Publishing on the Blockchain: Daisy Alioto on How Dirt is the Future of Media
Eli
Day One FM. I'm excited for part two of the pod. I think it might be the best one of the year and it will only be February. By the time you're all listening to this. We have Daisy Alioto. She is the CEO and co founder of Dirt. Dirt media, technically, but I know we're all big fans of dirt at Day One spoken with Kyle Chakka. Other co founder, Terry Nguyen staff writer, yeah, I thought it was a great combo.
Trey
I'm super excited. I think that Daisy is probably one of the most intelligent people I've ever had the chance to meet. So bold statement, but I love it.
Eli
There you go. Clara, I know you're a term to heap praise. Kidding.
Clara
I also think that Daisy is very smart and greatly enjoyed our conversation.
Eli
No, I know, it was it was fantastic. And we were just internally talking about a piece that Carrie had written from Dirt recently about cultural indicators of a recession. And Trey, I don't want to, you know, completely take this away from you so,
Trey
I just think it's interesting that we basically willed ourselves into a recession based on the content that we're seeing posted across social media. Somebody said that like, because there was one flash mob in the New York City subway, it's a sign that the there like there's no greater indicator that a recession is coming.
Eli
But you saw it. I mean, that was that was a scary, awful, awful site.
Trey
Absolutely, I think like the creepy veneered smiles from like the La La Land cast come out when you know, when the recession is just around the corner. You know, I've been seeing a lot of a lot of that stuff on the subway recently.
Eli
What karma kuggeleijn flash mobs
Trey
Just like people hiding behind their Cheshire Cat smiles and not masks, which we won't go into. I don't know where that came from. But But yeah, I do think it's our conversation with Daisy is just very similar to reading an issue of Dirt, which you come away smarter. I really, I really enjoyed a lot of their recent articles, especially that one about recession indicators. As you know, people kind of create content to make light of a serious situation, and what that actually means or if there is even a recession coming, but amongst other things, they post a lot about trends and culture and fashion and the blockchain and what's going on in tech. They did a profile of Gary Vaynerchuk. There's just like, it's sort of a real mix of content that I think couldn't really live on a regular legacy publication site that has to have like a strict POV. But I definitely think that when you do read Dirt, you know that's a Dirt story. Like immediately I can identify things like oh, yeah, good Dirt story.
Clara
MILF manor, famously, MILF manor. Here January 27. So when it drops on dirt.fyi, we predicted it here,
Trey
right? No, just briefly summarize. What what MILF manor are
Eli
Please, we've been waiting for this since
Clara
Okay,
Trey
The safe work version,
Clara
The safe work. It's hard to do with a show like that. But I'll try. So basically, eight older women come into a large villa in Mexico for several weeks. And they're promised, it's like a dating show format. They're going to meet all of these eligible men and the door opens on like, who the eligible men are and it's their sons. Is that safe for work?
Describe knowing
Trey
we'll see if the phones light up after this pod is released. So we'll find out
Clara
Subscribe, subscribe, subscribe. I'm kidding. But no,
Trey
Give us a review.
Clara
I think well, because I think to your point Trey the reason I think both manner is like we're I don't know, I'm not a Dirt editor. But I think to me, it kind of is this thing that like encapsulates the very particular cultural period that we're at and I think Dirt has talked about this it's like television is made to be screened grabbed now like White Lotus is definitely you know, guilty of that in some ways succession is guilty of that in some ways. So it's like happens in prestige but like, likewise with reality, it's just the premises are getting more and more absurd and like they're self cannibalizing, like Love Island, or even like this is an obvious rip on a 30 rock joke from like years ago. And so like sort of like deeply self referential, but also like, deeply more and more problematic. And self awareness? It's, I don't know, it's an interesting thing. I hope that Dirt covers it. If they don't, I'll pitch it. But
Trey
is MILF Manor and the existence of MILF Manor? An indicator of the recession?
Clara
It might I mean, I don't know feel free to weigh in,
Trey
It might very well be.
Eli
It may be a recession of ideas. Oh god,
Trey
What have you guys found in dirt that you that really kind of stuck with you?
Clara
Well, I have to rewind. I'm currently reading white noise by Don DeLillo. And I saw Terry wrote a piece about the new Noah Bombeck film adaptation, which also stars Greta Gerwig, and has like a bunch of other all star cast members. And I like started to skim it, but I'm like a big no spoilers person. So I'm like, truly saving that article until after I'm finished with the book. But the other one that I did read recently was the world building piece. And I think this is something we talked about a ton from, like, a brand perspective, but also just a wider storytelling perspective, about the rise of franchises, please read the predictionairy, and learn about fra-tigue more
Eli
Yeah that was a big Jeb Bush, please clap.
