” AI, Streaming, and New Networks Dominate the Digital Conversation”
NETFLIX WANTS US TO WATCH ADS
It had been talked about almost from the beginning, and it finally arrived: Netflix started restricting the common practice of sharing accounts. A risky but necessary move, which other streaming giants will gradually follow. To mitigate the anticipated loss, various plans had already been prepared, some of which included the much-speculated advertising. In those early months, there was a lot of talk about decline, and even a crisis in the sector. However, the data for the second quarter leaves quite a bit of room for optimism.
$8.19 million in profits, a year-over-year growth of 2.7%, and, notably, 5.89 million new users. However, many of them may now be surprised to find that their subscribed plan has just been discontinued: the basic plan without ads is being eliminated.
A recent development in the sector has been directly related to content and its profitability: we are talking about the transfer of licenses between platforms. Through a surprising agreement, major HBO productions will also be available on Netflix. So far, only a few titles have been announced, all corresponding to somewhat older series, but this opens the way to new ways of monetizing productions by expanding their distribution.
META, THE PIONEER FALLING BEHIND
When in 2010 the Fincher-Sorkin duo released the Oscar-winning film about the creation of Facebook, they titled it “The Social Network,” in the singular.
Facebook was so dominant at that time that the title was perfect. That same year, Instagram was born, which, along with WhatsApp (2009), was later acquired by the now giant Meta. In just 13 years, the situation is radically different. But the current topic is not Elon Musk’s tortuous acquisition process, or the ups and downs with payments, etc…
THE NEW NETWORK EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
It’s a Twitter twin coming once again from Meta’s offices: we’re talking about Threads, the phenomenon
that managed to acquire over 100 million users in just 5 days, surpassing ChatGPT’s two-month record… And this despite the very staggered launch. Threads collects so much information that it does not comply with European legislation. The list is overwhelming (health, accounts, photos, history, usage data, diagnostics, contacts, location, purchases…)
USER DATA IS THE REAL TREASURE
Threads is a new app, built by the Instagram team, for sharing text updates and joining public conversations. But not only is it built by that team, much of its success is due to it being (very intelligently) fully connected with Instagram. Thus, it draws from its 1.3 billion users. For reference, Twitter ended 2022 with 368 million. Is it taking advantage of Twitter’s turmoil?
“Threads’ initial growth is stagnating, but the most important thing is that tens of millions of people are returning to this social network every day. And these figures are much higher than we initially expected,” says Meta’s majority shareholder. There is still much to be clarified on this topic, but we could be looking at a super-accelerated replica of Google+, where another internet giant leveraged its power to reach 90 million users in a year… before falling into obscurity and disappearance. Linking it to Instagram (like Gmail in that case) was the safe bet for takeoff, but we will see if there are incentives to maintain (or already regain) momentum.
