Hi Shopifreaks
Thank you to everyone who responded to my poll last week about which prizes to offer in my upcoming giveaway. Additionally, thanks for all the kind words you shared in your replies about my newsletter. Hearing how much value you get from Shopifreaks really made my week.
Which prizes did readers want most? MacBook Pro and iPhone 16 were the two most requested prizes by a landslide.
So, you got it! Those will be the prizes. I will announce the details of the giveaway next week (how to enter, when the prizes will be awarded, etc)
And now onto another jam-packed edition of Shopifreaks…
In this week's edition I cover:
- Shein's milestone sales in the UK
- The EU's new content moderation body
- NPR uncovered some major dirt on TikTok
- USPS wants to discontinue dual labels
- Meta is testing AI video creation & expansion tools
- Amazon Air Cargo is open for business
- A visual tool to help Amazon drivers find packages faster
- TikTok's new Smart+ campaigns
- WordPress takes over Advanced Custom Fields
- Google Merchant Center's AI video generator
- A Sam's Club store without checkout lines
- X is back in Brazil
All this and more in this week's 195th Edition of Shopifreaks. Thanks for subscribing and sharing!
Stat of the Week
Shein hit $2 billion in sales in the UK in 2023, which is 38% higher than the previously reported 16-month period ending in Dec 2022. (They did not reveal just 2022 revenue by itself). The UK is Shein's third biggest market behind United States and Germany.
1. New EU body to settle content moderation disputes
Social media users in the EU will soon be able to make complaints about platforms' content moderation to a new independent body set up in Ireland.
Appeals Centre Europe will act as an out-of-court dispute settlement body under the EU's Digital Services Act, initially deciding cases relating to Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube, with plans to include more social media platforms over time.
Until now, users have had limited options to challenge the content decisions of social media companies without going to court, but the EU wants to change that.
Appeals Centre Europe will be funded with a one-time $130M grant from Meta's Oversight Trust Board, followed by a €100 fee charged to social media companies for each case. Users who raise a dispute will pay a “nominal” fee of €5, which will be refunded if a decision is found in their favor.
The new body will review each case within 90 days to decide whether platforms’ decisions are consistent with their content policies.
Thomas Hughes, inaugural CEO of the Appeals Centre, said, “We want users to have the choice to raise a dispute to a body that is independent from governments and companies, and focused on ensuring platforms’ content policies are fairly and impartially applied.”
Uh oh.. does the EU know what they're about to get themselves into?
I can't say that Facebook's moderation is great… or even good… but I can say that it's a MASSIVE operation!
Earlier this year I reported that Meta's Oversight Board only made 53 decisions out of the 398,597 appeals they received globally last year. The board wrote in their annual report, “While we can only review a small number of cases, we continue to select cases that often raise underlying issues facing large numbers of people around the world and make recommendations to address them.”
Is the EU's new body going to attempt to tackle those other 398,544 Facebook appeals — plus TikTok and YouTube appeals?
Here's why the answer to that question doesn't matter…
Under the rules of the Digital Services Act, social media platforms are allowed to refuse to engage with this type of dispute settlement body, and the Appeals Centre Europe won’t have the power to impose a binding settlement on the parties, according to Fast Company. (I reached out to Appeals Centre Europe on X to verify that, but haven't heard back yet.)
If true, does that mean that the Appeals Centre Europe is pretty much a glorified r/AmITheAsshole subreddit — where a board casts opinions about a dispute, but can't change the outcome?
As a user with a dispute, what would be the point of paying the fee to have the Appeals Centre Europe review my case if in the end, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube can stand by their original decision either way?
I also asked the Appeals Centre Europe what commitments they have from Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube to abide by their decisions. I'll provide an update in a future edition if I hear back from them.
2. Turns out TikTok knew all along…
TikTok executives and employees were well aware for many years that the company's app is addictive to teenagers, according to unredacted documents from the lawsuit filed in part by the Kentucky Attorney General's Office.
Here's how this came to light:
- 14 attorneys general are suing TikTok for “falsely claiming [that it's] safe for young people.”
- The lawsuit alleges that the app was “specifically designed to be an addiction machine, targeting children who are still in the process of developing appropriate self-control.”
- The attorneys general obtained reams of internal communications and internal studies as part of the lawsuit's discovery process.
