A luxury cruise ship is selling rooms to those who want to live on the open sea. The cheapest option — a tiny studio with a Murphy bed — is $1m.
In today’s email:
Arkive: A reverse-Indiana Jones museum.
Chart: YouTube’s never-ending content.
Purple: Big news in the tomato industry.
Around the Web: DIY help, brain teasers, baby tigers, and more cool internet finds.
🎧 On the go? Listen to today’s podcast to learn about decentralized museums, Zoom and Canva zigzagging, and an unfortunate passing.
The big idea
Inside a decentralized museum without a building
Think about a typical museum — you buy a ticket, then look at whatever its curators put on display. Often, that’s great.
But Arkive, a startup that recently raised $9.7m, is a “decentralized” museum.
That might sound like some kind of NFT gallery in Roblox, but, while acquisitions are recorded on blockchain, they’re real-world objects.
Arkive’s members are its curators…
… voting on both what to acquire and where to display it.
That’s because Arkive has no physical space. Instead, it has a kind of reverse-Indiana Jones approach where not everything belongs in a museum. Why?
Even large museums are limited by space, typically displaying just 5% of their collections at any given time.
There’s a push to not just diversify, but to also “decolonize” museums. Some items were acquired (or looted) through imperialism, far removed from the cultures they represent.
“We would place [an acquisition] where it originated or where the artist created it or where it can be viewed by the most people,” founder Tom McLeod told The Hustle.
So far…
… Arkive has made five eclectic acquisitions with plans for 32 by the end of 2023:
The 1954 patent for the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer)
Three cloth fans used in Madonna’s 1990 “Vogue” performance
They’re currently on tour, with permanent homes pending.
Arkive’s membership is currently free…
… though paid tiers will eventually come into play.
But there will be free ways to participate, including via an upcoming app that will let travelers know where they can see Arkive pieces near them.
SNIPPETS
Patagonia’s founder, along with his family, is giving away the $3B company to a collective whose goal will be to contribute the brand’s $100m/yr. in profits to fighting climate change.
SoftBank, the investment group whose Vision Fund 2 is now worth 19% less than the $49B they put into it, is considering a Vision Fund 3.
Zoom has been quietly developing email and calendar tools. Meanwhile, Canva debuted a suite of visual tools for work.
Tudummm: Netflix is holding its global fan event for company news and first looks on Sept. 24. Here’s a trailer.
South Korea fined Google and Meta ~$71.8m for collecting user data without consent, violating local privacy laws.
The Museum of Modern Art is selling $70m worth of art to finance its online footprint — which could include a streaming channel.
Adobe found the top three most misunderstood emoji are the face with a cowboy hat, the cherries, and the upside-down smiley face.
A package thought to contain explosives was sent to Northeastern University’s VR lab in Boston with a note ranting about VR and Mark Zuckerberg.
Student loans: Some of the 9m+ people who made payments during covid may be eligible for refunds through the Biden admin’s loan forgiveness plan.
Hmm… A food delivery robot will stop at nothing — not even an active crime scene in LA — to reach its hungry customer.
Podcast: Learn how to optimize for the upside from HubSpot's CMO and SVP withMarketing Against the Grain’s latest episode, “10 First Principles That Will Change Your Business and Life.”
chart
Olivia Heller
Why YouTube’s best weapon is its library
The streaming wars often feel like an arms race.
In 2021, Disney+, Netflix, and Amazon spent a combined $55B to enrich their content libraries, which estimates peg at:
4.5k hours for Disney+
40k hours for Netflix
50k hours for Amazon
But YouTube…
… which is considered an alt-streaming competitor, blows them all out of the water.
Every three hours, YouTube adds as much content as Netflix and Amazon’s entire catalogs combined, or 20x Disney+’s.
With truly something for everybody, a recent poll found 95% of teens use the app.
Like YouTube, TikTok has also proven a formidable streaming competitor. Watch time on TikTok in 2021 was 22.6T minutes, compared to Netflix’s 9.6T.
The main difference: TikTok didn’t spend billions making that content — its users made it, for free.
Free Resource
NFTs for sweepstakes and 25+ business ideas
In his recent comedy special, Aziz Ansari joked about the fortress-level lockdown security of McDonald’s Monopoly sweepstakes.
Our analyst Julia first flagged NFTs for sweepstakes as an idea back in 2020. Ronald should’ve subscribed.
Her recent piece presents a stack of 25 other NFT applications, projects, and resources, many community-sourced from the Trends Facebook group, including:
How to grow an NFT project on Twitter and Discord
No- or low-code NFT-related creator apps
10 reasons why marketers should take NFT clients
Get access to the full article. The Trends blockchain group is barking.
Join 17k+ Trendsters for market moves, industry insights, and dynamic community advice.
Purple vegetables aren’t exactly new. There’s purple potatoes, cauliflower, carrots, and even tomatoes. Actually, nevermind — tomatoes are a fruit.
Anyway, after nearly 20 years of development, the USDA approved UK-based Norfolk Plant Sciences’ purple tomato for commercial use — significant for its potential health benefits.
What’s so special about this tomato?
The team used genes from the snapdragon flower to produce anthocyanin, an antioxidant-rich pigment also found in blackberries that may lower the risk of cancer.
In a 2008 study, cancer-susceptible mice that were fed high-anthocyanin tomatoes lived 30% longer than those that were fed red tomatoes.
The team now plans to develop and sell purple cherry tomatoes, tomato juice, sun-dried tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, and the seeds themselves.
At first, though, expect a juicy price tag. In 2016, the US approved a juicier, sweeter pink pineapple for sale. On one site, you can find them for ~$40. Another offers them for ~$12.
AROUND THE WEB
🥊 On this day: In 1978, Muhammad Ali became the first person to win the world heavyweight boxing title three times after defeating Leon Spinks in New Orleans.
😮 That’s interesting: The oldest known amputation occurred 31k years ago in Borneo. Despite no modern medicine or tools, the young patient survived.