Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 10/21 – PayPal Adds Crypto

Episode Date: October 21, 2020

Big news for crypto as PayPal adopts it, both for users to buy, but also, crucially, for them to spend. Facebook is testing a Nextdoor killer. Update on the Quibi deathwatch. Tech earnings snuck up on me and Evan Spiegel had a good night. And let’s end today with another review roundup. This time of the new iPad Air. Sponsors: KiwiCo.com/ride Monday.com/ride Links: PayPal to allow cryptocurrency buying, selling and shopping on its network (Reuters) Dropbox's family plan offers a shared 2TB for $17 per month (Engadget) Facebook Building Neighborhood Feature as Nextdoor Eyes IPO (Bloomberg) Katzenberg May Shut Down Quibi as Options Run Short (The Information) Netflix misses on subscriber additions and EPS (CNBC) Snap stock rockets up after surprise earnings beat (CNBC) APPLE IPAD AIR (2020) REVIEW: TAKE IT FROM THE PRO (The Verge) Apple iPad Air (2020) review: Who needs the iPad Pro? (Engadget) Review: iPad Air, smooth criminal (TechCrunch) 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, October 21st, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. Big news for crypto as PayPal adopts it, both for users to buy with, but also crucially for them to spend. Facebook is testing a next door killer. Update on the Quibi Death Watch. Tech earnings snuck up on me and Evan Spiegel had a pretty good night. And let's end today with another review roundup, this time of the new iPad airs. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Pretty big news for crypto. PayPal has announced it will allow users to buy and sell cryptocurrencies using its online wallets in the coming weeks. But you will also be able to shop at merchants

on its network and pay using crypto starting in early 2021, quoting Reuters. PayPal hopes the service will encourage global use of virtual coins and prepare its network for new digital currencies that may be developed by central banks and corporations. President and chief executive Dan Schulman said in an interview, we are working with central banks and thinking of all forms of digital currencies and how PayPal can play a role, he said. U.S. account holders will be able to buy, sell, and hold cryptocurrencies in their PayPal wallets over the coming weeks. The company said it plans to expand to Venmo and some countries in the first half of 2021. PayPal, which has secured the first conditional cryptocurrency license from the New York State Department of Financial Services,

will initially allow purchases of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies called Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and Lightcoin, it said. It partners with Paxos Trust Company to offer the service, end quote. I say this is a big deal for crypto because PayPal has 346 million active accounts and processed $22 billion in payments just last quarter, but also there are 26 million merchants on the PayPal network. So think of it this way. Exposure to hundreds of millions of normal consumers, but also allowing a bunch of

normies to shop and spend crypto in an environment where they're already habituated to doing virtual payments. Dropbox has launched a shared family plan with two terabytes of data storage for up to six people, all for just $17 bucks a month. Quoting and gadget. Plan members get access to a shared folder called Family Room, where they can see and open each other's files such as recipes or photos, but they still get separate accounts and folders for their personal stuff. That said, Family Plan comes with a 2-terabyte shared storage

allowance for all users, so it's probably not the best option for those with a massive amount of files to save and back up. The plan also comes with access to Dropbox passwords, a password manager plan. Members can use to store login details across Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android devices. If members need to store sensitive files such as bank statements or birth certificates, they can take advantage of another perk. Access to the vault. Files stored in the vault are protected by a pin and encryption during upload, download, and storage. And a user can choose to give one family member access to it in case of an emergency. Members can also use their accounts to back up their computer directly into their Dropbox folders, as well as automatically

upload photos from a mobile device. They can upload photos by connecting a camera or a memory card to a computer installed with Dropbox as well, or transfer their photos and videos. directly from Facebook, end quote. Speaking of, Facebook has confirmed that it is indeed testing a feature that allows users to connect with their neighbors, sort of like how folks do it on Next Door, which is interesting timing because we've been hearing for a while now that Next Door is considering going public soon, quoting Bloomberg. Screenshots of Facebook's new feature, which is currently being tested, were shared on Twitter

Tuesday by Matt Navarra, a social media consultant. The images show a product called Neighborhoods, where users can enter their address and complete a unique neighborhood profile. A Facebook spokeswoman confirmed the company is testing the feature in one market, Calgary, Canada. The screen grabs show the software using the Canadian English spelling of its name. Other images show Facebook reminding users that its community standards still apply inside the neighborhoods feature, and the company encourages people to keep it clean and be inclusive. An early version of the product was first spotted and shared on Twitter by Jane Mansion Wong back in May. Hi, Jane, I know you're listening.