- At TikTok's request, the states redacted privileged and confidential parts of the suit.
- However Kentucky's blacking-out did not work, and NPR's Sylvia Goodman at Kentucky Public Radio was able to copy and paste a blacked-out portion to reveal the contents.
NPR's Bobby Allyn said about the discovery:
“It's been pretty startling. This material is quite damning. And again, these details have not been made public before, including company officials admitting in these internal messages that features like a time-on-app reminder are not expected to reduce screen time, as advertised, but instead aimed at, quote, ‘improving public trust.' There was an internal TikTok document that found the exact number of videos it took before someone formed a habit – 260 videos. And Kentucky authorities said that could boil down to just spending 35 minutes on the app, since the videos are so short on TikTok.”
Here's what else NPR discovered in the documents:
- TikTok demotes unattractive people off the main feed to make room for the creators it deems more attractive.
- TikTok's own research found that “compulsive usage correlates with a slew of negative mental health effects like loss of analytical skills, memory formation, contextual thinking, conversational depth, empathy, and increased anxiety.”
- A TikTok executive spoke about the app's algorithm potentially addicting minors. The executive said that the company needs to think about how the app might deprive young people of opportunities, “And when I say other opportunities, I literally mean sleep and eating and moving around the room and looking at someone in the eyes.”
- The app's time management tool doesn't help keep young users away from the app, as it's quickly and easily bypassable. When the app is set to limit view time at 60 minutes per day, teens were still spending 107 minutes on TikTok, which is only 1.5 minutes shorter than the average use of 108.5 minutes before the tool was launched.
- TikTok knew that the tool would be ineffective, and based the success of the tool on how it “improv[ed] public trust in the TikTok platform via media coverage.”
- TikTok knew that “filter bubbles” were a real thing — which is when users find themselves sucked into certain painful and sad content the more they watched it.
- An internal investigation found that underage girls on the app were getting “gifts” and “coins” in exchange for live stripping.
TikTok spokesman Alex Haurek told NPR that the Kentucky Attorney General's complaint “cherry-picks misleading quotes and takes outdated documents out of context to misrepresent our commitment to community safety.”
Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't — but either way though, I agree with Bobby Allyn… the revelations are quite damning!
🔥 Partner News
Levanta, a partner marketing platform that integrates with Amazon’s Attribution API to allow sellers and publishers to partner directly, is excited to announce the addition of France and Germany to its growing roster of supported Amazon marketplaces. With these new expansions, Levanta provides sellers and creators with seamless access to two of Europe's largest Amazon markets, helping brands extend their reach and maximizing growth through affiliate marketing.
Nearly half of all adults have a side hustle, according to a new study by Omnisend, which found that in the UK, a massive 72% of side hustlers are making money through e-commerce, followed by 59.3% in Australia, 53.4% in Canada, and 51.9% in the US. Freelancing is another top contender, with 23% of Canadians, 22.5% of Brits, 21.3% of Americans, and 20.2% of Australians picking up gigs like writing, design, or programming. However despite all the hustle, over half of hustlers in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia make less than $500 a month! Check out the study to learn more.
3. USPS to discontinue dual labels for private shippers
USPS proposed a new rule that would discontinue the use of dual shipping labels, which are currently used by private shippers like UPS, FedEx, and DHL to identify both carriers. These types of labels are most often used for services where USPS handles the last mile of delivery.
The proposal reads:
“The Postal Service has reviewed the practice of using dual shipping labels and has found that this practice no longer serves the interests of the Postal Service. As a result, the Postal Service is proposing to discontinue the use of dual shipping labels. Items bearing dual shipping labels should not be accepted and may be returned to the sender.”
Consolidators account for about a quarter of total USPS parcel volume, according to Value Added Resource, but Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is looking for ways to boost postal revenues and efficiencies while encouraging shippers to use its Ground Advantage service instead of consolidator services.
The result has been that carriers are keeping more of the packages they had previously handed off to USPS in their own delivery networks for the final mile. For example, FedEx rebranded their SmartPost service to Ground Economy and UPS moved more of its SurePost volume to its own network for last mile.
The proposed dual label discontinuation has not yet been approved, and is currently open for public comment until Nov 14th. However some label providers and carriers are already making changes to their tracking label systems in anticipation of the change.
