Some numbers published in a report from The Information reveal that very few owners of Alexa-powered devices use them for shopping. Of about 50 million Alexa users, only about 100,000 reportedly bought something via voice interface more than once. It’s not exactly surprising, but it may still harm the narrative of conversational commerce that Amazon and others are trying to advance.
The Amazon Echo and its brethren are mostly used for the expected everyday purposes of listening to music, asking what the weather will be like tomorrow and setting timers. All of these things are obviously things that phones do as well, but there’s something to be said for having a stationary hub for the more domestic tasks.
But part of the expectation of seeding the home with these devices has been that users would also make purchases using them: “Alexa, order more Oreos,” or “Alexa, buy a pair of Bose noise-cancelling headphones.” This always seemed rather odd, as people tend to want to look at items before buying them, to check reviews, to shop around for better prices and so on. Who would just buy something by telling their Echo that they want to?
Hardly anyone, it seems. That said, it would be a bit disingenuous to pretend that conversational commerce is anything other than one point in a litany of proposed uses for the likes of Alexa, running the gamut of credibility.
As a hub for increasingly common smart home devices, Alexa is a great choice and a common one. And although groceries and impulse purchases may not be something people do via voice, an Echo is a great seller of subscriptions like Spotify and Audible, not to mention future possibilities from queries like “Alexa, call me a plumber.” And of course there’s the whole behind-the-scenes industry of ads, promotions and clever use of voice data.
Why would anyone use these devices to shop? It’s like using a laptop as a hammer. Possible, but not recommended. The other stat The Information mentions is that a million people have tried buying stuff but only 100,000 continued. It may be that this side of e-commerce is merely not “mature,” that catch-all term that could mean so many things. But it may also just be that it’s not something people want to do.
Twilio today reported a positive quarter that brought it to profitability — on an adjusted basis — ahead of schedule for Wall Street, sending the stock soaring 16% in extended hours after the release came out.
While according to traditional accounting principles Twilio still lost money (this usually includes stock-based compensation, a key component of compensation packages), the company is still showing that it has the capability of being profitable. Born as a go-to tool for startups and larger companies to handle their text- and telephone-related operations, Twilio was among a wave of IPOs in 2016 that has more or less continued into this year. The company’s stock has more than doubled in the past year, and is up nearly 170% this year alone. Twilio also brought in revenue ahead of Wall Street expectations.
Still, as a services business, Twilio has to show that it can continue to scale its business while absorbing the cost of the infrastructure required and acquire new customers. It also has to ensure that those customers aren’t leaving, or at least that it’s bringing on enough new developers more quickly than they are leaving. Larger enterprises, as a result, can be more attractive because they’re more predictable and can lead to bigger buckets of revenue for the company — and, well, most larger companies still need communications support in some way still today.
On an adjusted basis, Twilio said it earned 3 cents per share, ahead of the loss of 5 cents that analysts were expecting. It said it brought in $147.8 million in revenue compared to $131.1 million analysts were expecting, so it’s a beat on both lines, and more importantly shows that Twilio may be able to morph its toolkit into a mainline business that can end up as the backbone of any company’s communication with their customers or users.
As popular as Pokémon GO is, it has always been missing one major feature: pitting your Pokémon directly against another trainer’s. Strange, since that was the entire basis of the franchise to begin with! But the mobile game will at last get this much-requested feature by the end of the year, the company told Polish news site Gram.
After a record-shattering debut and then a long slump as players perceived the game’s shallowness and abandoned it en masse, Pokémon GO is having something of a renaissance. Improved gym and social mechanics, better reliability and, of course, a host of new ‘mon have brought players back, and it seems that features will continue to be rolled out.
What exactly the PvP mode will consist of is not clear. Chances are it will require players to be near each other, like the trading function. Though it is likely to produce some kind of reward, it likely will be limited in some other way, via a stardust or candy cost, to prevent people gaming the system.
