YouSaid · the spoken record

Perkins Miller

lines on the record: 83
first: 2023-08-22
most recent: 2023-08-22
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Sure. And I think if there were anti-trans commentary and again, this idea, these ad hominem remarks that are directed at the individuals, of course, we don't stand for that. And I consider myself as best I can, an ally, the LGBTQ plus community, especially as the father of a trans child. I was very personally meaningful to me.”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There is a tension there, though. So, you know, Harry Potter, I think, just it's all in there. It's a huge franchise, it's a massive business for Universal. JK Rowling is a famous person, is a huge community. You have a policy of inclusion. You know, my thesis about every platform is that the product is fundamentally content moderation. That's the thing you're making that makes everybody participate. Are you at the point where you're saying, look, Harry Potter fans on the official Harry Potter forum, we are not going to talk about JK Rowling's views towards trans people. We're just going to stay focused on the imagined world. Is that the content moderation decision that enables the business? Because that really is the heart of all this, right? You've got to make that kind of decision at scale and get more of them right than wrong.”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Important that we allow people's voices to be heard across the world. And again, it's an imperfect task I remind everybody every day, like this is not something where there's a finish line and there's going to be nuance and there's going to be debate to occur. But really, if we sort of hold two things true for ourselves, which is We're dedicated to these imagined worlds, and all they mean to people for the imagination. And we just make sure that the platform and the people who are on it to celebrate it behave as best they can and they're inclusive of one another. That's the role we play. And we kind of let the other, the business side that may be churning around a given IP or some other political questions that churn around IP. We kind of leave those to the side and just stay focused on that community in the imagined world.”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have a couple things that you maybe can tease out of that. So, one, just to remember, we're communities in celebration of these virtual worlds. So, and we think that the approach to them is really about let's talk about Harry Potter, you know, let's talk about Hogwarts and let's talk about what the magic is that's around that franchise. There's of course going to be discussion along the way if things get politicized or there's different agendas. You know, we're really, again, focused on the imagined world that people want to celebrate because that's the IP that is meaningful. We also, though, on the other hand, it relates to inclusion and diversity. We have a very strong policy of inclusion. And, you know, if there's toxic behavior on the platform, we don't allow for that. And if the admins on our platform are incredibly supportive of that because it's really...”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Classic, and they're trying to level up because they're rediscovering the game. Or whatever it may be that they're in anime series that is just replaying on Crunchy Rolls. So there's all this consumption of content and entertainment that happens all around the world. That's not necessarily tied to the sharp end of the spear of a release date. And so I think that's a really key distinction that, and we try to work with our partners in this and explain like, you know, you've got legacy inheritance behind a lot of these franchises. And the great thing about fandom as a category and as a business is that we actually dedicate ourselves to supporting these franchises over the kind of duration of their existence. So we're about the last 50 years. We're not necessarily just about what maybe launching in six months. So that's a really key distinction.”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tailwind behind it. We still have those communities on the platform. They're very engaged. And, you know, one of the things that I find is because there's sometimes a change in objective that a company may have who may own the IP, may they may have a change of heart about what to release or a change in creative vision or whatever it may be or the delay in a game and kind of the distinction I see is that Because we're community driven, it's really just about what fans want to talk about and look at and play. And so there's no agenda other than to celebrate your nerddom. So actually, you know, 85% of the traffic to our platforms is on IP that's already released. And this is all just people going back to look at the original series or TNG on the Star Trek side or to go back to World War.”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't see a lot of it. I mean, it's very hard to kind of paint this with sort of one brush because those communities are all different and there's different degrees. I mean, you can think about the Harry Potter communities and Potter Moore. And, you know, that's a very large community of people that actually has got a lot of official.”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We actually think of ourselves as this kind of key partner to these folks. I mean, we're not creating movies. We're not making video games. So we're in the business of just sort of celebrating the content that they create.”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Place where it's a source of record. I think it's incredibly valuable. And we worked very closely with the IP holders around it. And we're a good source of information. And we do surveys and polls to kind of help.”