Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 02/17 – A Y2K Bug For Our Times?

Episode Date: February 17, 2022

Why a dumb agent string bug may break some big named websites soon. Is Circle about to become the biggest pure play crypto company to hit public markets? Spotify buys basically the only remaining pieces of the podcast puzzle missing from their toolbelt. And the interesting raise from a company buying up YouTube back catalogs. Sponsors: RealVision.com/techmeme Links: Mozilla warns Chrome, Firefox ‘100’ user agents may break sites (BleepingComputer) Meta’s Clegg Promoted as Zuckerberg Steps Back From Policy (Bloomberg) Circle valued at $9 billion under revamped SPAC deal terms (The Block) Spotify is acquiring two major podcast tech platforms (The Verge) Sequoia Capital launches crypto token fund (Axios) Sequoia Capital is launching a $500-600 million crypto fund to invest in tokens (The Block) Spotter raises $200M to invest $1 billion into YouTubers’ back catalogs (TechCrunch) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the Unreal College deal, everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 premium and a year of Xbox GamePass Ultimate

with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at Windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last, ends June 30th, turns at AKA.m.m.S. college PC. Welcome to the Tech meme right home for Thursday, February 17, 22. I'm Brian McCullough today. Why a dumb agent string bug may break some big name websites soon. Is Circle about to become the biggest pureplay crypto company to hit the public markets? Spotify buys basically the only remaining pieces in the podcast puzzle missing from their tool belt and the interesting raise from a company buying up YouTube back catalogs. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Sex in the city is back on the air. to me, I'm told a phase shift is happening to bring wide bottom pants legs back. And oh, there seems to be a Y2K-like bug stalking the land. So I guess the 90s really are back, everybody. Mozilla has warned

that Firefox and Chrome 100 versions may break some websites, including the likes of HBO and Yahoo, due to user agent strings with three-digit version numbers, quoting bleeping computer. A user agent is a string used by a web browser that includes information about the software, such as the browser name, its version number, and the various technologies it uses. When a person visits a website, the browser's user agent is sent along with the request for a web page. This allows the webpage to check the visitor's browser version and modify its response based on the features the browser supports. In August 2021, Mozilla launched an experiment to see if the three-digit Firefox 100 user agent string would cause problems with websites. Google soon followed with their own experiment for Chrome 100.

In both experiments, Mozilla and Google found a small number of websites that would not operate correctly when parsing a user agent string that contained a three-digit version number. Since then, Mozilla has been keeping track of web bugs caused by the version 100 change and has found problems on websites for HBO Go, Bethesda, Yahoo, Slack, and those created by the Duda website builder. For the most part, these issues have ranged from the websites stating the browser is unsupported, to user interface issues affecting portions of the site. Without a single specification to follow, different browsers have different formats for the user agent string and site-specific user agent

parsing. It's possible that some parsing libraries may have hard-coded assumptions or bugs that don't take into account three-digit major version numbers. Mozilla explains in a new blog post about the upcoming user agent changes. Quote, many libraries improve the parsing logic when browsers move to two-digit version numbers, so hitting the three-digit milestone is expected to cause fewer problems, end quote. Mozilla and Google will continue running experiments for version 100 user agents until the browsers are released on March 29th for Chrome and May 3rd for Firefox. If there are issues with sites that Mozilla or Google cannot fix before these versions are released, both Google and Mozilla have backup plans ready to ensure the sites are not affected,

end quote. Hey, devs, why does this always happen? I mean, saving space by saving digits. That went out in about what, 1978? Is it just laziness now? You're not, you know, gaining anything by taking one digit out anymore. Anyway, doesn't sound like it'll be a big deal this time, but still, this should really never happen again, right? Mark Zuckerberg has named Nick Clegg as Meta's new president of global affairs reporting directly to Zuckerberg himself, meaning Zuckerberg will have less involvement in policy going forward. Also, C-O.O. Cheryl Sandberg might be stepping back from policy as well, quoting Bloomberg. Clegg was already running Meadow's global policy organization, but Zuckerberg said in a post-Windnesday that he will now, quote, lead our company on all our policy matters, including

