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Phil Ranta Joins The Show
(Meta says goodbye to fact-checkers, Disney - Fubo Merger and WhatNot receives new growth investment)
Eric Traub
January 11, 2025
What's On Tap
This Week’s Episode (Phil Ranta)
Watch The Episode Here! Leave a comment under the video!
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Episode Highlights
I would like to see Twitter (X) get resold to Meta… it’s because what Meta does best is ads and what Twitter (X) does best is having microbloggers.
Elon Musk’s proximity to power in this administration is a signifier that bad things were ahead for Facebook unless Mark did something. And he did something, he bent the knee.
User acquisition is everything. We are in a true attention economy, where eyeballs are more valuable than dollars because people assume the dollars will come. That’s been proven to not be true many times, but that is what the market thinks.
The Host Weighs In
The newsletter’s audience has grown quite significantly since the start of the year, so welcome to all new friends!
Great to have Phil on the show this week!
Here are a couple of my thoughts:
Zuckerberg’s decision to remove fact-checking and roll back content moderation at Meta was months in the making. As Phil said, Elon’s presence in the new Trump administration, as well as, other tech CEO’s like Tim Cook donating to Trump’s inauguration, made Zuckerberg’s decision quite predictable. It’s a decision that has quite predictably divided people along partisan lines.
Meta’s decision yesterday to eliminate DEI programs will also divide people politically. Trump’s power over U.S. business and tech leaders would have seemed far fetched only six months ago, but a lot has changed in six months. Now the only question is how soon Zuckerberg starts getting involved in the new administration.
Furthermore, I see Phil’s point regarding Whatnot, (see episode for context), but I do think that live social shopping will only continue to accelerate going forward. Someone has to fill TikTok’s void, and while Youtube and Meta may ultimately be the big winners, WhatNot’s live shopping infrastructure may provide the company a first mover advantage in the first couple of months post Tik-Tok ban.
Finally, even with heavy media m&a deal flow expected in 2025, the Fubo - Disney merger sure took me and many others by surprise. Phil and I both saw live sports as a beneficiary of the move. Now, after Venu was shut down before it even started, I’m not so sure about the direction of the deal.
Also, I’ve seen some confusion online regarding the details of the merger. To clarify, Hulu’s flagship streaming brand is not involved in the merger. Instead, it’s their Live TV bundle.
That’s all I have for this week. Next Thursday, I’m bringing on Andrew Wallenstein. Andrew is the Chief Media Analyst and President of Variety’s media subscription platform, Variety VIP+.
Respond to this email with any headlines, tweets or deals you’d like Andrew to make sense of.
Trivia, Oh Baby!
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