Niantic’s Anne Beuttenmüller, in her interview with Gram, didn’t get specific. She was more interested in talking about the upcoming Ingress Prime, a sort of relaunch of the game on which Pokémon GO is essentially based; that will also be released toward the end of the year.
As for the highly anticipated Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, which will no doubt involve people waving their phones around and uttering magic nonsense in full view of the public, her lips were sealed. It too will release around the end of the year! It’s going to be a busy holiday season.
The FCC has come clean on the fact that a purported hack of its comment system last year never actually took place, after a report from its inspector general found a lack of evidence supporting the idea. Chairman Ajit Pai blamed the former chief information officer and the Obama administration for providing “inaccurate information about this incident to me, my office, Congress, and the American people.”
The semi-apology and finger-pointing are a disappointing conclusion to the year-long web of obfuscation that the FCC has woven. Since the first moment it was reported that there was a hack of the system, there have been questions about the nature, scale and response to it that the FCC has studiously avoided even under direct Congressional questioning.
It was so galling to everyone looking for answers that the GAO was officially asked to look into it. The letter requesting the office’s help at the time complained that the FCC had “not released any records or documentation that would allow for confirmation that an attack occurred, that it was effectively dealt with, and that the FCC has begun to institute measures to thwart future attacks and ensure the security of its systems.” That investigation is still going on, but one conducted by the FCC’s own OIG resulted in the report Pai cites.
Pai’s statement was issued before the OIG publicized its report, as one does when a report is imminent that essentially says your agency has been clueless at best or deliberately untruthful at worst, and for more than a year. To be clear, the report is still unpublished, though its broader conclusions are clear from Pai’s statement. In it he slathers Bray with the partisan brush and asserts that the report exonerates his office:
I am deeply disappointed that the FCC’s former [CIO], who was hired by the prior Administration and is no longer with the Commission, provided inaccurate information about this incident to me, my office, Congress, and the American people. This is completely unacceptable. I’m also disappointed that some working under the former CIO apparently either disagreed with the information that he was presenting or had questions about it, yet didn’t feel comfortable communicating their concerns to me or my office.
On the other hand, I’m pleased that this report debunks the conspiracy theory that my office or I had any knowledge that the information provided by the former CIO was inaccurate and was allowing that inaccurate information to be disseminated for political purposes.
Although an evaluation of Pai’s “conspiracy theory” idea must wait until the report is public, it’s hard to square this pleasure of the chairman’s with the record. At any time in the last year, especially after Bray had departed, it would have been, if not simple, then at least more simple than maintaining its complex act of knowledgelessness, to say that the CIO had made an error and there was no attack. Nothing like that has escaped the mouth of Chairman Pai.
One must assume the agency had reviewed the data. Bray left a long time ago; why did these subordinates of his fail to speak out afterwards? If the FCC had its doubts, why did it not say so instead of risking withering criticism by avoiding the question for months on end?
Some of the FCC’s reticence to speak out may have even been explained as part of the request by the inspector general not to discuss the investigation. That’s an easy out, at least for some of the time! But we haven’t heard that, that I know of at least, and it doesn’t explain the rest of the agency’s silence or misleading statements.
FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel urged everyone to move on with a quickness:
The Inspector General Report tells us what we knew all along: the FCC’s claim that it was the victim of a DDoS attack during the net neutrality proceeding is bogus. What happened instead is obvious—millions of Americans overwhelmed our online system because they wanted to tell us how important internet openness is to them and how distressed they were to see the FCC roll back their rights. It’s unfortunate that this agency’s energy and resources needed to be spent debunking this implausible claim.
Although moving forward is a good idea, accountability and an explanation for the last year of mystery would also be welcome.
Because it wasn’t a hack, it seems that the comment-filing system, though recently revamped, needs yet another fresh coat of paint to handle the kind of volume it saw during the net neutrality repeal. Plans for that are underway, Pai wrote. A separate investigation by the Government Accountability Office regarding fraud in the comment system will no doubt affect those plans.
