.

Adam Mosseri 52:24 It's just not to say you should never pay. We, we've done performance-based incentives on Instagram before, and I think there are targeted ways to do it. But the, it's not a, it's not a scalable solution. So it's gotta be a way to learn or a way to bootstrap.

Harry Stebbings 52:38 You do postmortem on this, it went very well as an influencer activation strategy.

Adam Mosseri 52:42 Yes.

Harry Stebbings 52:42 Why?

Adam Mosseri 52:43 I think it went well for a few reasons. One is the, we had built a bunch of, uh, relationships o- You're talking about specifically the, the creator and influencer strategy?

Harry Stebbings 52:54 Yeah.

Adam Mosseri 52:54 One is that we had like gotten a bunch of people ready. Um, we actually had wanted to launch earlier, so the partnership team had already kind of engaged everyone, and then we had a delay, so they were like ready at a moment's notice, 'cause we had originally wanted to be up by VidCon. Um, that helped. I think giving, um, being opinionated about the verticals helped. I think giving, letting a bunch of people, a few thousand people in on, this was Tuesday, I think we launched Wednesday at midnight UK time. Also like built a huge amount of hype around it. Um, we, we ended up having to pull up the launch again, um, because on Wednesday we figured out that the, we did this pre-order thing on iOS just to kind of like build some buzz. And we found out that we couldn't control what time the Apple App Store delivered the app to people's phones, and it would just deliver on midnight Thursday local time. So we became the number one store in the App Store in Japan, and you couldn't log in-

Harry Stebbings 53:53 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 53:53 ... 'cause it was-

Harry Stebbings 53:55 (laughs) 'Cause it was like-

Adam Mosseri 53:56 I mean, that's a product wall.

Harry Stebbings 53:57 That's a product wall. Yeah. (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 53:59 It was a Wednesday morning in California. Um, and so we, that's why we had to pull it up again. So we ended up being like, okay, what's the next biggest, most important country that's gonna hit midnight? So we can either cancel the pre-orders, that seems terrible-

Harry Stebbings 54:12 Mm-hmm.

Adam Mosseri 54:12 ... um, or we can just pull up the launch. And so UK was the next one that was gonna hit midnight, which is why it was midnight UK time, um, that we opened the f- flood gates.

Harry Stebbings 54:25 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 54:25 Because otherwise every, you know, UK footballer would've gotten the app, they had pre-ordered it, would have had the app on their phone and they would've logged in and it would've been like-... error or something terrible. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 54:37 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 54:37 And that's like, that's gonna be like the worst launch of all time. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 54:40 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 54:40 Um, and so ... But that actually ended up playing to our favor 'cause that was like, that created more, uh, like, mystery and excitement. And like, it moved up again or moved up. And so just the whole thing ended up playing in our favor.

Harry Stebbings 54:52 Are you getting any sleep at this time?

Adam Mosseri 54:54 I don't get a lot of sleep. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 54:56 (laughs) I'm just saying, it feels a little bit hectic. (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 54:59 Yeah. The tough thing about living in the UK and working for a California-based company is the hours. And I have littles. I have a seven and five and three-year-old boy.

Harry Stebbings 55:07 Oh.

Adam Mosseri 55:07 So that's the tough thing.

Harry Stebbings 55:09 Did you sleep before or have you just adjusted to this?

Adam Mosseri 55:12 I used to sleep a l- I, uh, I slept a lot more before.

Harry Stebbings 55:15 Yeah.

Adam Mosseri 55:15 I've aged a lot this year. (laughs) I don't know.

Harry Stebbings 55:17 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 55:17 We didn't make each other up until this year, but I had a lot less gray hair a year ago.

Harry Stebbings 55:20 Dude, I think you look great.

Adam Mosseri 55:21 Oh, I'll take it. I'll take it.

Harry Stebbings 55:22 No, yeah. No. Like, real man crush. Like, the design, fantastic.

Adam Mosseri 55:25 I'm into it.

Harry Stebbings 55:25 Um, um, my question now is like, uh, I spoke to someone who I consider like a consumer social OG about the influencer activation strategy. And they were like, "It's like importing the landed aristocracy to the US." And actually, like, each platform, MrBeast on YouTube, the Kardashians on Instagram, Damelio on TikTok, they're like native to their own platform.

Adam Mosseri 55:48 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 55:48 And this felt like an importing landed aristocracy. How do you feel when you hear that and is that right or wrong?

