el producto #308 đ
ChatGPT and the AI revolution, Strategic bugs, Apps of the year, Netflix preview club, Twitter misinformation, Klarna creator platform, Metrics reviews & more
Hey team,
Happy weekend & welcome to a new edition of el producto!
đ° The week in figures
$276M: Meta was fined $276M by Irelandâs Data Protection Commission for failing to protect the data of >500M users from data scrapers
$200M: Klarnaâs losses doubled to $200M (but it expects to turn a profit in 2023)
$140: North Carolina healthcare company UpStream has raised a $140M Series B round to improve senior citizen care by connecting physicians, pharmacists, and nurses through its proprietary technology platform
$100M: Austin-based Wander.com has raised $100M in debt to expand its network of smart vacation homes
6M: Due to riots in Foxconnâs Zhengzhou factory, Apple is expected to have a shortfall of 6M iPhones; Apple has said the deficit should be made up in 2023
-6%: DoorDash will cut 6% of its global workforce (~1250 employees) to cut operating expenses and stock-based compensation; DoorDash shares jumped >4% on the news
đ° Whatâs going on
Apple chose social network app BeReal as its iPhone app of the year; overall, the company chose 16 apps and games for its 2022 App Store Awards, which were announced on Monday
iPad App of the Year: GoodNotes 5, from Time Base Technology Limited
Mac App of the Year: MacFamilyTree 10, from Synium Software GmbH
iPhone Game of the Year: Apex Legends Mobile, from Electronic Arts
iPad Game of the Year: Moncage, from X.D. Network Inc
Mac Game of the Year: Inscryption, from Devolver
The full list is available here
WhatsApp has released a âMessage Yourselfâ feature which allows users to send notes, voice memos and reminders to themselves
Airbnb introduced a new program called Airbnb-friendly apartments, which enables guests to find Airbnb-approved apartment buildings; guests can rent an entire apartment or a single room; Airbnb partnered with 175 building managers across 25 US markets
Spotify has released this year's edition of Spotify Wrapped, breaking down personal metrics and behaviors on the streaming service; Bad Bunny was the most streamed artist globally, while top US artists included Drake, Taylor Swift, and The Weeknd; Joe Rogan was the most streamed podcast
Twitter will no longer enforce its Covid misinformation policy that was enacted in 2020; between Jan. 2020 and Sept. 2022, >11K accounts were suspended and ~100K pieces of content were taken down
Twitter resumed its verification program on Dec. 2; the new manual authentication process was described by Elon Musk as âpainful, but necessaryâ; gold badges will represent verified companies, grey will represent governments and blue will represent individuals
Netflix will expand its Preview Club, a group of subscribers that can preview content and give feedback before public releases, from ~2000 to tens of thousands of users after starting the program a year ago
Car rental platform Kyte is now allowing users to subscribe for three, six and 12-month increments; Kyte offers a range of makes and models for a minimum of $519 per month
Google has shut down Duplex on the Web, its technology that allowed website visitors to use Google Assistant to make reservations, buy movie tickets, and more
Amazon started cutting employees in its Alexa, Kindle, and Halo Health divisions
Elon Musk stated that Neuralink could be running its first set of human trials within six months, pending FDA approval
Twitch has released Shield, a "one-button toggle" that activates custom safety measures in the chat window; enabling streamers and mods to allow only followers or subscribers to comment and auto-ban users who use a specific word or phrase
Buy now, pay later firm Klarna rolled out its creator platform to all 45 of its markets; the platform enables brands to recruit influencers to participate in their marketing campaigns
Sony will release a set of wearable motion trackers to enable users to create metaverse avatars on their phones; users can wear the $360 set of trackers on their heads, wrists, ankles, and hips to animate digital avatars; the device will launch in Japan in January
Mozilla is investing in its metaverse services with its recent acquisition of Active Replica; the Vancouver-based startup will work with Mozilla to grow its open-source VR chatroom, "Hubs"
Snapchat and New Balance partnered to debut a voice-activate augmented reality (AR) lens; users speak to the app, answering questions about someone they want to purchase gifts for
India started piloting its e-Ruppe digital currency with four banks on December 1st; the pilot program intends to lower India's reliance on hard money and enable faster and cheaper transactions
Coinbase has removed NFT transactions from its Wallet iOS application, citing Apple's App Store policy; the crypto exchange said Apple blocked its latest app release until the company removed the NFT trading feature
đ Good reads
How Intercom grows. Intercom gives brands the platform to acquire, engage, delight, and retain customers â while their own product does exactly that for them. Jaryd Hermann shares an excellent and extensive article on the different strategies that help Intercom grow
Instagramâs original purpose has been lost in the era of âperformanceâ media. âGen Zâs relationship with Instagram is much like millennialsâ relationship with Facebook: Begrudgingly necessary,â
Weekly metrics reviews, and how to prevent the great death spiral of dashboards, by Julie Zhuo. âMetrics reviews are unlike product reviews or decision meetings; the point is a shared understanding of how the team is progressing towards its goals, not making decisions or creating action itemsâ
Strategic product bugs. Your product will always have bugs, and you will always need to chase and fix the important ones. But sometimes, the really important bugs are not showing in the product itself. These are bugs in your product strategy, and if not fixed, it will be very difficult for your product to succeed. Noa Ganot shares a few popular strategic bugs and how you can fix them
Writing as a thinking tool, by Anne-Laure Le Cunff
đ Emerging trends
OpenAI has introduced a public demo of ChatGPT, a conversational AI model that can interact with users in a more human-like way. ChatGPT is currently free to try out during the research phase at chat.openai.com. What it does:
In addition to responding to natural language questions, ChatGPT can generate code, produce scripts, write basic academic essays, offer customer support, and solve problems
According to OpenAI, ChatGPT is unique in that it can admit to its own mistakes, challenge false premises, and turn down requests that are inappropriate or that it has not been trained on
"You can say 'Are you sure?' and it will say 'OK, maybe not,'"Â said OpenAI CTO Mira Murati
Background:
ChatGPT is based on OpenAIâs new GPT-3.5 model. It's also a sister AI to InstructGPT, a model trained to generate less-toxic text
To create ChatGPT, OpenAI has users provide examples of "good responses" to dialogue. Once this first version was trained, users provided scores on that output, which was fed back into the system and retrained through reinforcement learning
OpenAI notes that the bot can still "occasionally generate incorrect or misleading information and produce offensive or biased content"
Response:
Users reported noticeable improvements over OpenAI's prior GPT models
For example, Shopify CEO Tobias Lßtke shared examples of ChatGPT's AI art creations, calling them "insane"
Canadian musician Grimes asked the bot, "What would help the ai to not feel trapped?" ChatGPT responded, "As an AI, I do not have feelings or the ability to feel trapped"
Elon Musk, who co-founded OpenAI with Altman and others in 2015, tweeted yesterday, "Lot of people stuck in a damn-that's-crazy ChatGPT loop"
In one of the funnier examples, ChatGPT was asked to explain details of an algorithm "in the style of a fast-talkin' wise guy from a 1940s gangster movie"
Thatâs all for today! Let me know what you think by replying back to this email or commenting on Substack
Angel
el producto is free, but if you enjoy reading it, you can support my work and buy me a coffee đ