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Trust fall. The relationship between Americans and mass media is headed seriously south. According to Gallup, a mere 32% of Americans still thinks the news is reported fully and fairly. The rest think of outlets as a crappy ex — someone who’s managed to pull a fast one on you one too many times. Here at TFP, though, we’re trying to do things differently. We’re not like other guys… ahem… news outlets.
In other news… a bacterial life jacket, the platform vying to be the king of texts, and RIP to BeReal.
Top Trends
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FASHION
Courtesy of Normal Phenomena of Life
Normal Phenomena of Life debuts a jacket made with bacteria
The Future. Biotech fashion brand Normal Phenomena of Life (NPOL) is using synthetic biology to create one-of-a-kind clothing. It’s not just a greener way to make luxury pieces but also a comment on the indistinguishability of mass-produced clothing. As the fashion industry wrestles with its emissions, products from cutting-edge companies like NPOL or innovative mainstays like Patagonia could add more variety and sustainability to consumers’ closets.
“Grown to order”
The UK-based NPOL is taking fashion back to the lab.
NPOL’s signature product is the almost $5,000 Exploring Jacket, which was colored using the bacteria Streptomyces coelicolor.
Each jacket is unique due to the nature of bacterial fermentation, creating unpredictable designs because of how the bacteria reacts with the fabric.
The jacket (and NPOL’s entire collection) has a lower carbon footprint than traditional clothing because less water is needed in the dyeing process and less farmland is required.
NPOL is a joint partnership between biodesign research studio Faber Futures and biotech firm Ginkgo Bioworks, with the hope of being a collaboration between design and biology. To that end, the company had to build the entire supply chain to turn microbes into fashion — there’s just no precedent for it. That’s why the clothing is so expensive right now.
But by building it out, NPOL may also become the underlying logistics platform for other companies with similar ambitions. And with that expansion, hopefully the prices drop, too.
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SOCIAL MEDIA
Message economy // Illustration by Kate Walker
Automattic wants to be the king of texts
The Future. Software company Automattic has acquired message-aggregation platform Texts, making messaging a central part of its business. With support for DMs becoming the hottest new trend in social media, Automattic could provide both an easy solution for managing various apps and a potential way to actually monetize private communication.
Universal message
The company behind WordPress, Tumblr, and Pocket Casts sees messaging as the latest frontier.
The company has acquired Texts — the platform that lets you respond to messages from iMessage, Instagram, LinkedIn, Signal, etc., all on one interface — in a $50 million deal.
The first order of business for Automattic is to finish Texts’ mobile app and chart the long-term consumer offering (right now, it’s a $15/month platform, but a free tier could be around the corner).
Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg says the purchase creates a “third pillar” for the company — joining publishing and commerce as areas he feels are “fundamental to the human condition” and where “an open-solution is necessary.”
And with end-to-end encryption, Automattic can market that putting all your chats on one platform won’t compromise security. That’s an important factor as social networking gravitates towards becoming more private and message-based.
The future is all about saving it for the group text.
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Let’s talk about sex, baby
No, seriously! Let’s talk about it. Sexual health is a very important part of our overall well-being. So, it’s something worth talking about.
Experience Life knows this, so they devoted their first digital content collection ever to sexual health. In their minds, nothing in this arena should be glossed over, ignored, or considered taboo. And we’re here for it.
Here’s what you’ll find in this download:
Why Is Sex So Hard to Talk About?
3 Strategies for Improving Pelvic-Floor Health
Pillow Talk: A Q&A With Sex Therapist Vanessa Marin
How to Reclaim Your Testosterone — Naturally
SOCIAL MEDIA
Gone from the zeitgeist so soon… // Illustration by Kate Walker
BeReal is real dead
The Future. BeReal’s moment seems to already be over, with usage cratering 61% this year (which BeReal disputes). BeReal was what many expected it to be: a trend. And that’s because social media is really good at three things: connection, entertainment, and stalking. BeReal’s sidestepping of those three tenants may have built an expiration date right into the code.
Missed appointment
What’s behind BeReal’s decline? Dazed lays it out:
The two-minute time limit to post stresses out users, who have no choice but to post if they want to keep browsing the feed — that makes the app feel like “hard work.”
Answering things in the moment is stressful for younger users, who liken it to having to answer a call (something no one likes doing unless it’s scheduled).
Those pressures force people to phone it in, so they can just keep on scrolling — an experience that makes feeds more “boring” than “authentic.”
Because the platform doesn’t have real consequences for users when they don’t post during the allotted time, users just post whenever they’re doing something fun — undermining the platform’s purpose of chronicling what everybody is up to at the exact same time.
Why does BeReal’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it rise and fall matter? The app’s success was so sudden and spectacular that every platform from TikTok to Instagram replicated it. The features didn’t take off on those respective platforms because… well… users were busy enjoying the more entertaining options that were already available on there.
Unvarnished and unscheduled authenticity can only hold attention for so long.
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Global news that hits different
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So, if you want to know what’s going on in global business, tech, and politics, International Intrigue is the place to go.
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Highlights
The best curated daily stories from around the web
Media, Music, & Entertainment
With his latest album, Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana, Bad Bunny is responsible for three of the four all-Spanish albums to top the US charts. Read more → variety
Speaking of chart-toppers, Taylor Swift’s “Cruel Summer” hit #1… over four years after its debut. Read more → deadline
Spotify surprisingly hit profitability this quarter thanks to a surge in paying subscribers — the first time the company has been profitable in almost two years. Read more → thr
Fashion & E-Commerce
Real life Succession: Bernard Arnault has ensured LVMH will stay within the family for 30 more years, with the stage set for one of the fashion mogul’s five children to eventually lead the conglomerate… although the 74-year-old Bernard will have “unlimited control” until he’s 95. Read more → hypebeast
SKIMS has a menswear line now. Read more → bof
Startup I Own My Data (IOMD) lets people port personal information into ecommerce sites instead of having to create new accounts every time they want to buy something. Read more → techcrunch
Tech, Web3, & AI
The White House has deemed 31 regions throughout the US and American territories as new “tech hubs,” with each eligible for $75 million in funding. Read more → engadget
California’s DMV has pulled the licensing for Cruise’s fully autonomous robotaxi service — months after the GM-backed startup was granted permission to roll out commercial operations in San Francisco. Read more → techcrunch
According to the International Energy Agency, the transition to clean energy throughout the world has passed a rubicon and is now “unstoppable” thanks to renewables currently being the cheapest power source. Read more → theverge
Creator Economy
33 states have sued Meta in federal court over allegations that the company broke consumer-protection laws by creating features that reeled in kids and addicted them to its platforms. Read more → nyt
Speaking of Meta, Instagram is trying out a “verified-only” feed as a way for users to curate their feeds to only show posts from people and businesses that pay for subscriptions — a potential boon for (or hindrance to) discoverability. Read more → theinformation
TikTok is testing 15-minute videos with select users. Read more → tubefilter
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Melody Song. Copy edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.