Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 01/19 – Instagram Wants You To Take A Break

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 Tech Meme ride home for Thursday, January 19th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough. Today is Genesis finally on the verge of bankruptcy?

Starting point is 00:00:42 Instagram wants you to take a break from Instagram, and they're even willing to give you tools to do so. Frowny face for Amazon for shutting down the Amazon Smile program, Wikipedia gets a big redesign, some numbers on where investor dollars are going in tech right now. And is San Francisco back, baby? Maybe because I'm coming to town for a visit. what you miss today in the world of tech. Is another one about to bite the dust.

Starting point is 00:01:11 Sources are telling the block that Genesis creditors are negotiating a bankruptcy plan with the firm and weighing a one to two year forbearance period in exchange for cash and DCG equity. Quote, creditors like the Winklevoss twins, Gemini, would agree to a forbearance period in most of the payments of between one and two years under the pre-packaged bankruptcy plan, according to one of the sources. In exchange, creditors will receive cash payments and equity in Genesis parent company Digital Currency Group, the source said. Gemini formed an ad hoc committee late last year in an effort to coordinate efforts with other creditors and advocate together for a resolution after Genesis halted withdrawals on its platform. The creditor committee has been privately

Starting point is 00:01:56 negotiating for the past few weeks with Genesis in an effort to finalize a Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection plan ahead of filing. Publicly, Gemini co-founder Campbell, Cameron Winklevoss has been feuding with Barry Silbert, the head of Genesis parent DCG. He's accused him of commingling funds at the crypto conglomerate, negotiating in bad faith, and in his most recent open letter, insisted he stepped down as DCG's top executive, end quote. But there's another wrinkle here, remember? Digital currency group owns CoinDesk, which we quote from all the time, and which you'll remember broke the news that sparked the whole FTX meltdown, which led to the current situation. that Genesis is in. The publication might have killed the parent company. Well, CoinDesk has apparently retained investment bankers at Lazard to help the outlet explore options, including a partial or full sale after apparently numerous indications of interest. Quoting the Wall Street Journal. CoinDesk's parent company Digital Currency Group, or DCG, has received multiple unsolicited offers north of $200 million in the past few months,

Starting point is 00:03:02 according to people familiar with the matter. DCG acquired the media company in 2016 for $500,000, the people said. Coin desk generated $50 million in revenue last year from online advertising as well as its index and events business, they said, end quote. Instagram is rolling out quiet mode, which silences notifications, auto replies to DMs and informs your friends that you're taking a break, and plans to prompt teens to enable the feature at night. Quoting TechCrunch. Quiet mode joins a handful of other screen time management tools

Starting point is 00:03:40 Instagram now offers, including daily time spent controls that allow people to track their app use and send themselves alerts, those to configure take a break reminders after individual app sessions extend beyond a certain amount of time and various tools to pause, snooze, and unfollow pages, groups, and people

Starting point is 00:03:57 to help further reduce engagement with addictive or otherwise unwanted content. With the new quiet mode feature, however, the idea isn't just to introduce tool that pushes users to take a break. Instead, it focuses on the real-world impacts that a company trying to step away for a bit from an app that you regularly use and one where others expect you to be available. With quiet mode, Instagram users can choose to take a break to study, to sleep, or to otherwise disengage. It's sort of like the Instagram equivalent of turning your instant

Starting point is 00:04:26 messaging light off, for those who remember the aim and ICQ era. When you exit quiet mode, the app will offer a summary of what you miss during your downtime to help you get caught up. Instagram says teens will be prompted to enable a feature when they spend a specific amount of time on Instagram at night, but quiet mode will be offered to all users. Instagram says the prompt will be triggered after a short amount of time, but didn't provide details on what it considers short. The launches come as Instagram works to make its app less of a target for regulators and lawmakers who have been concerned with social media's potential harms, particularly for teenage users, end quote. Amazon is planning to shut down Amazon Smile.

Starting point is 00:05:12 This was a scheme launched back in 2013 to let customers donate half a percent of the purchase price of various eligible items to a charity. The Smiles end on February 20th, quoting the Hill. In a letter sent to Amazon Smile Customers Wednesday, Amazon explained the program, quote, has not grown to create the impact that we had originally hoped. With so many eligible organizations, more than one million globally, our ability to have an impact was often spread too thin, Amazon wrote. According to Amazon Smile's website, over one million charities have benefited from the program. A spokesperson tells Next Star, those charities have received $500 million with the average annual donation being less than $230.