Last month I reported that USPS is ending discounts for shipping consolidator partners that drop off packages at its delivery units, finalizing a push that began months ago to end the subsidization of last-mile delivery for other carriers, which is the most costly leg of the journey. Instead, USPS wants to incentivize consolidators to use its Parcel Select offering to bring more volume to its facilities earlier in the shipping process.
While I understand ending last-mile discounts for consolidator partners to help USPS curb some losses each year, I don't quite understand the rationalization behind ending the dual labels.
If a consolidator is willing to pay the non-discounted prices to USPS, what's the difference if they use a dual label?
The change feels petty. However it's possible I'm misunderstanding something.
I reached out to the article's author, Liz Morton, who commented on my LinkedIn post:
“My wild guess would be it may have more to do with the decision a few months ago to stop accepting drop offs of FedEx Ground Economy/SmartPost & UPS SurePost packages at USPS facilities.
Dual labels may be confusing, especially to consumer shippers or smaller online sellers who may purchase labels through marketplaces and they may still try to take those packages to USPS.
Several marketplaces put out an announcement about it, but not everyone reads those or may have gotten the message.
If USPS is still seeing a decent amount of people trying to use them for drop off, I can see where maybe they would consider that “no longer serving the interest of the postal service” and took this action to try to relieve themselves of that headache by removing what they think could be causing the confusion from the label process.
Other than that, I agree with you if the consolidator is willing to pay the non-discounted price, it shouldn't matter too much.”
4. Meta is testing AI video creation & expansion tools
Meta is testing new AI video creation capabilities that allow advertisers to animate an image and expand videos to fit Reels.
The AI Animation Tool allows advertisers to upload a static image and generate a video from it. In the example shown on The Verge article linked to above, Meta's AI tool made strawberries in the background of an image slowly float around the jar to capture the viewer's attention better while scrolling.
The Video Expansion Tool uses AI to generate “unseen pixels in each video frame” to increase its size. For example, it can take a square video and expand the top and bottom to fit within the vertical dimensions of a Reel. The tool was developed in response to the popularity of a similar feature for images.
AI expanded ads like this will appear on the new full-screen video tab that's coming soon to Facebook, which I covered in last week's edition (story #4).
Helen Ma, director for product management at Meta, told Retail Brew, “Maybe [smaller brands] aren’t ready yet to invest super heavily in creative. It’s an opportunity to say, ‘I’m gonna stay at my core, but I’m gonna use AI to figure out how to then transform this in a video environment.’”
The Verge noted that Meta isn’t the only platform letting advertisers create ads with AI. Last month, Amazon released an AI tool that creates clips based on product images, and TikTok is experimenting with using AI-generated avatars in ads as well. I also cover a new Google Merchant Center tool today in section 9.
Lastly in the world of Meta advertising… the company is testing capabilities to improve brand voice and tone in gen-AI-powered creatives, based on feedback from advertisers. Additionally, the company unveiled a tool to create more integrated creator campaigns, letting advertisers incorporate creator content into collections ads on Reels and elsewhere.
5. Ship your goods with Amazon Air Cargo
Amazon Air officially opened up space on its fleet of cargo jets to freight forwarders and businesses, in a move to challenge airfreight giants like FedEx and UPS.
The company announced on its LinkedIn, “Amazon Air Cargo is now open for business serving domestic networks across North America, EMEA, and Asia. Built on the backbone of Amazon’s world-class logistics network, we’re ready to handle, transport, and deliver your goods safely, securely, and efficiently — on time, every day.”
Amazon said it could provide space on 250+ daily flights, including partner airlines, and would also offer ad hoc, charter, or blocked space services. The airline is able to carry general cargo, pharmaceuticals, perishables, dangerous goods and parcels on its fleet of 100+ Boeing 737, Boeing 767 and Airbus A330 aircraft.
Amazon has been quietly selling space on its cargo jets to a handful of clients since 2019 including Airblox, Apex Logistics, and Naniq Global Logistics, but now it's opening up its fleet to the masses.
Amazon wrote, “Amazon Air Cargo has been offering third-party shippers access to Amazon’s logistics network to deliver air shipments with speed and reliability since 2019, and we are excited to now expand the service to more cargo customers.”
