🍪 Zuck’s got threads

Happy Thursday, friends. May Q3 bring you as many wins as Joey Chestnut in a hot dog eating contest. In the meantime, here’s a live look at our offices now:

Alright enough of the shenanigans. Let’s get to the good stuff.

In the oven this week:

🧵 Zuck’s got Threads
🗳️ Poll of the week: is the Twitter copycat here to stay?
🍪 Cookie crumbs: 5 bite-sized headlines and an extra one for fun
💬 Tweet of the week: NFTs are down bad
🍫 Chocolate chips: 3 snappy internet finds
😂 Snickerdoodles: memes for the weekend

FRESHLY BAKED

ZUCK’S GOT THREADS

Mark Zuckerberg.

Some people call him Zuck.

The Senate calls him a robot.

His employees call him the Eye Of Sauron.

But we call this man fabric, ‘cause he’s got THREADS!!

And not just any kind… IG just launched a new app called Threads, and it’s supposedly Meta’s “Twitter killer.”

Here’s how it works:

It’s a standalone app that’s built on top of Instagram, so you can log in with the same account and have the option to follow people you already follow on IG.
You can post text updates up to 500 characters and see a home feed of other tweets I mean threads.
It’ll have some sort of decentralized component, where you can interact with other social networks like Mastodon. (This part is still being worked on.)

We’ve used it a few times and it already feels like an earlier version of Twitter. And building it on IG gave it a natural boost. A few hours post launch, Threads climbed to the #1 spot on the app store charts:

It’s bad news for Elon, who struggled it up big time this week.

It all started when he made an announcement about “system manipulation” on Twitter:

To address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation, we’ve applied the following temporary limits:
- Verified accounts are limited to reading 6000 posts/day
- Unverified accounts to 600 posts/day
- New unverified accounts to 300/day
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk)
Jul 1, 2023

After the post, everyone on Twitter started seeing these "rate limit exceeded" messages, and boyyy were they pissed:

But the most hilarious part of this whole thing is that some web developer noticed a bug in Twitter's web app, which caused it to send requests to itself in an infinite loop.

Apparently it was sending hundreds of requests a minute, which was overloading the whole system. LOL.

So basically, Twitter itself was the culprit of its “extreme levels of system manipulation.”

If that ain’t pure comedy, I don’t know what is.

Ya just can’t make this stuff up.

It's amateur hour at Twitter, and Zuck's right on time.

POLL OF THE WEEK

IS THREADS ACTUALLY A TWITTER KILLER?

Zuck’s copying has seen kinda mixed success… IG Stories and Reels took off, but a most other clones didn’t (Clubhouse, Substack, BeReal, etc.) Do we think Threads is here to stay?

Sound off👇🏽

COOKIE CRUMBS

BITE SIZED HEADLINES

An interesting twist in the AI music world: the Grammys will now accept music that has been generated by AI so long as there is some human contribution in it too. Their main caveat is that the AI part can’t win the Grammy - so if AI is the lead vocal on a song, the track wouldn’t be eligible for the performance category, but could still be eligible for a songwriting nomination if a human was the one that wrote the song.

Uh oh… Youtube is coming after ad blockers. Apparently now, people that have ad blockers will only be allowed to watch 3 videos before getting restricted.

Apple became the first company to hit a $3 trillion market cap this week. Insanity.

It’s official - FTX is rebooting. Before the PTSD hits ya, apparently the goal is to pay customers back. They’re also planning to rebrand (for obvious reasons). Alright SEC, you got your work cut out for ya. Go get ‘em.

Everyone’s favorite holiday is coming up! And no, we ain’t talking about Christmas. Prime Day is July 11th-12th this year. Amazon’s annual online savings event gets Prime members steep discounts from brands like Casper, Levi's, Beats, and a bunch of small businesses. Time to prepare our wallets…

We love following the Forbes 30 Under 30 to fraud pipeline, and this week, another one bites the dust. Nate Paul (real estate investor) faces 8 counts of fraud after the FBI raided his house and accused him of making false statements to financial institutions. Ironically, Forbes did a story about the raid but didn’t mention the whole 30 under 30 snafu… 🧐

FROM THE COOKIE JAR

TWEET OF THE WEEK

What a chart.
— Haseeb ＞|＜ (@hosseeb)
Jul 3, 2023

The one thing more volatile than your ex-girlfriend?

NFTs.

The big names like Bored Apes and Cryptopunks have generally been safe from the worst price swings, until now.

Now their floor price is... well, on the floor.

Bored Apes are now down 88% from 2022 highs. (They’re currently hovering around 30ETH, which translates to about $60K, so not exactly cheap, but still.)

Brutal for the bag holders.

But if you’re in the market for a blue chip NFT, it looks like this July 4th sale might just stick around for a little while longer….

CHOCOLATE CHIPS

OUR FAVORITE FINDS

How much top CEOs get paid, ranked by WSJ.
How to overcome self doubt with the confidence portfolio.
100 little ideas that explain how the world works. My favorites:
- “The more expensive something is, the less likely you are to use it. Ferraris sit in garages; Hondas get driven.”
- “Members of a group become lazier as the size of their group increases. Based on the assumption that ‘someone else is probably taking care of that.’”

SNICKERDOODLES

THURSDAY MEMES

if you’re the type of reader who loves fiction, I highly recommend browsing your Linkedin feed
— gaut (@0xgaut)
Jun 18, 2023

— Not Jerome Powell (@alifarhat79)
Jul 4, 2023

😂

That's all we got for ya this week, folks. See ya next Thursday!

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