Farewell to our Oldest Frenemy

Metaverse Adoption Rates. McKinsey wrote a retail insight piece on Myths and Realities in the Metaverse. Their perspective is that most people 1) know what the metaverse is and can accurately describe it, 2) it’s not a fad, 3) it’s more broadly adopted by and anticipated by just Gen Z.

Farewell, Old Frenemy. After a long, full lifespan of 26 years — truly geriatric in tech — Internet Explorer is finally being laid to rest, and will join its pals Hotmail &Clippy in The Great Technical Beyond. Explorer is survived by Microsoft Edge and many, many other newer software applications. Thus, with a toast, we bid goodbye to Explorer with its favorite song, an audio clip of dialup internet.

More Sights & Sounds. LVMH is investing $90 million in a lab-grown diamonds. Lime’s scooter fleet is expanding to electric motorbikes in California. Spotify is acquiring AI voice platform, Sonantic. Squid Game is going to be a reality show on Netflix? Okay, sure. And lastly, Warner Bros is releasing a new Barbie movie, starring Ryan Gosling as Ken —honestly, it’s hard to picture, but when you see it, it really makes sense.

Calling all Grans. Coastal grandmothers aren’t the only ones being celebrated in fashion — it’s an invitation which extends to all grandmas. In a trend being called “grandmillenial,” all things nana might wear are welcome, including crochet sweaters, decorative buttons, and long smocked dresses.

Community Repairs. Bed Bath & Beyond is partnering with nonprofit, Rebuilding Together, to launch a no-cost home repair program in the communities where its stores are.

The New Ice Cream Sandwich. Oreo is at it again with a new Neapolitan ice cream-inspired sandwich cookie. In stark contrast to our team’s responses to the oreo/ritz cracker mashup, this flavor release received much more favorable feedback including: “this is one I could get behind” with a caveat that it will be “harder to only eat the chocolate side.”

Mobile Expansion. Wonder, a mobile food delivery service where “chefs cook meals curbside from mobile food vans,” just secured Series B funding to the tune of $350 million.

I Meant What I Said. Twitter did a study that asked users if they want to revise their tweets based on sentiment analysis and they were like, “NAH WE’RE GOOD.” Ryan Broderick of Garbage Day newsletter had this to say: “Now, you might read all of this and say, ‘wow, that didn’t really work great. Only about 20% of users made any meaningful changes to their behavior.’ But that’s actually huge.” 

Side note, we are loving the 1% of people who reconsidered and then decided on more offensive revisions.

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Cover Photo by Rubaitul Azad on Unsplash