Clara
Please, clap. No, but I think that I think in brands trying to like figure out how to reach their audiences authentically, and sort of create these communities that become self starting communities that engage not because you're prompting them to engage, but engage because they genuinely want to, I think world building has become both like, I don't know, like a buzzword, but something that is kind of like the future of fandom. And I think Dirt is a really interesting part in that too, which Daisy also gets into, but just in terms of how they are sort of creating this community in this world around Dirt. By using well, I don't swell what's to come? But yeah,
Trey
What is world building?
Clara
Well, I mean, again, I'm not the expert. But
Trey
As you understand it,
Clara
As I understand it, world building is, it could be multiple things, it could be about, like creating a distinctive lore around your product, or your brand, or your franchise that people want to explore and iterate upon, not just consume. So it's like, it's an engaging thing. Like you want to be part of the world by engaging with the other people in it and creating more parts of that ecosystem, if that makes sense. Rather than just like, essentially walking into a pop up, walking away with a purchase product, and then like leaving to go about your day. It's like this spending, you know, an hour of your day in the forum, like actively contributing to discussion around, like, what's the meaning of this easter egg and everything everywhere all at once. It's a terrible analogy, but like, it's the participatory element that I think makes it world building. And I think that that's also, at least in my interpretation of what Daisy talks about later, a huge part of like, what Dirt is also looking to do.
Trey
And how far off really is a social playbook from a socialist manifesto say,
Eli
wow,
Clara
wow. Trey!
Trey
Know what I mean,
Clara
I mean, I think so. Yeah. Like you're saying, like, a social manifesto, in terms of like the ethos of it like,
Trey
Right, we're sure gonna see brands playing with like, marks, quotes and their decks. They've built out their brand strategies. But
Eli
Mark Fisher wasn't far to be honest, that we slipped in a Mark Fisher. Not far!
Trey
How about you, Eli? What have you kind of read in there?
Eli
I mean, we were talking about this earlier. I love the vibe session piece. I was just getting into the Kyla Scanlon kind of blog post that had originally discussed this, which came out this summer or last summer, rather, when I think the discourse was way hotter around, are we or will we go into a recession? You know, I think at that point in time, gas prices were still high. Home prices were astronomical as we're mortgage rates. Consumer spending was still strong, which meant that the sorry, which meant that the Fed was gonna keep like, ramping up interest rates and like potentially lowering demand in the near future, but we hadn't technically, like, gotten past the threshold of what like, you know, Jerome Powell or the Fed or all of these kind of like hard economic indicators would consider a recession but on the ground like data can tell you one thing, but the feeling on the ground I think is very different, which is what they get to, like, we end up kind of with the vibes of what a recession might be, which is like, a Karma Chameleon, whatever flash mob on the L train, that, you know, one would certainly put their foot out, as you saw, and saw the flash mob coming to you, or, you know, like other cultural indicators or like the lipstick index, or there's the underwear index, which says that, like, men start to buy less underwear as a recession hits. Business Insider loves to throw like a quote, a quote from Michael Burry. The guy from The Big Short as in like, five things you need to know is like Michael Burry says, we're in a recession or something like that. But I don't know. She's brilliant. I thought it was brilliant analysis. The next one that I really liked, which was a while back was the indomitable human spirit. And I will keep this brief. But it was written by Leo Kim. And it's basically about this Tik Tok trend. That kind of reframes optimism in the face of kind of like global shocks and destruction and takes a lot of inspo from Viktor Frankl who wrote Man's Search for Meaning Camus, kind of like the father of Absurdism. But that was also some dig in spell as we kind of looked to, or we're doing some initial thinking around the prediction area as well, like, what is the right mindset and mental framework, so that you don't necessarily fall into this kind of like nihilist paralysis, but you're not also like, blind to the world around you. So very thought provoking stuff. It's like, this is the stuff you read in Dirt, things that are like, I don't know, feel like academic papers, but are delivered to you in a way that is, like Daisy said, weird and humorous and approachable. So,
Trey
And I do love like the content that Dirt publishes is consistently interesting. But Daisy has worked most of her career if not all in audience growth and development for places like NPR. And she advised on Air Mail weekly as air mail was kind of getting started. And now Dirt has recently relaunched at Dirt.FYI where you can mint a subscription, the subscription being an NFT, or digital collectible, as they're called now, which is really cool because it places the ownership into the hands of the fans. And they've built this kind of community where all of the people who own these tokens can vote on the content and have kind of a say in the content. And then that community extends beyond on Discord for now, but I think Daisy has plans for something else. But I think what's interesting about dirt is that's at this kind of convergence of web 3, and you know, the future of tech with also the kind of less geeky side of things, which is like things that people want to read and receive in their inbox on a day to day basis. So they currently have I think, free weekly newsletters and and the others are for subscribers only. But I'm really, really excited to get into our our chat with Daisy.
