Twitter Suspends Journalists | Bloomberg Technology 12/16/2022
I'm Caroline Hyde IBEX World Headquarters in New York and this is Bloomberg Technology coming up in the next hour. Freedom of speech in question. That's on Twitter, as must suspends a number of journalists. We discussed which is current policies and how Musk continues to create some. Well, on the fly. Plus, just last year, a tornado took down an Amazon warehouse in Illinois.
Why lawmakers questioning a rebuild and off the back of the collapse of FTSE crypto firm. Amber has raised three hundred million dollars to tackle the damage done. Details later in the hour. Bus foremost. Well, muted end to a week's trading. That's a really look at how tech stocks were under pressure once again.
It seems to be all about the Federal Reserve, the perfect person to talk us through it. Kitty Greifeld in the House. What a week. It was quite a week. And I have some bad news. It was an ugly end to what was a very
ugly week. If you take a look at the past five days for the S&P 500, you can see we have a little optimism. At one point, that was on Tuesday after those CPI numbers came out softer than expected. Still seven percent handle. But in any case, then we had the Fed and then it was just one line down.
Since then, we're going to end lower on the S&P 500 if we break apart this index into the sectors. Let's take a look at some of the worst performers. You had communication services. You had materials. Then you've had financials as well, down two and a half percent or so. Consumer discretionary is where it gets
interesting. That was your worst performer on the sector level on this week, off by about three point six percent or so. What's interesting to me is that it was Tesla and it was Ford dragging down that sector. So a tale of old and new. But let's break this apart even further and look at some of the individual stories here. You have Goldman falling today by about 1 percent or so. That's, of course, after reporting
showed that Goldman is looking to cut up to 4000 jobs. That would be about an 8 percent or so pullback. Again, that's according to people familiar with the matter. You had Starbucks off by more than 1 percent.
That says news that Starbucks staff are starting a three day strike. And I want to end on some good, good news, because it is a Friday in December. Metta platforms up by about two point eight percent. That fall falls an upgrade from JP Morgan, citing their cost discipline Caroline Hyde. Unfortunately, margin is still the focus for many. Katie, have a wonderful weekend company. The holidays are almost upon us.
Now, before all that, we were all kept pretty busy today. I don't know about you, but all eyes glued on what happened with Twitter after the platform, of course, suspended the account of a rival social network Mustard on which and tweeted a link to a profile that tracked, of course, the flights of private jets of wealthy individuals, including mosques. Then, of course, a number of reporters covering mosque. They posted screen grabs of the offending tweet and mercifully suspended themselves. That includes some pretty high profile
journalists from The New York Times, CNN and other outlets. Here's what you know. Musk himself had to say about that. They're not special for your families. You're just you're your Twitter. You're just you're a citizen. So
no special treatment. You DAX, you talk, you get suspended. End a story. Of course, this move has sparked a lot of questions. We'll try to answer some of them throughout the hour. First, we get our Twitter expert and residents cut. Wagner, of course, almost talking on the spaces of which then spaces immediately became inaccessible.
And we couldn't do all week spaces as we usually do. Just remind us about just what an extraordinary story this is today. Yeah, I think it's just been a real example of Ivan really managing on the fly. Right. And he is coming up with sort of new policies, is coming up with decisions about suspensions, with things that, you know, directly impact him personally. And then that is translated to the whole product. You know, in this case, within hours. Right.
And so it just kind of a good example of how he's choosing to run Twitter, sort of how it's going to be difficult to understand exactly what to make of Twitter. Right. Because things can change so quickly and so suddenly. I think that's left a lot of journalists in particular kind of worried or confused as to what might be happening at some point in the future as well. If we look at the other side, I don't think, well, maybe he is really concerned about his own safety and worried cut, but ultimately deciding to make the sort of decisions on the fly. How is that affecting not only journalistic world? And we might say this is a bit inside baseball, but what about the advertisers? What about the companies who want to use this as a way to get eyeballs of the consumer? Well, what we've been saying all along, right, is that advertisers in particular, they don't like uncertainty.
They like to be they like the platforms that they're on to sort of be boring. They want to know what to expect. They want to know what type of content is going to be there, what the rules are, how people are using it.
