🌮 TLDR

Meta’s stock plummeted as Facebook saw a drop in daily users for the first time in its history, while profits also took a hit. Lunchbox wants to change the way we order food online and secure a better deal for restaurants in the process. Pinterest is showing off its app AR capabilities, coming at a time when augmented reality shopping is expected to boom. Canva sees its user numbers swell, unsurprising for a superb platform. And What’s dAppening has a report on mortgages for virtual land in the metaverse.

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🎬 Takes

📉😓Meta – Week of Woe Compounded by Stock Price Crash

Oh my. We could fill an entire book with the bad news stories surrounding Meta this week. For a start, Facebook’s parent company lost more than $237 billion in value in a single day of trading (Feb. 3) – the biggest one-day drop in value in the history of the US stock market. Mark Zuckerberg, possibly the most meme-able CEO in history, was said to have lost around $31 billion personally. The stock market hit came as Meta announced it had lost around one million daily users last quarter (the kids are all off to TikTok🙋‍♂️), which was the first-ever drop in users in the company’s 18-year history. There was also the matter of Meta seeing a significant decrease in profits, with evidence showing that Apple’s ad privacy changes are eating into that juicy ad revenue. To cap it all off, Meta has agreed to pay the UK’s competition regulator (CMA) a $2 million fine for new issues regarding the Giphy acquisition from back in May 2020. If you recall, we reported in a previous newsletter that the CMA wants to reverse that $400 million Giphy purchase despite Meta owning the company for almost two years now. There was also a report by Mashable that claimed Meta might have to stop operating Facebook and Instagram in Europe, reasoning that the complicated data protection laws across the EU would make Meta’s ad revenue model unsustainable, although we’d be shocked if things went that far. Nonetheless, it’s a week Meta would like to forget, and there is a growing consensus in some quarters that a pivot to the metaverse will not be enough to dig it out of this hole. #MetaStockCrash Read more here.

🍜💰Lunchbox – Restaurant Technology Company Raises $50 Million

The rise of food delivery apps has been one of the stories of the pandemic, and most of us believe they are here to stay. Yet, not everyone is happy with the status quo, and that includes many restaurant owners who feel trapped by the fees (sometimes up to 30%) and lack of control over their product when using the likes of Grubhub and DoorDash. Step forward Lunchbox, a food ordering technology company that wants to disrupt the current model and stop delivery apps taking a “pound of flesh” (their words) from restaurants. Lunchbox has raised $50 million from a Series B funding round and has restaurants like Bareburger, Clean Juice, and Fuku onboard. The idea is that restaurants will no longer have to pay “exorbitant” commissions (Lunchbox charges a flat monthly fee), but, importantly, there’s also scope for them to avail of features like Lunchbox Studio and Lunchbox’s digital food halls where you can order from multiple brands in one cart (we love this idea). At 3Advance, we’ve worked with startups like Curbside Kitchen and TwentyTables, and we know how brand identity and flexibility are crucial to their apps. Lunchbox strives to offer restaurants and ghost kitchens that control and brand flexibility, ensuring that they are not just another anonymous listing on a delivery app. #LunchboxDisruptsFoodDelivery Read more here.

🛍️👓Pinterest – AR Shopping Experiences with Walmart, West Elm, Wayfair, and More

You know, for all this talk of the metaverse and how it is going to transform our lives through a blurring of the real world and the virtual, we think what the likes of Snapchat and Pinterest are doing with AR right now is closer to achieving that goal than whatever is being dreamed up in Meta HQ. Pinterest has partnered up with big brands like Walmart and Crate & Barrell and uses AR technology on its app to let you see how items of furniture would look in your home. Now, many of you will be aware that Pinterest isn’t the first to do this. Indeed, IKEA has been doing it as far back as 2013. However, the experience has improved significantly and is becoming more useful and widespread. We’ve been impressed by AR innovations like the Warby Parker app allowing you to (virtually) try on glasses before you buy, and Snapchat’s Black Friday AR fashion event was a superb showcase of where the technology can go. Shopify has reported extensively on all this and predicts an AR retail boom this decade. Some of its findings show that 3D modeling of products in augmented reality formats can lift conversion rates by up to 250%📈. It really feels like we are on the tipping point of something big in AR and eCommerce. #PinterestARShopping Read more here.

🧐 Stat of the Week — 75M Monthly Active Users

We are huge fans of the Australian graphic design platform Canva, which has now reached 75 million active monthly users – up from 45 million a year ago. Canva, which has both free-to-use and premium options that allow users to create social media graphics, posters, and other types of visual content, has become the industry standard-bearer for marketing and branding teams. It was valued at $3 billion in 2019. In 2020, that rose to $6 billion. And today, after its latest round of capital raises, it is valued at $40 billion. It has been further boosted by its acquisition of Flourish, a company that supplies data visualization tools to brands like the BBC and Deloitte. Flourish will help Canva branch out into what it calls “data storytelling”, and we are keen to see the brilliant Canva continue to, well, flourish in the graphic design sector. #CanvaHits75MillionUsers Read more here.

🕸️ What’s dAppening?

🏠💵TerraZero – Mortgages On Offer for Virtual Land in the Metaverse

Last week we brought you news of how NFTs and smart contracts can have real-world utility in property sales, and we stressed how it could act as an eye-opener to those skeptical about the usefulness of NFTs and other Web3 technologies. However, this is on the other end of the scale. Markets Insider has reported how TerraZero Technologies is offering metaverse mortgages, with one client backed with a loan to buy virtual property in Decentraland for an undisclosed fee. This, in our view, is obviously a very risky business: Trust us – property in Decentraland doesn’t come cheap. Taking a loan to buy virtual property represents a huge gamble, and this should be viewed with the same kind of risk assessment as investing in cryptocurrency. Maybe it will pay off for those buying those virtual properties. But in our view, nobody should be taking loans to buy land in the metaverse. #MetaverseMortgages Read more here.

Meanwhile at 3Advance…

We’ve been celebrating over the last week here at 3Advance 🎉 – one of our clients, HypeNight, just officially launched their app! HypeNight helps you find a restaurant or bar that fits the vibe you’re lookin’ for before you actually leave the house. Use the HypeMap to see real videos and check out recently hyped up locations no matter where you are. Quit relying on outdated reviews and old pictures – download the app so you don’t get restaurant catfished anymore! A huge congratulations to the HypeNight team and to our staff that made this all come together! 👏 📱