🤔 Wiser! #130: Twitter's Meltdown | Meta's Threads | Dior's NFT Sneakers | BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF
What’s In Wiser! This Week?
I know, I know. I promised you there would be no more Twitter distractions on Wiser! But this week I couldn’t help myself. Which is odd because Twitter figures less and less in my work these days. I used to be on the platform every day, looking for news and stories and opinions. It was the first place I used to turn too for more insight on anything that caught my attention. But no longer is that the case. To me, Twitter is no longer relevant as a news app.
However, there are several threads (excuse the pun) that make Twitter newsworthy this week.
First, Elon Musk’s odd decision to throttle usage over the weekend. For a platform that earns its money from ads, which means it literally feeds off your continued attention on the platform, it is remarkable that Musk would enforce a restriction on how much anyone could use Twitter. This is even more bizarre given that advertising revenue has halved since Musk took over (to around $2.5 billion) and he needs all they can get!
As with previous major platform changes, Musk made this change before telling the Twitter user base. When he did put his head above the parapet, his reasoning was to blame AI for mass scraping of Twitter tweets. He gave no specifics to this unspecific allegation, just pointed his big fat conspiracy finger at large language models eating his data.
I have no idea if this is real or not. If it is then that horse has already bolted. Besides, I’m doubtful that anyone would want to train their AI on the cesspit of human conversations that occupies a sizeable slug of Twitter’s back catalogue.
However a clue to Musk’s motivation can be found in one of his subsequent tweets over the weekend. It seems that paying subscribers get a ten times greater limit on how much they can use Twitter. This may just be a cynical, albeit blunt instrument, attempt to convert more users to paying customers.
Or maybe, it’s much simpler, and is closely related to Twitter’s ongoing missed payment and on-off relationship problems with Google Cloud, which hosts many of Twitter's essential services. Maybe it’s as simple as Musk can’t afford to pay the electric meter!
There’s a second reason why Twitter is newsworthy this week. And that is the launch of Threads, the Twitter-like platform from Meta. Threads was launched in the USA yesterday and had hit 30 million sign-ups as I put this issue of Wiser! to bed! That's some achievement, no doubt achieved because (a) Instagram users can log on instantly to Threads without any sign-up process and (b) Meta has the biggest social network on the planet with 3 billion monthly users.
Zuckerberg has showed a great talent for launching copycat products in the Meta family. Whether Threads can replace Twitter is to be seen, but it looks like Twitter and works like Twitter (500 character messages), so there's every reason to think it will replace Twitter. So much so that Musk is already threatening to sue Meta for stealing all of Twitter's secrets (by hiring the people Musk fired in the last 6 months.)
Unfortunately I can't tell you first hand what Threads is like because it is not available in the European Union (and I live in Spain.) Threads is not GDPR compliant. Yet again, the EU’s rules on privacy and data collection present a thorny problem for Meta.
Threads, just like every other app and platform, collects a ton of data on the user, whether it needs it or not. Add to this the fact that the Threads login is via your Instagram account and then you get into the murky waters of data sharing (you can't delete your Threads account without deleting your Instagram account.) EU rules already prevent Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp from sharing data used for advertising purposes. Threads would only make that issue harder given that Meta are launching it as a feature to Instagram. The fact is that Meta are simply avoiding having yet another fight with EU.
Assuming Meta fix the EU compliance issue, and they will, the other characteristic in its favour as the Twitter killer app is that it is going to be "interoperable." That means it will work like a decentralised platform meaning that messages can be sent between different platforms. So a "tweet" on Mastodon could be seen on Threads and vice versa.
Bottom line, Musk has drained Twitter’s moats, lowered the drawbridge and sent 80% of his foot solders home. Twitter is wide open to be replaced as the public square. All it needs is for a Twitteresque app, like Threads, to make the move and my 2023 prediction (#7 in the list) that Musk would walk away from Twitter empty handed will come true.
Take care and have a great weekend,
ATB, Rick
P.S. Remember: Insight and Information Gives You Leverage!
P.P.S I've renamed Premium to WiserPLUS! It's a brand name that better represents the value for readers that want more from Wiser!
👍"Great read, Rick. For me, very informative." - Efi Pylarinou, global influencer, fintech and disruptive technologies.
Google Bard v ChatGPT: Which one is best? And for what?
In this week’s long form article for paying subscribers, I explain the differences from a user perspective of the two leading AI chatbots. ChatGPT has set the standard and stolen the march in a space that Google has dominated for a decade. Now Google are in catch-up, and making up ground fast.
You can read the article here.
👟 Dior Launch the $1,000 B33 Sneakers With an NFT on Ethereum Blockchain
Luxury fashion house Dior has introduced new pairs of sneakers that include a blockchain-based certificate of authenticity, along with an accompanying NFT twin. The shoes come with an NFC chip in the sole that unlocks the digital record and gets the owner access to unique benefits and digital giveaways.