Adam Mosseri 55:54 I don't know about aristocracy, but I do think ... I think one of the things that played to our favor is there are a lot of platforms who do amazing work with creators out there. I talked about how TikTok is really good at breaking new talent. I think YouTube is the best at, you know, doing sustained consistent payouts, um, with their rev share program, 'cause long form video is, I think, a lot more conducive to that. Um, but if you look at all the different platforms, Instagram is the m- the ... it's the, it's the most popular in the creator community as far as we can tell. So the most creators use it. Now, more creators over time are using multiple platforms 'cause they're becoming just more savvy and trying to make sure they diversify their risk, which I think is smart. But it, we have, we have been s- uh, you know, we're not always the most loved. Uh, sometimes we are, sometimes we're not. But we've been, uh, the most important platform overall, not for an individual creator, but overall in the community, I think, um, for, for a while now. So we had this very rich vibrant community of probably tens of millions of creators that we could just tap into with this, um, in a way that I think was, um, exciting. And, uh, then it, then it, then it ended up taking on an energy of itself. As soon as you get enough big, not even big names necessarily, but like interesting names, then everyone wants to, they're like w- everyone's worried about missing out. And so then everybody tries it too, and then it creates a bit of a cycle.

Harry Stebbings 57:23 Which name do you not have that you would love to have?

Adam Mosseri 57:26 On, on Threads?

Harry Stebbings 57:27 No.

Adam Mosseri 57:27 Oh, there's a bunch of people who I want to do.

Harry Stebbings 57:29 Like number one.

Adam Mosseri 57:30 Uh ... As a p- as a b- as the h- as my role or as a person? (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 57:38 Both.

Adam Mosseri 57:39 Uh, the b- I think a huge one, um, will be Beyonce.

Harry Stebbings 57:43 Yeah.

Adam Mosseri 57:44 And as, in terms of my role, in terms of like cultural relevance. Um, Swift, uh, Taylor Nation, Swift Nation came over, but not Taylor Swift yet, but that'll also be a big deal. She's ... Her, her, her reach is insane. But as a, as a, for me, based on my personal interests, I'm really bummed about how long it's gonna take to support Europe, 'cause I'm a football fan and there's so many amazing footballers-

Harry Stebbings 58:08 Yeah.

Adam Mosseri 58:09 ... in Europe. So like, to me the big ... Yeah. To me, there's like the, there's the, obviously the, the market and like reaching a bunch of people, but it's also getting-

Harry Stebbings 58:18 Getting Ronaldo would be amazing.

Adam Mosseri 58:19 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 58:19 Getting Ronaldo or Messi.

Adam Mosseri 58:20 Ronaldo, Messi. Well, Messi's, uh, maybe he'll have a US account when he goes over (laughs) to Miami. Uh, (laughs) but Ronaldo can log in from Saudi Arabia. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 58:29 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 58:29 It's totally fine. Um, but football and F1 are so important worldwide that I, that, that ... And I, I care every bit about, every bit as much about making sure that the, e- maybe even more that the platform is culturally relevant than the sort of the m- the big number of users.

Harry Stebbings 58:47 What did you make of, you mentioned kind of the centrality of, you know, um, kind of enabling creators. I know Twitter have recently been y- I've just seen screenshots on Twitter talking about payments.

Adam Mosseri 58:56 Oh, the payments?

Harry Stebbings 58:56 Yeah, like payments for replies. I'm like, "Why isn't my fucking payment here?"

Adam Mosseri 59:00 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 59:00 Uh ... (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 59:01 I think, I think you have to think long. I think paying ... Look, creators, for a lot of creators, it's a business. And I think we've been trying to figure out ways to support those businesses for a while now. But I think you can't just pay everybody who's a creator, 'cause if there's tens of millions of creators, that just adds up to money that's gonna just completely destroy your business model. So you have to figure out ways to give them tools to make money, uh, in my opinion. And so we focus on things like subscriptions, which are relevant to a subset of creators, but that's growing, um, facilitating branded content deals, that's actually going very well on Instagram. And we do some payments as well, but that's more for bootstrapping. And then for, you know, s- a segment that's creating real content, that's really driving a lot of incremental value and revenue for, for Instagram. So look, I think it's a, I think it's gonna get a bunch of attention for the next couple days and ... But I think it's hard if it's unpredictable. If you're trying to run a business, you kind of need to know roughly what you're gonna make ahead of time. And if you're kind of getting these lottery type checks, I think it gets much more harder to plan. I think that's a, well, that's a common complaint I've heard ab- about how TikTok's payments compare to YouTube's payments, for instance, um, which are much more predictable. Uh, so we'll see. We'll see how it goes. I mean, look, they're trying new things. I'm excited that ... Like, I don't know where Twitter's gonna be in a year, and they're, they're making, they're shaking things up in all sorts of ways over there.

