?? Wiser! #93: This Week In Tech
w/Wiser! #93 - Sunday 2nd October
?Hola! Wiser! friends, welcome to the Sunday edition of the Wiser! Newsletter.
Email subscribers got this on Friday morning. They've already got a 3-day head start on you! To read the full colour version of the original newsletter, go here . Just leave your email address on the site and you'll be the first to get it every Friday morning.
On to business...here's what caught my eye this week in the world of tech.
Plus: I had a play with the AI image generator DALLE-2. You can see how it portrayed me writing my newsletter at the end of this post! And in the latest episode of Big Tech Little Tech podcast our guest is Jeffrey Kluge from ForHumanity. We had a discussion on protecting young people online. An important subject that has often been sidelined but is increasingly becoming the focus for lawmakers.
Plus Plus:?A ton of news headlines, some productivity tips, and?other content I think you'll find interesting and of value.
?? "it's always such fun hanging out with you"- Daniel Schreiber, Founder and CEO, Lemonade
Thank you for subscribing to my newsletter. This?week,?nearly 15k subscribers?will?get Wiser!
ATB, Rick
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w/Web3
"Hold onto your headsets!"
Walmart has announced its first venture in the Metaverse with two immersive experiences on Roblox (well kinda the Metaverse. Purists will say that Roblox is technically a web2 game, but I think that's splitting hairs.)
The Point Is: Roblox is the online gaming platform with over 52 million daily players that are predominately kids under the age of 16. These are Walmart's next generation of customers!
Like the majority of the other 200+ brands that I've tracked already releasing projects in web3, NFTs, blockchain or the Metaverse,?Walmart are looking for ways to find and engage with new customers.
These kids are not watching TV adverts anymore. In the run up to Christmas, how else are retailers going to get the attention of the demand generators for Santa's workload!
To find out the whole story and why it matters, watch this...
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w/NFTs
Nike leads the major brands in NFT sales
Top brands like Nike, D&G, Adidas, Gucci, Tiffany, and others have made no less than a combined $260 million from NFT sales, per Dune Analytics data.
Nike is by far the leading brand, having made over $185 million from its NFT drops. Half of this came from royalties on 2nd hand sales, which achieved a sales volume nearing a staggering $1.3 billion.
Here's The Thing: Second-hand sales revenue.
In the conventional world, Nike only receives income from the first sale. You buy a pair of limited edition sneakers for $250, scarcity and status drive up the value, then you sell them on for $400. In this scenario, Nike gets nothing from the resale of the sneakers. (And maybe they shouldn't, depending on your POV!)
The Point Is: when there's an NFT involved, future ownership is recorded on blockchain technology. Transfer of NFT ownership can trigger a royalty payment from the proceeds of the sale.
It's the subject I covered recently about Pearson, the world's largest book publisher, and their aspirations to capture revenue from the 2nd hand book market.
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w/Metaverse
From A to Z: Brand Strategies For The Metaverse
From Adidas to Zara, from Airlines to Zoos, consumer brands are always looking for new ways to build loyalty amongst existing customers, or find brand new customers all together!
In search of nirvana in the new digital economy, many major retail brands are dipping their toes into the next generation of the Internet, aka the world of Web3.
Brands are building new revenue streams, enhancing customer experience, and improving operational efficiency. But,
Here's The Thing: Their biggest win out of all of this is that they are learning.
These brands are testing what works and what doesn't. They're seeing customer reaction up close and personal. Which is important, because some things have worked really well. And some haven't!
The Takeaway:?They're getting Wiser! day by day whilst the laggards are losing ground.
"What's the solution, Rick," I hear you cry!
Check this out! I have built a unique collection of over 200 brands and their strategies in the Metaverse. I have scoured the Internet, social media, newsletters, blogs, press releases and compiled a massive database of collateral that lays out what these brands are doing in the new digital economy.
A lot of this is serious stuff too, it's not all giveaways and fluff marketing campaigns. There are genuine examples where the brand has enhanced their product to the advantage if the consumer.
This is a huge database that includes over 200 brands PLUS a futher 50 examples of celebrities and sports brands that are using these new technologies to enhance their brand experience.
Starting at "A", the list of brands include: Adidas, AIA Insurance, Alfa Romeo, Asics, Aston Martin, Atari, Audi, Bacardi, Bentley, Bose, Boss, Budweiser, Burberry, Cadbury, Campbell Soup, Carrefour, Champion, Chevrolet, Chipolte, Coca-Cola, DBS Bank, Decathlon, Dior, Disney, Dolce&Gabbana...(and goes all the way to "Z")
To access the collection of over 200 brands, go here .
?? You'll need a Premium subscription to access the link that's behind the paywall on this page.
For a Limited Time Only: Sign up for a Premium Subscription with these 20% discount codes...
"This is the single, largest collection of brand reference material for web3, NFTs, blockchain and the Metaverse" - Rick's mum
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w/Podcast
?? Young people’s data, Instagram, Peloton, and air fryers
In Episode #10:?Shaun and I welcome Jeffrey Kluge to the show to discuss the topic of protecting young people’s personal data and their online safety in general.