Businesses can now book air cargo shipments directly on AmazonAirCargo.com.
Amazon Air, was created in 2016 to meet the demands of Prime’s one- and two-day shipping commitments. By 2020, Amazon Air operated more than 80 planes and expanded to regional air hubs across the US. Its fleet now includes over 100 aircraft, operating from 54 US airports with more than 250 daily flights.
Air Cargo News commented, “At this stage, it is not clear if the move is a long-term strategy to compete with the likes of FedEx and UPS or a measure to fill spare capacity that it cannot fill with its own cargo.”
6. In other Amazon news this week…
Amazon released such a flurry of announcements this past week, and there were so many mention-worthy reports on the company from outside publications, that I decided to consolidate them into one headline section. Here's what else is new at Amazon…
Amazon launched Vision-Assisted Package Retrieval (VAPR), a new AI-powered solution that helps drivers find the right packages quickly by projecting a green “O” on all packages that will be delivered at that stop and a red “X” on all other packages. The tool will be rolled out to 1,000 electric delivery vans from Rivian by early 2025. Early tests saw a 67% reduction in perceived physical and mental effort for drivers and saved more than 30 minutes per route.
Amazon revamped its subscription service for Ring video doorbells with the launch of a new service called Ring Home Premium, which includes features like 24/7 recording and AI-powered video search that help users find specific moments in recorded video footage. The services start at $19.99/month and will launch in the US on November 5th.
Amazon Pharmacy is opening in 20 new cities across the US in 2025, more than doubling the number of cities where customers can get Same-Day Delivery of their medications. The company is leveraging its logistics network and advanced automation tech to provide customers more access to affordable medications. The new pharmacies will be embedded in Amazon Same-Day Delivery sites.
Amazon is rolling out a new online ordering method for Prime members that includes the ability to bundle standard orders and groceries into one same-day shipment, which will kick off first in Phoenix. The company is also adding more combined Amazon / Whole Foods fulfillment centers and trialing a store where robots pack your Amazon orders while you shop for groceries.
Amazon's cash balance is on pace to exceed $127.4B by the end of the year, which means it would triple the amount from 2018 and surpass $100B for the first time. This would give Amazon more money on hand than Alphabet and Microsoft, each expected to have about $112.8B and $108.1B respectively by the end of the year. Investors want a piece of that cash as buybacks or dividends, but Amazon wants to spend it on AI and other growth plans.
Amazon announced that customers saved more than $1 billion during its October Prime Big Deal Days event last week, and that more Prime members shopped this year compared to last year to take advantage of early holiday deals. However I'm curious if that's the actual amount customers saved, or just the difference between the marked up price sellers added right before Prime Day, and the “discounted” price they offered during the event. Amazon has historically been very secretive / ambiguous about their actual Prime Day sales numbers, and this year's event is no exception.
Amazon's Subscription Box Program, which allowed sellers to list, sell, and manage their fully-assembled curated subscription box products on Amazon.com, is no longer accepting new subscribers, while existing subscribers will be supported until the end of the year. The program originally launched in October 2018. Subscribing to individual products on Amazon.com remains unaffected. They are just cancelling the Subscription Box program. I asked Amazon: Will those sellers have the ability to transfer their subscribers to a 3rd party platform to continue operations? If not, how is Amazon giving subscription box sellers the ability to contact and continue serving their customers? I'll post an update if / when I hear back.
Amazon introduced AI Shopping Guides in the US app on over 100 product types including TVs, area rugs, dog food, running shoes, headphones, moisturizers, and more. The guides consolidate key information alongside a relevant selection of products, making it easier for customers to find the right product for their needs. I'm sure all Amazon Associates love reading that news…
Amazon and Apple teamed up to offer Apple TV+ as a $9.99 add-on in Amazon Prime Video bundles. Users who subscribe will now be able to watch Apple TV+ shows and movies in the Prime Video app without downloading a separate app, allowing users to manage payments through one billing system. How unusual for Apple to give up control of billing!
7. TikTok launches Smart+ campaigns for automated advertising
TikTok introduced a new advertising option called Smart+ that is designed to help advertisers automate the process of campaign creation in preparation for the holidays.
Smart+ automates the performance advertising process across targeting, bidding, and creative to deliver the right ad to the right person to offer the best performance.
