Capitalogix

Streaming Wars

Streaming services were big winners during the pandemic.  While that wasn't surprising, their subscriber growth and usage surge are impressive.

VisualCapitalist put together an infographic highlighting the numbers. 

 

via VisualCapitalist

I enjoyed the chart, and had a couple of different takeaways: 

• Many companies tried to capitalize on the streaming wave by launching half-baked streaming services, but it's clear that the pioneers are still extending their lead on the fast followers. 
• Despite Netflix already being the industry leader, they saw a 34% increase in 2020. 
• China's largest provider - Tencent Video - only has 120M users, which is about 8% of China's population. In contrast, Netflix has 74M US users, which is about 23% of the population. 
• The New York times is the only News subscription source big enough to make the list, yet it's at the very bottom with 6M users. Though, it did see a 61% increase in 2020. 
• Disney+ grew 95M in its inaugural year, which is a credit to the brand recognition Disney holds.

Interesting stuff and large numbers!

How will the world re-opening impact those numbers?  How about 5 years from now? What do you think?

Will virtual reality and augmented reality start to impact these numbers?

With that much money and on the line, I expect this to remain an industry segment primed for innovation, growth ... and a few surprises.

 

 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - March 7th, 2021

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

Lighter Links:

• This Wild Video Maps the Entire Internet and Its Evolution Since 1997. (SingularityHub)
• These are the Most Desirable Countries and Cities For Workers Looking To Relocate In 2021. (CNBC)
• All Peanut Butter, All the Time: Reese's Peanut Butter Cups Without Chocolate Arriving In April. (USAToday)
• Scientists Made an AI that Reads Your Mind So It Can Generate Portraits You'll Find Attractive. (TheNextWeb)
• New AI Deep Nostalgia' Brings Old Photos, Including Very Old Ones, To Life. (TheVerge)

 

Trading Links:

• A Fed President Predicts the Bitcoin Boom Won't Last. (NYT)
• Why Central Banks Around the World Want To Get Into Digital Currencies. (CNBC)
• Jack Dorsey Trying to Sell 1st Tweet As NFT, Highest Bid at $2.5M. (TMZ)
• NFTs, Explained. (TheVerge)
• We Expect 300,000 Fewer Births Than Usual this Year. (New York Times)

 

 

Top 20 Most Visited Websites (In The US)

I saw a chart looking at the top 20 most visited websites in the U.S. last month. It's only mildly helpful, but it is interesting and a little funny. 

 

SEMRush via Reddit

From a functional perspective, the most interesting data point to me is that Zoom has cracked the top 20 ... but only barely. I would be interested to see this broken up into time-per-visit to see how that tips the scales. 

From a humorous perspective, only three sites weren't US-based ... and they're all porn sites. 

As an aside, one of my more popular posts has been on how much time people spend on Pornhub. I don't know what this says about society, but it certainly says something.

Have fun ... and safe surfing.

 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - February 28th, 2021

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

Lighter Links:

• Why Teaching Robots to Play Hide-and-Seek Could Be the Key to Next-Gen A.I. (DigitalTrends)
• AI Teaches Itself Diplomacy. (Spectrum)
• What is Web 3.0 and How Will It Help You? (MakeUseOf)
• Highest-Resolution Images of DNA Reveal It's Surprisingly Jiggly. (Gizmodo)
• Salesforce Says the 9-To-5 Workday is Dead' and Will Let Employees Go Fully Remote. (TheVerge)

 

Trading Links:

• Here's How Much Wealth You Need to Join the Richest 1% Globally. (Bloomberg)
• Thousands of Bots May Have Played Role In GameStop Hype. (Benzinga)
• Investors are Suddenly Obsessed With 'SuperCycles'. (Fortune)
• Dalio: How To Spot a Bubble. (Ritholtz)
• The Number of Public Listings By Zero-Revenue Companies Valued Above $1 Billion Currently Exceeds the Dot-Com Era. (Markets)

 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - February 21st, 2021

Click here to see some cool photos and videos from the Perseverance rover. 

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

Lighter Links:

• The Texas Freeze: Why the Power Grid Failed. (Wall Street Journal)
• The Two Hours that Nearly Destroyed Texas's Electric Grid. (Finance)
• After Days of Mass Outages, Some Texas Residents Now Face Huge Electric Bills. (NPR)
• For Better Health During the Pandemic, is Two Hours Outdoors the New 10,000 Steps? (WSJ)
• Countries By Life Expectancy. (WorldAtlas)

 

Trading Links:

• Here's Why 'Black Swan' Author Nassim Taleb Dumped Bitcoin. (Decrypt)
• Turns Out Meme Stocks Have Basically Been Around Since 600 B.C. (Marker)
• China Blocked Jack Ma's Ant IPO After Investigation Revealed Likely Beneficiaries. (WSJ)
• Top US Lawmakers Want To Make Cannabis Federally Decriminalized: What To Know. (CNet)
• Top Wall Street Analysts Say Buy Stocks Like Denny's and Cloudflare As Economy Reopens. (CNBC)

 

Why Is Tom Brady So Good?

In 2017, I wrote an article "asking" why the Patriots were so good. 

It's now 2021 ... Tom Brady and the Patriots have parted ways. The Patriots had a middling season – while Tom Brady, who is now the quarterback of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, made it to his 10th Super Bowl appearance. 

There is a difference between 'luck' and 'skill'.

Both exist ... yet, luck favors the prepared.

