With its new Smart Glasses, the social media giant raises a whole new set of privacy concerns
If you’re an avid user of Facebook, it likely knows you better than you know yourself. It has access to your data, your friend’s list, your memories, your messages, and a record of everything you’ve ever clicked on, commented on or scrolled past on the platform throughout your history on it.
Not content with the data pool it has built (read: stolen from unwitting users), Facebook now wants to see what you see by living in front of your eyes.
It’s hard not to be cynical about the launch of Ray-Ban Stories, the $299 Smart Glass collaboration between Ray-Bans and…
Why is the McFlurry machine always broken? The FTC also wants to know
McDonald’s McFlurry machine is famous for great ice cream and for never being able to serve said ice cream. The machine is out-of-order so frequently that it’s become a long-running joke (read: big customer bugbear). Even the company couldn’t help but poke fun at the problem, tweeting, “We have a joke about our soft serve machine but we’re worried it won’t work.”
Customers have continually made their disappointment heard, and it’s now the most common complaint. Conspiracy theories have grown louder, including the popular one that McDonald’s employees intentionally lie about the machine being broken to avoid making shakes and…
A case study for ‘find it in your 20s and build it in your 30s’
Aimless.
That’s how I spent a lot of my 20s. I stumbled around and often got lost. I was working minimum wage jobs, slowly becoming too comfortable in mediocrity, in danger of floundering forever. While no one ever called me out, I felt their judgment. I understood it; I was a typical graduate, naively believing my degree was the key to unlocking all the doors ahead of me. Reality bit hard. My paper degree was no match for steel locks, and the doors remained closed. Finally, in an attempt to give myself some direction and purpose, I founded a business…
NUMBER CRUNCH
After a year of explosive growth, the company is beginning to slow down
25%: The percentage fall in Peloton’s share price year-to-date, not accounting for the further losses that occurred after the company’s recent Q4 report, which failed to meet expectations.
A treadmill runner typically struggles in the early minutes of the run, then kicks into gear, enjoying a sustained period of high-performance before hitting the wall and eventually coming to a stop. It seems this trajectory also applies to the trendiest of treadmill makers, Peloton. On August 26, the company shared its Q4 earnings for 2021, and the data showed a dramatic tail-off in growth compared to the previous year. The numbers…
If remote is the future, a day away from our home office will do us all the world of good
Before the pandemic turned the world upside down, my work-life was quite hectic; days spent manufacturing in the workshop, on-site visits with clients, installations, meetings, and 3 hours of daily commuting to make it all that more exhausting. Now, I roll out of bed, sit down at the kitchen table, and type away on my laptop until it’s dinner time.
The transition has been strange.
I’ve been remote working for around 16 months now, and the longer I continue to do so, the more restless I’m becoming. I love what I’m doing right now — getting paid to write and…
I Read It So You Don’t Have To
Two reporters tell the inside story of WeWork’s dramatic rise and implosion
I Read It So You Don’t Have To is a series that gives you the TL;DR on a business book you want to read — but don’t have time to.
What did I read?
The Cult of We: WeWork and the Great Start-Up Delusion by Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell.
So who are Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell?
Eliot Brown is a journalist who has covered start-ups and venture capital for The Wall Street Journal since 2010. Maureen Farrell is also a reporter for the Journal, whose work has received the Newswomen’s Club of New York’s Nellie Bly Award.
Give me the 30-second sell.
The Cult of We opens the lid on the rapid rise and even…
NUMBER CRUNCH
Is the collaboration with Saks the future of the retail sector?
$299: That’s the monthly membership fee to join SaksWorks, the collaboration between Saks Fifth Avenue and WeWork aiming to solve the issue of empty retail space.
WeWork has endured one hell of a rollercoaster in the past few years. From its meteoric rise and subsequent spectacular fall, the company has somehow lived to tell the tale. Not only having to rebuild its brand and reputation, the company had to contend with a global pandemic that shuttered businesses and moved the workforce into their homes — a bad position for a real estate business to be in. (Yes, real estate company…
Trend Mill
Is the sun going down on the ‘White Claw Summer’ for the last time?
“There ain’t no laws when you’re drinking claws.”
The now-famous line from the viral video by comedian Trevor Wallace, titled ‘drinks White Claw once’, marked a turning point for the fate of the hard seltzer — and the White Claw brand — catapulting the drink to fame.
White Claw debuted in 2016, and by 2018, the drink was beginning to make a little headway, bringing in sales of ~$150 million over 2018. But everything changed in 2019. In what became known as the “White Claw Summer” — a nod to Megan Thee Stallion’s “Hot Girl Summer — the drink became…
Number Crunch
The king of streaming is struggling for growth
400,000: That’s the number of subscribers Netflix lost in the US and Canada in Q2 of 2021, the first time it has lost subscribers in those markets since early 2019.
Netflix is a business that is driven by one thing only: subscriber growth. To maintain its position as the market leader, keep investors happy, and be afforded the luxury of spending eye-popping amounts of money (the company projects an outlay of $17 billion in 2021), that number needs to trend upwards continually — and preferably as fast as possible.
In a Q2 earnings report published July 20, the company announced…
Just like the office, working from home comes withserious downsides
I’ve been working from home in a one-bed flat alongside my wife for over 14 months now. It’s been… a testing time.
We’ve had to learn to manage our work-life and life-life, switching between being colleagues and a couple depending on where the clock hands sit. We’ve discovered new niggles and irritating habits in each other and had to swiftly make peace with them else go completely insane. (Have you ever noticed how often your other half coughs? How loud they type? How loud they breathe?) We’ve had to manage our schedules to ensure we don’t gatecrash each other’s virtual…
