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2021 keeps it scary
We're not talking about inflation or the pandemic here, but the fact that horror movies are having their best (relative) year for a long time.
Data from The Numbers reveals that horror movies are responsible for almost 18% of box office receipts in the US this year, way above the average of 5% from the last 20 years.
Box office hits like A Quiet Place: Part II, Candyman, Halloween Kills and the third movie in The Conjuring series have all propelled horror to its highest ranking in the box office in years.
That horror movies are doing so well during the pandemic is perhaps no surprise. If you're into being scared on a regular basis, the experience is presumably more intense at a proper cinema than it is at home. That's not necessarily as true for other genres.
Horror movies are also often surprisingly profitable. Low budget breakout hits like Paranormal Activity — which had a budget of just $15k and went on to gross $100m+ in cinemas — are just way more common in horror than in other genres.
As we head into Halloween, horror is probably only going to climb further up the ranks. Spooky season indeed.
Off the marketFor a long time, property website Zillow didn't surprise anyone. The company listed houses for sale or rent, making money from sponsored listings, advertising and agent fees.
Then, in 2019, Zillow started ramping up its side hustle: house flipping.
Armed with a mountain of property data, Zillow is — in theory — in a unique position to find bargains in the home aisle, and the company has scaled that side hustle into a sizeable business that accounted for almost 60% of its revenue last quarter.
Open door for OpenDoor
But this week Zillow slammed the brakes on buying homes, announcing that it would stop buying and renovating homes for the rest of 2021, as it grapples with labor shortages and a huge backlog of properties that it's already bought. That news sent Zillow shares down more than 10% on Monday, while doing the opposite for shares of OpenDoor — Zillow's biggest competitor in the space.
It will be interesting to see if Zillow returns to house flipping in the same way in 2022. Buying real houses, renovating and selling them is a much messier business than just listing properties on a website — and it's a lot less profitable too. Zillow's gross profit margin was around 9% in its Homes division. Its Internet, Media and Tech division? More than 90%.
This week Facebook announced that it's looking to change its name to better reflect its future ambition to build the "metaverse" — a virtual space where people could play games, interact, socialize and work.
Pulling an Alphabet (which Google changed its name to in 2015) is an interesting move, and it underlines how serious Zuckerberg is about Facebook's future in virtual spaces (although everyone we know still calls Google Google).
It means that Facebook's future competition might not be Snapchat, TikTok or Twitter, but gaming companies like Roblox and Fortnite, that already have a "metaverse" of sorts that is hugely popular with young people.
Roblox is the $45bn company that lets users create and monetize their own games for anyone to play.
Last quarter Roblox users spent almost 10,000 million hours on the platform. Almost half of that time was spent by kids under the age of 13, but Roblox is increasingly targeting an older, and wider audience.
Most of that time was spent playing games, but in future it might be broader — like attending virtual music festivals or just socializing more generally — which would bring it into Facebook's path.
MetaFace
Facebook already has 10,000+ employees working on building consumer hardware products, whether that's low-key smart glasses like its collaboration with Ray-Ban, or full virtual reality experiences through its brand Oculus, which it acquired in 2014. Both of those efforts will presumably fit into the grand metaverse plan in some way.
It's first mainstream metaverse product might be a long way off, but the name change supposedly isn't. Any takers for Facebook's new name? MetaFace? FaceMeta? Zuckerverse?
1) Apple has released a slew of new products this week, including its highly anticipated new MacBook Pro laptops, with their super fast M1 chips. The company also released an Apple branded polishing cloth which can be yours... for $19.
2) Netflix added 4.4 million new subscribers in its latest quarter, citing Squid Game as a good example of its continued global appeal. Separately the company is preparing for an employee walkout over Dave Chappelle's recent show.
3) The UNEP production gap report suggests that planned fossil fuel usage looks set to soar over the coming decade, despite a flurry of net zero emissions goals from countries and companies.
4) Contemporary art prices have outpaced S&P 500 returns by 174% from 1995 through 2020, besting gold and real estate returns by nearly 2x. We've found an incredibly smart way for investors to diversify in fine art without breaking the bank. Masterworks.**
5)WeWork is back, and is finally going public after an IPO process that was so disastrous that Hulu made a documentary of it.
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**This is sponsored content.
