The New York Times is reporting that "Elon Musk has started cleaning house at Twitter", firing "Parag Agrawal, Twitter's chief executive, Ned Segal, the chief financial officer, Vijaya Gadde, the top legal and policy executive, and Sean Edgett, the general counsel". Elon posted an open letter to Twitter's advertisers, saying that "Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape where anything is allowed" and that he purchased Twitter not to "make more money", but "to try to help humanity, whom I love". It's official, Elon owns Twitter. I really like Twitter so I hope he makes it better, not worse, but it's Elon Musk, so who the fuck knows what'll happen. Charlie Warzel has a good attempt at guessing in this article for the Atlantic.
Today is Apple and Amazon's turn to show the world the insane amount of money they generate each quarter. Apple cracked $90b of revenue and made $20b of profit - their best Q4 earnings ever. Amazon generated $127b of revenue (and had the biggest Prime Day sale ever), but actually lost $2.5b in net income (i.e: profit) globally. Amazon's share price dropped 20% overnight. After having looked at Meta, Microsoft, Alphabet and now Apple and Amazon's latest quarters, the clear trend is that all of them are taking hits, but some more than others. Meta and Alphabet's ad businesses are struggling and are probably past their peak - finally. Amazon, Microsoft and Apple are much stronger, but they are not immune to macro economic trends like foreign exchange rates, inflation and rising interest rates impacting their customers.
It's tough to feel sorry for Meta and NFT traders, but Apple has managed to do just that in their attempts to squeeze every last cent of the App Store. What Meta call "boosts" in Instagram or Facebook (paying to get your post higher priority in the algorithm) now must happen via an in-app purchase, with Apple collecting 30% along the way. NFT purchases, same thing - a 30% cut for Apple, even though Apple did little to fuck all to generate demand or develop the product/service that lead to the purchase being made. Apple is rent-seeking. They like to claim that without the App Store and Apple's devices these companies wouldn't have a business, so they deserve a cut - which is true - but 30% is taking the piss? As much as I hate Meta, Apple isn't responsible for 30% of Meta's income via an iOS app. If Apple simply lowered their IAP cut to 5%, businesses and developers would be happy to use it, IAP usage overall will increase and the customer gets a superior experience.
Here's five interesting discussions over on The Sizzle's paid subscriber forum for you to enjoy over the weekend. If you are not a paid subscriber but want to get involved, visit https://thesizzle.com.au/payme to get onboard.
Attorney Anthony Martin of the Committee to Fight Microsoft Corp. distributes leaflets outside a downtown Manhattan computer store 24 Aug calling for consumers not to purchase Microsoft's new Windows 95 software. Martin claims that Windows 95 is not an "upgrade" and will require consumers to purchase costly additional memory for their computers.
(Getty Images)
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