Here's how it works:
- Advertisers input their assets, budget, and targeting goals.
- Smart+ automatically creates or selects the best creative assets using TikTok Symphony, the platform's AI powered content creator.
- TikTok chooses the right audience and the right time to show their ad.
Smart+ campaigns are available in four formats:
- Smart+ Web Campaigns – to drive traffic to websites
- Smart+ Catalog Ads – automatically delivers relevant product recommendations to people based on their interests, intent and actions
- Smart+ App Campaigns – to drive app installs and conversions
- Smart+ Lead Generation Campaigns – to convert viewers into visitors and leads for businesses
TikTok says that advertisers using its Smart+ campaigns are seeing a 52% improvement in their ROAS by lowering CPA.
You can learn more about Smart+ campaigns here.
8. WordPress takes over Advanced Custom Fields plugin
For the past month, I've been following the recent WordPress vs WP Engine drama, and the situation seems to be getting worse each week. Read Edition 192 (story #1), Edition 193 (story #8), and Edition 194 (story #7) to get caught up to speed.
The reason I'm so obsessed with this ongoing story right now is that most of my websites (including Shopifreaks.com) and client websites are powered by a mix of WordPress / WooCommerce — other than the ones on Shopify.
Aside from my personal vested interest in the future of WordPress, the recent actions of Matt Mullenweg on behalf of Automattic and The WordPress Foundation are hugely impactful not only to WordPress (which is the most popular CMS on the Internet by a landslide), but also the open source community as a whole.
The sad part is that WooCommerce reached out to me a few months ago about becoming a sponsor of Shopifreaks — and I was enamored with the idea at the time. As a two-decade user of WordPress and Automattic products, I would've been thrilled to accept them as a sponsor — but they decided not to move forward with the sponsorship at the time. Now I'm thankful that they didn't because I would've been in a very uncomfortable position right now, as I disagree wholeheartedly with the recent actions of Matt Mullenweg.
Here's what happened now:
In retaliation of WP Engine's lawsuit against Automattic, Mullenweg performed a hostile takeover of the Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin, which was acquired by WP Engine in June 2021 and subsequently maintained by their company.
If you're not familiar with ACF, the plugin enables users to add custom fields to their WordPress websites and manage the data easily through the WP backend — a feature that many have advocated for decades be a core function of the WordPress CMS. The free and paid versions of ACF are collectively used by over 4.5M WordPress users, according to WP Engine.
Mullenweg said that the action was “to remove commercial upsells and fix a security problem” — neither issue which has resulted in such a response from WordPress in the past. The ACF team posted on X, “A plugin under active development has never been unilaterally and forcibly taken away from its creator without consent in the 21 year history of WordPress.”
WordPress is calling the “new” plugin “Secure Custom Fields” (SCF) to avoid trademark infringement, and claiming that they are “forking” the Advanced Custom Fields plugin.
However a “fork” (which is a legal way to copy a plugin's code) has always resulted in a new / fresh plugin listed in the WordPress Plugin repo that starts from scratch with 0 installs and 0 reviews. Never in the history of WordPress has a “fork” resulted in the complete takeover of an existing plugin listing, along with all their installs, reviews, and support documentation.
Any WordPress users who enable auto-updates, or who don't pay attention to what's happening when manually updating ACF, are now being switched to SCF, which Mullenweg says “is now a non-commercial plugin.”
Existing ACF users who want to continue using the real plugin have to perform a one-time download provided by the Advanced Custom Fields team, which will then update moving forward from their servers.
Keep in mind one other thing… Mullenweg is claiming that this plugin takeover is happening in the name of security because the ACF plugin had a vulnerability. However a week ago, he blocked WP Engine from the WordPress Plugin repo, making it impossible for them to ship updates. In other words, Mulllenweg caused this “vulnerability” (which has proven to not even be a vulnerability), and then booted ACF from the plugin repo as a result of the issue he caused them!
Matt, I urge you to reconsider your recent actions that are effectively destroying the WordPress community right now.
What you're doing is likely to be deemed illegal in court and to be followed by huge damages that'll have to be paid out by yourself and Automattic. However more importantly than that, you're destroying the empire you built over a feud with a competitor.
The losers in all this are the WordPress users, developers, and contributors around the world who are watching their livelihoods become held hostage by a CEO on a power trip.