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do. I mean, we have hundreds of official wikis on our platform. We hear all the time about how producers and writers actually use our platform when they're creating content because a lot of these major franchises you know have long story arcs really complex narratives. And they're like, wait a minute, what happened in that episode? Or when was that? Okay, that was 20 years ago. Like, wait a minute. We don't want to get this right so we can connect the dots correctly. So we do. We have these official relationships because I think we provide a real service because the communities are so dedicated to this IP. There are really, in a lot of ways, this are a source of truth. And as you think about the evolution of IP holders, I mean, people are going to transition. Somebody who is writing for Star Trek 20 years ago is different from somebody who's writing for Star Trek today. And to have one sort of”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I try to be as data driven as we can and again use those sort of scenarios and the idea of like, okay, can we look around us and see what's working to give us a little bit of directionally correct confidence and then make the quick decision as quickly as we can with imperfect information.”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then we go from there and make the decision as quickly as we can. And we know we do so with imperfect information. I think Bezos' note about 70% good is good enough is exactly right.”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I am very much a calculated risk person, kind of in my personal life and as a leader in a business. I'm pretty data driven. I consume a lot of data because I find it to give me really important context. And so the way we make decisions here is let's focus on a couple things. Number one is does it serve the mission and vision for the business? Number two, what does the data tell us? Is it something that is strong and growing or is it weak and failing so we can get some directionally correct information? Number three, can we see a comparable in the market around us? Because I, you know, I very much believe that there's many lessons to be learned by just looking around what it read it do, what did Pinterest do, what's been happening over at IGN. So those are things that we can look at to give us directional guidance on what works and doesn't work. And then we, you know, again, pretty quickly frame up the opportunity. So is it a kind of a bread box or a t-shirt exercise? How big is it?”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For people who are passionate about them is incredibly important. And I don't see that going away because, again, there are these, we know fans have these passion points and they want to consume kind of everything they can about the things they love.”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Where's it going? And I think that role of essentially being able to put the markers out on the road to get people to say here's where we need to go follow. I think that role is really important. And I think the team does a really good job. And I think there's relevancy there. And it's not just all transactional. And I think what we think about is, well, where are the places our voices need to be broadcast? And I think those platforms change, right? So have to do things on TikTok and have to be on Snap and have to do things better on YouTube. And we think about, well, where does that loop back on a wiki? How do you show that content so people get a sense of what's there? And some of it is transactional. So we have fanatical. And if you're reading a review on GameSpot, can you go buy that game? Sure. Do we want to make that as easy as possible? Absolutely. But I do think that the role of games journalism to provide, again, those signposts for these franchises.”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't feel bad. We have a lot of gamers on our team here. And I'm probably the weakest among them, to be clear. But I find, and again, what we find from our research too is that people are so curious about games and the community around game launches and changes to games and that role that the journalists provide in terms of giving people those signposts where your favorite franchise.”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“didn't have. And I think those brands, the GameSpot, the Metacrita, TV guide, Giant Bomb, are really representative of the best in class for getting people engaged at that point of discovery.”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I 100% believe in the team at GameSpot and the team at Metacritic and the folks at Giant Bomb and a couple people working GameFQs and TV Guide. I mean, these are really good brands. The question is, you know, again, we've got to be smart about how do we place them in the right position to drive that growth. That meant to prioritize the work before us. And the strategy for buying these businesses, I think, was pretty straightforward. It was, as I kind of talked about that connective tissue of those connective dots, it's fans have questions about what to watch, where to watch it, what game to play, is it good. And we have this huge bulk of information to help people enjoy the movie better or play the game better. And so we just really wanted to sort of have this point of discovery, this point of engagement.”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I want to be clear we didn't cut most of the editorial staffs. We left a very significant editorial staff in place and they're very good. We also have editorial staff that was in place at fandom before. We had incredible team and screen junkies and fandom productions. So it is always a difficult decision to sort of think about, okay, well, how do we get two plus two equal five as we grow these companies? But it wasn't one where we sort of said, look, we're going to leave these businesses in a position where it's made difficult to invest and drive growth because we believe in the brands.”