I’ve contacted the FCC and its Office of the Inspector General for more information, including the report itself. I will update this post when I hear back.
Zillow, the publicly traded real estate portal and lead generation service, has acquired Mortgage Lenders of America. This is Zillow’s first move into originating mortgages. Until now, the company’s focus in this space was on providing home buyers with quotes from a variety of third-party lenders.
The financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.
Mortgage Lenders of America (MLoA) is a privately held online lender based in Kansas. It will continue to operate as usual and will continue to appear in Zillow’s existing mortgage marketplace, which isn’t going away either. “Owning a mortgage lender will allow Zillow Group to develop new tools and partnership opportunities, including for real estate brokers with existing in-house mortgage operations or mortgage affiliates,” the company says in today’s announcement.
Other lenders in Zillow’s marketplace may not feel the same way. MLoA originated 4,400 mortgage loans from its ads on Zillow in 2017. The company argues that this leaves “plenty of opportunity for independent lenders to continue to advertise and build their businesses on the Zillow Group platform.”
In many ways, this move makes perfect sense, given the trajectory Zillow has been on in recent years. The company recently started buying and selling homes through its Zillow Offers program in a few select cities, so this closes the loop for buyers who are using this program.
“Getting a mortgage can be the toughest, most painstaking and time-consuming part of the home buying process,” said Greg Schwartz, president of media and marketplaces at Zillow Group, in a canned statement. “Now that we are buying and selling homes through Zillow Offers, we believe that having our own mortgage origination service as an option for consumers will allow us to streamline the process for people who buy a Zillow-owned home. Over time, we expect the work we do in conjunction with this new line of business will help us expand our offerings to our partners – including real estate brokers with existing in-house mortgage operations and third-party lenders who co-market with Premier Agents.”
MLoA was founded in 2000 and currently has about 300 employees. It will remain in its Kansas headquarters and its CEO Philip Kneibert will continue to lead the company as general manager after the deal closes, which will likely happen in the fourth quarter of 2018.
As of late, Lyft has been doubling down on its messaging that it wants to reduce the amount of car ownership in the U.S. The company’s most recent example of its anti-car ownership efforts is coming in the form of a partnership with car rental company Avis.
As part of a multi-year deal, Avis will add thousands of cars to Lyft’s Express Drive program, which offers drivers a way to rent cars on a weekly basis from Hertz, Flexdrive and now, Avis.
“Our partnership with Avis Budget Group allows us to provide new and existing drivers who are seeking a reliable source of income with more quality options when choosing a vehicle,” Lyft COO Jon McNeill said in a press release. “And as more drivers decide to give up their own cars, they can continue to earn with Lyft as we expand the Express Drive program.”
This comes on the heels of Lyft bringing on Tesla’s now-former VP of worldwide service and customer experience, Karim Bousta, to lead Express Drive. At Lyft, Bousta is also responsible for launching and scaling the next generation of Lyft Hubs, which are Lyft’s driver support centers. He also will be tasked with beefing up driver rewards and incentives.
Similarly, Uber offers weekly and daily car rentals for drivers via Hertz, Getaround and Fair. Uber has since expanded its partnership with Getaround to enable anyone to rent a car for the personal use via the Uber app. Dubbed Uber Rent, the platform taps into Getaround’s existing marketplace of cars that are available for instant rentals.
In May, Lyft committed $100 million to better support its drivers by specifically putting the money toward cheaper oil changes, basic car maintenance, serviced car washes and more. Lyft also will almost double its operating hours at its driver hubs in 15 cities throughout the nation.
The idea with that commitment is to help drivers make more money and maximize their earnings by offsetting the costs of driving. Other benefits will include car and SUV rentals, tax education and more.
Google hopes to add a few digital wellness features to its latest desserted update, Pie (out today) but Apple is already on this health track with its latest update for iOS 12.
