Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 08/28 – Ok, So… How About Walmart Owning TikTok?

Starting point is 00:00:00 On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the TechMame ride home for Friday, August 28th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. All right, if things couldn't get any weirder, what if I told you Walmart really wants to buy TikTok?

Starting point is 00:00:44 Has anyone else noticed that Facebook is actively working to keep the App Store controversy in the news? I say thumbs down to a sidekick-inspired smartphone, but thumbs up to a completely under-the-screen selfie camera, and of course the weekend long-read suggestions. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. can avoid the TikTok story today because it's gotten a bit wild. Maybe we thought it was crazy for Microsoft to want to take over TikTok. Maybe we thought it was crazy for Oracle to want to take over TikTok. But can I tell you, sources are saying Walmart is seeking a majority stake in TikTok,

Starting point is 00:01:21 and they are very, very serious about it, leading me to question the current nature of our reality. Actually, the reporting here is a bit confused. It seems like right now Walmart wants to team up with Microsoft in Microsoft's bid for TikTok, but before that, apparently Walmart was trying to put together a consortium to buy TikTok outright with others, quoting CNBC. Before teaming up with Microsoft in recent days, Walmart was part of a consortium put together by SoftBank Chief Operating Officer Marcelo Clowrie, which also included Google Parent Company Alphabet, according to people familiar with the matter. softbanks clary felt Walmart's all-American image and Google's cloud computing infrastructure backbone

Starting point is 00:02:05 could be a way for the Japanese technology company, which has specialized in buying young, high-flying technology companies in recent years, including Uber and WeWork, said the people who asked not to be named because the discussions were private. The deal structure would have had Walmart as the lead buyer with SoftBank and Alphabet acquiring minority stakes. One or two other minority holders held talks to join the consortium, two of the people, said, Walmart wanted to be the exclusive e-commerce and payments provider for TikTok and have access to user data to enhance those capabilities, one of the people said. But the people said the U.S. government wanted the lead buyer of TikTok to be a technology company because that would better fit with its national security rationale for forcing Chinese owner BightDance to divest

Starting point is 00:02:46 TikTok's U.S. operations, end quote. So it's a bit funny. The U.S. government basically told Walmart, you're not cool enough, I mean, you're not tech enough, to take over TikTok. So back to the drawing board. Now Walmart is trying to team up with Microsoft, and this has apparently been confirmed by CNBC. In a statement, the big box retailer said TikTok's integration of e-commerce and advertising, quote, is a clear benefit to creators and users in those markets. It did not say how it would use TikTok or whether it would be a part of Walmart Plus.

Starting point is 00:03:19 Quote, we believe a potential relationship with TikTok US in partnership with Microsoft could add this key functionality and provide Walmart with an important way for us to reach and serve Omnichannel customers as well as grow our third-party marketplace and advertising business, it said. We are confident that a Walmart and Microsoft partnership would meet both the expectations of U.S. TikTok users while satisfying the concerns of U.S. government regulators, end quote. Meanwhile, the rap is reporting that Oracle remains in poll position to end up sealing the deal with TikTok with a reported $10 billion in cash, $10 billion in stock bid, that would still allow ByteDance to receive 50% of TikTok's annual profits going forward.

Starting point is 00:04:02 CNBC reports that a deal, with whomever it ends up being, could be closed as soon as next week and would include the sale of U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand TikTok operations in a deal worth overall between $20 and $30 billion. Interestingly, Facebook is making a point of keeping the App Store controversy in the news. Facebook announced that in order to get approval to add new, paid events features to its app on iOS, Apple told it to remove a message inside the app, informing users that Apple was demanding a 30% cut of sales, quoting Reuters.

Starting point is 00:04:41 Facebook said that Apple cited an App Store rule that bars developers from showing irrelevant information to users. Now more than ever, we should have the option to help people understand where money they intend for small business actually goes. Unfortunately, Apple rejected our transparency notice around their 30% tax, but we are still working to make that information available inside the app. experience, Facebook said in a statement. Apple did not respond to a request for comment. Facebook earlier this month said it planned to roll out a new tool that would let online

Starting point is 00:05:09 influencers and other businesses host paid online events as a way to offset revenue loss during the COVID-19 pandemic. The company said it had asked Apple to waive the 30% fee the iPhone maker charges for in-app purchases so Facebook could pass on all of the events revenue to business owners, but that Apple declined. Facebook had aimed to provide a notice of Apple's cut to users according to mockups it released at the time, but Reuters found on Thursday that the promised message was not present on the new events feature, end quote. So I've given a lot of time on this podcast to the whole idea of foldable phones, not because I think they're super, super cool or anything, but just because I've been so desperate for some sort of innovation in the smartphone form factor

Starting point is 00:05:55 that I'm basically here for any kind of experimentation. Maybe any kind is a bit much, because this I'm not so sure of. Leaked video appears to show LG's forthcoming dual-screen wing smartphone, which has a rumored 6.8-inch main display and a flip-out 4-inch secondary display. You'll have to click through to see the video, but paint me as skeptical, quote, The Wings orientation in the video shows it can be used in regular portrait orientation, with the second screen on the side, as well as in a T-formation. The video shows full-screen navigation on the main screen with music playback controls and an inbound call on the second screen. It's interesting to see that neither display features a notch or a punch hole cutout.

