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Mr. Beast, YouTube Star, Desires to Take Over the Enterprise World

Mr. Beast, YouTube Star, Wants to Take Over the Business World

Mr Donaldson declined to be interviewed. A representative of his declined to discuss working conditions in his companies, but commented on the videos with objectionable content: “When Jimmy was a teenager and first starting out, he carelessly used a gay arc more than once. Jimmy knows there is no excuse for homophobic rhetoric. “The representative added that Mr. Donaldson” has grown and matured into someone who doesn’t speak like that “.

Many younger creators said they wanted to emulate Mr. Donaldson’s entrepreneurial path.

“I think Mr. Beast inspires all of Generation Z,” said Josh Richards, 19, a Los Angeles TikTok inventor with nearly 25 million followers. “It gives a lot of kids a new way to teach these little kids how to be an entrepreneur, not just to get a lot of views or get famous.”

Like many Generation Z members, Mr. Donaldson, who grew up in Greenville, NC, started a YouTube channel in 2012 when he was in middle school.

To crack YouTube’s recommendation algorithm, he first went through various genres of video creation. He’s posted videos of himself playing games like Call of Duty, commenting on the YouTube drama, uploading funny video compilations, and responding to videos live on the Internet.

Then, in 2018, he mastered the format that would make him a star: stunt philanthropy. Mr Donaldson filmed himself giving away thousands of dollars in cash to random people, including his Uber driver or people suffering from homelessness, to capture their shock and joy in the process. The money originally came mainly from brand sponsorships.

It turned out to be a perfect viral recipe mixing money, a larger than life personality, and healthy responses. Millions started watching his YouTube videos. Mr. Donaldson soon renamed himself “YouTube’s Greatest Philanthropist”.

The combination was also lucrative. Though Mr Donaldson was giving away ever larger amounts – from $ 100,000 to $ 1 million – he made it all back and more with the advertising that ran alongside the videos. He also sold merchandise such as socks ($ 18), water bottles ($ 27), and t-shirts ($ 28).

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IPL suspended indefinitely over coronavirus considerations

IPL suspended indefinitely over coronavirus concerns

Bowler Trent Boult from Delhi Daredevils plays against the Rajasthan Royals during an IPL cricket match.

Vishal Bhatnagar | NurPhoto | Getty Image

The 2021 Indian Premier League has been suspended amid concerns about coronavirus levels in the country.

The number of new coronavirus infections in India exceeded 20 million on Tuesday. 357,229 new cases have been reported in the past 24 hours, adding further strain to an already overwhelmed health system.

Three Australian cricketers – Adam Zampa, Kane Richardson and Andrew Tye – have already dropped out of their IPL season to go home while Indian weirdo Ravichandran Ashwin has taken a break to spend time with his family.

The regular season should end on May 23rd. Qualifiers and eliminators should follow before the final on May 30th.

“The Indian Premier League Governing Council (IPL GC) and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) unanimously decided in an emergency meeting to postpone the IPL 2021 season with immediate effect,” said an IPL statement.

“BCCI does not want to compromise on the safety of players, support staff and other participants involved in organizing the IPL. This decision was made with the safety, health and wellbeing of all involved in mind.

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“These are difficult times, especially in India, and while we have tried to bring something positive and cheer, it is imperative that the tournament is now suspended and everyone returns to their families and loved ones during these difficult times.”

Three Australian cricketers – Adam Zampa, Kane Richardson and Andrew Tye – have already dropped out of their IPL season to go home while Indian weirdo Ravichandran Ashwin has taken a break to spend time with his family.

Several English players – including Captain Eoin Morgan, Jos Buttler, Jonny Bairstow and Moeen Ali – took part in the tournament. The ECB had already announced on Tuesday that the decision on whether or not to continue participating would be left to the individual.

People like Buttler, Bairstow and Ali, who are members of the English testing team, had the chance to miss England’s five-day streak against New Zealand in early June, but the postponement of the IPL could cause them to become available.

The statement goes on to say: “The BCCI will do everything in its power to ensure the safe passage of all participants in IPL 2021.

“The BCCI would like to thank all employees in the healthcare system, government associations, actors, support staff, franchise companies, sponsors, partners and all service providers who have done their best to organize IPL 2021 even in these extremely difficult times.”

In this image, taken on October 10, 2020, a taxi drives past a hoard of Mumbai Indian cricket players at the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament in Mumbai.

INDRANIL MUKHERJEE | AFP | Getty Images

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Yamiche Alcindor Is Named Host of ‘Washington Week’ on PBS

Yamiche Alcindor Is Named Host of ‘Washington Week’ on PBS

When Yamiche Alcindor found out last month that she was going to be the next presenter on the PBS show Washington Week, she immediately felt the emotions of the moment.

“I basically cried right away,” recalled Ms. Alcindor, “and thought of Gwen.”

Washington Week, a quiet redoubt on the screaming battlefield of political television, is most closely associated with its longtime host Gwen Ifill, the pioneering journalist who broke barriers as a black woman in the Washington press corps.

