Between Meetings - November 6th
Friday round up of this week's noteworthy stories
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In the meantime, here is our weekly round up.
-G
While the election took up a lot of brain space this week, here are some of the things that grabbed our attention between meetings, and the weekly A Book, A Show, and A Podcast. Did you read, watch, or listen to something mind blowing this week? Share it!
Facebook
Some Updates
Facebook Reports Q3 2020 Earnings
More than 3.2 billion people using Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger every month, around 2.7 billion people using at least one of the services daily, and more than 200 million businesses who use Facebook’s business tools. Learn more here.
Preparing our Partners for iOS 14: Latest Guidance on SKAdNetwork
See the latest plans to update the Facebook and Audience Network SDKs to add support for the SKAdNetwork API. Learn more here.
Facebook expands Whatsapp payments to Indiain partnership with the National Payments Corporation of India, opening up the ability to send money through message to over 20million users.
Select Case Studies
Glamnetic (N. AMERICA / CPG)
To reach more beauty fans, boost brand awareness and increase online sales, Glamnetic ran Facebook and Instagram video ads using a wide variety of creative, and saw a 10.5% lift in purchases.
Rental Beast (N. AMERICA/Financial services, Real Estate) The US rental listings company showed the inventory listings of smaller landlords and property owners on Facebook Marketplace, which generated 54% more tenant leads than other online listing services.
Banggood (APAC / Ecommerce) To engage customers and drive sales, the online retail platform tapped into the trend of livestreaming by integrating Facebook Live and Messenger, and saw a 16X higher engagement rate.
Consumer Tech & Culture
Apple requires ‘Privacy Nutrition Labels’starting December 8th, detailing the types of data the app collects. While this disclosure is mandatory, the information is self-reported by developers.
Fortnite is now playable again on iOS devices through Nvidia’s GeForceas the Epic vs. Apple battle continues to ensue. While the game is accessible again and may potentially benefit from higher fidelity graphics streamed from a desktop, it’s possible that there may be latency and other issues played through a mobile web browser.
More Apple news, the Apple event on November 1this expected t ounveil the next generation of Macbook and Mac devices.
TikTok test new educational content formats through Learn Laba series of how-to and and informative video from a slate of well-known creators, under the hashtag #LearnOnTikTok, in a bid to compete with similar high engagement viral videos on YouTube.
AOC’s ‘get out the vote’ Twitch steam was one of the most watched ever, with 400,000 concurrent viewers, in an interesting intersection of politics, live streaming, and… influencer? Is AOC about to be the first politician to get an endorsement deal from a video game?
Californians give Lyft & Uber a ride pass on Prop 22, giving the entire rideshare economy an outcome they paid almost $200M in advertising dollars to achieve.
Business & Investing
Tech stocks had another incredible quarter, enjoying huge post-election ralliesas a divided government assuaged investor fears for regulation uncertainty. Among winners reporting during election week were Shopify and Paypal, signaling the continued meteoric rise of eCommerce.
Beijing halted Ant Group’s $37Bn public market listing, citing market stability concerns, in what some are speculating are a high level order to maintain control on the country’s fast growing micro-lending sector.
Interesting new from Bitcoin, which surged past $15,000 to hit a 2 year high amidst news that the US Federal Government has seized over $1Bn worth of Bitcoin in a forfeiture from an alleged anonymous person who had stolen the Bitcoin from Silk Road.
Stay at home businesses continue to thrive, with Peloton reporting expectation shattering earnings and projecting $1Bn in sales throughout holiday. Meanwhile, pandemic worries continue to threaten traditional brick and mortar businesses like Planet Fitness.
eCommerce giant Alibaba makes waves in the fashion industry with a $1.1Bn investment in Farfetch as the conglomerate continues to make inroads into higher price point, luxury products. Sound familiar? Last month, Amazon unveiled its Luxury Stores in its latest attempt to finally break into the highly sought after category.
A Book, A Show, A Podcast
I’m reading How to Decide: Simple Tools For Making Better Choices by Annie Duke, ex-professional poker player and author of Thinking in Bets. It’s a pretty uncertain world out there, and sometimes the best we can do is to make sure we’re making the best choices for ourselves and letting what happens happen.
I’m watching The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix, a show about prodigy chess player Beth Harmon (this name just gives me weird Rick and Morty / Dan Harmon vibes) set in the early 1900’s. I think Netflix is finally onto something here - the story is well crafted, the characters developed, and director Scott Frank is doing something masterful with his use of time as a storytelling tool.
I’m listening to The Present Future of Audio, a conversation between Connie Chan of a16z and Gustav Söderström, chief R&D officer at Spotify. It’s a little meta and I’m a couple weeks behind, but I’m really enjoying learning about the future of the audio surface. There is so much to unlock in that space as technology improves the curation process and enables more sophisticated two way engagement between podcaster and listener.