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The rise of restaurant subscriptions

The Future. Restaurants are jumping on a growing trend and offering monthly subscriptions to diners. The move aims to ensure steadier cash inflow and entice loyal customers with specialized deals and offerings. As subscription models get more and more popular, those who join the trend may be on to something — we could be on the cusp of a whole new way of eating.

Subbed to the sub
Restaurants are trying out a new business model — subscriptions.

Large chains like Panera Bread and P.F. Chang’s are experimenting with subscription models to lock in steadier revenue and customer visits.
Subscriptions include everything from unlimited drinks to free delivery.
Even Michelin-starred restaurants like Gravitas are joining the fun: Gravitas Supper Club offers subscribers a three-course takeout meal for $130 per month.

Elsewhere, bars like El Lopo provide members with their favorite dishes each time they come in, as well as the ability to gift a free drink to anyone in the bar.

Trending
The subscription model has been a growing trend as of late. According to Rocket Money, the average American had 6.7 subscriptions in 2022, up from 4.2 in 2019.

It’s the same strategy that skyrocketed Amazon’s success. By pioneering its Prime subscription model, the tech giant completely upended the world of delivery and became one of the biggest businesses in the world with its promise of two-day shipping — though some may say it’s taken things too far.

Still, can restaurants do the same? Perhaps, but only time will tell.

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February 23, 2023

Melody Song

Business

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Snapchat content is getting less profitable

The Future. Numerous news publishers are reporting that their Snapchat content profitability is taking a steady nosedive. As platforms like TikTok continue to siphon away ad dollars, audiences, and revenue, Snapchat — and other companies like Meta, Google, and more — may need to take a long hard look at their strategies if they want to keep their content partners happy.

Numbers go down
Some news publishers are finding that their Snapchat content is getting less and less profitable.

A digital media company launched two new shows with Snap (custom, video-heavy content that required lots of editing), but saw virtually no views.

From August 2022 to January 2023, they also noticed that monthly revenue from Snapchat decreased by about 60%.

Another news publisher noted that their company’s revenue was “substantially down” year over year in a trend that started in the middle of 2022.

Cost cutting
All this comes after Snap’s layoffs at the end of August last year. Like the rest of the tech industry, Snap has been shedding staff — about 20% — and pulling back on earnings calls. Meanwhile, it’s had a host of leadership changes, with top execs leaving one after the other.

Still, not all news publishers are struggling to stay afloat. PinkNews has seen continued success with its content. But for smaller or even mid-sized publishers to make content that’s worth the effort, it’s an uphill battle. And the barrier to entry for repackaging content onto TikTok is much, much lower.

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February 16, 2023

Melody Song

Media

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The online retail problem

The Future. In the last decade, Amazon and other megaretailers have championed the affordable abundance movement: get practically anything delivered to you anywhere for cheap. But in pursuit of this, internet retail has significantly sacrificed quality control, and consumers can only take so much. As online retail gets harder and harder to stomach, we may be on the brink of a buy-local renaissance.

Savvy no more
Online shopping is getting harder and harder to navigate.

Internet retail is getting overrun by third-party sellers, noisy ads, and sketchy sponsored products that push relevant well-reviewed options far down the page.

This type of decentralized, every-brand-for-themselves e-commerce has been popularized by Amazon and is now getting aped by competitors like Walmart and Target.

Today, it’s nearly impossible to be an informed, much less savvy consumer — what Amanda Mull from The Atlantic is declaring “The Death of the Smart Shopper.”

Buyer beware
“Understanding what it is you’re buying, where it came from, and what you can expect of it is a fool’s errand,” writes Mull.

Many of us have had this experience — buying something online from a seemingly reputable site and receiving something off-brand or clearly secondhand.

Then there’s yet another, more insidious layer. It’s near impossible for consumers to properly understand a product’s supply chain in order to avoid, for example, buying things made through forced labor. Yikes.

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February 14, 2023

Melody Song

Business

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The battle of the Shorts

The Future. These days, it seems like everyone’s trying to become TikTok. Most recently, YouTube Shorts just went live with its creator revenue sharing program, splitting ad revenue with creators nearly half-half. With TikTok dealing with backlash for creator pay, this just might be the foot in the door that Google needs to compete.

Your move, Tok
YouTube Shorts is ramping up its attempt to take on TikTok.

