Hi folks. This is our last normal newsletter of the year! Thank you so much, truly, for charting with us this year. Next week we'll publish 2021 in 21 charts, and then our usual service shall resume in January.
Happy holidays! We miss you already.
3 charts for you today:
Social media platform reddit has officially filed to go public, more than 16 years since the company was founded.
In many ways, modern day reddit looks a lot like the internet forums of the early 2000s, with communities built around different interests, ideas or identities. There's a subreddit for movies, music, Melbourne, minecraft, machine learning, male fashion advice, things that you find mildly interesting (only mildly), motorcycles and more.
Then there is r/wallstreetbets — the 11 million strong community of investors / traders / gamblers that turned wall street on its head earlier this year during the GameStop saga.
Those 11 million traders have pioneered the idea of a "meme stock" — a company whose shares suddenly see an enormous wave of buying demand for the sole reason of, well, "it's funny". Given the impending IPO, reddit itself is now presumably a candidate for being the next meme stock... although the r/wallstreetbets folks have been taking it easier in the second half of this year.
So far in December, r/wallstreetbets has been getting 15-20k comments per day, way down on the 100k+ per day that was common during peak "GameStop mania". The moment may have passed for another GameStop moment.
r/advertising
If reddit traders pass on the stock, other investors will likely actually look at the fundamental of reddit's business, which is advertising driven, like most social platforms.
And in theory, the way reddit is organized should be an advertisers dream. Want to advertise a Rolex? There's 1.6 million people in a watches community ready to go.
In practice however, reddit has struggled to make the big ad dollars, with the company expecting to bring in roughly $350m in revenue this year. By comparison, Pinterest did $1.7bn last year, with a similar sized audience. Twitter did $3.7bn.
The sun rises every morning, we publish 6 charts a week and Mariah Carey remains the reigning champion of Christmas music. Some things never change.
Her single "All I Want for Christmas Is You" is once again at the top of the Christmas hits list, racking up more than 30 million streams in the week ending December 9th — and that's just on Spotify, never mind the other major streaming platforms, radio plays, YouTube, CDs or vinyls.
Why do people love it so much?
With every year that passes “AIWFCIY” seems to get a stronger claim to "biggest Christmas song of all time", growing along with the rise of streaming platforms. But why is the song so persistently popular? A musicologist offered their thoughts a few years ago, citing the chord progression, the emotional hook at the start and the suspense that builds into the final verse. Whatever it is, it works.
P.S. All we actually want for Christmas is for you to sign up 1 family member or friend to Chartr. That would be amazing.
1) Bruce Springsteen has sold the rights to his music catalog for $500m.
2) Deciding where to give this year? GiveDirectly delivers ~90 cents of every donated dollar to people living in extreme poverty to spend how they see fit.
3) The Bank of England has raised interest rates from the historic low of 0.1% to 0.25%, in a bid to combat rising inflation. Separately, the UK recorded its highest number of COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic.
4)19 of the top 25 fastest growing public software companies use Outreach to fuel their revenue goals — see how Outreach can supercharge your sales process with a demo.**
5)HBO seems to get the best bang for its content buck, spending the least money per Emmy win.
6) Tired of all the bad news? Wired found 21 things to celebrate in 2021.
**This is sponsored content.
