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The Spyglass Dispatch is a newsletter sent on weekdays featuring links and commentary on timely topics found around the web. Feel free to forward it to others who can sign up and view previous dispatches here. You can also view this particular dispatch on the web here.
Since there's yet another new twist in the OpenAI going for-profit status (below), I figured I'd share the higher level take I wrote over the break based on the company themselves more explicitly stating their intentions and rationale for the shift. My read is that it's messy and all kinds of complicated, but not wrong. Apologies for the delayed Dispatch today – I may or may not have been up until 5am local time in London last night to watch Notre Dame/Penn State college football playoff game (great game for everyone but James Franklin)... Also, I've been following along with the TikTok Supreme Court hearing today – which, as expected, sure feels like it's not going to go in ByteDance's favor... Will there be a mad dash to do some sort of deal next week as a result?
I Think...🏈 Disney, Warner, and Fox Pull the Plug on Venu – While the Hulu + Live TV/Fubo merger was a new year shocker, arguably more surprising was that Disney and their partners were apparently still pushing to launch Venu, their ill-timed, ill-conceived, and ultimately ill-fated sports streaming service. But as noted a few days ago, the end of the lawsuit didn't necessarily mean the end of their problems. And DirecTV and Dish made that crystal clear yesterday, with their own threats of action against the service. Ultimately, it was probably around 10 headaches too many for Disney – who could have known, except, well, everybody – and so now Venu is dead. For real this time. Instead, you'll have to pick one of Disney's 600 other streaming content packages. [THR] 🗳️ Threads and Instagram Are For Politics Now – One clear upside of Meta's content-moderation changes: they're going to stop burying/downplaying real-time news and information. This is being framed around politics in particular, but given how vital that segment is to news/information in general, it's going to help unclog the pipes, as it were. IG head Adam Mosseri clearly feels a bit sheepish about the change (naturally, as he's been arguing against it for months), and the content control options still seem a bit complicated/unnecessary, but, baby steps. There will obviously be downsides to all of this as well – especially since they're making the change in lockstep with the moderation alterations – but this should help Threads become a better Xitter competitor. [Verge] 💰 Elon Musk Calls on California and Delaware to Force Auction of OpenAI Stake – In the latest tactic to try to derail (or at least delay) the shift to a for-profit company, Musk's team is suggesting that the only way to get a truly fair value for the non-profit stake in OpenAI is to let the market determine the price. While this would certainly create "more chaos" as the FT's source puts it, it would also negate what OpenAI clearly views as the single most important talking point of the transition: that the non-profit remains a vital part of the story. Also fun: this would presumably allow Musk himself to bid on the stake! I've tried to guesstimate how I thought the equity might be carved up in the past. Total guess, but if the non-profit gets 25% of the equity, that would be worth nearly $40B at OpenAI's current $157B valuation. Presuming that valuation goes up over the next year, we're probably looking at a "fair" price over $50B (again, in my estimate). Also note the concern from the Musk team about Delaware overseeing this process, since that's also the state which has blocked his Tesla pay package. [FT 🔒] 📲 Apple Likely to Face Fiercer Challenges in 2025 – The latest report by Ming-Chi Kuo is awfully bearish on Apple's financial prospects for this year, specifically calling out weak iPhone demand. And while the new 'iPhone Air' should generate some buzz/interest, there's concern that it's mix of not being as "good" as the Pro lineup coupled with an undoubtedly higher price than the "regular" iPhones. It will be an interesting test of "new" – that is, just how much simply a new design still matters to the iPhone market. If the new design was coming to the high-end of the line – as was the case with the iPhone X back in the day – that would be far more straightforward. But personally, I don't want to "downgrade" to an 'iPhone Air' if it's not going to be as fast as the iPhone Pro models. And certainly not if the camera system isn't as good. And if battery life is a bit worse, etc. It's all speculation on a rumored product at this point, but those rumors also seem pretty aligned... A bigger problem for Apple may remain China, where iPhone demand seems even more off and the prospect of a tariff war and the AI/SIM slot issues are sort of a perfect storm against the iPhone company, it seems. Finally, Kuo shares yet more signals that AI is doing nothing to move these needles right now. All of this seemingly adds to pressure for a foldable iPhone in 2026... [Medium]
I Wrote...Also over the break, I both watched and wrote about Fly Me to the Moon, which was a pretty big dud of a movie – enough to make me question Apple's taste when it comes to film. At first, I chalked up the fact that it bombed at the box office to Apple's oddly poor marketing of their movies, but it may be just as much about the fact that they seem pretty poor and picking what movies to make (though they're much better – some might even say great – when it comes to shows, oddly)...
