The week that was: the 6 things you need to know

Author Moonshot.news

Published on: 31/10/2021

Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook has changed its name and is now Meta to focus on his vision – the metaverse, a future huge network of platforms. ”From now on, we will be metaverse-first, not Facebook-first”, he said. The name change came after lots of bad publicity for Facebook after whistle-blowers accused it of putting profit before security and not doing what it could to stop disinformation. First reactions to the name change were mixed.

The threat of “new ransomware models” was the top concern facing executives in the third quarter of 2021, according to a report from research and marketing firm Gartner. EU Agency for Cybersecurity said hackers-for-hire is a rising trend among cyber-crime actors together with state-sponsored, cybercrime and hacktivists. “Threats are on the rise. Ransomware ranks as a prime threat”.

92% of digital publishers in the UK reported positive revenue growth for Q2 reaching a total of GBP 137.8 million. Display ads was still the largest category by revenue for digital publishers with GBP 56.3 million, up 42.1% against Q2 2020. Revenue from subscriptions increased by 23.1%, according to the Association of Online Publishers (AOP) and Deloitte.

Money laundering, war crimes prosecutions in Europe and corruption in sport are among 14 investigative journalism projects from across the European Union that received EU grants under the second round of IPI’s and EU’s support for cross-border journalism.

The EU has made “fragile gains” towards gender equality, but big losses are emerging as a result of the pandemic, according to the European Institute for Gender Equality. Top performers in this year’s Index are again Sweden and Denmark, followed by the Netherlands, which jumped over Finland and France to claim third place.

The week included many big tech quarterly reports.

• Apple reported revenue record of USD 83.4 billion for the quarter, up 29% year over year. CEO Tim Cook said global shortage of computer chips is affecting most of the company´s products.
• Microsoft reported revenues of USD 45.3 billion, up 22% compared to the same period last year. Operating income was USD 2 billion and increased 27%. Azure and other cloud services revenue were up 50%.
• Twitter reported an operating loss of USD 743 million referring it to a one-time litigation-related net charge of USD 766 million as well as ongoing investments. Quarterly revenue was USD 1.28 billion, up 37% year-over-year.
• Google’s owner Alphabet, reported revenues of USD 65.11 billion, up 41% from USD 46.2 billion in the same quarter last year. Operating income was USD 21 billion, up 32%.
• Facebook, as it was still called then, reported a profit of USD 9 billion, up from USD 7.8 billion in the same quarter last year. The company warned that Apple’s new privacy setting can have a negative effect on the company’s advertising business in the Q4.
• Spotify Q3 report showed a 75% increase of advertising revenue to Euro 323 million and premium subscribers up 19% to 172 million. About 40% of paid subscribers are based in Europe and 29% in the US. Total revenue was up 27% in Q3 to Euro 2.50 billion.