Prior to her death in 2016, Ms. Ifill also mentored Ms. Alcindor, the White House correspondent for PBS NewsHour. Beginning with Friday’s episode, Ms. Alcindor, 34, will take over Ms. Ifill’s old chair at the head of Washington Week. She succeeds Robert Costa, a Washington Post reporter who took office in 2017 and left the show that year.

PBS and WETA-TV, the Washington subsidiary that produces the show, announced the appointment of Ms. Alcindor on Tuesday.

“I know how much ‘Washington Week’ meant to Gwen and how much she put her stamp on the legacy of the show,” Ms. Alcindor, a Haitian-American woman, said in an interview. “I also feel this incredible responsibility to think deeply about taking this and making it a show that people want to see, that people believe lives up to their great legacy.”

Ms. Alcindor will continue to report on President Biden for NewsHour while continuing to contribute to NBC News and MSNBC. She was previously a reporter for the New York Times and USA Today.

She said that she had been a Washington Week viewer since college and that she wanted to expand the scope of a show that is sometimes imbued with DC Arcana. She also plans to maintain the bourgeois tone – “a sense of respect and respectability,” as she put it – that has been the show’s signature since its debut in 1967.

“When you work and live in Washington it can feel like everything is about what’s going on in DC,” said Ms. Alcindor. “What has guided my journalism so much is how vulnerable populations are affected by these guidelines. That will be my directional light. “

As a White House reporter, Ms. Alcindor became known as a frequent target of former President Donald J. Trump’s anger at press conferences. Once in 2018, Mr Trump labeled her question “racist” after asking if his policies had encouraged white nationalists. “As a black woman, it wasn’t the first time someone had targeted me or said something about me that I knew wasn’t true,” recalled Ms. Alcindor.

When Ms. Alcindor was first booked as a guest on NBC’s Meet the Press, she called Ms. Ifill “in a panic”.

She recalled Ms. Ifill’s advice: “She was basically telling me, ‘You are a reporter who knows as much as the people at this table. You deserve it and you are ready for it. ‘”

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Complete reported circumstances cross 20 million

Total reported cases cross 20 million

A man riding his bike on a street in Old New Delhi on April 19, 2021 as India’s capital is due to impose a week-long lockdown starting tonight, officials said as the megacity struggles to contain a huge surge in Covid-19 Cases with hospitals running out of beds and having low oxygen supplies.

Sajjad Hussain | AFP | Getty Images

India exceeded 20 million reported cases of Covid-19 on Tuesday.

According to the Ministry of Health, 357,229 new cases were reported within 24 hours, bringing the total to 20.28 million.

India’s first cases were discovered in late January last year, and a total of 10 million infections went undetected as of December, according to Johns Hopkins University. However, the next 10 million cases were reported in just under five months, mostly in April.

At least 222,408 people have died from the disease to date, but that number is likely lower than the actual death toll. Media reports suggest that crematoriums and burial grounds are overflowing with bodies of people who have died of Covid-19.

“The pandemic has now hit the small towns and villages and we are now quite concerned about how much devastation it will cause in areas where health systems are not well developed enough to provide support, even if some of the big ones . ” Metro has problems with case load from hospitals, “K. Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India, told CNBC’s Capital Connection on Monday.

Some states are banned

During the first wave last year, India imposed a strict national lockdown between late March and May that hampered the country’s growth trajectory and left millions of people without a source of income.

While the central government appears unwilling to impose a second nationwide lockdown, several states have tightened restrictions in recent weeks, including local lockdowns and curfews. These include Maharashtra, India’s hardest hit state, Delhi, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka and others.

Some health experts have suggested that India needs a National Home Order and Emergency Medical Declaration to meet current health needs.

The Indian health system has been overwhelmed by the surge in cases due to a lack of hospital beds, oxygen supplies and drugs to treat patients.

Public Health Foundation’s Reddy told CNBC India needs a two-pronged approach to tackling the second wave. First, efforts to vaccinate more than 1.3 billion people must continue.

India is facing vaccine shortages, at least in the short term, and just over 2% of the population have received both doses. From May, India will open vaccinations for people over the age of 18.

Second, India needs a “very strong” containment strategy to reduce the spread.

We turned our backs on the virus, but the virus hasn’t turned our backs on us. And now we’re paying the price.

K. Srinath Reddy

President of the Public Health Foundation of India

“What we need to do right now is to reduce person-to-person transmission by making sure there are no large crowds,” Reddy said, adding that India should not allow more than four people to be in public places and to congregate in areas with high crowds, positivity rates should be placed in full containment mode.

He added that India needs to ensure adequate social support for people recovering from milder symptoms at home.

How did India get here?

India’s second wave started sometime in February when cases started to pick up again. Previously, the country reported an average of 10,000 infections a day. In April there was a steep spike in the curve with nearly 7 million reported cases.