Starting point is 00:06:41 The secondary display flips out from the bottom of the main display and sits perpendicular to it. This makes it look like a traditional phone display with a smaller one-to-one display right next to it. The rumored LG wing specs include a 6.8 inch main screen and a 4-inch second screen powered by the Snapdragon 765 or 765G. Our tipster did not confirm any specs. Unfortunately, although the video does not show the screen flipping, our understanding is that the phone works a lot like the T-Mobile sidekick from the pre-Android years. With that early version of a smartphone, the display would flip outward and expose the physical keyboard underneath, end quote. So, again, skeptical of that one. This, however, is smartphone innovation I can get behind.

Starting point is 00:07:26 Zhaummi says that its under-display cameras are ready for consumer use, and the company expects, to ship a phone next year where the camera will be completely invisible under the screen, quoting Android Central. Zhaummi has highlighted its third generation under-display camera module in a blog post, and the brand says the sensor is invisible thanks to self-developed pixel arrangement with double the number of horizontal and vertical pixels, thereby achieving the same pixel density as the rest of the display. That means you won't be able to spot the camera module at all underneath the screen,

Starting point is 00:07:59 leading to a more immersive all-screen design. also says it tweaked its camera algorithms so that its under-screen modules deliver the same image quality as conventional selfie cameras. Jaumi's camera module also uses a special circuit design to, quote, hide more components under the RGB sub-pixels and further increase the light transmittance of the under-display area. Jaomi was never one to shy away from new camera technologies with the Mi-Mix series featuring the front cameras on the bottom bezel to create an all-screen experience, end quote. for the weekend long read suggestions. This Monday, a whole slew of companies filed to hit public markets

Starting point is 00:08:44 in various ways, including SPAC ways. But I didn't get to cover all of them, so I thought I'd highlight one of them that's particularly interesting. Asana, for a few reasons, Asana is interesting. A, it's a successful team management SaaS platform. B, its filing papers say revenue is up 86% year over year, which is impressive, because C, Asana is actually over a decade old, so it's taken the time to build a serious business. Also, D, one of the founders of Asana is Dustin Moscovitz, one of the co-founders of Facebook. In fact, Dustin was once the youngest billionaire in history, thanks to his Facebook stake, quoting Forbes. Moscovitz took back his own control by steadfastly rejecting Silicon Valley's hard-charging style. Once knee-deep in Facebook's move fast and break things

Starting point is 00:09:32 culture, Moskowitz has been careful to craft Asana in a more deliberate way. Wary of being another flash-in-the-pan unicorn, Asana has focused on long-term viability with a decade-old rule not to boost its headcount by more than double in any year, end quote. Next, one big company we did cover this week in terms of its ambitions to be on the public markets is Palantir, which is finally hitting the public markets after the better part of two decades of its secretive existence. Which was why I mentioned some people were actually questioning the strength of Palantir's business model once we got their paperwork.

Starting point is 00:10:10 Palantir only has a couple hundred customers and their four biggest customers account for maybe a fourth of all revenue. And after all this time, why is Palantir not bigger? People had been expecting at least a billion a year in revenue and that didn't pan out. So what people were whispering is, is Palantir a new kind of SaaS company or is it just a glorified consultancy? Well, I turned to one of my favorite newsletters, the diff, for a deep dive into what the Palantir S-1 can tell us about Palantir's business. And the conclusion is roughly this. Quote, Palantir is a strange company in a complicated industry. If they're a consulting shop with a great sales pitch, they're clearly overhyped. The sales pitch might land them clients and get them cheap employees, but that should be visible in their margins by now. If they're a software shop whose software is complicated enough that it requires a significant investment of developer time, though, they have the natural advantage that all complex products have. Palantir will pay the cost to install it, but the customer is on their own when they try to get rid of it. Palantir's overall margins look awful, especially for a company of its maturity, but unit revenue looks better the bigger

Starting point is 00:11:17 its customers get and the longer they've been using the product. And since Palantir sells to some of the biggest customers on Earth, over time their overall margin picture will be dominated by those giant mature accounts, end quote. Next, you may be aware of the recent political turmoil in the country of Belarus. You might have heard that the authorities in that country recently turned off the internet. That is, until apparently citizens got together to hotwire it and turn it back on, quoting Wired. Access to these VPNs is being facilitated by loan actors at a grassroots level. You would see people in the elevator just leaving USB sticks with VPN access files. It's funny. This is like low tech in action, said Milta. Some people didn't know about

Starting point is 00:12:00 VPN, so there were a few people offline for three days, added Carilla. I even had the idea to spread list with instructions on VPNs, but on the same night I came up with that idea, the internet was back, end quote. And Rafat Ali is someone I trust implicitly, both for his business instincts and his long-time experience running businesses on the internet. So when he comes out with a major essay, I take note. Rafat's latest missive makes an interesting point. What with the pandemic, but with the rise of Zoom and video conferencing and whatnot, what if the events industry, the live in real life industry, is having something everyone thought it was immune from? What if it's having its own Napster moment?

