full image - Repost: E-commerce Industry News - Week of Feb 13th, 2023 (from Reddit.com, E-commerce Industry News - Week of Feb 13th, 2023)
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Hi r/ecommerce - I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry pretty closely for my Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter. Each week I post a summary recap of this week's top stories, which I cover in depth in the newsletter.STAT OF THE WEEK: 625 of Twitter's top 1,000 advertisers stopped spending on the platform as of January, bringing monthly revenue down from $127M to just over $48M. – According to Pathmatics. Meanwhile Amazon's ad business grew 19% YoY to $11.6B in Q4, while Meta reported its third straight revenue drop, and Alphabet posted only a 1% revenue growth to $76B.Shopify has been busy justifying their recent price increase with 100+ product updates and new features, as part of their Winter ‘23 Edition. See my first comment on this post for a list of highlights.Roku and DoorDash announced a multi-year partnership to give DoorDash businesses in US, Canada, and Mexico the ability to buy interactive shoppable ads and place click-to-order offers within the ad. The companies note that this is the first time a restaurant advertiser can partner with both a streaming company and food delivery platform to target, measure, and attribute TV streaming ads. Once a viewer clicks on a TV ad offer, they are sent a text message or e-mail directing them to the DoorDash app to redeem the promotion.Australian-based Openpay has gone into receivership — which is a court-appointed tool designed to assist creditors with recovering funds in default and help them avoid bankruptcy. It has also laid off 80 of its 140 employees. The restructuring company McGrathNicol is now working to sell assets, including the Openpay technology platform, which other BNPL firms have already expressed interest in acquiring.The U.S. Treasury released a report that identifies the potential downsides of having three cloud services providers — Amazon, Google, and Microsoft — dominate the market. The Treasury noted that concentration within a few cloud providers could expose financial services to physical or cyber risks. An attack on a single cloud provider could take down tens or hundreds of banks.Generative AI isn't so easy, as Google publicly learned this past week during its unofficial debut of Bard chatbot. The company posted an ad to Twitter showing off its natural-language AI model, except nobody bothered to fact check the ad! It was quickly revealed that Bard displayed false information about the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), claiming that the telescope took the very first pictures of a planet outside our own solar system. However, that honor actually belongs to the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in 2004.But that AI setback isn't stopping Chinese tech companies from launching their own versions of ChatGPT. JD Group is utilizing its Yanxi AI platform to create an industrial chat software known as ChatJD. Baidu announced its plans in January to launch an AI chatbot service similar to ChatGPT this March as a standalone application before gradually merging it into its search engine. Alibaba also said that it's currently working on a rival to ChatGPT that is being tested by employees.Apple is slowing down on its plans to launch a hardware subscription service. The iPhone subscription program was set to launch alongside the iPhone 13 in 2021 or the iPhone 14 in 2022, but suffered from “engineering and technical setbacks that have led to slow progress and missed deadlines.” It is, however, still in the works.In the meantime, Apple is also reportedly looking at launching a service that will enable iPhone customers to finance their purchases using the Apple Card. The difference between the two options is that the financing will simply split the cost of the phone across 12-24 months, whereas the hardware subscription would be a “yet-to-be-determined monthly fee that depends on which device the user chooses.”Fanatics, the sports e-commerce platform that recently raised $700M at a $31B valuation, is launching Fanatics Live later this year. The standalone livestream app and website will allow customers to buy, sell, and trade cards and collectibles through creator generated content and entertainment.BeVigil, a security search engine for mobile apps, uncovered a critical security flaw in 21 apps, which were identified to have 22 hardcoded Shopify API keys, exposing personally identifiable information to potential threats. If an attacker gains access to the hardcoded key, they can use it to access sensitive data or perform actions on behalf of the program, even if they are not authorized to do so.Shipt, a US delivery service owned by Target since 2017, announced LadderUp, a new accelerator program designed to support local small businesses that are looking to develop their e-commerce strategies. Merchants selected for the program will take part in an eight-week course about creating sustainable e-commerce businesses, marketing for e-commerce, and basic legal knowledge, including a course from Shopify.Alibaba's Cainiao