The Best One Yet - Facebook Oculus creates a virtual world, Amazon launches tons of new products, and eBay’s CEO is out

Episode Date: September 26, 2019

Facebook’s virtual reality arm, Oculus, just cooked up “Horizons” — a virtual world at a whole new level. Amazon released a huge number of Alexa-packed products, including a finger ring, copy-cat AirPods, and a high-end speaker. And fresh after WeWork and Juul just lost both their CEOs this week, eBay’s leader is stepping down.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Nick. This is Jack. And this is Snacks. Daily, it is Thursday, September 26. Snackers. How are you feeling? We got the best one. You guys look fantastic.

This one is great. I am ready to go. First story is Amazon. Yes. It just unveiled Amazon Paloza with a whole bunch of Alexa connected physical devices. They want you to be Amazoning as a verb all the time. Got that Alexa? It's like the force.

It's everywhere. Second story. Oculus, which is Facebook's virtual reality headset. We never covered it on this pod. We're going to now because it just created an alternative. universe to play in virtually. So we're looking at how it's the future version of Facebook. This is like a sci-fi movie. Wild story. Third and final story, we've lost three CEOs this week. We work, Jewel, and now eBay bites the dust. It's been rough for the HR teams. Another one bites

the dust. So who we got here? We're covering the online shopping company you don't use anymore and probably never did if you're under 30. True. Now, Snackers, before we jump into all that, can we talk about the latest tread and sleep? Yes, brought to us by the Wall Street Journal, adult bunk beds. It's happening. It's a thing, and there are a lot of reasons for this. The WSJ says it's chic meets nostalgia on the top bunk. They did some research. Found a company, it's estimating that 30% of its bunk bed sales are going to adults. Now, I could speak from experience. I shared a bunk bed with my older brother, tuck, and with my little brother Teddy, four years each. Not much room in that room. I also had a Berlin, basically windowless prison cell with a lofted bed,

which is pretty much a bunk bed. But let's say you've grown up a little bit, and you want to go back to the old days with the bunk bed. You want to think of, like, the reasons why you might want a bunk bed? Well, now it's socially acceptable, and here's why. Is it? Kind of. Sleepovers with friends? Yes.

It's definitely Instagram candy to be, like, telling scary stories on the top bunk. Also, we know that you're probably living in a one bedroom or rental studio apartment in New York that barely has any space. Good opportunity for a bunk bed. And you can easily, like, have your normal bed be your normal bed and squeeze a top bunk and have that instead of a guest room. Oh, my God. Golden, that's how get people to come in.

that's how you make more friends. Now, if you're a thrasher like me when you sleep, you might want a bunk bed or a king-sized bed like I do so you don't elbow and cause some black eyes to your loved one. Jack's got a bruise on his pinky right now. I can see from a thrash situation at night. Bunk beds, snackers, they're back. Brattles. You're tuned in the snacks daily.

We spoke to the lawyers. Snacks about to hear ain't food. It's air candy. They don't reflect the views of the robberhood family. It's all informational just so. You know, we're not recommending any securities. Nope. It's not a research report or investment advice.

Not an offer or sale of a security. Snacks is digestible. Business news for you. Robberhood Financial, LLC, member Fenra slash SIPC. For our first story, Facebook just launched a virtual world through its Oculus Virtual Reality Team. Oculus are those huge goggles you put over your head. They're like, they're like, they're like, you get in there.

You're like, you get lost in this thing. Like, where am I? Where am I? Where am I? Yeah. And the name of this new situation is going to be horizon. Horizon is the alternate world that you can live and play in. We're talking Ready Player 1 vibes over here.

Have you seen the movie? I haven't seen the movie. It seemed like the right reference. It's a great movie. It sounds intense. It shows that video games are like an escape if your world kind of stinks. Especially if you're like thrashed around in bed like Jack and hit your pinky on the wall. Now Snackers, this all came out of the Oculus event in San Jose.

Oculus 6 is the name. Yeah, Oculus was acquired by Facebook for $2.3 billion back in 2014. And they're the leaders in virtual reality goggles. Now, if you want to know more about this, Facebook basically put out a charming little trying to be funny video because they're going to launch this thing in 2020 about what horizon this new virtual world is. Well, it starts, if you put your goggles on, you're in a town square. Right.

