♪ emily: i am emily chang. this is "best of bloomberg technology," where we bring you all our top interviews from this week and -- in tech. my exclusive interview with arianna huffington from the wsj tliv tech conference in laguna beach, california. plus, we will sit down with facebook's head of messaging to find out how he plans to make it the default messaging app. after a summer of disappointment at the box office, disney doubled down on fantasy.

why ceo bob iger believes it superhero showdown, musical animation, and the force will pack theaters this fall. first to our lead, this week we brought you "bloomberg technology" from the conference in laguna beach where we had conversations with some of the biggest names in tech. let's kick off with my interview with arianna huffington. we started talking about uber's volatile year and the changing role of travis kalanick. arianna: he is on the board, and he is very active. he obviously built uber into the juggernaut it is now. he passed the baton. he was the one who introduced darrah at the all hands when he took over as ceo. it was a very nice transition of power. he has been amazing. he has been handling all the

problems, whether it is what is happening in london with the suspension of uber's license to the deal in process with softbank. he has been a great leader. confidence and willing to show humility in the appropriate times and very committed to building a thriving culture and company. emily: you mentioned the situation uber is facing in london, multiple legal probes elsewhere. what approach do you hope to see dara take to regulation and the law around the world going forward? arianna: we need to do better at serving the communities where uber exists around the world. we need to make sure we add to communities beyond the value we already add in terms of mobility and in terms of jobs, which is not to be underestimated. the launch of 180 days of change

which started with allowing tipping for drivers, which starts with allowing people to rebuild their relationship with drivers. emily: would you say the fractiousness of the board from the outside is now changing? arianna: the board is changing. we are now 11. we have grown. if they softbank deal goes through, the new governance measures that are going to be put in place, which include additional independent board members and a new chair, all of these things are really going to make sure that uber has a world-class governance before going ipo in 2019. emily: we understand that you have been a close confidant for travis kalanick.

what is your relationship with him? arianna: he is a friend. i'm excited to see his journey. he is only 41. he has a lot of life ahead of him. i'm excited to see what he is going to do. emily: we have recently seen the harvey weinstein scandal come out and how men can use their power. companies approached sexual-harassment in confusing ways. how do we put guardrails around what is tolerated and what is not? arianna: we see two issues here. one is to end the cult of the top performer. there is this cult in silicon valley and hollywood where, if you are delivering results or great performance, then a lot is forgiven.

the other issue is for us to break the silence. people see things, and they do not say anything, especially if whoever is involved is someone in a powerful position. we see that in politics also. i would love to see more republicans speaking out about what is happening at the white house. so breaking the silence before the few courageous people, the courageous women who came forward andy harvey weinstein case, before it has to come to that point. emily: in politics, you mentioned our president seems to be very divisive. what are your biggest concerns now that we are nine months into this current administration? arianna: my biggest concern is that so few republicans are speaking out.

it was great to see senator mccain last night speaking out and of course it has been great to see senator corker speaking out. it is so much up to republicans. this is not a partisan issue. it really involves the safety of the country. we need republicans. democrats, of course, but republicans have a lot more impact if they speak out about what is happening. emily: facebook, twitter, google, they are now having to answer to congress for russian meddling on their platforms. what is the responsibility of these companies when it comes to foreign actors weaponizing the tools they create? arianna: it is very important to increase oversight. facebook is hiring more people, investing in machine learning to catch the creation of these fake accounts. whatever you think of free speech, nobody wants to see fake

accounts being started. i think there is another problem, which is what we are addressing. in the international economy, a lot of these companies have incentives to hijack more and more of our attention. we see that having incredible problems, especially when it comes to teenagers and college students. you saw the article in the new york times over the weekend about the mental health problems among teenagers increasing dramatically. emily: you are announcing a partnership with samsung to turn a smart phone into a dumb phone. what do you mean by that? arianna: when you do not want to be interrupted like when you are with family or sleeping, then you can put your phone into what we call "drive mode." during that time, you will not be able to receive calls, texts, notifications. if you have a vip list if you need to get a call from a child or a spouse, you will be able to