The Indian government has been criticized for gathering large crowds for religious festivals and election campaigns earlier this year. These mass gatherings likely turned into super-spreader events.

Scientists say the increase in cases is also partly due to variants of the coronavirus currently circulating in India. This includes a local variant called B.1.617, which has several sublines with slightly different characteristic mutations.

Reddy stated that India, in its desire to get the economy back on its feet, ignored the looming threat of a second wave.

“I think by early January, when the daily case counts, the daily deaths count, and test positivity rates are falling, there has been a widespread impression that we have ended the pandemic forever,” he said, adding, “We had Turned our backs on the virus, but the virus hasn’t turned our backs. And now we’re paying the price. “

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Michael Jackson’s Property Is Winner in Tax Choose’s Ruling

Michael Jackson’s Estate Is Winner in Tax Judge’s Ruling

After Michael Jackson’s death in 2009 at the age of 50, executors began propping up the once-King of Pop’s fluctuating finances, settling debts, and closing new entertainment and merchandising deals. It didn’t take long for the property to be in strong shape, with debt reduced and revenues running into the millions.

But there was another matter that took more than seven years to process: Jackson’s tax bill with the Internal Revenue Service, where the government and the estate had very different views on what Jackson’s name and likeness were worth when he died.

The IRS thought it was worth $ 161 million. The property put it at just $ 2,105 on the grounds that Jackson’s late-life reputation was in tatters after years of reporting on his eccentric lifestyle and a widespread child molestation lawsuit in which Jackson was acquitted.

On Monday, in a closely watched case that could affect other prominent estates, Judge Mark V. Holmes of the U.S. Treasury Court ruled that Jackson’s name and likeness were worth $ 4.2 million and dismissed many of the IRS’s arguments . The decision will significantly reduce the tax burden on the estate from the government’s initial assessment.

The IRS believed the estate had underpaid its tax liability by nearly $ 500 million and that it could owe additional fines of $ 200 million.

At the height of his career, Jackson was one of the most famous people in the world, with some of the most popular records ever released. And since his death, he’s been one of the world’s highest paid celebrities. Forbes estimated that his estate made $ 48 million in the past year.

But the tax case revolved around the value of Jackson’s public image at the time of his death. His reputation had been badly damaged, and since 1993, Judge Holmes said, Jackson had no endorsements or stores unrelated to a musical tour or album.

However, the judge found that the estate’s estimate of $ 2,105 was simply too low, and that the estate “captured the image and likeness of one of the world’s most famous celebrities – the King of Pop – for the price of a heavily used $ 20 -Prize appreciated. Year old Honda Civic ”(complete with a footnote to a used car price guide).

In a 271-page judgment of literary references to Hemingway and Plutarch, Judge Holmes – known for his clear and sometimes humorous writing style that summarizes dense tax cases – summed up the vicissitudes of Jackson’s life, public reputation, and finances.

“We do not make any special judgment about what Jackson did or should have done,” the judge wrote, “but we have to decide how what he did and is supposed to have done affected the value of what he did left behind. “

Judge Holmes also ruled on the value of two other assets: Jackson’s stake in Sony / ATV Music Publishing, the company that controlled millions of song copyrights – including most of the Beatles’ catalog – and Mijac Music, another catalog, owned by the Jacksons contained own songs as well as others that Jackson had acquired.

The estate had argued that those assets, along with Jackson’s name and likeness, were worth a total of $ 5.3 million. Judge Holmes ruled that their total value was $ 111.5 million. (In 2016, Sony / ATV – now known as Sony Music Publishing – agreed to pay the Jackson estate $ 750 million to purchase its portion of this catalog.)

The Jackson case was closely watched to assess how celebrity real estate can be valued and what tax liabilities it has. Major tax issues ahead of the IRS include those of Prince and Aretha Franklin.

In a statement, John Branca and John McClain, co-executives of the Jackson estate, called the decision “a great, unequivocal victory for Michael Jackson’s children.”

“For nearly 12 years, Michael’s estate has claimed that the government’s valuation of Michael’s fortune on the day of his death was outrageous and unfair, which would have weighed on his heirs with an oppressive tax bill of more than $ 700 million,” said Branca and McClain . “While we disagree with some parts of the decision, we believe this illustrates how unreasonable the IRS assessment has been and provides a path forward to finally resolving this case in a fair and equitable manner.”

The IRS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday evening.

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Cramer rejects Buffett’s stance on inventory selecting, favors hybrid mannequin

Cramer rejects Buffett's stance on stock picking, favors hybrid model

CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Monday denied Warren Buffett’s claim that Wall Street’s new retail investors are shying away from individual stock picking to invest in index funds.

“I respect Warren Buffett, but I’ll always be the Peter Lynch type,” Cramer told Mad Money, responding to comments from the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. Cramer endorses the investment philosophy of Lynch, the legendary investor best known for his management of Fidelity’s Magellan Fund and his book on investing, One Up on Wall Street.

Lynch’s philosophy is based on an investor using their ability to watch, study, and take action on a stock, Cramer said.

