After two years of pandemic-induced demand and supply shocks to the system, we are getting our first good look at the new normal. At the same time, the stock market’s bout of turbulence has impacted wide swaths of the tech sector. Many are now connecting the two developments and declaring the start of some kind of pandemic-induced tech recession. History is being rewritten, and current developments are being misdiagnosed.

The pandemic was…

Based on regulators’ and lawmakers’ comments, the tech giants are unstoppable because they don’t have to worry about competition. Meanwhile, a long list of smaller competitors are said to face major growth hurdles due to built-in advantages that the giants have given themselves.

The past few months have shown such narratives about competition are crumbling apart. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like those tasked with ensuring proper competition is present in markets are…

Elon Musk Buys Twitter

It’s been quite the April for Elon Musk. Within just three weeks, Musk went from disclosing that he had spent months quietly amassing a 9% stake in Twitter, to accepting and then turning down a Twitter board seat, to finally having Twitter’s board accept his hostile takeover bid for $44 billion.

Musk buying Twitter is a big deal for a few reasons:

Twitter finds itself between a rock and a hard place. With Elon Musk now as its largest shareholder, Twitter’s CEO and its board are wholly unprepared for handling the accompanying unknown. This became visible this past week as Twitter made one questionable move after another. The uncomfortable truth now needs to be discussed: Twitter has a leadership problem.

In last week’s Inside Orchard essay, we discussed the two issues that Musk…

Earlier today, Elon Musk revealed that he had quietly amassed a 9% stake in Twitter valued at nearly $4 billion. The news kicked off a whirlwind of speculation as to Musk’s plans. While the investment was deemed passive, that distinction has already proved meaningless given some of Musk’s recent tweets.

It’s not likely that Musk bought a nearly 10% stake in Twitter because he thought it was a good investment. It is…

For the past two years, the European Commission has been formulating a series of regulations aimed at curtailing the tech giants in its 27 member states. Last week, the Digital Markets Act reached a finalized draft stage. While additional steps are needed before the end is reached, we are at a point where the major points of contention have been determined with implementation set to begin later this year. We are seeing…

While much of Silicon Valley remains infatuated with crypto, NFTs, and the metaverse, Wall Street has been lusting over electric vehicles (EVs). In an industry that has experienced a major sales contraction due to supply issues, EV growth of nearly 90% in 2021 has been positioned as nirvana. Legacy auto makers look at EV as an answer to finding relevancy while EV startups are finding it easier than ever to raise new…

In the weeks following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, two wars have been waged:

The economic war against Russia is being conducted solely because of Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine. We have seen an unprecedented response from the corporate world in pausing / halting operations in Russia indefinitely. While most of the announcements have been publicly tied…

One of the clearest trends unfolding in tech has been the gradual shift from brick and mortar to e-commerce. However, there is one question associated with the shift that Amazon appears to be struggling to answer. What happens to brick and mortar in an e-commerce world? Some of the world’s largest retailers (Target, Walmart, and Costco) consider their web of physical stores to be an asset when competing with Amazon. Given its…

Ten years ago, the Arab Spring showed us the power found with digital town squares. Social media could be leveraged to organize both people and information like never before. A few years later, the Facebook / Cambridge Analytica scandal opened society’s eyes to how our data can be weaponized to alter how we interact and engage with digital town squares.

With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we are seeing the start of a…

The Super Bowl serves as an annual reminder of what live sports used to be. While approximately 100 million people still tune into the Super Bowl, the motivation behind watching has changed. A declining number of watchers are even aware of which teams are playing each year. The Super Bowl is instead still able to grab interest by reminding people what it was like to have everyone watch the same live event…

Last week, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg sounded the alarm. TikTok was successfully taking engagement share away from his most-prized pieces of digital real estate: Facebook and Instagram. What had been theorized about for some time is now being discussed out in the open, and we may see others follow Zuckerberg in sending out SOS signals. Companies ranging from Spotify and Netflix to Roku are likely feeling TikTok pressure to some extent. Management teams…

For the first time, Spotify may be discovering the limits of all press is good press. Some look at the current Spotify vs. Neil Young vs. Joe Rogan saga as a battle involving freedom of speech. Others think it’s more of a censorship dilemma. With Spotify choosing to platform Rogan despite Young’s ultimatum, a move that everyone saw coming, the company finds itself taking on a new kind of pushback - one…

It may be tempting for an outsider to dismiss gaming as a hobby for Microsoft. Doing so would make it difficult to understand the company’s multi-decade bet on gaming. Reported within the same business segment as Windows and Surface, gaming is about twice as large of a business as Surface when looking at revenue. One can argue from a mindshare perspective that the difference is much larger. Prior to Microsoft correctly pulling…

Spotify and Roku have a lot more in common than meets the eye (and ear). Both companies are fascinated with advertising-driven business models in which listener and viewer time and engagement is monetized via delivering ads. Roku is much further along in its advertising pursuit. Nearly 90% of Roku’s revenue is generated by ads while just 10% of Spotify revenue is from ads. However, both companies have signaled that advertising is where…

The new year started out with a bang in the digital media space. Last week, the New York Times announced that it was buying The Athletic, widely considered to be the most intriguing sports media start-up, for $550 million in cash.

The deal does not look to come at a time of strength for The Athletic. Rumors from just a few months ago pegged The Athletic as seeking $750 million in a…

Whenever a new calendar year begins, there is an urge to press reset on the news cycle and existing strategies and plans. This doesn’t make much sense considering how, excluding new laws and taxes that may go into effect on January 1, the new year doesn’t usher in changes in marketplace conditions. Nevertheless, there is a psychological benefit found with using the new year to remove oneself from all of the noise…

It is too easy to get caught in the weeds of a topic and in the process lose sight of the big picture. That scenario is occurring with both NFTs and crypto.

At a very simple level, the promise found with NFTs and crypto is said to be about empowering people. Instead of figuring out if NFTs and crypto meet that promise, there is more value found in understanding why such a…

The more I think about smart homes, the more I’m convinced many of the concepts and ideas that have come to describe the phrase don’t make sense. Examining the smart home’s most publicized “chapters,” one is likely left more confused than anything else.

The late 2010s saw the smart speaker mirage play itself out in the home. Breathless press coverage for a new paradigm shift ushered in by voice computing in the…

YouTube’s history can be broken into eras symbolized by certain creators. Around 2010, creators like the Shaytards pushed the idea of vlogging. A few videos resembling something of a video diary were uploaded each week for the world to watch. The concept was an evolutionary offshoot of reality TV kicked off years earlier by shows like Survivor.

In 2015, Casey Neistat took the vlogging concept in a new direction by uploading a…