Rohit Bhargava's Blog, page 37

Getting Ready For The Dynamic Pricing Future Of All Things

This week Wendy’s unintentionally stirred up some trouble as headlines popped up online that the fast-food chain was testing “surge pricing” similar to Uber where they would charge more for food when demand was highest. The chain quickly backtracked with the relatively bone-headed explanation that they were actually using it to offer “discounts during slower times of day” … which is pretty obviously a sneaky “heads I win, tails you lose” sort of argument.

Still, the story struck a chord becau...

3 Observations from TikTok’s New 2024 Trend Report

The newly released TikTok 2024 Trend Report offers more than a few to-be-expected trends that are essentially meant to promote the platform to advertisers … but some of the insights also offer some useful cultural commentary. Here are a few observations that stood out for me:

Serendipitous Scrolling – TikTok users often discover unexpected new passions that they didn’t expect. The report suggests a marketing opportunity to use breakout creative (not that easy!) to make use of the serendipity...

Leap Day, the Longest Year and Julius Caesar’s Year of Confusion

Today is February 29th – which apparently is a quite popular day to get married. Some couples think it’s quirky or romantic. And let’s be honest, a handful of people might be hoping they only have to celebrate an anniversary once every four years. Not that I identify with this idea at all, of course.

But aside from creative wedding dates or the various online support groups devoted to people born on leap day – today might also make you curious about the history of this correction of the moder...

ADD+SPACE Wants to Become a New Airbnb … for Your Stuff

Imagine you’re living in a cramped apartment with a bunch of extra stuff that you don’t need year-round. You could keep it at your parent’s house – if you’re a young person and they live nearby. Or get a storage locker, which is inconvenient and requires a lot of effort.

Or you could try ADD + SPACE, a new startup (available in NYC only at the moment) which lets you take photos of your items and store them in an orange waterproof box that will get picked up by a courier and taken to a nearby ...

How Bad News Might Be Making Us Worse Humans

We might all be getting addicted to bad news. I was thinking about this point as I considered my own reactions to two other disturbing stories I read this week. The first was about an outbreak of measles in a Broward County Florida school where 11 kids were unvaccinated and over 100 may now be at risk.

The second was a new campaign by controversial political activist group The Lincoln Project which used AI to bring Donald Trump’s emotionally abusive father back to life to berate his son about how...

How AI Might Be Getting “Lazier” And What to Do About It

What if you had to “convince” ChatGPT to give you a better or more in-depth answer? Some users are suggesting a “winter break hypothesis” to explain why AI sometimes seems reluctant to do hard work. While the claims are unproven, OpenAI acknowledged the criticism from several users via Twitter and noted that they are “working on it.”

To some, this quirk makes sense. After all, if the language learning models are trained on our behavior, why wouldn’t they also simulate seasonal depression? It’s a ...

The Real Reason HBO Is Waiting 4 Days to Share Clips of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

HBO announced they will now force people to wait four days before sharing on YouTube the highlights from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Of course, fans of the show online were pointlessly indignant. Their fury demonstrates exactly what the problem has become for most entertainment creators and news organizations alike online … people expect content to be free.

In response, HBO candidly share that they hope this move will entice more fans of the show to subscribe to Max so they can watch the ...

The African Media Streaming Brand That Just Turned Down $1.7B

One of the most famous streaming media brands in the world is one that you may not have ever heard of. It’s called MultiChoice and they are the “king of content in Africa,” owning the #1 streaming platform on the continent known as Showmax. They dethroned Netflix last year for the biggest market share in Africa, holding 40% compared with 35% for Netflix.

More importantly, they feature much more local content, own rights to broadcast the hugely popular English Premier League soccer matches and hav...

Decline of Wine? Spirits Attract Celebrity Partners and Outsell Wine for First Time in 45 Years

Boomers love wine, but that may not be enough to keep it flying high. A new report of sales figures from 2023 shows that spirits outsold wine for the first time in 45 years. Combined with a story I shared recently about how Gen Z is not drinking as much alcohol as previous generations, it seems the wine industry overall has been struggling to reach younger consumers. In contrast, despite the early demographic data around Gen Z drinking habits being lower, spirits experienced a 13th straight year...

Instead of Binge Watching, Why Not Try “Stinge Watching”?

Last month my wife and I binge watched For All Mankind on Apple+. The show was highly original, smartly written and now that we’re done with Season 4, we are stuck waiting for a new season and we miss it. This is a familiar emotion for any of us who have gotten into a new show, devoured it and then felt the angst of a new entertainment void to fill. Instead of watching that way, what if you took longer … on purpose.

I am a big Star Trek fan, but new shows from this universe on Paramount+ are ones...