ICYMI: Taylor Lorenz Is NEVER Logging Off
An interview with the Extremely Online author
⏰ 1-SECOND SUMMARY
Washington Post tech columnist Taylor Lorenz tells me she has a “poster’s heart”
Creators see 16x higher engagement than brands 🔥 data to dig into!
McDonalds’ social media director breaks down how the team decided to handle the Grimace Shake trend
A Threads brand deck being sent to partners promises that Trends & Topics, Improved Search and Messaging are coming soon
💻 ROADMAP
📲 Meta Updates
It seems like it’s going to be Threads-Friday for the foreseeable future due to a combination of Meta updates and media obsession around the newest social app:
Now that they’ve launched, Instagram head Adam Mosseri says the is team is focused on:
A following feed
An edit button
Multiple accounts
Post search
Hashtags (eventually)
Web presence
Like List
A Threads brand deck being sent to partners also includes the following updates coming soon:
Compatible with Mastodon
Trends & Topics
Improved Search
Messaging
Threads won’t encourage politics and hard news, according to Mosseri, because it’s “not worth the scrutiny, negativity (let's be honest), or integrity risks that come along with them."
Threads plans to roll out a branded content tool even while advertising is still off limits, according to Axios
Meta’s also working to add government-affiliated media labels to relevant Threads accounts
Threads reached 100M sign ups within 5 days, according to Mark Zuckerberg. (It feels like this one should come with an asterisk to indicate an assist from Instagram)
Twitter traffic is reportedly ‘tanking’ as Threads takes off, according to a tweet from Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare
Creators (68%), celebrity fans (67%), early adopters (61%) are more likely than Americans overall to say they will try Threads in the next few weeks, according to an Ipsos survey
Related: I shared my thoughts on Threads with several outlets this week. I appreciate everyone who asked for my opinion:
Meta’s Threads Now Has to Keep Its Millions of Users Engaged -Washington Post
Meta’s Threads Has 100 Million Users, But Experts Don’t Know if It Will Last -The Messenger
Do You Need to Join Threads for Work? -Bloomberg
📲 TikTok Updates
TikTok is testing an option to allow you to save posts without watermarks. Note: it must be videos or photos posted by you, according to this TikToker’s screenshot.
📲 Snapchat Updates
Snapchat partnered with Linktree to allow users to include links to their Linktree profile or any other URL on their public profile. Previously, only brands and Snap Stars could include links. This will also allow creators to display their Snapchat profile on their Linktree page.
📲 Twitter Updates
Select Twitter users who subscribe to Twitter Blue and have earned more than 5M impressions each month for the last 3 months are eligible for the platform’s ad rev share program.
🧮 DATA OF THE WEEK
Creators posting on a brand’s behalf see an average engagement rate that’s 16x higher than the brands' average Engagement Rate 🔥
Dash Hudson* just unleashed a super insightful trend report you can borrow for your pitches and presentations!
The data touches on four key social trends:
Brands cultivating community to impact social performance
How to unlock successful creator-brand partnerships
The role of entertaining content in predicting sales success
The importance of discoverability through hashtags and captions
I’m here for the Creator Interest factor across multiple niches: The average performance of each type of creator category can be attributed to the predominant size of creators (Nano, Micro and Macro) in that space:
Animal and Pets and Clothing and Accessory show the highest Engagement Rates as creators in that space are primarily Nano or Macro
Home and Design creators have gained the highest number of followers on average, which could be due to the high number of Micro- and Macro-creators in this category
*sponsored
Taylor Lorenz Is Never Logging Off
I was lucky enough to read an early copy of Washington Post tech columnist Taylor Lorenz’s upcoming book from Simon & Schuster, Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet. Despite some heavy themes within the book, it struck me as a largely positive history of Silicon Valley and the emergence of bloggers-turned-influencers-turned-creators. I asked Taylor about the book; how she gets anything done between her full time job, book writing and prolific social posting; why she’ll never log off; and where we go from here.
Lia Haberman: The book feels like — to me — a love letter to the emergence of social media platforms and creators, but from a very specific era, about 2005 to 2016. There are so many firsts, the original VidCon, #Instameets, the DJ Khaled era on Snapchat. And it seems like there's a lot of optimism. Would you say that’s fair?
Taylor Lorenz: I'm always a tech optimist. I think it comes through. My editor was saying the same thing. I love technology. So, you know, I'm not gonna write the doom and gloom book. I mean, it is doom and gloom. It's f*cked up. And a very core theme of the book is misogyny and reexamining the role that women play on the Internet, in shaping it and how just horrible it's been for women. But I think that's the power of the Internet, its ability to facilitate connection and that's a good thing.