Starting point is 00:05:54 Amazon now plans to wind down Amazon Smile by February 20th, 2023. We will continue to pursue and invest in other areas where we've seen we can make meaningful change from building affordable housing to providing access to computer science education for students in underserved communities to using our logistics, infrastructure, and technology to assist broad communities impacted by natural disasters, the company said. Those charities that will be impacted by Amazon Smile coming to an end will receive a one-time donation worth three months of what they received in 2022, Amazon explained. Charities will still be able to receive donations until the program officially ends, end quote.

Starting point is 00:06:31 So lots of people saying that Amazon's reasoning for ending the program that it was spread too thin is pretty weak stuff. I mean, there's spreading thin, and then there's also the concept of spreading broadly doing a lot of good. Lots of people used to do things like effortlessly contribute to, say, your school's PTA and such. As Dominic Chu tweeted, quote, I'm sure a lot of smaller nonprofits in America are beneficiaries of the Amazon Smile charitable donation. platform, they're likely the ones more hurt by its shuddering than larger charitable organizations, end quote. And here's Adrian Bradley from Twitter. This is so rubbish. Amazon Smile was such an easy thing to do, and even if it didn't raise as much money as it hoped for, some orgs, I reckon, even that small income stream was a lifeline, end quote. Wikimedia has launched an updated Wikipedia design, including improved search and accessibility, a refreshed table of contents, and easier language switching. This is the first makeover the site and service have seen in over a decade, quoting the verge.

Starting point is 00:07:44 The changes being introduced are not very dramatic. In fact, they may not even be immediately noticed by some users. The organization, however, says the update was necessary in order to meet the needs of the next generation of internet users, including those who are more newly coming online and may have less familiarity with the internet. To develop the new interface, the foundation engaged with more than third, different volunteer groups from around the world, with users in places like India, Indonesia, Ghana, and Argentina, among others, all helping to test the update and provide insights to the product development. The goal for the update was to make Wikipedia more of a modern web platform,

Starting point is 00:08:18 it said, and to remove clutter, while also making it easier for users to contribute. It additionally aimed to make the desktop web version more consistent with Wikipedia's mobile counterpart. Among the changes is a newly improved search box that now uses both images and descriptions in its auto-complete suggestions that appear as you type to help direct users to the article you need. This change, like many being introduced, is relatively small but offers a visual clue that could speed up searches and make them more helpful. The Wikimedia Foundation said this update led to a 30% increase in user searches when it was tested, a reminder that even minor changes can have larger impacts on a product's real-world use. Another change involves an updated

Starting point is 00:08:56 sticky header where you'll find commonly use links like search, the page name, and sections that move with you as you scroll down, staying pinned to the top of the page. That means you'll no longer have to scroll back up to the top to find what you're looking for, allowing users to stay focused on reading or editing the content instead. Again, this seems like a smaller tweak, but one that decreased scroll rates by more than 15% during tests, something that may be helpful to those who spend a lot of time on Wikipedia navigating between pages and sections, though it largely addresses an annoyance with the site more so than any real problem. The tests also found that edits people started using with the edit button and the sticky header

Starting point is 00:09:34 were reversed less often than those initiated through other edit buttons on the page. Language switching tools were previously available but are now bumped up to a new more prominent position at the top right, allowing readers and editors to switch between over 300 supported languages. This could be helpful in emerging markets where multilingual users want to access pages from other languages at times. The new table of content section on the left side of articles, which helps people navigate through longer content, will now remain visible as you scroll down the page and helps you to see which section you're currently reading. This makes it easier to jump around, moving in

Starting point is 00:10:08 between various parts of the article as you further investigate a topic. Again, helpful, but not world-changing, end quote. I kind of want to say enough with the Apple rumor news, except that this is something I've been saying Apple should do since I became a fan of Facebook's proleto device during the pandemic. Who else but Mark German says Apple is working on an iPad-based smart display with smart home controls, video, and FaceTime, and a new Apple TV, also with a faster processor, probably slated for release in the first half of 2024. But back to that device that I'm still looking for so that Papa doesn't always have to be the videographer during FaceTime calls, quote, the push into smart displays will start with a tablet product, essentially a low-end

Starting point is 00:11:00 iPad that can control things like thermostats and lights, show video, and handle FaceTime chats. People with knowledge of the plan said, the product could be mounted on walls or elsewhere using magnetic fasteners, positioning it as more of a home gadget than a regular iPad. Apple has also discussed the idea of building larger smart home displays, according to the people who ask not to be identified because the deliberations are private. Work on a long-anticipated product that would combine the TV box with a smart speaker and FaceTime camera also has suffered setbacks, though that project is still ongoing. The device was initially targeted for release this year, but the timing has slipped.

