Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 03/31 – Everything Old Is New Again In The News Feed

Episode Date: March 31, 2021

Facebook has announced News Feed changes to bring chronology back. LinkedIn is working on a Clubhouse rival and I think that makes total sense. Apple actually leads an interesting investment round. Deliveroo has a disastrous first day on the public markets. And how about Roblox, but inside the Unreal Engine? Sponsors: PingIdentity.com TinyCapital.com Links: Facebook Adds New 'Most Recent' Timeline to Switch to Chronological Posts (MacRumors) LinkedIn confirms it’s working on a Clubhouse rival, too (TechCrunch) Apple invests $50M into music distributor UnitedMasters alongside A16z and Alphabet (TechCrunch) Android sends 20x more data to Google than iOS sends to Apple, study says (ArsTechnica) Deliveroo drags on the LSE; closes down 44% on debut (TechCrunch) Maker of NBA Top Shot Scores $305 Million in New Funding (WSJ) ConsenSys Lines Up Damien Hirst to Launch New NFT Art Protocol (Decrypt) Manticore Games raises $100M for user-generated games in the ‘multiverse’ (GamesBeat) RideHome+ Feed: tech.supercast.tech Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Wednesday, March 31st, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today. Facebook has announced news feed changes to bring chronology back. LinkedIn is working on a clubhouse rival, and I think that makes total sense. Apple actually leads an interesting investment round. Deliveroo has a disastrous first day on the public markets, and how about Roblox, but inside the Unreal Engine? Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Facebook has announced some changes to news feed, including a most recent mode that will show posts in chronological order. So everything old is new again. This is available on Android right now and iOS in coming weeks.

Imagine that. A pure feed with no algorithmic juicing, quoting macrumers. Facebook previously rolled out a new favorites timeline allowing users to specify their favorite friends, family members, and pages, and access their posts in one place. Facebook's now building on that functionality with a new most recent mode that will show posts in chronological order instead of based on algorithm. Other changes coming to the Facebook timeline include the social media giant offering users more context as to why they might be seeing a specific post. For content labeled suggested for you, users can now learn what factors triggered Facebook's

algorithm to suggest the post to you. Factors may include past-related posts you've engaged with, topics that interest you or your location. Lastly, following in the footsteps of Twitter, Facebook will now allow users to specify who can comment on their posts. Users can choose to have anyone be able to comment, just friends, or only profiles and pages mentioned in the post, end quote. Ever since the hype around Clubhouse surged and then seemingly crested only to see, or maybe specifically, because of seeing a rise of everyone and their mother wanting to roll out their own clubhouse-style rooms. The only place everyone said it actually made sense to see a clubhouse clone was LinkedIn. Right. Stories on LinkedIn seems silly, but given that a lot of clubhouse rooms are just people

trying to impress their peers, maybe in their industry and make a name for themselves as, I don't know, thought leaders. Since LinkedIn posts have become the go-to venue for some thought leaders anyway. It seems like clubhouse style rooms would be a decent product market fit, to borrow a phrase. Well, LinkedIn has confirmed it is working on a clubhouse rival and will begin beta testing it soon, but it doesn't have an exact time frame for launching, coding tech crunch. Unlike the clubhouse rivals being built by Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn believes its audio networking feature will be differentiated because it will be connected with users' professional identity, not just a social profile.

In addition, the company has already built out a platform that serves the creator community, which today has access to tools like stories, LinkedIn live video broadcasting, newsletters, and more. And just today, LinkedIn formalized some of its efforts in this area with the launch of a new creator mode that lets anyone set their profile as one that can be followed for updates, like stories and LinkedIn live videos, for example. This focus on creators puts LinkedIn on competitive footing in terms of expanding its own clubhouse rival compared with other efforts by Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, or Discord, all of which have their own audio-based networking features in various stages of development at this time, end quote.

An interesting raise from Apple. Apple has led a $50 million series B in Music Distributor United Masters, again leading the round alongside other usual suspects like A16Z and Alphabet. This is notable because while Apple does do acquisitions all the time, they tend to rarely do venture investments. According to Dan Primack, the last time Apple participated in a venture capital round, much less led one, was a 2017 investment in D.D. Chu Xing, quoting TechCrunch. If you're unfamiliar with United Masters, It's a distribution company launched in 2017 by Steve Stout, a former Interscope and Sony Music Executive. The focus of United Masters is to provide artists with a direct pipeline to data around the way that fans are interacting with their content and community,

allowing them to connect more directly to offer tickets, merchandise, and other commercial efforts. United Masters also generally allows artists to retain control of their own masters. Neither of these conditions are at all typical in the music industry. In a typical artist deal, recording companies retain all audience and targeting data as well as Masters. This limits an artist's ability to be agile, taking advantage of new technologies to foster a community. Currently, United Masters has deals with the NBA, ESPN, TikTok, Twitch, and others that allow artists to tap big brand deals that would normally be brokered by a label and manager. It also has a direct distribution app that allows publishing to all of the major streaming services. More importantly, artists can check stream, fan, and earnings data at a glance, end quote.