The online video-sharing platform is offering new financial incentives to content creators to lure them away from TikTok.
Starting February 1, creators that are part of YouTube’s Partner Program (those with over 1,000 subscribers and 10 million views) can monetize their videos with ad revenue sharing.
YouTube will give 45% of advertising revenue on in-feed ads to creators, pocketing 55% for itself.

The clock’s Tik-ing…
Why is this a big deal? Well, TikTok has been siphoning ad dollars away from major tech platforms like Google and Facebook for years now. From Instagram Reels to YouTube Shorts, everyone’s been trying to reclaim their audience.

With TikTok’s seemingly unstoppable success, it’ll be a tough uphill battle. But revenue sharing may turn out to be the best way to take a shot at TikTok. The social media platform has been criticized for its poor payment sharing. Its $1 billion Creator Fund paid some TikTokers mere cents, while TikTok Pulse (the platform’s version of AdSense) hasn’t been that successful.

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February 2, 2023

Melody Song

Business

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Vrbo cracks down on parties

The Future. Online short-term rental platform Vrbo is cracking down on parties ahead of the Super Bowl with ‘anti-party tech.’ After Airbnb codified its anti-party ban last year, it seems that rental platform marketplaces are washing their hands of parties once and for all. But must the party go on? With Vrbo and Airbnb out, this may open up a space in the market for a new, party-focused platform to emerge — if they can crack the code.

Shut it down
Vrbo wants to press pause on Super Bowl parties.

This week, the company announced the national rollout of its ‘event prevention’ technology that identifies potentially disruptive parties.
The tech has already been implemented for 12 months in its pilot phase and stopped ~500 unauthorized event bookings, saving Vrbo hosts over $2 million in party-related damages.
Vrbo has also implemented several other measures to ensure hosts are ready for the flood of visitors who will be traveling to Phoenix for the Super Bowl.

Peace and quiet

Vrbo isn’t the first rental marketplace to enforce a no-party and event ban. Last year, Airbnb officially codified its party ban, prohibiting “disruptive parties and events, including open-invite gatherings.”

The enforcement of this policy has been ensured by Airbnb through special holiday anti-party measures, a 24-hour safety line, a Neighborhood Support line, and even a partnership with Vrbo to share information on repeat “party house” offenders in the US. They’re not playing around.

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January 31, 2023

Melody Song

Culture

The rise of NewsTok

The Future. In the search for new audiences, news publishers like The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post are flocking to TikTok. And many are getting creative with their Tok strategy. From hiring lovable personalities to creating weekly series, the future of journalism might be short-form.

News flash
News publishers are figuring out TikTok.

39 out of Comscore’s top 50 news publishers created a TikTok account over the last two years.
CNN has released an average of 13 videos per week, with 1.3 million followers and 11.3 million likes.
The Washington Post has a series dubbed “Misinformation Mondays,” which combats inaccurate news stories.

Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V
But the move to TikTok isn’t as simple as you may think. News publishers can’t just copy and paste their web or video content and expect it to go viral. Instead, many are realizing the importance of investing in native and authentic content strategy.

LADbible, for example, posts with a mix of user-generated and original content, testing out different tones with their research panel. BBC, on the other hand, saw lots of engagement around big newsworthy stories like the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II.

But The Washington Post just might take the cake — its ‘dorky dad’ approach, spearheaded by Dave Jorgenson, has earned the platform over 1.5 million followers and counting.

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January 26, 2023

Melody Song

Entertainment

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Tough times for traditional TV

The Future. Traditional television companies are in limbo, grappling with one of their most challenging years. From mass consolidation to channel selloffs, the recent transition to streaming has thrown the business models of TV’s biggest firms into disarray. Meanwhile, firms that opted out of the streaming wars, like Fox Corp, have seemed to fare okay — at least, with investors. Perhaps it can be best to stick with your bread and butter.

Telly blues
Television had one of its roughest years ever in 2022.

Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney, and Comcast are all set to sell or combine with other media entities in the next few years.
Smaller TV companies are also having a rough go of it — Starz is up for sale, while AMC Networks is laying off 20% of its staff.
Meanwhile, Disney’s stock plunged to one of its lowest levels in 21 years last quarter due to losses from streaming.

Streaming struggles
Much of TV’s languishing comes from the transition to streaming. Many companies bet big on streaming to fill in for cord-cutting losses — but didn’t see that bet pay off. Everyone from Paramount to Comcast says they don’t expect their standalone streaming offerings to break even until 2024 or 2025.

Today, only two-thirds of US households pay for a cable, satellite, or fiber TV subscription, down from 85% in 2007.