interactions with governments and how Meadow will, quote, make the case publicly for our products and our work, end quote. Clegg, who was reporting to Sandberg, is now reporting to Zuckerberg, too, with the new title of President for Global Affairs. We need a senior leader at the level of myself for our products and Cheryl for our business who can lead and represent us for all of our policy issues globally, Zuckerberg wrote. Clegg's elevated role means that Zuckerberg and Sandberg will defer to Clegg more on policy decisions. Zuckerberg in particular has spent more time in recent years on issues like content moderation and regulation than he would like, according to sources familiar with his thinking. That has included many discussions around issues like political advertising and how to

handle high-profile users like former President Donald Trump. Zuckerberg would rather dedicate more time to meta's technology and products, areas where he is more experienced, including plans to build a new immersive version of the internet known as the Metaverse, say people familiar with his thinking. Clegg's promotion may also help Zuckerberg avoid making public statements on day-to-day policy issues, which haven't done much to improve Facebook's trust with the public. As CEO, though, he'll still likely be the one called before Congress when lawmakers seek a top executive to testify. As Nick takes on this new leadership role, it will enable me to focus more of my energy on leading the company as we build new products for the future, and it will support Cheryl as she continues to focus on the success of our business. Zuckerberg wrote, end quote. So does this indicate that Clegg is in the ascendancy, and Sandberg maybe is on the wane? Is she maybe positioning herself to leave the company eventually? Lots of tea leaves to read here.

And look, ever since Clegg joined Facebook, British tweets have always expressed incredulity about his rise there, which I've never really understood because I've never looked up the background to Clegg's previous career. But a couple of those British tinged tweets, Johnny Leiden on Twitter, quote, you can make an argument that Nick Clegg might now be the most powerful Brit on Earth. For anyone with even a passing knowledge of the history of the Lib Dems and the coalition years in particular, this is an M-9. Shamanian twist in the tale, end quote. And here's Tariq Panja, quote. Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is a stepping stone to becoming first lord of the metaverse, end quote. Spotify is acquiring Chartable and Podsites, two podcast analytics companies that let podcasters and networks include tags in shows to track listeners, quoting the verge. Both pod sites and chartable allow podcasters and networks to include tags in their shows that are used to track who listened, They heard an ad and whether they took action upon hearing it. Spotify says it plans to use PodSites technology outside podcasting and will bring it to the,

quote, full scope of the Spotify platform, including audio ads within music, video ads, and display ads, end quote. The chartable acquisition appears to be more directed toward podcasters themselves rather than advertisers, particularly because of its technology like smart links. These tools will make it easier for publishers to turn audience insights into action and expand their listenership while ultimately growing their businesses, Spotify writes. This deal is particularly critical for the company as it tries to make its ad platform the best and most powerful in audio. If it wants everyone to purchase ads through its marketplace,

then it needs technology to better figure out who's listening to those ads and what they're doing after hearing them. At the same time, marketing analytics are critical for show creators who want to ensure they're spending their budgets well. This deal helps both creators and advertisers to groups, Spotify needs and wants to court, end quote. I'm going to pull back the curtain just a bit here. I'd say about 10% of the ads you hear on the show are tracked using either chartable or pod sites tracking, but it's not quite as nefarious as it sounds like neither of those tell the sponsor who's listened, like who you are or anything like that. It's largely used simply to confirm that the ads actually ran. That's it. That's how

still in the Stone Ages podcast analytics are. For both good and bad for the overall industry, frankly. Congratulations to Dave and the Charitable team, who I've known personally since they've been big supporters of the show from the very beginning. And further behind the scenes, four years ago when I started the show, all my friends at places like Gimlet and Pineapple Street were independent. Megaphone was a not particularly well-developed platform inside of Slate. Charitable was this tiny team with less than a million dollars in funding. And now everybody is owned by the big guys, especially Spotify. Heck, even the host that delivers this show to you every day, Art 19 is now owned by Amazon. But heck, when I started podcasting in 2014, the only real host in