You feel like you're in a different place. Not in planet Earth. You're in this other world called Horizon. And that's when you start building your avatar, kind of like Fortnite. Right. So you're building a fake version of yourself. You got like custom T-shirts you can make. You can build your own island.

You got like building blocks to build like arenas to play games with friends. And you can actually use your hands too because these goggles, they sense like your fingertips and you can use your hands. Exactly. One freaky thing, the avatars, the people in this world, they don't have like legs or pants. They don't have pants. No, it's mainly just upper body. Design choice there wasn't part of the decision. Jack and I weren't in that room. No pants party. Got it. So there's no coding involved if you want to do any of this, by the way. You literally don't need know how to code. So so far like a regular Facebook user doesn't use. this thing. Right. You got to buy the goggles. Exactly. Now, that is how that works

when you're in the world. But the key thing that Jack and I were interested in was the security, and this was the most surprising part. Privacy. Privacy is kind of a buzzword at Facebook right now. So basically Facebook came out and said, here's the deal. Quote unquote, as citizens of Facebook Horizon, it is all of our responsibility to create a

culture that's respectful and comfortable. So if you're walking around this virtual town square and someone picks on the T-shirt, you chose for your avatar. Not cool. I did this thing. And they start trolling you hard. I built this thing without coding. What are you doing? Yes, what you can do. You can mute that person. Boom. Or you can create a safe space around you so they can't get touched, like close to you and like get up in your face. And there's a pause button if you're really just overwhelmed and don't want to deal with these virtual

books. But that's the small snake stuff. Because what really kicked this up a notch was a key feature called Horizon Locals. These are guides. They're like good citizens who just walk around the virtual town square of Horizon. They're basically policemen, but they're wearing other basic avatars clothes. Like they're in plain clothes. And they're trying to like identify trolls and then disable them and like block them. They're like your friends, but they're policemen and they're hanging around. I want to know if these people get paid to be like content moderates. Because Facebook has that.

They're moderating the walls of everyone's news. I think it's a great question, Jack. So what's the takeaway, Jack, for our buddies over at Facebook and Oculus? Virtual reality and virtual worlds, that's Facebook 2.0. Exactly. Because you might become bored with Facebook eventually. This becomes the more engaging future option. Well, if you're bored with Facebook, you've joined Instagram like all of us.

But eventually you might get bored with Facebook. Instagram and join Facebook's virtual world. So you're going to buy this $400 virtual reality headset, and then your question is, all right, if this is the future of Facebook, how does Facebook make this sustainable from a business perspective? I got to underline the 400. That's actually like the lowest cost Oculus headset. So that's a big announcement that comes to that.

But if you're Facebook, if you want to turn this into your future business, there's one thing you need to get. Advertisels. Exactly. That's what Facebook does. We're talking potential virtual billboards in this virtual world. You might see like a Times Square full of J-Crew ads and stuff. Starburst ads.

As long as they're no jeans and they're promoting khakis, I could be in there. The parallels to the movie Ready Player 1, I just need to emphasize here. It's freaky. Everybody. Disconnect your connected things. We got our second story for you over here. We'll do our best not to activate your voice assistance. Hey, Alexa, what did you do today?

I said we'll do our best not to activate your voice assistance. We tried on that one. We couldn't help it on that one. Amazon just launched 15 new Alexa Things. We're talking like AirPods, kickoff, spectacles, knockoff, and they got a ring. It was a super low budget event. It was in Amazon. It looked like it was an all-purpose conference room. Classic Amazon. At Amazon, Seattle. They don't even have water at these things. Meanwhile, Apple has a glitzy Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California. Let me tell you dress up to go to these Apple

events. I think there's free bananas, though, at Amazon. Yeah, but they probably don't have like kind bars and stuff, but we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's get to it. Amazon announced a new thing called an Echo Studio. We're talking $200 smart speaker going right after Apple's HomePod and who else? Sonos. Exactly. So this isn't your typical echo speaker. It actually has super high quality music.

And Sonos stock fell 5% because of this direct Amazon competitor. Then you got a wild thing here where they went with the name Amazon Sidewalk. Here's the deal. It extends. If you have connected devices, it only works within the reach of your Wi-Fi currently. And like 5G is too far away. So Amazon Sidewalk extend your Wi-Fi by like a mile, offering very basic connectivity to connected things.

