Unsocial Media 🐥📵

👀 TLDR:

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover the news that Twitter users have been hit with rate limits, effectively limiting the number of Tweets you can read on the platform. It’s an extraordinary intervention from Elon Musk. He says it’s to help combat data scraping, but limiting some accounts to seeing just 300 tweets per day is a nuclear option. It makes little sense, even if Musk claims it’s a temporary measure. This week, we also have news on a new type of wearable - the Humane Ai Pin - as well as details of the Tour de France app. Our Stat of the Week sees Apple reach a $3 trillion valuation, and keep it. And What’s dAppening covers the rush for hedge funds to file applications for Bitcoin spot ETFs.

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Takes 🎬️

🐥⛔ Twitter – Musk Opts for Nuclear Option By Introducing Rate Limits

There is an iconic sketch from the late great Bill Hicks where the comedian muses on the (stupid) accusations that rock band Judas Priest was encouraging listeners to commit suicide via satanic messages contained in their records. “What performer,” Hicks asks, “wants his audience dead?”. Might we extrapolate that theory to 2023 and ask, “What social media company wants its users to use the platform less?”. Enter Twitter. On Saturday, Elon Musk announced that all users would be issued a read limit; 600 tweets per day for non-paying users and just 300 for new non-verified users. While the cap was raised to 1,000 tweets by the end of the weekend, the decision to limit social media usage for users is both extraordinary and unprecedented. Musk has said the limits are in place to combat data scraping, with the finger pointed at Google, OpenAI, and Microsoft for training AI language models. Data scraping can impact a website’s performance, sure, but the decision to ‘punish’ users makes little sense. Reading fewer tweets means fewer ad dollars and more users leaving the platform; early reports saw Truth Social surge in new signups, and Bluesky had to suspend new signups due to high volumes over the weekend. Thus far, we can only see attempts at explaining the logic coming from the (very vocal) Musk supporters on the platform. The read limits are supposed to be temporary, but it is yet more damage to a platform already beset by problems. Like so much that has happened on the platform since November, it smacks of an erratic owner who does not have a clear plan. #UnsocialMedia Read more here.

📌🤖 Wearables – Apple Alumni Offer Sneak Peak of the Ai Pin

Ok, let’s file this one under intriguing. In 2018, a super secretive hardware startup, Humane, was founded by a group of ex-Apple employees, giving out precious few details of what it was working on. Humane has now provided a new glimpse of its product – the Humane Ai Pin. Note that the “i” in Ai is lowercase, so we guess it’s pronounced “i-pin”. Regardless of nomenclature, the Ai Pin is one of the world’s first “clothing-based wearables”, and it should be able to perform many of the tasks that the average smartphone can do. You’ll wear it on your top (it looks like an actual pin) and use voice commands to take photos, place calls, listen to emails, and so on. It can also project an interactive interface onto a surface (like the palm of your hand – cool, right?). We are being drip-fed information on the Ai Pin, so we are still in the dark about many things. Yet, it has some serious partners, including Microsoft, and backers who have poured 100s of millions into the project. Expect Ai Pin to drop later this year. #MoreThanMeetsTheAi Read more here.

🚴‍♂️📱 Apps – Offical Tour de France Cycling App Has Caught Our Eye

We love a good sports app here at 3Advance. And with Le Grand Départ for the 2023 Tour de France setting off on Saturday, July 1st, we decided to run the rule over the new official app for the biggest event in cycling. Like the Masters app we reported on back in April, the Tour de France app puts the fan experience front and center of its offering. Users can watch the action live, follow their favorite teams and cyclists, and even become an active participant in the race via the Tour de France Club. The pièce de résistance, however, is the LIVE tab on the app, which uses clever compartmentalization to double up as a live race tracking and social-media-like news feed. If you are interested in cycling, sports, or just cleverly-designed apps in general – download it for iPhone here or Google Play here for free. #TourDeForceApp Read more here.

🧐 Stat of the Week: $3T (Again)

🍏💰 Apple – Company Reaches $3 Trillion Market Cap and Stays There

Apple briefly became the world’s first 3-Trillion-Dollar company back in January thanks to a surge in its stock price, but that was only for a fleeting moment – largely a symbolic achievement, as the stock almost instantly pulled back. But the iPhone maker has recently regained that valuation, stayed there after the stock market closed on Friday, and remained there as we celebrate the Fourth of July holiday. However, all of this comes amid declining iPhone sales and disappointing (by Apple’s standards) revenues. Investors must really like Vision Pro. #Apple3T Read more here.

🕸️ What’s dAppening?

🪙📈 Bitcoin – The World’s Biggest Hedge Funds Rush to File for Spot ETFs

If Blackrock were a country, it would be the third-biggest economy in the world behind the United States and China. Thus, when the hedge fund with $9 trillion in assets (enough to buy 3 Apples😏) moves, people take notice. And Blackrock has been pushing to get into crypto, filing an application for a Bitcoin spot ETF (exchange-traded fund). This has been celebrated as crypto’s mainstreaming moment, one where institutions start entering web3 in earnest. Blackrock’s move prompted other hedge funds to follow, with some, like Fidelity and Ark Investments, refiling applications that were previously declined. Blackrock has made 576 ETF applications down the years, with just one being turned down. So far, the SEC has approved exactly zero of 100 or so Bitcoin spot ETF applications. Something has gotta give. #BlackrockBTC Read more here.

Meanwhile at 3Advance…

July is here and we have a few things we want to share with you! We kicked off our new video series, "Getting to Know 3Advance" where you can catch up on our team, our clients and learn more about our projects. Be sure to check out the first client conversation here - and stay tuned for all the “Appenings at 3Advance”!

You can also catch the monthly newsletter recap on our YouTube channel bringing you all the biggest stories from June in Tech. Our latest video brings you up to speed on the world of AI, Apple Vision Pro, Google domain news plus more. Check it out here!

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