Welcome to the Techmeme Ride Home for Friday, November 8, 2024. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, some interesting moves over at Block. Share To TikTok could be something major for the music industry. Amazon's offer to invest in and throbbing again comes with some interesting strings attached. More signs that the Smart Glasses category is coming now. And of course, the weekend long-read suggestions. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech.
Weird stuff going on at Block, formerly known as Square. They had earnings that were mixed, a revenue miss, but a slight beat on earnings. But it's the restructuring that is going on over there that is making headlines. First, summing up the earnings quoting CNBC, the cash app of business, the company's popular mobile payment platform, and a significant contributor to overall profitability reported $1.31 billion in gross profit, a 21% year-over-year jump.
Block run by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey said monthly active users of its cash app card increased 11% from a year earlier to more than $24 million. Going into earnings, analysts were focused on the company's Buy Now pay later unit. Block acquired the Australian Buy Now pay later firm after pay for $29 billion in 2021. CEO Dorsey devoted his quarterly shareholder letter to explaining the company's lending products, including square loans,
after pay, Buy Now pay later, and cash app borrow. He said the company is looking to transform cash app cards, quote, into a better alternative to credit cards, when it launches after pay on cash app card. But there are extensive cost-cutting measures. The company said in its shareholder letter that it was scaling back its investment in title, the music streaming service founded by JZ, an entirely winding down TBD, the Bitcoin-focused arm of block. The company went through layoffs
earlier this year. Dorsey said on the earnings call that when it comes to Bitcoin, the company is focused on making it more accessible, which it does through cash app. Additionally, Block holds Bitcoin on its balance sheet. The company said it had 8,300 Bitcoin at the end of the quarter, which is currently worth about $630 million. End quote. But as you'll recall,
I mentioned restructuring, as mentioned briefly there, quoting CoinDesk. Jack Dorsey's payment firm, Block plans to renew focus on building equipment for Bitcoin miners and its self-custody crypto wallet, funded partly by giving up on creating a new decentralized internet, dubbed Web 5, and investing less in music streaming app title. The decision was revealed the same week that Donald Trump won the US presidential election, promising a far-frenelier environment in the world's
largest economy for crypto. Bitcoin mining was an industry he pledged while campaigning to foster, likely welcome news to a business suffering from dramatically lower profitability, following the so-called halving earlier this year, which cut mining rewards by 50%. We are scaling back our investment in title and winding down TBD, the business developing Web 5.
This gives us room to invest in our Bitcoin mining initiative, which has strong product market fit and a healthy pipeline of demand and bitkey our self-custody wallet for Bitcoin, the company said, and its third quarter shareholder's letter. The restructuring isn't a complete surprise, as Block said earlier this year that it plans to cut headcount by as much as 10% by the end of 2024, explaining that the growth of our company has far outpaced the growth of our
business and revenue. Block doesn't mind Bitcoin but sells equipment to firms that do. Its initiatives include building its own mining computer. The payments firm said in April that it completed the development of a three nanometer mining chip which it had been working on since April 2023. In July, one of the largest Bitcoin miners, Core Scientific, said it will use Block's mining rigs for its operations. Square is also focusing more on its self-custody wallet,
Bitkey, which the company started shipping in March. At the time, the company said that Bitkey will not only provide standard wallet functionality but also connect to Block's payments platform, cash app and crypto exchange coinbase to allow buying and selling BTC. TBD was started by Block in June 2022 to create Web 5, not to be confused with the better known notion of Web 3, as a quote, group of technologies that enhance the web with decentralized identity, personal
data storage, and verifiable data exchange capabilities. Meanwhile, the company bought title, a music and entertainment platform in 2021 for nearly $300 million. Tiktok has launched ShareToTiktok, which lets users directly share music from Apple Music and Spotify, in a post to their TikTok feed or in DMs via TikTok messages. Quoting TechCrunch. The shared content can include tracks, albums, playlists, and more, and will link back to the
music streaming service. This allows users to move between their preferred music app and TikTok to further engage with the content and doing so TikTok gains an increased ability to connect users with their favorite songs and artists. This is something it was already doing due to the nature of a tap, which allows music clips to be added to users videos where they end up driving