Right. So when things are changing overnight, when things are changing sort of drastically this quickly, I think that upsets or unsettles a lot of advertisers, because that's just not how they're used to working and that's not what they prefer. And so I think from a business standpoint, that's where the concern is that the policy can change overnight to affect journalists in this case. You know, what other policies could happen in the future that could affect a brand advertiser whose spending, you know, thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars at the service, uncut. Some interesting news coming from
another outlet about potentially Twitter. So fundraising, just briefly, what do we know that? Yeah. There was a report from Semaphore and it came out and said that they were raising money at the fifty four dollars and 20 cents per share that you bought Twitter at. Right. And in some cases, this isn't entirely surprising. We were just talking about advertisers being a little nervous to be on the platform.
There's got to be some type of revenue concern at the company right now. They're going to have these debt interest payments due in January. And so, you know, if you're having trouble making money, making revenue through your business, maybe there's a way to kind of fund, raise and make more money that way. So we'll see how many people are willing to sign up for Ellen's version of Twitter now that they've had about six or seven weeks to see how he's running the company.
But I think to me, this speaks to a need of the company in search of more cash. Always great to get your expertise. Thank you for setting up so well. Happy we can find. Meanwhile, let's dive deeper into all of this. Jennifer Gray, an associate professor of communications at Syracuse University. Also, of course, expert in social media and part of our discussion on bullying since the early days of my possible acquisition of Twitter. Chickens coming home to roost in some
way, Jennifer. Yeah. Not much has changed that. You know, maybe the gift, though, is that Moscow's just made it painfully obvious that it's time to go. Especially for those journalists that we were just talking about, Ryan. And I don't know about Kurt. Maybe he watches World Cup. I I am there watching what's happening within the journalism world, specifically with an eye towards the free press.
Maybe it's a good time to step back and remember what that is. It's supposed to be free from the government. Right. So we were thinking about a free speech issues and, you know, Elon Musk's rights, you know, like he gets to have his free speech because he owns this. But the rest of us. Well, not so much, right. In that, you know, the risk, I think, has really proven to be that we cannot have Twitter be at the center of journalism. We don't want some type of
baron or, you know, rich, you know, kind of mogul kind of deciding who is essentially authentic should be trusted as a journalist, which should be on there, who can say what and when. And, you know, again, I think it's just for me, it's that the journalism piece and that's that's, I think, something we need to focus on more. Jennifer. The other side has been discussed that other voices have been suppressed for years and in fact they've been coverage of that, many of it being associated with right wing and right wing press. What do you make of that and whether or not we're deafening ourselves to certain sides of a conversation? Yeah, I know. For one, I've been reading the Twitter file. So it's problematic in how the
information has come out that not enough journalists have access to that. So we're going to like a piece of the stories that are kind of cherry picking, Ryan. But for me, there's actually some insights and we have real cases. And you know how deeply connected the federal government was, you know, and with content moderation teams.
That's concerning. But I know I was one of maybe few out there raising alarms around what was happening around The New York Post when the Hunter Biden case came out in a little bit of crickets out there. But for me, it was a case as to what is journalism. And I think that's showing up again. It's showing up again with YouTube saying the suspension of Donnie Sullivan at CNN and Ryan Mack, The New York Times, like they were reporting on this. And so, again. CAC, any information the that in your compiled? It's. Yeah, it's the jet tracker.
Right. That they were reporting out what was happening. So what is news? And, you know, can they share a link to The New York Times story? You know, that was, you know, sharing that information or was it because it was in a tweet that I'm just not sure. So for me, it's really a question of
what is news? Who's a journalist? Are they being censored on their citizen? Journalism, though, has maybe it's the force of the crypto fair as well, in large part working in tandem with this narrative of Hamas taking over Twitter, but has been extraordinary that in some parts you have had direct access to some Mark Gurman free via Twitter spaces in a way that never used to be the case. And journalism sort of the genesis being cut out in some way. Well, where are we going to go to for our trusted sources going forward? Does Twitter still have a role to play? Do you think? Well, I've been questioning for a while. Like, are the stock markets decoupling from the signals that used to be coming sometimes from datasets like Twitter? Right. But when it comes as good as in
journalism, I think that's, you know, I would say different than having direct access to like somebody who's pitching an investment. Right. Like these are what we call sources. They're essentially news material. And until it's vetted by journalists, it's really not news. So we have to remember that even in the case of the citizen journalists, you know, they may not be even identifying as such. They may be just somebody who is there in some type of crisis happened. And they happen to be pointing their
camera at something that they should still be seen as a source. And I think that's some of the struggle with citizen journalism, is that, you know, maybe there is not the same type of ethical grounding, but this even gets more discussion. I would say, you know, what was the role of a citizen journalist more than, say, who is somebody who's working for state media, for example? So I'm going to just say one of the people that were suspended overnight worked for a voice of America.
