#192 – The WordPress vs WPEngine beef, Amazon’s RTO, & YouTube Communities

by Shopifreaks | Sep 23, 2024 | Recent Newsletters

Hi Shopifreaks!

A long time reader brought to my attention that last week's edition of Shopifreaks made it to her Promotions tab instead of her Primary Inbox. Sometimes that unfortunately happens due to the subject line or content topics of that week's edition.

Here are a few ways to ensure that Shopifreaks hits your Primary Inbox:

Add me to your contacts: Paul Drecksler / [email protected] / +1 (828) 273-3031 — I always send newsletters from my personal e-mail so that I can easily receive your replies. Or alternatively, here's my Vcard.
Star My E-mails: If you're using Gmail, click that little star next to my sender name.
Filter My E-mails: Click the checkbox next to today's e-mail, click the three dots and choose “Filter messages like these,” and then Categorize As “Primary” and “Apply filter to matching messages.”

Beyond those three things, whether or not my e-mails hit your Inbox is in the hands of the Gmail Gods!

Now let's dive into this week's “beefy” edition where I cover:

TikTok Shop holiday shopping predictions
The WordPress vs WPEngine beef
Amazon workers return to the office
YouTube launches Communities
Snapchat becomes more TikTok-esque
BigCommerce launches BigTravel
Apple in talks with JP Morgan Chase
BigTech's massive surveillance
Elon Musk backs down in Brazil (and gets sanctioned in the U.S.)
Prime Big Deal Days are back this October
So is Walmart's Holiday Deals event
Amazon's reality business competition show

All this and more in this week's 192nd Edition of Shopifreaks. Thanks for subscribing and sharing!

Stat of the Week

54% of Gen Z shoppers in the U.S. are planning to shop for gifts on TikTok Shop this year, with 24% indicating that they will make purchases through influencer recommendations. — According to Fiverr

1. The WordPress vs WP Engine beef explained

If you're behind on the WordPress vs WP Engine beef, here's what went down…

Matt Mullenweg, CEO / founder of Automattic (the makers of WordPress), called out WP Engine at the recent WordCamp US event for not contributing enough, in his opinion, to the WordPress open source project.

He went on to say that Silver Lake, the parent company of WP Engine, doesn't care about the WordPress ecosystem and only cares about making money. He encouraged WordPress users to switch hosts and get off WP Engine. Then he oddly praised Google and gave them a shout out right afterwards.

One Redditor who attended the speech wrote:

“Everyone left in a very weird mood. Matt started his talk pretty good and then it quickly turned to him name dropping WP Engine and their parent company. He showed the CEO on screen and suggested that people leave WP Engine. Honestly, whether they deserve it or not, it felt like the wrong time to do it. The whole place immediately picked sides.”

Matt later followed up with a blog post on WordPress.org (as opposed to his personal site) that criticized WP Engine even further:

“It has to be said and repeated: WP Engine is not WordPress. My own mother was confused and thought WP Engine was an official thing. Their branding, marketing, advertising, and entire promise to customers is that they’re giving you WordPress, but they’re not. And they’re profiting off of the confusion.”

He actually went as far as saying that WP Engine “are a cancer to WordPress, and it’s important to remember that unchecked, cancer will spread.”

His main criticism in the blog post was that WP Engine disables post revision history by default:

“They disable revisions because it costs them more money to store the history of the changes in the database, and they don’t want to spend that to protect your content. It strikes to the very heart of what WordPress does, and they shatter it, the integrity of your content.”

Many folks in the WordPress community criticized Matt on X for his speech and blog post:

“WordPress.com charges extra to access plugins that would be free. You can’t call one company out for taking advantage of the core open source project when your business is doing the exact same thing.”
“But, you have explicitly said dozens of times – if not hundreds. You are free to make WordPress do what you want, even if you do not like it.”
“Wow, I never got them confused. It has always been clear to me that they are one of many “WP” brands that grew up around the amazing open source project that is WordPress.”
“WordPress.com isn’t WordPress and is far more egregious in its misleading of customers about that fact.”