So they got something called ring fetch. This is the first product and the only product for Amazon sidewalk. Attach a little device like a tile around your dog's collar, and it'll let you know if it starts to run away. Meanwhile, we know what you're thinking. Well, what else is there? They've got Samuel L. Jackson who signed on to do the Alexa's voice, an alternative voice. There's too many devices on this plane. Terrible Samuel Jackson.

I didn't expect that at all. I love where you went with that. We know what you're thinking. Amazon's basically pulling an Oprah here and just dishing things out. Well, actually, Samuel L. Jackson is the first celebrity to become your Alexa voice if you want. But Amazon at its core is annoyed. It's annoyed here. It's annoyed that it doesn't have a smartphone and that Google and Apple do. But both Google and Apple, they've also got their own smart assistance. And Amazon's in there like, hey, Alexa, she's great. She can even talk like Samuel L. Jackson.

That's the problem. Siri and Google Home have an advantage that they're packed into your smartphone that you take with you everywhere. Phones are everywhere. So, Amazon's response, is putting Alexa into other things that are on the go. It's like putting a, pulling a switcher over here. It's not going to do its own phone. It's just going to put its stuff everywhere. Now, we're about to hit the main events of Amazon's big product on value. Okay, General Motors is adding Alexa to all its cars standard if it's a 2018 or newer vehicle.

If you have a new car, it's going to be there already. If you have a 2018 car, you just have to do a software update. Then you got these AirPods-ish Echo Buds, which costs $129. I think that's the headliner, headliner. It's like Apple's AirPods, but they're cheaper. They don't look as good, and they have Alexa instead of Siri. And then they're going to a little Warby Park artist over here. They got Echo Frames.

Prescription eyeglasses with a tiny little speaker and a tiny little mic. A door. A really big arm on the glasses. And then finally, this one is just, we didn't see this coming. Echo Loop. Okay, this is a big, fat ring that you put on your finger, and you can ask questions to Alexa by putting it close your mouth, and then get answers. if you put the ring close to your ear.

Oh, we know what you're thinking. It was just a little too much of a stretch to, like, talk to the watch on your wrist. Well, Amazon doesn't have a smart watch. Exactly. So they're just going for your finger game. But this is a lot of excessive gadgets just to be able to ask,

how's the weather today to Alexa. A lot of body real estate. The frame and loop, by the way, the eyeglasses and the ring, those are by invitation only, so you can't get your hands on them quite yet. That just sounds mean. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies

over at Amazon? They want you to be connected to Amazon all the time through Alexa. This is Amazon's next big bet. If Alexa is always available, you'll start doing more and more with Alexa, which is more and more for Amazon. These 15 products Amazon rolled out yesterday,

it cost a lot of money in R&D to roll these out. And I don't think these like Alexa, Amazon basics microwaves are making money. But if they get you to start spending like, I don't know, from 30% of your money on Amazon to like 40%, that's a win for Amazon. That's what Alexa is here to do, to get you to boost the slice of your spending pie that's going to Amazon currently by a little bit, and then Alexa becomes a profit puppy.

For our third and final story, eBay CEO just stepped down because of a big disagreement of the board, and that means we should talk about boards. Well, let's talk about CEOs first. It's been a tumultuous week for CEOs. The CEO survival group is doing a lot of meetings right now. The support group. Yeah, you got the CEO of WeWork just stepped down. You got the CEO of Jewel, the vaping cigarettes, just stepped down.

step down yesterday and now eBay's CEO is out. Have you ever bought anything on eBay by the? I've only bought old sports memorabilia. I think that's the only reason you go to eBay. I placed one bid for a Mariano Rivera game field home Yankees jersey and gave it to my brother for his right. Right, but then you had to deal with like Price's Right Rule. Someone puts one penny over you No. No. I made one bid and got it. I love that. It was a good deal. It's a bold move. I left the higher than I bid price tag on the gift from my brother. But that's the thing about eBay. It is the pioneer of e-commerce, and it's still relevant, actually not really. Well, it's 24 years old. Impressive. It's AARP status. Now, it just got passed by Shopify,

though, as the number two e-commerce company in the world. And it's got competition, not just from the top with Amazon, not just from Shopify. Etsy is a craft version of eBay. And there's all sorts of of other online marketplaces. So we don't know really is using eBay as much these days, but it's got $2.7 billion in revenue in the last three months. So a lot of people are using eBay. And it's a tough task to use eBay. It needs to find buyers to buy stuff on it and sellers to sell stuff on it. It's a two-sided marketplace. The other tough situation here is for the HR department, which just had to help the CEO leave. The CEO left yesterday, and we're going to read it straight from his Twitter account. In the past few weeks, it became clear that I was not