Digital wellness allows users to keep track of time spent on and unplug from your digital device when needed. Google announced the new wellness features coming to Android at I/O in May, including a dashboard for digital wellness, or the ability to track just how much time you spend on your device, an app timer that lets you set time limits on apps, a new Do Not Disturb feature which silences pop-up notifications and Wind Down, a feature to help you switch on Night Light and Do Not Disturb when it’s time to hit the hay.
Apple is also making digital wellness a focus. New features in this space were announced during its WWDC conference earlier this summer and the company has included an updated ‘Do Not Disturb’ feature in the iOS 12 update, also out today.
Severalstudies have suggested the importance of unplugging and breaking our addictions to our smartphones for our sanity’s sake and it seems Google would like to help us do just that with these new features. However, the new digital wellness features aren’t quite available in the latest Pie update, out today. We’ve asked Google why not and will update you when and if we hear back on that.
Meanwhile, Apple continues to roll ahead, adding its own controls to help iPhone owners curb their app and screen time usage. Similar to Android’s future offerings, iOS 12 includes a dash with a weekly report on how you spend time on your device. A feature called Downtime helps you schedule time away from your screen (versus just leaving your phone somewhere, seeing a notification and being tempted to pick it up), a feature to set time limits on apps and a way to block inappropriate content from reaching your screen as well.
Apple beats Android in this department for now but those features will supposedly be made available to everyone with a Google phone eventually. For those wanting to check out the new digital wellness features for Android, you can still do that today but only if you happen to have a Google Pixel — and only if you’ve signed up for the beta version.
For all of you time-strapped startup founders hoping to apply to TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield Latin America, we have good news! We’re extending your deadline!
You now have an extra week to submit your application to our premier pitch competition taking place in Latin America for the first time ever on November 8, 2018, in São Paulo, Brazil. The deadline to apply is Monday, August 13 at 5 p.m. PST, sosubmit that application today.
Recently, the TechCrunch team traveled through Latin Americaspreading the Startup Battlefield gospel and met some incredible early stage startups while there. Will one of them — or yours — win the first Startup Battlefield Latin America?
For anyone who may be a little late to the game, Startup Battlefield is TechCrunch’s startup launch competition. Companies pitch on stage, provide a live demo and then get grilled by world class judges – investors and seasoned entrepreneurs – from all over the world.
On November 8th, 2018, 15 startups will compete live on stage at São Paulo’s Tomie Ohtake Institute in front of tech’s brightest investors and entrepreneurs for a $25,000 cash prize and an all-expense paid trip to San Francisco for two to join TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2019 — where they’ll get to exhibit free of charge in the Startup Alley. Importantly, TechCrunch does not take equity and participation is 100% free.
All finalists receive free expert pitch-coaching and become part of the Startup Battlefield alumni community, which consists of more than 800 companies that have collectively raised more than $8 billion in funding and produced more than 100 exits. You may recognize a few of them: Mint, Dropbox, Yammer, Fitbit, Getaround and Cloudflare.
And that’s not all — finalists gain the attention of press and investors and TechCrunch records the entire pitch-off and streams it to our global TechCrunch audience. Pitch videos will be available later, on demand.
We encourage all early-startup founders to apply if they meet these basic eligibility requirements:
Have an early-stage company in “launch” stage
Be headquartered in one of these countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela, (Central America) Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, Panama, (Caribbean — including dependencies and constituent entities), Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico
Have a fully working product/beta reasonably close to, or in, production
The removal of conspiracy enthusiast content by InfoWars brings us to an interesting and important point in the history of online discourse. The current form of Internet content distribution has made it a broadcast medium akin to television or radio. Apps distribute our cat pics, our workouts, and our YouTube rants to specific audiences of followers, audiences that were nearly impossible to monetize in the early days of the Internet but, thanks to gullible marketing managers, can be sold as influencer media.