The neighborhoods feature is notable, given the popularity of Next Door, a neighborhood-based social network founded in 2008 that has raised about $470 million in funding. Next Door is considering different options for going public, including a direct listing, Bloomberg News reported last week. The San Francisco-based company says it serves more than 268,000 neighborhoods globally, including about a quarter of U.S. neighborhoods on the service. Each neighborhood works as its own mini-social network, and people use it to do everything from selling used goods to posting about crime or neighborhood events. When Facebook enters a new market, it can have an immediate impact on competitors already in the space. When the Menlo Park-California-based company launched its dating product in the U.S., for example, match group stock fell as much as 7%. End quote. The information is solidly on the whole Quibi

Death Watch, watch, I guess, or beat. Sources are telling them that Jeffrey Katzenberg has tried to sell Quibi's catalog to NBC Universal and Facebook, but both passed. This is different from when Kansberg was shopping around people buying the entire Quibi service outright. Katzenberg has also told others he might just shut Quibi down. Internally at Quibi, employees have said important strategy meetings have been canceled, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Some employees have informally been scheduling goodbye drinks, said these people. A Quibi spokeswoman said she had no comment. Katsenberg referred questions to the spokeswoman. If Katsenberg ends up shutting down Quibi, it would be one of the highest profile failures of an entertainment startup in memory. Katsenberg and Whitman raised nearly $2 billion to launch the service, which offered programs with episodes of roughly five minutes long, that people could watch on the go, waiting in line for a coffee or on public transit. Katsenberg persuaded most of the major Hollywood studios to invest, as well as companies such as Ali Baba, Google, and Madrone Capital Partners. Could be had about $850 million of cash recently,

ensuring that its investors would get at least some money back if Katzenberg does shudder the firm. Those who invested in the first round, such as Alibaba, Goldman, Google, Katzenberg's holding company Wondercoe, and several media companies should recover the most, end quote. When I wasn't looking, tech earning season snuck back up on me. It's going to run through the end of the month, but hopefully, or maybe not so helpfully, instead of dribbling out slowly over the course of several weeks, one or two a day. It seems like most everybody is going to report on the same day this quarter. On October 29, Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Twitter, Spotify, even Shopify, all report their earnings of the companies

we usually or sometimes cover on this podcast. Only Microsoft and Uber are left out of that party, but I digress. Netflix last night reported Q3 revenue. up 22.7% year over year. But as ever with them, all that mattered to investors was how many subscribers were added. Netflix had 2.2 million paid net additions in Q3 versus 6.8 million new net subscribers in the same period a year ago. That's also down pretty far quarter over quarter when Netflix saw 10.1 million net ads in Q2 right in the teeth of the quarantine. Now, because of all this, Netflix's stock is down around 5% this morning. But, yo, Wall Street, didn't they tell you this was going to happen that quarantine had shook loose some of the lower

hanging fruit that probably would have come to Netflix over the course of the next year or so? Quoting CNBC, the company attributed slowed growth to its record first half results. The stock was considered a good buy early in the pandemic as stay-at-home orders left consumers looking for ways to fill their time. Netflix vice president of investor relations Spencer Wang warned investors not to put too much weight on the subscriber numbers. We just really don't overfocus on any 90-day period, Wang said on the company's recorded earnings interview. And just to give you an example, if the quarter was 48 hours longer, we would have come in slightly above our guidance forecast, end quote.

For the fourth quarter, Netflix forecasts six million paid net ads still well below the 8.8 million it added in the fourth quarter of 2019, end quote. But you want to know who has telegraphed a turnaround this year and has really stuck the follow-through, at least according to investors. Snap. Snap reported Q3 revenue last night that was up 52% year-over-year, and they beat analyst estimates. Daily active users were up 18% to 249 million. The average number of daily snaps was up 25% year-over-year. The company's net loss fell to $200 million down nearly 12% from $227 million net loss last year. All of this has Snap's stock price up 30% at the time of this writing, quote, the adoption of augmented reality is happening faster than we had previously anticipated,

and we are working together as a team to execute on the many opportunities in front of us, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said in a statement. Snap said it used the third quarter as an opportunity to engage with brands that were looking to, quote, align their marketing efforts with platforms who share their corporate values, end quote. That coincides with the stop hate for profit Facebook ad boycott in which more than a thousand advertisers paused ads on the social network during the month of July in boycott of the company's hate speech and misinformation policies. Quote, this gave us an opportunity to engage with advertisers and agencies in real time to ensure that our existing partners, as well as new prospects understood, are offering in relation to