The winners will be Squarespace, Wix, Shopify, Ghost, Webflow, and other content management systems that will inevitably take your market share — as website owners and developers lose trust in WordPress.
For the love of God man, stop.
9. Other e-commerce news of interest
Google Merchant Center is rolling out AI-powered video generation tools within Product Studio, which can transform existing product images into dynamic videos. The tool will customize the video to match your brand, enhance your images, highlight product attributes, and allow you to add audio and headlines to promote a sales event. The tool is currently only available in the US, with plans to expand into more countries soon. Google also announced its upcoming integration with Amazon MCF, which is set to improve how retailers display their shipping speeds on Google Shopping.
Sam's Club is opening a new club in Dallas that'll be its first ever store without checkout lines. Members will instead shop exclusively with the company's Scan & Go smartphone app to ring up their purchases as they walk through the aisles. The idea is to test this first checkout-free store before potentially scaling it to other locations. CEO Chris Nicholas said that there will be no change to the number of store workers, but some will have new roles.
eBay announced the 50 US winners of its fifth annual eBay Up & Running grants, of which over 18,000 small businesses applied this year. Each winner will receive a $10,000 grant, training and mentorship, and a $500 stipend to equip themselves with business technology from eBay Refurbished.
Walmart partnered up with Pawp, a digital health clinic that virtually connects pet owners with veterinary professionals, to offer free unlimited access to virtual veterinary care for Walmart+ members. The service will provide 24/7 text or video consultations with veterinarians at no additional cost to members, as part of Walmart's ongoing effort to attract and retain loyalty program subscribers. Shots fired again, Amazon!
Google Ads is implementing a new data retention policy effective Nov 13th that will limit historical data access to 11 years. The change affects all account data including performance metrics, billing information and historical reports. Advertisers who need data older than 11 years are told to retrieve and store it before the deadline.
Revolut Business partnered with American Express to enable its merchants in the UK to accept AMEX payments on its Revolut Gateway, Payment Links, and Tap to Pay on iPhone, with more in-person payment solutions coming later this year. The company also announced its new POS device “Revolut Terminal” which syncs with Revolut Business accounts and offers integrated WiFi and SIM connections and all-day battery life.
In other Revolut news… the BBC found that Revolut was named in more recent reports of fraud in the last financial year than any of the major banks. BBC shared the story of a Revolut user named Jack who had lost £165k to fraud in under an hour on the platform, which Revolut refuses to take accountability for and refund. At first when reading the story, I thought — “well that was kind of his fault” — but then the details and lack of action by Revolut were astonishing.
Just Eat Takeaway, which operates Just Eat in the UK, Lieferando in Germany, and Grubhub in the US, along with restaurant and grocery delivery brands in 16 other countries, partnered up with Rokt to launch a retail media offering across all its websites, reaching a global audience of more than 82M customers. The partnership will enable advertisers in the Rokt Ads network to offer personalized message on the order confirmation and order tracking pages of Just Eats apps and sites, which is when the company says customers are highly engaged and most likely to convert.
Google is teaming up with the Global Anti-Scam Alliance and the DNS Research Federation to spearhead a new effort against online fraud called Global Signal Exchange, which aims to launch a global hub for sharing research on cybercrimes and speed up the detection and disruption of online scams. The exchange is already up and running with a pilot program that has recognized over 100k URLs linked to malicious merchants
The EU asked Temu for more information about its compliance with the Digital Services Act, including in relation to how it prevents the sale of illegal goods on its platform. The commission is also after specifics on how the platform identifies traders who are selling illegal stuff, and on mitigation measures it uses to ensure that problem sellers can't just find their way back and resume selling illegal wares.
Google is expanding its Store Ratings feature, which allows merchants to display customer feedback about their services including product quality, shipping, and return policies directly in search results, beyond the US into Australia, Canada, India, and the UK. Store ratings appear in shopping search results and offer insight into the store's services and product quality.
Auctane, parent company of shipping solutions like ShipStation, ShipEngine, and Stamps.com, entered into a new agreement with FedEx to provide its customers with discounted rates starting in November 2024, just in time for the holiday season. The press release did not specify exactly how big of a discount customers can expect and only mentioned that the discounts will apply to FedEx 2Day®, FedEx Ground® Economy and FedEx® International Connect Plus.