And interestingly, Apple, as a part of this investment, entered into a strategic partnership with United Masters. Something, something enabling the creator economy, quoting Dan Premack, this is kind of like substack for music, in which artists can bypass record companies and release their music straight onto streaming platforms like Apple Music and Spotify. No wonder Andresen Horowitz is involved. The company is led by music industry vet Steve Stout and claims to have over one million artists already on its platform, end quote. A new research study has found that both Android and iOS devices are capable of transmitting telemetry data back to their various motherships even when devices are idle or users have explicitly opted out. Also, Google collects about 20 times more data than Apple does,

quoting Ars Technico. Both iOS and Android, researcher Douglas Leath from Trinity College in Ireland, said, transmit telemetry data to their motherships even when a user hasn't logged in or has explicitly configured privacy settings to opt out of such collection. Both OSs also send data to Apple and Google when a user does simple things such as inserting a SIM card or browsing the handset settings screen. Even when idle, each device connects to its backend server on average every four and a half minutes. It wasn't just the OSs that sent data to Apple or Google. Pre-installed apps or services also made network connections even when they hadn't been opened or used.

Whereas iOS automatically sent Apple data from Siri, Safari, and ICloud, Android collected data from Chrome, YouTube, Google Docs, Safety Hub, Google Messenger, the device clock, and the Google search bar. Where Android stands out, Leaves said, is in the amount of data it collects. At startup, an Android device sends Google about one megabyte of data compared with iOS sending Apple around 42KB. When idle, Android sends roughly one megabyte of data to Google every 12 hours, compared with iOS sending Apple about 52 kilobytes over the same period. In the U.S. alone, Android collectively gathers about

about 1.3 terabytes of data every 12 hours. During the same time period, iOS collects about 5.8 gigabytes. Google has contested the findings saying that they're based on faulty methods for measuring the data that's collected by each OS. The company also contended that data collection is a core function of any internet-connected device, end quote. Follow up on something we mentioned recently, shares of deliveroo dropped by as much as 30 percent on that company's public markets debut on the London Stock Exchange, quoting TechCrunch. Deliveroo announced share pricing of 3 pounds 90 or about $5.36 for its shares when they went public on the London Stock Exchange, valuing the company with a market cap of 7.59 billion

pounds or $10.4 billion and raising 1.5 billion pounds or $2.1 billion. The figure is at the lower end of the reduced range Deliveroo set earlier in the week of 3 pounds 90 to 4 pounds 10. At the time, Deliveroo said the, quote, volatile global market condition for IPOs led it to narrow the range from its original. Deliveru is choosing to price responsibly within the initial range and at an entry point that maximizes long-term value for our new institutional and retail investors, the company said. However, separately, Deliveru has been facing persistent controversy over how it pays its drivers, a story that doesn't look like it'll go away too soon. Deliver resources have repeatedly claimed that negative stories arising out of these labor issues have not been impacting the company in the lead-up to the

IPO, although some have been detailing the large institutional investors that have refused to participate in the offering. Activity today on the market could be one indication of what the real impact has been, end quote. I've heard people say that this could be the worst IPO performance for a major London market debut in more than a decade. I think the worry from investors, aside from any moral qualms, is that Deliveroo could be one regulation ruling away from disaster, and given what just happened to Uber in Britain. Now, I'm not saying this would happen, but today I learned from Sam Sheed on Twitter, that on the London Stock Exchange, they have what is called conditional trading.

You basically have a week of trading after any debut before a listing is official, So technically, Deliveroo could elect to cancel its IPO at any time up until April 7th, and all the money would go right back into investors' pockets. Again, I am not suggesting that will happen, but until today, I had no idea something like that was even possible. Let's pivot back to interesting raises thanks to the whole NFT thing. Dapper Labs, the maker of NBA Topshot, perhaps the most successful flavor of NFT at the moment, has raised $305 million, sources are saying at a $2.6 billion valuation, and the investors include several pro athletes, including Michael Jordan, quoting the Wall Street Journal.

Dapper Labs said Tuesday it raised $305 million from investors including the NBA legends and other athletes and celebrities, such as Michael Jordan, Kevin Durant, Stefan Diggs, Ashton Coocher, Sean Mendez, and Will Smith. The deal led by Cotoo Management, values the company at $2.6 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. NBA Topshot has been a standout in the NFT craze. Less than five months into beta testing, the platform has more than 800,000 registered users and has completed nearly half a billion dollars in sales minting unlikely millionaires in the process.

