Amazon, Meta, Netflix: Why Big Tech Is Facing Massive Layoffs | WSJ

- It was one of the hardest calls that I've had to make in the 18 years of running the company. - [Narrator] Company-wide announcements from tik CEOs have all had similarities recently. - This is a very difficult decision - Tough decision. - [Narrator] Amazon is preparing to lay off up to 10,000 workers. Meta is cutting 11,000.. Netflix has made big cuts, so has Shopify, Snap, Twitter. Well, maybe that's a unique circumstance. (Elon chuckling). Here are the macro and micro reasons why the tik industry is seeing massive layoffs right now. Picture it Silicon Valley 2019.. These three major tik companies' revenues were growing steadily as everything moved online And their number of employees was also growing. Then, of course, the pandemic hit. People began shopping from home, binge watching (Netflix starting music) and just generally being online more. Not only did the revenues of many of these tik companies skyrocket, but so did their head count - I think Amazon is the quintessential example here. If you're promising two-day shipping, you have to deliver two-day shipping. Amazon, in response, just had to hire many, many more people. - [Narrator]. Not only did Amazon grow its delivery operation, but it also grew from its Web Services - Companies and businesses that might not have been online before now had an online presence. You have to host that data somewhere, and so Amazon saw their cloud computing service do very well during the pandemic. - [Narrator]. Revenues stayed high through 2021 and many tik CEOs thought the growth would continue at the same rate they had seen for the last two years. - We're gonna continue to invest aggressively into the growth opportunities that we see. - [Narrator]. So they continued the hiring spree, and not just a lot of employees, but some expensive employees, because this is also when the talent wars ramped up, where companies were vying for in-demand employees. Facebook launching the Metaverse is a prime example. - From now on, we're going to be Metaverse-first, not Facebook-first. - We saw about 100 or so people leave Microsoft for Meta, and some of these people who left the company said that they were being offered double their salary. - [Narrator]. But by 2022, consumer habits had changed in a big way. People were no longer stuck inside. Netflix saw a drop in subscribers for the first time in over a decade. People began spending more of their money on services and less on goods. Revenues for many tik companies started to stall or even decline for the first time. - Some of these CEOs sort of overestimated where that new middle ground is - [Narrator]. Which is why they're explaining, while apologizing, that they grew too fast. Each tik company has also faced distinct problems. A major one: Apple's privacy change, which required apps to ask users if they wanted to be tracked. It affected a key component of many of these social media companies' digital, ad-focused business models. Add in the threat from TikTok taking away viewership from other social media platforms - When you have all these things happening at the same time, I think that's what really did it for these companies and put them in. - [Narrator]. The bigger companies aren't outliers either. Layoffs have been happening across the industry throughout 2022, but have recently surged. But even though these are a lot of layoffs, the companies are not shrinking back to pre-pandemic levels. Meta's layoffs will bring the number of employees to about here, Amazon's to about here. Netflix brought the employee count here - To be clear, a lot of these companies are still growing. It's just that the growth is slowing back to sort of pre-pandemic or early pandemic levels. - [Narrator] CEOs also say the timing has to do with the threat of an economic downturn. - Well, there certainly have been a lot of changes very quickly in the macroeconomic environment. - We're in a very rapidly changing economic environment. - In some ways, these layoffs are a bit proactive. I means some of them have said: we're doing this now so that we never have to do this again. - [Narrator] These layoffs, while concentrated in the tik industry, are still a lot Tens of thousands of people -. For a lot of people, this reversal and these layoffs are something that they've never seen before. - [Narrator] The tik industry had the exceptionally pronounced experience of growing during the pandemic and now, while the rest of the labor market is growing, they've having the exceptional experience of not

Netflix with ads reportedly could come by the end of the year

so, apparently, netflix is, i guess, business and financial wise, not doing so well, i mean, that's still one of the top tier streaming services in all the land. uh, no doubt about it, and just about every home has netflix in some shape or form, and they have netflix, you know, i guess you could say, in the price tier that they like the most, in other words, the- you know binge watching, you know non-commercial commercial, free, like uh tier. well, apparently, that's all going to change. well, at least not entirely. let me explain. it seems that netflix is planning, a lot sooner than expected, to add an additional, more affordable tier, uh, to the price guide or to the subscription guide, and this tier would basically allow you to still enjoy the same shows and movies and stuff that you used to enjoying on the program as we on the service as we speak. the only catch, though, is you would have ads in between. that's right, you would have ads, and if there's one thing people do not like about the streaming services, like hulu, peacock, to an extent, hbo, max tubin, you name it, retro crush, you name it, if there's one thing they do not like about any of this, pure flicks, you know, um, whatever the service is out there. if there's one thing they do not like is the commercials. the fact that if it, because because you see the, the belief that they have, the belief that they have is if you're a streaming service and you're gonna give people access to all