Eli
Yeah, no, it was a great one. So stick around for part two, where we dig in to all of the Dirt. Great discussion around I think future of kind of media models, subscription models loyalty as a whole.
Trey
Time to get dirty!
Eli
Okay. Signing off.
Okay, every time. Daisy Alioto. Welcome to the pod. Welcome to Day One FM. Thank you for carving out some time. I'm what I'm sure it was a very busy schedule. How are you doing today?
Daisy
I'm good. Thanks for having me.
Eli
Cool. Trey, Clara. What's up, good to see you. Not in person. But all good.
Trey
Yeah, I'm super excited to hear about everything going on with Dirt, which is one of my absolute favorite newsletters and ecosystems. Now I suppose it sort of expanded its digital footprint. And I'm really psyched to hear more about it.
Daisy
Thank you so much. Yeah, I think I've been using the P word platform, because seems like that's something investors like to hear. But I would I would argue and maybe we'll get into this later that publishers are platforms now and vice versa. So I think those those divisions have been sort of loose for a while. But I also love using the word ecosystem and it feels very appropriate to the blockchain.
Trey
Absolutely. I always remember working in like, media during the kind of pivot to video and there was a lot of talk especially where I was at, which was days days magazine about not using the dreaded C word content.
Eli
Are we gonna have to start every word with that thee blank word.
Daisy
Yeah. Commit to the bit. The C- word is commit to the bit.
Eli
There you go.
Trey
Exactly. I'm wondering if you could just give us like the rundown of what dirt is for people who haven't heard of it haven't received the awesome cultural briefings in their inbox?
Daisy
Yeah, absolutely. So substack started off Dit started out as a substack. Co-founded by Kyle Chaika. And I and I know, Kyle is a previous guest on this podcast. So
Eli
Friend of the pod.
Daisy
Yeah, very good. Next suggested episode. And we sort of bootstrapped our editorial budget by selling NFT's at, I guess, the peak of the bull market, which is not, it's not quite the economy that we're in now in terms of NFT's. But there's also been a shift in NFT marketplace from an emphasis on financial speculation to utility sort of like what can this if it's not a blue chip artwork, and a lot of NFT's I would argue are sort of fine digital artwork, fine art, then what can it be used for. And we were able to bake in that utility pretty early on by saying, you know, if you own this NFT, it's going to come with these tokens. And you can use the tokens to vote on stories and topics that you want to see in the newsletter. So we were doing that, you know, even in the various sort of beta beta days of Dirt, and then we raised some venture capital. And the idea was to move off of substack, to have our own platform, our own ecosystem, where we would be able to still send out the content, content, via newsletter. So still very inbox forward in terms of distribution, which, you know, if you look at all the technologies that are being interrupted, right now, by like AI, or web 3, I think email is probably the one that the least amount of people are trying to replace. We've sort of had like a retreat to email. But so we were staying very inbox forward. But we've also created a home Dirt.FYI, for people to read on the browser and any content that is subscription content. Rather than hitting a paywall, people hit a prompt to connect their wallet, and they need to be holding an annual subscription, which is represented by an NFT. So I basically have been saying, like, we want people to enter the ecosystem as wallet addresses, which is sort of the current form of somebody's consumer blockchain identity, rather than email addresses or credit card numbers, because I think it'll give us the foundation to build out a platform that can include, you know, more elements of a social network, more elements of targeted advertising, that people might actually enjoy advertisers and consumers as time goes on. So that's sort of that's the foundation and we do have two tiers of subscriptions, we have the annual subscription. And then we have something called a Founder Pass, which represents membership in our founders group, which we previously called our Dow. And that's the group of people, you know, max, basically 1000 People who have these ability to vote on what they want to see in the newsletter, in addition to some other pretty sweet perks. But I think that that's been the most compelling use case. It's definitely unusual for cultural content to be a two way street in that way. And it detracted a lot of people who have this similar quality in our audience of wanting to influence the newsletter to reflect their personal tastes, but also feeling very influenced in turn by the newsletter on a daily basis, and that sort of push and pull of, you know, I'm a tastemaker, but my taste is being formed by my membership in the dirt community is been a really fundamental organic behavior that I believe we can use this technology to sort of supercharge.
