Hello! On the back of Valentine’s Day yesterday, spare a thought for the customs officers who vetted over a billion flowers for bugs, pests, and diseases in the run-up to the 14th. Today we’re exploring:
Airbnbillions
Airbnb just booked its first annual profit in its near-15-year history, minting a whopping $1.9bn in 2022.
It may come as a surprise to some — particularly those who see the platform as a home for sneaky add-on charges — but, last year aside, Airbnb has lost nearly $6bn since 2015.
Additional fees
Since it was founded in 2008, Airbnb has altered the world of travel as we know it, for better or worse. It’s opened up worlds of opportunity to hosts and holidaymakers through short-term lodgings and experience offerings.
Its business model was the archetypal Silicon Valley strategy (excluding the bit where they sold cereal to stay afloat). Airbnb grew at blitz speed, burned money, and tried to get to “scale” as quickly as possible. That model, of course, doesn’t always work: Quibi, Jawbone, WeWork — the list of companies that raised $10m, $100m or $500m+ before failing is very, very long.
And even in the last few years, it wasn’t obvious if Airbnb’s model was sustainable. In 2019, when it logged more bookings (327m) than ever before, the company still lost a cool $700m+ over the year. When the pandemic struck in 2020, Airbnb’s first year as a public company, the platform was badly hit as fewer bookings and stock compensation expenses combined to cost the business $4.6bn.
However, Airbnb now appears to be in rarefied air, with its place as the de facto online marketplace for homestays and experiences giving it a network effect that’s hard to compete with. Travelers will go to the platforms where they have the most choice, and hosts will want the widest possible reach.
T-Mobile suffered a major outage across the US late on Monday, at its peak receiving more than 80,000 reports on DownDetector, with many customers unable to send texts, place calls or use their data.
For many of us, our phones have become so vital — arguably too vital — to the daily workings of our life that outages like T-Mobile’s can be frustratingly restrictive.
Cord cutting
That’s become particularly true as cell phones are slowly killing off the landline. Indeed, as recently as 2014, if a cellular provider suffered an outage, the majority of households would still have had a landline to rely on. Today, however, when 70% only have cell phones and the number of households with a landline has fallen to 29%, the same scenario causes much wider disruption.
For those unhappy with their cell coverage, the options are increasingly limited. The industry has consolidated significantly, and is now dominated by only a handful of major companies. In fact, after the $26bn deal that saw T-Mobile merge with Sprint in 2020, the industry has effectively been whittled down to just 3 major players. T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T now take 24%, 30%, and 45% share of the market each, respectively.
Unfortunately for landline manufacturers, they haven’t yet caught the nostalgia wave that’s propelled the revival of vinyl, polaroids and cassettes. Maybe Gen Z will one day find a soft spot for dialing on a rotary phone.
Start your engines
Yesterday, Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, announced her candidacy for president. The first confirmed challenger to Trump — who launched his own bid to return to the White House in November 2022 — Haley’s announcement comes nearly 21 months, or some 630 days, before the 2024 election date.
Putting political ideology aside, Haley’s early announcement is indicative of just how much goes into running a modern campaign to get the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Fundraising, canvassing, organizing volunteers, polling the public, producing media assets, filming commercials, running social media accounts and — of course — deciding on your flagship policies are time-consuming… but most of all they are expensive.
Indeed, data from OpenSecrets reveals that the most recent presidential election was the most expensive election cycle in history, with political spending in 2020 totalling some $14.4bn, or more than $16bn once adjusted for inflation.
The average winner in the House spent $2.35m, while in the Senate it took a whopping ~$27m to emerge victorious and history suggests that 2024 election spending is likely to reach new highs again.
• Been seeing fewer brands on Twitter? You're not alone — data suggests that more than half of Twitter’s top 1,000 advertisers have left.
• Video never actually killed the radio star? Pew Research shows that 47% of Americans get at least some of their news from radio.
• Recession-proof: Coca-Cola reported solid sales numbers yesterday, driven primarily by a 12% rise in pricing.
• Americans would apparently love the ability to walk everywhere but want to keep their imperial system – exploring the things from other countries that Americans would embrace.
• We hope that in search of your Valentine yesterday no one fell for these top romance scams.
Off the charts: An iconic, if somewhat unloved, internet browser has finally been put to rest. But can you name the biggest browsers from our chart below?
Answer here.
