Good morning, world, and happy Tuesday!
Heading into the holidays, there’s a natural slow down for some, while others use the time to get going for 2016. I tend to believe I am in the second category, but that differs from reality — two more posts and we close the year. A good round up today, enjoy!
Non-Travel Starters
Space X’s Falcon landed back safely yesterday. Re-usable rockets are coming. A bow to the man and legend Elon Musk. Link.
Facebook and Uber partners to allow people to get Uber rides right from the app. An interestering and probably one of the first integrations in Facebook Messenger which aims to connect businesses with users. While this seems like a big win for Uber, the step of Facebook connecting directly to the drivers is not too far — the messaging economy as a platform for connectivity is growing. Link.
Staying with Messaging, Slack announced its platform play and a fund to support developers to build apps for the messaging services. In that regard, we see a mimick of WeChat and a potential competitor to Facebook. Let’s see where that takes us. I am happy that we are pioneers in this space — an integration, powered by our Skyscanner APIs, offers this bot to users today! Link.
After Amazon started building its truck fleet, now it is considering getting 20 Cargo planes to expand into air. Not a bad move — with north of $7Bn spend on logistics and at scale, it might make sense for the e-commerce giant to own the supply chain. With air and trucking, the last hurdle will be last-mile access for their Prime offers (let’s not be fooled that an 18-wheeler will deliver your booze to your door) could be initially outsourced and why not fully owned- Deliveroo and Redmart’s Relay are good options. Link.
Data seems to be the last resort for Foursquare — the company is interested to see if they can monetize the massive data bases from their users. I said it in 2014, but I will say it again- the biggest non-Facebook data base of user locations and reviews (after Trip) is Dens’ company. Yet, the value of it decreases as the information gets old. Link.
Snacks
IATA is projecting 3.8Bn passengers next year and that is amazing. Flying is on the rise and more people will be able to enjoy going via plane to domestic and international places. Good outlook, keep in mind that most of the profits in the industry have been in the US and that will continue. Travel and travel more. Link.
Flight Centre acquired StudentUniverse for $28M. Congrats to Atle, Paul and team — now the Australian OTA has its feet in a very lucrative market, even though with the rise of LCCs, student fares are not that much of a draw. Link.
Blackstone wants to be in travel tech again — it invested $170M in IBS, a res system which handles different travel verticals. The transaction allegedly buys out the stake of General Atlantic and might be a sign that there could be an IPO in the making. Link.
Dessert (stats)
$300,000: How much money celebrities can make on Instagram. In a day. Phewww. Link.
764,000,000: People who tuned in via TVs at least for a minute during the Women’s World Cup Soccer Final. Impressive. Link.
54.5M: Users of Apple Music. Link.
1/3: iPhone photos uploaded on Flickr. Link.
Some Cool Reading (Watching)
A couple of stories and my holiday reading list.
A man jumps out of a plane, Skype-calls his parents during the fall. It’s hilarious and outstanding. (1 min) Link.
Martin Shkreli, the ‘most hated man on the internet’ and the CEO of the pharma company that raised its pill prices to the moon, got arrested for running a Ponzi scheme. Good story. (5 min). Link.
My reading list for this holiday season is below. Send me a message and tell me what you are reading these days.
The Choice. A gift by a mentor and inspiration, this book captured me quite a bit. Let’s see if I can apply the lessons.
Alibaba’s World. Educating myself on the story of this rocket ship.
The Devil’s Financial Dictionary.
Sir Alex Ferguson’s Leading.
//Expressed views and opinions are my own.
Photo Credit: National Geographic is amazing. Please share and give credit to their photographs and photographers. Here’s the link for your daily inspiration: http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/