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January 24, 2023

Melody Song

Business

The tool to outsmart ChatGPT

The Future. It’s no secret that AI-generated text is blowing up. Everyone from students to job applicants to employees has been wowed by the power of ChatGPT. But now, yet another tool has emerged — engineers are developing ways to detect text written by AI. Looks like you may have to write that history essay after all.

Double-check
Engineers are creating tech to screen for ChatGPT-generated text.

OpenAI has its own GPT-2 output detector model, which reportedly has a “relatively high detection rate.”
AI scientists at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab and the Harvard Natural Language Processing group created GLTR (Giant Language Model Test Room), which can detect if the text was written by a bot.
GPTZero, built by 22-year-old Princeton senior Edward Tian, can measure randomness in sentences and calculate the probability that the text was written by ChatGPT.
And even anti-cheating software Turnitin says it’s focused on detecting whether students are using ChatGPT for assignments.

Meanwhile, OpenAI is looking into ways of watermarking ChatGPT text with “an otherwise unnoticeable secret signal in its choices of words.”

Pl(AI)giarism
What does this mean for the AI-generated text world? Well, in the education realm, teachers may be heaving a sigh. After concerns over students accessing ChatGPT during school, NYC banned access to the program, citing “negative impacts on student learning.”

Still, things might not all be smooth sailing from here. At the rate at which AI technologies are progressing, who knows what will come next. Buckle up!

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January 24, 2023

Melody Song

Technology

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Twitter secures the bag after all

The Future. Despite doomsday warnings of Twitter’s downfall, the bird app seems to be doing alright after all. The company is reportedly scheduled to run dozens of content sponsorship deals and ads this year. While some may credit Musk with the turnaround, what it might actually reveal is that fears of reputational damage (associated with Elon-era Twitter) may be strong, but the draw of moolah is even stronger.

Bird is the word

Over three dozen news outlets, media companies, and sports leagues are reportedly planning on running content sponsorship deals on Twitter this year.

Nearly all major sports leagues (NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, NASCAR, PGA Tour, etc.) will be running content deals for regular games and big tournaments.
News outlets like The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Forbes, Condé Nast, and more are planning for deals around tentpole moments like CES and Pride Week.
Entertainment and TV companies (NBCU, Paramount, Disney) will run content alongside award shows, concerts, prime-time TV hits, and more.

The show Musk go on
Last year, many foretold the fall of Twitter when Elon Musk took the helm, and advertisers nearly immediately fled the platform in droves… but it seems that the tables may be turning.

For many, there’s simply too much dough left on the table to ditch Twitter entirely. Deals with participating content partners are lucrative, with opportunities to make incremental revenue on ad buys and monetize targeted video inventory.

As Sara Fischer writes for Axios, there’s “little financial downside” to staying with the platform.

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January 19, 2023

Melody Song

Business

AI meets mental health

The Future. ChatGPT, a large language model (LLM) created by OpenAI, has taken the internet by storm these past few weeks. Now, many people are harnessing it to help them out with their mental health. In the future, LLMs could be a powerful tool to assist IRL therapists struggling with growing demand… but there will be many kinks to work out first.

And how does that make you feel?
People are flocking to ChatGPT for mental health advice.

Users on Twitter like @jevakallio queried ChatGPT to act as a CBT therapist to help him feel better.
@michellehuang42 trained GPT on her childhood journal entries so she could engage in “real-time dialogue” with her inner child.
@sxtvik used the LLM as a mental health chatbot and reported results “better than any #MentalHealth chat I’ve ever used.”

People have even used AI to connect with and grieve the deceased.

Mental mayhem

The mental health crisis is a widespread and increasingly troubling problem. This year, according to a report from Ipsos’ Annual World Mental Health Day Survey, people ranked mental health (36%) higher than cancer (34%) as a top health concern for the first time ever.

Meanwhile, the therapist shortage is worsening as enormous demand outpaces the number of mental health professionals available. Hoping to fill the gap, there’s been a flurry of digital apps, teletherapy platforms, and chatbots in recent years looking to help out.

But, it’s important to note the many concerns that come with using AI for mental health. For one, there are bias and privacy issues associated with all forms of AI. And others have noted that bots are a poor replacement for the intimate, fulfilling relationship patients form with their therapists.

Whether you’re a proponent or detractor, one thing’s certain — we’ll have to tread carefully into the new era of LLMs.

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January 4, 2023

Melody Song

Technology