Others agreed with Matt:

“I can see where @photomatt is coming from. surprising to see a company generating half a billion from a project, yet contributing only a small amount back.”
“I'm with Matt on this. PE are mostly vultures who do not care about the product, only how much money they can suck out before they kill it.”
“I'm not judging him personally but I like the idea of calling out people profiting off open source without contributing. If everyone contributes a little it makes the world a better place.”

This isn't the first time Matt Mullenweg has called out a WordPress hosting company.

In June 2024, he identified GoDaddy as “an existential threat to WordPress' future” and urged GoDaddy employees to examine how many people are contributing to WordPress and WooCommerce, versus the company's investment in proprietary products.

WP Engine shot back at Matt's comments without naming him directly by publishing a blog post shortly after that highlights their historic contributions to the WordPress community.

My Thoughts: WP Engine has no obligation to contribute development hours to WordPress. It'd be great if they did — but it's not a requirement of using or profiting from the open source software.

I'd also agree that WP Engine gives back to the WordPress community in many other ways, outside of direct development hours, as their blog post mentions. Making it easier for more website owners and developers to use WordPress subsequently brings more people into the ecosystem, more users to WooCommerce, and more customers to Automattic's premium plugins (as one example of an indirect contribution).

I also find his comments about people thinking WP Engine was the “official” WordPress because of their marketing & advertising to lack merit. WP Engine using “WP” in their name is no different than the hundreds of other services doing the same — like WP SEO, WP Forms, WP Bakery, and on and on and on…

As the leader of an open source project, it's Matt's responsibility to incentivize companies and developers into contributing to the project — not publicly shame them into doing so.

What are your thoughts? Hit reply and let me know or join the convo on my LinkedIn post.

2. Amazon orders employees back to the office 5 days a week

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy sent a memo to employees notifying them that the company would require corporate workers to be back in the office five days a week, starting in January. The strict RTO mandate tightens requirements from last year that workers be on-site at least three days a week.

Jassy wrote, “We've decided that we're going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID. We continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant.”

He really buried the lede though — finally breaking the news ten paragraphs into the memo — and only using the words “five days a week” for the first time in passing in the eleventh paragraph. Maybe I'm just a stickler for direct communication, but I found the memo to be self-serving and patronizing to employees, breaking many of the company's own rules on communication.

The first few paragraphs were spent patting himself and Amazon on the back for progress the company has made in the areas of Stores, AWS, and Advertising, followed by a personal anecdote about how he didn't plan on being at Amazon for 27 years. Then he spoke about culture for several paragraphs, made a few minor announcements, and eventually made the big reveal (900 words into the memo) that Amazon is pulling the rug out from every worker who enjoys their current hybrid work-from-home scenario.

RTO 5 days a week?! That's an opening statement, not a tenth paragraph announcement!

I'd imagine most employees found out about the 5 day/week mandate from either the news or other employees who actually made it that far in the memo.

Other announcements in the memo include:

Strengthening Amazon culture remains a top priority for Jassy and the executive team.
Amazon is increasing the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15% by the end of Q1 2025 to remove layers of bureaucracy and increase efficiency.
Jassy created a “Bureaucracy Mailbox” where employees can whistleblow any examples they discover of bureaucracy or unnecessary process that's crept into the company (such as returning to the office 5 days a week).
Amazon is returning to assigned desk arrangements in many offices, as opposed to the “hot desk” system that they adopted during the pandemic, where employees decided which days they were going to come in and then reserved a desk.

Thoughts and prayers to all Amazon employees impacted by the news.

3. YouTube launches YouTube Communities

YouTube launched a new feature called YouTube Communities for creators to interact with their fans and viewers right on the platform, instead of having to take viewers to Discord, WhatsApp, or other 3rd party community platforms. YouTube wrote:

“We wanted to build a space where, for the first time ever, subscribers can chat with each other and the creator directly. This introduces a whole new level of interaction on YouTube, and takes some pressure off creators to always make new content to keep their community buzzing.”

