đ¤ Wiser! #98: Whatâs Goinâ On In Tech?
đ Wiser! #98: TikTok Eats BigTech | Bitcoin Day | Gen Z in the Metaverse | Decentralised Insurance
Sunday 6th November â This is the Medium edition of Wiser!
Welcome to this weekly round-up of what happened in tech this week. This is the Sunday edition of the Wiser! Newsletter on Medium.
Email subscribers got a longer, fuller version of Wiser! delivered straight into their inboxes early on Friday morning. Theyâve already got a two-day head start.
To read the full-colour, longer version of this weekâs Wiser! go here.
This weekâs featured newsâŚ
The second drop went live this week in the A to Z of Brand Strategies for Web3 and the Metaverse collection. The real-life use cases for brands named from A to H are now listed in the online collection.
Over 60 consumer brands, 30+ celebrities and 15+ destinations have already been analysed, researched and documented in the Notion database.
These all illustrate real life examples of the utility of NFTs, blockchain, virtual reality and crypto.
The full alphabet will be dropped by Christmas. More details below.
Meanwhile, back to Wiser! This weekâs featured stores include:
- TikTok is eating BigTechâs lunch,
- Bitcoin turned 14 this week,
- Roblox research tells us what Gen Z think about living, playing and spending in the Metaverse,
- podcast no12 of Big Tech Little Tech has a focus on healthtech,
- Decentralised insurance and my conversation with the DeFi founder and CEO of autonomus, Joe Corrigan
Plus: a ton of featured headlines from across tech, some productivity tips, and other stories and interesting content I think youâll find entertaining and of value (including a website that tells you where all the broken MacDonaldâs ice cream machines are in the world â more entertaining than of value!)
Thank you for subscribing to my newsletter. Every week, 15k readers like you get Wiser!
ATB, Rick
đ âGreat read, Rick. For me, very informative.â â Efi Pylarinou, global influencer, fintech and disruptive technologies.
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w/BigTech
TikTok is eating BigTechâs lunch
Big Tech stocks have endured a terrible 2022. One important cause has been the shift in digital ad spending. For the better part of a decade, Facebook and Google have dominated and controlled this market. But no more.
Not since TikTokâs pandemic boosting rise and Appleâs privacy tracking changes to iOS.
The tough reality for tech firms is that costs are rising by a order of magnitude faster than revenues. BigTech are laying off staff they hired in expectation of a post pandemic surge of demand that hasnât materialised â placing further expectations on BigTech as they look for methods to compete with and duplicate TikTok.
đ Continue reading on my Typefully microblogâŚ
Meanwhile, the chorus to ban TikTok grows louder.
Brendan Carr, one of five commissioners of the Federal Communications Commission, told Axios that he doesnât see âa path forward for anything other than a banâ of TikTok.
Carr, and other US officials, views the appâs Chinese ownership as a threat to US national security. But to ban TikTok, heâll need support from elsewhere in Washington because the FCC canât regulate TikTok on its own.
đ˝ď¸ Watch this video about the threat from the CCPsâ influence over TikTok.
Further Reading
- Turmoil at Twitter. Overnight, Twitter has gone from one of the best working environments in tech, to one of the worst. What is happening, and why? Source: Pragmatic Engineer
- Revenue of Alphabet and Meta, The Digital Duopoly, Has Been Slipping
- TikTok Is Killing Facebook, But Is It A Propaganda Machine For The CCP?
- Appleâs Unfair Advantage In Digital Advertising
w/Web3
What does Bitcoin, Halloween and my daughter have in common?
đ October 31st
Not only was it Halloween, Dia de los Muertos (âday of the deadâ) and my eldest daughterâs birthday last Monday, it was also the anniversary of the publication of the Bitcoin White Paper.
- In 2008, in the wake of the financial crash, a mysterious and still unidentified person called Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin White Paper.
This was the birth of crypto currency and the technology it was built on â called âblockchain.â
Itâs about 20 mins long and is a reading of Satoshiâs White Paper. Each contributor recites a section from Satoshiâs document and pay their respect to what and who started it all.
