Interesting Bits

These families are living car-free and the benefits surprised them – The Washington Post

by dldamore

These families are living car-free and the benefits surprised them – The Washington Post:

 

“Just 8.4 percent of U.S. households own no cars, and 33.3 percent own just one vehicle.”

*Wonder what the age and demographics are. Is is mostly old and young people without cars? How many people from 22-62 are without cars? Where do they live and how accessable are supermarkets, pharmacies, public transportation …  to them? How does rideshareing impact people seeing zero car as an option? How much money are people saving with the substitute options?

Everybody Knows Flo From Progressive. Who Is Stephanie Courtney? – The New York Times

by dldamore

Everybody Knows Flo From Progressive. Who Is Stephanie Courtney? – The New York Times:

In 2022, nearly half the active property- and casualty-insurance premiums in the United States and Canada were sold by just 11 companies. Increasingly, insurance corporations attract business not by building trust between their customers and local agents, but by successfully ascribing positive characteristics to the fictional characters who anthropomorphize the companies and products in ads.

 

According to Ad Age, in 2022 the Progressive Corporation spent more than $2 billion on advertising in the United States, pouring more money into the effort than McDonald’s, Toyota or Coca-Cola. (The insurance industry’s total annual media-ad spending is estimated to be just shy of $11 billion — more than was spent by all the top beer brands combined.) 

Netflix Prepares to Send Its Final Red Envelope – The New York Times

by dldamore

Netflix Prepares to Send Its Final Red Envelope – The New York Times:

In a nondescript office park minutes from Disneyland sits a nondescript warehouse. Inside this nameless, faceless building, an era is ending.

The building is a Netflix DVD distribution plant. Once a bustling ecosystem that processed 1.2 million DVDs a week, employed 50 people and generated millions of dollars in revenue, it now has just six employees left to sift through the metallic discs. And even that will cease on Friday, when Netflix officially shuts the door on its origin story and stops mailing out its trademark red envelopes.

*Netflix was able to innovate and move from distribution to a new technological business model and thrive at the dawn of a new industry we call streaming.

NYT Article – Hoka Shoes

by dldamore

It’s hard to overstate the multigenerational appeal of the shoes. Hoka is still small, relative to juggernauts like Nike or Reebok. Mr. Doolan says that the company has only 440 individual unique shoes for men and women in different colors and widths. (A Harvard project estimated that Nike has 10,000.) Somehow, though, the shoes have crossed into the mainstream.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/05/style/hokas-fashion.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Interesting article. A friend of mine introduced me to Hoka somewhere in 2014-2017. Maybe it’s time for me to check this brand out for real.

Micropayments for content | Seth’s Blog

by dldamore

Micropayments are a system where you pay a penny or a nickel or a dollar for a piece of content.

It introduces two kinds of friction, though:

There needs to be a tech system that can effectively move tiny amounts of money around.
As a reader/consumer of content, you need to constantly make decisions about what’s “worth it.”
— Read on seths.blog/2022/11/micropayments-for-content/