🐦 Wiser! #97: Elon The Twit | Meta's Woes | Hot Or Not | Hennessy's Web3 Café | Interpol's Metaverse
Elon finally gets his hands on Twitter. Meta's woes continue as they pour good money after bad into virtual reality. Plus: HotOrNot.com? Hennessy go Web3 and Interpol in the Metaverse.
w/Wiser! #97 - Friday 28th October
I delayed posting this week to catch the overnight developments on Elon Musk and Twitter. The deal has closed and Elon is about $47 billion poorer today as a result.
Premium subscribers can read all about it in my article called "The Bird Is Freed". There's a preview at the end of this issue of Wiser!
I'm also covering:
Meta's woes continue as the pivot to the Metaverse continues to drag the Facebook business down,
Interpol have joined the Metaverse with a virtual reality environment for law enforcement training (a bit like Accenture are doing for staff onboarding),
Global brandy brand Hennessy has launched an exclusive Web3 social club with limited entry via NFTs,
Remember Hot or Not? It's got a lot to answer for!
Apple have clarified their rules on NFT purchases on Apple devices. It's not gone down so well!
Plus: As always, there's a ton of other stuff from across tech, some tips and tricks, and other stories, content and stuff I think you'll find interesting and of value.
Thank you for subscribing to my newsletter. Every week, 15k readers like you get Wiser!
ATB, Rick
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w/Promotion
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w/BigTech
Meta’s Woes Continue
Ouch! Meta Facebook has now lost $600 billion in market capitalisation in 2022.
The firm is down 75% from its all time high valuation of $1.08 trillion a year ago when it was the 5th largest company in America. Today, Meta Facebook doesn't even make the Top 20, valued at around $263 billion, less than Home Depot!
The boss, Mark Zuckerberg, has seen his own personal wealth decline $100 billion over this same time period. Bless!
Why Is This? Because the pivot to the Metaverse is draining all its cash.
The virtual reality division lost $3.7 billion in the last quarter, beating the previous quarter’s loss of (only) $2.8 billion. And it’s going to get worse!
Meta said in a press release that it expected the reality lab operating losses in 2023 to grow "significantly" year over year. Remember, the virtual reality business already lost around $7.9 billion last year.
How Are Sales? Whilst costs keep going up, income is trending down.
On the flip side, revenue from virtual reality was only $285 million in the quarter, missing analysts expectations by over $120 million. Worse still, revenue was down $180 million from the previous quarter.
These are terrible numbers and the market didn’t like any of them. The share price bombed 23% in after hours trading!
w/Web3
Apple’s new policy for NFTs is a “tax on crypto”
Backstory: Apple has made a number of changes that will have a massive impact on the trade of NFTs in its ecosystem.
The short -take on the new policy is that users who buy and sell NFTs on apps featured in its App Store must use Apple’s in-app payment system.
This is a one-way transfer of value from the holders of the digital asset to Apple.
The key line is this: “Apps may allow users to view their own NFTs, provided that NFT ownership does not unlock features or functionality with the app.”
In Other Words: Apps can sell and distribute NFTs on Apple device, and buyers can own the NFTs they’ve bought. But whatever benefits and features come with the NFT has to stay within the Apple ecosystem...so that Apple can see it.
This is what happens when you “own the rails.”
w/SocialMedia
Do You Remember HotOrNot.com?
Not So Hot: John Pargin tweeted this at the weekend about HotOrNot, a site I had long forgotten about.
But the tweet jogged my memory from 2 decades ago and a time when the Internet was still largely unused by the vast majority of people.
Pargin tweeted: "I have a theory that an old 2000-era website accidentally destroyed the world, and I'm dead serious about it. Facebook and YouTube both began as straight-up copies of this site, both looking to take advantage of a phenomenon that breaks the human brain: HotOrNot.com
(don't bother trying the URL, it's not there anymore)
Pargin's point is that this immature website was the catalyst for two of the biggest and most influential social networks in the world today.
Both Facebook and YouTube modelled themselves on the way Hot or Not learnt about the individual preferences of users whilst also demonstrating addictive human behaviour that kept users online.
It's no secret that Mark Zuckerberg's first endeavour was a Hot Or Not copycat.
These are the origins of the technology that now grabs the attention of users like bees to honey. The same human behaviours that we see today in its most extreme form across social media.
If only we (society) had known the slippery slope we were on over 2 decades ago!
w/Web3
Hennessy Launch A Digital Social Club
Hennessy (The "H" in LVMH) has released details of their digital and in-real-life NFT project called Café Eleven, an exclusive Web3 members-only social club.
This is a real-world use-case for NFTs and Web3 that doesn't involve pixelated cartoons or animated apes.
What Is It? Cafe Eleven is a collaboration between the world's leading cognac brand and the Web3-based social community called "Friends With Benefits." This digital social club will launch during Art Basel Miami Beach in December.
Interesting Headlines
While Amazon, Facebook and other Tech companies have missed quarterly estimates, Apple delivered a record quarter (Source: Patently Apple)
Alphabet stock eyes worst day since 2020 after earnings call. The firm's entire advertising business shrank by $2 billion in the quarter. Search revenue was up and remains strong, but YouTube was down 2%. Alphabet stock was down 7% after the quarterly earnings call.
According to a report in Forbes, the Chinese owner of TikTok, ByteDance, wanted to use TikTok to spy on some American users.
Bicycle Playing Cards announced Oct 18th that it purchased a Bored Ape NFT for $187k and that it plans to create and sell physical playing cards using the artwork. (Source: Twitter)
53%: A survey by MGH found that just over half of millennials surveyed visited or ordered from a restaurant they saw on TikTok.
Interpol has entered the Metaverse! It sounds like a joke but I can assure you it's for real. Read all about it here in my microblog on Typefully.
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w/AboutWiser!
Wiser! is a weekly newsletter that makes sense of what's happening and what's coming next in the tech economy. From disruptive technologies, like blockchain, crypto and artificial intelligence, to emerging trends, like Web3 and the Metaverse. Plus there's a big focus on BigTech and the impact of social media.
The purpose of Wiser! is simple, to help you stay interesting, informed and one step ahead of your competition. Using easy and engaging language, I make sense of it all so that you don't have too.
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