Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 06/15 – Automattic Acquires Day One

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 Right Home for Tuesday, June 15th, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today. Automatic acquires the popular iOS and iPadOS journaling app day one. Everyone wants a piece of stripe.

Starting point is 00:00:46 Stripe wants to be the stripe for identity all by itself. With HBO Vanquish, now Netflix wants to become Disney, faster than Disney can become Netflix. And could I interest you in an NFT of the entire worldwide web? Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. WordPress parent company Automatic has acquired day one, a popular journaling app for Apple devices with more than 15 million downloads on the Mac and iOS app stores. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, quoting TechCrunch. The addition makes for an interesting expansion of Automatics' now-growing collection of online writing tools, which today include blogging platforms WordPress.com, and Tumblr, the latter as of 2019, when Automatic

Starting point is 00:01:34 took the aging social blogging network off parent company Verizon's hands for a fraction of its earlier $1 billion acquisition price. Unlike WordPress and Tumblr, which tend to focus on publishing to a public audience, day one's focus has been on privacy. The app offers end-to-end encryption for all your journal entries, which can include text, media, and even audio recordings. It has also offered advanced features like automatic backups, auto-import of Instagram posts, voice transcriptions, templates, rich text formatting, location history, and optional printed books, as well as integrations with other platforms like Spotify, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and more. With its addition to automatic, day one will allow users to choose to publish select journal entries

Starting point is 00:02:18 to WordPress.com and Tumblr, and soon import content from either platform back into day one, too. The app may also make sense as a way for existing Tumblr users to sync their private entries over to a protected and backed up writing tool instead of accidentally publishing them to their main blog. Automatic in an announcement notes, Day 1 CEO Paul Main will continue to lead the development of Day 1 following the acquisition. The team of 12 will also remain intact. Day 1 had been bootstrapped and self-funded for 10 years, end quote. The U.S. Supreme Court has thrown out a lower court ruling that had allowed third-party scraping of LinkedIn users' public profiles. The dispute will now go back to the federal.

Starting point is 00:03:05 Appeals Court from which it came, quoting Reuters. The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday gave Microsoft's LinkedIn another chance to try to stop rival Hicue Labs from harvesting personal data from the professional networking platform's public profiles, a practice that LinkedIn contends threatens the privacy of its users. The justices threw out a lower court ruling that had barred LinkedIn from denying IQ access to the information that LinkedIn members had made publicly available. At issue is whether companies can use a federal anti-hacking law called the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which prohibits accessing a computer without authorization, to block competitors from harvesting or scraping vast amounts of customer data from public-facing parts of a website.

Starting point is 00:03:50 The justices sent the dispute back to the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider in light of their June 4 ruling that limited the type of conduct that can be criminally prosecuted under the same law. In that case, the justice has found that a person cannot be guilty of violating that law if they misuse information on a computer that they have permission to access. For its part, HICU uses the data for products that analyze employee skills or alert employers when they could be looking for a new job. It said LinkedIn issued the threat around the same time LinkedIn announced a similar service to HICUs. It sued in federal court accusing LinkedIn of anti-competitive conduct and a federal judge in 2017 granted its request for a preliminary injunction against LinkedIn.

Starting point is 00:04:36 Explaining its stance, Haiku has said public data must remain public and innovation on the internet should not be stifled by anti-competitive hoarding of public data by a small group of powerful companies. The Ninth Circuit in 2019 blocked LinkedIn from cutting off Haiku while the litigation continued ruling that the law at issue likely does not apply in situations in which no authorization is needed to access the data that users have made publicly available, end quote. When I say that Stripe is the hottest private startup I've seen in a long, long time,

Starting point is 00:05:13 this is what I mean. Buyout firm Silver Lake, mutual fund giant capital group companies, venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, and others recently bought around a billion dollars worth of Stripe's stock from existing shareholders. Among those others, hoovering up these shares, was Shopify, which has long been deeply integrated with Stripe, quoting the Wall Street Journal. The company, which processes payments for e-commerce businesses, recently offered investors the chance to acquire sizable stakes in the company from existing shareholders, including current and former stripe employees, according to people familiar with the transaction. Bids from those investors exceeded $4 billion, some of the people said. But only about $1 billion of those bids were filled,