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As a whole, and that's been our practice, we've added a lot of staff every year, but we've hired a lot of people, but we've done so because we've always been able to see down the road far enough that we know kind of which way to turn the wheel and where to make the investments. And again, it's a tricky business. And I really understand the impacts, of course, on individuals. I take it incredibly seriously. But I'm also a CEO of a company that is tasked with driving profitable growth. So that's the balance you have to strike. And that's sort of the approach I took when we were, you know, looking at how do we build this set of brands to the next level of growth where we just need to get some perspective and put them in the right orientation so we know which way to turn and which way to place investment.”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As we talk about restructuring and acquire businesses, I mean, there's always going to be overlap. I mean, they're just going to be the some redundancy that you just have to kind of work through. And that's what a restructuring. And then there's some decisions that are business driven around how do you set ourselves up for success with the right cost and revenue basis. I'm an operator that believes that we really want to be oriented around profitable growth and being able to at least see down the road far enough to decide which way to turn the wheel. And so as a consequence, when you acquire a business, especially one that from a business standpoint was struggling, in order to give me enough and give us as operators enough perspective to see down the road, you've got to pump the brakes and be able to see down the road far enough to know, okay, we need to go right with this business or left with this business. And that if we're able to do that, you know, getting that visibility, then we can push behind investment. I mean, you look at fandom.”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We do. I'm very sensitive to the idea of focus. And I think the test for us is we think about fan identity, how broader reach is it between what do I want to watch and what is it I'm watching? Or what game do I want to play and how do I play the game? Those are actually pretty connected issues for me. And even to the point of like, and what game do I buy? And so that's one of the reasons why we've been pretty disciplined about our operating structure, that we're like, there's not a lot of daylight between, what game do I buy? What show should I watch? And how do I play that game? And what does this show mean? And can I buy that game? And so as a consequence, because the connective tissue is so tight, having a structure that's functionally oriented gives us actually a lot of leverage.”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're very functionally oriented and we try to be as flat as we can. And so we have chief product officer, chief technology officer, chief marketing officer, chief business, community officer. And then we have a chief revenue officer. And then we have a strong GNA group with a CFO and a CHRO and a general counsel. So that's a broadly written how we're organized in terms of functional. product and tech community business strategy, marketing, sales and commerce, and then the GNA structural support. That's how we're organized.”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our best with data to try to make sure it's as relevant as possible and try to get as right as we can. But that at the core, the fact that we have creators creating content and celebration of these IPs is what's really distinct and kind of unique for fandom. We're similar, I guess, in the sense that we provide a platform for voice for people, you know, which I think is really important that this new media landscape, you know, everybody can be a creator and everybody can have a voice. And I think just like every other platform, fandom provides the tools to do that. It just so happens that our community is really kind of focused around galvanizing around the IP and around the story and less interested as much in personal aggrandizement or personal performance. So it's much more about like, what do I know about Star Trek? What do I know about Fortnite? Those are the things that really are celebrated on our platform.”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Dedicated just to support these communities. We want to make sure the tools work. We want to make sure the platform's stable. We make sure that they have the best tools in the hand to do the work they want to do. And so I think that's what's a little bit distinct and different from a sort of a traditional user generated content platform where it's really about celebrating the IP and creating the tools to do it. We run advertising on the platform to fund that. We're not apologetic about it.”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Probably best to start on the differences fandom, because we're dedicated to the pursuit of these imagined worlds, we kind of lose some of the baggage that you get on more traditional sort of social platforms where there's a fair amount of toxicity that can get generated, where people are kind of out for their own self-interest. You know, you see a lot of this idea that there's big influencers sort of trying to nudge their way to the top. communities are really about celebrating what's going on with game of thrones you know what are the icons that are involved in that story and what is the story arc and you know what is the dynamic how to dragons play the role and and they want to debate the sort of the conditions and canon the content creators for a platform who are awesome you know they really are the experts in these spaces and so they come together as a community and we do we have a whole team”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think about that a lot, right? You watch something. Let's use Game of Thrones as an example. I think this was like peak wiki as you're watching television in American culture at least. You're watching something. It's complicated. There's a lot of lore. You need to figure out what's going on. You're going to fall down the rabbit hole of some wiki or the other. It's going to explain everything to you. And it's core that is a user generated content platform, right? You have people who are contributing for free. You have some moderators. You have editors perhaps. And you have an underlying platform that is a technology product to enable all this to happen. You know, if you squin, it looks more like YouTube or Instagram or anything. What are the differences and what are the similarities as you think about, okay, I run a giant user-generated content platform. It's not Wikipedia, right? Wikipedia is constantly asking people to donate for money. It's free. It has a volunteer ethos. You're running something at scale for profit. You've got a big private equity investor. And you've got the same challenges as the other big for-profit.”