To be fair, there's always been a Comments section on YouTube for creators and viewers to interact with one another, but comments didn't facilitate conversation in the way that YouTube is hoping its Communities feature does.

Here's how YouTube Communities is different from / similar to Comments:

Fan-initiated – both conversations and comments can be initiated and shared by fans, with creator control over who can participate.
Dedicated Space – one central spot for continuous conversations with viewers, as opposed to disjointed conversations across individual videos.

Once a creator turns on their Community, anyone who enters can join the convo, make posts, and reply to each other. There’s also a special section for creators to pin their own posts for more visibility.

Communities initially launched with a select group of creators on mobile devices, with plans to expand access to more channels early next year.

Additionally YouTube is rolling out a new tool called Community Hub that gives creators a combined view of all the activity on their channel. YouTube's AI systems will help surface popular comments and offer reply suggestions so that creators can engage with their audience faster and more frequently.

4. Snapchat plans major revamp to become more like TikTok

Snapchat is planning a major revamp of its app that promises a simple interface, generative AI features, and a unified video entertainment experience (ie: TikTok). Here's a breakdown of upcoming changes:

The app will simplify its design from five to three tabs: 1) Messages & Stories, 2) Camera, and a 3) TikTok-like video feed
Effectively, Snap is merging its Spotlight tab with content from media brands, where it makes the most money from ads, intermingling friends and small creators with professional content producers into one feed, delivered in an algorithmic experience.
Snap Map, one of the current five tabs, will now be accessible from the messaging tab, along with Stories from your friends and creators you follow.
The new design, dubbed “Simple Snapchat” (currently in testing phase), is built around “Chatting, Snapping, and watching entertaining videos,” according to the company's VP of product.
Snapchat is bringing Stories to the chat functionality so users can have video conversations with each other.
A partnership with OpenAI will give Snapchat developers access to their LLMs for their apps.
Snapchat is bringing generative AI tools to its Lens Studio, letting users create new lenses based on the tools.
Snapchat users will soon also be able to create AI-generated videos based on text or image prompts.
Lastly, Snapchat Spectacles got an update that bring a more fully-realized AR experience to the product for the first time.
The upgraded Spectacles will be based on Snap OS, a new operating system “designed to enhance how people naturally interact with the world.”

The goal of the redesign is to make Snapchat a place to consume the type of video content you'd normally go to TikTok or Instagram for, as opposed to just being used to send private messages to friends. CEO Evan Spiegel told The Verge that he thinks the changes will translate to a better business for Snap's creators, who collectively share more than a billion pieces of content per month in the app.

Spiegel said, “One of the things that creators have done very effectively is use shortform video to grow their Stories audience and then monetize the Stories through our revenue share program. I think that will become even easier with this app layout, where the Stories from your friends or from creators you’re following live on the chat page, and then you can discover new creators or new content in full screen on the third tab.”

5. BigCommerce launches BigTravel

BigCommerce teamed up with Ubique Digital to launch BigTravel – a solution designed to simplify travel industry operations for travel agents by:

Providing a unified interface for managing customer inquiries and bookings across channels.
Automating routine tasks so agents can focus on high-value customer interactions.
Simplifying the process of creating custom travel packages through an intuitive interface.

BigTravel allows travel agents to create mobile storefronts with advanced search, browse, and booking capabilities, and offer personalized experiences and targeted promotions to customers.

BigCommerce wrote in its announcement:

“Travel agencies and aggregators influence much of the industry’s revenue, but they often lack the business and tech tooling to quickly and easily integrate with these fragmented systems and complex booking processes. Each agency has different needs, different size and scale, and BigTravel allows them to adapt the solution according to their needs.”

Mark Adams, senior VP and general manager of EMEA at BigCommerce, said:

“Going on holiday is supposed to be a fun experience, but shopping for flights, hotels, rental cars and all the other services needed for a trip requires visits to dozens of different websites for all those various providers. BigTravel will make it easier and significantly faster for travel agencies to deliver a unified customer experience that takes the pain out of planning a trip.”