Trey
That's so cool, because I think that like a big part of building community comes from the ability to kind of voice your opinion and have a say in what gets, I guess sold back to you in a way but for those who maybe don't subscribe yet, or don't have an NFT kind of subscription to Dirt. I think that it's important to note that you guys kind of cover everything from like, a profile of Gary Vaynerchuk to, you know, a discussion about the death of canon and what is canon and culture to things like art and architecture and even fragrance. So I think like the, you know, kind of content spans a wide breadth of different people's tastes. And I'm curious, because you were talking a bit about how you came up with the idea originally. And I know your background, which I want to get to is kind of more in like the audience growth sector. But was the start out as an experiment to see kind of how you could build a community and interact with the community and have them influence the content? Or was it very much like, we want to make cool content, and then find a way to finance that basically,
Daisy
I think a little bit of both, right, like, what maybe media in 2023 happens at the intersection of like an experiment and the economy. So it was definitely a little bit of both. I think we're beyond an experiment now. And one thing I've been thinking a lot about, maybe this is like some alpha from my brain, because I'm planning on writing about this at some point. But I've also just been kind of giving the spiel at parties is, I feel like we have these two big categories of media right now. There's big newsletter, and then there's small magazine, and big newsletter is like, the group of publications that started with Axios and ends with semaphore and in between, we have the information and Puck and Airmail to a certain extent. And then in the small magazine category, we have like the drift and Jewish currents and locks and, you know, all very cool publications. But if you don't fall into those two categories, I think people don't really know what to do with you. Um, and I think we need some stuff outside of that. Because the small magazine is a very cool vehicle that is not expected to scale will support the careers of a small, finite number of people. Big newsletter, you know, it's challenging, because there is sort of a ceiling on that business model as well. So I'm looking at these two categories, I'm observing them, I'm cheering for their success. But I'm also saying like, Hey, I think there's another category and maybe that category can arise and like the vacuum that Twitter has left, you know, maybe the other category can look more like a social network, maybe we should be clawing back a lot of this engagement and, you know, content and attention that we gave away to these social platforms for free, as publishers in exchange for distribution and saying, actually, you know, we want people to hang out on our site, instead of on Twitter or on Discord. So that's something that I've been thinking about a lot. And it is very much a meta commentary, because it impacts me directly. And it impacts my ability to sell Dirt to the general public, and also to sell Dirt to investors who have been historically very skeptical of media as a venture scale investment. And I think, you know, there's a lot of money that's been poured into media, just from a vanity perspective. And an article that I'd highly recommend is a piece that came out last week slash in the weekend edition of the information about Marc Andreessen and his relationship with media as a sort of like, love hate relationship. Where, you know, he invested in stuff like the activist early on, he sort of turned towards being anti media. But there's like this Me thinks he doth protest too much dynamic to it, because of this symbiosis between Silicon Valley, and the media, and I don't think we can escape it. So like, I would like to, you know, exploit it.
Trey
Absolutely. I've just quickly want to know, where does legacy media fit into this? And I think like, I can answer this easily by just referring to like, the massive Fox layoff that just happened. I think yesterday that affected like Eater and Thrillist in New York mag and stuff like that, but curious in your sort of, I guess, binary of big newsletter, niche publication, where does like a Cosmopolitan or like Vogue or New York Times even
Daisy
I feel like they almost don't count. Like they're sort of the backdrop. And you know, where there are winners. The winners are like Conde Nast in New York Times The Washington Post, you know, they'll go through expansions and contractions, but they're not expected to go away. I don't even expect them to like limp along because I think that's like a little bit ungenerous, I think that they exist as a part of history as a part of prestige publishing. And, you know, we'll go through cycles and like a pretty consistent way. So I almost don't count them in this analysis because like, they're not new, they're not old, they're, they're just sort of there. And whatever new is invented will be invented, like on the backdrop of their existence, ends, and also like, to certain extent, standing on their shoulders. Because we haven't gotten into this yet. But like, a big part of my approach to there, a big part of my attraction to media in general is being somebody who idolized magazines like growing up. And, like, I'm kind of obsessed with this idea of like, how you translate magazine culture, and the real tangibility of that to emerging technologies, like, can you use emerging technologies to create a community in a reading experience that would feel the same way as it felt to be like, sitting in the corner of the public library, just like, you know, demolishing a copy of 17 Like, I can't cram all of these images in my brain fast enough, like, I have to smell the perfume, I have to see the like, you know, the layouts. And that feeling, I think it's a feeling I've been chasing for a long time, it's not really going to come from magazines anymore, except for again, on the small magazine scale, which is beautiful. Um, but I don't really want to be small. So I'm kind of figuring out what that means for me and what it means for Dirt.