It sounds a dry subject, but it's a hugely important one, especially if you're a parent with kids under the age of 18.
The internet's age of consent is currently 13 years old. That means once a kid becomes a teenager, it's open season for tech companies. They can track their online activity, sell their data, use manipulative technologies without the consent of an adult. (See?heartbreaking story of Molly Russell, 14, in the UK press ATM ).
“2 in 5 kids report they’ve been approached online by someone they thought was attempting to “befriend and manipulate” them.”?(Thorn.org ?2022)
The issue goes back to when 1998, the online age for consent was set at 13 years old. At the time, lawmakers wanted 16, but the e-commerce led tech industry lobbied for 13. And they won.
But in 1998 we didnt have social media as we know it today. No Facebook, Instagram or TikTok, no mobile apps, no mass collection of data tracking our every move, no digital ad business model fuelling it all.
Following the UK’s lead, California has passed a law that resets the age to 18. It also makes platform executives liable for online harm.
Unlike Texas and Florida, who want to relax the rules governing social media in the name of freedom, California is taking the lead in protecting young people from online harm.
This is what we talked about in the podcast. We also talked about Instagram statistics, the mess Peloton are in, air fryers (not hair dryers) and our guest’s top tech innovation of the last 100 years.
??? You can find Big Tech Little Tech on all major Podcast platforms:?Apple Podcasts ?|?Spotify ?|?Amazon Music ?|?Anchor ?|?Google Podcasts
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Read this week's issue of Wiser! in full here...
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w/CBDCs
Stark Differences In Attitudes Towards Digital Currencies between the East and the West
Did You Know? 107 central banks around the world, constituting 95% of GDP, are experimenting with CBDCs in some form or fashion.
As the US economy shows signs of strength and resilience relative to everywhere else in the world, the focus on its relationship with China intensifies. The idealogical differences between the East and West are laid out clearly in tech. Particularly when it comes to the debate over Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC).
In simple terms, a CBDC is just ordinary money in a digital form. It's not like making a payment on Apple Pay (that's a form of lending involving multiple handoffs between banks). Instead, it's like having cash in your wallet, except that it's digital cash in a digital wallet on your smartphone.
In China, they're pushing ahead with rolling out a digital Yuan, building a trading ecosystem with neighbouring countries. This will put China ahead of the West by a decade! The latest news comes from Hong Kong where are planning to roll out a "retail CBDC " with the potential to connect with crypto economies as an?on/off ramp for DeFi ?(decentralised finance).
By contrast, in the US when the Federal Reserve consulted on a CBDC, they had over 60% negative feedback. The main concerns being two-fold. Bankers are concerned about the impact to their profitability (by removing the friction, cost and need for payment services only they can provide), whilst consumer groups worry over tracking and surveillance of everyday spending.
You'll even find Bitcoin evangelists using the anti-CBDC argument to promote a Bitcoin-Is-Better one!
What's Happening In The USA
For a better understanding of the US current thinking is around digital assets, here's a thorough assessment from Chainalysis...??
What's Happening In China
For my take on China, surveillance, their move to a cashless society and how they're regulating BigTech, watch these videos...??
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w/SocialMedia
Is This the Beginning of the End of the Internet?
How a single Texas ruling could change the web forever
Rather than write this story myself, I've used this piece by Charlie Warzel in The Atlantic.
It's a good read about the nonsense culture war over social media being driven by the right-wing of US politics, largely in indignant outrage to Donald Trump's removal from social media after the Jan 6th insurrection.
Warzel writes...
Earlier this month, the court upheld a preposterous Texas law stating that online platforms with more than 50 million monthly active users in the United States no longer have First Amendment rights regarding their editorial decisions. Put another way,?the law tells big social-media companies that they can’t moderate the content on their platforms. YouTube purging terrorist-recruitment videos? Illegal. Twitter removing a violent cell of neo-Nazis harassing people with death threats? Sorry, that’s censorship, according to Andy Oldham, a judge of the United States Court of Appeals and the former general counsel to Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
Here's The Thing: The law would allow both the Texas attorney general and private citizens (in Texas) to file a lawsuit against the social media platforms if they feel their content was removed because of a specific viewpoint, regardless of how vile and inaccurate that POV was.
In that case, social media firms would have to shutdown, even including the biggest of them all, Facebook. It seems far fetched, but the point is that content moderation is extremely difficult already. It's also largely dependent on a combination of AI and user feedback to make the moderation decisions.
The threat of being sued every time content is taken down would mean that nothing would be taken down. If you want to see what an Internet sewer looks like, go to 4chan.org.
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w/Snippets
Tech Headlines
Tech Numbers
Tech Interesting
“Everything is possible if you’re brave.”
Katherin Bestandig, a regular at the Bam Bam Beach Bitcoin Bar in Lagos, Portugal, describes her bold approach to investing in volatile cryptocurrency to the?New York Times .
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?? The Newsletter of Newsletters
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?? Use AI Writing Tools To Do The Heavy Lifting
Do you ever need to summarise an interesting, long-form article without going through the effort of doing it yourself? Like, when your boss can't be arsed to read it themselves and they dump it on you to do it for them. Well, here's a hack you'll find useful (and one that I use myself).
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w/The End