My First Thought: BigCommerce entering the travel space feels like a “side quest” that'll distract from its “main quest” — in the words of Shopify leadership. Should they be spreading themselves thinner right now across multiple industries? Or instead be dialing in on retail e-commerce for Enterprise stores?

My Second Thought: Maybe it's smart for BigCommerce to create new services and serve different markets using its existing infrastructure, storefront architecture, and content editor. There's nothing wrong with a pivot. Although someone's already using the name “BigTravel.”

Side quest or intelligent pivot? I haven't quite decided yet. What do you think?

6. Apple in talks with JP Morgan Chase to replace Goldman Sachs

JP Morgan Chase is in talks with Apple to replace Goldman Sachs as its credit card partner, according to The Wall Street Journal, which cited sources familiar with the matter.

Here's a quick backstory:

Aug 2019 – Apple and Goldman Sachs collaboratively launched the Apple Card, which grew to over 12M cardholders in the U.S., with 60% using it as their primary credit card.
Aug 2022 – Apple and Goldman Sachs announced a high yield savings account, which officially launched to the public in April 2023 offering a 4.15% APY (which was high at the time).
March 2023 – The Apple / Goldman Sachs partnership expanded to include BNPL via Apple Pay Later (which was discontinued in June 2024).
All the while, Goldman Sachs was reportedly winding down its consumer banking division, yet simultaneously moving forward with Apple on credit services and a savings account.
July 2023 – I reported that Goldman Sachs was in discussions with American Express to take over its deals with Apple, but it wasn't confirmed at the time whether Goldman Sachs was actually going to back out of the deal (which would require Apple's approval).
Dec 2023 – It became more apparent that Goldman Sachs was planning on ending its deal with Apple, and that Apple has to find a new banking partner.

The WSJ reports that discussions between JP Morgan Chase and Apple commenced at the beginning of the year, and that talks have progressed in recent weeks, but a finalized agreement could still be months away.

American Banker reports that 40% of Apple Card owners had an annual income of $100k or more in 2023, and 34% of Apple Card users had an income between $50k and $99k, with over half being millennials — which means Apple's credit card business would be a welcome addition to the portfolio of any of the top 10 issuers.

Aaron McPherson, principal at AFM Consulting, predicts that JP Morgan Chase, if it were to secure the partnership, might increase underwriting guidelines to give the Apple Card offering a more premium position (ie: the new AMEX for Millenials).

7. BigTech involved in massive surveillance according to FTC

The FTC issued a new report on the data collection and use practices of Meta, Amazon, Google, X, Snap, TikTok, Discord, and Reddit. The findings indicate that these big tech platforms engage in “vast surveillance of consumers in order to monetize their personal information while failing to adequately protect users online, especially children and teens.”

Although the knowledge of this happening in mass is not necessarily groundbreaking news, the FTC report is likely to light fires under previous efforts of policymakers to curtail these practices.

The FTC report found that the business models of these companies incentivize the mass collection of user data for monetization, in particular through targeted advertising, which accounts for most of their revenue, and that this financial model is “in tension” with user privacy.

The risk to user privacy, and non-user privacy alike, is exacerbated by these companies acquiring information on U.S. citizens through data brokers and other means, which means folks have no way to opt out of how their data is used.

FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a statement:

“While lucrative for the companies, these surveillance practices can endanger people’s privacy, threaten their freedoms and expose them to a host of harms, from identity theft to stalking. Several firms’ failure to adequately protect kids and teens online is especially troubling. The report’s findings are timely, particularly as state and federal policymakers consider legislation to protect people from abusive data practices.”