Harry Stebbings 1:00:23 Facebook had the like supposedly like five friends or six friends was like a retained user.

Adam Mosseri 1:00:28 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:00:28 Do you have a metric as such with Threads?

Adam Mosseri 1:00:32 We don't hav- we don't know what the number is yet. I do think you're gonna need two different things. You're definitely gonna need a critical mass, I think, of friends, and then you're gonna need a quality of-... or, um, like, maybe it's a critical mass on your interest graph side as well. Now, we can bootstrap you by showing you recommendations, if you don't follow anyone, to start on the interest side. It's not, it's much more difficult to do that on the friends side. But by the way, that number, uh, for Facebook, back in the day, varied wildly by country.

Harry Stebbings 1:00:59 Huh.

Adam Mosseri 1:00:59 Like in Japan, it was like six, and in Indonesia, it was 106 or something bonkers, um, because, uh, just cultural differences, internet usage differences meant that that tipping point varied drastically from country to country.

Harry Stebbings 1:01:15 A lot of social, uh, consumer app or consumer social apps get a lot of buzz. Uh, admittedly, this has been unlike almost any other before. How do you think about retention? How do we retain a community then?

Adam Mosseri 1:01:27 It's just a primary focus. I think it's like you have t-... It's gotta be the thing that the team focuses on for the next couple of months. I think we have to do a number of different things. Um, we have to plug a bunch of obvious missing features.

Harry Stebbings 1:01:38 What are the biggest missing features?

Adam Mosseri 1:01:40 Following feed, edit button, um, sh-... There's like, you know, supporting the continent of Europe. Um, I'm actually really excited about the Fediverse work that's coming in and supporting Activity Pool.

Harry Stebbings 1:01:52 When does Europe come?

Adam Mosseri 1:01:54 T- months, many months, minimum.

Harry Stebbings 1:01:56 February.

Adam Mosseri 1:01:56 Hmm. We'll see. I mean, I'd be excited about that, honestly, at this point. Uh, it just requires, um-

Harry Stebbings 1:02:02 What's the reasoning side?

Adam Mosseri 1:02:04 It's laws coming out next year, making sure that we're proactively compliant with them. Uh, it's, it's about data separation, but it's also about being able to verify all of the statements you make about how data works 'cause we hold ourselves to very high standards on that. And if we're gonna make claims, we have to make sure that we prove those claims are true, and then just that work is, is a lot. It's a lot of time. Just a lot of time.

Harry Stebbings 1:02:28 Are you a politician or a CEO?

Adam Mosseri 1:02:30 I'm not. I'm neither. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 1:02:33 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 1:02:33 Um, I'm not a politician. Um, I-

Harry Stebbings 1:02:35 I mean it in the nicest way, but like when you get to a stage where you're as big as, you know, F- Facebook, Meta, Instagram are, and you are CEO then... (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 1:02:45 Yeah, I mean, you just... uh, I, it's wei-... I sometimes I forget that I have the job and like 'cause I get... and I, and every once in a while try to pinch myself like, "This is a pretty cool, wild thing you got to do with your time." I don't know. I think my job i-... I think I'm very lucky to have my job. I think... The way I think about it is, it's my job to build a team and set them up for success by pointing them at the right problems and giving the right support and feedback along the way. And sometimes that means a more specific direction. And sometimes that means, honestly, just being a glorified shit umbrella.

Harry Stebbings 1:03:24 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 1:03:25 Um, sometimes that means... Like I... Sometimes I joke 'cause I did, I do, I deal with a lot of, um, customer service requests- (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 1:03:31 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 1:03:31 ... from friends, family, extended friends, and DMs. So, I joke that I'm a highly overpaid, um, customer service rep. It just depends on the need. Um, but it is a weird balance 'cause you think that the more senior you get, the more you just get to make decisions. But in a lot of ways, your influence becomes more and more indirect. Um, and so it is a, it is a, it's a very, it's a very odd

Adam Mosseri 1:03:57 experience sometimes.

