What I wrote last week
The importance of reading footnotes
Interesting articles on Business
Facebook Says Its Rules Apply to All. Company Documents Reveal a Secret Elite That’s Exempt. The sentence “we’re not going what we say publicly we are” can be applied to any company to some extent. The problem for Facebook is that the trust-eroding incidents happen way too often for a company with grandiose ambitions. Facebook wants us to trust them and use some of the new services for Facebook Pay, but how can trust be formed when stuff like this happens? I am sure this won’t be the last time that Facebook got a PR black eye.
Intuit Agrees to Buy Mailchimp for About $12 Billion. “Mailchimp, established in 2001, is based in Atlanta and is still owned by founders Ben Chestnut and Dan Kurzius, according to its website. The company, which hasn’t taken any outside funding, began as a web-design agency and ran an email-marketing service on the side that later became its focus. Today it also offers other digital-ad services and customer-relationship- management tools. Already popular among small businesses, Mailchimp became something of a household name in 2014, when it advertised on the first season of the hit podcast “Serial.” The company now serves 2.4 million monthly active users, including 800,000 paying customers. Half of its customers are outside the U.S. It had about $800 million in annual revenue last year, a 20% rise from the year earlier.”
Square Offers Sellers and Consumers a New Checkout Experience with Cash App Pay. It’s a natural progression in my opinion. Square is competing with PayPal to be the Super App for consumer financial needs as well as the go-to partner for commerce. PayPal has enabled payments by QR Code and mobile wallet for a while. Now, Square and Cash App have it too.
Facebook Knows Instagram Is Toxic for Teen Girls, Company Documents Show. “For the past three years, Facebook has been conducting studies into how its photo-sharing app affects its millions of young users. Repeatedly, the company’s researchers found that Instagram is harmful for a sizable percentage of them, most notably teenage girls. Expanding its base of young users is vital to the company’s more than $100 billion in annual revenue, and it doesn’t want to jeopardize their engagement with the platform. The features that Instagram identifies as most harmful to teens appear to be at the platform’s core. The research has been reviewed by top Facebook executives, and was cited in a 2020 presentation given to Mr. Zuckerberg, according to the documents.” Guess what Facebook chose to do? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Adobe jumps into e-commerce payments business in challenge to Shopify. The race to be the force that powers eCommerce features some of the biggest firms in the world: Amazon, Walmart, Shopify, PayPal, Adobe and Square. If you notice, the first three have fulfillment capabilities. PayPal bought Happy Returns. So it’s only a matter of time the latter three build out their own fulfillment muscle.
Amazon Is Doing It. So Is Walmart. Why Retail Loves ‘Buy Now, Pay Later.’ “Shoppers spend more at Macy’s when they use installment plans offered through Klarna Bank AB, Macy’s CEO Jeff Gennette said on a recent earnings call. Klarna also is helping the retailer attract younger customers, he said. A desire to boost loan approvals was among the reasons Walmart in 2018 decided to end its decadeslong credit-card partnership with Synchrony Financial. Citigroup Inc. saw a sevenfold increase in the dollar amount of credit-card purchases converted to installment loans in July, compared with the same month a year prior, said Gonzalo Luchetti, head of Citigroup’s U.S. consumer bank.”
Other stuff I find interesting
One Woman’s Mission to Rewrite Nazi History on Wikipedia. I hope down the line, years from now, there will be folks who come across what Ksenia Coffman did and be thankful that she did. Same way as I do today.
What Makes Work Meaningful — Or Meaningless
Stats
“Close to half of all new U.S. gun buyers since the beginning of 2019 have been women”
55% of shoppers start their 2021 holiday season shopping before Thanksgiving
Minh Quang Duong 