X Marks the App ✖️🐤

👀 TLDR:

In this week’s What’s Appening, we wanna talk about X. The decision to scrap the Twitter brand is one of the big bets of Elon Musk’s tenure, and the rush to rebrand it as X has come in for a lot of ridicule. While the roll-out of X was hurried, Musk’s plans are not. He has been wanting to create an “Everything App” for years now, and the platform formerly known as Twitter gives him the opportunity to do it. That does not necessarily mean it will be a success, however. Elsewhere this week, we cover the launch of Worldcoin, Sam Altman’s project that wants to help prove you are a real person. There’s a bunch of AI news, including ChatGPT launching on Android and reports of an Apple AI chatbot. Our Stat of the Week has some good news for Netflix. And What’s dAppening looks at the huge success of an NFT collection based on comic book legend Stan Lee.

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Takes 🎬️

🐤✖️ Twitter – The Bird Brand Is Dead as Platform Becomes X

The Ship of Theseus Paradox is a Greek fable that poses the riddle of a ship constantly in motion that has all its components replaced one by one: Would it still be the same ship when every part has been replaced? There are parallels to the old fable in 2023 with the Good Ship Twitter, which is no more. The new platform has been rebranded to “X”, a long-term goal of Elon Musk. The billionaire reportedly wanted to brand PayPal as X, and he has SpaceX, a kid called X Æ A-12, and Twitter’s holding company is called X Corp. The rebranding has been widely criticized, not least due to the Unicode-like logo that looks like it took five minutes to create. The new logo is all over the site now, and most of the bird references are gone (but not all, making it look clumsy and rushed). So you no longer Tweet, you “X” or “Xeet”. However, this is not all about Twitter, at least not in its previous form. Musk wants to create the Everything App, a long-held ambition. That means you could use X to go beyond social media posting and move into everything in your life, but payments most of all. In essence, he wants to create a fintech platform on top of the social media platform. It’s not uniquely a Musk idea – we look to Asia we can find several Everything Apps like WeChat and GoJek – but he believes he can do it bigger and better. He claimed that X could account for “half of the global financial system”. Ambitious, right? While nobody should underestimate Musk, we might argue that he overestimates the desire for Everything Apps in the West. With all the turmoil on Twitter X recently, would users really embrace it en masse as a financial platform? As well the bugs, scammers, bots, Musk’s immature public trolling doesn’t inspire confidence beyond his most ardent fans. #XMarkstheSpot Read more here.

🪙🌍 Worldcoin – New World ID Token Launches for Human Verification

X was not the only talk of the tech town over the weekend: Sam Altman (he of OpenAI fame) has officially launched the token for his Worldcoin cryptocurrency project. The project is all about verifying humans in the new AI-dominated environment. Humans can download the World App, get verified using iris-scanning devices called Orbs, and then start claiming Worldcoins as a reward. The Orbs are located across dozens of cities globally, although many more are planned to be launched. We took the World App for a test drive and can report that it has some bugs and capacity issues. However, for the moment, that’s a moot point. Worldcoin – and there are some similar projects – is important. Its goals are broad, ranging from providing Universal Basic Income to Digital Passports. The latter is the big focus right now, and it is not without controversy. A lot of people don’t like giving up their biometric data to central authorities, and there is skepticism about Worldcoin in that respect. There are also accusations that the project is much too naïve. Private data can be weaponized in authoritarian states, for example. The launch hasn’t been smooth – Worldcoin is already under investigation in the UK, and while proof of personhood is becoming more and more important in the digital world, it’s massively presumptuous to think that we all want to become part of one giant database (sure, it’s the blockchain, but that’s still what is is) that contains our biometric data. This may all sound like a dystopian movie, but it could yet become a reality. Worldcoin is betting that it will. #OneWorldcoin Read more here.

🍏🤖 ChatGPT – Android App Launches as Apple Reportedly Exploring AI Tool

A couple of quick notes on AI that we felt compelled to share this week. First, ChatGPT has finally landed as an Android app that will be rolled out later this week. You can pre-order it on the Google Play Store now. As for ChatGPT, we must report that some experts are grumbling about its reliability, including noted Twitter user Santiago (a go-to guy for things all AI-related). He posted a report showing that ChatGPT was getting worse with its model responses, including mathematical equations. You can read the thread here. Finally, Reuters has reported that Apple is ramping up testing of generative AI tools, suggesting the iPhone maker was working on something to rival ChatGPT and Google’s Bard. As we reported back in June, mentions of artificial intelligence were conspicuously absent from Apple’s WWDC conference. #AINews Read more here.

🧐 Stat of the Week: 6M Sign Ups

📈📺 Netflix – Password Clampdown Causes Wave of New Signups

It seems that Netflix’s tactic of clamping down on password sharing has worked, as the platform added almost six million new subscribers in Q2 2023. That is in stark contrast to the same quarter last year – when Netflix lost almost a million. It’s good news for the platform, but challenges remain, not least the fallout from the Hollywood writers’ (and actors’) strike. #NetflixAndWin Read more here.

🕸️ What’s dAppening?

🔎💰 NFTs – Stan Lee Marvel Collection Sells Out Almost Instantly

The NFT market is in a weird place right now. Many of the blue-chip collections – Bored Apes, Crypto Punks – are broadly losing value, whereas many projects are in a race to add utility to their tokens. But IP and iconography will always sell, and a new collection of Stan Lee NFTs – launched to celebrate what would have been the comic book icon’s 100th birthday – sold out in mere minutes, all 8,000 of them. The floor price, too, has risen by 500% in a matter of hours. Strong sales show there is still a big demand for NFT launches, even if some of the blue chips look to be struggling. #AmazingStanLee Read more here.

Meanwhile at 3Advance…

Last week was an interesting one! For the first time since before the Pandemic, our co-owners Paul and Darren both took off for separate family vacations. Unplugging is something we truly value at 3Advance, so for our owners to both be able to set those laptops down for a week - at the same time - it speaks highly for the whole team, and the system of organization we’ve worked so hard to create. The cherry on top? We didn’t skip a beat. We’ve got some tough projects, important milestones and promises to fulfill. So that’s what we do, and when folks come back from vacation, refreshed and ready for the next big push, we’re stronger than ever. So cheers to a balanced home and work life! 🌴😎

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