What's Appening: Big Tech Ups & Downs 🎢🚨

News in apps delivered weekly to your inbox on 🌮 Tuesday.

iOS “CRASH DETECTION” IS ROBO-CALLING FIRST RESPONDERS TO THEME PARKS 🤦🏻‍♂️

👀 TLDR:

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover Apple’s roller coaster gaffe. It seems that Crash Detection is dialing 911 when iPhone 14 and Watch users are whizzing around on theme park rides. Elsewhere, Elon Musk has agreed (again) to take over Twitter for $44 billion (again), and we just want this saga to end. This is happening with a backdrop of Twitter feature updates. Google has loads of new products, including the Pixel 7. Our Stat of the Week looks at the tiny number of users relative to the huge valuation of Decentraland. And What’s dAppening highlights how Binance coped with a major exploit on the BNB Chain over the weekend.

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Takes 🎬

🍏🎢 Apple – “Crash Detection” Has an Achilles’ Heel – Roller Coasters

New product features can have ups and downs on launch – but Apple is taking that a bit literally. In the most funny (not-funny!) story this week, Apple’s Crash Detection (iPhone 14, Watch Series 8) is dialing 911 when users are on roller coasters. Whoops. #AppleUpsAndDowns Read more here.

🤝💰 Twitter – Elon’s All-In Again (for now?) while Platform Keeps Evolving

It’s been a busy week on Twitter. The big news is, of course, Elon Musk. When he wasn’t busy wading into arguments over international affairs, he was announcing the deal to buy Twitter was back on. Sigh. There are still arguments between Musk, the courts, and the Twitter hierarchy, so we wouldn’t say the messiest deal in tech history is over the line yet, but it does seem that Musk has shifted his stance again, and is now pushing the deal to happen. Now, the focus is financing. Elsewhere on the ‘bird app’, there’s a host of new features: The Edit Tweet feature has been extended to everyone in the US with the paid Twitter Blue subscription; there’s a fun multimedia option that allows you to combine photos and gifs; and Twitter is also experimenting with nudging people towards sharing tweets rather than taking screenshots. The latter is an interesting effort to get people moving back and forth through the ecosystem when Twitter posts are shared on other platforms like WhatsApp. It makes a lot of sense for Twitter to provide that little nudge. #WeekInTwitter Read more here.

⌚7️⃣ Google – New Phones, New Features and Competition from a Former Exec

Google has a busy week too. The company had its Fall 2022 event, which showcased the latest in its hardware, including the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro. There were a couple of neat features showcased for Pixel 7, including snoring and coughing detection for users’ sleep issues (no idea if it works on roller coasters), an interesting VPN solution for the OS, and a brilliant Guided Frame feature that helps the blind and visually impaired take selfies with voice guidance. Google also took a big leap into the smartwatch market with Pixel Watch. Google’s other big news involved its rival, Apple. The company launched its first line of iOS 16 Lock Screen widgets, including Gmail and Google News. However, we are still waiting for the most in-demand widgets – Search and Maps. Finally, we wanted to bring your attention to Neeva, an advert and tracking free browser created by former Google ad exec Sridhar Ramaswamy. The browser now has 600,000 downloads in the US, and it has recently launched in Europe. It’s getting an interesting amount of traction, including a $77 million funding round. Keep an eye on it. #WeekInGoogle Read more here.

📰 💪 The Best of the Rest – Other News:

Twitch Elevated Chat Offers New Way of Monetization: An interesting way to help creators earn a buck was announced by Twitch this week, allowing users to pay (up to $100!) to get their chat messages featured prominently. Get the details here.

Instagram Testing Multiple Links In User Bios: After a year of testing, Instagram has expanded its rollout of multiple links in user bios as a means to augment business-building potential. Read about it here.

Google Docs Will Allow Embedding of Third-Party Apps: In its expansion of Workspace to become more of an all-rounder (and take on Notion and Coda), Google will soon roll out its “smart chips” feature, allowing third-party apps to be embedded in documents. Learn more about that here.

Breaking News! Meta announces Quest Pro: As we hit “Publish” on our Tuesday newsletter, we’re tuning in to Meta’s live show where the latest Quest VR (and AR) headset is being unveiled. At $1499, the cost has significantly increased but with that comes some serious improvement in tech… More on this next week!

🧐 Stat of the Week – $40 Million/User

💰📊 Decentraland Has Huge Valuation Compared to User Count

We saw an interesting stat from DappRadar this week: Decentraland, the metaverse-like virtual world owned by its users, has a valuation of $1.3 billion but can have as little as 30 DAUs (daily active users) interacting with the ecosystem. So, it equates to around $40 million per user! Decentraland (and 3Advance’s own Kayne) was quick to point out that it doesn’t tell the full story and that DappRadar’s count only lists those with a unique wallet address interacting with the platform in ways like buying an NFT, thus not casual users. Nonetheless, it highlights the fact we need to tear up the rulebook when considering web3 valuations. #DecentralandFinance Read more here.

🕸️ What’s dAppening?

A dApp is a decentralized app. Here’s the latest in web3, NFTs and blockchain apps.

🏴‍☠️💻 Binance – BNB Chain Paused as Major Exchange Deals with Exploit

Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, got ‘hacked’ last Friday, with initial reports showing that around $570 million had been stolen, a figure later revised down to $100 million. It was one of several major crypto exchange exploits this year, but it was perhaps the most interesting in how it played out. For a start, it was commendable how Binance announced, contained, and dealt with the issue, restoring order within a few hours. It also highlighted one of the advantages of centralized exchanges over decentralized counterparts, with Binance’s CEO Changpeng Zhao providing reassuring commentary on Twitter as the exchange dealt with the exploit. This exploit might have hurt Binance to an extent, but it was also an advert for how to manage a crisis. “We are still early” is one of the mantras of web3, and that includes behemoths like Binance. Lessons will hopefully be learned here for next time. And, alas, unfortunately when it comes to crypto, there will always be a next time. #BinanceHack Read more here.

Meanwhile at 3Advance...

We’ve made our client first investment of 2022! You may not know this, but 3Advance has a sister company, 3Adventures (of course, right?! 🤓). When the opportunity arises with one of our clients, and the deal makes sense for both sides, we make a move. The size of our investments range from $10k-$50k, and previous client investments have been made in DC startups TwentyTables and HSA Coach. Last week we confirmed terms with our most promising web3 client and we’re ecstatic! 🎉. While the team is still in stealth mode, we can’t say much more than it is a mass-market NFT marketplace built on the Flow blockchain due to go live in November. We always say that we become successful when our clients succeed (and they thrive when their users thrive… hence 3Advance!). This commitment allows us to be entrenched even deeper, and provides us access to major upside in the future. We are currently formalizing how we invest in our current and future clients, with plans to launch a build-for-equity program in 2023. If you want to talk to us more about this, please reach out to Paul ([email protected]). Otherwise, keep an eye out here for more news on our side (ad)ventures.

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