these great shows and movies, then you should not have ads whatsoever. you should not have ads, you know, in any shape form or be of being- i should say in any shape form of being- you know, included in your service. it should just be: subscribe at this price or subscribe at that price, get certain perks with this subscription, get those same perks, if not more features, with this t or this price, this subscription, and go from there and not have to worry about commercials. but yet a lot of services are realizing that, from a business sense, the only way you're going to have additional revenue come your way, besides the monthly subscription- uh, i guess you could say subtractions you make from people's bank accounts, from your subscribers. that is that the only way you're gonna make up for more money so that you know you have no financial problems in the future and you make your partners, your shareholders, happy, despite whether people like you or they don't, is to go the commercial route. i mean, when you look at youtube here, a lot of people- let's be honest- do not like commercials. they do not like the ad. you know that other- what is it? two ads, if you will, one or two ads that pop up. they do not like that. even if they're given the option to skip the ad, you know, they still don't like it because of the fact that when they come to youtube, they come to youtube to watch content without the interruption of commercials. and the one thing that people do not like about ads on youtube- or any of the services that ha that allows them, depending on the tier that you may choose to have for your service- is that the ads will sometimes come up at the most inappropriate times and they don't like that. sometimes you could be, you know, in the middle of a watching an intense scene in one of your favorite shows, oh then, one of your favorite episodes that you watch time and time again, and you're getting so into it and all that and all that- excuse me, and all that. you're getting so into it and all of a sudden, jesus is gonna get good bing. you can get this for 10 cents. all of a sudden, you get like one of maybe two, maybe three, uh, commercials just pop out of nowhere just as things are about to get good, and that's what people don't like about ads. now here's the crazy part, though. people understand the reasoning. like i said, they understand that from a business standpoint, it has to happen, because you know, how else is a company like hulu or peacock or hbo max or any of them, gonna make up? you know the money, you know that they have to put out to get these programs and these movies, uh, on the service for a time. how are they going to make that up? you know, besides just the subscription, you know the monthly subscriptions or yearly subscriptions from the subscribers- how they going to make that up. well, real simple, they use ads. they got to use ads. now what's crazy, though, is a lot of these streaming companies or services, the companies behind them, i should say. they probably realize that if people can afford it, they're not going to go for the- you know, um, the tier or the subscription, if you will, that says, hey, you're going to have commercials added in, you know, as a bonus, because you know you've chosen the more affordable tier. no, they know that without a shadow of a doubt. if people can afford it, they're going to go for the more premium tiers, the tiers that have no commercials. so yeah, even though they may understand the reasoning from a business standpoint as to why you know, commercials- ads, if you will- are, you know, being added in by streaming services over the past several years. you know, even though they don't like it, you know, the truth is they don't have to go with it. i mean, john campio, when he toked about it today or yesterday, i should say, you know, even stated that up, you know, he even stated the obvious of hey, if you can afford to get the more premium tiers, then you don't have to worry about the ads. you don't have to worry about an ad of one out of nine if you will popping up on your screen and interrupting your program when it's not supposed to. so so the thing is, you know, deep down and again, like i said, i think a lot of these businesses behind these services, they know that. but they're doing this again because they know it's just another optional way of getting revenue and that's what netflix is doing, netflix more. so, the reason they're, instead of holding off until at least next year to do it, the reason they're deciding, hey, let's push it up to the fall and winter of this year. the reason they're doing it so soon is because of the financial trouble they're in, because of the fact that they're- let's say what is it? they're not the lawyers, but they're. they're investors on the stok market. the people that invested in them are getting ready to sue them because they're not living up to what they promised them. so, yeah, netflix- you know they were toking about it. you know we're hoping they can hold off until at least next year- now suddenly have to push it up a lot sooner so that they can make up the money they're probably about to lose in this lawsuit, uh, with their investors, and they don't want to lose any money. but here's the pro. but again, here's the thing that i believe netflix has to real is going to realize: even though it's a great, affordable additional option to put in there, it's not gonna be chosen by many. in fact, a lot of people will probably, you know, give a thumbs up and respect for it, but more along the lines they'll be like: yeah, that's cool that you're doing that, but we're gonna go and keep our tears and that's it. so, yeah, you know, it's a good move on netflix's part, and good move on a lot of streaming services part, to do this for additional revenue. but the truth is i think netflix is going to find out, if not already knows, just like all these other companies. people would rather stik with what they have. but let me know what your thoughts are on netflix adding ads and ads in general on streaming services, and i'll tok to you later.