The FTC recommends:

Passing comprehensive federal privacy legislation to limit surveillance and grant consumer data rights.
Companies proactively working to limit data collection and implement concrete data retention and sharing policies.
Stopping the collection of sensitive information through privacy-invasive ad tracking technologies.
Big Tech addressing the lack of user control and transparency over how their data is used by systems.
Greater privacy protection for teens and children.
Federal privacy legislation to fill the gap in privacy protections provided by COPPA.

Another swing and a hit by Lina Khan and the FTC! I'm a huge FTC fanboy ever since she came into office.

8. Elon Musk backs down in Brazil

After defying court orders in Brazil for three weeks, Elon Musk's X has complied with orders from Brazil's Supreme Court in the hopes that the court will lift a block on its site.

The decision was a surprise move by Elon Musk, who publicly and adamantly refused to obey what he called “illegal orders” to censor voices on his social network, and then dismissed local employees and refused to pay fines levied by Brazil.

The response from Brazil was to block X in the country and subsequently seize around $2M from a Starlink bank account and $1.3M from X to collect on fines.

Now X's lawyers confirmed that the company has done exactly what Musk vowed not to do — take down accounts that a Brazilian justice ordered to be removed for threatening Brazil's democracy and comply with the justice's other demands, which include paying fines and naming a new formal representative in the country. (Who the hell wants that job?)

Brazil's Supreme Court confirmed X's moves in a filing, but said that the company had not filed the proper paperwork yet, which it has five days to do.

Neither X nor Brazil provided a timeline for when X might resume operations in the country, or if it will. Although I'd imagine it will, because otherwise what was the point of caving to demands and taking down accounts on a social media platform that isn't going live again?

Meanwhile in the USA…. The SEC revealed that it is seeking monetary and legal sanctions to force Elon Musk to appear for a scheduled testimony, after Musk failed to appear last Thursday to provide a testimony about his $44B acquisition of Twitter in 2022. Musk's lawyer told the SEC that his client had to urgently travel to the East Coast for the launch of the Polaris Dawn mission and would be unable to attend the testimony or reschedule to the following day. The SEC intends to file sanctions against Musk, ordering him to “Show Cause [for] why he should not be held in civil contempt” for allegedly violating the original terms of the agreement stipulated in the May 2024 order, which established the Sep 19th date for the testimony.

9. Other e-commerce news of interest

Amazon's Prime Big Deal Days shopping event is coming back this year on October 8-9th, marking its third annual October sales event. New deals exclusive to Prime members will drop every five minutes during select periods throughout the two days.

Also starting on Oct 8th is Walmart's Holiday Deals event, which will run until Oct 13th and feature savings across electronics, home, fashion, and toys. Walmart+ members will get exclusive early access to shop the most-wanted deals, 12 hours earlier than other shoppers.

Roku launched a self-service advertising solution called Roku Ads Manager, designed for connected TV performance. The company is also expanding its partnership with Shopify to enable merchants to launch self-service shoppable ads that allow consumers to checkout on-screen using their Roku remote. Roku and Shopify first introduced this shoppable ad type in July 2023, but at the time, it wasn't yet a self-serve option.

YouTube and Shopee are launching an online shopping service in Indonesia that will allow viewers to purchase goods viewed on YouTube via links to Shopee, with plans to expand the service to Thailand, Vietnam, and other countries in Southeast Asia in the near future. The tie-up is designed to position the two companies to compete against TikTok, which recently took control of Indonesia's biggest e-commerce platform Tokopedia.

Amazon is shipping 70% more off-Amazon orders for sales channels like TikTok and Walmart so far this year. It's business of shipping goods for off-Amazon orders is growing faster than on-Amazon sales.

Shopify launched a new platform called Carbon Commerce that enables the online sale and purchase of carbon credits. The platform offers an inventory management system that enables merchants to perform spot purchases, set pre-purchase agreements, and long-term offtakes, as well as a system for calculating inventory projections. First sellers include Heirloom, Graphyte, and Grassroots Carbon.