Starting point is 00:12:46 Quote, all types of business events are in danger of their revenue streams of tickets, sponsorships, memberships, and other types of fees being eroded. This is happening as the world gets used to digital formats and alternatives emerge to physical networking, matchmaking, and other tasks we get out of these events. Does that threat sound familiar? Everything about the underlying economics of the sprawling, diverse, chaotic, and highly profitable sector is being undercut by the move to virtual. And 2019 might be the year where the industry's revenues peaked. This year could be the event industry's 2000 moment, a la what happened to the music industry, end quote. It's ironic. In real life activities, conferences, even

Starting point is 00:13:27 pop-up stores and events. These were supposed to be new business lines that everyone from magazines to clothing brands were ginning up to counter disruption from other angles. But now it seems that the last high ground is underwater for them. Also, I'm keeping my eye on my whole burrito delivery bet in order for that to come true. Lots of regulatory stuff needs to happen to make those Death Star ankle droids a reality. In other words, autonomous small robots need to be legal on our sidewalks. Don't worry, though, as Wired outlines, Amazon and FedEx are giving the necessary nudge to the bureaucracy. Quote, the Kansas bill failed, but it was just one battle in a wider war. Amazon and FedEx seated and backed similar bills permitting delivery robots in more than a dozen

Starting point is 00:14:14 states this year. At least six have become law. Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor who studies emerging tech, says the bills don't mean you'll wake up tomorrow to an Amazon robot knocking on your door. Instead, he's says, they reflect, quote, the recognition by well-positioned companies with capable national and, in some cases, in-state lobbying operations, that now is the right time to shape favorable legislation on this topic before everyone starts talking about it, end quote. Companies often want to create legal certainty, he says, to give themselves more flexibility as they develop and start using new tech, end quote. And finally, GQ has a long profile up of Jaron Lanier, who we've

Starting point is 00:14:53 spoken about before on the show. He's a VR pioneer. He's also a Cassandra about the evils of social media. GQ calls him the conscience of Silicon Valley, quote, But all that was only part of the reason I had sought out Lanier, I told him. What I really hope to do, I said, was to talk about the future and how to live in it. This year feels like a crossroads. I do not need to explain what I mean by this. We are on the precipice of ruin or revolution or both. We are sick of looking at social media, but social media is also maybe driving the most significant and necessary social movement of my entire life. I sometimes want to destroy my computer, through which I now work and have drinks and stare at blurry simulations of my parents

Starting point is 00:15:37 sometimes. I want to kneel down and pray to it like a god. I want someone. I want Jaron Lanier to tell me where we're going and whether it's going to be okay when we get there. Lanierre just nodded. All right then, end quote. So yeah, I'm with the general consensus that the robo voice experiment from yesterday, while cool, it's not quite there yet as a technology to do something with on a regular basis. If I use it for truly breaking news, like if Tim Cook announces he's really a space alien right before I hit export and garage band, maybe I'd quickly use a robo voice to do a super brief segment instead of editing a whole new thing in there. and if we end up doing a morning headlines thing, a three-minute long thing in the morning,

Starting point is 00:16:27 I promise we'll do that as a separate feed and probably with my voice. Maybe what I should do is actually just put together a test example, and you all can give me more feedback on that formatting. But honestly, don't expect that anytime soon because I'm sort of burning the candle at both ends at the moment, which is why there haven't been as many weekend bonus episodes this summer, and I won't do any more of the robo voice surprises on you. By the way, no weekend bonus episode this weekend, but I am recording one on Monday, so we will have something for you next weekend in time for the long holiday weekend in the U.S. And by the way, this is that time of year again usually happens around this time.

Starting point is 00:17:05 I have four open, unsold mid-roll sponsorship slots on the podcast starting next week. In the past, we've found some great sponsors, long-term sponsors by reaching out to the listeners. So if you're hearing me right now and you'd like your product or company to sponsor some episodes in the next two weeks, hit me up at podcast at techmeme.com. I'm offering these four spots, one or all of them, at 40% off the going rate, but only on a first come, first serve basis, and only for these open slots over the next two weeks. If you can help me out on short notice, you'll get a good deal, basically less than an $18 CPM rate. Podcast at Techmeme.com. Talk to you on Monday.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 08/28 – Ok, So… How About Walmart Owning TikTok?

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