Of Kings and Queens...👑👑
Was Netflix's latest hit predicted by an A.I. or did it come out of the blue🎯 and the latest console war has a supply line problem⚔️
If someone described a TV show to you as being ‘about a chess-playing orphaned girl during the cold war’, you wouldn’t instantly think it would be a smash hit for Netflix. Yet, The Queens’s Gambit almost matched The Irishman in first-month views, with over 60 million accounts streaming the title in the 30 days after release. The novel the show is based on is back in the top best-sold books 40 years after the original release, eBay is seeing a 250% increase in ‘chess set’ searches and the number of new users on chess.com has increased 500%.
While, at first, it would be hard to see how Netflix’s famous data-driven development recipe could have spearheaded this particular effort, breaking the work into pieces makes it a lot easier. The show is a well-made, aesthetically pleasing period drama about a sports underdog that transports the viewer into a romantic epoque of yesteryear. Add to that the performance of Anya Taylor Joy —ambiguous yet focused, emotional yet indifferent, both from Venus and Mars— and you have yourself a recipe that an AI could have determined to be successful with a lot of humans based on viewing habits.
It’s official, both front running consoles have now had their ‘biggest console launch ever’, with the PS5 seeing unprecedented demand and Sony committing to re-stocking the device at retailers before the end of the year. It’s come to light over the past week that shortages of both devices are, in part, the to bots and scalpers who acquired them in the hope that they could sell for a profit as big retailers stuck back up.
The other part being that, somehow, both Microsoft and Sony were ill-prepared, despite the hype both managed to generate over the past 9 months and regardless of the fact that they knew that a lot of people continued to be locked inside.
As an aside, not that anyone ever bought a console for the numbers on the spec sheet, despite the Xbox having roughly 20% more computing power on paper, it looks like the PS5 is matching it in almost all aspects when it comes to the real world. And this is happening after Microsoft started producing their device later in the year because they wanted to integrate AMD’s RDNA2 solution, which in theory should have given them even more of an edge. With yet another potential argument in their favor stripped away, it looks like Microsoft will be relying only on services and the migration to cloud gaming for this console generation, and the King will stay King.
Not a week goes by without a recommendation for the rich, and this one is no exception! This week we’re adding ‘the criminal’ on top of ‘the rich’ with the Yamaha 350Li being a favorite of this cohort, guaranteed to grant a speedy getaway, but in no way does it assure escape from an alphabet soup agency🤿🛵
It took 18 months for an individual to reach 100M followers on TikTok, the time the first YouTube account needed to reach this milestone was…14 years. The growth in social media doesn’t look to be stopping anytime soon and the stars of the platform, guided by purpose-build talent management companies, are finding new ways of monetizing their new-found popularity in new ways. If you think TikTok is successful now, wait until they add some serious built-in features for creators to make money, but while building this moat around them will prove important for both user acquisition, retention and as a revenue driver, it’s easy to understand why the company isn’t rushing things. It’s not like they have any real competition or anything…👨👨👦👨👧👦👩👩👧
While TikTok is taking their time in retaining and makes basically no effort in acquiring new ones past organic joiners, Snapchat cannot afford this strategy right now so they decided to give out $1M per day to whoever has the entertaining post each day. ‘Spotlight’ will use an algorithm that Snap’s keeping to themselves in order to determine who gets the cash, but we do know it includes metrics like engagement, unique views, viewing time, and the number of times a post was marked as favorite by users. This big-spender move is pretty risky for the company at a time like this, but I guess desperate times and all that…💸💸
I’m not saying we should be grateful for the situation that we’re in, but the ongoing quarantine has forced media companies to create new products in areas they wouldn’t have otherwise gone in. Disney+ has gone the way of recording studio sessions with music artists in order to satisfy their subscribers’ desire for new content in a time when little can be produced. It’s true that restrictions breed creativity, but it’s hard to self-impose restrictions when Starbucks is still open🎶📺
Here are some OnlyFans stats some will be surprised to hear. In the past 4 years since its creation, the site paid over $2Bn to creators, $500M net revenue for themselves, 100 members earned more than $100M in earnings, they raised no outside money and they’re profitable; in a world of Ubers and Airbnbs, this latter one is very much laudable. Who would have said, sex still sells in 2020👙💰
As soon as the ongoing apocalypse is over, get ready to eat some level-up mushrooms…
Is the quarantine getting to your head yet? Why not start knitting…
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