Meta is contemplating a new application
See you later Skype.
Hello,
Are you busy? I’m busy. If we just get through this week/month/year then maybe things will calm down. No, wrong. This is it. This is literally your life. Stuff will keep happening and then that’s that.
What to do about this conundrum? If you’re lucky most of it is good stuff. Work, relationships, projects, kids, life. Well I’ve done some research and reached the following conclusions:
Be grateful - easy for me to say for sure, but whatever is going wrong there is probably something going right.
Be here - it’s about the experience, dude. How your feet feel against the floor? Class. That building you walk past every day? Intriguing. That bloke eating a burger on the train? Charming how oblivious they are.
Be now - in the words of everyone’s favourite Sanskrit author (Kalidasa) “yesterday is but a dream, tomorrow is a vision” - the past and the future aren’t real.
Do less - you don’t have to do that thing. I know it feels like you do but you don’t. Not right now. Honestly. Mañana.
Take it easy,
Hugo
Chief Lessness Officer
The Business of Stuff
The Stuff
Microsoft announces the end of Skype 📞 - back in the noughties it seemed pretty insane that you could video call someone in another country for free. Skype was at the front of the pack (along with MSN Messenger for whatever reason) with regards to turning broadband internet into communication. How they’ve survived this long is news to me. I presume there is a cohort of grandparents for whom it is still newfangled technology. Sorry Granny, you need to get Snapchat.
Instagram considers launching separate reels app 🤔 - Meta is looking to capitalise on TikTok’s perilous future in the US with its own short form video app. I was going to make a joke about it going the same way as Threads but have just discovered Threads has 320 million monthly users! They do need to sort out their algorithm though, especially after this week’s shenanigans when they flooded feeds with violence and gore.
Chloe is loving the Pokémon dream 🎴 - the former office worker from Chorleywood decided to bin it all off and open Collector’s Cardhouse. She recently sold a card for £40,000, has lots of international visitors and a YouTube channel with 118,000. I absolutely love this sort of thing, excellent work Chloe.
IAG profits double over the Christmas period 🛫 - the owner of British Airways and Aer Lingus has benefited from a massive rise in transatlantic travel as it continues to recover from the pandemic which decimated the industry. The CEO has warned that corporate travel will never return to what it was but luckily for them more people are willing to shell out on expensive seats when they go on holiday. The group carried 122 million passengers in 2024 with 46 million travelling on BA services.
Aston Martin cuts 170 jobs thanks to a pre-tax loss of £289m 🚗 - the car manufacturer has removed 5% of its workforce. It has launched a whole host of new models since it was bought by Laurence Stroll in 2020 but supply chain issues and production delays has resulted in several loss-making years.
Pearson’s profits rise to £3.5bn 📚 - you might recognise the name from school textbooks but it is the education company’s focus on digitisation that has put them in a better spot. Omar Abbosh, an executive from Microsoft, took over as CEO in 2023 and has pivoted the company to focus on technology adoption, including a strategic partnership with AWS. Soon enough school will just be downloaded into children’s brains so they can focus on playing conkers and nicking apples.
Crypto ATM operator sentenced to four years in prison 🏧 - turning piles of cash into cryptocurrency is of course a fairly blatant approach to money laundering and is therefore illegal. Olumide Osunkoya is the first person to fall foul of the authorities for doing so, processing more than £2.5million and falsifying documents.
Spotify detaches us from the musicians 🎶 - the music streaming service discovered a long time ago that the majority of listening time is spent on background music whilst people are doing other things. This has led to the proliferation of playlists which atomise the works created by musicians and opens the door to AI-generated music. We need to get back to albums, it’s all about the albums.
Lululemon sign up Lewis Hamilton as an ambassador 🏎️ - the athleisure brand has been trying to expand its market share by appealing to men, so it’s a collaboration that makes sense as the F1 driver prepares to start his first season with Ferrari. It also speaks to the changing audience of the F1, which is getting younger and more female, a good result for the Canadian clothes company!
DeepSeek is taking hold in China 🇨🇳 - as a country they’ve been very focussed on renewables/electric vehicles and been slightly behind the curve on AI but with the dramatic release of R1 and the support of the government, usage is increasing dramatically. All the major cloud service providers, car manufacturers, hospitals and state-owned enterprises have moved quickly to adopt the software.
Quote of the week
Sometimes I do need to go to karaoke, sometimes I need to relax. - Jackie Chan