Amazon launched a seller-focused chatbot called Project Amelia that is aimed at answering sellers' questions and sharing insights to expand their businesses, at its Accelerate conference last week. Project Amelia can answer knowledge-based questions such as how to prepare for an upcoming shopping event, provide updates on metrics and data based on a seller's sales over time, and help handle problems with sellers over inventory issues or other incidents. The beta version rolled out to a select group of sellers on Thursday, and the company plans to bring access to more U.S. sellers over the next few weeks.

Meta introduced new marketing tools in anticipation of the upcoming holiday shopping season including simplified promo codes, additional landing pages for videos and images, and location-based notifications for users who show interest in physical places. Reminder ads, which notify people of an upcoming event or sale, are also getting an update for the holidays with new “Shop now” prompts that direct users to a mobile app to make in-app purchases.

Meta and EssilorLuxottica reached a long-term deal to partner and collaborate “into the next decade” through the two companies' collaborative Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. The news comes after Google reportedly tried and failed to strike a deal of its own with the eyeglasses maker.

Amazon is increasing front-line workers' pay by at least $1.50 / hour, as well as offering its Prime membership as a perk to its 800,000 frontline workers starting next year. The pay bump will take Amazon warehouse workers' average pay wage to around $22/hour, which the company says will represent an investment of more than $2.2B into its workforce.

Substack launched a new live streaming video feature in its app that allows writers to host live sessions with other Substack users. The feature is currently available to Substack Bestsellers on iOS and Android, with plans to extend live video to all users in the coming months.

Meta published its latest “Responsible Business Practices Report,” a 144-page document that covers AI development, the metaverse, the company's environmental impact, diversity of suppliers, connectivity, teen protection, and more. The report also looks at Meta's data privacy and protection efforts, which it says include a more than $5.5B investment in privacy programs designed to identify and address privacy risks early and embed privacy into their products from the start.

THG, formerly The Hut Group, a British online retailer that sells cosmetics and dietary supplements, is looking to spin off its technology platform, Ingenuity, which is the technology services division of the company that provides e-commerce technology, marketing services, and fulfillment infrastructure to brands. Ingenuity was formed in 2021 with the help of SoftBank, which a year later ended its investment deal with THG and sold its entire stake in the company to founder Matthew Moulding.

Social Snowball, a word-of-mouth marketing planform for e-commerce stores that automates affiliate and referral programs, now integrates with TikTok Shop. Merchants can view an affiliate's TikTok Shop and DTC affiliate data from one unified profile, as well as enroll existing affiliates into a collaboration on TikTok Shop directly from their affiliate dashboard.

ByteDance has designed two AI chips with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company that it plans to mass produce by 2026. By producing its own chips, the company could become less dependent on Nvidia's GPUs, which are subject to U.S. export controls.

Amazon Ads announced a new feature at Accelerate that uses generative AI to make it easier for advertisers to create video ads for customers. The new feature, called Video Generator, creates rich video content using a single product image by curating custom-AI generated videos based on the products selling proposition and features.

Amazon India announced discounts as high as 75% on mobile phones, laptops, televisions, and household appliances, less than a week after India's Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal accused the company of predatory pricing. Trade body leaders said that the government should take immediate action against Amazon, including suspending their festival sales to restore fairness and protect the interests of the retail sector.

Klarna is teaming up with Shaquille O'Neal this holiday season to launch “Shaquille O’Deals,” which bring holiday deals to shoppers in the U.S. and U.K. The campaign will roll out across a variety of channels including TV, digital, and out-of-home placements. You can watch the commercial here. Well that campaign sounds like a slam dunk!

TikTok introduced a new feature called TikTok Now, which prompts users to take a daily photo and video that shares what they're doing at that moment using their front and back cameras. The feature, which will first be available to U.S. users over the coming weeks, mimics the app BeReal that launched to the public in early 2020 and grew to amass over 21M users. Snapchat already has a feature that copies BeReal and Instagram is reportedly also experimenting with something similar called IG Candid.

