Introducing Inside Orchard
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Inside Orchard
@InsideOrchard
Thought-provoking & insightful essays about technology & its impact on society. New essays on Tuesdays. Also available as a podcast. Founder/author:
Inside Orchard’s Tweets
The EV Price War Has Arrived
insideorchard.com/essays/the-ev-
Waging a price war to grab superior EV economics of scale is a gutsy move by Elon Musk.
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Don’t Overthink Big Tech Layoffs
insideorchard.com/essays/dont-ov
When it comes to the 51,000 Big Tech layoffs announced in just the past two months, the simplest explanation will prove to be the most accurate.
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Throwing Cold Water on ChatGPT
insideorchard.com/essays/throwin
We are trying to solve a problem by looking for answers that resemble what we are accustomed to.
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CES Lost Its Meaning
insideorchard.com/essays/ces-los
It is no longer possible to contain “tech” under one trade show banner.
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Elon Musk Isn’t Twitter’s Problem
insideorchard.com/essays/elon-mu
Musk will ultimately need to choose between addressing the company’s core problem of limited market reach and financially subsidizing Twitter with his other ventures.
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Bob Iger’s Mandate at Disney
insideorchard.com/essays/bob-ige
By bringing Iger back as CEO, Disney's board has given him a mandate that his hand-picked successor (Bob Chapek) never had.
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FTX and Crypto’s Buzz Drain
insideorchard.com/essays/ftx-and
Even with FTX and SBF in the news, crypto is becoming an afterthought, and that is a recipe for dark times ahead. Without increasingly higher crypto prices, the fascination and interest just isn’t there.
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Valuing Meta
insideorchard.com/essays/valuing
As Mark Zuckerberg contemplates some of his toughest business strategy decisions to date, Wall Street has already weighed in with its verdict on Meta: The company has about a decade left.
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I don't write or talk much about crypto etc. largely because I think it's mostly noise. I did publish this essay on NFTs/crypto over at in March 2021. The essay is aging quite well.
NFTs, Tulips, and Misplaced Artist Hope
insideorchard.com/essays/nfts-an
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The Year of Paid Video Streaming Price Hikes
insideorchard.com/essays/the-yea
As significant change and chaos engulf paid video streaming, one theme ended up being quite reliable in 2022: subscription price hikes.
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Elon’s Twitter
insideorchard.com/essays/elons-t
Cutting through all of the noise, there is reason to believe that Musk and friends have been more right than wrong with Twitter in their first two weeks.
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Twitter has been going through the same ad-related problems as its peers. Companies need to rethink processes and systems.
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Advertising never worked for Twitter. Advertising isn't working for a growing list of companies: Spotify, Roku, Snap, etc.
@ElonMusk's pivot to paid subscriptions is likely the correct one with the long-term in mind. twitter.com/elonmusk/statu…
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Wall Street Was Caught Sleeping on Digital Advertising
insideorchard.com/essays/wall-st
A takeaway from 3Q22 earnings in Big Tech land was that Wall Street has been overestimating advertising as a monetization strategy for free services.
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As Elon Musk builds out his version of Twitter, we should probably expect most, if not all, banned accounts to return. What then? Here were two ideas that I put there last year (pre-Musk) for handling fringe ideas on Twitter / social media.
insideorchard.com/essays/the-ris
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My suspicion is many funds are "stuck" in some of these tech names that likely represented core holdings in their portfolios. We are looking at long-held narratives being tested and ripped apart. There is still a lot of denial out there as well.
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Snap Is a Feature, Not a Company
insideorchard.com/essays/snap-is
At its core, Snap offers something that users love but which isn’t attached to an attractive business model.
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Google’s Hardware Bet Isn’t Working
insideorchard.com/essays/googles
Google needs to start asking itself the tough questions about its hardware bet.
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Peloton CEO Barry McCarthy is publicly saying the company has six months to turn things around or Peloton won't be viable as a stand-alone company.
Good time to recirculate my essay from two weeks ago.
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Peloton’s Ride Is Ending
insideorchard.com/essays/peloton
We are at the point where we can begin writing Peloton’s eulogy. The one thing that was always going to represent the core of Peloton’s last stand is falling apart.
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Google’s Strategy for Coexisting With TikTok
insideorchard.com/essays/googles
Based on what is known about YouTube Shorts advertising, we are about to see quite the dramatic change of affairs for video creators on the YouTube platform.