Trey
That's awesome. I love to hear like kind of how you guys are disrupting the landscape, I suppose. But it's interesting, because at the moment, I'm reading Tina Brown's Vanity Fair diaries, which is a highly recommended read for anybody who wants to hear about the heydays of legacy media and the town cars and the suspense accounts and stuff like that. But one thing that she one thing that stuck with me that I kind of read recently, that maybe is even relevant to you Dirt, and kind of where you're going is that when Tina Brown took over as editor and chief of Vanity Fair, nobody was kind of talking about the successes of it. And like the growth of it, because she increased, I think she increased circulation to something like 600,000 copies or something, which is just insane. But not nobody was like talking about Vanity Fairs growth. So what she ended up doing was she took her editor's letter and one of the like, forthcoming issues and just wrote her own story about how Vanity Fair was growing, and said something like, if nobody else is going to, you know, say the story, then tell it yourself kind of thing, because people will believe it if it's in print. And I thought that was just like a really interesting way to kind of, I guess, like, you know, be the change you want to see in the world kind of thing to put it easily. But I'm curious about Dirts growth and success. I know, you had a huge first round of VC investors come in and curious how like, with this recent relaunch, which I love to hear about, you guys are sort of continuing that growth and success story.
Daisy
Yeah. Are we allowed to swear on this?
Eli
Absolutely.
Daisy
No, I don't want to
Eli
Oh, come on. Come on. We can make an exception.
Daisy
Thank you. That's so kind of you. So I was just gonna say I love the Tina Brown Vanity Fair diaries. I've also heard it's really fun to listen to on tape. If you're like, looking for good audio book. And, you know, the part that gets me is like, I think her publisher like cosigned her Hamptons house. And it's like, yeah, everyone's like reading sitting in their bedroom in Bushwick just like well, I guess I'll go fuck myself. 'Me'. But yeah, to your point. Well, okay, so raising investment, this is interesting, because, um, I was freelance writer for a long time and other freelance writers, I think, you know, even people I know really well, we're like, Well, you know, what do you mean, you raise $1.2 million? Sort of, like, looking at me, like, I had three heads? Like, what, why? How are you able to do that? Because, like, you we, you know, we both come from the same world, which is like sitting at my computer emailing an editor, the nation being like, Please buy my op ed for $200. Begging. Yeah, so like, how do you go from that to like sitting in a room with somebody who probably don't have a lot in common with saying, like, give me $500,000 And my message to people is, like, you don't realize how valuable your skill sets are as a writer and a person who works in the media industry because they have been so undervalued in the context that you work in. But if I plopped you in a room at McKinsey, or I plot to you in like trend forecasting agency or even Trey, if I clocked you into a marketing agency, all of a sudden the skills are the same, the context has changed. And now the ability to tell story, or analyze something that's happening in culture before other people is worth $600 an hour, $1,000 an hour, whatever somebody's willing to bill for it. We just haven't had that ability in the context that we're in. And pitching a company for investment is it's literally storytelling, it's telling the story of your company, what you're going to do, what your vision is, how much money you want, and what you're going to use it for. And anyone who has been around the block, or written a single article for GQ, I would argue, has this ability. But it does require a lot of self empowerment. A lot of really embarrassing Google searches. And you have to be immune from imposter syndrome, because the people you're competing against, have never felt imposter syndrome in their life, and they really should. And that's, and that's like, what it is. And if you're a VC investor, and you're listening to this, like lean and really close to your screen, I'm going to tell you my email address. And I would love to hear from you. But no, I'm kidding. I feel like I've grown a lot through this process. And I just like want other people and, and and I also think like, I think there are a lot of writers who don't, maybe don't want to have being a business person be part of their identity, but are probably already running a one person business to a certain extent. So I think I wish people would explore it more. But I understand why it's a huge risk. And it might it raises uncomfortable feelings about money and capitalism, and you know, who succeeds and fails? And how organic that success actually is? That, you know, I've had to like, think about as well. You know, because there's no money or system of investment. That's like a political right.
Eli
Yeah, we don't know if you know, Marc Andreessen, or SPF is listening from his parents home right now. But no, I mean, speaking of, you know, I don't know ethical investment. And I know, that's just one among many things you were just touching on. But I dropped this in the Dirt discord earlier, we Clara and I were just at a conference and Justin and Ben Smith at semaphore were asked about, you know, SBS investment, and they would not disclose how much he and he had invested in semaphore. And it turns out that he was like, almost half of all of their funding. So like, you know, without it, who knows where they would have been right now, but I think a lot of what you're getting at, or maybe we'll get at is kind of this issue of ownership and media, right? And how how tricky that is, or has been traditionally, is that something that dirt with kind of the organizational and NFT framework and ecosystem is looking to change.