TikTok trends. With ShareToTiktok users will now be able to post to TikTok's feed or stories and then use the popular green screen feature to showcase the content or make advantage of photo mode. Tiktok says on Spotify users can share music podcasts or audiobooks by tapping the share button or they can access the share icon in the bottom right corner of the now playing
screen. A similar feature is available through Apple Music's share sheet where users will be presented with the different options to post a video, post a photo, or share the music in a message. Over the years, Tiktok's growing popularity drove its ability to change the music industry overall and help people discover new music. As Business Insider recently reported, songs that trend on Tiktok tend to end up in the Billboard 100 or Spotify viral 50 and 67% of the app's
users are likely to seek out music after hearing the songs on TikTok. The company's relationship with music labels, artists, and marketers also helps to keep the app flooded with new releases. For a time, Tiktok parent company byteance considered taking advantage of Tiktok's power more directly by going ahead to head with Apple and Spotify with its own streaming app, Tiktok Music. The app was tested in a handful of markets, but the company later decided to shut down its global
efforts on this front back in September. Instead, Tiktok's focus is on driving music fans to its app for discovery, working toward this goal Tiktok has previously launched an ad to music app feature that let Tiktok users save a track they found on the app to their preferred music streaming service. The move also may help to ease tensions with streamers which saw Tiktok as a potential new rival. Now Tiktok will actively help move traffic both to and from their apps instead of trying to
steal their customers. The information says that Amazon is discussing a second multi-billion dollar investment in AI startup Anthropic, but it's asking something quite interesting in exchange for that money. Amazon is discussing making a second multi-billion dollar investment in open AI rival Anthropic, according to a person involved in the discussions. The new deal is similar to Amazon's initial four-billion dollar investment in the startup which was struck last year, but this
time Amazon wants Anthropic to make a concession. The cloud giant is asking Anthropic which uses Amazon's cloud services to train its AI to use a large number of servers powered by chips developed by Amazon, this person said. The problem is that Anthropic prefers to use Amazon services powered by Nvidia designed AI chips. The size of Amazon's total investment in Anthropic could depend on the outcome of this discussion specifically on the number of Amazon chips Anthropic agrees to
use this person said. The status of the talks couldn't be learned. The discussions are an example of the competing priorities of large cloud providers and developers of conversational AI that have formed alliances due to the high cost and complexity of producing the technology. The first such marriage in the industry between Microsoft and OpenAI has been remarkably beneficial to both companies but has lately become fraught over OpenAI's concerns that it isn't getting enough
servers from Microsoft to stay ahead of smaller AI rivals. While Microsoft is developing its own AI server chip which it hopes OpenAI will want to use, OpenAI hasn't been interested in it to set a person with direct knowledge of the situation. OpenAI is also developing a chip
of its own to run its AI models. Shifting to the Amazon server chip could be technically challenging for Anthropic because the Amazon software that developers must use with the Trainiam chips isn't as mature as Nvidia's Kudas software which AI developers have become accustomed to. Such a move could also lock Anthropic into using Amazon Trainiam servers making it more difficult for the AI startup to use other cloud providers or to lease its own data centers in the future as
Amazon doesn't make its hardware available to facilities run by other companies. Amazon though has good reason to get Anthropic to use its own chips known as Trainiam. The cloud giant could reduce the number of Nvidia chips it has to buy if it can get its cloud customers to agree to use.
Trainiam powered servers won't need as many Nvidia chips as part of Amazon's initial deal with Anthropic to start up agreed to use some of Trainiam servers but mainly relied on Nvidia servers in Amazon data centers said the person who has been involved in the discussions involving the companies. Anthropic recently sought funding from investment firms at a valuation of 30 to 40 billion dollars and any investment deal with Amazon could come in the form of convertible notes that become
equity after Anthropic raises capital from other investors. In addition to the investment the companies are negotiating a cloud deal in which the companies share revenue from the sale of Anthropics model to Amazon cloud customers such as DoorDash and Goldman Sachs and Anthropic agrees to ran out specialized servers from Amazon to develop its technology end quote.