“That’s why I believe in a hybrid. I don’t share Buffett’s disdain for home gamers trying to pick stocks, nor do I want you to go all-in on individual stocks,” he said.

Cramer provided a list of retail stock ideas for investors to test the principles of Lynch.

“I don’t want it to sound easy. If you want to invest like Peter Lynch, you have to actually visit these places or try things on, whatever piques your curiosity,” Cramer said, suggesting that viewers read Lynch’s book. “But I think a game or two of these reopening games will go well with an index fund in your retirement account.”

A Berkshire Hathaway spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment.

Disclosure: Cramer’s charitable foundation owns shares in Walmart and Costco.

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Invoice and Melinda Gates Are Divorcing After 27 Years of Marriage

Bill and Melinda Gates Are Divorcing After 27 Years of Marriage

Bill and Melinda Gates, two of the richest people in the world who were reshaping philanthropy and public health with the fortune made by Mr. Gates as co-founder of Microsoft, said Monday they were divorcing.

For decades, Mr. and Mrs. Gates have been unique forces on the world stage. Their enormous charitable donations give them access to the highest levels of government, business, and the non-profit sector. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, with approximately $ 50 billion in endowment, has made a tremendous impact in areas from global health to early childhood education and has made great strides in reducing deaths from malaria and other infectious diseases. And last year, the couple were particularly visible, regularly commenting on the global battle against Covid-19, when their foundation spent more than $ 1 billion fighting the pandemic.

“After much thought and work on our relationship, we made the decision to end our marriage,” said Mr. and Mrs. Gates in a statement posted on Twitter.

They went on to say that they “have built a foundation that works around the world to help all people live healthy and productive lives” and that they “continue to believe in this mission” but “can no longer believe us” in grow together as a couple in this next phase of our life. “

The foundation said in a statement that Mr. and Mrs. Gates would remain co-chairs and trustees and that no changes were expected in the organization.

“They will continue to work together to develop and approve foundation strategies, advocate for the foundation’s problems, and set the general direction of the organization,” the statement said.

Even so, the divorce will raise new questions about the fate of Gates’ fortune, much of which have not yet been donated to the Gates Foundation. The 65-year-old Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, is one of the richest people in the world with an estimated value of $ 124 billion, according to Forbes. The Gateses have been married for 27 years and have three children.

With 1,600 employees in offices around the world, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awards approximately $ 5 billion each year in areas such as global public health and development. The foundation used their expertise and relationships to play a key role in formulating the global response to the Covid-19 pandemic, investing early in vaccine candidates, and Covax, the global initiative to organize the purchase of vaccines for 92 poor countries and dozens of other nations to help shape.

“Bill and Melinda Gates pioneered the great philanthropy of today,” said David Callahan, founder of Inside Philanthropy. “Everything was oversized.”

While the Gateses did not provide details on how they would structure their finances, it is believed that they have a marriage agreement. The Gateses are the largest farmland owners in America and have huge investments, despite Cascade Investment, which manages Mr. Gates’ personal wealth, and has large stakes in the Four Seasons hotel chain, the Canadian National Railway and AutoNation, the largest car dealership chain in the United States Landes, owns companies, among other things. The family owns several homes and lots, including a 66,000 square foot mansion in Washington.

In business today

Updated

May 3, 2021, 6:40 p.m. ET

Mr. Callahan said Ms. Gates, 56, could become even more influential in the years to come.

She already has her own company, Pivotal Ventures, which she has invested in to invest in women’s economic empowerment issues. Should she receive any of the Microsoft inventory from Mr. Gates, she could start a new foundation or give direct gifts for other causes she supports.

“You could imagine Melinda Gates being a much more progressive giver herself,” said Mr. Callahan. “She will be an important force in philanthropy for decades to come.”

In 2019, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and longtime wife MacKenzie Scott divorced. Ms. Scott received $ 36 billion worth of Amazon stock at the time and immediately set out to make billions of dollars in direct grants to a number of progressive organizations.

Mr. Gates recently resigned from some of his business activities. Last year he left the board of directors of Microsoft and the board of Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate of his close friend Warren Buffett.

Mr. Buffett has donated billions of dollars to the Gates Foundation over the years and has pledged to leave most of his fortune to the foundation when he dies. In 2010, Mr. Buffett and the Gateses founded the Giving Pledge to encourage wealthy individuals to donate much of their money to charity.

Mr. and Mrs. Gates have had relationship problems in recent years, said two people close to them. There have been multiple times when the relationship was nearing breakdown, but they worked to keep it together, people said. Mr Gates decided to partially step down from the boards of Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway to spend more time with his family, these people said.

“When he had difficulty making the decision to get married, it was incredibly clear to him that it was not about me, but about whether I could find the right balance between work and family,” said Ms. Gates in one Interview in 2019 in the Sunday Times of London. “And believe me, I can remember a few days that were so incredibly difficult in our marriage when you thought, ‘Can I do this?'”