Daisy
I think that the more self sustaining media can be, the less, you have to rely on money that feels uncomfortable to take, the more desperate the industry is, economically, the more compromises have to be made. And there's this really wonderful piece in the generalists. That just came out. I think I tweeted out yesterday, it's about the future of social networks, and, you know, had some really nice thoughts about Gas, which was just acquired by Discord and BeReal and Geneva and some of these other sort of smaller social media networks that are very targeted to a certain type of person, a very certain type of behavior. I'm basically saying like, these might be the future and like, we're not maybe we're not going to see unicorns like I think he uses that the line like, you know, none of these, like the real isn't going to make Meta sweat. Right, right. Maybe this is healthier, right? Because perpetual growth is extremely unnatural. We don't see it in nature, like, and I don't think we should expect to see it from technology either. And so it requires like, founders and also investors like being willing to undergo this paradigm shift where venture scale returns, like, you know, you're still you're making your money back. But maybe there doesn't need to be a billion dollar company and maybe there doesn't need to be as many billionaires.
Trey
Amen. There you go. But yeah, I know I would love for you to explain like I am five, the sort of Dirt model of how you are getting your audience converted into NFT holders. And I was also curious if you could explain a bit more about how you are kind of harnessing owning your audience to then kind of sell advertising against or kind of, you know, I'm not sure what else your plans are there. But can you explain how that is work?
Daisy
Yeah. Um, so we have our free newsletter product. So there's a three times a week dispatch. That's written by our senior writer Terry Neuyen and she, you know, kind of rounds up what's happening in streaming digital culture and starts off with the, you know, a cool blurb that goes a little deeper into one area have something that's happened that week, and that three times a week pre-send is sort of a funnel for the two times a week send, which is excerpts of stuff that's paywall. So the thing that you have to be holding the NFT to access, and that subscription is an unlimited edition. So basically, it's non transferable from when it's issued for 12 months. You can't financially speculate on the cost of a subscription, like you can't buy an annual subscription to Dirt for $60 and then turn around and sell it for 20, which is very intentional on our part. And there's no limits the amount of people that can mint, this NF t. And then there's the founder group, which is 1000 founder passes. They are designed by an artist named Monica Rizzoli, who is an incredible generative artist, they are interlocking mushrooms in a collective ecosystem. And they, you know, from an NFT art perspective inverted this thing that was part of really the last phase of valuable NFT's, which was this idea of like rarity, right? You know, I want the one that's the most rare, I want the one that has the most unique traits. And with these mushrooms that are these founder passes, they're each undergoing this 24 hour cycle where the background is changing. And there's this peak of noon. And each of them have a different peak. So I think about 170 of them are kind of approaching noon at the same time. But only one pass is at like mid day at a time. So each of them becomes the most rare pass for about a millisecond per day, which was a very cool inversion. Yeah, so these are really like artworks in and of themselves. But they represent the ability to vote on newsletter topics, and really access to merch and take your ticket to events and everything I sort of listed at the beginning of the call. And, you know, the idea behind that is like this is kind of the loyalty tier. This is like our editorial board essentially. And so we have this free product, we have the annual subscription, we have the 1000s sort of super loyal community members. And then we can start to take that vertical growth, where the sale of the NFT is basically represents a mini economy. So of the NFT's that we've sold. So far, since dirts relaunch, we've basically made enough to sustain our editorial budget for another year. So it's like this mini vertical media ecosystem with its own treasury. And then we can take that and say, okay, copy, paste, now we're gonna launch a newsletter about perfume, or now we're gonna launch a newsletter about tennis. And you know, it might look a little bit different. But it's the same principle. You know, there's the free product, there's the gated product. And then we're gonna have this like super group of people who are really into it, giving feedback and essentially acting as the first layer for what could be a future social network, right? But because the social network starts is around 1000 people, and you start letting people in slowly, you end up with like, a much more high trust, high engagement network, and then like a Goodreads or a Yelp, or a Letterbox, where I go, and the websites ugly, and I read somebody's review. And then I say like, wait a minute, I don't know you, I don't know your tastes. We like why should I trust that you didn't like this book? I don't know anything about you. Versus Oh, you said you didn't like this book. And like I noticed you also have like Dirts, perfume subscription, and a Nike token and a White Lotus token. And, you know, you're in the original group of founders of Dirt. So like, if you like this book, I'll probably like this book. And that is a really big shift away from the sort of like drive by attention economy and the algorithm of the last social media cycle. But I really think that that's the future and it's a future that has to be built in tandem with publishers that already have the content, people need a baseline to engage around. And if you have the content, you should be able to own the social network as well and all of the network effects. And you know, the advertising that you can sell against people's collectibles that they have complete control over in the privacy inherent in that as well.