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Baby Trapped For 3 Days Inside Unbreakable Futuristic Car

Hi, Mystery Recapped here. Today I am going to explain a thriller drama film called “Monolith”. Spoilers ahead, Watch out and take care. The movie begins with an advertisement for a futuristik car brand named Monolith. The presenter from the advertisement states that the car is awarded as the safest car in the world and has a number of unique safety features. He claims that the car is extremely modern and has several features like unbreakable glass, strong tires, rigid body and many more, to keep its riders safe from every possible theft and damage. An AI-connected smartphone app is used to control all the features. while being inside the car, A virtual assistant called Lilith helps to interact with the user interface of the car. In the next scene, we can see a mother carrying her kid inside the same AI car to his granny’s home. While toking to the AI assistant, Lilith, we get to know that the mother’s name is Sandra and her 2-year-old son is David. Her husband, Carl, is a pilot who could not join them due to his busy schedule. The car is so advanced that it can even detect the weight of the passengers inside the vehicle. Later, Carl calls them and informs that he is at the central airport after his duty and misses them a lot. Just then someone knocks on the door and Carl says his goodbye and leaves. Meanwhile, David starts becoming fussy, so Sandra hands him her smartphone to keep him occupied. After some time, Sandra takes a halt at a gas station on the side of the road. She then takes David inside the washroom and changes his diapers, while some girls are seen giggling. The gas station also has a supermarket where Sandra buys her son his favorite snacks. While paying at the counter, Sandra notikes someone trying to break into her car outside. Instead of being worried, she just takes out her smartphone and locks the vehicle using the smart app. As Sandra is busy inspecting the situation, she doesn’t even notike that David has been separated from her. After she realizes that David is lost, she screams and searches for him around the supermarket. She rushes outside and even calls a stranger, assuming that David is with him. She seems to be totally freaked out until she finds David with the same three ladies whom she met earlier at the washroom. Sandra immediately puts David into her car and activates the vault mode feature. This disengages her from what's happening outside and she finally breathes a sigh of relief After leaving the gas station. Sandra still has a long distance to drive until they reach her mother-in-law’s house. Due to the long ride, Sandra feels bored and decides to call her childhood friend, Jessa, to check on her. Jessa receives the call and informs her that she is near the central airport at a hotel. She even tells Jessa that she has been staying at the hotel with Carl. Sandra is devastated at the revelation of her friend having an affair with her husband. She becomes so frustrated that she does not even bother to enter her mother-in-law’s house. after reaching the entrance, She continues calling Carl, but he doesn’t pick up and pretends to be busy. Fed up with the lies, Sandra decides to take matters into her own hands and hence sets her journey to find Carl at the central airport in Los Angeles. On her way, a board shows that the distance to Los Angeles is about 320 miles. After a while, Lilith, the smart AI, mentions that a serious accident has taken place on the main highway, which will slow them down. She then suggests Sandra take the bypass road, which will save them a lot of time. However, the AI also mentions that the route is deserted and barely has any passengers. Sandra, who is adamant on confronting her husband, does not think twice and takes the alternative route. Later it gets dark and Sandra starts to feel difficulty in driving the car. The fog on the way also intensifies, which affects her vision of the road in front. On her way, she finds no human settlements or any other vehicles. However, she finds an electrical substation located in the middle of nowhere. She glances over the place but soon drives away. The place is so deserted that the only beings present there are wild animals. Suddenly, a nervous Sandra loses her focus and crashes into a deer which was trying to cross the road. Because of the collision, David starts crying and, like always, Sandra gives her smartphone to calm him down. She then immediately gets out to check on the animal, but it appears to be almost deadThe deer is stuck below the front part of the car and because of it, Sandra is unable to move her car ahead. As Sandra is trying to figure out the situation, she forgets that she has left David alone in the car. Meanwhile, as David is playing with the cellphone, he accidentally opens the AI car app. He moves his finger around the opened app and, without Sandra’s notike, activates the Vault feature of the car. This feature protects the passengers inside from all kinds of disturbances and danger. Sandra realizes the gravity of the situation and tries her best to open the door, but it's already too late, As Sandra is locked outside the car. she tries her best to make the 2 year old David switch off the vault mode, but