Starting point is 00:05:57 one of the people said, suggesting that many current Stripe shareholders believe their stock has a long way to climb. Silicon Valley is awash with investors looking for new places to park their money, partly because low interest rates have made some traditional investments on appealing. Stripe in particular has garnered interest because it has been turbocharged by the coronavirus-fueled boom in online shopping. After a fundraising round in March, it became the most valuable private company in Silicon Valley valued at $95 billion. Tender offers have become a popular way for startup investors to amass larger holdings outside of more traditional fundraisings. Softbank Group, for example, acquired nearly $7 billion of shares in Uber in a 2017 tender offer when Uber was still a

Starting point is 00:06:38 private company. Many of the large participants in Stripe's tender offer boosted existing stakes. Shopify, for instance, has now invested more than $350 million in Stripe over a number of transactions a person close to Shopify said. Shopify is one of Stripe's largest payment processing customers, and starting this year, Shopify rolled out bank accounts and debit cards to its merchants through a Stripe program, end quote. Speaking of, I promise that we'd start covering new Stripe product announces more often, since so many people use Stripe to do so many things. So, say hello to Stripe Identity, a self-serve tool for companies that can be used to

Starting point is 00:07:23 verify identities using AI, quoting TechCrunch. A number of startups have fashioned themselves as the Stripe for Identity Verification, providing an easy way for developers to integrate ID authentication into a platform. today, Stripe is stepping in to fill that need itself. The company is launching a new product called Stripe Identity, a self-serve tool that companies can use to verify users' identities with Stripe managing the customer data in an encrypted format using computer vision and machine learning to read and match up government IDs with live selfies. Stripe says the service works in as little as 15 seconds. The service is launching in beta starting today in 30 countries,

Starting point is 00:08:04 the company said. But in the meantime, it's already quietly been in use by select partners. They include Discord as part of its ID verification feature, PeerSpace, which runs ID verification when onboarding users and merchants, Shippo, when it identifies high-risk users and asks them to verify themselves, and other unnamed customers using it to prevent account takeovers, end quote. Amazon is bringing its cashierless technology to a full-size grocery store for the first time in a new 25,000 square foot Amazon Fresh location in Seattle. Quoting Geekwire. Amazon on Thursday will open a 25,000 square foot Amazon Fresh location in the Factoria neighborhood of Bellevue, Washington. Amazon Fresh stores are designed to be similar to a traditional full-service grocery store, but with some

Starting point is 00:08:59 added technology, including smart grocery carts and Amazon Echo devices that help shoppers navigate aisles. The Factoria store will now also feature the cashierless technology, which uses an array of cameras and sensors to log what people put in their carts as they shop, eliminating checkout lines. Customers scan their phones when they enter and simply walk out after loading up their basket or cart. Amazon uses the tech at its smaller Amazon Go convenience stores. With the addition of just walk out, the Factoria store will not offer the smart grocery carts that automatically detect and log items on a digital display and removes the need for a traditional checkout line. Amazon said the smart carts, also known as Amazon Dashcarts, will remain available at other

Starting point is 00:09:40 Amazon Fresh Stores. The first Amazon Fresh Store opened this past September, and there are now eight open in the Los Angeles region, four in the Chicago area, and one in Virginia. Another is planned on Jackson Street in Seattle's Central District. The stores sell produce, meat, prepared foods, rotisserie chickens for $4.97, pizza at $1.79 a slice, and more, and also act as return centers or delivery stations for Amazon packages. The Factoria store located at $3.9.00.com. 903, Factoria Square Mall Southeast. We'll have traditional checkout lines for those that don't want to use Just Walkout. It will also feature Amazon 1, the company's palm reading ID system that recently expanded to Whole Food stores. Amazon said it's focusing on Just Walkout at the Factoria store and will go from there in regard to bringing the tech to other Amazon fresh stores or Whole Foods locations, end quote.

Starting point is 00:10:33 Although remember, Amazon is also shopping this technology around to other retailers, so maybe any of us will see. similar technology coming to stores near us soon. Bit of a long read, but this is interesting as a way to understand where Netflix is at strategically at the moment. Basically, Netflix has suddenly woken up to the need to evolve beyond just selling you a subscription for streaming video. According to Bloomberg, Netflix is hiring execs to lead consumer products, podcasts, and video games, even merch and concert ticket sales, as it seeks Disney-like franchises that can stay relevant in between new seasons. Quote, Netflix used to say it wanted to be HBO before HBO became Netflix. It succeeded,

Starting point is 00:11:23 creating some of the most memorable TV shows of the past decade. But Netflix is now entering a new chapter, and with that comes a new challenge. It wants to become Disney before Disney beats it at its own game. As Netflix tries to compete with Disney on a global scale, it is trying to create franchises that can have the same impact on culture as, say, Star Wars or Toy Story. This still starts with the shows, however, the company has identified properties it thinks fit the bill and is planning a spinoff and new season of Bridgeton, an anime spin-off and sequels or prequels to The Witcher, and a Korean version of La Casa de Papel. But the company has also begun to realize how a podcast or a Halloween costume can keep its programs relevant in between new seasons. Netflix has hired or is