The source of all of this came from Gen X’s deep love of authenticity. They formed a new vein of content that, after breeding DIY music and zines, begat blogging, and, ultimately, created an endless expanse of user generated content (UGC). In the “old days” of the Internet this Cluetrain-manifesto-waving post gatekeeper attitude served the slacker well. But this move from a few institutional voices into a scattered legion of micro-fandoms led us to where we are today: in a shithole of absolute confusion and disruption.
As I wrote a year ago, user generated content supplanted and all but destroyed “real news.” While much of what is published now is true in a journalistic sense, the ability for falsehood and conspiracy to masquerade as truth is the real problem and it is what caused a vacuum as old media slowed down and new media sped up. In this emptiness a number of parasitic organisms sprung up including sites like Gizmodo and TechCrunch, micro-celebrity systems like Instagram and Vine, and sites catering to a different consumer, sites like InfoWars and Stormfront. It should be noted that InfoWars has been spouting its deepstate meanderings since 1999 and Alex Jones himself was a gravelly-voice radio star as early as 1996. The Internet allowed any number of niche content services to juke around the gatekeepers of propriety and give folks like Jones and, arguably, TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington, Gawker founder Nick Denton, and countless members of the “Internet-famous club,” deep influence over the last decades media landscape.
The last twenty years have been good for UGC. You could get rich making it, get informed reading it, and its traditions and habits began redefining how news-gathering operated. There is no longer just a wall between advertising and editorial. There is also a wall between editorial and the myriad bloggers who write about poop on Mt. Everest. In this sort of world we readers find ourselves at a distinct loss. What is true? What is entertainment? When the Internet is made flesh in the form of Pizzagate shootings and Unite the Right Marches, who is to blame?
The simple answer? We are to blame. We are to blame because we scrolled endlessly past bad news to get to the news that was applicable to us. We trained robots to spoon feed us our opinions and then force feed us associated content. We allowed ourselves to enter into a pact with a devil so invisible and pernicious that it easily convinced the most confused among us to mobilize against Quixotic causes and immobilized the smartest among us who were lulled into a Soma-like sleep of liking, sharing, and smileys. And now a new reckoning is coming. We have come full circle.
Once upon a time old gatekeepers were careful to let only carefully controlled views and opinions out over the airwaves. The medium was so immediate that in the 1940s broadcasters forbade the transmission of recordings and instead forced broadcasters to offer only live events. This was wonderful if you had the time to mic a children’s choir at Christmas but this rigidity was bed for a reporter’s health. Take William Shirer and Edward R. Murrow’s complaints about being unable to record and play back bombing raids in Nazi-held territories – their chafing at old ideas are almost palpable to modern bloggers.
There were other handicaps to the ban on recording that hampered us in taking full advantage of this new medium in journalism. On any given day there might be several developments, each of which could have been recorded as it happened and then put together and edited for the evening broadcast. In Berlin, for example, there might be a bellicose proclamation, troop movements through the capital, sensational headlines in the newspapers, a protest by an angry ambassador, a fiery speech by Hitler, Goring or Goebbels threatening Nazi Germany’s next victim—all in the course of the day. We could have recorded them at the moment they happened and put them together for a report in depth at the end of the day. Newspapers could not do this. Only radio could. But [CBS President] Paley forbade it.
Murrow and I tried to point out to him that the ban on recording was not only hampering our efforts to cover the crisis in Europe but would make it impossible to really cover the war, if war came. In order to broadcast live, we had to have a telephone line leading from our mike to a shortwave transmitter. You could not follow an advancing or retreating army dragging a telephone line along with you. You could not get your mike close enough to a battle to cover the sounds of combat. With a compact little recorder you could get into the thick of it and capture the awesome sounds of war.
And so now instead of CBS and the Censorship Bureau we have Facebook and Twitter. Instead of calling for the ability to record and playback an event we want permission to offer our own slants on events, no matter how far removed we are from the action. Instead of working diligently to spread only the truth, we consume the truth as others know it. And that’s what we are now chafing against: the commercialization and professionalization of user generated content.