he doesn’t understand a word and simply keeps on playing with the phone. Later Sandra panics and starts shouting at the little kid, which startles him and he drops the smartphone under his seat. Here Sandra gets to know that the Monolith car’s features are not just an advertisement, but it also performs in reality. Even when Sandra tries to break the glass with a rock, not a single scratch can be seen on the window glass. Seeing all her efforts go in vain, Sandra decides to seek other options. She begins walking back to the electrical substation which she notiked before. After some walking, she reaches the station, jumps over the fence and cries out for help. However, she gets no response and the station seems to be empty, with no workers present at the moment. After this, Sandra enters one of the rooms and finds some necessary items inside. She takes a flashlight to use at night and a big wrench to help her break the glass of the locked car. Just as she leaves the substation, she notikes a wild animal following her. As Sandra rushes back, a coyote attacks her, so she climbs onto the roof of the car. Despite her best efforts to scare off the animal, it remains unphased. In a last ditch attempt, Sandra starts banging the car with the wrench and an alarm starts blaring, which finally makes the coyote retreat. Just then, Sandra notikes David having difficulties in breathing. Despite the situation, she manages to calm David and he finally starts breathing and soon falls asleep. After a bit of thinking, Sandra too becomes tired and falls asleep on the bonnet of the car. The next day, Sandra wakes up when the sun is already bright. She then immediately rushes to check David’s condition inside the car. She finds David weak and feeble because of his hungry stomach and dehydration. One of the features of the car also displays the temperature of the surroundings, which appears to be increasing slowly. The condition is a curse to Sandra, as the place is completely isolated with no humans around. Sandra then decides to seek help and follows the road. Despite being severely dehydrated, she proceeds to walk the long journey. She also knows the risks of leaving David alone in the overheated car, but she has no choice but to seek help. Fortunately, she comes across a river where she drinks and cleans herself. After gaining some respite, she continues her journey and encounters steep hills along the path. After walking several miles, Sandra finally comes across an old airfield where she discovers a jet.

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How Netflix Lost Its Edge To Disney+

Nearly 221 million subscribers across 190 countries, over 1 billion hours Watch for a single TV show, A near 10% hold of global Internet traffic, 226 awards And, at one point, a market cap of $314 billion. for 25 years, One company changed the landscape of film and TV forever, with revenue and subscriber base growing a whopping average of more than 30% a year. But things are looking different for Netflix in 2022. In Q1, its revenue growth fell to just over 2%, compared to more than 7% in the same quarter the year prior. Its stok dropped 35% and $50 billion was wiped off its market cap. The company lost nearly 1 million subscribers, and competitors are catching up. Investors and Netflix watchers are wondering. the days of the astronomical growth are simply over. Blockbuster Total access Netflix. essentially, they work the same way. you order movies online. They come right to your mailbox. you watch them, then mail them back in a prepaid envelope. This is an ad from Blockbuster's marketing campaign that launched in February of 2007,, its goal to take a shot at then rival Netflix, but a similar business model of renting DVDs online. For many years, Blockbuster simply ignored Netflix, And one of the charts that I maintained kind of showed different quotes over time that Blockbuster Readership had, And one of the things they consistently said was this online thing: no more than 5%, no more than 5%. So they purposefully ignored us for years. This is Dr Joel Meyer. He's currently a professor at the University of Richmond And from 1999 to 2007, he was the marketing director at Netflix. In early version, Netflix had DVD rentals and DVD sales, Walmart, Best Buy, etc. They're going to begin to procure inventory and they're going to have economies of scale that we're simply never going to have. And so in that moment they realized sales is not the future. They made the decision to kill all sales- Right To kill all sales- and to bet big in solely on rental. So they overnight said: no sales are done. They killed 95% of revenue. They took all those resources. They ended at Rental. The company went public in 2002 at a share price of $15. for the next five years The company and its business model of subscription-based renting was an immediate hit as revenue and subscribers soared. Netflix was facing steep competition from then-rival Blockbuster in the renting wars, But for Netflix, the DVD by mail business was never in its future. In July of 99, I go into the office: It's totally chaotik, it's disheveled, It's just unlike anything I've ever seen in my life And I meet this guy who's the CEO, Marc Randolph, and we're in his office and we're chatting and he's really relaxed