25 November 2021 – Given the tendency of Silicon Valley folks to substitute verbs for nouns – as in “learnings” for the perfectly functional “lessons” and “gifting” instead of “giving” – the traditional term for today’s holiday in the U.S. seems a little outdated. But in honor of whatever you call today depending on where you are, we should consider some of the events in tech business and the tech world that have certainly made business/work life far more entertaining this year. Just seven (from an incredibly long list) to catch the spirit of the thing:
1. Zillow, for first massively hyping and then completely abandoning its massively expensive investment in iBuying – which says so much about the world’s nutzo love affair with AI. Yeah, U-turns made in broad daylight on the highways of corporate America aren’t common, but they’re always fascinating to chronicle.
2. Zoom Video, for screwing up the acquisition of Five9 so badly that VCs were squawking this week that Zoom probably now needs to be acquired itself.
3. Jack Dorsey. That’s it. Jack Dorsey. Oh, c’mon! How can you not be thankful that someone as offbeat (I’m being charitable) as Dorsey has the audacity to still be CEO of TWO public companies?
4. Mark Zuckerberg and the folks at Roblox for giving other executives the idea of talking up the metaverse potential of their businesses, no matter how real world their operations might be. The most inane, most insane metaverse comparison was perhaps yesterday’s PR pitch describing an online chocolate sale as an example of a food company jumping into the metaverse 🤣 🤣 🤣
5. Harry Potter publisher Scholastic for providing a real-life “Succession” battle for business news junkies, as the latest update in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal demonstrates.
6. Didi Global, for showing other companies that are going public what not to do when you have China on your back.
7. Elon Musk