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just 50 cents per week for your first year that's 80% off their typical offer so this is truly a steel once again that's Washington Post dot com slash ride to subscribe for just 50 cents per week for your first year several times this week we've suggested that apple might soon pivot from
building out the vision pro line and instead move toward the Orion style smart glasses form factor the idea is that that product might end up being closer on the horizon for mainstream adoption than a face computer is well more evidence of that because Bloomberg says that by do plans to
unveil smart glasses with cameras and voice commands built a top of their AI model Ernie next week launching as soon as early 2025 for under $299 quote the push to monetize AI has found expression in a series of hardware introductions this year from the humane AI pinflap to Microsoft's better
received co-pilot plus PC range the meta platforms smart glasses designed in collaboration with Ray band maker S allora Luxeneca are an older product that's grown in features capabilities and popularity this year met a said demand has outpaced its ability to supply new units and
S allora Luxeneca has singled them out as a product driving new sales Beijing based by do is likewise working to capitalize on more than a decade of AI development and its smart glasses will connect to a suite of products such as by do maps and its online encyclopedia
bikey sales of the product which will likely cost less than matters $299 could start as soon as early 2025 the person said the AI glasses have been developed by by do's hardware division jiao do which in 2020 raised funding from investors including i dg capital at a value of $2.9
billion dollars its key products include voice activated speakers and wireless earbuds that also connect with by do's content ecosystem a slew of Chinese upstart hardware makers have introduced AI glasses with cameras and open ear audio already while others have focused on narrower functionality
like translation and pathfinding and across the Pacific apple is exploring a push into the category with an internal study of products currently available on the market Bloomberg news has reported and quote time once again for the weekend long read suggestions starting out this week
ours technical takes another look at how crafty the whole smart tv segment has gotten quote success in the tv industry used to mean selling as many tv sets as possible but with smart tv's becoming mainstream and hardware margins falling oem's have sought new ways to make money tv os providers
can access a more frequent revenue source at higher margins which has led to a viewing experience loaded with ads they can be served from the moment you pick up your remote which may feature streaming service ads in the form of physical buttons budget TVs are the leaders in this trend
often offsetting cheap hardware prices with ads and data collection some people seek out the latest display developments but many consumers merely want the cheapest TV they can buy within a certain size range various brands lower budget shoppers with low prices but often force them to pay
through heightened ad exposure either immediately or after a future software update in recent months we've seen budget brands test users limits when it comes to ads and this is all happening amid a global shift to streaming services that are also increasingly ad driven roco os is constantly
trying to fit more ads with stronger targeting into its UI whether that's on the menu or screen savers or delivered via roco tv channels earlier this year roco os introduced home screen video ads roco has also tested a feature that quote would force viewers to sit through effectively a mid-roll ad
when clicking from the roco city screensaver to return to the home screen digit a reported in may additionally roco filed a patent for showing ads over anything you plug into your tv it's possible that neither capability will roll out but interest in these sorts of developments illustrates the value
roco puts in advancing its ad services moving off an android fork amazon reportedly started deploying its own os to run on its tv's in november amazon fire tv users are subject to full-screen video ads and os ownership gives amazon more control and greater potential for earnings from
advertising services amazon's advertising business was thought to be its most profitable in 2020 and fire os is becoming a bigger part of that end quote lastly from new york mag a piece with the title what i learned from destroying myself at the new york city marathon quote boi'd buy the
cheering hordes i was cooking for the first eighteen miles of the race actually going at a faster pace than my usual training runs i felt as if i were floating above the ground as if the crowd were carrying me along through the air it turns out it wasn't it was my legs that were doing that and
my legs were mad at me for it at around the mile nineteen mark out of nowhere i suddenly began to suffer severe leg cramps it felt as though every step i took landed my foot on a two foot tall iron pole sticking out of the ground i instantly pulled over to the side of the road sat down and began
massaging my calves and thighs furiously just trying to get them to work again see if you can tell where on my race graph this happened i stood back up leaned over the railing and tried to stretch out my screaming calves terrified i'd gone all this way and done all this work just to fall short in
the final stretch then i noticed a group of young people making eye contact with me i was in as serious pain as i'd been ever in my life and i'm sure i looked it but they did not behold me with pity or concern they just screamed almost in unison you got this man and you know what it really
helped their enthusiasm didn't loosen up my cramping muscles but it pushed me to keep going anyway to reward their unalloyed holy sincere excitement to make their effort as worth it as mine much has been written about the joyous love fest that is the new york city marathon but i'm
not sure it can be emphasized enough people can be mean and cruel and inconsiderate we all see it every day but this was something basic and elemental human beings supporting other human beings simply because they are other human beings i could barely walk for the last two miles of the race
but after that there was no way i wasn't gonna finish that effort and i did end quote i have got a bonus episode for you this weekend a portfolio profile episode of a company with a simple pitch what if you could use your extra garage space your basement space airbnb style to serve the last mile of package delivery gig economy style it's very interesting and it's very early listen to that talk to you on monday