Spyglass - Grift & Greed

Back in London, but not quite back on time yet. I have some thoughts on Snap's announcements today, following the manifesto a couple weeks back, but those will have to wait until tomorrow. For now, enjoy a couple posts on everyone's favorite topics: grift and greed (with a side of fraud).

Some Thoughts...

🏆 FX Wins Most Emmys of 2024 as ‘Shogun’ and ‘The Bear’ Top Night – For the most part, award shows are silly, but they are an interesting proxy for which networks/content have tapped into the zeitgeist. To that end, FX topping Netflix and HBO is interesting. Also interesting: Apple TV+ in 4th place on the list, ahead of the much larger networks, like Disney+. And how poorly Amazon showed, in 10th place. Of course, FX is now owned by Disney and if you roll up all of their properties (Disney+, Hulu, ABC), they had more than double any other company. Shogun and The Bear are both great, and both coming back. We'll see if this year was just a fluke for HBO or if they should team up with someone else... [Variety]

⚖️ Court Appears Skeptical of TikTok’s Challenge to U.S. Ban – This would seem to be very bad news for TikTok as these judges are clearly signaling that they believe the government is within its rights to ban the app (or limit the reach to the point of effectively banning it) and that there's precedent in doing so in tangential areas. These judges have also seen the classified information that others – including, notably, TikTok's own lawyers – have not. It points to the best case for TikTok perhaps being the election of Donald Trump – unless he changes his mind on the service, again. [WSJ 🔒]

🤖 Slack Lets Users Add AI Agents from Adobe, Asana, Workday, etc – If you believe in our agentic future of AI, there's a pretty good case to be made that a tool like Slack could be the perfect hub in such a world. Especially since it's chat-based. In a way, this is the future the company always envisioned. But it's still early, messy, and chaotic out there. As such, are people really going to pay for such integrations right now? What about businesses? Even mighty Microsoft seems to be having some issues... Then again, at least their AI is not called "Agentforce". A branding compliment for Microsoft from me! [VentureBeat]

🧑‍✈️ Copilot Pages is Microsoft’s New Collaborative AI Playground – Speaking of, this new feature seems sort of interesting. It almost reminds me of Google Wave but centered around AI, which actually might make some sense. Wave was always a cool piece of technology, but no one – including Google – seemed to know what to do with it. Perhaps it was just too early. Or perhaps this is still too early to actually be useful – especially to businesses. [The Verge]

💳 JPMorgan in Talks to Take Over Apple Card From Goldman – This would seemingly be a good outcome for all sides – including, importantly, customers. While I love AMEX, the reality is that there are just too many places that don't accept those cards (due to their fees). A JPMorgan-powered Apple Card would likely either stay on the Mastercard network or move over to Visa. Per the report, it also seems like Apple is willing to budge on their oddly strict billing dates to make a deal happen with JPMorgan. It's still a bit weird to me that Goldman couldn't make this partnership work, but they clearly just have different priorities at the moment. Apple, for its part, seems to be taking a step back from becoming a full-on bank after seemingly pushing in that direction... [WSJ 🔒]

Some Analysis...

The Grift that Keeps Giving

NGL, I feel like we’re NGMI

Spyglass •M.G. Siegler

The MoviePass Fraud

The seemingly obvious fraud turned to be, in fact, fraud

Spyglass •M.G. Siegler

As An Aside...

• While yesterday was mainly (rare) good news for Intel, there was the whole bit about how they lost the Playstation 6 business to AMD. Though that also seems to have just as much to do with backwards compatibility for PS5 games (that system also runs on AMD processors). [Reuters]
• While it clearly seems like the right call for Meta to ban a Russian media outlet tied to disinformation, it's also mildly weird timing given Mark Zuckerberg's recent full-throated stance that they wouldn't be so quick to take orders from the government, specifically calling out the Biden administration for trying to tamper in his strange "neutral" pledge to Jim Jordan. [NBC News]
• A lot had to come together to make Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice work, but it did, thanks to a pre-production gamble by Warner Bros and the talent taking front-end pay cuts. Both now are paying off, literally. [NYT]
• Microsoft has rolled back a redesign of the Edge browser. Seemingly because that was built around Bing Chat, and when that first stab at AI failed to take off, it seems to be back to the drawing board – and back to simply being a clone of Chrome. [Windows Central]
• EssilorLuxottica and Meta continue to have eyes for each other in announcing a new 10-year partnership – but oddly, no mention of the potential Meta investment in the luxury eyewear maker, as had been reported. Also odd: announcing this a week ahead of Meta Connect – which just makes it seem like a shot at Snap, given that their 'Lens Fest' was today with a new pair of Spectacles (more on them soon), as expected. [Reuters]
• It sounds like there will be no 'The Sims 5' – instead, EA will keep updating 'The Sims 4'. They're also still trying to figure out how to make this the franchise work online as a multiplayer experience. [Variety]
  • Something that is coming? The Sims movie, being made by Amazon's MGM Studios and Margot Robbie‘s production company. "Kate Herron, who helmed “Loki,” set to direct the movie and co-write with Briony Redman." [Variety]
• Google is pushing further into FAST (free, ad-supported TV) channels with 'Freeplay' for Google TV. Given the trend, it will be curious if Apple goes down this path as well – certainly as they move further down the advertising path with sports, etc... [9to5 Google]

A Golden Oldie...

Comcast’s Bargain Bin Basement Bundle

StreamSaver! I cannot believe Apple and Netflix agreed to this name…

Spyglass •M.G. Siegler

And I Quote...

"I'm not letting anyone else put on the pointy hat and beard if I can help it."

-- Sir Ian McKellan, talking about the prospect of being in the new Gollum-focused Lord of the Rings movies that Andy Serkis is developing...