And I would say that we need to start remembering that that is funded by the United States government. So, you know, there's like the free press over here. And then there's there's also something else happening on Twitter. And for years that hasn't been labeled.
So, again, like, you know, people watching sports and I'm just over here, popcorn being like, OK, U.S. state media has been suspended. Did anyone notice? You know, like, OK, we got citizen journalists coming in. OK. Sure. But like what?
What is their role on this? I want to. So but for me, we have to remember that the free press is what matters in making sure it's healthy and that it's not being controlled and kind of geeky by, you know, some type of rich overlord. Jennifer Prego, associate professor of communications at Syracuse University. Thank you. And some breaking news to keep the narrative going is that apparently Moscow saying Twitter spaces is back. If you're missing it for 24 hours or so. Meanwhile, coming up, why some U.S. lawmakers are questioning Amazon's plans for rebuilding an Illinois warehouse that collapsed in a tornado last year.
That's next. This is Bring Back. Let's talk about Amazon, because it is planning on rebuilding a warehouse over in Illinois after it collapsed in a tornado last year that actually killed six workers, it prompted actually an investigation by workplace safety regulators. But three US lawmakers say the e-commerce giant should be constructing it with stronger safety features than existed before the collapse. More super has been across this story and in many ways, people, the whole tornado and the effect and the havoc it wreaked on families, it put into stark relief some of the issues about contacting people when they're in and working around Amazon and indeed some of the safety measures in place. Yeah. So there was a very strong reaction. Six people died, it happens on everybody. 50 deaths as a result of this talk, a
pretty devastating. And so some piece of it at the time, there was so a lot of attention on our our existing building standards adequate to protect people if we are seeing more severe weather events. And so that was a big emphasis. Now, the latest thing is, you know,
there's indications that average life, basically and the landlord is basically slapping up the same building that was there previously. And these lawmakers are probing questions about, you know, precisely what are you doing to improve safety. So in any event that there is a currents up this event. But it is it is a difficult thing because it's storm shelters are not required.
Things like that may have protected these workers more are not necessarily fired or recommended. So a lot to push back on on the on the regulatory side. What are they actually going to require? Industrial buildings to to have to protect workers? Amazon did say in a statement that they strengthen their emergency response plans and untainted them to meet specific needs of individual sites. I'm interested, Spencer, just all of this comes amid a macro picture where the pendulum kind of swings in Amazon's direction. They want him there, an employee, perhaps they're thinking more about employees who want the jobs, looking for them, willing to come and perhaps work in these sorts of environments. And I'm interested in also the spillover
effects. We hear just the UK, their latest headline that we're going to get a strike. I think it's the first strike in the U.K. from Amazon workers over in Coventry. What work is that Amazon? Think about all of this at the moment. Well, it's hard to generalize, right,
that, but more than three points and you have people in this facility who are not satisfied. You have other people who are perfectly content and don't want to organize. We've had some quite a few elections fail after this historic win in Staten Island. And in terms of that, you think you're talking about striking January. That's kind of how we went up generally. You know, we really stepped down a little bit after the holiday crunch. So I think strategically it doesn't seem
like such a bad time. And also, the pay is about one tenth of the revenue of U.S. primary market. So I don't know, felt, you know, if, you know, they get a sizable number of people from that one particular facility and inflict much pain on having some if workers really want to inflict pain on Amazon to get their attention. They're really big movement or a concentrated geographic movement that expands. I just want to show, because it is Amazon's resilient enough to handle even a big strike.
