Weekly Digest from the West
Jean-Baptiste Piron
Cultural Attaché I Attaché culturel I Québec Office Los Angeles
-Tech predictions for 2019: It gets worse before it gets better: Looking into a crystal ball at the year to come, we’ll say goodbye to Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and electric scooters — and hello to pricey foldable smartphones and 5G networks that most people can’t use. 2018 is a year the tech industry wishes it could forget. But 2018’s problems aren’t going anywhere. It was the year we came to grips with how little we can trust Facebook and how much we’re addicted to our screens. It was the year that online hate and misinformation became an unavoidable reality and Google, Microsoft and Amazon faced revolts from their own employees over ethical lapses. It was the year Apple became the first trillion-dollar company — and then lost a quarter of that when we yawned at its new iPhones. When my Post colleagues and I looked into a crystal ball to make this list of nine intentionally provocative headlines we might see in 2019, it was hard to see past the problems we’re bringing with us into the new year. New technologies like 5G networks, alternative transportation and artificial intelligence promise to change our lives. But even these carry lots of caveats in the near term. I’m still optimistic technology can make our world better. So here’s a glass half-full of hope for the new year: 2019 is tech’s chance to make it right:
-Slack, Uber, Airbnb, Lyft, Pinterest top list of companies that could make 2019 an explosive IPO year: Despite some notable names like Dropbox and Spotify, 2018 turned out just to be a so-so year for tech IPOs. That trend softened even further in the fourth quarter thanks to global economic concerns, political uncertainty, and stock market volatility. Which means conditions heading into 2019 are not exactly ripe. That said, the top 8 companies on the cusp of or considering going public this coming year could, and big emphasis on could, make it a blockbuster year.
-Social media predictions for 2019: a return to personal authenticity: To say 2018 was a tumultuous year for social media is an understatement. Simmering issues with privacy and data integrity came to a boil at Facebook, with effects felt at the highest levels of government. Networks in the crosshairs of congressional investigations have had to reckon with their own power and potential for abuse, while users have been left to question the larger impact of social media on politics, culture, and civic discourse. What does this mean for 2019? How will users and networks respond to these seismic shifts? How will the way companies use social media evolve in light of changing attitudes on privacy and meaningful connection? In its annual Social Trends Report, Hootsuite surveyed more than 3,000 businesses, from small agencies to huge enterprises, to see how they plan to adapt in 2019. Here’s some of the most salient findings and a look into the crystal ball on what the year ahead holds. Waves of scandal have had a tangible impact on faith in social networks. According to Edelman’s 2018 Trust Barometer Report, 60% of people no longer trust social media companies. Against a backdrop of “fake news” and data manipulation, users have grown distrustful of influencers–both celebrities and media personalities. In a major reversal, trust has reverted back to immediate friends, family, and close acquaintances on social media, individuals whose personal credibility speaks far more than the size of their followings. For businesses on social media, this presents a delicate challenge in 2019. Using social media as just another ad channel–filled with flashy clickbait and promo codes–feels increasingly out of step with social norms and user preferences. Instead, progressive companies will focus less on maximizing reach in 2019 and more on generating transparent and meaningful engagement, and 50% of respondents to our survey agreed that personalizing social content will be a key challenge. Brands like Adidas and the New York Times exemplify this emerging ethos. They’re creating focused communities and sharing insightful, relevant content, then allowing passionate users to connect with one another.
-Golden Globe Nominations: Complete List: https://variety.com/2018/film/news/golden-globe-nominations-2019-1203082075/
-Nike execs see digital as ‘the majority’ of future business: While Nike's numbers were great, the retailer's second quarter earnings were really all about the potential of digital. The company is not only aiming for over 30% digital penetration in the short term, but is also planning for a future where the business is dominated by digital. "Looking out longer-term, we do see the potential to have digital be the majority of our business," CFO Andrew Campion told analysts on a call. He also pointed to the importance of integrating digital tools into the physical space to ease the shopper experience and drive digital penetration. That’s evident in its newly-opened House of Innovation flagships in New York and Shanghai, as well as at its local small-format store concept Nike Live, the first of which opened in Melrose, Los Angeles in July. "While we already have extraordinary digital momentum, we're still in the early stages of this transformation," Campion said. "We are executing against a 3-year roadmap of new digital capabilities that will enable us to continually serve consumers better. We’re aggressively building those capabilities in-house and accelerating our development of those capabilities through acquisition."
