Welcome to the Techmeme Ride Home for Thursday, August 8, 2024, I'm Brian McCulloch today. Tick-tock launches Spotlight. Met as Budget kills a VR studio. Why did everybody think Logitech was going to create a mouse you had to pay a subscription to use? And did you know how big anime is? I apparently did not. Here's what you missed today in the world of Tech. Like Airbnb yesterday, I'm also constantly interested in how Tick-tock is looking to expand
their thing beyond, you know, 15-second video clips. This morning, they're launching Tick-tock Max Spotlight in app hubs for movies and TV shows that add links to applicable videos with information as to where to watch. This was all apparently tested on the release of the most recent Dune movie, apparently, quoting the verge.
The links will show up in the bottom left corner of a creator's video and users can tap in to view a landing page with the cast list, links to official accounts related content and information about where to watch the title. You might have already spotted this feature on Tick-tock as the platform partnered with Warner Bros. Discovery to promote Dune Part
2 with a dedicated hub on the app. James Stafford, Tick-tock's global head of publishing, says not every video featuring a particular TV show or movie is eligible to get an anchor link to a hub. We rely on both technology and human review to decide which videos qualify for an anchor link, Stafford said. We're looking at things like hashtags, keywords, audio,
visual matching technology from clips of TV shows, and more. Tick-tock also considers a video's views, the creator's follower count, and whether the creator has violated any of its policies. Meanwhile, the entertainment companies that own the content can access an analytics dashboard to track trends within their fandoms. They can also see how Tick-tock users are using their IP and choose whether to take action. Outside of Tick-tock's creator
rewards program, creators won't get compensated when Tick-tock adds links to their videos. However, Stafford says, quote, each spotlight campaign has customized incentives for creators to participate, such as exclusive profile frames, filters, merchandise, tickets, and more. Meta is closing Ready at Dawn Studios, which they acquired back in 2020 and which produced VR games like Lone Echo and Echo VR. This is apparently in aid of meeting those new
reality labs budgetary ceilings that I told you about recently. Quoting Android Central. One of VR's greatest development studios is closing its doors permanently today. Ready at Dawn Studios was behind the famed Echo VR and Lone Echo games, all of which received critical end customer acclaim. But the studio hasn't launched a new game since Echo VR was ported to Quest in May 2020, and its likely sales of Lone Echo 2 could have played a part
in the decision since that's a PC VR only game. Meta first made cuts to the studio last February when it announced it would shutter Echo VR despite still having a player count in the low tens of thousands as noted by Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth at the time. It's worth noting that Meta just stated that Quest 3 sales are, quote, exceeding their expectations
in the company's most recent quarterly earnings call last week. One report in mid July said that Meta was cutting its reality labs division budget by 20% by 2026 and an internal memo sent to Meta employees by Geohunt, VP Oculus Studios seen by Android Central, supports this reasoning.
A Meta spokesperson told Android Central that the cuts weren't being made to save money per se, rather these cuts are being made to ensure that reality labs stays with a new budgetary constraints, and that Oculus Studios can make a better long-term impact in VR development. Meta also commented that this isn't a signal of wider cuts to the number of
first-party games on Quest and that the company is still committed to VR development. While reality labs has historically spent billions per quarter on development costs of XR hardware, like the Meta Quest 3 and Rayban Meta Smart Glasses VR games and Meta AI features, the company is starting to put a hard cap on that spending each quarter, end quote.
The UK's CMA has opened a formal merger inquiry into Amazon's Anthropic Investment after getting what they called sufficient information about the deal, quoting the Financial Times. The competition and markets authority said on Thursday that it had sufficient information about Amazon's partnership with the company behind the Claude Generative AI models to begin an investigation. It will decide whether to escalate the inquiry into a more in-depth
phase 2 investigation by October 4. The CMA could ultimately clear the deal, block it, or require the companies to make changes in order to obtain approval. Amazon said it was disappointed by the decision and that its work with Anthropic quote does not raise any competition concerns or meet the CMA's own threshold for review. By investing in Anthropic Amazon along with other companies is helping Anthropic expand choice and competition in
this important technology it said. Anthropic meanwhile said it will cooperate with the CMA, adding, we are an independent company. Our strategic partnerships and investor relationships do not diminish our corporate governance, independence, or our freedom to partner with others end quote. Thursday's move comes weeks after the CMA officially launched a formal
merger inquiry into rival Microsoft's hiring of staff from Startup Infliction AI. The tech giant paid $650 million in March to hire a number of the Startup staff including its chief executive Mustafa Soliman, co-founder of Google's Deep Mind and to license its technology. Regulators worldwide have increasingly turned their attention to the alliances being forged between big tech and AI Startups that are developing the technology that is captured global
attention and which advocates promise will usher in a new era of computing. The tie-ups have prompted concerns that the world's largest and most well-capitalized companies are set to wield an outsized influence over how the hugely expensive technology will develop and who the winners from its adoption will be.