do that. one is bidirectional. if you put it into "drive mode," it will tell you when you are supposed to be out of it. it will also give you a mirror of your social media use. it will tell you you were on instagram for nine hours and ask if you want to change that. it will give you notifications and then shut you out. emily: what is the next step? arianna: it is our work with corporations. we are going to companies. we work to improve culture and outcomes in terms of both productivity and well-being. we are also a media platform which increases awareness around these issues. both are bringing together the latest science and also new models. there are a lot of people who are practicing taking care of

themselves and recharging. i have seen the impact this has on their productivity and performance. emily: that was arianna huffington. coming up, we will have more from laguna beach including our conversation with facebook vp of messaging products. david marcus, how the social media giant plans to become the default messaging app. that is next. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ emily: this week, bloomberg learned that facebook is looking to hire employees who have u.s. security clearance. they want to eliminate the possibility of foreign actors of using facebook for social media campaigns before elections. facebook declined to comment on this story. sticking with facebook and one of the tech leaders in attendance at this year's conference, was facebook vp of messaging products, david marcus. he was recruited personally by mark zuckerberg. i asked marcus how much revenue the company is driving into advertising. david: we do not break out revenues for specific products, but i can say it is still very early in the developed for messaging as a business or facebook. the early signs are promising.

if you redirect people from either a facebook ad, instagram ad, or a messenger ad, you will increase roi of your business objective. that is a good sign that we are allowing businesses to create more conversations with the customers and generate more revenues. i have tons of examples for you, but a good one to share for instance is that t-mobile is now selling data plans and devices on messenger, and they are saying a seven x conversion increase in comparison to traditional web shopping, because they are able to re-create the experience would have inside a store with ui elements inside messenger.

emily: the competition in the chat space is heating up. you have got apple imessage, skype, and even whatsapp trying to own this relationship. how do you see messenger standing out amidst the competition? david: it is a very different geographical split between different types of messaging apps. what we see is that whatsapp is really strong in certain markets like latin america or india. we are very strong in north america and western and central europe. i think one differentiation that messenger has is really groups today. when you create a group, you are never seeing phone numbers. it is always identities so you know exactly who you're talking to at any point in time. you can send media very quickly. when you add a device, it works flawlessly. you have all of these great chat extensions from creating a

playlist with friends to playing games or making plans. you can do all of these things much better on messenger, and it is a key differentiator for us. we will continue to invest in groups and in real time. you can upgrade from texting to live video in groups. it is a really delightful experience with augmented reality. we really feel that we have a key advantage here, and we are going to continue to invest in it. emily: you have new features like location, polling, spotify, the ability to buy movie tickets on fandango, share recipes from the food network. how are these driving user growth? what trends do you see? david: those experiences are driving engagement.

once you have those types of expenses, you tend to stick with messenger and create more conversations on messenger. when people actually get what they want, when we can infer intent from a conversation and then leverage m to suggest the right thing at the right time, what we see are that people are having a better experience and sticking around on messenger to create more groups and more conversations. emily: with m, you are referencing ai technology. some people are saying that facebook seems to be a little behind when it comes to the home ai game. amazon echo, google, these are products that are already in people's homes. do you think that facebook and facebook messenger have some catching up to do? david: i think we are having a very different approach here. the current experience you have is that they suggest things that you want to do based off of conversation, and it is really popping up at the right time.

as a result, we tend to not disappoint when you have an intent you want to complete. we only surface suggestions when we feel confident that this is what you want to do. the model we have been working on right now is the model we have been talking about with suggestions in conversations, and we are continuing to invest in bringing a more full-fledged assistant to market. we have been working on it for a while. we really want to ship something that is valuable and will not let people down. it is really important. this is one where we do not want to rush to market. we want to get it right. and once we get it right, we will ship it to the 1.3 billion people on messenger and counting. emily: facebook along with google and twitter will speak before the house intelligence committee about russian meddling on the platforms.