Network announced a new partnership with Deutsche Post DHL Group to build the largest network of delivery lockers in Poland, giving them a foothold into one of Europe's fastest growing e-commerce markets. The two companies will invest $64.75M to build parcel lockers across Poland, and DHL will also take an undisclosed stake in Cainiao's Polish subsidiary as part of the deal.Microsoft shut down its metaverse team, which was only established four months ago and had about 100 employees. The team was focused on building interfaces and features in industrial settings, specifically to build interfaces for operating control systems in electrical power plants and robotics and transportation networks. But were there legs?PYMNTS research found that higher-income consumers favor digital wallets like Apple Pay, PayPal, and Google Pay, while BNPL is most popular among middle-income consumers for retail purchases. Which makes sense given that Apple Pay accounts for 44% of digital wallet market share and Apple users are higher income.Amazon has been testing Condition descriptors for used books and media, but forgot to tell sellers, who were surprised to see items described as “perfect” instead of “like new” and “good” instead of “very good”. After several days of sellers pleading on forums for Amazon to stop, the original condition fields began reappearing, but indicated that they may continue testing different conditions.India's Food Safety and Standards Authority is looking to enforce front-of-the-pack nutritional labeling to alert consumers about high fat, sugar, and salt foods. They will likely mandate online marketplaces to prominently display key health and nutritional alerts alongside the price for food items on their platforms.PayPal is pausing work on its stablecoin as regulators increase scrutiny of cryptocurrencies including a key partner in the project, Paxos Trust Co, which is responsible for the issuance of Binance’s BUSD, the third largest stablecoin on the market. PayPal hoped to debut the stablecoin in the coming weeks, but will delay that work as it seeks to understand the changing regulatory landscape for cryptocurrencies. “And it's gone.”Affirm is also sunsetting its cryptocurrency service, which it started in 2021 to let customers buy, sell, and hold cryptocurrencies. Both PayPal and Affirm (and many other fintechs) launched crypto initiatives in the late stages of the bull market, and are now feeling the pressure as Bitcoin and other crypto assets are down over 68% from their all time highs.Twitter began testing 4,000 character tweets called “long tweets” among Twitter Blue subscribers, which account for around 0.2% of users. Elon Musk has been hinting at plans to increase the tweet character limit for several months.In other Twitter news, the company delayed plans to shutdown its free API access and announced plans to take away blue checkmarks from people who have not paid for them.Zilch, a London-based BNPL provider, formed a partnership with StepChange, to integrate its debt advice tools into its platform and help recognize and make referrals to debt advice more effectively. Zilch CEO Philip Belamant said, “This partnership ensures we provide our customers with the very best support if they do fall behind on repayments – all for free.” So putting a Band-Aid on the wound they severed?Luna, Amazon's game streaming service, will lose over 50 games this month including classics like No More Heroes, Pong, and Missile Command. Amazon said that losing games is a normal thing for a platform and a way to keep their selection of games fresh. Or will they go the way of Google Stadia? A shut down which UK's Competition and Markets Authority are blaming on the merger between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard for making it harder for other cloud gaming services to offer a competitive game library.Pipe, an alternative financing platform that was last privately valued by investors at $2B, announced Luke Voiles as their new CEO, who joins the company after working as the general manager of Square Banking at Block. The appointment comes months after the company's three co-founders stepped down from their posts, after allegations surfaced that Pipe made $80M in loans to crypto mining companies that got written off when the companies went out of business.Meta is likely to cut more jobs this year, causing some staff to do “zero work” because managers have not been able to plan their schedules. The company is also reportedly undergoing a process called “flattening”, in which managers will be asked to start coding, designing, and doing research again. It was also announced today that Meta's chief business officer Marne Levine is leaving the company, stepping down later this month.In other layoff news… Alibaba Group is reducing its workforce by 11% at Daraz Group, eBay is laying off 500 employees, Amazon cut more than 300 jobs at Zappos, and Affirm laid off 19% of its workforce.Plus 9 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including Breef's $16M Series A round led by Greycroft.I hope you find this news recap helpful. See you next week!-PAULEditor of Shopifreaks
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