I somewhat hesitated to do this one because you know I'm not intending to pile on here, but sources are telling the verge that at this point daily returns of the humane AI pin are outpacing daily sales. More AI pins were returned than purchased according to internal sales data obtained by the verge. By June, only around 8,000 units hadn't been returned, a source with direct knowledge of sales and return data told me as of today, the number of units still in customer hands
had fallen closer to 7,000 a source with direct knowledge said. At launch, the AI pin was met with overwhelmingly negative reviews, our own David Pierce said it just doesn't work and Marques Brownlee called it the worst product he's ever reviewed. Now humane is attempting to stabilize its operations and maintain confidence among staff
and potential acquirers. The New York Times reported in June that HP is considering purchasing the company and the information reported last week that humane is negotiating with its current investors to raise debt which could later be converted into equity. Humane's AI pin and accessories have brought in just over $9 million in lifetime sales according to the internal data seen by the verge. But around 1,000 purchases were canceled before
shipping and more than $1 million worth of product has been returned. These figures which have not been reported before paint a better picture of the difficult position humane finds itself in with limited options on a path forward. The low sales figures also pale in comparison to the over $200 million that humane has raised from notable Silicon Valley executives like opening I see a Sam Altman and sales force CEO Mark Benioff to date
around 10,000 pins and accessories have shipped in total. Humane hoped to ship about 100,000 pins within the first year according to a source with knowledge of the plan and first reported by the New York Times. Once a humane pin is returned the company has no way to refurbish it sources with knowledge of the return process confirmed. The pin becomes erased and Humane doesn't have the opportunity to reclaim the revenue by selling it again.
The core issue is that there is a T-Mobile limitation that makes it impossible for now for Humane to reassign a pin to a new user once it's been assigned to someone. One source said they don't believe Humane has disposed of the old pins because quote, they're still hopeful they can solve this problem eventually. T-Mobile declined to comment and referred us to Humane. Logitech is running around assuring everybody that it is not making a mouse with a lifetime
subscription fee, which makes me curious. Why did everybody jump to that conclusion and think that they might? Quoting is moto. Peripheral and video giant logitech is running back comments about a supposed subscription based mouse that's supposed to be the last mouse you ever buy such a hardware as service model was quick to piss off consumers. Company execs are now saying no, they're not trying to build a mouse or any other PC controls with a long
term subscription fee. Last month, Logitech CEO Henneke Faber detailed her company's designs on a so called forever mouse. The exec told the Virgis Neely Patel that one of the company's engineers was working on a mouse that's supposed to be so good you'd never want or need another one. She attributed it to a watch where just because it's old doesn't mean it still can't work with some regular TLC. How would that work in today's current
buy it and toss it ecosystem? Faber suggested it may be close to a service model akin to the company's video conferencing products instead of paying for upgrades to the hardware users would pay fees for software updates over time though Faber said in the interview that was only one monetization model they were looking at. When asked directly if she could envision a subscription mouse Faber replied possibly according to the Virgis podcast transcript.