our values. Snap chief business officer Jeremy Gorman said in prepared remarks. Snap expects year-over-year revenue growth of 47 to 50% for the fourth quarter, Snap chief financial officer Derek Anderson said in prepared remarks, the company also expects to reach approximately 257 million Dow's in the fourth quarter, Anderson said, end quote. To paraphrase a movie line, a billion dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? Seeing your net worth go up by a billion dollars overnight, which is what happened to Evan Spiegel in the last 24 hours, as Snap stock has ripped to an all-time high. Remember when a lot of people, myself included, were saying Spiegel would have been better off if he had never taken Snap public at all? That was just a few years ago when Snap was a $5 stock today, or at least 30 seconds ago, the Snap stock crested the $37 mark.

Let's end today with hardware reviews once again. This time it's the new iPad Air, which everyone agrees has an excellent screen, a source, screaming fast processor, and since it's compatible with most iPad Pro accessories, lots of folks are like, forget the iPad Pro, this is the iPad to get if you're in the market for a tablet. It is still expensive, some folks said, and it weirdly doesn't have an in-between storage option. The base model has 64 gigabytes of storage, and there's no jump up. If you want more storage, you've got to pay $150 more for 256 gigabytes, and at that point, why not just pay $50 more for the $1,000?

28 gigabyte 11-inch iPad Pro model, but to the comparison shopping between the Air and Pro models, quoting Dieter in the Verge. Compared to the iPad Pro, here's what you're missing out on with the iPad Air. A processor optimized for GPU intensive tasks, face ID, a Pro Motion high refresh rate screen, an ultra-wide camera, a LiDar scanner, and quad speakers. Of those, the only thing I miss is the high-refresh rate screen, but I suspect most people won't be bothered by it at all. The screen still looks great and animations on iPad OS are smooth even without 120 hertz. The iPad Air has stereo speakers in landscape mode and they sound good, so the loss of

two more isn't huge. It does sting a little that Apple raised the price by $100 compared to last year's iPad Air, but it's also a great tablet and a very good computer. I am still annoyed that the iPad can't support multiple users, but that may not bother everybody as much as it does me. I think if you can afford the $599 price, you should definitely get it instead of the basic $329 iPad. Although that base iPad is quite good, it is beginning to look a little stale, and it too has its own storage configuration problems. For me, one of the biggest reasons to use an iPad instead of another computer is that it's just a nicer experience. You can pat around your house with it, attach or detach a keyboard, and almost never really have to worry about it crashing or slowing down. Apple

has allowed iPad OS to grow a little more complicated in recent years, but but it's still a more chill computing environment than the Mac, Windows 10, or Chrome OS. And the iPad Air epitomizes that niceness with its new design. Chances are if you're buying an iPad, you're going to keep it for many years, and so spending more on a nicer product is going to pay off more in the long run than it would for, say, a phone that might only last you two or three, end quote. Here's Dana Woolman's conclusion in her review in Engadgett, quote, With so few differences between the iPad Air and the Pro, I'm forced to reconsider who the Air is for.

Last year, it was the perfect just-right tablet. It offered more features than the basic entry-level model, but was still more attainable than the Premium Pro line. It was the best tablet for most people. This year, I would upgrade Air to the best tablet for almost everyone, and I'd even argue it's Apple's best high-end tablet. That is, until Apple upgrades the Pro with a new chip and more advanced display tech, which it almost certainly will, end quote. And here's Matthew Panzerino's conclusion in TechCrunch. Much of what I wrote about using Apple's iPad Pro over the course of 10,000 miles of travel

applies directly here. I still find it to be a great experience that, once you've adjusted for workflows, is just as powerful as any laptop. The additional features that have shipped in iOS 14 since that review have only made the iPad a better platform for legitimate work. And now you get the Gen 2 pencil and the fantastic magic. keyboard in an iPad outside of the pro lineup, and it honestly adds a ton of utility. Here's my advice. Buy this if you want a portable iPad Pro to use alongside a MacBook or desktop

computer for those times you don't want to carry or can't carry it. If you want an iPad Pro as your only computer, get the big iPad Pro, but probably wait until they update that one in a few months, end quote. This afternoon, actually about two hours from now, I'm going to be recording an internet history podcast episode, which is something that I haven't done in over a year. Had to blow off some dust from the old history hat, as Leo Leport calls it. So look for that soon. Talking to someone that I wanted to talk to for years, talk to you tomorrow.