Nicholas Kulish contributed to the coverage.

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Retailers from Bloomingdale’s to Petco take a look at livestreaming to win gross sales

Retailers from Bloomingdale's to Petco test livestreaming to win sales

Source: Bloomingdale’s PR

On a recent weeknight, Jimmy Choo’s creative director, Sandra Choi, logged into Zoom to broadcast live to dozens of Bloomingdale’s customers.

The livestreamed event, organized by the department store, ran for about 45 minutes, during which Choi highlighted some of the biggest trends she’s seeing in footwear this spring — chunky, jeweled sandals, and ballet flats with ribbons. She eventually pivoted to discuss inspirations for post-pandemic fashion and gave viewers a first look at Jimmy Choo’s upcoming summer collection.

Participants who had signed up in advance received a complimentary cocktail and macarons, sent in the mail ahead of the event, to sip and snack on while watching. The first 50 people who bought a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes during or immediately after the event were told they’d receive a personalized fashion sketch as a token of appreciation. There was a separate gift basket and Bloomingdale’s gift card giveaway for everyone who watched the livestream until the end.

Bloomingdale’s has hosted more than 50 shoppable livestreamed events during the Covid pandemic. It’s one way it has tried to reach its customers at home, when they haven’t been able to visit its brick-and-mortar stores. The streams have ranged from make-up tutorials to cooking lessons to fitness classes to conversations around sustainability in fashion.

The company, owned by Macy’s, doesn’t disclose how much sales it derives from each stream, but it said the events are helping to drive purchases and to gather more information on its customers.

“Certainly in the beauty space, demonstrating product is incredibly helpful … and we’re making it easy to make the connection back to buy the products with relatively low friction,” said Bloomingdale’s chief marketing officer, Frank Berman. “The key for us is matching the right audience with the content that we’re putting together.”

As online sales accelerate, retailers are giving livestream shopping a more serious look, along with other innovative tools like shoppable features on social media apps. Some brands have already been successful with these tools in markets such as China, where livestreaming was popularized by Alibaba. But in the U.S., livestreaming remains a risky bet for retailers. Even Amazon, which was an early adopter of the strategy, has yet to draw consistently large crowds to its livestream shopping events.

The hope — especially among high-end retailers like Bloomingdale’s — is that Americans are beginning to splurge on pricey clothes, shoes, purses and jewelry to show off as they dress up and leave the house again. The behavior, often referred to as “revenge spending,” has already appeared in China. Livestreaming could be one way for these companies to showcase their merchandise to consumers who are armed with cash and ready to spend.

$25 billion market by 2023

In the U.S., the livestreaming market was worth about $6 billion last year and could reach $11 billion by the end of this year, according to consumer market research group Coresight Research. It expects the market could eclipse $25 billion by 2023.

That’s still far behind China, where livestreaming is estimated to have driven about $125 billion in sales in 2020, up from $63 billion in 2019, according to Coresight.

“We’ve seen this done this very successfully in China, there’s no secrets here,” said Coresight founder and CEO Deborah Weinswig. “Livestreaming doesn’t have to be hard at all.”

Shoppable livestreaming appears to be gaining the most momentum, so far, among American beauty brands. Companies from Bobbi Brown to Clinique to L’Oreal have leaned into virtual shoppable events as a way to test products like lip balm and skin creams in front of customers and entice them to buy the products online, on the spot.

A number of bigger chains are beginning to experiment, too. Nordstrom launched its own shoppable livestream channel earlier this year. In late April, Petco hosted its first-ever livestreamed event on Facebook, which was a mix of a pet fashion show along with a dog adoption drive. The shoe brand Aldo also in late April held its first live shopping event, tapping a celebrity stylist along with a TikTok star to help show off its products.

Nordstrom said its experimentation with livestreaming to sell products is just beginning. It joins a small but growing list of businesses in the U.S. to test a livestreaming platform.

Source: Nordstrom

Underpinning the interest from retailers is the endorsement of tech giants who have either launched or ramped up livestreaming services. TikTok has hosted shoppable livestream events with Walmart, where users can browse Walmart fashion featured by TikTok creators without having to leave the social media app. And Amazon, the biggest e-commerce player in the U.S., has embraced livestreaming on its site, featuring a rotating slate of QVC-style, interactive videos from brands and influencers at nearly all hours of the day.

There are more eyes and ears on retailer’s website than ever before. Even though Americans are likely to spend less time shopping online as they begin to socialize more outside the home, this transition period is an opportunity. Retailers can offer advice on what to wear or how to apply new makeup looks. 2021 will be a year for retailers to seize the moment.

Weinswig said a key reason why livestreaming may soon gain momentum, particularly with younger consumers, is because of the friction it can remove in the shopping process. During a livestream, shoppers may be able to ask questions and see various sizes and colors in real time. That means shoppers are more likely to keep what they buy, she said.