Now Logitech is telling anybody who listens that no, it's not making a subscription based mouse. Logitech's head of communications in the Colt Kenyon offered the same line to several outlets. There are no plans for a subscription mouse and quote Kenyon added in her statement that Faber's description of the so called forever mouse was quote not an actual or planned product but a peek into provocative internal thinking on possible
future possibilities for more sustainable consumer electronics and quote. It's clear from Faber's original comments that she wasn't talking explicitly about a product consumers would have in their hands anytime soon still folk online were more taken aback by a CEO's first instinct to turn to a software as a service model. We've seen how things have played out with the switch from cable to streaming subscriptions to put it bluntly consumers
are tired of paying monthly for services. The idea of paying for hardware by this route as a mouse on a monthly basis was too much to bear and quote. Former might be coming to an end but you can bring back that perfect feeling of summer relaxation anytime with THC products from mood shop by different moods from euphoric to chill and everything from gummies flower vapes and more get 20% off your first order
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This year Dell technologies back to school event is delivering impressive tech with an inspiring purpose learn how Dell is helping computer aid whose work is helping equip solar community hubs with tech and AI literacy skills to empower remote displaced or disconnected
communities around the world help Dell make a difference and shop AI ready PCs powered by Snapdragon X series processors at Dell dot com slash deals that's Dell dot com slash deals and a real industries has raised a one and a half billion dollars series f round led by founders
fund and sands capital at a 14 billion dollar valuation up from around eight and a half billion dollars after raising one and a half billion dollars back in December 2022 hats off to Palmer lucky and the crew long before it was obvious to most they saw that there was a new wave
of tech coming for defense products and after the drone war in Ukraine they seem to be well positioned to ride this wave quoting axios the knock on andrille was always about chickens and eggs it couldn't get orders until it proved that it could fulfill orders on time and on budget
but it built a well sourced business development team that has helped it secure a number of recent wins including a big one with the us air force for collaborative combat aircraft major investors believe andrille has cracked the government contract code just seven years after
launch there hasn't been a substantial new us defense business in over 50 years explains marina sarabense a partner with sands capital you can't just build it and they will come you've got to be creative and earn the right to exist andrille is scouting stateside locations for a future behemoth
factory dubbed arsenal one another could quickly follow abroad the company expects arsenal one to cover at least five million square feet and employ thousands of people it also quote needs to be capable of producing tens of thousands of autonomous vehicles and weapons says chief strategy officer
chris bros arsenal one would join existing and in the works facilities including one in rod island that specializes in underwater drones and one in mississippi where the focus is on solid rocket motors the defense industries inability to produce equipment on mass has worried both pentagon
officials and outside analysts protracted wars can bleed stockpiles dry as underlined by fighting in Ukraine a bipartisan group of national security experts in july warned a world war two style industrial mobilization in the u.s. is not currently feasible america and our allies don't have
enough stuff according to bros we don't have enough vehicles we don't have enough platforms we don't have enough weapons this has been true for a long time and quote finally today once again there's a fairly big player in the streaming words that i bet not
everybody knows about sony's anime streaming service crunchy roll has announced it is surpassed 15 million monthly paid subscribers up from 11 million back in july of last year quoting the rap for comparison sake the mbc universal owned peacock reportedly had 34 million paid subscribers in
early 2024 considering that peacock offers a wider array of content than the niche crunchy roll these subscribers numbers speak well of the state of the streamer as well as the growing anime market currently the streamer has the world's largest streaming library dedicated to anime including
50,000 episodes and more than 25,000 hours of anime series films and music every season the streamer brings in between 45 and 60 new and returning series to its service those include series such as demon slayer kametsu no yai ba jujitsu kaisen one piece chainsaw man and solo leveling
last year the streamer also partnered with sony music entertainment japan to bring anime related music to the platform a collaboration that has resulted in 3,300 music videos and concert so far end quote more on crunchy roll from a different piece in the rap quoting again at a time when
gen z viewership and appointment viewing is in decline for most of television crunchy roll is bucking some of the most common negative tv trends what we actually have seen that anime has done is bring back appointment viewing jida reba pragada chief operating officer for crunchy roll told
the rap at the television critics association 2024 summer tour anime is actually very correlated to the japan's broadcast schedule so we'll see appointment viewing for an episode of an anime that is super exciting and highly anticipated she said after noticing this viewership pattern
crunchy roll decided to experiment typically the streamer airs new episodes pretty close to that shows japan's broadcast debut but when it came to the april premiere of the popular anime adaptation of nalia matsumoto's kaiju number eight crunchy roll streamed new episodes live every week world
wide at the exact same time as its broadcast in japan the live stream was available in japanese with subtitle options in english latin american spanish portuguese german and french many of the subscribers who tune into crunchy roll are exactly the younger demographic that most traditional tv
platforms are struggling to capture during reba pragada's tca presentation the coo explained that the average anime fan tends to skew younger and that gen z and even gen alpha over index when it comes to watching anime according to a poll conducted by polygon 42% of gen z and 25%
of millennials regularly watch anime that same poll found that 58% of gen z anime fans watch this content on crunchy roll and in february the streamers president rahoo perini confirmed that gen z watches the platform more so than any other demographic having this younger audience has allowed
reba pragada to observe several viewership trends some expected and others less so on the expected side is the importance of mobile and offline viewing what's more surprising is how new fans are entering anime these days from video games to netflix and cartoon network reba pragada noted there
are quote more entry points than ever to become an anime fan another surprising trend has to do with the popularity of in-person events this is not going to be rocket science to anyone but what's been super interesting to me is how the in-person experience the demand for that has gone up after
covid reba pragada said speaking of covid those years spent in lockdown may have helped anime break from niche to mainstream doai characterize covid is that it accelerated trends we were already seeing reba pragada said i think what we haven't seen is it to celebrate and quote crunchy roll
currently has 14 million monthly paid subscribers which is nearly three times the subscribers the platform had in 2021 this sharp increase is all post covid growth and quote nothing further for you today talk to you tomorrow