Father, creator, techie, kid at heart. Founder/CEO of @SocialBlade the YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook & Twitch stats site.

Raleigh, NC
Joined January 2008
Really disappointed with the news that @Tesla is discontinuing the S & X. Unless their "honorable discharge" is a to good to pass up deal my next car will not be a Tesla. Have had my S since 2015 & X since 2022. The 3 & Y are nice but too small for me & not interested in the CT.
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They're discontinuing the S and X so they can build Optimus. I guess this is how they want families to travel now.
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This week YouTube celebrates its 20th Birthday. CRAZY! Here is a video the Social Blade community put together 10 years ago, for the 10th birthday celebration. Crazy how much has changed since then. Happy Birthday YouTube!!! youtube.com/watch?v=6IIeexJP…
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Perhaps the most interesting question from the @Tesla Earnings Call today was one asked many times before, about vision vs lidar, specifically about sun glare. @elonmusk said this was solved using a method he called "Direct Photon Count". Not a lot of talk about this online that I found in normal cameras, just in relation to CT scans/X-ray and also astronomy (Hubble for example) tech. So not sure what exactly this means for the use in cars. Is it just they're using the raw image and processing it differently then one would to view as a human? Or do the HW4 cameras have some extra tech built into them to do this? I really hope some photography/camera experts pick this up and dig in deeper or Tesla releases a tech video showing the process because Elon's answer to this I think was the first time he explained how Tesla is actually processing the video feeds. If this is the secret sauce the cat is out of the bag now so explaining this with real examples I think will make a lot of people come around to it over lidar. Anyway here is the link to Elon explaining it in the earnings call as well as a "cleaned up" transcription I made of the explanation: "Actually it does not blind the camera. We use an approach which is direct photon count. When you see a processed image, an image that goes from the silicon photon counter, then goes through a digital signal processor or image signal processor, that's normally what happens. And then that image that you see looks washed out because if you point the camera at the sun the post processing of the photon counting washes things out. It actually adds noise. So part of the breakthrough we made some time ago was to go with direct photon counting and bypass the image singal processor. Then you can drive pretty much straight at the sun and you can also see what also appears to be the blackest of night. In fog we can see as well as people can, probably slightly better then the average person." youtu.be/vs4cfyyMWhQ?t=5073
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There were some complaints about the new design so we reverted the design back... 10+ years lol :P socialblade.com/ Happy #AprilFoolsDay
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As tomorrow is @AprFoolsDay crazy to think I've been running aprilfoolsdayontheweb.com/ for 22 years now, half my life. Thank you to all who help out each year submitting jokes! Maybe next year I'll finally get around to making the site look like its not 22 years old :P #AprilFools!
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The question of why X is removed from our new update is our #1 question, understandably, so going to answer this in full, just once. We did not plan on removing X, it only happened at the last minute, but you all deserve to know the full reason. Long post.. X is welcome to monetize their platform however they like. We know first hand it costs a lot of money to run a website, especially as big as X, especially if your goal is to be profitable vs just spending VC funding and operating at a loss. Also, when choosing customers a business must decide if they want a few very high paying customers, or a lot of lower paying customers, or a mix. Each has their own benefits. A decade ago when we added Twitter stats to our website there was no charge to developers from Twitter so they were squarely in the get a lot of low/no paying customers category. We too are in that category as most of the information on our website can be accessed for free. We do have paid features for power users, but even those we price as low as we can to keep the website running and the small team on board to maintain and expand them. Two years ago X decided to switch this up. The API they provided to developers was divided into three paid levels. Thankfully everything we needed to use to operate was included in their lowest level, a $100/mo charge which eventually changed to $200/mo. Last month however X reached out, via their lawyer, and stated that Social Blade was not allowed to use the $200/mo package anymore, and should be on the Enterprise package which they don't list an exact price for publicly but list that it ranges from $42,000 to $210,000 a month if you click apply now for it on their developer website. They said their intention is that any established website/app/etc is supposed to be on Enterprise. They said the other tiers are for hobbyist or prototypes and said "all of your peers have either had to unwind or transition to enterprise" and encouraged us to "expand and monetize your X integration more aggressively." There was some talk about a lower price, but they would not check if they were even allowed to offer it without us committing to paying it first, and even the lower price was still a major price hike and wouldn't change this outcome too much. Our biggest ask was to be able to have a gradual increase to allow us to grow things along with them, but they were not interested in this. At the end of the day we were left with a choice. Either immediately put all X stats behind a paywall and aggressively monetize facing backlash from that, or remove X from our website. Depending on how aggressively monetized this would mean somewhere from hundreds to many thousands of you would need subscribe out of the gate for us to just break even. While it's not impossible that we'd be able to get that many of you to sign up right away for something that was free up to this point, it was a giant risk that could end up in us not being able to run the rest of the website either. We hold no ill will towards X and defend their right to monetize however they see fit. If they did want to work with us on a sustainable path forward to bring things back they have our contact info. Just like they made a business decision to keep their lights on, we did the same. So with all of that said, we're again very sorry about the removal of X from the website. Hopefully this helps you understand a little more of what happened behind the scenes. Thank you to our amazing community who has supported us over the years for understanding.