“Returns are 50% lower when items are bought in a livestream,” Weinswig said, citing Coresight data on the matter. “Because of the U.S. consumer’s focus on sustainability right now, that is what could ultimately drive livestreaming.”

Sales associates at one of Alibaba-owned InTime’s store display products for sale during a livestream.

InTime | Alibaba

Prime opportunity

Retailers and tech companies have closely watched Amazon’s efforts around livestream shopping, which began in earnest about six years ago.

Amazon first entered the livestream shopping space in 2016 with Style Code Live, a high energy show that let viewers shop while they watched hosts talk about the latest fashion trends. It brought in on-air personalities to host the show with previous experience at MTV’s Total Request Live and ABC’s Good Morning America. Style Code Live appeared poised to become QVC-style programming for the internet era before Amazon canceled the show, just 15 months after it launched.

Since then, Amazon’s strategy has evolved. It now operates Amazon Live, a livestreaming service that lets businesses and members of Amazon’s influencer program, both of which Amazon refers to as “creators,” show off merchandise and talk directly to shoppers.

Amazon has democratized the ability to start a livestream by launching the Live Creator app.

Amazon

Through an app called Amazon Live Creator, Amazon has democratized companies and influencers’ ability to host livestreams. With just a few taps, they can go live to Amazon’s millions of shoppers, though only a fraction of those shoppers typically tune into a stream. Under each video is a slideshow of products that can be purchased on Amazon. Influencers earn a cut of each sale made by shoppers who click through to products featured on the stream.

On any given day, there are dozens of Amazon Live streams with a mix of programming that can lean more on the casual or educational side. Influencers might go live to “unbox” their latest haul of beauty products or walk viewers through a full-body cardio workout that also highlights recommended bike shorts, dumbbells and yoga mats, all available to buy with just a few clicks. Another recent stream, which drew roughly 40 viewers, featured a “success coach and mind guide” who provided tips for “navigating life,” above a carousel of holistic beauty products for sale on Amazon.

Amazon Live has also become a fixture of the holiday shopping season and Prime Day, Amazon’s annual, two-day discount bonanza. As Amazon becomes flooded with markdowns, some of which expire in a few hours, brands will attempt to draw in deal-seeking shoppers by promoting discounted wares on Amazon Live. Last holiday season, more than 700 businesses streamed on Amazon Live, the company said.

Amazon declined to share Amazon Live usage data, such as the total number of companies and brands registered for the service.

Amazon said it encourages creators to stream longer than an hour, so that it gives viewers enough time to show up and sound off in the chat window. In the chat, viewers can talk with the host and ask questions about products featured on the stream. They can also choose to “follow” a business or influencer to get notified when they go live.

The ability to “follow” a creator has lent Amazon Live an air that’s similar to social media platforms like TikTok, Alphabet-owned YouTube, Facebook’s Instagram or Twitch, which is owned by Amazon. While consumers can’t see a creator’s follower count, the metric can be important for brands and influencers to improve their visibility on the platform.

Creators are encouraged to stream more frequently to climb internal Amazon Live rankings and “unlock more benefits.” For example, to reach “A-List” status, Amazon said companies must amass 2,000 followers and sell either 100 units or $5,000 worth of goods via livestream sales within 30 days. As creators ascend through the rankings, Amazon will reward them in certain ways, like placing their streams on the amazon.com homepage, as well as near or at the top of the Amazon Live landing page.

As Amazon Live has grown, the platform has become a hotspot for high-profile product launches, author Q&As and, occasionally, celebrity guests like pop star Dua Lipa, whose stream last March racked up 1.5 million views within the first 24 hours it was recorded.

Not all companies that sell on Amazon may have the time or resources to plan and execute livestreams. But businesses that have experimented with Amazon Live say they’ve experienced significant payoffs.

Coffee and tea maker Quivr has been able to attract a wider array of customers by promoting its nitro cold brew coffee products on Amazon Live. Last year, Quivr co-founder Ash Crawford went live for the first time from his backyard. He talked about Quivr for about an hour in front of 50 viewers. After that, Crawford was hooked and now he regularly streams on Amazon Live.

Crawford has tried out other technologies like livestreaming on TikTok and Instagram, but he found few of them have same buying power or conversion rate as Amazon Live. “It’s like clockwork or guaranteed that if we go live and I do a show, sales are increased for the next 24 hours by like 150%,” Crawford said in an interview.

Whereas TikTok or Instagram also features a mix of entertainment or catching up with friends and family, on Amazon, consumers are typically on the site with the intent of making a purchase.

“It’s about what thing are they going to purchase and how many of them,” Crawford said. “So, that’s kind of taken that step out of the equation, because on all the other platforms, you’re trying to drive them to a sales page, whether it’s your own website or Amazon.”

Zoe Zhang was a fashion designer prior to starting the U.S.-based livestreaming consulting group, And Luxe.

Source: And Luxe

‘Another arm of retail’

Many retailers are still waiting on the sidelines to see which third-party livestreaming platform will scale large enough to catch and keep consumers’ attention — a platform could potentially rival Amazon’s.