Walmart plans to integrate its pay-by-bank option with the Clearing House's RTP network and the FedNow real-time payment system to shorten processing times. Walmart's real-time pay-by-bank service, which is part of its Walmart Pay Digital wallet, will be available in early 2025. By adding speed to A2A payments through real-time processing, Walmart can market the service to customers that are wary of using credit and debit cards.

A new class-action lawsuit claims that Amazon has been listing Fire TV bundles with “List Prices” that are higher than what the TVs have recently sold for, which misleads customers into thinking that they are getting a “Limited Time Deal,” when in actuality, they're just paying regular price for the TVs. This alleged action violates Washington's Consumer Protection Act, and the lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages and an injunction against Amazon.

India's Commerce Secretary Sunil Barthwal said that the government is planning to expand India's share in global e-commerce exports to $200B by 2030. In a press briefing, Barthwal highlighted the growing international e-commerce market along with India's focus on increasing its manufacturing capacity, which offers a huge growth opportunity for the country.

TikTok's head of global marketing, Kate Jhaveri, is leaving the company this month as part of a leadership shake-up. The company is phasing out Jhaveri's role, and beginning this week, everyone in TikTok's global brand and communications division will report solely to Zenia Mucha, the company's Chief Brand and Communications Officer.

Amazon appointed Samir Kumar as India's new head of consumer operations amid increasing competition and challenges in the country. Kumar has been with the company for 25 years and during his time has overseen consumer operations in the Middle East, South Africa, and Turkey.

eBay appointed CarMax CEO, Bill Nash, to its Board of Directors with the hopes that his “deep understanding of retail and e-commerce” can help turn the company around. Nash was promoted to President and CEO of CarMax in 2016 after serving as Executive VP of Human Resources and Administrative Services, and is credited for transforming the company by investing heavily in its technology and digital initiatives to become an omnichannel retailer.

Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Daniel Ek (Spotify), Patrick Collison (Stripe) and other tech CEOs have published an open letter urging the EU to loosen its regulation on data privacy and AI and warning that the region will miss out on the benefits of AI unless it regulates the sector more consistently. The letter calls for decisions from regulators to be faster, clearer, and more harmonized “to enable European data to be used in AI training for the benefit of Europeans.”

Meta banned Russian state media broadcaster RT and other Kremlin-controlled networks from its platforms, alleging that the outlets have engaged in deceptive influence operations and attempted to evade detection. Prior to the ban, RT had 7.2M followers on Facebook and 1M followers on Instagram. The move comes days after the U.S. Justice Department announced charges against two RT employees for funneling nearly $10M into a U.S. company called Tenet Media to create and amplify content that aligned with Russian interests. Isn't that treason?

JCPenney joined the Bazaarvoice Visual Syndication Network to find and post visual content from its customers alongside its product imagery. Using the solution, JCPenney is able to find user-generated content about its products and request rights to use the photos and videos on its site. The network allows end-to-end management of the content acquisition including discovery, request, syndication, and reporting.

Mercado Libre is bringing its dollar-backed stablecoin project Meli Dólar to Mexico and Argentina, following its initial launch in Brazil earlier this year. The company's senior director of product, Juna Vita, believes that expanding access to Meli Dólar will provide the countries with a stable alternative to traditional currency, allowing them to protect their wealth in a safe and accessible way.

Gu, a Japanese fast-fashion company with 451 stores across Japan, made its first steps into the U.S. market with the launch of an e-commerce site, app, and flagship store in New York City, marking the first permanent Gu store outside of Asia. As part of the U.S. launch, Gu unveiled a new collaboration with the fashion label Undercover, featuring track jackets, stadium jumpers, and logo tops.

commercetools made its Composable Commerce for B2C and B2B products available on AWS Marketplace. Customers can now quickly find, buy, and deploy the software directly from their AWS account, reducing procurement complexity, accelerating time to market, and consolidating billing.

Pitney Bowes' former e-commerce logistics unit, now called DRF Logistics under the ownership of Hilco Global, will lay off more than 1,200 employees in the next two months as it continues to wind down its operations. Package handlers, forklift operators, drivers, and managers are among the people losing their jobs.