LH: We’ll definitely get to the dark stuff but do you have a favorite anecdote or interview that you got for the book?
TL: Julia Allison's story. [An early Tumblr blogger who was labeled an “Internet fame-whore” by Page Six and ultimately bowed out after years of abuse.] She hasn't had the kind of re-examination of her story that she's needed. And so I would say that was like the most… I mean, that's why she's an entire chapter.
LH: Was there anything you had to leave out?
TL: God, yes, The book was 158,000 words so I had to cut the book more than in half. And so there was so much that I wish that I could have included. One person was Ingrid Nilsen, who is a pioneering beauty vlogger and I spoke to her for hours and hours and hours and her story is incredible. And you know, she was one of the YouTubers that made a coming out video that was this really seminal moment on YouTube and then ultimately left YouTube and now runs a candle company and her story is so interesting and ultimately it got cut. I wish I could have fit her in. There's so much… I could have written a whole book on Vine alone.
LH: Is there an era or a year that you identify with the most?
TL: I started as a blogger and so, for me, that era of 2008 to 2012, those were such formative years for me. And that's when these social media apps were just emerging but bloggers still had power and people still went to blogs. Like the Tumblr era. I mean, I got my start on Tumblr, so I'm biased but that's my favorite period.
LH: Maybe I should know this. But is there a Taylor Lorenz 2008 blog floating around somewhere out there?
TL: I had dozens and dozens and dozens of blogs. So, yes. I've worked so hard to scrape them all off the Internet but yeah, definitely some are still up there. Don’t tell that to Fox News. No, they’re totally harmless. I had a vegan baking blog. I just had silly blogs.
LH: Like you said, the book is not all rosy. There was a sense of optimism and potential online. And then it comes crashing down around 2016 to 2017. Is there any one thing that you feel you can point to or is it a multitude of factors?
TL: I think it's just a confluence of things where people really started to see how the Internet could go wrong in so many ways. Obviously, the Trump presidency here in the US was a pivotal moment on the Internet when the tenor of a lot of these platforms changed.
Twitter, obviously, stopped being fun and silly and people live tweeting TV shows and got highly politicized and toxic. A lot of these platforms struggled to tamp down on bad content. That's eventually what led to the [YouTube] adpocalypse that same year, where brands suddenly became aware of this dark underbelly of the Internet.
Gamergate was another thing you could write a whole book on. It ended up feeling like too much of a tangent but this world of right wing influencers started to gain a lot of power. I mean, let's not forget that Alex Jones wasn't even banned from social media until 2018.
I think it took a really long time for these tech platforms to recognize bad actors and the importance of influence. What these tech companies never paid attention to is, they had this weird relationship with power users where it was almost like a hostile relationship in some cases. And they didn't realize how these platforms were being exploited or how online influence was shaping our information ecosystem.
LH: Clearly, we’re much more cynical, weary and jaded about social these days. So where do you think things go from here?
TL: That's a good question. One big problem that these big open broadcast space platforms have had is delivering the right content to the right people and allowing you to grow an audience but also reach people that are actually interested in your art and your content. And so many of those platforms have done that by building their businesses on this follow-based model where it's up to the user to subscribe to a feed of updates from other users.
This is actually a terrible way to deliver content to people because not everything that I post is gonna be interesting to my audience. Or it might be interesting to some parts of my audience and not the other parts. So I think you see platforms like TikTok emerge and become so successful because they lean really hard into algorithmic discovery and tailoring content so that each piece of content is atomized and delivered exactly to its target audience.
And so I think platforms are going to rely more on that form of algorithmic distribution of content and less on the following subscriber model in these big broadcast based social networks.
And then you have the trend of people spending time in smaller spaces. So I think a lot of people feel because of that context collapse and inability to reach the people that you want to reach on these big platforms, you see people retreating into smaller spaces like group chats and Discord or even just private accounts.
LH: Speaking of algorithmic curation, it's been very good for TikTok. It's been a lot of fun as a viewer to watch. However, it does take away the emphasis from the individual creators. So what happens to influencer marketing and creators if everything moves towards algorithmic curation?
TL: Absolutely. I think the problem with creators is that you're even more at the mercy of the platforms than ever. Another trend is creators responding against this and trying to build those direct relationships with their audience. So, trying to lean into things like Substack. Or now Patreon having a free option is a good example of this as well. It's trying to get people's contact information where they can just have this direct relationship.