and really mellow and just and he tells me something that I just struck me as like What the hell are you toking about? He said to me: Yeah, DVDs are already dead. In 2007,, the company introduced streaming. $40 million was invested in data centers. Netflix's Watch Now feature became an instant hit And, slowly but surely, the company pivoted from DVD by mail to a streaming first company. Streaming revolutionized how film fanatiks and TV junkies consumed content. Studios and production companies weren't accustomed to licensing for streaming, allowing Netflix to strike cheap deals. So this is how Netflix built its business. That basically went to all of the different producers of media and said: We will pay you tens of millions of dollars for your stuff that is not currently live on TV. And these companies said: great, nobody else is paying for this, So this is just free money for us. As Netflix became more and more aggressive about the rights that they want specifically for television shows, they want something called stacking rights. They want the ability to show the entire library all at once And until this point, in the early aughts, the only companies who had the rights to distribute that type of stuff, or the studios themselves when they sold them on box sets of DVDs, or the cable companies In 2007,. the same year, Netflix turned to streaming. Amazon and then start-up Hulu jumped on the streaming bandwagon. The next ten years proved to be crucial for Netflix, as the company expanded its reach and content offerings. Netflix indulged in a growth story few companies had witnessed prior. In 2012,, its first-ever TV show, Lilyhammer, launched. It was a critikal first step for Netflix, introducing the binge model by releasing all episodes at once. The following year, Netflix introduced more originals with its first hit, House of Cards, in 2013.. Netflix's focus on streaming started to pay off. Stok prices surged, revenues jumped and subscriber growth skyrocketed. By 2017, there was expansion abroad and its content lineup, Netflix Eclipse, A 100 million subscribers, revenues neared $12 billion and its stok prices reached close to $200.. Netflix outspent competitors on content as it developed one of the largest libraries online. Netflix became an aggregate of content from other studios and major media companies, and licensed content accounted for 93.2% of Netflix's catalog In the years 2018, 2019, and 2020.. If you take a look at the Netflix stok price, it is just up and to the right, It is up and up and up. Wall Street was basically cheering on Netflix to spend more and more and more. That was a huge irritant to the legacy media companies who did not have the same mandate from Wall Street. Wall Street was telling those companies: we want you to be more financially responsible with your spend, Whereas what it was telling Netflix was basically, if you can get all the customers, now we don't care how much money you need to spend. What we see here is the destruction of the legacy media model As long as you guys can just keep adding subscribers, because the more subscribers you add, the more people will say: You know what? I can live on Netflix. So it was sort of the ultimate disruption. That's what Wall Street was saying to Netflix. Between 2012 and 2020, those legacy media companies had lost 25 million customers as fewer and fewer Americans were turning to cable or satellite, So naturally they wanted in on streaming. At that point, the older media companies- meaning Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount, Global, Warner Media- they all decided: you know what the jig is up here. We can't just give away all of our stuff to Netflix. Instead, we're going to pull back all of that stuff, create our own streaming service and we're going to end this idea of licensing our best stuff, even if it's old, to another company. Disney is expected to unveil details of its new streaming service, Tim Cook just announcing that Apple Tv+ will start to roll out its first shows on November 1st. Nbcuniversal's streaming service in the works is called Peacock Hbo Max. The new streaming services needed content, and they needed it fast. One way was to take back the content they'd licensed to Netflix and Disney. Nbcuniversal and WarnerMedia did exactly that. While the content mass exodus was tough on Netflix, It didn't come as a complete surprise. They always knew that they were going to have to make their own stuff because they knew that they were going to put a lot of people out of business, So they had to prepare for a time when they lost the most popular content on their platforms. Rewind back to 2016.. Netflix CFO David Wells announced the push for more Netflix originals and in just six years, that number of original content went from 2.8% to roughly 50% of total content. There is some value of Netflix for having licensed content in 2021.. Netflix's most watched show was Criminal Minds, accumulating over 30 billion minutes watched across 12 seasons. though licensed content made up most of the top shows for Netflix. that year. Shows like Squid Game proved to be a massive hit, with one season pulling in roughly half of the viewing time as criminal minds. However, that value of licensed content is quickly moving off the platform. Criminal Minds.

