Tuesday Dec.15, 2020

🎮 Zynga's game for your ears

_Audio-only version of Guitar Hero_
_Audio-only version of Guitar Hero_

Hey Snackers,

Proof that it's never too late to follow your dreams: a 74-year-old grandma just graduated from college alongside her granddaughter. Nana rules.

The techy Nasdaq Index outperformed while the rest of the market dipped yesterday. Also: the first public Covid-19 vaccinations were given to US health care workers.

Eary

Audio's Golden Ear-a: Zynga launches "games for your ears" on Google Nest

Hey Google, hit me with a Word Clue... Zynga is the social gaming legend behind mobile hits like FarmVille and Words With Friends. Now, instead of seeing Zynga's blindingly colorful games, you'll be able to play them with your ears: Zynga's launching audio gaming on Google Nest Hub and other Google Assistant devices. It's starting with a free, voice-based puzzle game called Daily Word Wheel (Zynga's obsessed with words).

Audio's "Golden Ear-a"... Radio and phone calls might be semi-dead, but audio definitely isn’t. We spend so much time staring at screens (especially in the WFH era) that audio-based entertainment is experiencing a major renaissance.

  • Spotify has spent more than $800M over the past two years on podcast-related acquisitions, as pod-pularity continues to skyrocket.
  • Apple is projected to sell ~$15B worth of AirPods in 2020, more than 2X what it sold in 2019 — and almost 9X Snap's total 2019 sales.
  • Clubhouse, the controversial audio-based social app, notched a $100M valuation with just 1.5K users.
  • Twitter launched voice tweets and is testing "Audio Spaces."

Meet your non-users where they are... Zynga's betting it can lure in non-gamers by creatively meeting them where they are (and where the competition isn't): smart speakers. Roughly one in four American adults owns a smart speaker, and 62% use a voice-operated assistant. Zynga's hoping to leverage Google's ~68M Nests and Nest Hubs to hook people with its games while they're doing the dishes and cooking. In time, these casual audio gamers could become mobile gamers, too.

Hack

The government's go-to anti-hacking agency gets majorly hacked

Niet good at all... FireEye, the go-to cybersecurity firm for government agencies, has suffered a major hack from “a nation with top-tier offensive capabilities.” We don't know for sure yet, but all signs point to Russia. The hack itself came in through software offered by network-monitoring company SolarWinds. Let's Putin perspective:

  • Problem: SolarWinds' software is used by hundreds of thousands of orgs, including multiple US federal agencies and most Fortune 500 companies.
  • Big problem: The Treasury and Commerce departments were definitely breached, and the Department of Homeland Security might've been.
  • Bigger problem: The hackers hacked FireEye's hacking capabilities (say it three times fast). They basically stole FireEye's secret hacking toolkit.

Drop it like it's hacked... FireEye stock has dropped 12% since the news broke, while SolarWinds shares plunged 17%. We don't know much about what was breached — but it could include anything from info on top-secret government operations to data on American citizens. The FBI is investigating.

Counterintuitively, this boosted cybersecurity stocks... While FireEye shares are down, major cybersecurity companies like Palo Alto Networks, Zscaler, and Fortinet are up. That could be because their competitor just suffered a major reputation hit. But it could also be that this hack highlights the importance of cybersecurity, especially in a remote world. No company is 100% hack-proof, including hack-fighting FireEye — that could drive even more cybersecurity spend.

What else we’re Snackin’

  • Tokit: Reddit is buying TikTok rival Dubsmash and plans to integrate its video editing tools into the Reddit app.
  • Panic: Google apps like Gmail, YouTube, and Docs were down for ~45 minutes on Monday in a massive outage (Twitter freaked).
  • Sweet: Popeyes is launching chocolate beignets nationwide for a limited time to entice customers.
  • Robo: Amazon's self-driving car startup Zoox unveiled a fully autonomous EV with no steering wheel — it can go for 16 hours on a single charge.
  • Swoop: Sims-maker EA outbid Take-Two to buy racing game developer Codemasters for $1.2B.

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Tuesday

  • Empire State Manufacturing Index

Authors of this Snacks own shares of: Apple and Snap

ID: 1449190

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