Good morning, world, and happy Tuesday!
Greetings from rainy Edinburgh, where the mania around #SB50 didn’t take over as much as it did in SF. 111.9M tuned in to watch the event, Europe didn’t care too much. Off to the good stuff now.
Non-Travel Starters
LinkedIn shed $11Bn in value on a single day after a revised forward 12-month earnings forecast, falling 43%. The adjustment puts the company more in line with the likes of Facebook (33.8X value) and Twitter (29.5X),which now is worth less than a few unicorns and down to almost $10Bn after a peak of $40Bn in 2013. In my mind, Jeff needs to figure out an end-to-end product for recruiting, which charges a percentage of hired candidate’s annual salary. Let’s see… Link.
Zenefits, the HR and insurance startup that started in 2013 and reached a whopping $4.5Bn valuation last year, just saw its CEO and founder Parker Conrad resign, substituted by COO David Sacks, formerly the CEO of Yammer. Big change as private market unicorns struggle to meet investor expectations and revenue projections. Link.
Uber started taking cash payments in certain markets. The move is quite suave — to ensure that Uber gets its cut, the card payments need to be more than the cash ones for a specific driver. The connection between bits and atoms continues, thus opening new markets where Credit Card payments might not be yet where Uber wants them to be. Link.
Yahoo! is not almost officially on sale, with AOL’s CEO Tim Armstrong taking a serious look at the business. Link.
Snacks
Congrats to Stefan and the Travelstart team on the raise — the leading OTA in Africa closed $40M in funding from Amadeus and MTN. A tip of the hat, sir :). Link.
CTrip and Tencent now own eLong. Consolidation in China is almost complete, with CTrip really going on the offensive, after the share-swap and ownership of Qunar. Now the top 3 in China are under the same management. Oh, yeah, and part of MakeMyTrip, the biggest OTA in India. Link.
easyJet is looking into ways to reduce CO2 emissions by powering taxing (usually about 20 min before take off) with batteries. That’s a nice move, which could save the planet and improve the cost base for the LCC. Let’s see more of that, please. Link.
Sabre is now offering NDC for American Airlines’ seat upgrades, a GDS first move into the new standard. Link.
At the same time, airlines are seeing the best year in terms of profits — fuel prices are down, capacity is better managed, and projections are for increased demand. With ancillary products driving additional profits, the expectation is that some of that bounty will be transferred to the passengers. Well, it is — in the form of peanuts and free snacks. A nice overview of the changes give us an idea where carrier amenities will go. Link.
Dessert (or Stats)
111.9M: TV Viewers of Super Bowl 50, making it the 3rd most watched ever. Link.
780,000: Paying FT readers, highest in its history. Old media might be finally figuring out how to do digital. Link.
400: Brick-and-mortar stores that Amazon plans to open. Let’s not be fooled here — these will double up as warehouses in Amazon’s expansion of its 1-hour delivery program. Link.
36: Miles of a no-fly, no-drone area around the Super Bowl stadium, as the FAA is getting stricter around consumer drones. Link.
Some Cool Reading (Watching)
A great piece in Wired, covering how and why Uber changed its branding. A smart move, as a global company looks to have a local touch by allowing flexible brand assets to develop on their own. (8 min). Link.
Facebook releases research to say that the 6-degrees of separation is a thing of the past. On average, Facebook users are 3.57 degrees of separation from each other. Now, clearly the Facebook population is peculiar and potentially more connected than everyone else, but then again — that’s 1.6Bn people globally. Zuck’s score is 3.17, Sheryl’s 2.9. Yours truly sits at 3.1. (2 min on Quartz, read the research on Facebook). Link.
A strong argument why most A/B tests give you bulls$#t results, as seen through the eyes of Mixpanel. For anyone in product, this could be a golden read. (7 min). Link.
Paper airplane machine, as built by a Lego enthusiast. Awesome — that should be a school project in every school. (1 min). Link.
Two of my favorite Super Bowl ads from this year.
Audi
Amazon Alexa
//Expressed views and opinions are my own.
Photo Credit: National Geographic is amazing. Please share and give credit to their photographs and photographers. Here’s the link for your daily inspiration: http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/
