It was all just a get-rich-quick scheme, wasn’t it? — At its peak in May 2021, NFT marketplace OpenSea processed a record $2.7 billion in NFT transactions. Fuelled by a crypto bull run, tales of unfathomable riches and a huge slice of FOMO, the Bored Apes, Crypto Punks and plenty of absolute JPEG-format trash projects were flying off the virtual…

10 billion dollars wasted and counting — On Aug 15, 2022, we got another glimpse of our impending Metaverse future. And it blew our minds. Unfortunately, it blew our minds because it was bad. Like, really, really bad. And when set against the context that Zuckerberg rebranded Facebook to Meta, pivoted the entire strategy away from the…

The comeback tour continues — First, he created a co-working company (sorry, a “tech” company) that hit a peak valuation of $47 billion. Then he created a residential real estate branch called WeLive, in an attempt to disrupt apartment living. Then he created a WeGrow to keep his wife happy, a school that threw out…

The company acquires Roomba to hoover up more data — Not content with the information it already has on us — i.e. far more than it should — Amazon is stepping up its efforts to turn our homes into data farms. The plan to ‘smart-ify’ our homes has been nearly a decade in the making. It began in 2013 when…

The company reports drop in revenue for the first time ever — Since going public in May 2012, Facebook (now Meta) has reported its first-ever revenue decline. In its Q2 earnings, the company revealed it had missed virtually all its targets, bringing to close a decade of unprecedented growth and relentless revenue. Earnings per share fell short. Revenue fell short. Monthly active…

Step aside friends and family, short-form video is cool now — When Facebook introduced the News Feed in 2006, it was unlike anything the digitally connected world had seen. It was also hated by a huge percentage of users when it launched, bringing privacy concerns to the company’s doorstep for the first time. But, as Facebook’s internal metrics and data showed…

It’s hard to Netflix and chill when everything’s on fire — Netflix was the original streaming giant, disrupting a stale industry failing to keep up with technological advances. It proudly wore the crown, enjoying its first-mover advantage to eat up market share and acquire subscriber numbers at breakneck speed. The dawn of the binge had arrived, and for that first decade…

12 months on from record highs, even the Apes are going down with the ship — In July 2021, NFT mania exploded. At its peak between August and November last year, the number of NFT sale transactions frequently topped 200,000 per day, with sales reaching an insane high of $12.6 billion in January 2022 alone. That’s some serious dollars for what was, at the time, just…

What could possibly go wrong? — It’s a tale as old as Silicon Valley; tech designed with good intentions that, when integrated into society, reveals unintended — and often harmful — consequences. A few shining examples: Social media companies that allowed us to connect to friends and family across the world that soon became cesspits for…