what responsibility does facebook bear here? what mistakes do you think were made? david: one thing i want to say when those things come up, we have been talking a lot about the responsibility of the platform, and clearly we have a lot of responsibility given our reach. i want to highlight one thing. we talk about the downsides of the platform come but we never talk about the upsides. this is something i feel very passionate about. the number of people who connect with other people around the world that have an orphan disease like they have, and they can connect with them in ways that they cannot connect with friends or family, the fact that we had turned on safety alerts about 650 times since we launched it and have one billion notifications going to people to notify them everything is ok, and the fact that we have raised millions of dollars for harvey on the platform, these are things we do not talk about. there is so much goodness on the platforms. when we operate at this scale, there are things that happened

that should never happen on the platform, but we do have a clear, crystal plan on how we will go about it. we are hiring thousands of people to ensure that what happened on the platform doesn't happen again, and we are collaborating with special counsel in congress on these investigations, but we are taking this very seriously. we have a plan that both mark and cheryl outlined recently, and we are going to go after it very aggressively. emily: these platforms can be used for good, but they can just as easily be used for bad. when it comes to advertising, we are seeing blind spots in how facebook developed its advertising system. whether it is targeting racists or fake accounts buying russian advertisements, these are things that facebook has apologized for, but as you continue to build out advertising capabilities in messenger, are you looking for ways that your platform can be abused, and are you taking steps to prevent it? david: we can definitely be better at this.

all of these things that are currently being raised are things that have made us realize that, as we roll new things out, we need to continue to be more thoughtful and try to over think how the platform can be used in ways that it was not designed for. going forward, that is definitely what we are going to do. we tend to learn really quickly and fix things very quickly. we had done this in the past, and i have no doubt we will do it again this time. emily: that was facebook vp of messaging platforms, david marcus. details on when gm might see a payoff from ridesharing investments. this is bloomberg. ♪ ♪

emily: automation in the drivers seat. shares in gm have risen over the last year 45%. deutsche bank expects a big push coming for gm self driving cars. i sat down with gm president dan and and asked him about this analyst call. dan: we actually think one of the big advantages we have today is that we have everything integrated under one roof. we have the advanced software engineering capability, the vehicle integration, the vehicle manufacturing fees, and what is allowing us to move so quickly is that we have all of that capability under one roof. that gives us that real speed advantage. emily: so you are saying that moving out of the mobility business is not an option now? dan: we are moving as fast as we can to get to commercial deployment of this technology. we believe the best way to do

that is to have all of the capability under one roof. emily: investors are starting to realize gm's ability to diversify, perhaps better than other automakers. whether it be through ridesharing, self driving cars, some of these things are still out in the future. how does it all come together for you? and when? dan: when you think about shared mobility and automation, we believe there will eventually be automation in all vehicles along with electricity. it is back to the theme of having all the capabilities we have under one roof gives us a real advantage on how fast we can move and get this technology deployed commercially. emily: you have made a big strategic investment in lyft. how do you leverage what you have learned? dan: we have a very productive investment relationship with lyft which gives us a perspective into the ridesharing business. we think it is really in the

early stages of shared mobility. we are just at the beginning, and there is much more to come. emily: uber has had some struggles over the last several months. do you see some opportunities there? dan: in what sense? emily: opportunities to take advantage of a weakness? dan: we see ridesharing over all as at the intersection of autonomous. ridesharing today accounts for 0.1% of all miles traveled. we still have 99.9% of the opportunity, so it is still very early days. we think the autonomous technology we will bring to fruition is the key to unlocking a lot of that next set of opportunities. emily: why have you not bought lyft outright? dan: we have a lot of options when it comes to going to market. we could go to market in our own network capability, in different partnerships. all options are open at this time. emily: how do you decide which is the best? at one point do you -- now that

you have learned all this, do you make a decision to move forward? dan: the closer it comes to being commercially deployed, the more clarity that comes. what really matters is to get the total vehicle profitable. we do believe in an all electric future at general motors, and we believe that in order for that to come to fruition overtime, we need to get the cost of battery electric cars down to in line or better than internal combustion engine cars. we, as a company, have the capability to solve that problem. we do still have a little more work to go. emily: when it comes to itself driving cars, gm has been able to move faster than i think a lot of people expected.

