Month: February 2018

There’s always a bigger fish Hall One at Mobile World Congress – a single space more massive than most conference centers in major cities – contained only a few displays. Although a quarter of the room housed small phone and mobile manufacturers, Huawei controlled the rest, creating a walled-off compound patrolled by women in folk costumes from many lands. The Small World After All jollity stopped at the gates. This was Huawei’s war room. Mere mortals were not allowed to tread its hallowed ground as the ladies at the gate…

LittleThings blames its shutdown on Facebook algorithm change A recent Facebook algorithm change seems to have claimed a high-profile casualty: LittleThings, a digital publisher focused on inspirational and how-to content for women, which shut down yesterday. I wrote about the company at the beginning of 2016, when it raised debt funding from City National Bank. At the time, it seemed to be flying high, becoming one of the largest lifestyle publishers online and, according to one report, publishing the single most popular Facebook post in 2015. But things were a…

Spotify plays the long game with Family and Student Plans even as revenue per user drops Spotify’s “Family Plan,” a variation of which launched in 2014, as well as its “Student Plan” appear to be driving a significant portion of the company’s growth and improving retention, as the company points to it multiple times in its filing for a direct listing on public markets today. But that also comes at a cost of decreasing the amount of revenue it actually gets from each premium subscriber. In the filing, Spotify indicates…

Here’s what Spotify shares will be worth when they start trading Spotify has finally filed to go public. But unlike most tech offerings, Spotify won’t be raising any money by issuing new shares. Instead they’ll just allow existing shares owned by investors and employees to be traded publicly on the New York Stock Exchange. No IPO means there are no investment banks to underwrite and price the offering, meaning the public markets will essentially be the only thing determining what Spotify shares will be worth when they start trading. However,…