Starting point is 00:12:06 hiring new heads of consumer products, podcasts, and video games. Netflix has been dabbling in all three areas for a few years and has yet to have much success. selling consumer products. Most industry executives blame two of the company's foundational strategies. Netflix drops every episode of its shows at once and releases more shows than anyone could ever watch. Its business model encourages people to obsess over a show for a week or two and then move on to the next one. But the most valuable entertainment franchises are built around properties that air on TV every day or multi-part movie series, often based on books or comic books. Selling toys requires constant engagement. Kids shows that are

Starting point is 00:12:44 are on every day are a great way to remind a child that they want a stuffed animal. When Nickelodeon moved a show from every day to just Saturday, sales fell by 80 percent, according to Jeremy Pottawer, an executive with jazz wares. It's worth remembering that Netflix has been making TV shows and movies for less than a decade. Making big franchises is difficult and expensive. That's one reason Netflix is quick to lower expectations for many of these new initiatives. The store and the podcasts are just a form of marketing. They aren't about to be a huge. business for Netflix. The most important thing they can do right now, Netflix says, is get better at animation and movies and international shows. The company is going to release more than 400 foreign

Starting point is 00:13:24 language titles from 30 countries next year. But Netflix knows it needs to figure this all out. The company isn't going to add 25 million customers a year forever. There will come a point at which the company has signed up so many people that its user growth will slow and it will need to find an alternative. That could be now or it could be in 2025. That's one reason why top executives have stopped referring to Netflix as a video service. They call it an entertainment company. This is semantics, but it signals the company's growing ambitions beyond just TV, end quote. Thus, Netflix's recent announcement of its ambitions to get into video games, perhaps. Netflix wanted to be the one app for television. Maybe it is broadening its ambitions to become your one app

Starting point is 00:14:04 for entertainment of any stripe. Heck, if in 20 years time you can walk through the gates of a Netflix theme park, remember that I said this now. today, Tim Berners-Lee, actually I'm sorry, Sir, Tim Berners-Lee, is auctioning his original source code for the World Wide Web as an NFT, which is notable for a number of reasons, not the least of which being the fact that, well, quoting the Financial Times, the auction at Sotheby's will be the first time that Berners-Lee has been able to raise money directly from one of the greatest inventions of the modern era, with the proceeds benefiting initiatives that he and his wife, Rosemary support. The idea is somebody might like a digitally signed version of the code.

Starting point is 00:14:50 A bit like plenty of people have asked for physically autographed copies of the book, Berners Lee said. Auctioneers hope that the one-of-a-kind digital artifact will ignite interest in NFTs beyond their mainstay of artworks, games, and sports memorabilia. Investment in NFTs has waned since March's record-breaking $69.3 million sale of Beeple's Every Days, the first 500 days piece. In an interview with the Financial Times, Berners-Lee, 66, said the auction was, and quote, opportunity to look back. 30 years on from the initial code, which was very, very simple to the state of the web now, which has some wonderfully simple aspects to it, but also has a lot of issues of various sorts,

Starting point is 00:15:30 end quote. Unlike the founders of Google, Facebook, and Amazon, who gained enormous riches through the web, Berners-Lee is no billionaire, the source code behind the World Wide Web and its first browser, which were conceived and coded by Berners-Lee between 1989 and 1991 was never patented. Instead, it was released for free into the public domain by CERN, the particle physics laboratory in Switzerland, where the British scientists worked at the time. The move enabled widespread uptake of a technology now used by more than 4 billion people every day. But for potential archivists and collectors, it also complicated the idea of authenticating Berners-Lee's original work. Quote,

Starting point is 00:16:07 The fantastic thing about NFTs is we can create this digital provenance document, proving the authenticity coming from the creator, said Cassandra Hatton, Global Head of Science and Popular Culture at Sotheby's. This will become the reference point for all others. It really is the most appropriate quintessential digitally born artifact for an NFT auction, she added, end quote. At the very moment, I am speaking these words. Nintendo is holding its E3 event where we think new switch. Hardware will be announced. If so, we'll cover that tomorrow. But as I said twice before, if they don't announce the release date of Breath of the Wild 2, I say we riot. Talk to you tomorrow.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 06/15 – Automattic Acquires Day One

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