https://www.retaildive.com/news/nike-execs-see-digital-as-the-majority-of-future-business/544975/
-Disney and Verizon dispute could blackout ESPN, other channels for Fios TV subscribers: New Year’s Eve could be a bit less celebratory for Verizon Fios TV subscribers if the pay-TV provider doesn't come to an agreement with Disney. The two media companies are negotiating a new contract to keep Disney's channels including ESPN, Disney Channel and ABC stations in New York and Philadelphia among subscribers' channel choices. But the current contract expires Dec. 31 and both sides are currently playing hard to please. Notices that channels could go dark on Fios have been shown on W-ABC TV channel 7 in New York and emails have been sent to Fios customers about ESPN's potential departure right before the lineup of New Year’s Day college football bowl games. "You could miss them all!" the email said. Verizon charges that Disney wants the telecom giant to ? pay hundreds of millions of dollars more for its programming, despite the fact that many of its key networks are experiencing declining viewership," Verizon says. Disney also is demanding Verizon add the ACC Network to keep the current Disney channels it offers, Verizon says. ? The rising cost of programming is the biggest factor in higher TV bills and we are standing up to networks like Disney, refusing to accept these huge increases," Verizon says.
-The creator of ‘Fortnite’ is leading a battle that could throw the entire video game industry into disarray, and it’s likely to be terrible for Google and Apple: Far and away, the biggest video game of the year was ? Fortnite," which has become a major piece of mainstream pop culture — and a revenue-generating juggernaut — in its own right. An underrated aspect of the ? Fortnite" phenomenon, however, is all the ways in which its developer, Epic Games, has been using its success as leverage to subtly but firmly shift the power dynamics of the video-game industry. When Epic decided to skip Google Play and offer ? Fortnite" directly to Android users, it was sending a clear message about what it thinks of the fact that Google takes 30% of every transaction— a model that's been the standard for every platform, more or less, since Apple first launched the App Store in 2009. And Epic is apparently living by its principles, too: Recently, it launched the Epic Games Store, a PC storefront that offers developers a full 90% of their revenues. Discord, a popular gaming voice-chat service, also joined this push with a similar model, ultimately putting pressure Steam, the leading PC-game store, to change its revenue split, too. All of this is happening against the backdrop of a major research-and-development (R&D) push at the big tech companies to totally shake up the dynamics of the video-game industry from the bottom up. This year, Google's Project Stream, in beta testing, aims to bring console-quality games to any phone or computer via the web browser; Microsoft has its Project xCloud, with similar aims. Mega-publisher Electronic Arts has its own streaming ambitions, too.
https://www.businessinsider.com/epic-games-vs-steam-discord-microsoft-xbox-game-pass-2018-12
-Quibi Should Be Quite Successful — Just Not On The Medium It’s Expecting: My sister recently recommended a British series on Netflix called Collateral. (NB: It’s excellent.) What caught my attention however was not so much that it was a mystery/spy thriller (she knows I like those) but rather that the series consisted of just four hour-long episodes. That was an ideal size for bingeing, especially at a time when getting through a single 12 episode series can take me several months. Collateral seems to be an excellent model for Quibi, the mobile short-form service being launched by industry legend Jeffrey Katzenberg. Katzenberg’s original idea was to create high quality short form video that could be watched on mobile devices. Episodes that ran around ten minutes each, produced, directed and starring Hollywood’s top talent. Enough people liked the idea to allow him to raise $1 billion. But let’s be real: no one is watching high quality video series on their iPhones. That’s like eating caviar on paper plates. Katzenberg seems to already know this. Or at least Quibi isn’t hedging its bets and it’s allegedly launching apps on Roku, Apple TV and other TV-centric devices from the get go. Here’s the thing: people like watching TV on a TV. Hulu reports that about 80% of its viewing happens on an actual TV set and Nielsen has numbers for OTT that are even higher—closer to 90%. People watch I’ve-got-some-time-to-kill video on mobile. It really is the video equivalent of a paper plate—not everything you eat off a paper plate is awful, a lot of it is quite good, but it’s not white tablecloth restaurant dining. (How’s that for stretching out a metaphor.) But mostly mobile video is not the sort of thing you really need to pay attention to or want to find yourself getting engrossed in. Because if you do find yourself getting engrossed in it, the very first thing you’ll probably do is try and find a way to watch it on an actual big screen TV set, TV being a lean-back experience and all. Kind of like what everyone did with Netflix, PCs and HDMI cables back in the pre-Roku days.
-The Most Anticipated Movies of 2019: https://variety.com/2018/film/news/the-most-anticipated-movies-of-2019-avengers-endgame-the-lion-king-1203088721/
-The Most Anticipated TV of 2019: https://variety.com/2018/tv/features/most-anticipated-tv-2019-game-of-thrones-big-little-lies-watchmen-1203034613/