Good morning! One small step for man, one giant wait for mankind... NASA has delayed the first human moon landing in over 50 years until 2026. Today we're exploring:
Meta’s added measures
Meta announced yesterday that it will introduce a range of new restrictions and policies to improve teens’ experience on Facebook and Instagram, aimed at ensuring the content that its youngest members see is “safe and age-appropriate”. The measures will see all under-18s on the platforms placed under the strictest content control settings, filtering out posts that Meta deems potentially damaging to younger users.
Blind spots
The changes will be rolled out in the coming months, though some parents may feel it’s too little too late, as legal scrutiny around how the social media giant harms minors builds.
Indeed, despite Meta’s efforts, violent & graphic content and suicide & self-injury content — 2 key areas that will be tackled by the new restrictions — continue to proliferate on Instagram and Facebook. Since the end of 2019, Meta has been forced to add warnings to, partially cover, or completely remove over 420 million graphic and violent posts from these platforms, while it’s actioned ~150m pieces of suicide and self-injury content over the same period.
However, managing what gets shared on its platforms doesn't come cheap. The tech giant reportedly spent some $5 billion on safety and security in 2021 alone (including counter-terrorism and law enforcement) — more than rival Snapchat made in total revenue over the last year.
Teenage dreams
Last summer, we explored how Abercrombie & Fitch — once the aspirational brand for an entire generation of teenagers — was trying to turn its struggling sales around. Out was the previous strategy, which included only targeting the “good-looking, cool kids” (per the company’s former CEO); in is a revamped A&F, focused on broadening its appeal beyond just T-shirts and jeans for a select crowd.
That strategy is working.
Indeed, A&F reported on Monday that it had sold more than it expected over the crucial Christmas and holiday season, with its ranges finding success among female and Gen Z customers.
The company now expects to grow its revenue 14-15% for 2023. The news sent A&F stock up 6% on the day, building on what has already been a white-hot 12 months for the fashion brand, having seen its shares rise 238% — more than the 234% rise that Nvidia investors have enjoyed throughout the AI boom. Perhaps most impressive, though, is that A&F has managed to reverse its revenues while keeping an eye on the bottom line — its latest financials reveal an operating profit of $138m, nearly 8x what the company managed in the same quarter one year ago.
Pretty vacant
The push from corporate execs to get employees back into the office hasn’t yet translated into queues at the watercooler... new data from Moody’s Analytics has revealed that nearly 20% of all office space across major US cities was unleased at the end of 2023, a higher share than any previous year on record.
Moody’s has been running the emptiness temperature check every year since 1979, with notable peaks in the mid-to-late 80s and early 90s — the only other times when the vacancy rate crept above the 19% mark.
In 1991, 19.3% of offices were vacant following the commercial building boom of the 80s, when a perfect storm of generous lenders and eager developers yielded a supply of office space that, at least for a stretch, massively outstripped demand. While that gap was eventually closed in the decade that followed, the current spike appears more down to the cultural shift in how we work, rather than any cyclical economic or construction factors.
Zooming in: The 19.6% average figure masks a lot of variation across America — San Francisco’s vacancy rate, for example, was reported to be as high as 35.9% in December.
• Earnings calls mentions of the phrase “generational opportunity” are up 3,800% since 2018 — one among a long list of interesting numbers from Harper’s.
• A live feed of all the biggest new tech product announcements from CES 2024, including robot projectors, foldable monitors, and transparent TVs.
• China likely dethroned Japan as the world's top exporter of cars, shifting more than 3.8 million vehicles according to data from the CPCA.
• Caffeine rush: Starbucks will need to open a store every 3 days to reach its 1,000 branch goal in India by 2025.
• If your New Year's goals need a kickstart, explore NPR’s resolution planner featuring expert guidance.
Quick cut: Which new viral sensation is sending Target shoppers into frenzy, while driving Google Search volumes above peaks seen for the ~130-year-old NHL Championship of the same name? [Answer below].
