Hello! The House has just voted to pass a bill that could lead to TikTok, which has roughly 170m US users, being banned nationally unless it's divested from Chinese parent company ByteDance. Today we're exploring:
The other ‘gram
The biggest social media company you’ve (probably) never heard of is nearing a billion users. Telegram, a global social media and messaging giant that only ~1 in 4 Americans are actually familiar with, has just reached 900 million monthly active users globally, with CEO Pavel Durov touting a potential IPO.
Despite its relatively low profile in the US, the platform has been making waves in other countries since its launch in 2013 — largely thanks to its apparent emphasis on privacy and security, which has helped it notch hundreds of millions of downloads in India, parts of South America, and Russia, where the app was originally founded.
Group chats
Telegram is many things to many people. It’s a place to joke with friends; a means for freedom fighters to arrange protests; a valuable outlet to get news to readers where media is censored… but, it’s also a place where people go to buy guns, drugs, fake bank cards, and was (or maybe still is) a major platform for terror groups to organize and spread information on.
While that wide range of uses has landed Telegram in hot water with governments and lawmakers from Brazil to Iraq, it’s also supercharged its growth. Indeed, adding nearly a billion users in roughly a decade puts it in an elite category of apps — particularly considering that it reportedly only has 50 full-time staff, a pretty tiny group that now wields a substantial amount of global influence.
Adidown
After years in the black, sportswear giant Adidas has gone red. The German company posted its first annual loss in over 3 decades as the full effects of its breakup with Kanye West and his valuable Yeezy brand continue to hamper the apparel behemoth.
The company revealed a €14m net loss for 2023 — a far cry from the €638 million net income it notched in 2022, and even further from the €2.2 billion (~$2.4 billion) that it achieved the year before. Weak revenue in the US, its second biggest market, is driving the decline, with sales slipping 16% in 2023 — a trend that the 74-year-old company expects to continue this year as it battles with a glut of inventory.
My beautiful dark twisted fantasy
When it cut ties with Kanye West in October 2022, Adidas still had some $1.3 billion worth of Yeezy shoes in its warehouses that it has slowly shifted over the last 15 months, donating some of the profits to fight hate speech, and the company now finds itself in a transitional period.
Soccer-player-turned-CEO Bjørn Gulden, who spent nearly 10 years at the helm of rival Puma, set out a pretty understated roadmap slogan, saying that Adidas should be a “good company” by 2025 and a “really healthy company” by 2026. Nonetheless, shares in Adidas are up 55% since Gulden took the reigns and implemented his turnaround plan.
Liquid assets
Liquid Death, the “goth kid of canned water” made a splash earlier this week with a $67 million funding round that brought its valuation to $1.4 billion — double what it achieved 2 years ago, giving the punky startup coveted unicorn status.
Investors backing the deal include actor Josh Brolin and entertainment company Live Nation, which has helped supercharge growth thanks to an exclusive supply deal that they’ve had with the company since 2021. The water brand is now stocked at more than 110,000 outlets across the US and UK, and recorded $263 million in scanned retail sales last year.
Canned laughs
Liquid Death’s appeal appears to derive in part from its #DeathToPlastic environmental ethos (their website describes cans as “infinitely recyclable”), as well as its dark marketing flair, with the company listing products like "Grim Leafer" and "Berry It Alive" under its tagline, “murder your thirst”.
At a time when other water brands went minimalist, Liquid Death leaned into a tongue-in-cheek metal morbidity that has paid off on social media, particularly with the increasingly sober Gen Z. Viral pranks and celebrity collaborations such as a Steve-O voodoo doll have helped amass more than 8 million followers across its platforms, including some 5 million on TikTok alone — more than quadruple the total for Evian, the next most followed water brand.
Next time you aren’t sure your business idea is radical or innovative enough: Liquid Death is worth more than $1 billion and they just sell canned water.
• Around 19.5 million people tuned into the 96th Academy Awards ceremony on ABC on Sunday — the most in 4 years.
• Donations at store checkouts contributed $749m to charities in 2022 alone, almost double the amount raised a decade prior.
• Work from harbour: Virgin Voyages is testing a cruise subscription service for remote workers, starting at $9,990 for 4 month-long cruises.
• Google has restricted its Gemini AI chatbot from answering queries related to upcoming elections in any global market where they’re taking place — or, more than 70 countries in this record election year.
• How generations got their generalized names.
• Mapping the states where people do the most (and the least) exercise.