Huge Companies That May Soon Disappear

with the economy so unpredictable and tiknology developing faster all of the time, it's not surprising if companies are struggling or even going under. it's always sad when a trailblazing company that's been around for decades decides to call it quits. here are our choices, of which 10 companies are most likely to disappear soon. number 10: Toys R Us. it's hard to believe that a company is widely below it, as toys or us would be in this video, but here it is in its Heyday. Toys R Us was known as a category killer, a specialty store that squashes competition from both large to small stores. however, since the popularity of larger discount chains such as Target and Walmart, Toys R Us has had trouble keeping up since roughly 1998.. to try and breed new life into the company, a new president and CEO was hired, who expensively restructured and remodeled existing stores, which seemed to please customers. the price tag on these Renovations, however, left the company in a considerable amount of debt. Toys R Us thrived despite its debt and continued open stores in both the United States and internationally. as the online Market flourished and retailers such as Amazon started taking over, Toys R Us has been feeling the burn, falling deeper into debt. the company was forced to file for bankruptcy in 2017.. once their debt hit 5 billion dollars after the news of the filing broke, the company released a statement telling customers they have no intention of closing its doors and will be around for generations to come. let's hope that's true. number nine- American Apparel. at just 19 years old, the American Apparel brand has become synonymous with picture style and American-made products. the company is no stranger to a scandal and has had its shares of controversy Through The Years. they've been hit with complaints pertaining to sexual harassment, Poor Labor practikes, immigration issues and racism. many attribute the downfall of American Apparel not to these issues, however, but to focusing too heavily on hipster culture. now that taste have changed and youth culture has moved on, the company is left with very few repeat customers. another reason this chain is struggling is due to online retailers taking over the entire shopping experience. American Apparel has mainly relied on visitors to their physical stores for Revenue. they never planned accordingly for the switch to internet sales. these components are what led to the sale of the brand for 88 million dollars. American Apparel was purchased by a Canadian apparel company called Gildan, who will shift its focus on Wholesale. in addition to the 88 million to purchase American Apparel, Gildan will also be shelling out another 15 million to purchase American apparel's inventory and orders. this additional purchase makes many think they will continue to distribute the same products. whether Gildan will keep the brand intact is yet to be determined. number eight: Virgin America. Virgin America was acquired by Alaska Airlines in 2017 and there was a big question mark for a while as to what Alaska Airlines would do with the Virgin brand. Alaska has announced that the acquired Virgin America flights will all fly under the Alaska Airlines logo by 2019.. Alaska Airlines has said that, while they understand the Virgin American brand is loved by many, they need to make the change to ensure consistency of their Airline. Alaska Airlines has made some big Promises to the loyal customers of Virgin America, saying they will keep the flare associated with the brand, as well as some of the perks, such as free entertainment, music and Lighting. the acquisition was Elite for Alaska Airlines in the hopes of getting their foot in the California Market. the Virgin America jets are all set to be painted with their new name in 2018.. number 7. Twitter came on the scene in 2006 and has been a success with users who like to post short messages or tweets and interact quickly and concisely with other users in real time. in recent years, however, there has been a consistent decline in Daily traffic to the site and to user interaction. many of Twitter's problems lie with their reluctance to listen to their users when implementing changes to the site. users have repeatedly asked for more functionality within their tweets, such as an edit button, more effective ways to block or moderate abusive comments and a more reliable customer service experience. Twitter is still a popular place for many to speak their mind. however, it's losing momentum due to a lack of necessary and desired upgrades. many say the only reason Twitter still exists is because a new Twitter hasn't emerged to take its place. speaking of social media, another app struggling to differentiate itself is Snapchat. with the introduction insta stories on Instagram, which basically mimics the functionality of Snapchat, the filter loving app may be in big trouble as well. Snapchat is losing their celebrity base and their followers to Instagram at an alarming rate, and ad agencies are pulling up just as quickly. number six, Barnes and Noble, the successful book Superstore of the 80s and 90s, may be no more of sales keep falling at the rate they are. sales have been down in 17 out of the past 19 quarters and the company is starting to feel a burn. it was bound to happen at some point, what with online retailers like Amazon selling books for less and with quicker shipping, not to mention the fact that