💊 Elon fights back, Snapchat sinks, and the evolution of home robots
Also, Ilya Sutskever is after the CGI and Spotify’s latest feature
Welcome to Tech Pills, the weekly newsletter about technology, innovation and startups. My name is Jose, and you can follow me on LinkedIn. Let’s begin!
⚫ X goes dark in Brazil after the company refused to name a legal representative for the social platform in the country. Elon Musk didn’t budge after Brazil’s Supreme Court’s last warning. As expected in any conflict involving Musk, the reactions are diverse. Brazil is X's 6th biggest market globally with about 21.5 million users, according to Statista.
On Tuesday, Starlink, also owned by Elon, refused to comply with the ruling and block X until the freeze on its Brazilian bank accounts is lifted.
A few days later, Musk decided to evacuate SpaceX employees and advise against travel to Brazil for work or leisure.
Users attempting to access X through VPNs can be fined up to $9,000.
📈 Bluesky fishes in troubled water, reporting 2,000,000 new users in the last days. They reached the top of the free iOS app ranking in Brazil. The CEO of the company, Jay Graber, encouraged Brazil’s choice and used the occasion to remind that the platform aims to create an open social network. This open-source social app was opened to the public back in February. As of today, the estimation of active users in Bluesky is over 6 million.
🧵 They aren’t the only ones picking up X’s users, in this post we can see how Threads is gaining ground after the latest controversies surrounding the platform. As of July 2024, Threads is the 3rd most downloaded app on iOS and the 7th on Android. There’s a mist of a lack of activity in Threads and a dodgy way of counting Instagram users as active users. However, the number of downloads is, in principle, unbiased and reliable data of measuring the trend of an app:
📉 On the contrary, Snapchat plans to make changes. Despite hitting a record in annual revenue, its stock value dropped by 48%. They have a slower ad growth compared to competitors, and that is something investors don’t like. To revert the situation, they are testing a simplified version to enhance accessibility and attract older users. Evan Spiegel, CEO and founder, wants to be cautious because they made design mistakes in the past. Despite having over 850 million users, the company struggles with profitability
He also announced new ad placements to boost the struggling ad growth. They want to put ads next to messages, this feature is named “Sponsored Snaps”, and will be in the Chat tab. These ads are shown as unread messages, and positioned above personal chats. Additionally, advertisers will soon be able to promote locations within Snapchat’s Map tab. Evan Spiegel is an expert in design, but in my opinion, I don’t think shoving ads to users is a good strategy to revert a negative trend. Only time will tell.
🤖 Isn’t it curious how little home robots have evolved over the last few years despite the technical development? In this interesting article published by TechCrunch, we can read some of the causes. Seems like the robotics industry is targeting manufacturing. Maybe because a B2B business model is more lucrative. There is an exception though, vacuums seem to be pretty successful; perhaps for focusing in a single task. In my opinion, they are forgetting about smart speakers (with Alexa dominating the market). I think they can be considered robots and we just take for granted how smart they are.
📺 YouTube restricts teens' access to certain videos about fitness. This decision follows expert warnings about the harmful impact of such content. Although teens can still view these videos, YouTube's algorithms no longer promote related material. The platform introduces this change globally, aiming to protect young users from developing negative self-image due to repeated exposure. Experts emphasize the need for guidelines to help teens maintain healthy comparisons while they navigate their identities.
🍏 Apple warms up for the official presentation of the iPhone 16. The event is scheduled for next Monday, the 9th of September. There are more products in the agenda, like Apple Watch Series 10 or the AirPods 4. There are also rumors about new Mac models. What is guaranteed, whether we like it or not, is that AI will have a strong presence at this event. I’ll break down the most significant information in next week’s post.
Innovation & Startups
🔐 Ilya Sutskever, co-founder of OpenAI, launches a new AI startup called Safe Superintelligence, and raises $1 billion in funding. The company, known as SSI, aims to develop safe artificial intelligence systems that exceed human capabilities. To be fair, the name is sort of self explanatory, they clearly didn’t waste time brainstorming names for the company. So far, they employ ten people and plan to hire top talent while focusing on research and development. It’s already valued in $5 billion, attracted investments from major firms like Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital.
🎵 Spotify rolls out its evolving playlist. This personalized playlist adapts throughout the day based on listening habits. Initially introduced in English speaking markets, it now supports 14 additional languages. Daylist, which is the name of this new feature, updates its title and tracks leveraging user data to suggest music at different times.
🪄 The new beta of iOS 18.1 introduces the AI-powered Clean Up tool. This feature removes unwanted objects in images, similar to Google's Magic Eraser. It uses smart detection to isolate elements, then removes them and fills the background seamlessly. Clean Up understands overlapping subjects, ensuring important people remain intact. This beta version is expected to improve before the official release later this year.
📱 If you’re considering getting the new Pixel 9, this review from The Verge could come in handy. It doesn’t include a telephoto lens, but doesn’t make much difference. The performance is significantly better than previous models, and Google promises seven years of OS updates. It’s well positioned to finally compete with Samsung and Apple, something very expected in the Android world.
Meme of the Week
I have a secret love affair with Snapchat. Always have, my Snapchat memories go back 8yrs! I remember when I thought Evan was crazy for not selling. I think he got an offer for $3B from Zuckerberg? But I’ve never used it to scroll. It’s always just been to send stupid stuff to friends/fam. My nieces use - next gen - but they don’t scroll either; it’s all TikTok for them. So yeah … I can see how monetizing is a challenge for them but perhaps I’m not a typical user? I just find their other content very click-baity