I Note...- In a footnote a few days ago, I wondered where Google was in the clearly agreed upon $1M payment to the
fealty inauguration fund. Sure enough... Only some mild gaslighting in the statement on the matter. [CNBC]- And not to be left behind, a few hours later, Microsoft joined the paid party. The price? You'll never guess. It was their best copying of Google since the Bing homepage situation earlier this week. [CNBC]
- Hopefully they all get a special 'Magnificent 7' section at the inauguration. Wait – where's NVIDIA?! Come on Jensen, there are rings to kiss here.
- The Frank McCourt-led group has apparently finally formally placed a bid for TikTok – er... proposed to place a bid. Lol. No word on how much – $20B had been thrown out there, which would seemingly be far too low to be taken seriously – or who else is in on the deal, beyond Mr. Wonderful. Have they even spoken with ByteDance yet, or just lobbed the bid over for max publicity as the Supreme Court case kicks off? Nobody knows. [Reuters]
- You know who is not thrilled with Meta’s new stance on content moderation? Mastodon. As it turns out, there’s a downside to Fediverse integration when it means you suddenly have to moderate all the content on Threads that Meta no longer will… [TechCrunch]
- Enron is "back" in a sort of weird performance art version of an Onion article. The Enron Egg is cute though. Cutest nuke ever. [NYT]
- Given that their last-minute Election Night news coverage test out-drew a couple of the networks in audience, it's no surprise that Amazon is exploring doing more such live content for Prime Video. Why? Same idea as sports: another great surface to serve up ads. But only around special events so they don't have to actually keep a news team on staff. [Variety]
- Apple is putting season 1 of their show Severance on Roku. Why? Awareness, of course. Apple TV+ remains tiny compared to their streaming peers and Roku is promising to put it on their homepage, which tens of millions of people regularly see. It's basically an advertising strategy. How long until they put some shows on Netflix? [THR]
- Speaking of reach, not to be left out of the audience size announcements yesterday (which was clearly meant to be a signal to would-be ad-buyers and marketers), Disney says they have 157M monthly active users of their ad-supported content (of which 112M are in the US). What counts as "active"? Watching content for more than 10 seconds. Lol. [CNBC]
- In a clear battle between two of the worst ideas in recent memory – certainly since the removal of headlines (which was quickly reversed) – Xitter is apparently considering removing timestamps from the timeline and also charging new users $8 to sign up. May the worst idea win! [Fortune]
- Another day, another Nintendo Switch 2 render. [91mobiles]
- "How to delete Facebook" and related queries are surging in the wake of Meta's content moderation shift announcement. That sure is a lot of "virtue signaling". [TechCrunch]
- Google announced that it's partnering with The Linux Foundation to create a new initiative to broaden the financial and technical support of Chromium. It's sort of a strange, nebulous announcement which seems more to be a signal to the government just how vital Google is to the project, which, of course, underpins (and benefits from) Chrome. [9to5Google]
- Lastly, thanks to my friends (and former colleagues) JZ and Jake (who now run Character, a hands-on seed fund) for the (very kind) shout-out on their (very fun) podcast – about 45:10 in – back atcha guys. [YouTube]
I Quote..."Senator, you get a chance to kick Mark Zuckerberg’s ass out there? Senator! Senator!"
-- Benny Johnson, after Markwayne Mullin, a US Senator from Oklahoma, revealed that Zuckeberg had been texting him to "come down there and roll with him" (Mullin is a former mixed martial arts fighter and we're all well aware of Zuckerberg's interest in the sport). The actual headline from the chat, however, is that Mullin says Zuckerberg was actually visiting with Donald Trump the day before he announced the content moderation changes for Meta. That's not just a heads-up, that's the white glove service version of a heads up.
I Spy...I missed it yesterday, but it was the 18th anniversary of the Apple TV announcement. Oh, and a certain other device that Regis Philbin simply could not wrap his head around. "Nah, I don't like it."
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