April 3 2023 - Monday, Monday!

👋Good Morning and Happy Monday. April Fools is over, spring is in the air and we don't have any layoffs to report on (yet). Let's get into it 👇

ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, generated over $80 billion in revenue in 2022, up over 30% from the previous year, according to two sources. This puts ByteDance's revenue on par with Tencent, which owns social media site WeChat, with most of ByteDance's growth coming from its core advertising business in mainland China, particularly the Douyin app.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has failed to gain control of the more than 24,000-acre parcel of land near Orlando where Walt Disney World Resort is located. In February, Disney secured approvals for the next 30 years on zoning, infrastructure, and air rights that the company might need if it chooses to expand Disney World. This week, those approvals were criticized by members of a new board that was created by the Republican governor to strip Disney of governing control over the land’s special tax district, known as Reedy Creek.

“Disney didn’t do anything secret. They publicized it, they advertised it,” Mr. Planas said. “If you’re in Tallahassee, and you’re replacing the board, how do you not know what that board is doing in their public meeting? This was negligence on the part of the governor’s office and Republican legislators.”

Twitch, the Amazon-owned livestreaming platform, has lost its grip on the streaming community, with streamers feeling less connected to the company as it invests more in advertising and less in community building. Twitch has been criticized for changes including a revenue share shift from a 70/30 split with top streamers to 50/50, and a perceived inadequate response to attacks against women and minority streamers. Despite the upheaval, Twitch remains the most popular streaming platform, with users spending a total of 1.602 billion hours watching livestreamed content on the site in December 2022.

Italian Regulators have ordered an effective ban of AI chatbot ChatGPT, accusing creators OpenAI of "unlawful collection of personal data" and lack of safeguards for minors. OpenAI has disabled ChatGPT for Italian users and claims to comply with GDPR and other privacy laws. Italy's regulator previously banned chatbot app Replika.ai in February for failure to process data properly and safeguard minors. OpenAI may face fines of up to €20 million if it fails to comply with the order within 20 days.

Activision Blizzard has been accused by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) of spying and intimidating employees who were trying to unionize. The Communication Workers of America union has accused the company of using security staff to keep tabs on workers during a walkout and threatening to close workers' internal Slack channels where employees discussed working conditions. The claims were found to have merit by the CWA. The NLRB has issued a settlement with Activision, which has yet to agree, or the board will issue a complaint against the company in California and three other states.

Google's Bard AI will soon move to more capable PaLM datasets, according to CEO Sundar Pichai. Bard has struggled to match the knowledge and detail of rivals OpenAI's ChatGPT and Microsoft's Bing Chat, and will now transition to larger-scale PaLM datasets in the coming days. Pichai stated that "getting it right is very important to us," and acknowledged that Google will need to ensure it can handle more powerful AI models before it releases them. He also expressed support for government regulation of the AI sector.

McDonald's has temporarily closed its US offices to prepare for a restructuring that is expected to lead to job cuts. The company has informed its employees that it will communicate key decisions on roles and staffing levels this week. The message urged workers to offer personal contact info to managers if they did not have access to a computer during that time. The restaurant company is expected to notify workers about the status of their jobs virtually, but has not given details of the precise headcount reduction expected.

Google has ceased sales of its Glass Enterprise smart glasses and will terminate support for the devices by September 15, 2023, according to a company statement. Glass Enterprise Edition 2 is the last of the glasses to be offered for sale, and while they are expected to work beyond the September date, there will be no further software updates. The product was launched as a mainstream product in 2013, but was withdrawn in 2015 due to privacy concerns, and was subsequently pitched as a workplace tool. Rivals such as Meta and Apple continue to develop XR hardware.

Roblox, the popular gaming platform, has implemented a blanket ban on advertisements for users under the age of 13 to protect children from potentially harmful content. The platform has also added more restrictions to its advertising guidelines, prohibiting ads for multi-level marketing schemes, NFTs, cryptocurrencies and financial services, and insect body parts. The changes are likely to impact Roblox's ad revenue, but the platform continues to expand, with plans to introduce generative AI tools for game developers to create unique user-generated content.

