NFR #68 - Amazon Pee Bottles, Layoffs & Klaviyo Acquisition

Never Fully Read

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Never Fully Read is a 5-minute marketing newsletter providing you latest events across eCommerce, NFTs, culture & more every Wednesday morning on Linkedin & sub-stack.

Newsletter in a flash:

🤖 eCommerce news:

• Amazon Drivers Are Still Peeing in Bottles 

•  Disney+ reaches 164.2M subscribers as it prepares for ad-supported tier launch 

•  Instagram rolls out an in-app scheduling tool to all professional accounts 

• Netflix launches a new interactive trivia experience, ‘Triviaverse

• Travel app Hopper raises $96M from Capital One to double down on social commerce 

• After 40 million app downloads, PhotoRoom raises $19 million 

• YouTube will soon roll out a ‘Go Live Together’ co-streaming feature to select creators 

• Blueprint and Klaviyo combine forces to scale SMS in EMEA 

• Klaviyo Acquires Napkin.io Company’s first acquisition marks continued commitment to developer community 

📈Top Trends

• Tech layoffs continue to rise

🐵 NFT download

• Here’s a 30-second summary of the FTX drama that’s blowing up in Crypto

👀 WTF Moment:

• CVS and Walgreens announce opioid settlements totalling $10 billion

🐦 Twitter thread of the week:

• The fastest way to hack your energy & stress through your breath

🤝 Hot jobs:

• Charlotte Tilbury Beauty - International Marketing Director 

• Mention Me - Chief Marketing Officer 

• Influencer - VP Marketing 

🤖 eCommerce news:

📦 Amazon Drivers Are Still Peeing in Bottles Roughly 18 months after Amazon finally acknowledged its pee bottle problem, the subreddit for Amazon delivery drivers is full of posts reporting that workers are still peeing in bottles on their routes due to the pace of work, and drivers Motherboard spoke to say that drivers regularly still have to pee in bottles. 

🎥 Disney+ reaches 164.2M subscribers as it prepares for ad-supported tier launch “2022 was a strong year for Disney, with some of our best storytelling yet… and outstanding subscriber growth at our direct-to-consumer services, which added nearly 57 million subscriptions this year for a total of more than 235 million,” said Bob Chapek, chief executive officer, The Walt Disney Company, in the letter to shareholders.

⏱ Instagram rolls out an in-app scheduling tool to all professional accounts “Instagram is rolling out an in-app scheduling tool to all professional accounts in its app, the company has announced. The new tool allows businesses and creators to schedule their posts in advance without having to use third-party apps or Creator Studio. Social media managers and creators have long relied on third-party tools to schedule posts on Instagram, so the new scheduling tool will likely be a game changer.”

🕹Netflix launches a new interactive trivia experience, ‘Triviaverse’ “Triviaverse” is today launching globally on the streaming service and is available in nine languages, including English, Spanish (LatAm), Spanish (Spain), Portuguese (Brazil), French, German, Italian, Korean and Japanese. The gameplay itself is fairly simple. Players must correctly answer as many questions as possible within a limited time frame by pressing the arrow keys on their remote. Questions will span various categories like history, science and pop culture. They’ll increase in difficulty as you make it through the rounds.

✈️ Travel app Hopper raises $96M from Capital One to double down on social commerce “Evidently, the downturn hasn’t soured investors on the travel industry. Travel booking startup Hopper today announced that it closed a $96 million follow-on investment from Capital One, bringing the company’s total raised to $740 million. The fresh cash will be put toward several efforts, CEO and co-founder Frederic Lalonde said in a press release, including supporting Hopper’s new social commerce initiatives.”

📸After 40 million app downloads, PhotoRoom raises $19 million “PhotoRoom has focused on one niche in particular — small businesses reselling objects on eBay, Poshmark or Depop. In just a few taps, these marketplace experts can process a batch of photos and create images that are ready to be used. It can help them save a lot of time and sell more products. Behind the scenes, PhotoRoom uses deep learning to identify different objects and elements on a photo. A flat photo becomes a multi-layer image, which means that users can delete the photo background, blur it or replace it with something else entirely. The same technology can be used to retouch image and remove unwanted objects.”