That might not end up being a social media site.

“The average social media user is not going into social media for commerce,” said Amitaabh Malhotra, co-founder of VISX.live, which is encouraging retailers to use their store associates to hold livestreams in their stores. “That’s where most of the U.S. mindset is when it comes to social media. … Most people use social media as an entertainment media channel where they’re looking at it just to see what’s going on.”

According to Mark Yuan, who co-founded the livestreaming consultancy And Luxe, retailers shouldn’t try to do livestreaming on their own, either.

“If choosing between a brand building their internal livestreaming capability or a marketplace where hundreds of brands and sellers and new influencers are livestreaming … I will choose the latter,” Yuan said. “Because consumers like one-stop shopping, and the convenience of just ‘swipe left.'”

There are a number of up-and-coming third-party livestreaming platforms, including Livescale, which has been used by brands such as L’Oreal, Lancome, Tommy Hilfiger and Kiehl’s.

ShopShops is another platform that launched in China in 2018 and recently expanded to the U.S., with a kickoff event with designer Rebecca Minkoff late last year.

“The focus on our English program right now is to recruit people who could potentially be livestream influencers,” ShopShops founder and CEO Liyia Wu said in an interview. “We’re targeting more retail associates. … Where we create the best, most authentic content, that’s where we have very high stickiness of user-ship.”

There’s also Popshop Live, which started working with the Mall of America to host livestreams last fall.

According to Coresight’s Weinswig, malls could become the perfect venue for livestreaming in the U.S., as they have been in China.

“Malls can make use of any vacant spaces and reassign employees to organize livestreaming events while physical traffic is low,” she said.

Coresight recently highlighted in a report the mall owner Your Mark, which operates around 40 shopping centers in Hunan province, and started livestreaming during the pandemic. The shopping mall Suntec City also launched Singapore’s first livestreaming shopping festival last June.

In China, where so-called revenge spending was especially pronounced as malls began to reopen, luxury brands like Hermes, Gucci and Prada reported a rapid bounce back in sales. Some of these companies could be the biggest beneficiaries of livestreaming.

“I really believe that livestream shopping is going to be another arm of retail, one that the Western world has not caught on to yet,” fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger said recently during a virtual panel at the Global Retailing Ideas Summit.

“We’ve tested it, we’ve had success with it, and we’re going … fully into it, because I really believe that the consumer is [always] walking around with a mobile device — or they’re shopping,” Hilfiger explained. “And if we combine all of that together with livestream shopping … we’re able to speak to the consumer, worldwide.”

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Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5 Billion

Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5 Billion

Yahoo and AOL, kings of the early Internet, saw their fortunes plummet as Silicon Valley raced forward to create new digital platforms. Google has replaced Yahoo. AOL has been replaced by cable giants.

Now they are owned by private equity. Verizon, its current owner, agreed to sell it to Apollo Global Management for $ 5 billion, the companies said on Monday.

The two-branded business, Verizon Media, is set to be renamed Yahoo (again) (without the brand’s stylized exclamation mark), and the sale will also include the advertising technology business. Verizon will retain a 10 percent stake in the newly formed media group, the company said in a statement.

Guru Gowrappan, Verizon’s media director who will continue to run the new Yahoo, was optimistic about employees on Monday morning. “This next Yahoo development will be the most exciting yet,” he said in the memo received by the New York Times.

He added that Apollo would enable the company’s growth, a more difficult prospect if it operated within Verizon, which wanted to spend even more money building its next-generation 5G cellular network.

“Yahoo will now have the investment and resources needed to take our business to the next level,” said Gowrappan, suggesting the company will be able to add new revenue streams like subscriptions and e-commerce open up. The company is not currently planning any layoffs.

The deal signals the reversal of a strategy Verizon announced in 2015 and marks the latest turning point in the winding history of two internet pioneers.

Yahoo used to be the front page of the internet, cataloging the rapid pace of new websites that emerged in the late 1990s. AOL was once the service that got millions of people online.

But both were eventually replaced by more nimble startups. Google and Facebook became the dominant forces of the web, and Yahoo and AOL became giant publishers instead. Yahoo Sports is a popular destination with sports fans, and Yahoo Finance has a wealth of information for retailers. AOL acquired a number of early media brands including the Huffington Post (now HuffPost), TechCrunch and Engadget, as well as several digital ad tech companies, to create a huge advertising platform.

When Verizon bought AOL for $ 4.4 billion in 2015, the company called AOL “a digital pioneer.” Lowell C. McAdam, then CEO of Verizon, endorsed the deal as part of its “strategy of providing consumers, developers and advertisers with a cross-screen connection to deliver this premium experience”.

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Updated

May 3, 2021, 2:39 p.m. ET

Tim Armstrong, the head of AOL, was part of the package and soon convinced Verizon executives to expand their media holdings. Mr Armstrong orchestrated the purchase of Yahoo in 2017 for $ 4.5 billion – a price he had pursued for years.