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Selling the Disney Experience
insideorchard.com/essays/selling
Disney has one of the most powerful brands in business. Executives are only now starting to understand how to leverage its brand to improve customer experiences (and user monetization).
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Peloton’s Ride Is Ending
insideorchard.com/essays/peloton
We are at the point where we can begin writing Peloton’s eulogy. The one thing that was always going to represent the core of Peloton’s last stand is falling apart.
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Companies are getting nervous. Return to office momentum will continue to build. The next thing executives will go after: dialing back hybrid work arrangements that were announced last year and 1H22.
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Return to office momentum continues. Back at 48% of pre-pandemic levels, and that reflects hybrid work arrangements (which companies are now trying to dial back as well).
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A Live Sports Saga
insideorchard.com/essays/a-live-
The Big Ten sports rights deal revealed the challenges (and opportunities) facing the tech giants when it comes to getting their hands on live sports programming.
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A pitch timer has shown to reduce games by 26 minutes while increasing stolen-base attempts by nearly 30%.
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Nice to see the MLB announce changes to the game in an effort to speed up game play. Tells me MLB knows young folks are losing interest in baseball. The topic was talked about in an Inside Orchard essay back in February. mlb.com/news/mlb-2023-
insideorchard.com/essays/live-sp
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Waiting for Mixed Reality
insideorchard.com/essays/waiting
We are likely overestimating how mixed reality will change things in the near term while vastly underestimating just how transformational the technology will be in the long term.
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Roku’s Bad Bet
insideorchard.com/essays/rokus-b
While Roku correctly saw streaming's potential, a bet that the company placed regarding its place in video streaming ended up being very wrong.
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A reminder to Inside Orchard subscribers.
The weekly essays are also available in podcast form. For information on getting the (private) podcast up and running, log in here: insideorchard.memberful.com/auth/sign_in
Scooter Mania Fizzles
insideorchard.com/essays/scooter
In a rush to rid cities of cars, we have rushed into alternatives that end up being flawed. The question needs to be asked – what are we doing?
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Amazon’s iRobot Deal Isn’t About Vacuums
insideorchard.com/essays/amazons
A $1.7 billion offer for iRobot is the latest evidence pointing to Amazon’s grand vision: digitizing our homes.
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Movie Theater Cracks Grow
insideorchard.com/essays/movie-t
We are starting to get a better sense of how movie theaters will continue to lose relevancy. The primary ingredient will be time.
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Snap Is the Canary in the Ad Coal Mine
insideorchard.com/essays/snap-is
Snap’s problems, which are long and varied, serve as a warning for nearly all ad-based business models. Things are going to become turbulent.
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The situation unfolding at Meta (TikTok blowing up the status quo) has been a key theme that I've discussed this year over at . You can check out the archive here: insideorchard.com/archive.
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Facebook's new "Home" tab, which will be positioned as the default view when opening the Facebook app, is a big move to be more like TikTok. As I wrote in a recent essay (found below), the implications from such a change are significant. about.fb.com/news/2022/07/h
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Social Media’s Days Are Numbered
insideorchard.com/essays/social-
Our online social fabric is splintering. Social media’s ending is likely to be ushered in not by regulation, but by a new kind of algorithm delivering content that users didn’t know they would have an interest in.
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A Luxury Safe Haven
insideorchard.com/essays/a-luxur
Continued supply chain issues and software’s ongoing invasion of new industries bode well for companies playing in the premium sector of the economy.
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The Musk Ride Continues for Twitter
insideorchard.com/essays/the-mus
If there ever was a time for a white knight to “save” Twitter, now would be it. The problem for Twitter is that even at a discount to Musk's offer, it’s difficult to come up with a buyer list.
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Among the giants, Amazon is the most exposed to inflation and the accompanying risk to economic growth. insideorchard.com/essays/inflati
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Ouch. Inflation is far too important a problem for the White House to keep making statements like this. It’s either straight ahead misdirection or a deep misunderstanding of basic market dynamics. twitter.com/POTUS/status/1…
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A VR Head Fake
insideorchard.com/essays/a-vr-he
There is something about the way the tech industry continues to prop up and push VR that isn't right. Too many companies are using VR to distract from a genuine rise in competitive pressure and worsening business performance.
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