🎙YouTube will soon roll out a ‘Go Live Together’ co-streaming feature to select creators “YouTube is gearing up to roll out a new feature that will allow select creators to invite a guest to go live with them, the company announced on its Creator Insider channel and in a blog post. At launch, creators will only be able to co-stream via a phone, as the feature won’t be available on the desktop version of YouTube. The new feature will initially only be available to a select group of creators, but YouTube plans to expand co-streaming to more creators in the future.”

💬 Blueprint and Klaviyo combine forces to scale SMS in EMEA “Justin Khaksar, SVP International, commented: “This is an incredibly exciting opportunity for both Klaviyo and Blueprint. Blueprint has done a fantastic job creating a tool that provides brands a way to communicate with their customers via SMS. With this transition, the brands can receive the additional infrastructure and support they need to further improve on their customer journey. The customer experience is at the forefront of what we do here at Klaviyo and this is a great opportunity for us to continue to expand our presence in EMEA and show these customers what we’re able to offer.””

🛠 Klaviyo Acquires Napkin.io Company’s first acquisition marks continued commitment to developer community “Klaviyo is focused on providing the best possible experience for our customers – and that means opening up our platform to allow developers to build on top of our existing offerings,” said Ed Hallen, co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Klaviyo. “Last year a few members of our team discovered Napkin.io and were immediately impressed with the power of the software, clear user interface, and unique feature set which are all Klaviyo-level quality. Further, Nick shares our vision and DNA as a builder and creator and is passionate about the developer experience. We’re excited to see what we can build together.”

📈 Top trends:

Tech layoffs continue to rise:

• Spotify is Firing 75% of Its Talent Team

• Meta expected to lay off thousands as tech job cuts mount

• Elon Musk’s Twitter lays off employees across the company

• Stripe: Today we’re announcing the hardest change we have had to make at Stripe to date. We’re reducing the size of our team by around 14%

• Lyft to lay off 13% of staff

• Salesforce confirms it has laid off hundreds of employees

🙉 NFT download:

Link to the thread here

🏆 WTF moment:

CVS and Walgreens announce opioid settlements totalling $10 billion

“Under the tentative plans, CVS would pay $4.9 billion to local governments and about $130 million to Native American tribes over a decade. Walgreens would pay $4.8 billion to governments and $155 million to tribes over 15 years. The exact amount depends on how many governments join the deals.

CVS announced its plan along with an earnings report Wednesday, and Walgreens made an SEC filing with some details.

"We are pleased to resolve these longstanding claims and putting them behind us is in the best interest of all parties, as well as our customers, colleagues and shareholders," Thomas Moriarty, CVS chief policy officer and general counsel, said in a statement. "We are committed to working with states, municipalities and tribes, and will continue our own important initiatives to help reduce the illegitimate use of prescription opioids."

🐦 Twitter thread of the week:

Link to the thread here

🤝 Hot jobs:

• Charlotte Tilbury Beauty International Marketing Director As the International Marketing Director in the Global Brand Marketing team, you will be responsible for driving strategy, collaboration, consistency, and best practise across all our regions (UK, EMEA, NA, APAC, China, and Travel Retail). With the ambition of being the #1 premium beauty brand in the world, you will be instrumental in ensuring the global brand strategy is consistent across the globe. You will understand our customer proposition, innovation priorities, assortment strategy, marketing & communications strategies, distribution guardrails and work with our regional colleagues to ensure flawless execution.

• Mention Me Chief Marketing Officer “You'll be joining as our first CMO reporting directly into our CEO and Co-Founder, Andy Cockburn. You'll manage a growing marketing team of 5 including our Head of Brand and Head of Performance, to strategise and deliver on our global marketing goals across a breadth of channels including performance marketing, content, PR, social, email, ABM, and brand marketing. This year alongside increasing our headcount by 50%, we're launching our first products harnessing AI and machine learning, building out our martech partner channel, developing our Enterprise ICPs and launching in the USA. We now need a marketing strategy and team that lives up to our ambitions.”

• Influencer VP Marketing “In this exciting role you will be working, leading and delivering on our global marketing plan. Reporting into the CEO, your role will be to work with all business departments in order to build on our Brand Awareness, support our Commercial Operations, promote our Product, Waves, and to champion our Creator Community.”