The Tech Landscape #177 š¤
Social ecommerce, cloud gaming, and MILEs: this is issue 177 of The Tech Landscape, a weekly collection of news about consumer digital technology. Stories are selected by me, Peter Gasston, with a little insight and opinion where appropriate.
Two of the most interesting things happening in digital right now are the merging of gaming, entertainment, and fashion, and the merging of ecommerce and social media. Over time, I expect those two things to start merging more strongly with each other: gaming spaces as virtual social spaces, with passive and active entertainment, and multiple ways to express identity. All of which is preamble for this weekās top stories:
Top Stories
TikTok and Shopify announced a partnership which makes it easy for vendors to sell through social campaigns. TikTok was the last big holdout of social commerce, although it was only a matter of time. Shopify has been one of the āwinnersā of 2020.
newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/connecting-shopify-merchants-with-the-tiktok-community
Pinterest announced more features and tools for sellers on its platform, including improved storefront and discovery, tagging products in photographs, and improved conversion insights. Pinterest has adapted really quickly to the acceleration of ecommerce; Iāve been hyping it all year, but itās a great tool for shopping inspiration and purchase.
newsroom.pinterest.com/en/post/pinterest-launches-new-commerce-tools-for-merchants-to-curate-feature-and-measure-their
Facebook Gaming made its move into cloud-streamed games with the release of a few titles (in the US), along with a couple of swipes at rivals: not aiming to be a AAA console replacement like Amazon Luna or Google Stadia, and not launching on iOS because of its App Store policies and poor browser.
facebook.com/fbgaminghome/blog/cloud-gaming-meet-facebook-gaming
A new American football league will launch next year with the interesting wrinkle that fans watching the games streamed on Twitch will be able to earn points to influence play, including sending āpower-upsā. This is an early effort at MILEs: Massive Interactive Live Events, where viewers become participants. Expect to see more like this in future.
sportico.com/business/media/2020/football-streaming-twitch-fcfl-nfl-tnf-1234615372/
Everything Else
XR Snapchat announced 10 new Lenses with full-body tracking, just in time for Halloween. Full-body tracking unlocks a whole new context for AR, but can potentially be used for harmful purposes (āslimmingā lenses), so Snap isnāt making the creation tools publicly available just yet.
vrfocus.com/2020/10/snapchats-new-halloween-ar-lenses-offer-full-body-tracking/
Social Instagram extended the length of Live videos to up to four hours, will archive Live videos for up to 30 days after broadcast, and added a Live Now section for better discoverability in the Now tab and IGTV app.
twitter.com/instagram/status/1321107756494049283
Smart Home Amazonās Fire HD tablets are gaining a Device Dashboard to manually control Alexa-enabled smart home devices, for times when ātouch might be more convenient than voiceā.
zdnet.com/article/amazon-fire-tablets-to-get-smart-home-device-dashboard/
Video YouTube refreshed its app with new features including easier navigation to individual chapters, a more prominent captions toggle button, and suggested actions (e.g. āview in fullscreenā).
blog.youtube/news-and-events/tips-and-tricks-watching-your-favorite-videos/
Video Appleās Clips video creator/editor got a big update with a social-friendly default 9:16 recording ratio on iPhones, Apple Pencil support on iPads, and HDR recording on iPhone 12.
apple.com/newsroom/2020/10/clips-gets-its-biggest-update-ever/
Video Apple acquired Vilynx, a company which uses machine learning to extract and tag information from videos. This could be used to better catalogue shows on Apple TV+, to improve search results for Siri, and for live camera input for contextual augmented reality.
bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-27/apple-buys-self-learning-ai-video-startup-to-improve-apps
Stat of the Week
Genshin Impact, a new game from Chinese studio miHoYo, earned around Ā£189 million in its first 30 days of release. The game cost an estimated Ā£77m to develop, and was released for free on multiple platforms; all of its revenue came from in-game sales.
sensortower.com/blog/genshin-impact-first-month-revenue
As Matthew Ball said of Fortnite: āit turns out the most effective way to generate billions of dollars is to not require a player spend a single oneā. I wonder if the free-to-play/free-to-win model could work as an alternative model to advertising-funded for social media?
Quarterly Results
The big tech platforms announced their quarterly financial results this week. Here are a few highlights:
Google beat expectations across all sectors, with advertising revenue (especially on YouTube) notably strong, and YouTube Music/Premium subscriptions also up.
Appleās revenue was only slightly up on the same financial quarter last year, although thatās a good sign as it didnāt include sales for the new iPhones which were delayed this year due to COVID supply chain restrictions. Its services (iCloud, App Store, etc) were up by over 16%.
The social networks Facebook and Twitter both exceeded financial revenue targets, but Twitter grew its global daily users by 1 million over the last quarter and Facebook saw 2 million fewer daily users in North America, its most valuable market. The post-COVID bump is over; āopen socialā has largely peaked, and the focus now is on earning more revenue from its users.
Snapchat now has 249 million daily active users; thatās almost 100 million more than Twitter, and a growth of 18% over last year. Revenue was up 52% in the same period.
Amazonās international sales were up 37% over this time last year, exceeding expectations, while its subscription services (e.g. Prime) grew 33% and its āotherā business (mostly advertising) was up a massive 51%.
Spotify gained 72 million new users, up 29% on last year, of which 31 million are new subscribers, a 27% growth.
Shopifyās revenue was up a massive 96% on last year as small businesses moved online.
All in all, a strong financial quarter driven especially by subscriptions, purchases, and advertising. The COVID effect in action.
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