when you say self driving cars will be on the roads in larger numbers in a few years, what you mean by a few years? give us some more detail on the timeline. dan: i really cannot get more specific than that at this point in time. all i can say is that things are moving very quickly. we believe we have an interesting approach in having all the capability integrated in one place, and that is giving us the ability to move at speed. we feel we have an obligation to move this technology to commercial deployment as soon as possible because of the impact it could have on improving road safety. .emily: that was gm's president dan ammann. coming up, more from the laguna beach conference. his predecessor john chambers legacy as he plans to depart the company. the movie business may be in a world of trouble, but bob iger is confident that disney's portfolio of super hero films will pack a punch in the coming months. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ emily: welcome back to the "best of bloomberg technology." i am emily chang. the name of the game at cisco the last few years has been transition from legacy hardware to software and services. the push has been led by the ceo chuck robbins. i caught up with him at the wsj conference in laguna beach and asked about cisco's role in building the cities of tomorrow. >> what we see happening around the world, whether it's a company, a city, a country, technology is at the heart of every strategy. we get that. cities are no different. whether it's meeting the objectives that cities have around revenue generation or solving some of the problems

they have like parking or like lighting costs, etc., all of those now can be solved or achieved through the use of technology. just a quick example, 20% of the lighting costs in the world are 20% of the energy costs that come from lighting. just by connecting these lights are and controlling them more effectively, you can reduce that in the cities by 50%-75%. there is a tremendous opportunity out there. the network is at the heart of making that happen. emily: how do you turn that into big business? when do we see this adding substantially to the bottom line? chuck: we are operating in 120 cities around the world right now. driving projects. we also have digitization agreements with 16 countries around the world where we are helping them with education and health care. i think all of it continues to contribute to the transition you talked about as you opened the show. around moving to more software with software platforms in addition to the network.

we have innovation going on across all of these areas in helping the cities achieve their objectives. it's a long road with these businesses but we think it's going to be a great business for a long time. emily: you have said cisco will not stick its neck in the sand and ignore the changing realities of the industry. how would you rate your progress so far making that transition? chuck: i never think we are going fast enough but i don't think any ceo does. when we started this, we had a couple of big objectives we want wanted -- we wanted to drive. one was the transition to software. in eight quarters, our deferred software revenue on our balance sheet doubled from $2.5 billion to $5 billion. that is significant. we have an over $10 billion software business today. we wanted to also move toward more recurring revenue as a percentage of our business and last quarter we exited at 31% which was up four points from

the prior year. on a big business that is a big move. our product revenue, we had over $1 billion of that coming from recurring revenue which was up 40% year-over-year, the first time it had over been over one billion in one quarter which represented 11% of the product revenue. we made progress there and we have massive innovation we have been working on in the core franchises which was another key objective for us. emily: when will see software and services revenue become the driving force of growth? chuck: if you look right now, at where we are headed, i think they are going to be the drivers of growth over the next few years, particularly if you look at the launch we did the summer. because one of the things we wanted to do was re-energized our core franchises and bring a software model to our core franchises. we did that this summer. we launched the very early phases of what we call intuitive networking, which is intent-based networking which is a category. what it allows you to do is take the priorities of your business and drive them through to how you run your infrastructure, as you well as drive context out of the infrastructure through analytics.

we have rewritten all of our software. we got analyst capability coming out of every aspect of our technology. and we launched a subscription business on top of our core switching platforms which people did not think we could do and we are having a uptake on that. emily: you have been aggressive on m&a. are you open to more acquisitions? chuck: we are open to any acquisition that aligns to where we want to go. i have said that repeatedly. when we think about innovation, we spend a lot of money on internal r&d and wanted to refocus that on our core which we have done. the m&a engine. i think we bought somewhere between 15 and 20 companies since i became ceo. we're also driving a lot of deep strategic partnerships like what we have done with apple and inspur and rockwell and more partnerships will come from us. one other interesting aspect we have begun to implement is co-development, co-innovating with our customers in an iterative way. we will continue to use all of

those. emily: john chambers, who was the ceo for many decades before you, will be stepping down from the board at the end of this year. many of the executives that he hired have also left the company. what does that kind of sea change mean? what does it signify? chuck: this was part of his plan. he's got so many things he's off doing now. he is into startups and wants to help drive the startup capacity in the united states. i think he will do great things. but if you look at the leadership team we put in place, we really just need to ensure that we had the leadership team that really bought into the vision of where we wanted to take the company. i think we have that today and we are executing really well. emily: the supreme court just decided to hear the microsoft's case against the doj over whether companies can be forced to hand over information on their customers stored on servers outside the united states.