on the same page as my board. You know what that means? Board versus CEO showdown. Let's talk about the board. Exactly. The board is a group of like eight to 16, well-dressed, well-paid individuals. And they basically, they get these seats from elections. They are elected by shareholders of the company. They actually have elections. Now, if you're a regular investor, you probably didn't even notice. Maybe you've heard of some big deal board members in some places. Well, you actually get a letter in the mail or you get like a PDF in your email that says, we are electing new board members. Do you want to vote? You hear a bunch of names. Are you interested? Yeah, you probably don't know what's going on there. But if you are a big shareholder who owns millions or billions in the company, those votes

matter. And those board members, they have got quite the situation going on. It's a pretty cush job. You get hundreds of thousands of dollars in salary for attending like 10 meetings. You show up these meetings. You basically just raise your right hand and you say yay or nay, I think. Now, the board's job is to oversee the CEO. So if the CEO does something they don't like it, the CEO could be fired by the board. Yeah. And the board gets to decide like the direction of the company. So if the board wants to change eBay, the CEO either has to do it, not do it, and possibly get fired by the board. So in eBay's case, the CEO is just left and now the CFO has taken over. Until a full-time replacement can be found. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies

bidden over at eBay? The board wants one big thing. They want eBay to sell stuff. That's it. Now, eBay's got some critical activist investors like Elliott Management or Starboard Management. Those two companies are so disappointed by how eBay is being run that they bought up like one, two, or three percent of all the shares, which is like billions of dollars of shares, so that they could have a say in the matter and change the company. We're talking like, they're not like regular investors like you know us. They have big chunks of the company, and that means they could even choose board members. Yeah, they're like pirates. They bought shares. They took over the boat and now they're demanding change.

They won some board seats and they don't like what's happening to stub. No, they think Stubhubhub is dragging eBay down. They want to change a direction. they disagree with the CEO, so they switching them out. They love that Stubhub takes enormous processing and delivery fees from every time you want to go to a concert, and they think it can make even more money separate from eBay. That's why the board just stood up. But a new CEO is going to have to figure this out.

Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us over that? Facebook's virtual reality world, Horizon, is pretty cool and could be the social network of the future. But right now you need a $400 headset, and Jack needs to say, Horizon again. Right. Alexa's job is to get you to spend 1% more of your disposable income on Amazon. And that's why Amazon unveils 15 new devices, so Alexa is everywhere. And eBay's board wants stub hub to get spun off from eBay, and the CEO disagrees, so he quit.

And that's why activist investors like pirates and boards have a really cushy job. Snackers time for our snack fact today. This one sent in by a Los Angeles native. Justin Gideenas. He's got a Tokyo-based one. He points out something about the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, which are right around the corner. This is pretty cool. I like how they do this.

It's called the Metal Project. Apparently, sustainability is a big focus of the 2020 games. So they've asked citizens of Japan to, like, submit their electronics so they can recycle the metals in those electronics. Turns out those electronics have bronze, silver, and gold in them. Well, what are the odds of that? So the cities are going to like town square, like real reality, not virtual reality. Bring out your gold! Bring out your bronze!

They're going to melt that gold, that bronze. that metal into metals. That sounds pretty cool. I like what they did that. Oh, by the way, L.A., where Justin is from, gets the 2028 Olympics. Congrats, L.A. Snackers, today Peloton's doing its IPO, and we are interviewing the C.O. He's a co-founder. We got your great questions with us. We can't wait to do it. Thanks for hooking us up with those. We'll talk to you more about that tomorrow.

That's going to be big. This is Jack. I own stock of Amazon. The Robin Hood Snacks podcast you just heard reflects the opinions of only the host who are associated persons of Robin Hood Financial LLC and does not reflect the views of Robin Hood Markets, Inc. or any of its subsidiaries or affiliates. The podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended to serve as a recommendation

to buy or sell any security and is not an offer or sale of a security. The podcast is also not a research report and is not intended to serve as the basis of any investment decision. Robin Hood Financial LLC, member FINRA, SIPC.