138,000 platform beds sold at Amazon and Walmart are being recalled across the U.S. and Canada due to a high risk of sagging, breaking, or collapsing during use, which can cause severe injury. To date, there have been 245 instances of this occurring in the U.S. and 11 reports of “bed failures” in Canada. I guess Americans are a little bit heavier and cause more beds to collapse than Canadians.

Amazon is launching a new reality competition show, which OmniTalk describes as “Shark Tank meets Home Shopping Network, but with an Amazon twist that could leave competitors scrambling to catch up.” Debuting on Oct 30th, the yet-to-be-named show will feature entrepreneurs pitching their products to a studio audience and a panel of judges that include Amazon executives and celebrities, with the winners seeing their inventions sold in a new Amazon “Buy It Now” online store and being awarded a $20,000 prize.

Chipotle is celebrating National Quesadilla Day this week with text-to-claim codes that will drop on Instagram and X, which will reward up to 21,000 customers with BOGO free quesadilla offers. Additionally, three TikTok creators will drop 10,000 codes to their audiences, and DoorDash will award 15,000 users a free quesadilla with a minimum order of $25.

10. Seed rounds, IPOs, & acquisitions

Simpler, a checkout-as-a-service platform that focuses on the EU market, raised €9M in a pre-Series A round led by VentureFriends. The checkout company, which boasts over 250 merchants and half-a-million registered shoppers, will use the funds to double down in the U.K., Italy, and Spain with the intention of 10x-ing its revenue by the end of 2025.

Flink, a Berlin-based quick-commerce startup with 146 dark stores across 80 cities, raised $115M in equity and $35M in debt from a mix of new and existing investors at a valuation close to $1B. Flink, which was once an acquisition target of Gorillas, Getir, Amazon, and Gopuff, is forging ahead on its own, with plans to double down on business in Germany and the Netherlands in partnership with Just Eat Takeaway.

SecondShop, a Toronto-based re-commerce platform that offers overstock and open-box home goods directly from retailers and manufacturers, officially launched the B2C side of its re-commerce platform, which aims to make shopping for secondhand goods as easy as buying from mainstream retailers by using reverse logistics to give new life to over returned goods. The launch comes five months after the company closed a previously unannounced $2M CAD round led by Harvest Venture Partners.

JD.com acquired Walmart's entire stake in Dada Nexus, an on-demand delivery service, raising its stake in the company by 9.3% to 63.2%. Following the sale, Walmart China CEO Christina Zhu will leave Dada Nexus's board.

Rebelstork, a Toronto-based re-commerce marketplace that sells overstock, open-box, and used baby gear, raised $24.45M in a Series A round led by Maverson Ventures. The company will use the funds to launch new products, expand operations, and grow its team within tech and operations.

Ferovinum, a London-based digital platform that helps businesses fund, produce, procure, and sell to global wine and spirits markets, raised £17.5M in a Series A round led by Notion Capital. The company will use the funds to broaden its product across funding and the supply chain, as well as launch in the U.S. and Europe later this year.

Motion, a Toronto-based advertising technology startup that sells analytics and research tools for creative strategists, raised $30M in a Series B round led by Inovia Capital, bringing its total amount raised to $42M. The company will use the funds to accelerate its product roadmap and ramp up its go-to-market efforts with a focus on its core Creative Analytics product and its new Creative Research Offering.

DailyObjects, an India-based online retailer of mobile phone covers and lifestyle products, raised $10M in a Series B round led by 360 One Asset. The company will use the funds for inventory management, product research and development, and team expansion.

Bamboo Rose, a product development and supply chain platform that connects retailers, brands, and suppliers with supply chain partners, acquired Foresight Retail, a SaaS retailer and brand-focused planning company, for an undisclosed amount. The deal expands Bamboo Rose's platform to now include an integrated solution for bidirectional data movement and workflows like planning, PLM, supplier relationship management, sourcing, costing, and order management.