In life, as in sports, hard work often beats talent (especially if talent fails to work hard).

Don't get me wrong - all the commentary about the Patriots in 2017 is true. Bill Belichick is an amazing coach with a storied career (even without Brady). 

But, when you see this picture from the 2000 NFL Combine, it's hard to believe that Tom Brady would be a 6-time Superbowl MVP taking the Buccaneers to the Super Bowl in his first year with them. All at the geriatric (for an NFL player) age of 43. 

via CBS Sports

When I talked about the Patriots, I focused on the fact that they were a well-oiled machine with a powerful framework of success that allowed individual greatness to shine. 

I think Brady's continued success is emblematic of that. 

Tom Brady is a paragon of culture, process, and hard work. Much of his approach was molded by his time with Belichick, but of course, he gets enormous personal credit as well. 

He expects the best of himself and brings out the best in his teammates. That's enabled him to stay a top-level competitor despite not being the strongest, fastest, or most mobile QB (and that was when he was young). 

The System is the 'system'; but, within it, you can measure what works, who contributes, and use it to identify the best things to try next.

Win, lose, or draw ... some things speak for themselves.

7 Levels of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

Sometimes insight and inspiration come from strange places. 

I stumbled upon a video of a Japanese man playing the lullaby "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" on the piano at 7 different levels of intensity. It has almost 5 million views. Check it out. 

 

hat-tip to David Kotok for the video via Cateen かてぃん

On top of being an impressive feat of skill, I couldn't help but relate it back to our tendency towards pattern recognition and heuristics. 

 

Even at level 7, it's not hard to hear the iconic lullaby. Whether you hear the simple version or a complicated version, somehow you know that the base is the same.  The human brain is great at recognizing patterns (sometimes too great, finding patterns that aren't there).

 

As an aside, I have three distinct sets of clothes in my closet.  I think of them as fat boy clothes, skinny boy clothes, and clothes.  If I look at Facebook, it's easy for me to see (simply by looking at my face) when I'm picking clothes from each of those sections in my closet. But how does a facial recognition software know that I'm still me (at weights ranging from 200 to 250 pounds)? Or that I'm still me in a profile picture taken eight years ago.  Somehow you have to recognize the match despite the mismatch.

 

Similarly, how does pattern recognition software recognize a pattern that might happen over a period of minutes versus that same pattern when it occurs over a period of seconds or days?

A simple video - but a great reminder. Hope you enjoyed it. 

 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - January 31st, 2020

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

Lighter Links:

• American is the First US Carrier To Use Digital Health Passport. (Simpleflying)
• Tim Cook On Why It's Time To Fight the "Data-Industrial Complex". (GQ)
• Wikipedia Turns 20. (MorningBrew)
• The 2500-Year-old Technique To Make Ice In the Desert. (Medium)
• The San Francisco School District's Renaming Debacle Has Been a Historic Travesty. (MissionLocal)

 

Trading Links:

• Public Market Verdict: the Unicorn Binge Wasn't Crazy; It Was Really Profitable. (Crunchbase)
• Bitcoin Investors May Lose Everything, Central Banker Warns. (Bloomberg)
• The SPAC Boom Rolls On Into 2021. (MorningBrew)
• FAA Clears Way For Commercial Drone Deliveries With New Rules. (ABCNews)
• Apple Overtakes Amazon To Become World's Most Valuable Brand, While Tesla is the Fastest-growing. (MarketWatch)

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - January 24th, 2021

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

Lighter Links:

• Meet the Man On a Controversial Mission To Preserve and Digitize Your Brain. (DigitalTrends)
• What is Consciousness? Scientists Compete To Find Out. (Bloomberg)
• Balinese Temple Monkeys are Sophisticated Thieves and Negotiators. (Economist)
• How Predictive Algorithms are Transforming Data Into Decisions. (JeffBullas)
• What is AI? The Human's Handbook to Computers that Think. (MorningBrew)

 

Trading Links:

• The Stock Market is At or Near the Most-expensive Levels Ever By Most Measures. When Will It Matter? (CNBC)
• Stock-Market Bulls Brace for Major Gut Check as Earnings, Fed and GDP Loom. (MarketWatch)
• David Einhorn Warns of Danger From Valuation-Indifferent Investors. (Forbes)
• How VCs and Founders See 2021 Differently. (TechCrunch)
• Virtual Reality Will Be a Trillion-Dollar Marketplace Within Five Years – Here's a Good Example Why. (MW)

 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - January 17th, 2020

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

Lighter Links:

• Are Humans Smarter or Stupider Than We Used To Be? (Freakonomics)
• Inside Twitter's Decision To Cut Off Trump. (New York Times)
• Robots Turn 100 and Still Enthrall Us. (Wall Street Journal)
• From Good To Great: How the Flywheel Can Be Your Company's Next Big Thing. (Entrepreneur)
• Clever New A.I. System Promises To Train Your Dog While You're Away From Home. (DigitalTrends)

 

Trading Links:

• An Old Foe of Banks Could Be Wall Street's New Top Cop. (Wall Street Journal)
• The 'Black Swan' Covid Catastrophe Shows Us Just How Fragile Our World Is. (TheGuardian)
• The Five Biggest Issues For Technology Companies In 2021. (WSJ)
• 5 Charts Show What the Global Economy Looks Like Heading Into 2021. (CNBC)
• 'I Don't See Anything On the Horizon that Can Stop the Growth of the ETF Market,' Invesco Official Says. Here are Her 2021 Predictions. (CNBC)