Remember all those text-based startups? I wrote about it in 2019… Community was the name of that tech startup. I think the appeal or the goal of that app — and the goal of a lot of startups around this time and other apps like Patreon and Substack moving into this role where they're trying to be intermediaries, where they're helping creators facilitate more direct relationships, is a direct response to this increased reliance on algorithms, because creators want to obviously circumvent the algorithm.
LH: You are all over Threads right now. Are you thinking about the book promotion or are you genuinely enjoying Threads?
TL: No, I'm just having fun. I wasn't thinking about book promotion. But I did sign up for an account with my book account to provide updates. It's called @ExtremelyOnlineBook. But no, I just love posting and I have a poster's heart and I'm excited to have a new app… Twitter got so toxic. So it's been fun.
LH: Do you think creators are going to benefit from Threads? Actually, let me rephrase that, who's going to benefit from threads?
TL: It completely depends how the product evolves. I just left a meeting with my editors saying this exact thing. We're day five on Threads. It's so early, we have no idea what the core features of the product will be. Meta rolled this out very quickly. And it's such a stripped down product right now. So I don't think we know who's gonna win or lose until real user behavior patterns emerge.
We'll see how it's similar and different to Twitter based on what sort of discovery mechanisms roll out. Right now, they've been pushing celebrities really hard. I wrote a story just last year about Twitter and celebrities and why they don't like Twitter and why they fled Twitter years ago. So you know, will they embrace Threads? Who knows? Most celebrities don't have anything interesting to say. So I would imagine that the people who end up amassing true Threads fandoms are people with interesting things to say.
LH: Let's switch to the process of writing a book. Can you take us through a typical day? Were you working at the Washington Post then?
TL: I was working at the New York Times. I wrote it during the height of the pandemic, and I did it on top of my job. I didn't really end up taking time off because book leave is unpaid. And I couldn't afford to take very much time. So I basically wrote 90% of the book while I was doing my full time job through quite a lot. I don't know how I did it, actually.
LH: How did you map out your day?
TL: I was writing big breaking news, front page New York Times stories, covering huge tech news. I did a bunch of COVID investigation related stuff, like fraud investigations. I was doing all of that at the highest level.
And then on top of that is the level of harassment and attacks that I was getting was crazy. Tucker [Carlson] was doing all these segments on me and all these people were targeting my family and my friends in really scary ways and I had to have security come to my house. I've had to deal a lot with the police. It's been insane dealing with all of that, psychologically. I lost three friends of mine. I lost a lot of people to COVID and suicide, including my old roommate, and then I had to write this book as well on top of all of that.
So it was just two years of hell. I don't even know how I made this book because I was dealing with a lot. Not to turn this into a therapy session. But I feel like the book was a little bit therapeutic in writing because I was experiencing the worst of the Internet and the worst of all of this stuff. And I liked to go back and look at this other time and process things and I think that the book helped me do that.
LH: That's a lot. I'm sorry. It's remarkable because there was so much joy and optimism in the book. It did not seep through that you were struggling. Obviously you take a lot of abuse online and …
TL: It’s not the online stuff though. I don't care about death threats. I don't care about that. I care about people showing up to events. I’ve had speaking events canceled because they don't have the budget for security that I need. I've had to be escorted out of events with security.
People think of the Internet as this alternate reality where ‘Oh, I see the attacks you get online.’ OK, but those people are people in the world. Those are not just figures on the Internet that only exist on the Internet. These are people that exist in the real world, and it's terrifying. I can take it because I'm strong and I can deal with it myself but my family and people close to me... You know, it's not fair and it's f*cked up.
It sucks that this is the world that we live in and that we have no laws. I've written so extensively about this, and not just no laws, but employers don't support you either. Legacy media has no understanding of this stuff. You have no one that has your back when you're going through this stuff. Thankfully, there's a great detective here in LA who was really kind but they can’t ultimately do very much. And so you just have to go through it alone. Which is hard. There are other people on the Internet that have helped, that have also been through it like big content creators, and other women in tech journalism….
It was crazy… But I love technology. I love technology so much. I love the Internet. I wish I could live inside the Internet all day long. I really do love it. And so I'm glad that it comes through.
LH: Did you have to take a social break to write the book?
TL: No. Well, I only took a break from Twitter for six months, but that was also because I was trying to go really hard on TikTok to get to half a million so I started to post almost daily on TikTok. I've never taken a full break ever since I got the Internet.
LH: I guess that means there are no lessons or tips that you can share on how to become extremely un-online?