cisco has backed microsoft when it comes to this particular case. what are your biggest concerns? do you worry this could set a precedent? chuck: i don't worry so much about a precedent. these are policy issues. what i think -- we do support microsoft in this case. we believe that the countries need to define what the policies are. in fact, in this case, we believe countries that are involved actually need to figure out what are the cross-border data privacy issues and how will we deal with them. the technology can be deployed in whatever way aligns with the policy, but we have always just viewed this as a policy issue that the governments need to decide. emily: the tech industry has made some effort to bridge the gap with washington. i am curious. in silicon valley, that is largely anti-trump. have you seen the efforts to engage what the administration actually pays off? chuck: if you look at the priorities coming out of washington from a business

perspective, we remain very active in congress and on tax reform. we remain active on discussions around high skilled immigration, all the things that matter. there is tremendous progress. if you look at what's happened with the early framework for tax reform and what we see happen this week, i think they are making progress. emily: you're happy with what you see? chuck: i am happy with the business imperatives they are trying to do in washington, absolutely. emily: what are you unhappy with? chuck: my 16-year-old's latest grades. there are a lot of things you can be unhappy about. in washington, you just have to -- it's always a dynamic place. there is obviously lots of politics and, in my view, more discussion about things that divide us than things that unify us. i think -- but again, with the approach that was taken on trying to get this process for

corporate tax reform done, it was done across the house, it was done across the senate as well as the executive branch. i think that is promising so we are hopeful. emily: that was the cisco ceo chuck robbins. netflix reported a blockbuster third quarter. the company blowing past growth charts. netflix added 6.3 million subscribers, nearly 4.5 million overseas, surpassing expected subscriber growth. it's an encouraging sign for investors since they just announced their first price hike since 2015. amazon announced it will sever ties with harvey weinstein's former production company. weinstein was fired after a litany of sexual harassment allegations against him. amazon had ordered two seasons of a high profile project produced by the embattled production company starring robert de niro and julianne moore. that show will no longer be made. in further developments, roy price resigned as the head of amazon's movie and tv studio after allegations of sexual harassment. amazon studios chief operating officer albert chang will

oversee the studio while amazon searches for a replacement. price but their push and to tv and and video production for the estimated budget of $4.5 billion in 2017. price has not responded to a request for comment. after the worst summer box office for hollywood in a decade, bob iger has high hopes for his company's fall releases. that includes the new "thor" film. why is he confident of a box office turnaround? we talked about the importance of this film. >> it's important and not just to disney but the whole industry. we have been writing about hollywood's big disappointments. the industry is down about 5% this year. but it looks like things could turn around a bit in the last quarter in large part due to disney as the new "thor" looks good and a new pixar movie and star wars in december and that could get more people into theaters. emily: what are box office

projections here? >> "thor" looks like it will open $105 million and do $270 million domestically. it will make it one of the top 10 movies of the year. the other two movies will both be over $200 million. star wars -- "rogue one" did over $1 billion. everyone expects the latest star wars sequel to do more than that. emily: if these sequels and revivals have not been doing well, why do they keep making them? >> because when they do do well, they make a lot of money. that is the reason. i asked bob iger about keeping these things fresh. he says it's a lot of work and new stories, new places for the heroes to go, new characters. in the case of thor, it's a funny movie so there was kind of a change in tone from the past.