So it's going to feel really big for Buffett for four Amazon series set up to present now. Fascinating, as you said there in Seattle, when we see Starbucks staffing beginning a three day sixty still strike as well. So this something that keep on talking about, said Spencer Soper. Great to catch up with a happy weekend. Thank you. Meanwhile, coming up, Bloomberg Businessweek list of 50 most impactful people in business is out this week. We speak to one of them, Tom Oxley, CEO of Sinking, who made this year's list.
The company's brain computer interfaces, Spotify Bezos is backed by Gates. We'll tell you why. This has been back. Bloomberg is out this week with our sixth annual Bloomberg 50.
It's a look at people across finance technology. You name the industry that have defined global business in 2022. One name stood out to us in the list. Was Tom Oxley, CEO of Synchrony, which just completed a 75 million dollar funding round because the company is backed already now by Basil's by Gates creates brain computer interfaces known as B.C. ISE that can interpret can stimulate parts of the brain and is seen as a possible treatment for brain injuries.
Tom joins us now. And if anything's at the cutting edge of technology, you are brain computer interfaces, the way in which you can treat debilitating illness, the way you can transmit thoughts that are wirelessly to a digital devices. Tom, talk to us about, if you can, basically how this works. Technology has been around for 20 years. The challenge for commercialization has been to make it fully implanted and safe and out. What we do is we've figured out how to put the devices inside blood vessels inside the brain.
It detects from the part of the brain that controls the movement in the body. We digitize that signal, bring it out of the body, and then we use it to control computers so that patients who are paralyzed can restore their ability to engage with their world through a digital ecosystem, which which you and I take for granted. Suddenly being able to share as the masses WhatsApp messages, able to order food online, do your bills or credit cards is extraordinary. What they can be useful. The way in which you talk to investors, of course, having these conversations with Jeff Bezos with with Koestler, of course, we know Kosovo, one of your first backers. What is it about timeframes?
What is about pacing that you talk to them about? A Class 3 medical device is a very long journey, so the time frame is long, but we've been at this for 10 years actually. We've been in discussions with FDA to get this clearance for the study that's happening in the US currently. We just heard enrollment happened over the implant happening this week at UPMC in Pittsburgh. So we're moving along, but we've still got several years to go.
The next step with the series Safe Financing is to launch a pivotal study that will take us one step closer towards commercial launch. The people, the impact, the market, sort of. How many could this help? Tom? Paralysis is a very large problem when you think about it, not as a particular disease state, whether it's stroke or spinal cord injury or illness or multiple sclerosis. Many ailments or injuries can impact the body's ability to control the muscles in your body.
So we actually think there's 100 million people worldwide who have lost the ability to use their hands to control digital devices like you or I do. But where we're starting is the most severe into that spectrum for people who are unable to engage at all with digital systems and complete completely depend on a loved one or a caregiver for their for their daily needs. We're looking at footage now of just in the way in which this can potentially be revolutionary for people who have lost their ability to communicate in that way. Tom, your dad in Brooklyn told us about
the moment is regulation or moment. It's making sure that you're getting the right test results and showing that your heading all those sorts of hurdles. But what about talent? What about where you grow this business? How have you been able to do that? We are excited.
We were going to set up in the Bay Area and we made a decision to stay in New York primary. We're sitting up here in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. We've grown to 55 people and we the people coming into the company share a lot of New York City. So we've got a really interesting mix here. Very passionate and talented people that are really loving being inside New York City. A lot of our investors are here.
Our chief medical officer, Jay Macro at Mt. Sinai is here locally. We have a date, Petrino, who's running the Mt. Sinai,
the Mt. Sinai study. So we where we think New York's a great place to be doing medical device innovation. Great to have some time with you. Tom Oxley, congratulations. Thanks. Wonderful to have you on that. Yes. And can, of course, be sure to check out this week's issue of Business Week.
And you'll get all the deep dive on some of these incredible entrepreneurs. Meanwhile, coming up, we'll continue to talk about, of course, Twitter. What's this latest ban on certain individuals, on particular journalists? What's it mean for the future of the platform? Jason Goldman is with us, former Twitter founding team member. We'll also be talking about the future of advertising on the platform, the advertising trends and video commerce large in the year ahead as well. We push forward with all that and so much more this bring back.
Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology. I'm Caroline Hyde in New York. And joining us to, well, deep dive once again into the world, the extraordinary day, this ordinary six weeks around Twitter. This time, of course, we're going to discuss the banning of accounts of certain journalists. Great voice, Jason Goldman, one of the founding members of Twitter, a former White House chief digital officer under President Obama, of course. You've got an insider outside of
perspective here. And Jason, first and foremost, when we think about whether Elon Musk at the moment, many would say, yes, we don't always like the way in which he acts and gets there. But you can't. You can't. Backing against him. He always gets things done. The success he has with Tesla, the success he has with Space X. But at the moment, is he acting, from your perspective, like a rational business business leader or erotically in some way? No, I think he's acting very radically and motivated based on his own political preferences and the issues that activate him the most.
This ban that occurred last night for a variety of journalists was motivated by fear that he had for his family. And no one can. No one can doubt a fear that a person has for their family. But in fact, it seems fairly unconnected with the Twitter account that was tracking his jet movements. You know, there was no post from that account on Tuesday night. This paparazzi incident happened on
happened on Tuesday night away from an airport. And yet he somehow decided to blame this jet tracking service. But not only that, he banned journalists for even just linking to the account of that journal of that of that plane tracker. He would have been much better off just saying anything that talks about my family is off limits on this service that I now own. But instead, he's trying to formulate this very convoluted pre textual policy and presenting it as a protection against DAX. And it simply doesn't work because it's really about his own personal fears and motivations. Jason, what's interesting and I suppose
what many have been upended by is the idea that he bought Twitter because he's a freedom of speech absolutist is the way he sort of turned it time. And now these sorts of movements don't seem to work in that. But what's interesting is the way perhaps he brought back previously banned accounts like one child, Donald Trump was.
He went on a pit Twitter poll and he asked the audience and he's done it again. We understand, of course, he's gone and said, look, should I be actually banning these journalists for I should I unbanned immediately? Shall I leave it for seven days? The poll seems to say that, well, he should lift the ban. Do you think he'll stick to that at the moment, Jason? Do you think he'll use that again because he followed the poll previously? Hill Hill unbanned the journalists not because of the poll, but because he's he realizes that he's messed up in this situation. He realizes that this was a bridge too far and that he's he's now going to try to make an attempt like, see, you have to follow my rules.
But the outcry over it is simply going to be too much. And he's going to unbanned these journalists because he doesn't want to have to deal with this. He does want to have to deal with this untenable issue. And it's true that he did present himself as a free speech absolutist. But I think anyone with a fair reading of the facts, even from back in April, would have seen that this was just pretext for him advancing very specific political views. He's now gone on to endorse a Republican ticket.
He is very specific about the Wolk mind virus that is destroying the United States. And he's been silent on other important free speech issues, such as Chinese dissidents who use Twitter outside of China to coordinate protests. And the protests in Iran that are are are being done to help advance pro-democracy movements. You know, Twitter has been a tool of free speech and for democracy advocates since before. Elon Musk has had an account and he doesn't care about those issues because he's not really motivated by free speech. He's motivated by what serves his own parochial interests. It was interesting.
We asked our own audience, find our own technology handle on Twitter about whether they think ultimately the end goal of freedom of speech is being achieved by Elon Musk right now. At the moment, I don't think it is, Jason. And I'm interested interested as to whether in the longer term we will see that Benchley. Oh, well, we see people push to other social media platforms. What's so interesting and you referenced it yourself, is that a rival mastodon seems to be having all of its links basically banned. Its own profile was banned because it linked to Elan Jets.
But now anything that people are linking to in terms of social media put on that rival social media platform seems to not be getting through either. What do you make of that? The competition in focus, too? That's right. And I think, Mike, my prediction for Twitter has long been that it's not going to die overnight, but that it will become more broken and more stupid. And I think that's what we're seeing
play out. And as a result, people will find other places that they want to hang out, whether those are public places like Mastodon or private places like Discord. They're simply not going to want to be on a service where the main character every day is Elon Musk. And it's simply tracking, you know, what new shenanigans that he's gotten up to and what policies he's decided to invent out of pique and anger.
You know, one thing I would say one thing I would say to Elon about this and his and the and the very real moves that he's making to drive users to other platforms because of the anger and pique that he's pursuing these new policies with. As I know you, is a big fan of Frank Herbert's Dune. It's a book that he's quoted. It actually misquoted on his tweets before.