April Fools' Day, it either works or it doesn't. Most brands fall into four categories: create an actual product or service; make it clear from the start that it is a joke; do nothing; or trick customers into believing a lie. This year, brands like Sega, Overwatch 2, Call of Duty: Warzone, and Tesla have chosen to participate in April Fools' Day with jokes falling into these categories. Here's a few others in case you missed:

• Instacart, the grocery delivery firm, has increased its internal stock price by 18%, according to an anonymous source. This price increase reflects a quarterly evaluation of the company's stock. It suggests that Instacart's value has increased from roughly $10bn to $12bn. Instacart's last equity financing in March 2021 valued it at $39bn. The increase in Instacart's stock price may result in similar increases for other mature startups that follow publicly traded peers' valuations.
• General Mills, the maker of Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal, is pursuing a strategy of cross-collaboration to create new products that incorporate familiar cereal flavors. The company has introduced Cinnamon Toast Crunch-themed products such as popcorn, cake mix, yogurt, marshmallows, and even cosmetic brushes to increase brand awareness among younger consumers who grow up with the flavor. This trend of brand extensions and collaborations is not new, but General Mills believes that it will help them achieve their goals of 5% organic sales growth. Fernandez, the president of U.S. morning foods at General Mills, adds that collaborations among General Mills brands happen organically, but it’s not hard to see the company emulating a winning strategy pioneered by PepsiCo in the snacking category.
• Paramount Network executive Keith Cox said during a PaleyFest panel that he is "very confident" that Kevin Costner will continue with the hit show Yellowstone, despite rumors earlier this year that Costner wanted to leave the show. While Cox's statement is not a definitive denial, it indicates that there may have been issues behind the scenes with Costner wanting to scale back his involvement in the show, but those issues may have been resolved in a way that allows him to continue.
• Tesla reported delivering a record 422,875 vehicles in the first quarter, a 36% increase from the previous year, after cutting prices to boost demand in a cooling car market. The result surpassed fourth-quarter deliveries by around 4% but fell short of analyst expectations. Tesla's stock recorded its worst annual performance in 2022, falling 65%, before rebounding this year. The company has more wiggle room than most automakers to play with pricing due to high operating margins and a robust cash cushion. However, concerns persist about Tesla's ability to maintain its growth trajectory without further price cuts.
• TikTok has hired former Disney executive Zenia Mucha and two former senior advisers to President Barack Obama, David Plouffe and Jim Messina, as it faces the threat of a possible ban in the US. The three new hires were brought in to mentor TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew in the lead-up to his appearance before Congress.
• Endeavor and Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) are merging with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) to create a new public company, valued at over $21 billion. The deal is expected to close near the end of the year, pending regulatory approval. The company will trade under the symbol “TKO” and be a juggernaut in live entertainment and combat sports. The new firm is betting that rights for live events like wrestling will continue to soar. The deal comes as viewers abandon traditional television and live events continue to draw big ratings, anchoring the cable TV business.
• Disney+ has cast newcomer Maia Kealoha as Lilo in the live-action version of the animated movie Lilo & Stitch. The movie follows the story of a lonely girl named Lilo and her relationship with an alien named Stitch who was designed to be a destructive force. The film is directed by Dean Fleischer Camp and also stars Zach Galifianakis. Lilo & Stitch is the latest in a series of Disney animated movies that have been adapted to live-action. No release date has been announced yet.
• Pioneer Works, an arts center in Red Hook, Brooklyn, is currently hosting an immersive mixed reality installation called "Medusa" until April 16th. Visitors who put on the Magic Leap 2 headset, which offers a 70-degree field of vision and the ability to communicate with other nearby headsets, are transported into a seemingly empty space. However, when they look up, they are greeted by great undulating aquamarine rods of light anchored to the ceiling that seem to dance and wave like the tentacles of a Portuguese man-o’-war.
• Bloomberg has released a new large language model (LLM) called BloombergGPT, which has been specifically trained on financial data to assist with natural language processing (NLP) tasks within the financial industry. BloombergGPT was trained on a comprehensive 363 billion token dataset consisting of English financial documents, as well as a 345 billion token public dataset, creating a large training corpus with over 700 billion tokens. Bloomberg plans to use the model to improve existing NLP workflows and imagine new ways to use the model to improve customer experience.

Magnum Ice Cream taking shots at the Metaverse

A new study by Eric Scharnhorst of the Research Institute for Housing America reveals that parking in America's cities is taking up an extraordinary amount of space and costing cities an astronomical amount of money. The study looks at five US cities: New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, Des Moines, and Jackson, Wyoming, and estimates the total number of parking spaces in these cities, their overall estimated replacement costs, parking spaces per acre, parking spaces per household, and parking costs per household. The study confirms Donald Shoup's idea that American cities devote too much space and resources to parking.

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