Clara
And I was also just curious, especially like going into the different tiers of NFT's and stuff, you'd started to touch on it, I think a little bit earlier. But like, in this could be completely anecdotal. But like, who is in Dirts? Audience like is it a lot of like, other media people? Is it a lot of like, young people who are maybe feeling like, slightly disenfranchised, for lack of a better word from like, media as it stands, like the Axios is of the world versus like, the smaller magazines? And like, just how much difference you see across like, you know, are your founders kind of coming for your founder level people kind of coming from all walks of life? Or like, do you see like, what kind of representation I guess, are you seeing among this community that's starting to emerge, like across discord, and then also, like NFT holders,
Daisy
I think it's all of the above, I think the first NFT holders are by nature of the friction that is front loaded into getting that pass, tending to be more crypto native. I think media technology, advertising, even academia are pretty well represented in our audience. And I've heard, you know, from people who are older, that feel like they wouldn't know what's happening in internet culture if they weren't reading Dirt. And I've also heard from people that are younger that are in college, like you, you said, and they're trying to make sense of the internet, they're trying to make sense of the fact that most of their lives have been online. And I think the dirt really strikes a good balance between being playful, but also intellectually rigorous, in a way and weird when we want to be in a way that like a lot of writing about the internet hasn't been able to consistently achieve. There's a very distinct POV. And it's hard for me to encapsulate it because I'm like, so far inside of it. But I was telling somebody the other day, it's like, everyone knows that Dirt story when they see it. And I think that that's how you've achieved, you know, your, your brand equity.
Clara
Yeah, for sure. And I think what you were saying earlier, too, about the sort of trust aspect being so important, like I think in our work a lot of the time and talking about, you know, relationship building between a brand and audience. But I think also sort of maybe what you had started to touch on is like, trust within the community, and like, creating a community of people that, you know, is maybe brought together through Dirt. But then it's like having interactions that are like, somewhat independent from Dirt and Dirt content, specifically, and like, you know, sharing revieor sharing other things. And this is maybe sort of like, a way down the line question. But like, is it like a potential ambition at one point to kind of have, you know, like, you have this kind of community ecosystem that in some ways is self sustaining by nature of all of these interconnections? And then at the same time, sort of, like continuing to produce content across it, like, as mediated by these people is that kind of, I guess, I'm trying to like piece together, how you know, how it might evolve moving forward, I was just curious, if that's like, close ish.
Daisy
I think that Dows, whatever you want to call them, this model, where you have a small group of people with a shared treasury and a shared interest are not only the basis for future social networks, but they're like incubators, right. So I could totally see a scenario where Dirt has five different newsletter pop ups, each are focused on a pretty specific vertical, you know, Dirt is the first it's the flagship, but Dirt media is an umbrella that can contain a lot of different distinct media brands. And that one of these networks has achieved a scale that the others have not and sort of reaches an escape velocity, where it's like, okay, actually, now we're going to start like letting people in, you know, on mass, because we believe that this has the ability to support like, a lot of different people and be bigger than 1000 people or 10,000 people. So I'm also thinking about it as like an incubation process as well.
Trey
And I also want to know, how Dirt and what you guys are pioneering over there relates, if at all to other kind of loyalty programs like Starbucks Odyssey or what Reddit is doing with like, how they are minting NFT's. Do you see any overlap or are they doing something wacky?
Daisy
I think what they're doing is really smart. And they've been very successful with it. And Reddit has notably been successful on a platform that was extremely hostile to NFT's by calling them digital collectibles and calling wallets vaults, which is a hustle like I respect a lot. Starbucks, you know, the consumer emphasize it has touched on what I think will be the next phase of consumer, which is membership and loyalty versus a more influencer driven economy, startup economy for, like DTC. And, you know, we can see that in Tahinis new projects, try your best, which is helping to use the blockchain, to launch these membership tokens within individual brands, rather than relying on influencer promotion and people's relationships to influencers that are pretty, I think, tenuous and emotionally fraught at this point. And, you know, rely a lot on the whims of the algorithm as well. And Starbucks and Reddit, I think the key difference between what we're doing and what they're doing, which, you know, maybe over time will kind of come closer to their model is they're using L2's, so layer twos, built on top of Ethereum, that don't require somebody to self custody their assets. So like, what does that mean? Well, if I'm self custodying, I have my cryptocurrency wallet on my phone, it's an app, and all of my things that I've collected, I'm holding on to in there. So you know, my Dirt subscription, and my Nike token, and my doodle and my, you know, World of Women NFT. They're all living together and like, essentially, a virtual backpack. What Reddit has done, and I believe Starbucks has done to make the onboarding process easier, is they've actually created the wallet for the user, which makes it a lot easier to enter the network. But the problem from my perspective, and this is something I'm still working through is it makes it a lot harder to move that membership token out of the ecosystem and into a wallet with other things that are important to you. And the reason why that matters for us is like I think that advertising revenue will be a big part of our business model moving forward, I think advertising and lifestyle signaling will always be part of the media economy to a certain extent. And what I would like to create is, you know, an ecosystem where advertisers can say to us, or we could say to advertisers, hey, by the way, 10% of people that have a Dirt subscription in their wallet, also have a Nike token, would you New Balance, you know, like to pay premium dollars to advertise just to those wallets when they're connected to our website. And they should be willing to do that. Because collecting something is pretty much the highest form of consumer behavior, you can have, like you didn't buy it, like you collected it, you know, you didn't just look at it for 10 seconds last week. And the example I always use is like the sneakers that you buy, and they follow you around the internet for another week, even though you've already bought them. Like that's not helping you because you know, you already bought them. It's not helping whoever's paying for that to follow you around on the internet. And it's such a low signal of affinity. It's like a drive by, you know, piece of data, it's worthless. But if you had collected those sneakers, that information and the ability to purchase, advertising real estate against your love of those sneakers, the fact that you were carrying them around in your virtual backpack with all this other stuff that you're interested in as a consumer, and that you have control over it, like advertisers should want that. And they need places to do that. And they don't have anywhere to do it right now, because there's not enough publishers with this capability. So I really believe that the wallet address or whatever we end up calling them you know, the wallet might not be the final form, the wallet might be the floppy disk, whatever the CD ROM version of this will be the new fundamental unit of consumer data, and the next era of media will look a lot more like what Dirt is right now then it will look like BuzzFeed five years ago.
