Why Clubhouse could Disrupt Traditional Radio, Progeny’s AI Capabilities
Can Clubhouse’s Live Audio be a Game Changer?
Let’s face it, traditional radio is boring. You can’t really participate in the conversations real-time.
Clubhouse, an audio-based social media platform, ‘live radio’ has taken on new meaning.
Founded in April 2020, Clubhouse topped 8 million users in virtual rooms to listen to and participate in conversations. Today, the company is valued at $1 billion now that user growth is exploding with attributed to several high-profile guest appearances, including Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, for example.
Although Clubhouse has staying power, will other tech giants like Twitter, Facebook or even Mark Cuban build similar audio capabilities?. However, not all users are sold on the idea of Live Audio. Clubhouse has its but, more important, as an entertainment medium live radio could become more of a feature on many social networks, not a standalone product.
Graphic: Business Wire
2. Progeny’s AI Vision combined with UAS Aerial Drones
(NASDAQ: AVAV), a global leader in unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), today announced it has acquired Progeny Systems Corporation’s Intelligent Systems Group (ISG). AeroVironment acquired ISG for $30 million in cash and an earnout for Progeny Systems Corporation of up to $6 million over three years.
Like AeroVironment, Progeny Systems supplies its solutions to the US Government, specifically the Department of Defense (DoD).
With this acquisition, Singular believes although AeroVironment’s fleet learning is currently hindered by an inability to save and share secure government data. In contrast, commercial drone operator can perfect flight algorithms by extracting data from many customers like what Tesla is doing with its semi-autonomous driving technology .
While military drone suppliers have focused on building robust and rugged machines that meet the government’s high standards, commercial drone suppliers could have a machine learning software advantage. That said, ISG could benefit AeroVironment’s autonomous strategy in its smaller commercial solutions division.
WeChat Pay Opens to Foreigners without a Bank Account. Image Source: WeChat
3. Digital Wallets has surpassed Cash globally
Recently Worldpay conducted a study and found that last year digital wallets surpassed cash for the first time as the number one payment method at all points of sale (POS) globally. And that is true from Argentina to Vietnam and the same digital wallet adoption has taken the world by storm.
Worldpay Group plc was a payment processing company. It was acquired by FIS in July 2019 for $43 billion.
In e-commerce alone, digital wallets have dominated checkouts since at least 2018, the year that Worldpay published its first Global Payments Report.
By offering inexpensive and rapid access to financial and other commercial services like e-commerce, digital wallets on mobile phones could become the dominant app for both personal finances and shopping around the world. Leading this trend is Asia where digital wallets have dominated ecommerce payments since 2018, if not earlier, and POS transactions since 2019.
People are changing their payment behavior patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers elsewhere seem to be following Asia’s lead, as digital wallets now are the second most popular e-commerce payment method in North America.