Or you can read the Bitcoin White Paper here. Enjoy!
Sceptical about Bitcoin?
There are still many sceptics of Bitcoin. Just as there were many sceptics of the Internet a decade earlier in 1998. If youâre not convinced that thereâs utility in Bitcoin, watch this.
From A to Z: Brand Strategies for Web3 and the Metaverse
The collection of consumer brand use cases in NFTs, blockchain, virtual reality and crypto is live and freely available to all Wiser! Premium subscribers.
đĽ HERE ARE SOME OF THE 60+ BRANDS ALREADY LIVE ON THE A-Z DATABASE.
For full details of what you can find in the Brand Strategies collection and the special offer discount code, read thisâŚ
w/Metaverse
Roblox report on Gen Z in the Metaverse
Roblox released a report this week that shines a light on the attitudes of Gen Z towards the Metaverse.
- Roblox is an immersive gaming platform, a pseudo-Metaverse without the need to wear a brick on your face.
- Itâs also the gaming platform that dominates in the under 16 demographic. Roblox has round 50 million daily active users, with roughly half of them 13 or under.
đš ď¸Download the full report here.
Metavertisingâs Ely Santos called out the following interesting highlights from the Roblox report:
- There are at least 200 times as many creators designing clothing and accessories on Roblox as the estimated number of fashion designers creating physical collections in the USA
- Dressing their avatars allows consumers to express their individuality (47%) and feel good about themselves (43%), but also to show off their digital collection and feel more connected to peers â in both the digital and physical worlds
- Nearly 3 in 4 Gen Z say that they spend money online to buy digital fashion,
- 70% of Gen Z said their avatars dress at least somewhat like their IRL style, with equally as many (70%) saying they also get physical style inspiration from dressing their avatars.
What Does It All Mean?
đ¤ It means that this generation (and remember, the first of the Gen A generation hits 13 next year) are at ease with living, playing, spending in the Metaverse.
What might seem completely bonkers to us older folk (spending pocket money in the Metaverse), is as normal to this generation as sending Christmas and birthdays cards through the post is to older generations.
Further Reading:
- Walmartâs foray into Roblox.
- Roblox: Defining 3D Gaming In The Metaverse
- Starbucks Expand Loyalty Program With NFTs
w/Podcast
đ Big Tech Little Tech Ep #12
The big story for the latest episode was healthcare. Shaun had read an article on the use of sensors, smartphones and wearable tech to improve our health.
So, the two of us gathered around a virtual cup of coffee and digestive biscuits to discuss what Apple, Amazon and Google are doing in this space.
We also talked about Interpolâs new venture in the Metaverse, What3Words and how itâs used, AI and knee replacement genetic science, The Jetsons, Spanish goats going past my house and our favourite Halloween cocktails.
Further Reading:
- Walmartâs foray into Roblox.
- Roblox: Defining 3D Gaming In The Metaverse
- Starbucks Expand Loyalty Program With NFTs
w/Podcast
đ Big Tech Little Tech Ep #12
The big story for the latest episode was healthcare. Shaun had read an article on the use of sensors, smartphones and wearable tech to improve our health.
So, the two of us gathered around a virtual cup of coffee and digestive biscuits to discuss what Apple, Amazon and Google are doing in this space.
We also talked about Interpolâs new venture in the Metaverse, What3Words and how itâs used, AI and knee replacement genetic science, The Jetsons, Spanish goats going past my house and our favourite Halloween cocktails.
đď¸Find Big Tech Little Tech on all major Podcast platforms: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Anchor | Google Podcasts | Website
đ˝ď¸ Wiser! On YouTube
This weekâs YouTube explainer is about decentralised insurance. Itâs a brand on decentralised finance that has played second fiddle to the higher profile banking and lending use cases.
But itâs not one that should be overlooked.
In the video I explain why that is. And I also talk with Joe Corrigan, the CEO and founder of DeFi startup Autonomus Insure to understand it better.
đ˝ď¸ Watch the video on my YouTube channel hereâŚ
đ Or read about it hereâŚ
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Interesting Headlines
- A16Z are helping out at Twitter. Silicon Valleyâs elephant in the room, the massive venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (also known as a16z), is lending a helping hand to Twitterâs new overlord Elon Musk.
