A week before yesterday’s launch of the Fire Phone, Amazon sent all of the attendees a copy of the children’s book “Mr. Pines Purple House” with a note from Jeff Bezos stating: I think you’ll agree that the world is a better place when things are a little bit different. Beyond the book, the first […]
Daily Update: Amazon’s PR Runup, Box Acquires Streem, Priceline Acquires OpenTable
Good morning, Two acquisitions and anticipation for a big announcement – there’s always something interesting in tech! On to the update: Amazon’s Press Release Runup Amazon is doing something interesting in the runup to tomorrow’s announcement, which most expect to be a Kindle smartphone: they are effectively pre-announcing multiple features that will likely be sellingSubscribe […]
Daily Update: Twitter’s World Cup Starter Kits, Amazon’s Dangerous Tactics, LINE Partners with Salesforce
Good morning, It’s World Cup day! I couldn’t be more excited (even if I shouldn’t be) – I even have a World Cup related update. On to the update: Twitter’s World Cup Starter Kits Twitter is trying out some interesting new features designed to drive engagement during the World Cup. From Alexis Madrigal at theSubscribe […]
Daily Update: Alibaba Buys Out UCWeb, Dropbox Buys MobileSpan, Will Microsoft Undercut AWS on Price?
Good morning, I forgot to link in yesterday’s update, but in case you missed it I wrote a piece on Stratechery defending Uber’s $18.2 billion valuation. To be clear, I’m not saying that Uber is guaranteed to succeed, but rather the size of the opportunity and the relative risk involved make it an obvious investmentSubscribe […]
Daily Update: Payments – Affirm, Amazon, and Facebook Messenger?
Good morning, Quite a bit happened today across a wide range of industries, but today’s update is all about payments. Max Levchin to be CEO of Affirm A few weeks ago I wrote The Problem with Payments which argued innovation in payments is hard because there isn’t much margin available if you’re building on topSubscribe […]
Daily Update: Google Blocked in China, WeChat Ecommerce, LINE IPO?
Good afternoon, I finally posted the WWDC piece I mentioned yesterday: Growing Apple at WWDC. While the number of updates were pretty incredible, I think they mostly fit into a coherent growth strategy. Check it out. I apologize again that today’s update is a little later (tomorrow’s probably will be as well). I’m very muchSubscribe […]
Daily Update: JD.com Prices IPO, Google’s SEC Letter, Patent Reform Dies
Good morning, My Surface piece got pushed to today, so keep an eye out for that later. On to today’s update: JD.com Prices IPO While tons of attention has been paid to Alibaba’s forthcoming IPO, JD.com, China’s 2nd-largest e-commerce company, has flown under the radar. From the BBC: Chinese online retailer JD.com has raised $1.8bnSubscribe […]
Yahoo and Tumblr, Alibaba IPO incoming, #AmazonCart
Good morning, Thanks for being subscribers! No site news, just on to the updates: Apple Retails and the Innovator’s Dilemma As Angela Ahrendts takes over Apple Retail, I explore why Apple Stores matter from a theoretical perspective. Link Yahoo and Tumblr It’s been a year since Yahoo acquired Tumblr, and the New York Times hasSubscribe […]
Daily Update: Net Neutrality, Google+, Amazon Earnings Follow-up
Good morning, A few site updates: For access members, I invited everyone who had updated their profile to confirm that they wanted Glassboard access to the private Glassboard. If you haven’t gotten an invitation, please double-check your profile; I’ll do another import later today. I’ve manually gone through the member lists to make sure everyoneSubscribe […]
Messaging: Mobile’s Killer App
Messaging is a completely new kind of social networking that is uniquely enabled by mobile.