Harry Stebbings 1:03:58 What have you learned from working with Mark, speaking of like... (clicks tongue)

Adam Mosseri 1:04:01 Mark? I mean, Mark has been really helpful in a couple different ways. Uh, Mark is always holding an incredibly high bar. I think his... one of his fears is that we fail hitting our goals all the way down. And so, it's his... you know, you can crush it and then he's like, "Set the goal a little higher still."

Harry Stebbings 1:04:20 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 1:04:20 "Set the goal a little higher still." And I think there's a, there's a real value to that, um, which is just like really, really setting a high bar. He's also very willing to take risks in a way that sometimes is infuriating, but I think it's very good for the company over the long run. Like, for instance, on Threads, he was the one who was like, "You guys should just try to build a separate app." And we were really trying to figure out a way to do it in the main app 'cause it seemed like it would be much more likely to succeed. And he was by far the most convicted early on, um, about taking the big step.

Harry Stebbings 1:04:56 Is, is Threads a risk? Like it doesn't work and it's a Facebook Home that people forget. I don't mean it badly.

Adam Mosseri 1:05:02 Uh, I mean, look, there's a, there's... Yeah, it's still a risk. Uh, I think that... I think if you fail, I think it can damage your reputation. It can damage your brand. It can make people less likely to want you to succeed in the future. It's a huge... opportunity cost. The team is getting smaller, not bigger right now.

Harry Stebbings 1:05:18 Mm-hmm.

Adam Mosseri 1:05:18 And so, like, you know, it's not a big team. Um-

Harry Stebbings 1:05:22 How big is the Threads team?

Adam Mosseri 1:05:23 It's gonna grow now. It started small. It... They really... The team really properly formed a little less than five months ago or five months ago. We started working on it a little before, but the team didn't really form properly until maybe five months ago. Dozens, 50-something-

Harry Stebbings 1:05:38 Wow.

Adam Mosseri 1:05:38 ... engineers, three PMs, three designers. It's pretty lean, but they're really, really good engineers, designers, PMs, data scientists, researchers. So, the opportunity cost is not properly, I think, evaluated by the, by the number.

Harry Stebbings 1:05:54 Can I ask, from a business perspective, how does the business and monetization potential differ when comparing the video visual of Instagram Reels versus the text-based nature of Threads?

Adam Mosseri 1:06:06 I actually think it's gonna be easier. I think it... I mean, the, the ad formats will be less immersive. Uh, and I think that's, that's a, that's a cost, but it is... A text-based feed is about the highest monetization efficiency of any sort of online business I've seen. I think the... that and search are basically like the two.

Harry Stebbings 1:06:28 Mm-hmm.

Adam Mosseri 1:06:28 Um, just because the number of things you consume per hour, uh, is just incredibly high 'cause it's so light, which allows ads to really seamlessly integrate. And we honestly, we fell into this business model with Facebook. We were, you know, we were putting ads in those sort of-... right-hand column (laughs) on the side of the website.

Harry Stebbings 1:06:47 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 1:06:47 Like, don't look over here. And the shift to mobile forced us to do it and ended up being one of the best businesses of all time.

Harry Stebbings 1:06:54 I, I love that. Can I ask, when you think about success with Threads, what do you think success is to you? Do you have a metric yardstick?

Adam Mosseri 1:07:02 For me, the thing I'm gonna look at the most, um, is probably, (sighs) for the verticals we care about most, what does the creator community engagement look like? 'Cause I think that's gonna be, that's going to be a bellwether for how big the app is over the longer run. And then, I mean, right now, the thing I care about most is retention. Is like, uh, and it's, there's no good signal now 'cause this hasn't been long enough and everyone who signed up is, not everyone, but most of the people who've signed up have been early adopters and they use things differently. So, I really just don't know yet. So, it'll be, the two things I'll focus on most for the next year will be the creator community, specifically not only how many of them use the app, but how many of them share the app as a place where their creativity, and then retention for the average user.

Harry Stebbings 1:07:47 Those are the two things that really would kill Threads or make it not a success. Why would creators not share on Threads? Like, what would cause that?

Adam Mosseri 1:07:56 I mean, there's all sorts of reasons. Um, if you get more reach elsewhere, like if, you know, obviously Twitter, um, is, is definitely a risk. Then there's, is it just worth your time? Like, creator, they're busy. They're trying to make content. Often they're, don't just make content for a living, they do something else for a living too.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:13 Mm-hmm.