Trey
I love these analogies. I'm curious, what are your thoughts on AI?
Daisy
I think um, so AI, like my understanding of AI is like all of these AI startups are essentially pulling from the same inputs. They might have different, like storage and data capabilities, you know, but they're all pulling from the same source. So I think the winners and the losers in the AI economy are going to be like, who can come up with the best applications and who can really come up with the best front end? Um, I don't really have a ton of anxiety around it right now. I think it's for the most part when it comes to creative stuff producing stuff. That's pretty cool. Like premium mediocre. I don't I don't know if sweet green is a client of yours. So like I apologize in advance, but you know, it's like the sweet green salad of SEO Poppy, right? Like, that's kind of where we are with it, this kind of green salad of like, an image of somebody walking in a dark alley. And that's okay, like, most of the internet is going to be premium mediocre. And that's why we're so good at ignoring it, but it's not going to replace, you know, the shape and the salad, right. And I don't really have a vision for how it'll fit into Dirt. At the moment, it's certainly something that we're interested in, like, covering and conceptualizing for people. But I'm not like the type of founder who's gonna, like rush out and be like, well, you know, it's funny. So, going back to Marc Andreessen, his sort of like, one of his beefs with the media is this idea of like, the current thing that we go from caring about, like, the Ukraine war to, like, you know, another civic issue, but like, if anyone is obsessed with the current thing, it's technologist is Silicon Valley AI is definitely the current thing. And, you know, I'm just not the type of founder who's gonna run out and try to like, contort my business model to fit in that, even if it will, like, bring in more money in the short term. So yeah, I think it'll be around for a while. I don't think it's distinct from web three. I think these are the branching pathways at the same cultural impulses. And it'll be really interesting to see how that shakes out.
Eli
Yeah, coming from the guy who poured billions of dollars into clubhouse the literal like, next thing. Did you read that piece? Yeah, sorry. I know, we're still we're still potentially cording. But anyway, did you read that piece on character? There's all these kind of like, random.ai platforms now. And like, the current one is like character.ai. I think there's another one that like, allows you to speak with individuals who are either living or dead. Do you know about this?
Daisy
If I want to speak with like, if I want to be in dialogue with like, dead thinkers? That's like, what books are for, from my perspective, but I understand like, it's worth experimenting with.
Trey
You don't want to communicate with Sylvia Plath?
Daisy
I don't I don't see it replacing my already useless liberal arts degree.
Eli
Yeah, you and all three of us to. Kidding. We've all landed on our feet, haven't we?
Daisy
Everyone hold up their student debt amount.
Eli
Yeah.
Trey
Is now a good time to plug our d1a.com/career
Eli
Unless, yeah, well, I mean, I think this is this has been super fascinating. Daisy, and thank you for taking the time. Where can we find you? Where can we find dirt for the people who are interested in maybe connecting their wallets? Do you want to do a quick plug?
Daisy
The floor is yours. So our new internet home is Dirt.FYI. You can also find us on Twitter us @dirtyverse and then I'm on Twitter as @daisandconfused.
Eli
Sweet. Well, thanks for joining us. Again, really appreciate the time and the Dirt family. So yeah, looking forward to seeing what's next.
Trey
Yeah, catch you on the Dirt discord. Thank you so much Daisy.
Eli
Thanks for listening in. Be sure to check out more on d1a.com/perspectives, and sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter to get the latest trends and insights directly to your mailbox.