Bust Out The Name Tags

PRESENTED BY MOOD

Happy Wednesday, Future Party. In what could be the greatest movie-memorabilia scavenger hunt ever, guitar company Gibson is searching for the guitar Michael J. Fox played in Back to the Future. It’s been missing for decades, so the company has launched a marketing campaign, a 1-800 number, and even production on a documentary to recover the famous instrument. It’s all part of the run-up to the movie’s 40th anniversary, when Gibson plans to release custom guitars inspired by the iconic prop. Considering how many film readers we have, someone here likely has a hot tip on its whereabouts.

The old-school practice of networking — building professional relationships over the course of years — is becoming an increasingly important employment safeguard as AI upends the workplace.

The Big Picture: AI and remote work have disrupted every aspect of the job market, including what entry-level jobs still exist, how resumes are analyzed, and who’s eligible to apply for positions. Add in social media, and it’s clear there’s a widespread depersonalization happening — one that only cheap name tags and sweaty handshakes can cut through.

Between the Handshakes: Time to hit the hotel conference rooms.

Closing Thoughts: Dorie Clark, a professor at Columbia Business School and author of The Long Game, calls the new paradigm of networking the “favor economy,” which she details as being willing to “help someone that you don’t know that well, because you are indirectly doing a favor for the person you do know well.” It’s that daisy chain of favors that helps people constantly find employment.

Prediction: Ask anyone looking for a job right now — it’s hard. Landing any job in this environment may be predicated on first taking the time to attend unique networking events that can get you a leg up in the application process.

Most people prefer to smoke cannabis, but that isn’t always an option if you’re at work or in public.

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Soot — a visual catalog meets social media platform — has raised $7.7 million in funding to help design the next phase of online content sharing.

The Chaotic Picture: The vertical-scrolling feed seems to have reached its zenith with TikTok and Instagram. So, figuring out what’s next could become one of the most lucrative moves for investors.

Behind The Content: Soot — founded by Zoox vet Jake Harper and Drop Everything founder Mary Nally — doesn’t want you to look at one picture or video at a time… it wants you to look at all of them simultaneously.

The Future: Currently, Soot is made up of invite-only personal spaces, with 25,000 users (including the renowned Guggenheim Museum) hosting a collective four million pieces of media. That content has either been directly uploaded to the platform or curated by copying and pasting URLs from YouTube or other social platforms.

Prediction: While using Soot on a browser will take a learning curve (and don’t even get us started on using it on a smartphone), the platform could find its biggest adoption with users who access it via XR headsets.

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44.2% of you voted Keep a tab open in yesterday’s poll: Would you rather pay as you go or keep a tab open at a bar?

“And I always tip in cash. There’s never a tax.”

“I only drink socially, and I usually limit myself to a couple of drinks over the course of a night to avoid hangovers and save money. Leaving a tab open feels unnecessary and potentially stressful. I don’t want to fight the crowds if I need to make a quick exit.”

“Drinking at bars and restaurants is far too expensive for my budget these days.”

Let’s keep the conversation going. Join our Poll Of The Day newsletter, so your opinions can shine. Discover how your views line up with your peers’, check out cool insights, and have some fun. It’s data with personality.

📈 After Taylor Swift bought back her masters, Spotify streams for her first six albums more than doubled, including a 430% spike for her Speak Now record.

🎥 The California Senate passed the retooled film and TV tax incentives bill… just without raising the cap on incentives from $330 million to $750 million as hoped.

🤖 Epic Games is giving Fortnite creators the ability to make AI-powered characters that people can voice-chat with.

🔋 Meta is paying Constellation Energy’s Clinton Clean Energy Center in Illinois billions to stay up and running through 2047.

🦾 Samsung is finalizing a deal to invest in AI firm Perplexity and integrate its system into its devices.

🚀 Space startup Voyager Technologies, which is building a private space station called Starlab, is looking to IPO at a $1.6 billion valuation.

🤳 MrBeast is the first YouTuber to pass 400 million subscribers.

👀 TikTok is rolling out an AI-powered trends-insights tool to advertisers.

👔 Arcade Media, the management company behind the Sidemen, is launching a creator-first brand agency.