📡 You mean this much to us

Nov 08, 2020

Hello and welcome to Pulse — the weekly techie/businessy newsletter from @perspectiveix. I’m your host, Ben, and I’m sending you this Pulse in the middle of my moving-in day — in the middle of a pandemic!

You see, instead of helping my wife, I’m writing this (she insisted)… You and Pulse mean this much to both me - and her!

Please support us by becoming a member — or by sending this to a friend and asking them to subscribe to Pulse [this one’s free]; if they don’t know how you probably shouldn’t be friends with them!

JK! Teach them, please!

Now, let’s get down to business!

🗞 NEWS

Fortnite offering free Disney+ [link], Facebook’s antitrust seems pretty close [link], and Virgin Galactic’s first spaceflight [link]
Twitter against violence & lies, Netflix TV, and iPhone 13 — already! [link]
Earnings, Facebook fighting disinfo, and New emojis [link]
Election, Laws, and Lockdowns [link]
Instagram messing with voters, Spotify’s independence, and Amazon’s new boxes [link]
Baby Shark, TikTok’s new deal, and One more thing [link]
Election hacks, Facebook’s special conservative treatment, and Huawei’s chips [link]

⏳ a gift for you.

Whatever you do, don’t do it alone - Credit: Pablo Heimplatz on Unsplash

📊 STATISTICS

India overtakes US as Snapchat's top market for downloads

It took 15 months (from May 2019 to July 2020) for India to go from the #6 market, representing 4% of Snapchat’s downloads, to the #1 market, representing 20% of its downloads. That lead has been increasing as October 2020 saw India represent 32% of Snapchat’s downloads.

Over the past 18 months, Snapchat’s new user acquisition has become increasingly top heavy. India + the United States now make up 50% of the app’s new users.

App Downloads and Spending Continued to Climb in Q3

Global consumer spending on Apple’s App Store and Google Play grew by 32% YoY in Q3 2020 to reach $29.3 billion, per data from Sensor Tower Store Intelligence.

The faster-than-average growth in spending is thought to reflect the ongoing impact of COVID-19 along with consistent growth in adoption, globally.

Uber Pivots to Food Delivery Amid Pandemic

Two days after scoring a big win on election day, when Californians passed Proposition 22, a ballot measure that exempts gig economy companies from a law that would require them to classify most of their workers as employees rather than contractors, Uber reported its third quarter results on Thursday.

While the company missed revenue expectations, as the pandemic continues to wreak havoc on its ride-hailing business, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said there were early signs that the company’s core mobility business would fully recover.

The report once again highlighted the shift that Uber’s business has been undergoing during this time of restricted mobility. The company’s food delivery segment continued to outperform its core ride-hailing business, as the latter saw gross bookings plummet by 75% in the first nine months of 2020 and the former just about doubled in size.