Dozen Worthy Reads 📰 (No. 165)
This week : Apple v. Epic, GPT3, Amazon, Facebook & Creators, Big Tech Acquisitions, 7 Powers/Moats, Big Tech and Privacy, Workplaces, DeepFakes landscape, Vimeo, The American Dream, Calendly!
Hi All,
I hope you all are doing well and welcome to Dozen Worthy Reads. A newsletter where I talk about the most interesting things about tech that I read the past couple of weeks or write about tech happenings. You can sign up here or just read on …
Apple v/s Epic : Now in theaters
The hottest topic of this week is the Epic v/s Apple battle being played out in court. At stake are multiple things 1) Apple’s revered 30% commission. The core argument as I have mentioned in the past is whether Apple can restrict Epic from implementing its own payment provider (or even showing them any kind of in-app comms about where/how they can subscribe. Apple’s core promise of “security” and “sandboxed” apps makes sense; no doubt but how much can a human really catch?
. But how does tying this to a payment system make sense? Also remember that this is applicable to virtual goods. Why not physical goods? The reason is simple; dealing with real world complexity requires a heavier investment in customer service. Imagine if Apple was the CS for a failed DoorDash delivery? What would happen then? The EU last week charged Apple with an antitrust breach in a narrow market. That market is “music streaming services” as opposed to every kind of app though this isolated use case will serve as a trial for what might be next. As far as the Epic lawsuit my bet it that
Apple wins the lawsuit. In the future regulation will be changed to ensure that this is addressed
Apple will likely need to either 1) Allow 3p payment systems or 2) reduce their % take to an acceptable amount. It is also likely that Apple will have to offer the same terms for markets where they compete as an App (Apple Music for example).
Allow app developers across the board to market payment systems outside of the app store.
On a related note, Apple has avoided M&A scrutiny by acqui-hiring so many small companies. Good strategy
When the computer does your job
There has been a lot of talk about GPT3 and its capabilities. Computer generated imagery, deep fakes, script writer, voice-overs. I mean I really see the need to start a movie production studio, get all these technologies together and voila I’m producing movies.
The real world bites back
I’m not sure I fully agree with the ruling that Amazon is responsible for every single product that they sell but notwithstanding that, this is the real world coming back to bite. All these things existed in a human centered world. Uber and Lyft know this too well. For the past decade tech chipped away at the “easier to solve” (compared to all other) problems. Now the real problems appear
Facebook, Creators, and the strategy : Five takeaways about Facebook's pivot to audio
Facebook is probably realizing that there is demand for other kinds of products outside of the Big Blue App. This is creating a situation in which they are investing in creator products and allowing them to get paid for it. Facebook has always been a walled garden and ad’s has always been the main business so allowing creators to port their data is interesting. I do think part of this is related to ATT changes. Giving creators more reason to come to Facebook and monetize and allow Facebook to ad-monetize that content. This also ties into Facebook in general allowing more portability though this portability is the data, not the network graph. Yeah sure it's useful but not really THAT useful without your network (as opposed to substack!). I mean what would really be cool if you extend that is a delete button. Port and delete all your data (including your Facebook connections!). That is never gonna happen!
“I think one of the powerful things that Substack has done is making it so that … if someone signs up with them, [and] decides to pick up and go to another place, your subscriber list is yours. And I think that that is a really powerful part of the creator economy, too.”
He continued: “When we talk about giving favorable terms [to creators], it's actually not just the economics. I think it's also the portability, so that we creators know that if they start building up a business here, that they're not just gonna be locked in, and will be able to take it to different places.”
This is a pretty big deal! You can’t export your Facebook Page subscribers or your Instagram followers. Nor can you easily transfer your subscribers on TikTok or YouTube. If Facebook leans into the notion that creators ought to own the relationship with their creators, it could represent the start of a healthy shift in mindset among platforms.
A look at Agora which powers the real time audio capabilities that companies like Clubhouse depend on. They also build real time video capabilities! : Bull & Bear: Agora, the API Powering Clubhouse
Big Tech and Acquisitions
If you really want to get a better sense for the kind of acquisitions that Big Tech has been doing this interactive from WaPo was brilliant. Puts things in perspective right? You hear about the bigger ones but the smaller ones just slide through. This has positive impacts since startup founders get an exit; join for a couple of years; rake in the $, and go back out and start something of their own. However this also enabled big tech to monopolize technology and nip things in the bud - so to speak!
7 Powers
For all of you that have been reading this, know how much I believe in the 7 powers (which I call the 8 moats). This article from NFX on 7 powers was a great read, a good refresher with some neat examples since I wrote Building Moats
Tech and privacy regulation
Big Tech’s agenda is to push lax privacy laws lest everyone adopt CCPA type regulations!
Big Tech Is Pushing States to Pass Privacy Laws, and Yes, You Should Be Suspicious – The Markup
"The future of work is not working." - Charlie Warzel
As an introvert that prefers not to have much “chit chat”, I can't say that I disagree with the below. Workplaces are becoming “cooler” but less personal and I think the future of workplaces will closely mirror guilds (or what Lavingia has done below)
“Over the last five years Lavingia purposefully destroyed Gumroad’s corporate culture. This isn’t to say Gumroad has a bad or peculiar culture — it has no culture at all. “I’m not friends with any of my [part-time] employees,” Lavingia told me recently. “We get along fine but there’s no real water cooler talk or chit chat. Every time we talk, it’s about Gumroad.”
This policy probably sounds cold and joyless. But I’d argue there’s also something admirable about it. All work — even in the best companies — is transactional, but we disguise this fact by dressing our jobs up in the language of corporate culture. We use language like ‘we’re all a family, here,’ which sounds really nice in theory but is often a clever way to break down the boundaries between work and life. Even if you genuinely care about your company and your coworkers, the family posture is still a lie. It frames a primarily transactional relationship as a primarily emotional one.”
Deep Fakes and the current synthetic landscape
Speaking of deep fakes, a good read on the synthetic landscape from Marie Dolle : Deepfakes: Two sides of a Yin and Yang
Vimeo? The YouTube has been?
What is Vimeo about? Great read on Vimeo’s reinvention and SaaS video creation tools. From being a youtube wannabe competitor to a whole suite of tools Vimeo has carved a successful niche in the SaaS video tools business. Shedding the brand association however has been a bit more thorny! How Anjali Sud reinvented Vimeo
The New American Dream
Is the purpose of education to merely get a job or learn? If you take the point of view that the goal of education is to learn then how that learning happens should not determine if you get the job or not. As Scott Galloway has written in Higher Ed 2.0 (What We Got Right/Wrong), education is a key part of upward mobility. There is also the issue, thanks to COVID, of many colleges running out of budgets. This does not happen to the Ivy League schools. The result of this however is that Ivy League schools become more expensive and more of a status symbol and a lot of folks can’t go to college anymore since so many had to close because of budgetary constraints. As long as employers look at a college “education” as a heuristic this will not change. However this is changing, companies such as Amazon are training their employees to become software engineers. However I think this all starts one step before. What if, right after you finish high school you are chosen and groomed by an employer (employer ISA’s), where the employer pays you and takes a cut. I really see positive signs that this is emerging as a trend; now if only we can lose our social signaling as a habit (which I am not sure will ever go away)
A look at Calendly’s viral loops from Sacra
Calendly: The $4B DocuSign of Scheduling
Thank you for reading. Stay safe, be well! If you enjoyed reading this please consider sharing with a friend or two (or sign up here if you came across this or were forwarded this)