there is a lot more humor in this which people seem to respond to in these superhero movies these days. emily: we do have a chart showing what movie theaters -- you can see how they have tumbled over the last year. in terms of keeping things fresh, one of the things that's him him fresh, one of the things that's interesting is the marvel comics, the print editions, they have tried to increase diversity. thor is now a woman and iron man is a black woman from m.i.t.. when will see that kind of diversity translate onto the screen? >> you are starting to see it. there were definitely new characters. there was a big woman star, cate blanchett in the new thor movie. you will see "black panther" directed by african-american director next year. it is starting to work. it is a big issue in hollywood these days. diversity of all kinds. you will start to see it reflect more in the product as well. emily: what would a hit mean for the film business? >> well, right now, we are just trying to get back to even for

the year. last year was a record year. these three disney movies do well, warner bros. has "justice league" coming out and we could get back to breakeven and that will at least take away this feeling that people are not going to movies anymore. emily: coming up, the founder of fast the cofounder of paypal on ending predatory lending. my interview with max levchin is next. we are streaming on twitter so check us out at 5:00 p.m. in new york and 2:00 p.m. in san francisco. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ emily: time warner/cnn has received a waiver for flying drones above crowds. they can use remote control devices from insurance inspections to covering news.

the approval is the first time the u.s. government agency has granted a waiver for unlimited flights over people. previous exemptions allowed flights of drones over people in closed set operations and only when tethered with a maximum height of 21 feet. this week, top business and tech leaders gathered at the wall street journal conference in laguna beach, california. among them, max levchin. before entering the tech lending space, he cofounded paypal. in my exclusive interview with levchin, i asked about the trends he sees in the lending arena now. max: i think we are just about ready to enter the consolidation phase of this new market where companies good at managing risk and smart about underwriting, smart in reserving are set up for long-term success and will start picking up the stragglers, the wanted done of the capitol with the managing teams and are not ready to take on both the risk management demands and the regulatory demands of the space.

emily: what do you see happening when it comes to predatory lending? max: i think the promise, the thing we have come here to do in .3one way is to get rid of predatory lending. it's to shine a spotlight of what is the right and wrong way of doing this, to bring more credit to those who are traditionally excluded, pushed out by the players into the darker reaches of pawnshops. i think the opportunity is still there. we're all working on it very hard. but i would say the dent that has been made by the industry is fairly small. we think we are doing our part and then some but there is a lot of people who have no access to credit whatsoever. emily: talk to us about the newest developments at affirm

and how you guys are trying to combat some of these trends? max: affirm has been scaling very steadily over the past five or six years since we have been around. we are focused on this idea of honest finance being able to deliver a loan product to the consumer that uniquely tailored to the purchase they are trying with very transparent pricing, something we can commit to that will not change. there will be no hidden fees or interest rate changes or any other plagues that hurt consumers and would give the industry a bad name. deservedly in many ways. we have just been working on that for a long time and have picked up a lot of happy customers. we have been hovering well north of 80. for a comparison, traditional banks have a negative nps score so that's an accomplishment i am proud of. what of big things we have been able to show with real data is that we open our credit excess, we approved more than 30% knew people than usual financial institution. we are actively bringing in

credit access to audiences that are traditionally excluded. i think that is the best way of doing it, create responsible vehicles, lend money to those who can afford to borrow it but provide guidance and guardrails to not overextend people and put them into a cycle of debt. emily: the equifax hack is in the spotlight. hundreds of millions of people having their private information stolen. you were just asked on stage if equifax should even exist. you said credit bureaus should exist but how do we avoid risks like this? max: i think it's the reality that many traditional players have not yet come to full terms with. security is no longer optional. it used to be the joke in the security industry that cryptography and security is the insurance policy you only buy after your house burns down. it sounds a lot enough alarm that teaches everyone in the industry to do yourself and your customers a favor, encrypt your

data and have real security practices. we should spend a lot of our time pointing out how easy it is to fix that problem. we did not have to have that. emily: i'm curious what your thoughts are on bitcoin. jamie dimon says it's a fraud. how are you thinking about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies? what is their future? max: i think it's a developing story in the sense that from a skeptical perspective, it's a hammer looking for nails. every time somebody pitches me a cool new cryptocurrency-based company, can this be done without bitcoin and ethereum? nine out of 10 times, it's unnecessary to bring it in. having said that, the promise of cryptocurrency and the ledger of the idea of inexpensively creating fully distributed, verifiable trust is really powerful. i believe we will converge on concept and companies and

