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November 10 - November 28, 2018
In Q4 of 2016, Apple registered twice the net profits Amazon has produced, in total, since its founding twenty-three years ago.7,8,9,10Apple’s cash on hand is nearly the GDP of Denmark.
There are 7.5 billion people in the world, and 1.5 billion have a daily relationship with Facebook.
Facebook (#1), Facebook Messenger (#2), and Instagram (#8) are the most popular mobile apps in the United States.
The social network and its properties register fifty minutes of a user’s typical day.
One of every six minutes online is spent on Facebook, and one in five minutes spent ...
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About one out of six queries posed to the search engine have never been asked before.
Soper, Spencer. “More Than 50% of Shoppers Turn First to Amazon in Product Search.” Bloomberg.
55 percent of people searching for a product start on Amazon (vs. 28 percent on search engines such as Google).
THIRTY PERCENT OF U.S. HOUSEHOLDS have a gun, and 64 percent have Amazon Prime.
Wealthy households are more likely to have Amazon Prime than a landline phone.
Half of all online growth and 21 percent of retail growth in the United States in 2016 could be attributed to Amazon.
When in a brick-and-mortar store, one in four consumers check user reviews on Amazon before purchasing.
Consumption has taken the place of shared sacrifice during times of war and economic malaise. The nation needs you to keep buying more stuff.
OODA loop: “observe, orient, decide, and act.”
Most boards ask management: “How can we build the greatest advantage for the least amount of capital/investment?” Amazon reverses the question: “What can we do that gives us an advantage that’s hugely expensive, and that no one else can afford?”
“Failure and invention are inseparable twins. To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment.”
e-commerce doesn’t work, isn’t economically viable, and no pure e-commerce firm will survive long term.
In 2004, 47 percent of affluent consumers could name a favorite retail brand; six years later that number dropped to 28 percent.
If Prime continues to grow at its current rate, and people continue to cut the cord, within the next two years more households will have Amazon Prime memberships than cable television.
Eighty-two percent of U.S. high-income households have Prime.
when shopping habits migrate online, the design and feel of a product matter much less. There is no visual merchandising, no endcaps with carefully displayed products.
With voice, consumers don’t know the price or see the packaging and are less likely to include the brand in their request. Fewer and fewer searches contain a brand name.
The guy who has the greatest insight and influence into the future of the world’s largest business (consumer retail) has come to the conclusion that there’s no way the economy will be able to create, as it has done in the past, enough jobs to replace those being destroyed.
Whole Foods had been criticized, and its stock price had fallen preacquisition because of its high prices. Amazon has just the cure for that—within five weeks, beverage and bakery prices were down 2.8 percent and 6.8 percent, respectively,101 while other prices were slashed 15–40 percent nationwide.
The wealthiest man in the twentieth century mastered the art of minimum-wage employees selling you stuff. The wealthiest man of the twenty-first century is mastering the science of zero-wage robots selling you stuff.
Walmart’s share of online sales in 2017 was 1.9 percent, while Amazon’s was 36.2 percent.
55 percent of product searches start on Amazon (vs. 28 percent on search engines such as Google).
Consumers no longer go to stores for products, which are easier to get from Amazon. They go to stores for people/experts.
we need business leaders who envision, and enact, a future with more jobs—not billionaires who want the government to fund, with taxes they avoid, social programs for people to sit on their couches and watch Netflix all day.
when we allow an enterprise to run unchecked and lawless, we’ve lost respect for the proper standards they, versus other firms, get to play by.
Apple with a cash pile greater than the GDP of Denmark, the Russian stock market, and the market cap of Boeing, Airbus, and Nike combined.
Facebook, Inc., on the other hand, has a meaningful relationship with 2.2 billion people.
You dedicate thirty-five minutes of each of your days to Facebook.
We begin by coveting what we see every day. —Hannibal Lecter
The legendary Grant Study at Harvard Medical School has borne this out. The study—the largest longitudinal study of human beings to date—began tracking 268 Harvard male sophomores between 1938 and 1944.
The study found that the depth and meaningfulness of a person’s relationships is the strongest indicator of level of happiness.
“Happiness is love.”
these algorithms reinforce polarization in our society.
Politicians may seem extreme. But they are just responding to the public—and the anger we are working up daily in our news feeds, our march to one extreme.
Forty-five percent of Americans, and much of the world, turns to Facebook for its news.
Physiologist Benjamin Libet used EEG to show that activity in the brain’s motor cortex can be detected 300 milliseconds before a person feels they have decided to move.50 We click on impulse rather than forethought. We are driven by deep subconscious needs for belonging, approval, and safety.
religion that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge. —Carl Sagan
Church, mosque, and temple-goers score higher on optimism and cooperation with one another, which are key paths to prosperity.1 Believers are more likely to survive than their atheist friends.2
People with graduate degrees are less likely to turn to religion than high school graduates.
You are also less likely to believe in God if you have a high IQ. Only one in six people with an IQ above 140 (uber-smart) report deriving satisfaction from religion.
Know thyself, admonished the oracle of Delphi.
if you have a smartphone (88 percent of consumers)
Three and a half billion times each day human beings turn their gaze not upward but downward to their screen.
One in six Google queries have never been asked before.
Google was able to grow revenues 23 percent that year and—here’s the key part—lower cost to advertisers by 11 percent.
