AVIATION

Pining for Panda Express?

We know the seven-month air travel freeze has you nostalgic for $8 water bottles, damp sandwiches, and leg cramps. Good news: Those dreams could come true courtesy of a new app. 

CommonPass, which was created by tech nonprofit The Commons Project and the World Economic Forum, will be used on a trial basis on Cathay Pacific flights between Hong Kong and Singapore today. Later in the month, United will test it out on flights between Newark and London’s Heathrow. 

What CommonPass does

It takes countries’ wildly divergent requirements for air travel safety and lets passengers demonstrate they’re good to go—in most cases, by testing negative for Covid-19. 

• It could solve a major obstacle to flying in the Covid era. Those different protocols for proving you’re virus-free have caused confusion for both travelers and airlines, and everyone from the industry to the CDC has been calling for a global, uniform system. 

How it works: Passengers get tested at CommonPass-supported labs, then upload their results to the app. If you’re negative, the app spits out a QR code you can then wield at Newark to certify you aren’t carrying the virus. 

Or at least...you weren’t when you got tested. Critics have pointed out holes in the CommonPass plan, including 1) the possibility of getting infected after being tested and 2) the tests still aren’t 100% accurate. 

• Plus, it’s hard to overstate the power of the heebie-jeebies. People are reluctant to travel by plane these days, testing app or no testing app. 
• Still, it’s a potential jump-start for the sputtering air travel sector, which has been the subject of intense emergency aid negotiations these past few days. 

Zoom out: Airports and airlines are spinning up their own testing schemes as safety-improving- and heebie-jeebie-reducing measures. Airports in Oakland and Hartford, CT,  are opening their own testing centers, while Hawaiian Airlines is offering passengers at-home saliva tests for $150. 

WORKPLACE

Slack Hits the Lab

Workplace communication tool Slack was handed a golden opportunity when companies went remote in March. Since then, it’s been experimenting with new features to help it meet the moment. 

It unveiled a few of them yesterday at its Frontiers conference. 

• Collaboration: Because swapping Homer GIFs with your coworkers isn’t distracting enough, Slack is making it easier for you to message someone outside your company. The goal is to allow business partners to collaborate more efficiently. 
• Stories: Slack’s adding a Stories feature by the end of 2020, because of course it is. “There was a joke going around that soon all software will have it,” CEO Stewart Butterfield told The Verge, but “...it’s an idea that’s time has come.”
• Sneakers: Not a typo. Footwear brand Cole Haan and Slack announced a collab on limited-edition sneakers, which you can see in the image above. Thoughts?

Zoom out: Slack is in a software scrum with Microsoft and Google, both of which are releasing new features or rebranding to capture your company’s internal communications budget.

MACROECONOMY

A Rise in Extreme Poverty Reverses Decades of Progress

Yesterday, the World Bank said an additional 88 million to 115 million people will fall into extreme poverty this year due to the pandemic.

Why it matters: Because it marks the first uptick in extreme poverty in about 20 years. Powerful economic growth in countries like China and India allowed hundreds of millions of people to raise their living standards over the past couple of decades.

• Extreme poverty is defined as living on an income of $1.90 or less a day, or ~$700/year.

What’s driving the reversal? A greater number of city residents are falling into extreme poverty, whereas before the pandemic it was mostly concentrated in rural areas. The World Bank also reported a larger share of extreme poverty in middle-income countries and among people with higher education levels. 

Big picture: As progress in eliminating extreme poverty suffers its worst setback in decades, the richest North Americans have already recovered most of their wealth lost during the pandemic, according to a new report from Wealth-X.

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VIDEOGAMES

Twitch Is Doing Exstreamly Well

Audiences watched 7.46 billion hours of live-streamed content in Q3, according to a new report from streaming software company Streamlabs. 

• For some context, there are 876,000 hours in a century. That means roughly 8,447 centuries of content was consumed across all streaming platforms in just three months. 

Twitch put the team on its back 

The Amazon-owned behemoth, which is primarily used to watch videogame streams, accounted for 63% of total hours watched and 91% of hours streamed. After Microsoft’s Mixer shut down in July, YouTube (5.5%) and Facebook (3.4%) are the only other challengers on Twitch’s radar. 

• When Microsoft pulled the plug on Mixer, it encouraged its viewers to move over to Facebook Gaming. Instead, Twitch’s viewership jumped 15%, as most of Mixer’s big-name streamers, like Ninja, returned to the market leader.  

Zoom out: Total hours watched on Twitch actually fell in Q3 compared to the previous quarter, when widespread lockdowns were in effect. But year-over-year, its streaming numbers are healthier than a quinoa bowl, up 91%.

SOCIAL MEDIA

The Best Thing to Happen to Ocean Spray Since Cran-Apple

If you caught someone actually smiling while looking at their phone recently, chances are they were watching the TikTok video of a man cruising on a skateboard, mouthing the lyrics to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” while sipping Ocean Spray juice. 

The backstory: Nathan Apodaca, who goes by 420DoggFace208 on TikTok, first posted the video in September. It went megaviral, racking up over 26.9 million views on TikTok and countless more across other social media platforms. 

• Fleetwood Mac drummer Mick Fleetwood and Ocean Spray CEO Tom Hayes both jumped on the trend by posting similar videos of themselves vibing out. 
• Then, on Tuesday, Ocean Spray gave Apodaca a truck for his role as the company’s unexpected brand ambassador. 

It was a windfall for everyone involved

Last week, Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” had its best streaming week ever, the #oceanspray tag on TikTok has over 25 million views (the video didn’t even use that hashtag), and Apadoca got a new, cranberry red Nissan Titan PRO-4X.

Bottom line: This is one of the most concrete examples of TikTok’s ability to manufacture celebrities and drive cultural moments. Every brand is hoping they’re the next Ocean Spray.

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Eli Lilly shares jumped after it requested emergency use authorization from the FDA for its antibody treatment for Covid-19.
• Facebook said it will halt political ads in the U.S. after the polls close on Election Day. 
• Citigroup was fined $400 million over risk management issues.
• Ruby Tuesday filed for bankruptcy.
• Google defended itself to the Supreme Court against Oracle’s claims of copyright infringement.
• Dispo, David Dobrik’s social media app, nabbed a $4 million seed round led by Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian’s fund.

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Important for all of us: How to make video calls as good as face-to-face.

Choose your dive.

• Shallow dive: A colorized snowball fight from 1896
• Medium dive: An excellent guide to different fonts
• Deep dive: How Flash Games shaped the modern video game industry.

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FROM THE CREW

Brew's Bookshelf

Every other Thursday, Brew’s Bookshelf brings you a selection of our favorite business-related reads. Here are some new releases we're excited about.

• How I Built This by Guy Raz distills the best lessons in entrepreneurship from NPR’s hit podcast. 
• If Then by historian Jill Lepore tells the forgotten tale of the Simulmatics Corporation, a Cold War-era tech company.
• Blood and Oil by WSJ reporters Bradley Hope and Justin Scheck lifts the curtain on Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s controversial crown prince. 
• The Secret Life of Groceries by Benjamin Lorr describes the human costs of stocking and running an American supermarket.
• The Biggest Bluff shares writer and psychology Ph.D Maria Konnikova’s unconventional journey of hacking her way to professional poker leagues.

GUESS THE LOGO

One company recently switched its visual branding from the juicy-looking strawberries on the left to the...we're not really sure what on the right. Can you name it? 

Source: Can't tell you that yet

GUESS THE LOGO ANSWER

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