Amazon's Kindle is dominating the e-book market and their own nooksi reader has flopped. the hope is that there will be a buyer for the 560 million current price tag. this would be quite a deal for any buyer, since Barnes and Noble has hardly any debt to speak of and is still making some money. if they could partner with another company- think Amazon and Whole Foods- they may just be able to make it through the storm. number five: Google. when Google hit the scene, no one had ever seen anything like it. there was nothing else on the internet that gathered and organized information the way Google has done. the problem with Google is there seems to be nowhere left for the search engine to go. while almost every website on the internet seems to be realizing the significance of social interactions online, Google has made very little successful Headway in this realm. users now expect to be able to interact with other users when they do everything online, whether it be making a purchase, reading an artikle or listening to music. Google tried to take note by introducing Google Groups and Google Plus, but Mega really took off. unless Google can find a way to revamp their website, they may be beat by websites like Bing, Yahoo or even ecosa, which is a search engine that essentially does the same thing, but takes the revenue it collects from ads and uses it to a plant trees, but they're not nearly the biggest threat to Google's dominance. on the issue, Google's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, said many people think our main competition is Bing or Yahoo, but really our biggest search competitor is Amazon. this is because both companies predominantly compete in product searches, so, even though it may seem unlikely now, Google itself isn't quite as indestructible as you may think. number four: Time Warner Cable. internet-based streaming for movies and television has left many cable companies with very few options. one of those companies is Time Warner Cable. unable to compete with the immediate gratification of Netflix or Hulu, Time Warner Cable has started the dreaded Shuffle to try and save face. with years of being notoriously known for terrible customer service and tik support, Time Warner Cable had the highest amount of customer complain links in 2015, according to Consumer polls. all wasn't lost for the company, though. despite their poor customer reviews, Time Warner kept subscribing new customers to their cable TV service. in 2016, they merged with Charter Communications and its name has officially been changed to Spectrum. with this change, Charter hopes to invest a lot of money to improve the customer experience and help Spectru.

How to Get Publicity For Your Brand and Business

if you have an online business, getting more visible should definitely be on your to-do list for the year to come. you might have the most amazing offer on Earth, but if no one knows about you or your business, you're not going to experience the success that you deserve. publicity will boost your credibility, build your Authority, pump up your email list and, ultimately, increase your bottom line. the tough part, though, is actually knowing how to get publicity in the first place. today, I'm toking with PR expert Almira bardai, and she is going to take the mystery out of getting the publicity that you and your business deserve. Almira is one of North America's leading experts in brand building and Communications, having spent the last two decades creating powerful narratives for both domestik and Global Brands like flight center, Granville Island Brewing, Nike, Best Buy, Future Shop, Molson and Telus. so let's dive in. I'm Rachel Harrison's son and I help online entrepreneurs make more money so they can live more life. if you are an aspiring online entrepreneur and you feel like you could use a little help mapping out your first steps, please download my free Guide to the four step. no time to waste online business startup blueprint down in the description below. this guide is going to take you through all of the steps of starting an online knowledge based business, from idea generation right through to creating an offer and marketing it to your audience. so do check that out. hello, Almira, thank you so much for being here with me today. before we get into it, can you just give us, you know, like a little bit of a history of your background in PR? yeah, thank you so much for having me and I'm so excited to have this conversation. so I've been in PR for 25 years, which is always hard to say because you know time just like flies, but literally that's how long I've been in the industry and, uh, working with my clients, um, on the corporate side, to like build up their personal Brands, their company, and then, of course, I coach as well and teaching entrepreneurs how to do their own PR. so I've released been in the game for a long time. that's amazing. so would you say that there are any partikular, you know, like personal Brands, online businesses or what have you that should make getting publicity a priority, or is this something that's kind of applicable to anyone that's running a business? Yeah, a hundred percent to everybody. and one thing I want to clarify, which I'm sure we'll get into it as well. is that what exactly is publicity and what is PR? but it's all to say is that everybody could benefit from it, because it really establishes your credibility, your Authority and your expertise. well, they think