📈 *Drum Roll* Tech, but not pretentious.
📈 *Drum Roll* Tech, but not pretentious.
Happy almost Memorial Day Weekend! If you’re reading this it means you are either:
interested in learning about the ins and out of the Tech industry OR
my mother.
At A Glance
Credit card swiping, market manipulation, and Goliath gets even bigger. Let’s get to it.
Why Is My Credit Card Bill Lower Than Normal?
It may be because the ten items in your online shopping cart aren’t staring at you all hours of the day. E-Commerce experienced a massive boom during the pandemic to the tune of $844 Billion spent online in the US from March 2020 to February 2021. In the calendar year 2020, $813 billion was spent online, a 42 percent growth over 2019.
As COVID cases decline and the general population begins to step outside again, consumers are starting to wonder if they need that new wallpaper in their guest bathroom. Now that consumers have more freedom to choose, they may express a preference for more physical-channel interactions in certain industries.
Do not fear: while consumers might be displaced by pandemic standards, online shopping is not going anywhere. The Adobe Digital Economy Index says this,
At current growth rates, we expect 2021 calendar year will bring in somewhere between $850 billion and $930 billion [in online sales]. The pandemic produced a rare step change in online spending, equivalent to a 20 percent boost, and future growth is expected to build off of this gain. 2022 is expected to be the first trillion-dollar year for eCommerce.
What does this mean for you? All of these numbers speak to the truth that consumers have a growing appetite for convenience in the digital marketplace. Companies are bridging the gap to meet us there and give people the option to buy anything, anywhere, through the internet. So go outside, garden, and squirrel watch. Abandoned cart emails will always be right around the corner.
Read More Here
Money Moves
This past week cryptocurrency met its maker: the Chinese government. Last Wednesday, Chinese regulators doubled down on it’s decentralized finance position saying,
Prices of cryptocurrency have skyrocketed and plummeted recently, and speculative trading has bounced back. This seriously harms the safety of people's property and disturbs normal economic and financial orders.
This is not the first time external forces have aimed to put the final nail in crypto’s coffin, but there is no question that the nearly $1 trillion lost in market value across the sector hurt… a lot. Since then, Bitcoin and Ethereum have recouped some of their losses and are currently trading above $38,000 and $2,700, respectively.
What does this mean for you? For all you Robinhood traders out there, you only have Dogecoin losses to worry about. Overall adoption metrics for cryptocurrency are a very gray area. Even though Coinbase saw a 117 percent quarter-over-quarter increase in monthly transacting users from Q1 to Q2, it is hard to distinguish between people FOMOing into the market and institutional acceptance. I will say, if the kid that mows your lawn tells you to buy Shiba Inu coin, you should probably listen.
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Content is King
Have you ever thought, “I wish I could order The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills DVD Set AND get free two-day shipping”? Me neither.
However, with Amazon’s $8.45 billion deal to acquire MGM Studios that dream might be one step closer to reality. This offer is about 40 percent higher than other prospective buyers, including Apple and Comcast, in an attempt to get a leg up in the streaming wars. The deal is just one of many strategic moves for Amazon to add value to the business’ cash cow: Prime.
In addition to paying Amazon $119 a year or $13 a month for free shipping and other perks — notably access to the Prime Video streaming service — households with Prime memberships typically spend $3,000 a year on Amazon. That is more than twice what households without the membership spend, according to Morgan Stanley.
What does this mean for you? That Prime membership might get a little more expensive. Amazon is slowly expanding it’s network of Prime benefits and MGM is just another collection of content to add to Prime Video.
Read More Here
So Hot Right Now: Talking to People
You heard me right. Talking to people is IN.
Over the past year social media platforms are following in the wake of Clubhouse, a invite only “drop-in audio chat” platform. You are correct in thinking that “drop-in audio chat” is just a tech way of saying you spoke to someone. Early in 2020 Clubhouse was formed and gave interaction deprived users a way to hang out in talk in groups without spreading germs. Here is a hilarious description of the app, because I didn’t get it at first either:
Its rooms are a mix of music industry chatter, speed pitches with investors, strangers vibing, amateur astrology readings. The model is somewhere in between leaving an iMessage voice memo and hosting your own podcast.
The platform currently has 10 million weekly active users, up from 600,00 in December 2020. Tech giants smelled blood in the water and have been quick to adapt their offering. Twitter, Facebook (reportedly), LinkedIn, Discord, Spotify, Mark Cuban, and Slack have all launched or are working on their own attempts at social audio according to The Verge.
I finally understand the phrase, “Everything comes back in style eventually”. The new trend is speaking to people online so get in before it’s over!
Let me know if you want an invite
Q&A
Question: Why does Gen Z care so much about internet food?
Answer: Eitan Bernath is probably asking himself the same question. I have asked myself more than a couple times why people gravitate to TikTok stars who lip sync and dance to songs that they did not create. But then again, I am watching their videos too.
Eitan, however, is a viral star of another side of the app: cooking TikTok. He quickly found out that food content played really well to a lot of people stuck in their houses with sourdough starters in the cupboard. Videos with the hashtag #TikTokFood have a total of 25.2 billion views.
TikTok as a platform is unlike any other social media simply based on the way it’s algorithm takes a hold of viral posts. Eunice Shin is the head of media and entertainment at Prophet, a growth strategy firm, and said this,
The thing that makes TikTok outstanding compared to any other platform is the speed of scale. If something goes viral, you can go from zero to millions of followers in a matter of months. That’s really hard to do if you take a traditional trajectory.
This has led Gen Z stars to question why anyone would spend years as a line cook when they could be building their own brand online. So don’t be surprised if the next Gordan Ramsay or Anthony Bourdain got their career in their parent’s kitchen during a pandemic.