fundamental improvements to our society through usage of the block chain. i'm just not sure what they are yet. emily: my exclusive interview with affirm ceo and paypal cofounder max levchin. coming up, pinterest is introducing a new way for small and medium-size businesses to reach the masses. we catch up with interest president kim kendall next. check us out on the radio or bloomberg.com or on the radio on sirius xm. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ emily: pinterest hopes to reel in the advertisers. they are introducing a new way for small and medium-sized businesses to reach the masses. the new tools will be found in the pinterest ads manager and will allow businesses to target customer searching for potential products. tim kendall joined us to explain the new move.

tim: people use pinterest to plan. since they are planning, it's an awesome time for businesses to connect with the consumer while they're in the early part of the buying process. what we are announcing today is an ability for small businesses to reach people on pinterest while they are searching. emily: when they are searching, there is some sort of intent. you worked at facebook for many years. do you think these pinterest ads will be more effective at getting people to buy stuff than your typical facebook ad? tim: we see what people search on pinterest. they know what they want. they are looking for an l-shaped couch or a bedside table but they don't know what brand they want to buy it from. that's why it is a unique and out double point for an advertiser to that optimal point for an advertiser to get in front of that consumer. they know what they want but they don't know who they want it from. for businesses, especially small businesses who have to acquire new customers to grow and have

to find people to buy their product who never heard of them, it's an awesome time to get in front of them. if you are searching for a couch or a baby stroller, we can now let a small business who sells those products get in front of new people. emily: how much could this boost pinterest's revenue? tim: the small and medium-size businesses are the fastest-growing segment and some people do a trick of law of small numbers. in this case, it's a big number and its growing the fastest. i think pinterest because we are strong in home and beauty and style and food, these are categories where small businesses thrive. there are lots of new entrants, people want selection and so because pinterest is strong, it's a natural place for businesses to be. emily: what can you tell us about trends in advertising revenue at large? tim: in the correct direction, the trajectory is great and we are pleased with it. emily: one of the weaknesses

with self-service advertising is the potential for abuse. we have seen this with the russian meddling on facebook, trying to swing the election. how do you make sure this kind of thing does not happen on pinterest? tim: in terms of our ad review, every single ad on pinterest has been reviewed by a human. every single one. the second thing -- emily: can you keep that up as you scale? tim: i believe we can. the second thing we do is we use technology to look for fraudulent ads and then we have human eval to check that technology and continue to provide a constant feedback on that technology so it keeps getting better and learns. emily: there was a report in "the washington post" that russian content ended up on pinterest. your head of policy responded to this that you are looking into it. it appears it came from facebook. what more can you tell us about what happened there and what

measures you are taking? tim: look, the content has been across the internet and our pinners saw the content. it is convincing content and it doesn't look fake. when we saw it and we removed it. emily: what is the responsibility of these platforms? tim: when we see that content we have an obligation to remove it. we are trying to stay in line with that principle. emily: when it comes to advertising in general, pinterest is on the list of the potential companies who could go out of the gate and hit the public market. does this bring you closer to an ipo? tim: we don't have any plans for an ipo. we are super focused on making the product better for our users and growing the business. emily: what can you tell us about demographic trends among users? women use pinterest mostly, is that true?

tim: no, men are the fastest-growing segment. 40% of sign ups today are men. it's significant. emily: where do you see this going? you are in charge of building the business beyond these new ad features. tim: we want to do for discovery what google did for search. that is a huge opportunity. if we are the service that they use to discover what they want to eat, what they want to wear, where they want to live, where they want to travel, it's a gigantic business. it's also a gigantic service for everyone to use and improve their lives. emily: that was the pinterest president tim kendall. that does it for this edition of "bloomberg technology -- the best of bloomberg technology." tune in each day at 5:00 p.m. in new york and 2:00 p.m. in san francisco and remember we are live streaming on twitter. check us out at bloomberg tech

tv on weekdays. that's all for now. this is bloomberg. ♪

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