And I'm a fan of Frank Herbert's Dune as well. A proper quote from doing that I would encourage him to reflect on is a stone is heavy and the sand is weighty, but a fool's Braff is heavier than them both. And what we're really seeing with users go into these other platform is the result of a fool's wrath. What's interesting is, as I said before, people's belief any on Musk and we spoken to voices who are still very much supportive of the Space X fund raise that's going on at the moment, for example. They don't feel that they can bet
against him as a leader, even if you say perhaps as he's letting foolish mindset, perhaps pervade his overall actions at the moment. Twitter currently we understand this reports out there that it's raising funds at the moment, once again at 50 feet on a 20. Price is do we think people are going to be interested in this investment? I think it will get filled. I'm sure there's Elan fanboys out there and in the tech world who will be happy to be in business with them for the reasons you say. Maybe it allows them to get friends and family in the Space X IPO or they just want to be involved with on long term.
I'm sure the Space X IPO will work out, will work out well. And you know, even though Tesla is down over 60 percent on the year to date, you know, maybe there's maybe there's a case for Tesla longs as well. The difference is, is that Twitter and the moves that he's making with Twitter are just destroying brand value. Twitter has always had an excess of brand value beyond its business value. It's always succeeded because it attracted the important real time conversations among journalists, media personalities, celebrities and so on. And he is actively driving away those
use cases even before these bands. He's doing that. But now with the moves that he's making the last 24 hours, he's showing that it's just simply not a place for those conversations to be had. Additionally, you know, you on purportedly someone who's concerned about safety and his own family safety, I'm sure he is concerned about his own family's safety. But we have to remember that he also, in the course of putting out the Twitter files, has endangered the lives of employees who used to work for the company. You know, trust and safety, had you all wrong, had to flee his home, reportedly because Elan helped propagate a false story that you on that your well was soft on child sexual abuse material. I mean, that's deeply irresponsible coming from the CEO of a social media company.
And I think it should give anyone pause about the future of Twitter's trajectory. Jason Goldman, former Twitter founding team member, of course, former White House chief digital officer. And President Obama, thank you. Have a wonderful weekend.
And interesting that Jason, was that talking about brand value of Twitter. But also brands with value often want to go and advertise on Twitter. What does that look like in the future? It's already been perhaps questioned at the moment, already been dealing with some major brands dropping off the social media platform. What are the other opportunities for
them? I'm pleased to say that NIKKEI CEO and chairman of the content production company NBA TV is here in the studio in New York. Quite some time. Nina, thank you for having me. You're a man who has expertise within the digital media space, within direct to consumer, but also in previous life operations of big fuel, which is a social media sort of first digital company. And I'm interested in what you think of Twitter at the moment and what companies you speak to are looking for advertising opportunities. Thinking about it.
Well, thanks for having me. And, you know, I think brand safety is really important. A lot of brands are concerned about the volatility of platforms like Twitter. I know that YouTube has had challenges in the past and brands, I think are looking for a safe place to tell their stories and connect with their consumers and with the corporate responsibility of being a good brand, not getting caught up and all of the antics that seem to be going on over there. It's it's a wild ride, for sure. Talk to us when when we're thinking about how a brand wants to interact with a consumer right now. You're doing things with NBA, TV, sports
network and of course, newly launched Gulf Nation is what your company bringing the content and also the opportunity to directly come to me, who's viewing? And I can buy something that I like very seamlessly within within the content creation experience. How would people react to that in this environment? How are they seeing that as a more trust in space? It's been really effective. I mean, we're not a social media network, so we're a closed network and we tightly control our programming and content. We've been called Netflix meets QVC. So we're creating a lot of premium original content. We're free to watch you go to Spirit's Networks com or Golf Nation dot com.
Both of those channels operate very similarly where consumers can watch and purchase what they see and have it delivered directly to their home. The response has been really great. Spirit's network has been around for the last three years. We've had tremendous amount of success working with large global brands, specifically beverage alcohol.
