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PELOTON HAS CAUSED A STIR BY OFFERING FREE SUBSCRIPTIONS TO FIRED EMPLOYEES

🌮 TLDR

Peloton has fired 20% of its workforce, but its golden handshake involves a one-year subscription to its platform and not everyone is convinced that’s an appropriate way to say goodbye to hard-working employees. McDonald’s wants to bring its golden arches to the metaverse, and it’s joining others in the rush to trademark IP and experiences in the virtual world. Disney+ has beaten expectations with its new subscriber numbers, and What’s dAppening brings news of America’s first NFT real estate transaction. Finally, our client’s app has become a go-to for daily centering for individuals in over 50 countries!

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🎬 Takes

🤸‍♀️ 📉 Peloton – Pandemic Impacts Sales and Peloton Fires 2,800 Staff

Peloton is joining a growing list of companies (Zoom, Netflix, Roku) that boomed in the early days of the pandemic, but are now finding growth a lot tougher. People are attending in-person office meetings and preferring gyms over at home workouts. Peloton’s sales and subscriber numbers have dropped drastically, and they recently fired 2,800 staff members (20% of its total workforce). Part of their exit deal offerings include a one-year subscription to the fitness platform for fired staff. As far as severance packages go, this is quite a weird one. Perhaps the company is hoping ex-employees can keep up flagging platform and app subscriber numbers? To be fair to Peloton’s management, the read-the-headline-in-a-tweet-then-get-angry age of news consumption means everyone is focused on the subscription offer. But, the company is also giving them a “meaningful cash severance allotment” as well as “several other benefits”. Peloton, Zoom and others may be facing uneasy times, but the opposite is true for Uber which announced revenues were up 83% recently – a sign that it is emerging from its pandemic-induced downturn. #PelotonStaffStayFit Read more here.

 

🍔 🤡 McDonald’s – Plans to Open Restaurants in the Metaverse

Welcome to the McMetaverse, where your fries might be served as NFTs and you can save a few bucks by ordering from the McCrypto menu. And whether it’s virtual or not, you can bet the milkshake machine will remain reassuringly out of order. McDonald’s has filed 10 trademarks for the metaverse, including a virtual restaurant with ‘real’ and virtual food. The latter will come in the form of digital downloads and lip-smacking NFTs. Fans (can we call them fans?) of McDonald’s might enjoy eating a real Big Mac in a virtual restaurant, but it’s perhaps more interesting to learn that McDonald’s also hopes to offer live concerts and other virtual entertainment. Mickie D’s is not alone in dipping a McNugget into the metaverse’s ketchup, though. Panera Bread has made a trademark application for the “Paneraverse” to launch a virtual restaurant and café chain. There’s a rush for companies to file trademarks for the metaverse, so this won’t be the last time you see a company sticking “verse” on the end of its brand. #McMetaverse Read more here.

 

📺 ↗️ Disney+ – Streaming Platform Beats Expectations with New Subscribers

Lately, it’s been a theme for What’s ‘Appening to cover companies having a reversal of fortunes during the pandemic (see Uber and Peloton above). We reported on the struggles of Netflix and the surprising strength of HBO Max. Regardless of the exterior forces shaping a product’s fortunes, having great content still counts for a lot. Disney+ demolished analysts’ forecasts by adding 11.8 million subscribers in its most recent quarter (about 3 million more than Netflix). It pushes the Magic Kingdom’s streaming platform towards 130 million subscribers worldwide, rising to 200 million if you count its Hulu and ESPN+ services. You might think this is all down to the allure of Star Wars and Marvel, but experts say the key to the success of Disney+ is mixing in content for adults too. Peter Jackson’s Get Back documentary on The Beatles, for example, drove 200K sign-ups to Disney+ in just three days. It might be a hard day’s night for some streaming platforms, but Disney’s got a ticket to ride all the way to the top. #DisneysMagicNumbers Read more here.

🧐 Stat of the Week — Account Hacks Drop By 50%

Trust us when we say the following: It’s very difficult to find reliable stats for cybersecurity. So, we were interested to see the results of Google’s ‘neutral’ experiment with two-step password verification on 150 million of its accounts. Google assigned two-factor authentication (2FA/2SV) to 150 million accounts for the last three months of 2021, and it found that hacking (and other related cyber chicanery) dropped by 50%. Google is obviously very pleased with this, and it suggested in a recent blog post that it was going to initiate 2SV on all accounts in the near future. #Google2SV Read more here.

🕸️ What’s dAppening?

🏡 🤝 Propy – Tampa Bay Property Sold as NFT

Things move fast in the Web3 sector. A couple of weeks ago, we told you about Propy, the blockchain startup that launched an NFT platform for real estate transactions. Well, a Tampa Bay home has become the first piece of real estate to be sold through the platform. Selling for a cool $654,310, or about 210 ETH in new money, the property is now in the hands of a U.S. buyer, who can boast of becoming the first American to buy a home as an NFT. The key here is the utility and security offered by the NFT, which stores the legal details of ownership on Propy’s immutable blockchain. The idea is that it speeds up transactions, cuts red tape, and importantly – cuts costs for buyers and sellers. We’ve had a look at Propy’s website, and there are now other U.S. homes up for sale. 👀 #FirstNFTHomeSale Read more here.

Meanwhile at 3Advance…

We’re excited to share a new case study on one of our most recent projects, Second Breath 🎉. Greg Farrand (Second Breath’s Executive Director), first came to us with the vision of expanding their mission to a global audience – bringing their meditation and daily centering offerings to users worldwide. We built and launched their apps last summer, and have been collaborating with their team to add additional features (like a Group Membership option) ever since. The beautifully designed mobile apps are now used in over 50 countries and continue to provide users a sense of calm daily – something we could all use more of these days! Read the case study or download the app and check it out for yourself.