Google’s Latest Swing 🏌️🌥️

👀 TLDR:

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover all the major announcements from Google Cloud Next 2024. As you might expect, generative AI loomed large over everything at this event (arguably Google’s most important after I/O), and Google announced a host of new AI-powered tools and services. There was little mention of the cloud, as such, but this felt like a confident Google, flexing its muscles on how its vast armory of AI applications could transform its products for personal and enterprise users alike. We’ve quick takes on the Vision Pro at the 2024 Masters, Humane AI Pin reviews, ChatGPT, a Game Boy emulator, and X. Our Stat of the Week looks at how Instagram pulls in huge ad revenues. What’s Appening wonders what might have been, as Vana showcases how we can sell our data without blockchains. And be sure to check out our GPT of the Week, which is a must-try for golfers.

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Our Top Take 🎬

☁️🤖 Cloud Next – Gen AI Dominates Google’s Annual Cloud Showcase

You’ve heard of supercomputers; well, how about an AI hypercomputer? That was one of several major announcements at Google Cloud Next 2024, where generative AI was the phrase du jour in every presentation. In fact, the cloud wasn’t mentioned much at all. AI loomed large at Cloud Next 2023 when Google was still reeling from the arrival of ChatGPT, but this year’s event felt less reactionary and more proactive as Google announced a wave of new AI products and injected AI into core services. It included Gemini Code Assist, an AI code completion and assistance tool (it’s essentially the successor to Duet AI). There was a flurry of AI updates for Workspace, including voice prompts and “help me write” AI features for Gmail, and Google Vids, an AI video creation tool. The AI image generator Imagen 2 was also announced, timely given that the Gemini image generator is still unavailable. Vertex AI Agent Builder is Google’s pitch to enterprises that wish to build conversational AI agents. And we were also told that Nvidia’s Blackwell platform would be coming to Google Cloud next year. Get a full breakdown of all the announcements here. #CloudNext2024 Read more here.

🦾 GPT of the Week: GolfGPT

And while we’re talking about the Masters, we felt it right to feature the one and only GolfGPT! As you know, we’re big in the sports tech space, and have successfully launched two really awesome golf apps over the years - Istruzi and TboxTour. So when we discovered GolfGPT, we couldn’t help but get excited. This GPT is super simple, and that’s the beauty of many of the best GPTs out there. Just let the GPT know what hole you’re on, and this AI caddy will advise you on how to approach it. Sure, it will help you next time you play Augusta (!), but with a deep knowledge bank it can likely serve the rest of us at our local courses too. Check it out here.

Other Stories 🗞️

⛳ Vision Pro Offers New Way to Experience the Masters. We have praised the Masters App in the past (it’s still great), but the way to experience Augusta this year was on Apple Vision Pro. Social media abounded with Vision Pro users showing off interactive leaderboards, shot tracking technology, and multiple screens all controlled with a quick snap of your fingers. Golf Digest summed it up: “Watching golf will never be the same again”. More here.

📌 Humane AI Pin Gets Scathing Reviews. Marques Brownlee – the massively influential YouTuber – was among those hammering the Humane AI Pin in reviews, with some claiming the device simply does not work. The reviews were so bad that a row broke out over the ethics of product reviewing itself. Check out Brownlee’s review here.

🕹️ Game Boy Emulator Launches – And Is Promptly Removed – From App Store. Apple’s relaxing of rules on retro game emulators on the App Store saw the arrival of iGBA, a Game Boy emulator, over the weekend. Excitement was curtailed, however, as Apple booted it out of the store. Find out why right here.

🗣️ OpenAI Makes ChatGPT More Direct and Less Verbose. OpenAI has tinkered with GPT-4 Turbo to improve the ChatGPT conversational experience. The idea is to make answers sound less pompous and verbose and more direct and human. Details here.

💳 Elon Musk Confirms X Will Charge New Users to Post. How to solve a problem like millions of bots blighting your platform? Elon Musk seems to believe the answer lies in charging all new users a (small) fee to post on X. More on that here.

🧐 Stat of the Week: $32.4B

📸📈 Instagram – Massive Ad Revenue Exceeds that of YouTube

There were several raised eyebrows at 3Advance HQ when we learned that Instagram had higher revenue from advertising than YouTube. The latter’s revenue-sharing scheme will likely mean Insta’s margins are much higher, too. The data came from court filings from Meta, showing that Insta pulled in $32.4B from ads in 2021 alone (YouTube made just under $29B in the same period). The fillings also show that Instagram, which was bought for $1B back in 2021, now accounts for about 30% of Meta’s total revenues. #InstaAds Read more here.

🕸️ What’s dAppening?

Technically, this is not a web3 story, but we will get to why it is placed in What’s dAppening in a moment. Vana, a startup founded in 2021, is setting up a program to allow social media users, including Redditors, to pool their data and rent it out to train AI models. Crucially, Vana provides the platform, but you will do the renting. To use Vana, you will pay a $3.99 monthly subscription. Now, Vana isn’t perfect and has come in for some criticism, but what brought this to our attention was that it feels like a web3 project. In fact, many crypto and blockchain projects, such as Datacoup and Jasmy, claim to aspire to the same model. The only problem is they haven’t really delivered. Whether Vana is a success or not remains to be seen, but it is challenging the once-held assumption that blockchain was crucial to taking ownership of and monetizing our data. #VanaData Read more here.

Meanwhile at 3Advance...

And, we’re LIVE! The redevelopment of Béné Tipping’s groundbreaking digital tipping platform was one of our biggest accomplishments of 2023. As we kick off this new quarter, we’re now celebrating a major update to the platform along with a brand-spanking new website at https://benetipping.com. Béné Tipping is successfully running across 1000s of hotels in North America, and while we’re talking golf, remind you that it even featured last year at the Wyndham Championship for charitable donations. The most recent launch enables a new monetization strategy through paid subscriptions that unlock even more reporting features for hotel group management. We also just rolled out tip-matching, which allows service workers to be rewarded further - employers can now opt to match every guest tip! This is great for the employee, and in the long term, much better for hotels as it reduces turnover and increases staff satisfaction. Béné has been such a great client of ours the past year and a half that we even decided to throw in a new website too. The new site showcases the amazing work done on our end, but most importantly of course, the fantastic value prop for future Béné customers. Check it out, and let us know what you think.

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