And then we also saw that a lot of our data said that consumers inside of spirits like to golf. So we decided to take advantage of it and launch Golf Nation with the same idea of lifestyle programming with consumer shopping. And I think consumers are tired of interrupted ads and commercials and they're looking for an alternative way to really connect. And big media, especially streaming media, is struggling right now with figuring out new business models and trying to connect with consumers where they spend their time. What's interesting, you say struggling Netflix.
Ashley had pretty poor week in terms of its share price. It fell a lot yesterday because its new advertising tier. There were reports that it wasn't landing in quite the way they expected it to. Talk to us about just at the moment whether advertisers are willing to spend in this macro environment in spirit networking Gulf nation. Are they wanting to commit money to
marketing? Well, the beauty of our offering is that we can actually show attribution from views and impressions and eyeballs to sales. I think consumers are looking for a better experience. I don't think TV is broken. I think the consumer experience with TV is broken. Advertisers are looking for a way to reach consumers where they're spending their time. So we're spending a lot of our time on CTV as well as mobile. So the connected TV universe and we're
finding that that's an opportunity for. ISE was to get in front of consumers, the Netflix news recently was not only about some challenges they were having with over in terms of reaching audience, but it was more about supply. There seems to be a challenge with inventory in the connected TV market.
And so by creating more content, you're essentially creating more more inventory, more supply. Consumers are still watching more content than ever. And I think even though there might be some challenging economic times ahead. Advertisers are taking advantage of it to build brand equity, also to become storytellers.
And now, more than ever, advertisers have to separate their products in the market. So advertising in down times is often sometimes overblown. And I think people are still going to spend money. And I think, you know, they were going to do it more wisely. So advertisers have to show as well as talent with doing it with us. Of course, you can get it right in your hands. Time with you.
Thank you. The bank having to ethics spectrum on Netflix. Got it all. NIKKEI NIKKEI, CEO and chairman of NBA TV. Coming up, crypto from Amber. It raises three million dollars. Bill able to do that, but in fact, is actually raising the money to stem some of the damage and the implosion of RTX NIKKEI.
Describe that story. The contagion risk that still that doesn't bring back. We're going to talk about the embattled crypto firm Amber. It's actually just raised three hundred million dollars and the company's CEO says that the new cash will be focused on customers who actually lost money on the platforms products due to RTX is implosion. Joining us to discuss is being IBEX Hannah Miller, who wrote a great story with the CEO. And it's interesting, they originally were raising money to expand what was a three billion dollar valuation and then suddenly had to pivot and raise money for a very different reason.
Yes, they put this one hundred million dollar funding round on pause. They were raising that money in multiple parts. But with the collapse of that RTX, they had to switch gears and they actually raised three hundred million dollars to help their institutional and high net worth clients who were affected by the collapse of FTSE X. And this was raised at a lower valuation than three billion dollars. What about the growth or lack thereof in the company as well? Because this was had much coverage when they first launched DAX.
Morgan Stanley trade is coming up, setting up helping the institutional world get into the world crypto. Well, I mean, they grew very fast and now seem to be having some wine. Yeah, this company is going back to basics. That's how we're looking at it. They have completely ended their services to retail customers and they're only focusing on institutional clients and high net worth individuals. So they're going back to where they started.
Their workforce at its peak was eleven hundred people. That's now being trimmed down to over 300. So that's a huge, huge step back. But I guess unsurprising when volumes have come down so much as well. Did he give you any take on how the
market's going to continue to evolve? What sort of clients are going to be serving? Yes. So their overall trading volumes have shrunk. They had about 10 percent of their trading capital trapped on RTX when the exchange collapsed. Since that trading volume has decreased,
that percentage has increased of what they have on RTX. So looking ahead, they're hoping that by refocusing drilling down to just work with institutional clients, that they can have a leaner, more successful business. And the CEO is adamant that they will be here in 2023. Does he think have you want to be here
in 2023? What about I mean, we've only got a minute left, but contagion is still a can. You can save him. Yes, I mean, contagion is a serious concern here. They are definitely a firm in the
crosshairs, especially after ending a high profile sponsorship deal with Chelsea FC. So there's question of whether they'll be pulling back on other deals, including with Athletic Co Madrid. So all eyes are on this company in Asia. They're based in Singapore. So it'll be interesting to see what the year has had for them.