NBA Topshot has processed more than 3 million transactions, the company said, more than two-thirds of the 344,000 users who have bought a Top-shot token, also known as a moment, have made a purchase off the platform's secondary sales marketplace. Dapper Labs expects to use the new funding to help finish developing a mobile app for NBA Top Shot and expand the company's platform to serve other developers and creators. While speculation has contributed to recent interests in NFTs, the adoption of tokens by companies and sports leagues can help bring these collectibles more into the mainstream, said Dapper's CEO, end quote.

Meanwhile, consensus, the Ethereum startup behind another. NFT phenomenon Metamask announced Palm, an Ethereum-connected NFT ecosystem and protocol that consensus claims can deliver 99% more energy efficiency for NFTs than proof of work systems can, quoting decrypt. Palm has its own token, Palm, and is built from Ethereum as a side chain, a kind of network that's interoperable with the main net. The side chain factor has a few benefits, one of which is relative sustainability. Whereas Ethereum is powered by the proof-of-work consensus mechanism, the Palm side chain runs on proof of authority, which dramatically reduces its energy consumption.

The Palm side chain will also allow for tokens to be transferred to the Ethereum mainnet. The first release on Palm is a collection from artist Damien Hurst called The Currency Project. Though details are scarce, a press release describes it as 10,000 discrete works on paper, each associated with its own NFT, end quote. And finally today, one more interesting raise since we've been talking about Roblox, especially if you are a ride home plus subscriber and you listen to that recent Chris Frailic office hours episode. But also generally, we've been talking about the coming potentially of the multiverse. VR plays into this as well. But things that dabble in the multiverse like Roblox, even like Fortnite to an extent, they've all been sort of dumbed down multiverses, at least graphically. So what if you made a stab at the true multiverse, the true promise of the idea by trying to build it on top of the state of the art in terms of immersive graphics?

Mantacore Games is a Roblox-like platform to build and play games, but it uses Epic's Unreal Engine to do so, and it has raised a $100 million Series C also to do so, quoting Venture Beat. The Metaverse is the universe of virtual worlds that are all interconnected, like in novels such as Snow Crash, and Ready Player 1. But to Manicor Games CEO, Frederick Descamps, the Multiverse is more like a collection of universes of high-quality user-built games that is like an endless arcade. And he hopes that one chunk of the multiverse

will be hosted under one roof through the core platform at Manticore Games. Via Mantecor, creators use Core, a platform with tools that make it easier for players to create their own games. It's not unlike Roblox's user-generated content, which enabled Roblox to go public at a $41.9 billion valuation. But Core games are based on Epic's Unreal Engine,

with graphics that have both greater variety and higher quality than many blocky Roblox titles, which are often for kids. Core is more like Roblox for adults. Because Roblox has become so valuable, it's clear that investors believe that Manticore games must also be similarly valuable. With Core, players are creating their own worlds, and the virtual environment is seamless. You can go into a hub and see all of the popular games that you can go into.

And when you're in a game, it is amazingly easy to open a portal and move to another game. Players can even connect their games through these portals, which take seconds for players to traverse. The players can keep their avatars and use them in any number of the game worlds. The investment comes as the company approaches a major milestone, as Core will be available for early access exclusively on the Epic Games store on April 15th. After just a few months in Alpha Testing, Core already offers more than 20,000 free games in every genre, has had roughly a million projects started on the platform, and has amassed over 1 million player and creator accounts globally. DeComp said that Manticore Games shares 50% of the revenue generated by games with the creators,

with the hope that Core creators can make a living making games. Still, the company couldn't share more with users in part because it has expenses like marketing, customer service, and community management. It operated a game creation contest, for instance, and gave $150,000 in prizes to the top 50 creators, end quote. We may or may not be doing a Twitter Spaces thing tonight at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific. Again, Twitter Spaces, not Clubhouse. And it might not happen. It will be a sort of game time decision.

And if we don't end up doing it tonight, we'll probably do it Friday night. Anyway, if you happen to remember around that time and you jump on Twitter, look for a space's notification, and if you see it, that means we're doing it. In the meantime, though, on our subreddit, which if you'll remember, is R-slash ride home, I posted a stub and a poll because I'm looking for feedback on these experimental episodes we've been doing. Please head over there and share your general opinions about what we've been doing, about the format. Anything is game, what you like, what you don't like, but also if you could answer

this specific question, which is the poll. If we did these sort of shows regularly, like once or twice a week, how would you like us to deliver the episodes to you in a separate feed, like it's a totally new podcast, or in the existing normal feed, just as the weekend bonus episodes like we've been doing? Thanks for any thoughts you might have on the topic. Talk to you tomorrow.