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We got sick of staring at the new site waiting for launch day, so we're going to launch it tomorrow. #excited #hopeyoulikeit
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The early web was fun. It was weird. It was community-driven. It's time to rebuild that. Which is why @KevinRose & I just bought back @Digg — rival CEOs turned partners! Just don't call it nostalgia! This is a necessary evolution.
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Just noticed we placed 100 Amazon orders in the past 3 months. Yikes. Not all for us though, many, like lucky order #100, are for friends and family out of state that it's easier to order gifts to directly. But what really bothers me is even though we've literally placed 100 orders in the past 3 months, when one of them had an issue where it got lost on the way to the post office, and the 3rd party seller (ugh) literally said just let Amazon deal with it, Amazon refused to do anything until 48 hours after the seller's message, or rather lack of another message. I guess just in case they decided to randomly change course and send a refund instead? Fought with them on the phone for 30 mins or so before sending my credit card after them since they obviously don't care otherwise :( As a small business myself I hate chargebacks and we try to do everything we can to help our customers and avoid them. Amazon's got us (the whole US really) for sure, but would be nice if they appreciated us too... Creating an ecommerce company at the scale of Amazon is pretty near impossible these days, but if someone is looking for a challenge where you can provide competitive prices, fast shipping times, vast item availability (without 3rd party sellers), and also amazing customer support, please the world needs you! Or Amazon, be better.
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Jason Urgo retweeted
After several months of development, I'm excited to finally release my new text adventure game, SmartHome. This is the best free browser-based game you'll play all year. smarthome.steviep.xyz
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The journey to modernize Social Blade has been long and arduous, but it’s also been incredibly rewarding. We rebuilt everything (Web, Cronjobs, DB Structure, Infra) based on what we've learned over the past 15 years. I can't wait to finally get off Google Cloud! 🙏 soon™
Get ready for something special! 🚀We're excited to share a first look at the all-new Social Blade—faster, more powerful, and still packed with everything you love. Watch the preview and let us know what you think as we gear up for the full launch!
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Get ready for something special! 🚀We're excited to share a first look at the all-new Social Blade—faster, more powerful, and still packed with everything you love. Watch the preview and let us know what you think as we gear up for the full launch!
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Tesla brought the referral program back today which means if you want $1000 off a Tesla make sure to order from this link ts.la/jason1090 :) Share this if you have a friend who is in the market too :)
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Let’s celebrate life and it’s journey, there’s up and downs but together we are able to accomplish anything We kicked off @theXtakeover @Teslalightshows the largest @Tesla @SpaceX gathering in the world 🎥 @billykyle @mayemusk @elonmusk @cybertruck @tesla_na
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The feeling you get when you install a brand new operating system that just came out today and check for updates and there are none <3
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I truly love my @Tesla's (a 2015 S and 2022 X Plaid) but @elonmusk Tesla Service, at least in the Raleigh area needs some MAJOR help. Pretty much every single interaction with them via the app is extremely painful. They really make me angry how bad and rude they are. They are not good at customer service. Please consider bringing @dspector32 back as head of service, or at least working with the head. He was one of the newest sales hires so was let go in the recent layoffs just because he was new. He is an owner himself and helps run our local Tesla Owners Group. He's one of the most active people in there too and always on top of everything. He too has had bad customer service from Tesla and I think would do an amazing job bridging the gap between Tesla and customers. Please consider him for immediate hire. You guys need some major help!
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Big shout out to @discord for breaking all sorts of records on YouTube. While we wait for the views on their loot box video to settle, we can share that in just one day they already made it to the top 300 list of all time most viewed videos on YouTube. WOW!
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