Dispatch 034: A New Social Media?
Is there an opening for another shift in social media? While TikTok's algorithms may have veered us too far away from the friend graphs of old, is it finally time for a following model based around topics and taste? It's working for Bluesky, as you can see by Meta's quick copy of the idea. Is there a trend to Surf here?
M.G. Siegler
I Think...
📲 Apple Halts Effort to Build iPhone Hardware Subscription Service – Well, so much for 'Apple Prime'. I've long been drawn to the idea of paying an annual fee to Apple in exchange for a new iPhone each year, but I also buy a new iPhone each year, something that is becoming less common as the reasons to upgrade have grown less clear with each passing year. It's also still more of a pain than it should be to swap out iPhones – my wife has an iPhone 14 and didn't even want the 15 Pro when I upgraded last year because it takes too long to port things over and several things still break in that process. Some of that undoubtedly plays into this change of heart for Apple, despite the work put in. But also, they really don't seem to want to be a bank, or even look like a bank, dishing out loans and dealing with credit. They have enough regulatory headaches as-is. Of course, they also need new vectors of growth. And 'Apple Prime' could have been peak services. There's a reason why Sony has a massive financial business... [Bloomberg 🔒]
🏒 David Bonderman, Private Equity Pioneer, Is Dead at 82 – If you work in finance or any of the tangential fields, you undoubtedly know who David Bonderman is. But did you know that he didn't even start his career in private equity until he was in his 40s? He seemingly lived a lifetime before that – he majored in Russian studies and used part of his time at law school to live in the Middle East and become fluent in Arabic. He then taught law before he joined the Justice Department under Lyndon Johnson, working on civil rights. Eventually, after time working on the other side, arguing cases in front of the Supreme Court, a Texas oil baron came calling to ask him to help invest his family fortune – for which Bonderman had zero background. A few deals later, notably buying Continental Airlines out of bankruptcy and turning it around, Texas Pacific Group was born as was modern day PE. Bonderman was about to turn 50. Today, TPG has just about $250B under management. He was 76 when he helped found the Seattle Kraken NHL team. Never too late to start something new. [NYT]
🏈 Why Every Cable Network Is a Sports Channel Now – Speaking of sports... FX, TruTV, even Nickelodeon – all now doing some level of sports programming. The reason why is obvious: increasingly, it's the only content that works on cable. And related, it's the only content that can keep carriage fees intact, as Warner Bros Discovery has been scrambling to fix after their shocking loss (to them) of the NBA rights for TNT. But the writing is on the wall here – those sports rights are increasingly going in the two opposite directions of cable: streaming (for the future) and broadcast (for reach). Cable is getting gutted and that's why Comcast, WBD, and everyone else are applying the tourniquet now. They must cleave those assets off before it's too late and infection spreads. [THR]
☠️ Apple Hits Out at Meta's Numerous Interoperability Requests – I'm not entirely sure what to read into this sort of humorous back-and-forth between Apple and Meta here. Obviously, the two companies don't like one another, but the EC doesn't like either of them – and if they dislike any company more than Apple, it's Meta. So is Meta being a tattletale here? Trying to curry favor – something they've seemingly been doing a lot of, of late. Just poking Apple for fun? And Apple publicly calling out Meta for this – noting specifically the privacy issues and fines Meta faces in the EU – is another interesting political maneuver. Who are the baddies here?! [Bloomberg 🔒]
🦸🏻♂️ Superman Is Bruised and Bloody in First Trailer – While I poked fun at it yesterday – trailers for trailers for trailers – the first actual trailer of James Gunn's Superman does look pretty good. Two things I immediately appreciate: that it's not yet another origin story and that it would seem to have a look that's neither the too-slick Marvel Cinematic Universe or the too-drab DC Comics films of the past. The latter, of course, is why Gunn got this gig – and the job of (co)running all of the DC slate – but he's smart enough to know not to directly copy that model (which has shifted from refreshingly clever to a bit too much) or to do the opposite (as Zack Snyder had been veering into – going so far as to go black and white – and while I liked the new Batman, Matt Reeves didn't help that perception, nor did Joker, to put it mildly!). Mainly, I'm surprised that this is opening July 11, 2025 – one week after July 4th. What's more American than Superman? Jurassic Park 7, it seems. [THR]
I Wrote...
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
I Link...
- Well, TikTok got their Supreme Court hearing – but much earlier than thought, on January 10, ahead of their would-be January 19 ban date. Given the lower court rulings, this doesn't seem like particularly positive news. It may all come down to Trump, and a deal, which he must love. [CBS News]
- Instagram seems on the verge of hitting 50% of Meta's total advertising revenue in the US, a big moment for the company formerly known as and dominated by Facebook. [Bloomberg 🔒]
- Saturn's rings are set to vanish in 2025 – to those of us on Earth at least, due to their placement relative to the Sun. This is something Galileo first noticed in 1612 with a quip, "has Saturn devoured his own sons?" [Economist 🪐]
- With Baidu talks seeming to have cooled, Apple is apparently now talking to Tencent and ByteDance about a partnership for AI – key, since ChatGPT doesn't operate in China and while the early features may not exactly be a selling point of the iPhone, their absence will hurt there. [Reuters]
- Speaking of Tencent, the US DoJ has forced them to give up their two board seats at Epic due to antitrust conflicts given their ownership in Riot Games – sort of strange it has taken so long though given the Epic investment was in 2012 and Riot was 2011... [Bloomberg 🔒]
- Has 114-year-old Hitachi – nearly bankrupt in 2009 – reinvented itself for the AI age? Investors seem to think so, at least, thanks largely to their Lumada division that focuses on bringing data services to analog realms. [FT 🔒]
- A consumer tech (confidential) IPO filing, what is this, the 1990s? Chime is clearly aiming to go out early next year. [Bloomberg 🔒]
- Imagine a very online person sidetracking a major spending plan in Congress by retweeting various misleading memes and other misinformation – it's easy if you try. [Politico]
- Walmart is following the tried-and-true tradition of corporate parents starting their own gaming magazine/site with Restart. Hopefully they're more focused on the kids than GameStop of late. [Verge]
- Zero surprise following the recent press cycle (and launch), Ōura is now valued at $5.2B after a new $200M round – one of the largest for a European tech company not specifically in AI. [FT 🔒]
- Good news for them too as non-AI startups still seem to be having some trouble raising new capital post-boom times. [TechCrunch]
- After holding out while their rivals all race ahead, Apple is finally teaming up with NVIDIA – on research papers about AI. [9to5Mac]
- One thing I appreciate about Amazon's new device packaging, despite the environmental benefits, is that it doesn't look anything like Apple's packaging. It's still nice, but in an entirely different way. [GeekWire]
- The hype video is a bit much – "engineered to embody innovation and defy limitation" – but I certainly don't hate the new Sandisk logo, especially since the old one was pretty bland. Nice work, the company formerly known as SunDisk (changed before the IPO to avoid confusion with Sun Microsystems), for not pulling a Jaguar. Then again, they did get a whole post for their work... [Fast Company]
I Quote...
"What Apple is actually saying is they don't believe in interoperability. Every time Apple is called out for its anticompetitive behavior, they defend themselves on privacy grounds that have no basis in reality."
-- A unnamed Meta spokesperson in a statement issued alongside the EC's DMA warning to Apple about the interoperability of their devices (per link up top).
I Spy...
A bird... A plane...