town was Libson. It's crazy to think that I've seen most of this industry's evolution, and I've only been in it for less than a decade. U.S.D.C. Stablecoin developer Circle says its forthcoming SPAC deal now values the company at $9 billion up from $4.5 billion when the deal was first announced, which somehow I missed that Circle was doing a SPAC. I think that the company. I think that the company, this is an important thing to keep an eye on, though, because is this the first pure play crypto company of this magnitude to hit public markets? Most of the public companies from the crypto space thus far, you could argue, are not really pure crypto. For example, Coinbase, as we said, is a traditional marketplace at its core. And there are crypto mining companies that are public,

I believe. But again, that's more about, you know, buying computers and running them. But Circle is pure crypto. And stable coins are the hotness of. the moment, quoting the block. In July 2021, Circle announced its plans to tap public markets via a SPAC through a deal with Concord, which is chaired by former Barclays Chief Executive Bob Diamond. The New Deal values circle at $9 billion, an increase from the first deal's terms that valued it at $4.5 billion. The transaction is subject to shareholder and regulatory approvals. The deal could close by the end of 2022, after which the combined entity would trade on the New York Stock Exchange. The New Deal's announcement noted the new terms reflected, quote, improvements in

Circle's financial outlook. Upcoming rate hikes by the Federal Reserve could bump the interest circle earns on the cash pile underpinning the dollar-backed coin, end quote. Sequoia Capital has announced plans to raise $500 to $600 million for a new fund focused on liquid crypto investments. This will go along with a $900 to $950 million ecosystem fund and a $3.2 to $3.5 billion expansion fund. So VCs raising tons of money to invest in crypto. What's new? about that, Brian, but listen closer, because this is not just about investing in companies. Like, they're actually going to invest and speculate in the coins themselves, quoting Axios. This is a brand new strategy that will focus on liquid crypto investments, i.e. tokens,

and is enabled by Sequoia recently becoming a registered investment advisor. We could buy these out of our seed or venture or growth funds and be mostly passive, and we have done some of that, but it's not really what LPs or the crypto, community once, Sequoia's Alfred Lynn tells Axios, this fund will let us manage those tokens differently from staking to voting rights and having a say on governance, end quote. Lynn adds that around 20% of Sequoia's investments over the past year have been for crypto startups and that such deals will continue at a brisk pace. Sequoia last fall said this open-ended fund would become the sole limited partner for all future

sub-funds, basically creating a loop whereby the main fund and sub-funds would continuously feed each other. The move shook other VC firms, judging by our inbox, as Sequoia is almost universally viewed as the industry's best in class. It is now laying out plans for its first three sub-funds under this new structure, having sent PPMs and allocation requests out this morning, and they aren't just continuations of existing strategies, end quote. And quoting from the block, Sequoia Capital, one of the world's oldest and most successful venture capital firms, is launching a new crypto-focused fund, its first ever sector-specific fund since its founding in 1972. The Sequoia Crypto Fund will primarily invest in liquid tokens, tokens that are already listed

on crypto exchanges and those that are yet to be listed, Sean McGuire partner at Sequoia Capital told the block in an interview. The fund's size is $500,600 million, and it is part of the bigger Sequoia Capital Fund, which was formed last October as part of the VC firms restructuring. The Sequoia Capital Fund now holds all of the firms' U.S. and European investments, including stakes in publicly traded companies. In addition to the crypto subfund, Koya will also continue to invest in crypto startups out of its main seed venture growth and expansion funds that have over $7.5 billion in total capital commitments, end quote. Finally, today, an interesting raise. I've told you about all these startups that buy up