- Shein adds pressure to US fast fashion competitors. The apparel behemoth valued at $100 billion is looking to speed up online delivery with a US distribution network.
- JP Morgan invests in Second Life payments platform.
- Forrester Research predicts brands and agencies to increase spending on web3 and the metaverse
- TomTom are reinventing maps. Why? Because the world is now navigated by data not road signs and the North Star.
- Deepfake celebrities are populating commercials. Bruce Willis, Tom Cruise, Leonado DiCaprio and Elon Musk has all been deepfaked for ads and promos, but only Willis gave his blessing. Apparently itâs perfectly legal to deepfake a celebrity without their permission as long as you tell the audience thatâs what youâve done.
- Shutterstock is to start selling AI-generated art. Shutterstock is letting AI-generated works to be created and sold alongside the human-created images that theyâre trained on. Shutterstock is the first company of its kind to partner with AI generators. But itâs a grey and murky area with legal ownership issues open for debate. Which is why Getty Images are staying well clear of AI generated art.
- Music artist Steve Aoki has overtaken Snoop Dogg as the No 1 NFT collector with the most valuable portfolio.
- There are few countries where Google are not under investigation by regulators and lawmakers. Hereâs a thread of countries where Google is in troubleâŚ
- Interpol are in the Metaverse. It sounds like a joke, but itâs not! The internal crime agency, Interpol, has launched what it calls its âglobal police Metaverseâ. Itâs a serious effort to teach members how to do police work in a virtual environment.
- Google wants to let robots write their own code.
- In China, hundreds of workers are said to have fled the worldâs largest iPhone manufacturing complex, fearing Covid lockdowns.
- This week Meta revealed it would soon introduce the ability for users to create, buy, and sell digital collectibles, i.e. NFTs on Instagram. OK, so what? đ
Hereâs The Thing: Redditâs collectible avatar NFTs have introduced a whole new audience to the world of digital assets with around 3 million NFTs minted already. Reddit is about a tenth the size of Instagram. So imagine, if Instagram gets the same adoption rate as RedditâŚđ¤
Meanwhile, Twitter are also about to introduce NFTsâŚ
Interesting Numbers
53%: More than half of millennials surveyed say they eat at restaurants theyâve seen on TikTok. These are the findings of an MGHus survey in the US.
14%: The percentage of Americans who get their news from Twitter, according to Pew Research taken in July this year. The question is will it stay at that level now that Elon Musk has taken control of the social media network? Personally, I donât think so, hereâs why.
However, the number 1 platform for news is still Facebook, followed by YouTube.
$500 trillion: The 20 richest tech billionaires have collectively lost around half a trillion dollars this year. To put it into context, this is a loss of wealth that is more than the market values of all but seven companies in the S&P 500.
Websites you might not know about
Iâm always on the look out for new and obscure websites. Especially sites that are entertaining or give me productivity tools. So, this week, I thought Iâd share a few of the more light-hearted and entertaining ones.
- My 90âs TV!
This is a TV simulator showing shows, music videos, ads, and trailers from the 1990âs. https://my90stv.com
- McBroken
This is not a joke. This website tracks which McDonaldâs ice cream machines are broken worldwide. https://mcbroken.com
- Drive & Listen
Listen to local radio stations while virtually driving through cities around the world. Strangely addictive. https://driveandlisten.herokuapp.com
- Caffeine Informer
Do you love coffee (as much as I do)? This site lets you discover the caffeine amounts for over 4,000 items. Surprisingly informative. https://caffeineinformer.com
đ ď¸ Tools, Tips and Tricks To Boost Your Productivity
Whatâs happening and whatâs coming next.
Wiser! is a weekly newsletter that makes sense of whatâs happening and whatâs coming next in the tech economy. From disruptive technologies, like blockchain, crypto and artificial intelligence, to emerging trends, like Web3 and the Metaverse. Plus thereâs 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 donât have too.
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The original version of this newsletter was published on Friday 4th November 2022 and can be found here.