TL: I don't like to. It makes me depressed. It's lonely and isolating and I don't like not being connected to people. So I don't like to log off.
LH: At the same time you're taking all of this abuse. A lot of people would disengage and disappear. So what keeps you going?
TL: I don't want to go back. I think I was so depressed before I discovered the Internet, I mean the broader Internet. I think about my childhood and I think about the levels of depression that I experienced in isolation. I never want to live in that world again. I never want to live in a non-connected world where you're only exposed to your physical reality. That's horrifying…
Silicon Valley has way too much power and the people in control of these platforms are maniacal and horrible but that doesn’t mean that I want to escape. It's more just spending my time intentionally in positive spaces.
I spent so much time in Discord playing Fortnite with my friends. My Discord server really helped me a lot. I have a couple Discord servers of close friends and people that I never knew before that I've become really tight friends with that I consider some of my closest friends now because we just bonded. Some of them I haven't even met in person, still. But that stuff really gets me through because I love those people...
LH: Does it get better for Gen Z and Gen Alpha? Or do you think people gravitate towards the safety of group chats and closed communities?
TL: We're in this weird transition period right now where things are really bad and chaotic. The first 15 years of social media — I count that as from 2000 to 2015 — there was this optimism and this excitement and the sense of possibility and that's almost because Silicon Valley billionaires weren't paying attention… Well, they were exploiting people, but it hadn't all gone south yet. These platforms hadn't been weaponized to the extent that they have been today.
And I think right now we just need to educate people. A lot of people are still living in denial. They don't understand the stakes. Look at the case that I just wrote about with the Supreme Court and how they were laughing. One of the justices is literally laughing at the idea of online harassment and they basically determined that you can say anything on the Internet and stalk and harass people and that's fine. That was a really horrific ruling.
We need better protections. Users deserve more control. Users deserve more power and autonomy over their online spaces. And that's what I wanted people to take away from the book: Users played a really significant role in shaping these platforms. It's not just the tech pioneers. Often, Silicon Valley anticipated their platform would be used one way and it emerged for a completely different purpose. So we need to exert our power when it comes to these tech platforms, and what we demand from them, so that we can have a better Internet experience.
⏳ TAYLOR LORENZ RAPID FIRE ROUND ⏳
LH: Twitter or Threads?
TL: Threads
LH: GIF or JIF?
TL: GIF
LH: iMessage, Instagram DMs or Snapchat?
TL: iMessage
LH: TikTok, Reels or Shorts?
TL: TikTok. Not even a question.
LH: Which term do you prefer: creators or influencers?
TL: I like the term that I found in my book that was used in the late 2000s, ceWEBrities. I think we need to bring it back.
*Taylor’s interview was lightly edited for length and clarity.
📣 QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“The campaign was already wildly successful, both on a social and business standpoint, so why would we take the "risk" to jump in? But hours of watching, reading the comments, trying to learn and genuinely understand helped us see what this was about : brilliant creativity, unfiltered fun, peak absurdist gen z humor, just the way a new generation of creators and consumers play with brands…
We then discussed what was the right thing to do about the trend : saying nothing felt disconnected, encouraging it felt self-serving, so we just decided to show our fans that we see them and their creativity in a sweet, candid and genuine way, as grimace would. The same way you would respectfully and gently nod at someone, without repeating what they said to show you agree with them and stealing their thunder.”
-Guillaume Huin, McDonalds Social Media Director, Brand Content and Engagement, writing in a LinkedIn post about how his team approached acknowledging the fan-led Grimace shake trend
📖 ON YOUR RADAR
Instagram is launching a NIL incubator program for female student-athletes -Meta Application
LinkedIn’s algorithm is prioritizing knowledge and advice -Entrepreneur
Amazon Bets Big On Creators for Prime Day 2023 -Lindsey Gamble
How Wendy’s and 12 Other Brands Jumped on Threads -PRWeek
China Tightens Content Controls on Social Media Influencers -Bloomberg
Someone please stop the Musk vs. Zuck billionaire 'dick measuring contest' before Elon gets his ruler out -Insider
I'm suddenly much more interested in Logan Paul and KSI’s PRIME (as a grown up) now that Sen. Charles Schumer called on the FDA to investigate over levels of caffeine that are comparable to 2 cups of coffee. Anyone else? -AP
Excited to read more of Taylor's insights! Her optimistic perspective is so unique. As someone working in online spheres, it's so easy to feel trapped in the online abyss, but Taylor's viewpoint is hopeful and so appreciated. Great interview!