all these small commerce players that exist on the Amazon and Shopify platforms. But today I learned about this other interesting strategy. Spotter is a startup that licenses YouTubers back catalogs, and it's raised a $200 million series D at a $1.7 billion valuation led by Vision Fund 2, bringing its total funding to $755 million. Quoting TechCrunch. A YouTuber's back catalog can become a financial asset. Every month they know they'll get a payout from ever-increasing engagement on their past content. Now the Los Angeles-based startup spotter wants to help creators scale their channels faster by offering them large sums of upfront cash. in exchange for the future ad revenue from their existing uploads. Since its launch in 2019,

some of YouTube's biggest creators like Mr. Beast and Like Nastya have struck deals with Spotter. The company says that across its roster of clients, which also includes Dude Perfect, Amphamel, smoking and grillin, Witt A, B, and others. Spotter has licensed content that generates over 40 billion monthly watchtime minutes. Spotter's business model is a contemporary interpretation of the Bowie Bond, which is becoming more popular among creator economy startups. It's not dissimilar to venture capital investments. You give a promising company or person the money that they'll need to grow, assuming that eventually you'll recoup your investment and turn a sizable profit. Another creator-focused startup funded by SoftBank Vision Fund to JellySmack also just earned $500 million to license back catalogs on

YouTube. JellySemack's licensing of back catalogs expires after five years, the same length of spotter's contracts, and uses an algorithm to determine whether or not to invest in a creator. Spotter claims to be on track to reach a cumulative total of $1 billion invested in creators by mid-20203, four years after the company was founded. In 2022 alone, C.O.O. Nick Paul told TechCrunch that Spotter plans to spend $500 million to license creators' back catalogs, and so far, Spotter has done about 200 deals of this nature. Some creators like YouTube's top U.S.-based creator Mr. Beast have done multiple deals with Spotter over the years. If a creator wants to work with Spotter, the company will analyze their channel's metrics to make them an offer for

their back catalog. A company spokesperson said that engagement metrics are the most important to Spotter, including how much time viewers spend watching a creator's content and what percentage of video viewers actually watch before dropping off. Spotter also considers metrics that the YouTube algorithm directly rewards like the number of likes, shares, and comments. Another consideration is the kind of content. Spotter won't invest in YouTubers that make videos about news and politics, for example. Then, once a creator inks a deal with Spotter, the company will use those analytics to give them advice about growing their channel. This benefits Spotter as well, since more traffic on a creator's channel could lead to more ad revenue from the back catalog that the company licensed, and even

better, the creator might want to license even more of their content to Spotter, which might perform even better than their past uploads. Spotter's average size of a deal is around $1.5 million, yet some deals with smaller channels can be as low as $15,000. These payouts are not loans. Spotter provides upfront cash, which the creators don't have to pay back. But in exchange for this fast capital, creators have to be willing to license their content to Spotter for five years. While Spotter won't take copyright or intellectual property, that would be a huge red flag for creators. The company is buying ownership of any future ad revenue that the videos generate. Our target return in terms of getting the money back is around four years, said the company.

So Spotter clients are presented with a challenging business question. Do you want to earn about four years of ad revenue up front, but then never see another penny from those videos again? or would you rather bet on earning more money over a longer period of time, but sacrifice some growth potential? The answer to that question is different from creator to creator, end quote. By the way, since we were talking about the business of podcasting earlier in this episode, I've long thought that back catalogs a podcast is something that could be more monetized than it is. Like, you know, there's 15 years of the flop house back catalog, and every time people discover that show, they tend to go through the whole thing. And unfortunately, those boys aren't earning a dime

from that old stuff. Well, it finally happened. Is it just me or on Max? Does it always take forever to load Excel? Always bounces forever, then says it's authorizing or something like that. Well, this morning, as I said, it finally happened. Excel just never opened. Anyone know what's up with that? Happens with words sometimes, too, though not as bad yet. Asking for a friend again. tomorrow.