In the statement announcing the deal at the time, Mr. Armstrong said, “We are building the future of brands.”

It was all in search of the almighty “yardstick”, a business term in art that has almost become a religious mantra in Silicon Valley. The goal was to build a bigger audience to sell more advertising. However, the economics of the Internet had changed years earlier, and content that users made available for free, whether in the form of Facebook posts or YouTube videos, led to a lot of online activity. Despite their large audiences, AOL and Yahoo had become distant comrades-in-arms.

Verizon still saw value in Yahoo and AOL. The idea was to offer Verizon customers content they couldn’t get anywhere else at a time when all cell phone service offerings were essentially the same. And AOL’s huge ad tech business could give Verizon a better way to sell ads on their phones.

However, that strategy fell out of favor when Verizon’s current CEO, Hans Vestberg, was appointed in 2018. At the time, he praised the media department’s work, but high-speed internet via phones was key to the company’s health, and he redoubled his efforts building Verizon’s new 5G network.

In 2018, Verizon announced the resignation of Mr. Armstrong and began restructuring the media unit. Around 800 employees were laid off at the beginning of 2019, around 7 percent of the workforce. Last year, with the sale of HuffPost to BuzzFeed, Verizon began winding down the media group.

Mr. Vestberg called the Apollo deal “a bittersweet moment” in a company-wide memo on Monday morning, but added that the sale was “a big step forward” for the media group.

“I believe this move is right for all of our stakeholders, including media workers,” he said. “Our goal is to create networks that move the world forward. This will help us to better concentrate all of our energy and resources on our core competencies.”

Verizon had to spend a lot of money to improve its wireless business. In March it was agreed to pay nearly $ 53 billion in wireless radio wave licensing to help the company expand its 5G infrastructure. It also plans to spend $ 10 billion on cabling more cell towers and upgrading its systems over the next few years.

For Apollo, the purchase is an opportunity to continue investing in digital media – an industry the company is already in with deals for photo printing company Shutterfly, web hosting company Rackspace and Cox Media Group, which owns TV and radio. has invested stations across the country. Apollo also has extensive experience with the complex process of buying companies that have emerged from larger corporations, which generally requires the separation of interwoven financial data, systems, and often key executives.

And Yahoo and AOL are still generating a lot of revenue. Verizon’s media division had sales of $ 1.9 billion in the first three months of 2021, up 10 percent year over year.

Apollo hopes that increased focus on the individual brands he believes will be lost in a large corporate empire can accelerate this growth. One strategy could be to add more subscription offers. Yahoo Finance is already selling a premium service through the free website. Apollo also sees an opportunity for Yahoo Sports to take over more of the online betting and fantasy sports industries, which have seen explosive growth, two Apollo executives said in an interview with The Times.

Apollo is particularly optimistic about digital advertising given government scrutiny from some of the biggest players like Google. And as digital ads rebound after the pandemic, Apollo expects the entire industry to grow.

“Is most of it going to Google and Facebook and Snap and Twitter? Of course, ”said Reed Rayman, partner at Apollo. “But is there a role for others in digital media to benefit from the rising tide, like Yahoo and the other real estate? Absolutely.”

Apollo has been on a shopping spree for the past few months, announcing deals to acquire Michaels, the artisan chain, and the Venetian Resort in Las Vegas. It also saw a shake in its leadership roles when its co-founder, Leon Black, stepped down as chairman in March after it was revealed he paid more than $ 150 million to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

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Newell Manufacturers CEO Ravi Saligram says residence will stay the hub post-Covid

Newell Brands CEO Ravi Saligram says home will remain the hub post-Covid

Even if students return to school and workers return to the office, changes in consumer spending will survive the pandemic.

“The house has become the center,” Ravi Saligram, CEO of Newell Brands, told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Monday.

As companies become more flexible and their employees work remotely in a post-pandemic world, Saligram expects the increase in sales to continue longer than this year.

“We believe some of these trends are going to continue and we’re pretty innovative,” he said. “We believe that we will continue to grow in the future.”

The owner of brands like Papermate, Rubbermaid and Sharpie reported better-than-expected earnings and sales on Friday that rose 21% year over year to $ 2.29 billion.

“All eight of our companies have done well and grown. And seven out of eight companies grew double-digit worldwide,” said Saligram.

Newell raised his forecast for this year, citing students returning to school in person as a factor that contributed to his optimistic outlook.

“We had a feeling with our forecasts that we would do better than 2019, and much of it has to do with the continuation of consumer trends,” said Saligram. “A big part of [the positive outlook] is that we believe that most of the students will be back in school. We’re going to have a normal back to school season and that’s a big factor for us. “

Newell estimates that adjusted earnings will be between $ 1.63 and $ 1.73 per share this year. Revenue is expected to grow between $ 9.9 billion and $ 10.1 billion.

Newell Brands shares rose nearly 2% on Monday. The stock is up nearly 29% that year, valued at more than $ 11.7 billion.