Good morning! On this day in 2003, Martha Stewart was indicted on charges of insider trading. The more you know!
At A Glance
The app economy, where to buy a vintage cardigan, and why we should be cheering for the tech underdog.
That’s a Lot of V-Bucks
Apple most likely wants you to think that the App Store is the gateway to connect with the world through apps on our phone. Apparently, everyone else thinks that as well. Apple has been riddled with antitrust scrutiny, with app developers and competitors effectively saying that the App Store amounts to a monopoly but these claims have not slowed those in-app purchases.
The company has now released an updated version of a study performed by the economists at the Analysis Group, which claims the App Store ecosystem facilitated $643 billion in billings and sales in 2020, up 24% from the $519 billion seen the year prior.
Lets be real. Middle school Bennett definitely bought gems on Clash of Clans but the figures that Apple has put out for App Store sales show a much larger scale shift in consumer mindset than just one pre-teen. $511 billion came from the sale of physical goods and services through apps — think online shopping, food delivery, ride hailing, etc. — or 80% of the total.
What does it mean for you? From the looks of it, the ways in which we access goods and services through our phones is not changing any time soon. As a result, companies are leaning even further into the app economy to capitalize on convenience and access to one of the largest marketplaces in the world.
Bonus: Here is an email thread from Steve Jobs in 2008 deciding on App Store alerts.
Read More Here and Here
Scrap Bookers Unite!
Etsy, the New York based marketplace announced on Wednesday that it will be acquiring Depop for $1.625 Billion. This is huge news for the creator economy. Etsy has long been a home to crafters and a variety of knick-knacks. TechCrunch says this about the acquisition,
Some 90% of Depop’s users are under the age of 26, and this will give Etsy a sizeable opportunity both to tap them and their community in Depop itself, but likely will also act as a bridge to bringing more content and younger shoppers to Etsy, which may have started skewing younger but has also a huge number of older users now, too. Etsy is publicly traded and has a market cap of over $20 billion currently.
What does it mean for you? Depop is a UK-based fashion marketplace and a home for Gen Z customers. Etsy wants you, the customer, to be able to find any clothing item, home good, and consumer good made by independent creators on their site. This is just another move in a sort of anti-Amazon role that Etsy might want to play in the industry. Now you know where to go if you’re thinking, “Man, I really need a bird feeder made out of thumbtacks and a custom handbag.”
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Silicon Valley Mediocrity
New York Times reporter, Shira Ovide, posted an op-ed article this past week diving into the issue of those mediocre companies that come from Silicon Valley. Most of the companies you hear about are either “Unicorns” with abnormal success or raging failures.
There are the likes of Amazon, Facebook, and Uber. On the less fortunate side, there are companies like the blood testing company, Theranos (which you might recognize from it’s Netflix documentary). She says this as a further example,
I’m talking about companies like Dropbox, Box and Cloudera that were once hot enough to be on the covers of business magazines and have survived but hardly set the world on fire. They are not whales nor are they minnows. Dropbox, a digital file-storage service, is worth about as much as Levi Strauss.
In my opinion, I think this view on the tech industry is incredibly necessary in continuing innovation. The more visible these “meh” companies are to investors, the better those organizations are able to execute on their vision for the business. Cash and valuations run the media coverage of these startups but I join with Shira in saying that, “Most of life isn’t success or failure, it’s the mushy in-between, and this applies to most start-ups, too. There exists a vast middle ground of overlooked young tech companies that are definitely not winners but are not losers, either”.
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So Hot Right Now: Popcorn Enjoyed Best On The Moon
You or someone you know has probably told about GameStop, AMC Theaters, and Blackberry’s meteoric rise in stock price a few months ago. This was the result of a surge in retail investors pushing for something called a “short squeeze”. I really don’t have the time to explain that in detail but you can read more about that here.
That being said, there has been a lasting impact of “meme stocks”. Wednesday, AMC Theaters launched it’s new investor relations program titled, AMC Investor Connect. President Adam Aron said,
AMC Investor Connect will put our Company in direct communication with a retail investor shareholder base that owned more than 80% of AMC at last count. Many of our investors have demonstrated support and confidence in AMC. We intend to communicate often with these investors, and from time to time provide them with special benefits at our theatres. We start with a free large popcorn on us, when they attend their first movie at an AMC theatre this summer.
This initiative is most likely a push to drive brand engagement after a dismal pandemic season. AMC Theaters lost $4.6 billion during 2020 and is just one of many companies looking to spring up campaigns to get themselves back on track. I will say, it feels like AMC is fully leaning in to the fact that 80% of the company is owned by a group of teenagers on Reddit. But who am I to complain? Free popcorn for all!
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Q&A
Question: How does Bluetooth work?
Answer: One of my friends asked me this and I realized that I have absolutely no clue. What I found was some super technical mumbo-jumbo so cut me some slack in explaining.
Long story short, think of Bluetooth as an invisible wire that connects all devices. Bluetooth is a form of wireless technology used to transmit data over relatively short distances from one device to another, and appears in a range of devices across the smart home space. Like television broadcasts, wireless home phones and Wi-Fi networks, Bluetooth is a radio wave technology. However, unlike those examples Bluetooth is designed to work over much shorter distances. All Bluetooth devices contain an antenna for connecting to each other.
Here’s where it gets technical. Bluetooth devices operate across 79 different frequencies on the 2.45GHz radio wave spectrum. When two devices want to connect, say a smartphone to a smart light bulb, they pick one of the 79 channels at random, or try a different one if that's already taken by another pair of nearby devices.
To sum it up, think of the device antennas and the signal as spoken language. The antennas have to speak the same language (frequency) to be able to connect.