Starting point is 00:11:37 Likewise, the smart displays have seen their development schedules delayed and likely won't launch until next year at the earliest, end quote. Finally today, some interesting data points from startup funding land, but also from startup land itself. An analysis from Crunchbase says that funding to VC-backed Web3 startups fell from 2019. $2 billion in 2021 to $21.5 billion in 2022. But as last year went on, the numbers got even worse. Q4-2020 funding fell 74% year-over-year-over-year at Web3 projects, from $9.3 billion to just $2.4 billion. And analysis using AngelList data shows that Series B valuations have fallen 50%.

Starting point is 00:12:28 from a $250 million median valuation in Q1 of 2022 to a $125 million median valuation in Q4 of 2022, quoting Eric Newcomer. For much of 2022, the narrative has been that the tech IPO market and late-stage growth rounds were essentially frozen. But many investors, armed with billions in dry powder, instead shifted their attention to early stages, helping buoy valuations at Seed, Series A, and Series B. Angelus data shows cracks in those early-stage valuations emerge, in the second half of 2022. Even seed round valuations began to fall by the fourth quarter. Surprisingly, by volume and tenor, venture activity in Q4 was nearly identical to the second quarter of

Starting point is 00:13:10 2020 when COVID first hit startups and everyone else was panicking. Abe Othman, head of data science at Angelist and report co-author wrote in an email, at the time, that was the worst quarter for venture since we started tracking in 2016. Of course, that quarter was followed by a quick recovery and then an investment frenzy, but this time feels different. I believe it would take a jovial temperament, perhaps verging on delusion, to anticipate the same rebound happening over the next several quarters, end quote. Among those startups reporting a change in their price per share in the quarter, the percent of startups that raised a favorable round of financing or sold the company above the last round price, dropped by 17 percentage points year over year to just 67 percent, according to Angelist. While the dip in the

Starting point is 00:13:54 second half of 2022 is worrying. It doesn't seem akin to anything like the dot-com bust-level turbulence. The majority of startups are still raising at premiums to the last rounds of funding, and pre-seat valuations don't even seem to have been affected yet by the downturn. If you just zoomed out and looked at 2022 as a year, things actually weren't so bad. Year over year, average valuations increased at all stages in 2022, the report says. But of course, the poor performance for valuations in third and fourth quarters of 2022 raises questions. about what this year will look like, end quote. And also this narrative violation, Vox says that people might be moving back to San Francisco.

Starting point is 00:14:34 Quote, over the last 12 months, San Francisco has seen the second biggest worker population gain of any area in the United States, according to LinkedIn. The January data, which measures when people update their locations and their profiles, showed that for every 100,000 LinkedIn users, 83 of them moved to San Francisco in the last 12 months. The workers largely came from Los Angeles, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Washington, D.C. The data represents a significant shift in population trends for San Francisco, which hadn't seen notable net gains in LinkedIn's data since 2017. The San Francisco metropolitan area had some of the biggest population declines from 2020 to 2021, losing more than 125,000 residents,

Starting point is 00:15:15 according to the latest available census data. Indeed, more people are now coming to San Francisco then leaving. By the end of last year, nearly two people were coming to the metropolitan area for everyone that left. LinkedIn wasn't able to provide the net change in area members since the start of the pandemic. The area was still bested by Austin, where prices are still relatively cheaper and where there's no income tax, but that's been the case for years now, end quote. Well, speaking of Austin, though, I saw a tweet yesterday from Ethan Mollick, who's a professor at the Wharton Business School. I'm going to share the link to it in the show notes, but I really hope someone does a deeper write-up on this angle, quoting the tweet. Last quarter, only 23% of U.S. venture

Starting point is 00:15:56 capital went to Silicon Valley, a low number, but it fluctuated every quarter. So what emerging tech center has been on the rise? Not Miami at 1% of venture money captured, or even Austin at 1.4%, but Los Angeles at 12.5% joining the big leagues of Boston, 11% and New York city at 14% of all venture investment attracted, end quote. Lots of listeners got in touch to help me fill out my empty ad inventory at that discounted rate. In fact, you heard the first ad for those today. Of course, I always want you to patronize our sponsors. But do me a favor and pay special attention and give special consideration to these ads because they're from your fellow listeners. They're helping me keep the lights on over here. And they're from.

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Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 01/19 – Instagram Wants You To Take A Break

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