Here’s The Thing: The utility of NFTs for consumer fashion brands is in customer engagement. Imagine you’ve just shelled out a grand for a pair of luxury trainers with a “look at me, I’m rich” designer tag on the side. Inside the shoe is a chip with a unique code that identifies that shoe belongs to you. It also gives the consumer brand a means to stay engaged with you (unlike today, where there’s no ongoing connection after you walked out of the store.)
Now imagine that the brand wants to do a promotion, give you a reward, sell you a new pair of designer sneakers, give you an exclusive deal. The NFT provides the means, even if you’re the second or third owner.
🍎 Apple Make History Again - 1st Company To Be Valued At $3 Trillion
Apple Corporation has become the first company to reach a market capitalisation of $3 trillion. To be fair, Apple briefly breached the milestone in early 2022, but they've never held on to it until now. After a challenging 2022, Apple's share price is up 49% already this year, boosting the company's market cap by more than $900 billion.
Here's The Thing: it's deja vue all over again! When Apple hit a valuation of $2 trillion in August 2020, they were the first US company to do so, after Saudi Arabian oil and gas giant Saudi Aramco beat them to it in the previous December. Apple were also the first company to hit $1 trillion market cap too!
Even more remarkable, Apple have done so without the artificial aid of the AI boost that has seen other tech stocks, like Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta and Nvidia climb massively this year. By contrast to the rest of the tech stocks, Apple has been remarkably quiet about AI, focusing its attention on the launch of its new Augmented Reality headset, the Apple Vision Pro.
💰 Is It A Coincidence That The World's Largest Asset Managers Want A Bitcoin ETF NOW?
Asset management giant Fidelity has re-entered the race for a spot Bitcoin ETF. They first applied in 2021 to create the Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust, but that was rejected by the SEC last year. This comes on the heels of BlackRock’s surprise submission of a Bitcoin ETF application two weeks ago. This is important because the SEC has consistently said no to approving a Bitcoin fund based on spot markets for years. However, BlackRock have applied 576 times to the SEC for ETFs and been approved 575 times!
Now, other companies are applying too: ARK, WisdomTree, Invesco, VanEck, and Bitwise have all applied for Bitcoin ETFs.
Here’s The Thing: with so many big names (and BlackRock have a near impeccable record of getting approvals), the SEC is under pressure. They’re already facing a lawsuit from Grayscale after the SEC rejected their Bitcoin fund proposal. Bloomberg analysts reported there's a 70% chance the outcome will favour Grayscale. With the big guns from the asset management sector all looking at Bitcoin, which is up over 80% in value in 2023 already, it is looking less and less likely that the SEC will prevail.
For me the interesting question is “why now?” And I have theory. It’s because of Bitcoin halvening. Sometime next April 2024, the fourth Bitcoin halvening will take place. After each of the three previous halvenings (where the number of new Bitcoins created every 10 minutes or so is cut in half to give Bitcoin its unique anti-inflationary characteristic), the value of Bitcoin has sky-rocketed. The last time to $68k (it’s currently around $30k.)
P.S. I see the gap between Bitcoin and every other cryptocurrency widening, the majority of them disappearing into the ether.
👗 Google’s AI Virtual Try-On Technology
Google has a new AI tool for virtual try-ons in retail stores as well as home shopping. The benefit for the retailers is to increase sales, reduce e-commerce returns, and provide personalised data to help retailers better target consumers. The tool uses generative AI to reflect how clothing will look when worn and is already being used by several major brands, such as H&M, Anthropologie and LOFT.
Snippets of Insights and Information
A recent study reveals that tweets generated by large language models are perceived as more convincing than human-written tweets, highlighting the risk of the spread of disinformation.
Meta has issued a series of flash cards that explain how its AI decides what you see on Facebook and Instagram.
Vietnam has mandated international social media platforms to deploy AI algorithms to automatically detect and remove "toxic" content, enhancing its strict regulation of such companies and echoing efforts across Southeast Asia to establish AI governance and ethics guidelines.
Researchers have developed an AI tool called CognoSpeak which streamlines the diagnosis of dementia and Alzheimer's through cognitive tests, achieving a 90% accuracy rate in early trials.
A new Oxford Academic report details how data scientists are using AI to translate Cuneiform into English, one of the earliest writing systems in recorded human history.
Electric flying car company Alef Aeronautics has received approval to start testing by the FAA – pre-orders start at $300,000.
Chart Of The Week
Have you seen Blackberry, the movie yet? It’s great and I highly recommend it. I must confess that I though Blackberry was long gone, but it seems they have a thriving business in the IOT software space.
About Wiser!
Wiser! is a weekly newsletter for busy professionals who want to know what's happening and what's coming next tech and business. Wiser! primarily focuses on BigTech, emerging technologies and the utility of tech, looking for the clues to make sense of it all and figure out what's coming next.
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