Every medium goes through this confusion. From Penny Dreadfuls to Pall Mall sponsoring nearly every single new television show in the 1940s, media has grown, entered a disruptive phase that changes all media around it, and is then curtailed into boredom and commoditization. It is important to remember that we are in the era of Peak TV not because we all have more time to watch 20 hours of Breaking Bad. We are in Peak TV because we have gotten so good at making good shows – and the average consumer is ravenous for new content – that there is no financial reason not to take a flyer on a miniseries. In short, it’s gotten boring to make good TV.
And so we are now entering the latest stage of Internet content, the blowback. This blowback is not coming from governments. Trump, for his part, sees something wrong but cannot or will not verbalize it past the idea of “Fake News”. There is absolutely a Fake News problem but it is not what he thinks it is. Instead, the Fake News problem is rooted in the idea that all content deserves equal respect. My Medium post is as good as a CNN which is as good as an InfoWars screed about pedophiles on Mars. In a world defined by free speech then all speech is protected. Until, of course, it affects the bottom line of the company hosting it.
So Facebook and Twitter are walking a thin line. They want to remain true to the ancillary GenX credo that can be best described as “garbage in, garbage out” but many of its readers have taken that deeply open invitation to share their lives far too openly. These platforms have come to define personalities. They have come to define news cycles. They have driven men and women into hiding and they have given the trolls weapons they never had before, including the ability to destroy media organizations at will. They don’t want to censor but now that they have shareholders then they simply must.
So get ready for the next wave of media. And the next. And the next. As it gets more and more boring to visit Facebook I foresee a few other rising and falling media outlets based on new media – perhaps through VR or video – that will knock social media out of the way. And wait for more wholesale destruction of UGC creators new and old as monetization becomes more important than “truth.”
I am not here to weep for InfoWars. I think it’s garbage. I’m here to tell you that InfoWars is the latest in a long line of disrupted modes of distribution that began with the printing press and will end god knows where. There are no chilling effects here, just changes. And we’d best get used to them.
Can a mobile app help to address the opioid crisis in the U.S.? That’s the goal behind FEND, an app that’s taking advantage of technology solutions like machine learning and gamification to increase young people’s understanding of opioids and to change their behaviors. It’s the first large-scale attempt at running a public health campaign in the U.S. on a mobile device in this manner. And it’s already seeing some early success thanks to its sponsorship of Vans’ Warped Tour and the endorsement of several participating bands and artists.
Unlike traditional public health campaigns which use mass media, like billboards or TV ads to reach users, FEND [Full Energy No Drugs] personalizes its material for each user.
The FEND app encourages downloads by promising users – young people who otherwise wouldn’t bother with an educational anti-drug app – free swag they actually care about. For example: Vans Warped tour tickets, a trip to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Vans shoes, access to acoustic sessions at the Warped Tour with bands like Waterparks and We the Kings; and in the future, if all goes well, a way to bring a concert produced by Warped Tour’s Kevin Lyman to their own hometown.
The idea for FEND comes from serial entrepreneur Steve Huff, a North Carolina native who has been living in Australia for the past eighteen years. During this time he has founded and headed a number of businesses, including automated publishing solution Typefi Systems; parenting information resource Sixty Second Parent; and sustainable energy non-profit, The Light Foundation, where he authored a report for the UN on the use of solar lighting in refugee camps, and ran a solar entrepreneurship program for teenage girls in Malawi.
“For me, it’s always important to combine innovation, entrepreneurship and some kind of social good,” Huff explained, as to his motivations around FEND.
The problem FEND aims to address is to make public health campaigns more effective by individualizing the conversation for each user, while also using the same sort of technology social apps leverage to addict their users.
The technology platform itself, iPug, uses gamification, rewards artificial intelligence, and personalization techniques to make the information shared in the app relevant to the end users, and retain them over time. It combines the evidence-based research it aims to share with technology, its own streetwear brand and – as the means of reaching the target audience – music.
While there are obviously a number of ways this platform could be used in public health education, the company is focused initially on an opioid educational campaign launched in partnership with the Preventum Initiative.