We seem to keep coming back to marketing and businesses willingness or potential ability to invest in it. At the moment, Hannah Miller, we thank you so much. Or the World Cup tie that. Meanwhile, coming up, as we head towards the end of our final edition of Bloomberg Technology for the year, that is, we look ahead to 2023. The CEO Sato witness joins next to preview the trends that will shape ISE team next year. This bring back. So today is the last edition of Bloomberg Technology for the year, and so we're going to look ahead to twenty twenty three for you. Solar winds is out with the top trends that will be shaping the I.T.
space next year. Pleased to say that the CEO is with us, Sadako Krishna. Sir, it's great to have some time with you and stock up and talk to us about what you see in terms of we're all worrying about macro headwinds. We're all worried about companies not
being able to spend on marketing as much as they would. What about the Internet infrastructure? What about that technology? What about investment in our D in that respect? Are you worried about the pulling back in the breaks the. Paul Callan, thank you for having me here. I'm really happy and excited to be here. It is true that we are in a very unique macroeconomic environment, but this may seem paradoxical. But the interesting thing is the need for digital transformation and is actually accelerating. To that end, solutions that serve
customers with timely value are becoming even more relevant and critically in this environment. I will highlight two real trends and reasons for that. One is complex. City of every customer's environment is actually increasing due to multi cloud, hybrid solutions, hybrid world, remote work and so on. And to is the costs or the budgets that they have commensurate to their complexity is not increasing. So in that there is a unique opportunity
for a solution suppliers to give the best time to value to customers by delivering simple effective solutions that enable them to manage their environments more effectively because they don't have productive time on their hands today. How do you then in this extraordinary environment we find ourselves on with a lot of I'm competitors trying to woo those checks from the similar clients you have. How do you set yourself apart? What are the sort of key areas that you focus on that are going to make a CEO or leader of a business that much life easier? Absolutely. First of all, we have the pleasure of serving 300000 customers all over the world. So we have our pulse to the ground and understanding of their customer requirements and dynamics on a daily basis. What is most important to customers these days is simplicity in everything that we do, not just the solutions that we offer in terms of their ease of use, but how easy are we to do business with and the business models associated with it.
So, for instance, recently we introduce the notion of a node based price which helps customers simply deploy ISE solutions without having to worry about. I mean, network nodes do I have how many applications do I have and so on and so forth, so that it just makes it easy for them to engage with us. So simplicity in everything that we do related to that is that trying to value that it takes customers do not have 18 month pricing and packaging and deployment cycles when they make a per Kevin decision. They need to see value of those solutions immediately and almost instantly. That is the other dynamic that we
differentiate on. And then we build from there into remediation and automation related capabilities, all to unlock productivity at a reasonable cost for the customer. And with safety as well, first and foremost, particular solution are working in the office. They are working remotely as those make for more vulnerabilities. NASDAQ. I know this is about a difficult perhaps
question and at times probably feels repetitive, but back in 2020, of course, your name Solar Winds is embroiled with the hackers that managed to infiltrate your own software. How are you looking to ensure that that just doesn't happen again and isn't going to be a theme of 2023 for other people? Unfortunately, it has remained OPM in 2021 and 2022, even though the spending on security has gone up. The number of security incidents very high profile ones since what we've inflicted with have continued to rise. And my belief is we all need to continue to work together in a partnership with the public and the private to deliver what I call it a community vigil. And that's the only way we can improve no company harm that no matter how good you are or how large you are or how many resources you're spending, are immune to it.
And so we have taken an approach of secure by design. And over the last couple of years, as ironic as it may sound, we've actually built a significantly greater level of trust with our customers in terms of how we manage through this situation and build secure by design principles. So that is what I would recommend to everyone. Transparency, collaboration, urgency are the key things to drive on a foundation of humility circa great tools and time with you. Happy holidays in the Air Force. Ramakrishnan, Barcelona's CEO, with his
outlook for 2023. And that does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology for 2022. Bloomberg Technology going to be back in January to continue to bring you the biggest, the best out there in terms of the technology, the innovation space. Do not forget to keep checking out our
podcast to find us on the terminal on Apple, on Spotify. And I heart keep checking us out on Twitter. Twitter spaces for many. Let's bring back.
2022-12-20 18:07