Adam Mosseri 1:08:13 There's a, you know, you're be, you're a musician, you're a footballer, etc.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:16 Venture capitalist. (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 1:08:17 Yeah. (laughs) Exactly. Um, and so, is the return worth your time? Uh, if it degrades in quality, slow or toxic or buggy, like, obviously those things can hurt you too.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:30 Yep. No, I totally get you. Um, can I just take you on a slightly weird turn? Um-

Adam Mosseri 1:08:35 I liked the preamble for this question.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:37 Yeah, it's just like, you're a great dude. And I, I joked about the references and kind of, but they were phenomenal.

Adam Mosseri 1:08:44 Really? That's good to hear.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:45 Yeah, they really, they really were.

Adam Mosseri 1:08:46 I like that.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:46 But I'm also like, you have three kids as well.

Adam Mosseri 1:08:49 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:49 And a happy marriage, and you're CEO of Instagram. It's not a fucking easy job.

Adam Mosseri 1:08:54 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:55 My question to you is, when you look at all

Harry Stebbings 1:08:59 of it, how do you have the personal side and not lose an inch on work? I'm being very open. I'm nervous about opening my life up to the personal-

Adam Mosseri 1:09:08 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:09:08 ... and losing an inch on work.

Adam Mosseri 1:09:10 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:09:11 What advice would you have?

Adam Mosseri 1:09:12 I just think you have to be really intentional about putting pen to paper on your priorities. I n- I'm constantly feeling like I'm doing a shit job at something. I'm either not there for my kids enough or I'm not there for my team enough, or I missed something that I could have helped the team avoid and it blew up in our face. But I think I, uh, I'm a shit friend 'cause I'm never around. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 1:09:36 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 1:09:36 My life is, is, is Instagram and now Threads and my kids and my wife, and then, like, I barely see friends, which I feel terrible about. Um, so I, every year I put down a few intentions. They used to be very measurable and I would, like, grade myself at the end of the year, typical PMing my life kind of way. I got really good advice from a really close friend named Alejandro recently, which was just write yourself, like, a mantra, like a thing to say to yourself, and just say it every night before you go to bed. And that'll be the way to keep that intention top of mind, and it'll help you actually better live up to that intention. Uh, so every year I do it, and it changes every year, and it gets simpler usually every year.

Harry Stebbings 1:10:24 What is it this year?

Adam Mosseri 1:10:27 It's very personal. I don't know if I should I share this on, uh, I can share, why not? Um, so now the mantra is, take care of yourself, love your children, support your wife, be there for your friends.

Harry Stebbings 1:10:42 Do you think you can do all of them? And what I mean by that is, like, actually I, someone told me that you have work, your family, and your friends.

Adam Mosseri 1:10:51 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:10:52 You can only do two at once.

Adam Mosseri 1:10:54 Yeah. Uh, I'm definitely not, I'm definitely not there for my friends-

Harry Stebbings 1:10:59 (laughs)

Adam Mosseri 1:10:59 ... as much as I would like to be. Occasionally, uh, but not as much as I would like to be. I'm hoping relocating back to the US will help with that 'cause it'll be a little bit easier, but we'll see.

Harry Stebbings 1:11:07 If you could call up yourself before your first child, when you were nervously expecting that first child to come-

Adam Mosseri 1:11:15 Oh, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:11:15 ... what would you tell yourself before becoming that father?

Adam Mosseri 1:11:19 It's a race to the starting line. Before you have your first, you're so focused on the birth 'cause it's terrifying, particularly obviously for the mom who has to actually do all the work. Um, but you're like, "How's this gonna change my life?" My brother was calling me a lot before he had his first and was, like, trying to wrap his head around a- about how his life was gonna change. And I was like, "This is the most absurd exercise." Like, you don't, the whole having a kid means you can't plan for how your life is gonna change. All you know, it's gonna change, it's gonna change a lot, and it'll continue to change. But we, we, we spend all this time focused on the birth, focused on how much paternity leave when to take it, how much maternity leave, when to take it. But this person's coming into your life for, for two decades. The more important thing is how are you going to adjust how you do what you do so you can be there for them for 18 years? Not, do you take 8 weeks or 12 weeks or 16 weeks of leave in year one that they're not gonna remember? By the way, as the dad, your job is basically to take care of the mom.

Harry Stebbings 1:12:13 Mm-hmm.

Adam Mosseri 1:12:13 And so I would just say it's a race to the starting line. I was way too focused on day one and way too s- way not ready for the rest of it.

Harry Stebbings 1:12:21 How did you adjust how you work?

Adam Mosseri 1:12:24 I started working less. I just ran out of hours. Um, I used to come in really early. I used to come in, I