about it. you know, when you do anything, we're we're human beings in that we want the best of everything or we want the expert right. so when you seeing somebody being quoted in the media or being on a podcast, we're naturally thinking our brains are like, oh, like, they're really good or they're really qualified right. and so who would you, if you're a coach, for example, like and you're trying to get clients, who are clients going to pick the one who's had media interviews, or the one that hasn't right, or the ones that, promoting themselves, are doing a really good job on Instagram, and so it's all about being visible, but then also having the right kind of visibility, which is what PR comes down to, right? so can you just kind of go over the different possible mediums that people can get publicity in? yeah, yeah. so let's take it a step back and explain what PR really started out as and for the longest time. that's what it was. it's really changed, I would say, in about the last 10 years, and so it was getting into print radio or TV, and so you'd read the newspaper and or watch something on TV and it would be a news story or it could have been something like an interview on Oprah first, or you know those types of media interviews, and that's exactly what PR really started out as, and 90 of what you read or see in a newspaper, TV, all that stuff it's actually a PR person um pitching that story to the media. it's not as if the media are being investigative or anything like. there's just there's not enough time. so that's what they really rely on- PR people, publicity publicists, PR people- to do that work, to get them into the media, and so it was all about pitching it to the media and getting the story in for free. but the media industry has really changed and it's mostly because of money and the way that people are consuming and so people are. so, first of all, people were not buying the local um or the regional like: so we're here in Vancouver, and so people were not buying the Vancouver Sun as much or not everybody was watching TV, especially as people um, we have more young people. they're not watching TV necessarily. they might have Apple TV or Netflix, right. so, because the industry changed and the demand changed, it's really evolved and so social media has become part of it: Instagram, tiktok, those types of things. that is PR publicity when you get the interview. but it also encompasses like paying for a story on yourself. if it's a really good publication and it's worth the money, great pay for it. it's still seen as credible now and it's actually really great way to get yourself out there. and so, going back to it, what PR is now is that it's really about strong visibility. yes, getting into those media Outlets, being radio, TV, online, especially like blogs or online magazines- I mean, as we've seen, there's very few hard copy magazines out there, it's all online um. and then getting into podcasts, which I love. podcasts, I think they really democratize um PR. and then, of course, like now, we have Instagram, and I mean back then, when it started, it was like Facebook and Instagram, but now it's really like Facebook, or, sorry, it's Facebook and Twitter, but now it's Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, tiktok and all the social media um platforms. and it's also thinking about your owned channels, owned channels being our own blogs, our own email newsletters, our own Instagram, our own YouTube channels. those are our forms of owned channels, owned PR channels, where we're putting out our message. what is it that we're trying to say, getting ourselves out there, creating Transformations and Transitions and attracting new clients. yes, yeah, totally so. do you think there are any like one or two partikular mediums that it's really important to focus on? um, you know, like podcasts or guest posting on blogs, or, you know, getting that artikle in Forbes, or is it better to have sort of a multi-pronged strategy where you're you're trying to kind of get into a little bit of each one? yeah, so it really depends actually is what is your business and who is your client base? so, for example, if you are a business person and you're trying to create business collaborations, you should actually be on LinkedIn. you know, Instagram is not necessarily going to do anything for you, tiktok probably won't. but I mean, we're seeing so many different things happening. The tiktok, right, but realistikally, you want to be on LinkedIn and potentially your own blog. if you are a coach, you want to be on either Instagram or tiktok. but then, of course, um, sorry, maximizing your email list, right, because we all tok about. is that what happens if all the platforms go bust one day? what is the one thing you're gonna own. you know, for somebody like yourself, your app absolutely leveraging YouTube and Instagram. I've seen- actually I don't know if you're on tiktok, are you? well, I I've kind of got a love hate relationship with- with Instagram certainly- like I kind of just go in these fits and starts where I'll like go hard for a couple weeks and then I get busy and like I totally drop off the face of the Earth, and even more so with tiktok. like I've got my, I've got my account set up. I don't even think I've posted anything. it's another one of those things that's just been kind of like on the back burner, um, which, you know, kind of like I should start, or I will start soon, but yeah, I de.