ByteDance is pushing further into hardware with the launch of its first set of earbuds called “Ola Friend” buds. The $170 ear buds link to the company's AI Assistant, Doubao, which can be activated with a voice command, and will only be available in China for now.
Spirit Halloween partnered with Roadie in the US and Uber in the US and Canada to offer same-day delivery, marking the retailer's first venture into e-commerce same-day delivery services. The service will be available from more than 800 Spirit Halloween retail locations. The company's entire costume catalog will be available to shop on both apps at the same prices consumers can find in-store.
Squarespace launched a new ad campaign called “Change Your World” — a three-part series that features a baker, gym owner, and scuba instructor launching businesses on its platform from their computers. For the “Scuba” ad, the production team built an entire apartment inside a water tank to capture the immersion in one take.
X is officially back in Brazil after paying a $5.1M fine and agreeing to represent a local representative, as required by Brazilian law. Last week I reported that X filed a request to restore its services in Brazil after paying all its fines, but The Supreme Court determined that the company paid the fines to the wrong bank! So I guess they got that all straightened out.
10. Seed rounds, IPOs, & acquisitions
Auger, a startup that aims to help companies and governments combine the mishmash of “Franken-software” overseeing their supply chains into a single platform, raised $100M from Oak HC/FT. The company was founded by Dave Clark, a veteran Amazon executive whose name you might also recognize as the former CEO of Flexport.
Convergence, a startup that creates personal AI agents for each user that can learn their tasks and workflows, raised $12M in a pre-seed round led by Balderton Capital with participation from Salesforce Ventures and Shopify Ventures. The company will use the funds to develop AI models that go beyond the current generation of AI and focus on enabling continual learning and skill acquisition through memory. (Doesn't ChatGPT do that now?)
Lovable, a Stockholm-based platform that allows anyone to create software, raised €6.8M in a pre-seed round led by Hummingbird and byFounders. Alongside its funding round, the company launched its beta product, GPT Engineer, which can go beyond building prototype and websites, and help users ship fully functional web apps.
Lightdash, a business intelligence platform and open source alternative to Google Looker, raised $11M in a Series A round led by Accel. The company is launching its new product that allows clients to train “AI analysts” specific to individual teams' use-cases, enabling anyone in the company to query aggregate business data by asking natural language questions.
RedTrack, a Vilnius-based AI-driven analytics and automation platform for media buyers, raised €2.9M in a Series A round led by Lead Ventures. The startup currently serves over 800 businesses, including e-commerce stores and marketing agencies across more than 100 countries, and manages 60,000 advertising accounts.
HubSpot acquired Cacheflow, a platform that provides billing and subscription management solutions aimed at simplifying B2B software selling and buying, for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition will expand HubSpot's Commerce Hub suite of subscription billing management and configure, price, and quote tools.
ClearCourse, a software and embedded payment solution provider for SMEs, announced its plans to acquire GOb2b, a platform that enhances e-commerce stores with features like live search and navigation, pricing and stock updates, accounting systems, and shipping management options, for an undisclosed amount. ClearCourse was established in London in 2018 and has since acquired 40 software and payments solutions in its core verticals.
Constant Contact, a digital marketing and automation platform for small businesses, acquired Txtify Technologies, a company that specializes in mobile-first lead generation through customized microsites and surveys, for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition will help Constant Contact's SMB customers to create mobile-optimized, branded lead generation forms without coding or web development experience.
FlexFactor, an AI-powered platform that helps rescue failed transactions, raised $16.8M in a Series A round led by Bessemer Venture Partners. The company's technology reviews every failed payment attempt in real-time, analyzes hundreds of data points to access whether the decline was due to an actual issue like insufficient funds or an incorrect fraud alert, and then completes the transactions if it detects that a customer should have been able to pay.
TUNL, a South African parcel shipping platform that helps e-commerce merchants save on international shipping costs, raised an undisclosed amount in a round led by E4E Africa, just ten months after raising its $1M pre-seed funding. The fresh capital will support the startup's growth in South Africa, including product expansion into international payments and improved marketing support for SMEs.
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PAUL
Paul E. Drecksler
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PS: Why do giraffes have long necks? Because their feet smell!