Above: Metalcore band Kublai Khan sporting FEND apparel at Vans Warped Tour, Tampa
A large part of FEND’s following comes from its sponsorship of the final run of the Vans Warped Tour, where it has a booth and the support of many artists who mention FEND on stage, send out messages to fans, wear FEND merchandise, or even perform special sets for FEND.
So far, FEND has been downloaded 20,000 times, Huff said.
After the first 9,500 downloads, the company took a snapshot of user behavior and found its engagement rate was 80 percent. And 79 percent of the kids said they would be “very likely” to talk to a loved one or friend who might be using.
In the app, users are first presented with a baseline survey to get an understanding of how much they already know about opioids. Then across four modules, they learn more about the topic through videos, infographics, quizzes, motion graphics, and more, which combined address key topics like how to spot the signs of an opioid overdose, or how to talked to a loved one about their addiction, and other information about the drugs.
As users progress, the plan is to customize the app’s material to each person’s learning style – using the right material and approach, by taking advantage of machine learning to personalize the experience.
Even if FEND falls short of being a success as measured by traditional app store metrics, it’s a whopper for public health campaign. And its results can be life-saving.
“We’re getting a lot of feedback from the kids, who said ‘I just downloaded this app to get free stuff. But I went to a party last week, and there was a kid in the corner. I went over and their lips were blue and their fingers were blue, and I checked their breathing. I knew they were overdosing, and I called 911. I put them in the recovery position, and the paramedics came, gave them Narcan and said I saved their life,'” Huff told us over the weekend, in a backstage interview at Warped Tour.
“John Hopkins is freaking out because they’re going to have the largest sample size for an opioid study in history,” Huff enthused.
(A prior study of opioid deaths included over 13,000 overdose cases. But many studies range in the hundreds, in terms of participants.)
The company now wants to bring FEND to schools, through deals with state governments.
“We’ve been talking to state governments,” Huff said, noting the feedback has been positive, but talks are in early phases – no deals have been signed. “Alabama was like, look, we have morgues where we’re putting bodies out under the trees because we don’t have enough space,” he continued. “This is way bigger than anybody knows.”
“2016 was the last time the CDC reported statistics on the opioid epidemic. And at that point, we were losing 60,000 people a year to overdoses due to the use of opioids and heroin. And 80 percent of heroin users in the U.S. got their start on prescription pills,” Huff added. [He’s citing these numbers from the CDC.]
“The United States has 4.3 percent of the world’s population, but we consume 80 percent of the world’s opioid supply,” he said.
The goal is to bring FEND to states for a pilot in five states for a period of 14 months, to further prove out the concept outside the progress made with the Warped Tour sponsorship.
The tech platform behind FEND, founded in late 2015, has raised $2 million in angel funding from Huff’s network of connections. The long-term goal is to offer the platform on a SaaS [software as a service] basis or through enterprise sales. It has also researched and aims to implement its own token economy on the Ethereum blockchain. This would allow other non-profits, celebs and movements the opportunity to run their own public health campaigns using the platform. These could be offered in their own white-labeled version of FEND app, focused on their own supported initiative.
For the bands involved, it could also allow those with smaller followings a way to be reimbursed in tokens for bringing their followers to FEND.
The bigger picture here is about taking advantage techniques common to tech companies drug companies, and others, and leverage them for public health campaigns instead, Huff also noted.
“We use the same techniques Big Pharma and Big Tobacco used to engage their users, and we turn the tables on them. And now we’re using those techniques to engage kids not to use opioids,” Huff said. “I’m a tech guy, I’m not a public health guy. So this is how a tech guy would design a public health campaign,” he added.
After a record-shattering debut and then a long slump as players perceived the game’s shallowness and abandoned it en masse, Pokémon GO is having something of a renaissance. Improved gym and social mechanics, better reliability and, of course, a host of new ‘mon have brought players back, and it seems that features will continue to be rolled out.
