What's Appening? Twitizen Kane: Elon Wants It All 🌎

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ELON MUSK WANTS TO BUY TWITTER TO UNLEASH ITS "EXTRAORDINARY POTENTIAL" 

🌮 TLDR

This week on What’s Appening, we delve into the Elon and Twitter soap opera. Not happy with a board seat, the Tesla boss has moved to buy it outright. Elsewhere, we have news of FIFA’s new streaming app, which brought a nostalgic tear to the eye of our CEO. And, there’s a lot of seller disgruntlement on online marketplaces, with Amazon and Etsy both raising fees. Our Stat of the Week has another hold my beer moment for Meta. While What’s dAppening reports on yet another delay to Ethereum’s move to Proof of Stake.

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🎬 Takes

🐥 🥊 Twitter – Elon Musk Wants it All

This is possibly the biggest tech story of the year, so you probably know most of what’s appened (sorry). But let’s do a super short recap of the last 10 days: Elon Musk became Twitter’s largest shareholder, was going to join the board, then wasn’t going to join the board, offered to buy Twitter at $54.20 a share (almost 40% more than it was on April 1st), and is now currently locked in a battle of wills with said board over who’s going to own Twitter. Caught up? Cool. It’s fair to say that Musk divides opinion, and the camp you are in will determine whether or not you believe his assertion that “Twitter has extraordinary potential, I will unlock it”. In terms of revenue, this social network lags way behind Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Since Jack Dorsey stepped down, Twitter has doubled down on features in an effort to realize this potential: Spaces, Tipping, Newsletters, NFT Profiles and more recently, the Twitter Blue subscription service. But this isn’t just about quarterly numbers, is it? There has been a lot of talk about free speech from Musk, and his previous critiques of Twitter suggests his vision for Twitter is a less monitored, more “open” platform. This is a huge, hot-topic, often political debate, and perhaps the “extraordinary potential” refers more to the influence Twitter yields than the dollars it amasses directly. Let’s not forget Musk’s 2020 tweet: "who controls the memes, controls the universe”. There are more twists and turns memes to this story yet. #ElonWantsItAll Read more here.

⚽➕FIFA – World Soccer Organization Releases New Streaming App

June 30th 1990. Darren (7) and Paul (10) are watching their beloved Ireland come oh-so-close to reaching a World Cup Semi-Final before losing by a single-goal to host-country Italy. Now, 32 years later, it’s finally become possible to relive those memories with the new FIFA+ app. The app will be funded by advertising, so it’s free – for now. FIFA has packed a lot into this app including an archive of every World Cup (men’s and women’s) game ever recorded on camera. There’s also going to be original programming with a focus on documentaries, including one available on launch covering the life and times of Brazilian wizard Ronaldinho. What FIFA won’t have, however, is top-level action from the likes of the Champions League and Premier League. Over 40,000 live games will be shown on the app, but they are limited to those competitions not signed up to juicy TV broadcasting deals. If you follow the Azerbaijani second division, though, you’re all set. FIFA hopes to get 200 million users by the end of the year. That’s ambitious – it’s around the same number of global subscribers as Netflix – but it’s possible if it remains free. Now go check out Ray Houghton’s goal in the 1994 World Cup (in good ol’ USA) as Ireland gained revenge over the mighty Italians. #FIFANewApp Read more here.

🧶💸Amazon & Etsy – Sellers’ Fees Are Rising, Revolts have begun

These are separate stories, but they are linked, and they form part of what we believe will be a broader theme in the coming weeks and months. Starting with Etsy, thousands of sellers on the online marketplace have gone on ‘strike’, putting their shops on “vacation mode” as they protest rising fees charged by Etsy. The rise, from 5% to 6.5%, might not seem like much, but it’s a 30% increase. The protesters have called it “pandemic profiteering”, whereas Etsy has said it’s essential for growing the potential of the platform. As for Amazon sellers, they are being hit with a 5% surcharge (effective from April 28th) to offset fuel inflation and other price increases. It looks like we are beginning to see the snowball effect of inflation, rising wages, and fuels costs hit the digital marketplace. Sellers say Amazon and Etsy (those two won’t be the last, mark our words) are taking “advantage of the moment”, whereas the platforms say they can no longer absorb the costs of these extraordinary price rises within their eco-system. They could both be right. #SellersOnStrike Read more here.

🧐 Stat of the Week – 47.5%: Meta's Creator Fees

Hey, speaking of high fees and bad press – you can always trust Meta to say, “hold my beer while we do worse”. News that it will be charging creators up to 47.5% in Horizon Worlds (this is Meta’s Metaverse 😅). This has unsurprisingly caused a stir, not least because of their history of bashing Apple’s App Store fees. Mark Zuckerberg even claimed in a November post that the metaverse would be in part built to help creators escape Apple’s fees of 30%. Not a good look here for Meta – how many times have we said that in the last year? #MetaDoBetter Read more here.

🕸️ What’s dAppening?

👨‍💻🗓 ETH – Move to Proof of Stake Has Been Delayed (Again)

You know when a movie is delayed, the producers keep saying, “everything’s fine”, and then they finally release a cobbled-together dud that stinks out the box office? As Humphrey Bogart famously said on the set of Casablanca, “making a movie is a lot like moving your decentralized open-source blockchain project to proof-of-stake, kid.”. Anyway, totally made up comparisons aside, what’s dappening (sorry, again) with Ethereum? Well, the long-awaited move from PoW to PoS has been delayed yet again. Originally slated for completion in 2019, the update was expected in June of this year. It’s been delayed for a further few months as developers try to iron out some of the bugs. Make no mistake folks, this upgrade to PoS is badly needed. It will cut the network’s energy costs by up to 99% and, hopefully, unleash Ethereum as the lifeblood of the web3 movement. It might be taking a while, but they must get this right: billions of dollars and the next generation of the internet depends on it. #EthereumDelayAgain Read more here.

Meanwhile at 3Advance...

Well, this week we’ve got some bittersweet news. Our Marketing Manager, Emma Rodger, has left 3Advance... But, wait for it, we couldn’t be happier. 😁 Emma has officially opened the doors to her new digital marketing agency, Salt Social Co., and you can guess who her first customer is! You’ve got it, 3Advance. While usually we’re celebrating the launch of startup product businesses, this week we’re cheering the launch of Salt Social Co. 🚀, the “one stop destination to spice up your social media and marketing”. We are delighted - and proud!! - and of course, we wish Emma every success in her new venture. We’ll be sending some clients your way!!

What's Appening is brought to you by 3Advance, the product development team that eats, sleeps and breathes apps. Not diggin' the apps? You can opt-out below. Forwarding to a friend? They can subscribe here.