3 charts for you today exploring:
Yesterday, March 11th, marked exactly one year since the World Health Organization declared the COVID outbreak a "global pandemic". That same day Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson announced they'd been diagnosed with COVID, and the NBA started cancelling games. For many people it was the day the pandemic became real — and it shows in the data from social media platform Twitter.
The chart above plots the data from hedonometer.org, which has been tracking the "average happiness" score of literally billions of tweets since 2008.
Last year March 11th and 12th were among the days when twitter users were most unhappy or angry, second only to May 31st, when thousands of people turned out in protest against police brutality, after the murder of George Floyd. Those protests actually saw more sadness posted on Twitter than during the storming of the US Capitol.
The happier moments, interestingly, are fairly predictable; the big holidays usually see the most cheer, with Christmas Day usually the "happiest" day most years. Check out the full timeline from the last year if it's a slow Friday.
How does this work?
The basis for the model is the scoring of about 10,000 unique English words, which are graded on a scale from 1-9 (1 being sad, 9 being very happy). Then, a random sample of about 10% of the ~500 million messages sent on Twitter every day is collected, and an average happiness score for that day is calculated for any tweets determined to be written in English.
The "B" word hasn't occupied as much airtime in the UK over the last year, but it will today as the latest trade data from the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) just hit the tape. The data reveals that exports of UK goods to the European Union fell by roughly 40% in January. With no similar falls in British exports to non-EU countries, the declines appear to be related to Brexit, and the introduction of a whole host of new trading rules and regulations.
For the UK economy, which also suffered a 2.9% contraction in January, it is more bad economic news.
Teething problems
Although the January data is concerning, the ONS report did say that the steep drop was likely the result of "temporary factors", giving hope for British exporters that once teething problems are ironed out that exports might bounce back strongly.
Roblox has become the latest startup to join the public markets in a direct listing, with its share price rising more than 60% on its first day of trading, valuing the company at $38bn and change. No, it doesn't make a profit, and yes it is growing very quickly.
What is Roblox?
Roblox is a game platform, popular with kids and pre-teens, which lets users create their own games for anyone to play. Which they do — a lot.
Roblox reports that last quarter more than 8,700 million hours were spent on their platform, and a recent report from Qustodio estimated that the average child in the US was spending 81 minutes per day playing on Roblox — roughly the same amount of time as was being spent on TikTok.
Roblox as a business is also particularly interesting. The platform and the games on it are free to download and play, but users can pay — using in-game currency called Robux — for various items, upgrades or content. Roblox earns a slice of each transaction, and also earns money through advertising. In 2020, there were nearly 250 developers and creators that earned $100,000 or more in Robux.
1) GameStop might have the weirdest share price chart of any company in recent memory. This week GME shares broke through the $300 mark for the second time this year, up from the ~$40 they were trading at during the congressional hearings back in February.
2) President Biden has announced that he hopes the US can celebrate its independence from COVID on July 4th of this year. His address came on the same day that he signed the latest $1.9 trillion COVID relief package into law.
3) According to a new report, Facebook now reportedly has nearly 10,000 employees working on virtual or augmented reality devices — almost a fifth of the company's workforce.
4) The Motley Fool Stock Advisor service recommended Amazon stock back in 1997. You probably missed that one, don't miss the next one.**
5) Last week we wrote about NFTs and crypto art. Yesterday, somebody bought a collage of images by digital artist Beeple for the equivalent of $69m. Rumours are that the buyer has saved the image on their laptop as "money_well_spent.JPG". The full artwork can be viewed here.
**This is a sponsored snack.
