Pivots in the business world shape the stories that brands tell us, in turn influencing how consumers view the world
Late last year, Disney announced a major reorganization prioritizing its streaming-video services. CEO Bob Chapek said that the move was a recognition of how consumers had changed their consumption habits amid the pandemic, favoring streaming platforms over movie theaters, as well as traditional broadcast and cable channels. Disney reoriented its business by untangling product from distribution, separating decisions over which shows and movies should be produced from decisions over which platforms were best suited to carry them. This reorientation was a change in direction — a pivot.
Pivots in the business world shape the stories that brands tell us. They…
Number Crunch
Blockchain technology still leaves digital crumbs behind
Sixty-four bitcoin, or roughly $2.3 million: That’s how much cryptocurrency the Justice Department recovered earlier this week from the total 75 bitcoin ransom paid by Colonial Pipeline, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. The cyberattack shut down the country’s largest oil pipeline in May, prompting gas shortages and price hikes across the country.
The ransom recovery reveals a fundamental misconception that cryptocurrencies are anonymous and not traceable. Cryptocurrencies are not tied to people but to digital keys, making their owners pseudonymous rather than fully anonymous. As explained by the Journal’s David Uberti, criminals have relied on blockchain’s pseudonymity to…
A little less enterprisey than Slack. A little more structured than Clubhouse. It’s just right.
In 2007, when BlackBerry was still the leader in the enterprise mobile space, a new competitor launched an irresistibly sleek touch-screen smartphone that epitomized the marriage of art and science. (Yes, we’re talking about the iPhone’s debut). BlackBerry executives scoffed at the seemingly pretentious device, which they thought would only appeal to consumers seeking mindless escape on YouTube and who possibly couldn’t care less about BlackBerry’s inner beauty — its relentless focus on security and its efficient, almost miserly, use of network bandwidth. BlackBerry’s bet was on what it called the “prosumer,” or the professional consumer.
Our kids understand it better than we do. And it’s training them for the token economy.
The stock market, still caught up in the GameStop trading frenzy, recently put a spotlight on the gaming industry’s latest entrant: Roblox. It debuted on the New York Stock Exchange last week via direct listing and was valued at a mind-boggling $45 billion. The gaming platform of the future has proven itself to be a pandemic mainstay among youth, with daily screen-time usage nearly doubling in the past year alone.
For many parents, this marks a crucial inflection point as many witness an innocent pandemic pastime transform into a booming business. The last time emotions were riding this high was…
Amazon changed its logo from a dot-com era shopping cart to its signature brown shipping box sealed with blue tape. The image, while clean, minimalistic and innocent, still represents a shipping box — the physical manifestation of our weakening resolve to address single-use, one-way packaging. If an icon update is meant to represent a brand’s evolution, I’m not comfortable with where Amazon is going.
Like millions of subscribers who found themselves unprepared for an unrelenting lockdown, I increasingly relied on Amazon throughout the pandemic. This is a first world privilege of course - one that started as a convenience and…
In the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma there is a fictional scene depicting a modern family trying to enjoy their dinner, where the mom decides each member of the family must place their phones inside a lockable cookie jar. The purpose is to be present in the moment, away from the distractions of social media. The photo-sharing app Dispo, which launched its beta in February, emulates a lockable cookie jar in the form of a digital disposable camera.
The invite-only beta maxed out its 10,000-person limit and drew immediate comparisons to Clubhouse, the audio-social network recently valued at $1 billion…
Technical details don’t seem to matter.
With its $1.5 billion investment in Bitcoin, analysts estimate that Tesla is “on a trajectory to make more from its Bitcoin investments than profits from selling its EV (electric vehicle) cars in all of 2020.” However it is ironic that Tesla, whose mission is to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy, is benefiting from a cryptocurrency that has a carbon footprint comparable to that of New Zealand.
But the association worked anyway.
On the surface, a digital currency like Bitcoin seems like a natural progression for the brand that is pioneering the digital transformation of the automobile industry. Matt…
How the meme-inspired cryptocurrency became an Elon Musk obsession
Forget the Year of the Ox — 2021 is rapidly shaping up to be the Year of the Doge, a cryptocurrency based on the internet meme of a Shiba Inu dog with a less than stellar command of English, hence “doge” and not “dog.” Nowhere has this development been cheered on more than on Elon Musk’s Twitter feed.
On February 7, the Tesla CEO — and arguably the world’s most powerful influencer — tweeted, “Who let the doge out?” Later that same day he followed with, “No highs, no lows, only Doge.” …
Memes are moving markets and we need to pay attention.
The Pandemic Primed Us to View Contagious Ideas as Viruses
Throughout the past year, we’ve been primed with the viral spread of COVID-19 to such an extent that the gravity of the GameStop surge last week appeared less pronounced that it actually was. The viral frenzy thrived through a complicated web of cultural and social fibers, forming an abstract network of impassioned traders as it spread.
Daily dosage of exponential COVID-19 rates have caused us to subconsciously ascribe any contagious packet of information with the properties of a virus. Just like viruses ideas replicate, fuse, and even mutate.
The viral contagion of GameStop’s upward and downward ride is fascinating because…
From the branches of the mighty pioneer to the roots of Palantir
You know the feature in WhatsApp where you can ‘star’ a message? I came up with that idea during my time at BlackBerry. BlackBerry owns the patent for it. When WhatsApp introduced the feature in 2016, BlackBerry didn’t do anything about it.
What could BlackBerry do? Politely ask WhatsApp to license the patent? Sue in patent litigation court?
Yes. That’s what I thought BlackBerry would do to protect the intellectual property developed by its impassioned engineers who believed till the very end that the smartphone keyboard would reign supreme. …
Tabarak Khan
I write about the psychological, emotional, and cultural factors that affect our decisions. Engineer | Brand Strategist | Curious