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Fans have this sense of identity. Personally, I'm a Star Trek nerd. And I read silly fantasy books, and I'm not reading all my silly business books. There's a part of my identity that's grounded in sci-fi. And so I love a place where I can kind of go down the rabbit hole and discover what I want to watch next and what game I want to play next. And so that's been over the last sort of almost 20 years, the evolution of fandom as this platform. And people do find their way into this, again, this matrix as they're trying to kind of figure out what to watch or what to play.”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Are 200,000 plus of them, and they reach over 300 million people a month or something that we can build on in order to try to celebrate people's passions for these imagined worlds. And so we have been growing fandom, these core wikis, but we've also been acquiring businesses. We acquired a business called Fanatical, which is the leading sort of online commerce platform if you want to buy an online video game. We bought a series of businesses that are for people who are trying to navigate the world of entertainment. So we own Metacritic and TV Guide and GameSpot and Giant Bomb. These are platforms that allow people to navigate their way into what to watch, where to watch, how to play. We reached now probably 350 million visitors a month across all these platforms around the world. And the mission is pretty straightforward. I mean, we believe that”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Phantom started at its core with Jimmy Wales, who is the founder of Wikipedia. I'm having this moment and thinking, you know what, there's probably more that I can do, believe it or not. The world's greatest encyclopedia to do more for people to celebrate their nerddom and fandom, frankly. And so he spun out on the same Wikimedia platform, first this idea of like WikiCities. And he thought that communities would come together and coalesce sort of on a geographic basis. But what happened over time and over the years is that people started to merge and celebrate these imagined worlds. You had these people coming around Star Trek and Lord of the Rings and World of Warcraft and every anime series you can imagine and started to sort of document and celebrate the lore. And it kind of became the home of this kind of canon of these imagined fantasy worlds across gaming and movies and TV. And we renamed it fandom probably about seven years ago. I joined about four and a half years ago. We've sort of been focused on this idea that these wikis or these blogs, which”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I am really excited to talk to you. I think there's something really big happening on the internet with our platforms, with communities. Fandom is right at the heart of it. It's a company that's been around for a long time. And it seems like it's going through a lot of changes of its own. So a lot to talk about. But I just want to start at the very beginning for people who are coming into this. They've probably encountered a fandom site in the past, but maybe not fandom itself. The company's been around since 2004. It started as kind of the sister to Wikipedia and more profit-driven way. Explain to people what fandom is.”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Will contribute millions of pieces of content to the platform, and fandom surrounds all that content with ads and then uses all that data to generate insights about how fans think about their favorite games, TV shows, and movies. And while you might enjoy the content and communities on fandom's thousands of sites, looking at Baldur's Gate Quest Walkthroughs or ridiculous Star Wars character names, the commercialization of all of it means that people have a lot of complaints about the user experience, particularly the sheer number of ads. So I asked Perkins about all those ads covering every fandom wiki. How much is too much and how much does fandom need to stay afloat? And does he think about it differently on mobile, where small screen real estate is at a premium? We also talked about what it means to host user-generated content here in 2023. If you're a decoder listener, you know that one of our big ideas is that the product of a social network is fundamentally content moderation.”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Neil Li Patel, editor in chief of the Verge. And Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today I'm talking to Perkins Miller, the CEO of Fandom, which runs thousands of wikis for everything from Disney to the Matrix to Taylor Swift to Grand Theft Auto. Fandom also runs several publications like TV Guide, Metacritic, and GameSpot. It's a big, complicated media company and a big complicated time for media companies. Fandom has an interesting history. It started as a company called Wikia, the commercialized sister company to Wikipedia. If Wikipedia is the noble, community-supported encyclopedia, then fandom is the explicitly profit-driven entertainment platform. And that means a lot of things that often collide with how people think about wikis. For example, Perkins talks about fandom like you would talk about any other big ad supported media company with tons of user-generated content. Millions of people”
2023-08-22 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Fandom runs some of the biggest communities on the web. Can CEO Perkins Miller keep them happy? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT