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Starbucks today is launching its blockchain-based loyalty program and NFT community, Starbucks Odyssey, to its first group of U.S. beta testers. The new initiative, which includes coffee-themed NFTs that translate to real-world experiences, is an extension of Starbucks’ existing loyalty program, Starbucks Rewards, but leverages web3 technology like the polygon blockchain and NFTs.

Announced to investors earlier this year, the coffee chain giant said it envisioned Starbucks Odyssey as a way for its most loyal customers to earn a broader, more diverse set of rewards beyond the perks they can earn today, like free drinks. Instead, Odyssey introduces a new platform where customers can engage with interactive activities called “Journeys” that, when complete, allow members to earn collectible Journey Stamps — which is Starbucks’ less geeky name for NFTs.

The Journeys are designed to promote the Starbucks brand and teach customers about coffee and the company’s history. They could include any number of activities, like watching videos or taking quizzes, playing puzzles, or even going to the store to try out new drinks the company wants to promote. The latter example is part of what makes Starbucks Odyssey more interesting than some other corporate NFT initiatives, as it’s actually connected to the company’s existing loyalty program, business goals, and mobile payment technologies, rather than functioning as quickly tacked on addition.

In the case of Journeys tied to in-store purchases, Odyssey members would scan their existing Starbucks Rewards card when purchasing the required drink or menu item, and that activity would then be shared back with Odyssey, earning the member points.

At around 500 points, members will earn Stamps — that is, a coffee-themed NFT hosted on the Polygon blockchain. These Stamps also unlock special experiences. There will be three levels of benefits and experiences that can be unlocked. At the lower end, these could be online experiences, like a virtual class that teaches you how to make espresso martinis, or provides access to unique artist merchandise. As you earn more points and NFTs, you may then begin to gain access to real-world experiences, like special events hosted at Starbucks Reserve Roasteries or even a trip to the Starbucks Hacienda Alsacia coffee farm in Costa Rica.

The points accumulate over the course of the year, instead of being redeemed for rewards (like Stars are). At year-end, the points reset and you’d start over. But you’ll still retain your NFTs, which will later be integrated with the Starbucks app, allowing customers to customize their Starbucks Card or perhaps be printed on other merchandise.

As the Odyssey program launches into beta, the first Journey Stamps will include those designed with inspiration from Starbucks’ history, like its first location in Pike Place Market in Seattle; others will feature classic designs and this year’s “Gift-Wrapped Magic” holiday cup art.

The company declined to confirm how many customers have signed up on the waitlist but said the demand had “far exceeded” its expectations. It will now begin to let a portion of those waitlisted users in to test Odyssey and offer feedback on the initial experience, which it will use to adapt the program further. Users will be emailed if they’re being invited into the beta, then have 3 days to join. If they don’t, they’ll return to the waitlist for a future invite.

To enter Starbucks Odyssey after getting an invite, members will need to have an existing Starbucks Rewards account as this program is tied to the company’s larger loyalty initiative. (There are not separate accounts just for Odyssey.)

As members participate in Odyssey, they’ll earn NFTs, which have a point value based on their rarity. That means, in addition to being tied to real-world experiences, the NFTs will be able to be bought or sold on Odyssey’s marketplace, launching in 2023. This part is powered by Nifty Gateway, with NFT ownership secured on the blockchain.

Starbucks is also simplifying the process of purchasing NFTs, as it won’t require that members have a crypto wallet, own cryptocurrency, or have any understanding of the underlying web3 technologies. Beyond dropping the word “NFT” from Odyssey’s lingo, members can buy the “Stamps” with a credit card, as they would any other online purchase.

“It happens to be built on blockchain and web3 technologies, but the customer — to be honest — may very well not even know that what they’re doing is interacting with blockchain technology. It’s just the enabler,” Starbucks CMO Brady Brewer told TechCrunch in an interview back in September.

For the coffee chain, the program allows the company to engage its most loyal customers and build community, but also provides a potential revenue stream. Starting next year, it will release Limited Edition Stamps which members can purchase to support various causes. The artwork on these NFTs is being co-created by Starbucks and outside artists while “a portion” of the sales will support causes chosen by Starbucks employees and customers. (The company wouldn’t yet say how much of the remaining revenue it would keep). These Stamps will be released 4-6 times per year.

While many corporate forays into the NFT market are gimmicky and ill-thought-out, Starbucks has been more cautiously weighing its approach to web3. The company said it had been investigating blockchain technologies for a couple of years, but it has only been involved in this particular project for around six months. Brewer earlier said the company didn’t want to treat its investment as a “stunt” side project, but rather wanted to use the tech to expand its existing loyalty program.

Starbucks also brought in Adam Brotman, the architect of its Mobile Order & Pay system and the Starbucks app, to help serve as a special advisor on Odyssey. Now the co-founder of Forum3, a web3 loyalty startup, Brotman’s team worked alongside the Seattle coffee chain’s own marketing, loyalty and technology teams, the company said.

In a demo of Odyssey, the program looked simple to use. You sign in, pick an avatar, and go through an onboarding experience that teaches you about Journeys and Stamps, then get started. The company says there will always be at least 2 Journeys available at any time.

The first invitations are being sent to a small group of waitlist members today, Dec. 8. In January 2023, Starbucks will begin to send out monthly invitations to a wider group of waitlist members.

Starbucks opens up its web3 loyalty program and NFT community to first beta testers by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

What do media layoffs and tech worries have in common? Fear about what’s ahead in coming quarters, especially as it relates to advertising revenues.

The advertising business is huge and lucrative. So lucrative, in fact, that for major tech shops, some level of advertising-derived income is unavoidable once they reach a certain scale. Amazon is famed for its mega-scale advertising business (the other side of that coin is here); Apple’s App Store is an ad goliath; Microsoft’s Bing search engine generates material advertising incomes, and the company has even greater ad-focused aspirations; and Meta and Alphabet are advertising-centric businesses by nature.

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money.

Read it every morning on TechCrunch+ or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

Due to major tech companies’ reliance on generating advertising-based revenues, we track the ad market more than we once did. We kinda cannotnot, if that makes sense.

Back to media: It’s a bloodbath out there today, with layoffs arriving in droves and some publications straight-up dying. Underlying the cuts, at least per official corporate talking points, is anxiety stemming from an uncertain economic future.

Just how bad is the Q1 ad market going to be? by Alex Wilhelm originally published on TechCrunch

The day has arrived. Today, Disney+ launched its ad-supported tier, “Disney+ Basic,” at $7.99/month. The plan is currently only available in the U.S. and will become available in other countries sometime next year.

“Today’s launch marks a milestone moment for Disney+ and puts consumer choice at the forefront. With these new ad-supported offerings, we’re able to deliver greater flexibility for consumers to enjoy the full breadth and depth of incredible storytelling from The Walt Disney Company,” Michael Paull, president of Direct to Consumer, said in a statement.

Netflix has its work cut out for it if it wants to compete successfully with Disney+’s new ad-supported tier. For instance, Disney+ Basic not only lets viewers stream high-quality video, including Full HD, HDR10, 4K Ultra HD, Dolby Vision and Expanded Aspect Ratio with IMAX Enhanced, but it also lets subscribers stream on up to four supported devices simultaneously. Plus, the ad plan includes Disney+’s full content catalog.

Netflix’s ad-supported plan, on the other hand, only supports 720p HD video quality, subscribers can only stream on one device at the same time and around 5% to 10% of Netflix’s content library is missing due to licensing restrictions.

Neither Disney+ Basic nor Netflix’s “Basic with ads” plan allows offline viewing or downloads.

Other features not included in the Disney+ Basic plan at launch are GroupWatch, SharePlay and Dolby Atmos. A Disney spokesperson told TechCrunch that the company hopes to support this in the future, but the exact timing is unknown.

Ads will range from 15 to 30 or 45 seconds long, the spokesperson added. As we previously reported, Disney+ is limiting thetotal ad loadto an average of four minutes of commercials an hour. Preschool content has zero ads.

Also, the company revised the Disney Bundle. The Disney Bundle Duo (Disney+ Basic and Hulu’s ad plan) will cost $9.99/month, whereas the Disney Bundle Trio Basic (Disney+ Basic, Hulu’s ad plan and ESPN+) will be $12.99/month and the Disney Bundle Trio Premium is priced at $19.99/month.

Alongside the launch, Disney+ increased the price of its Premium ad-free subscription to $10.99/month, up from $7.99. So while it may seem that Disney+ is launching a cheaper tier, the reality is that subscribers will have to pay the same price for a plan that will now get ads.

Research firm Kantar found that 23% of existing Disney+ subscribers plan to switch to the new tier, Deadline reported. That means more than 37 million subscribers could choose to pay the same price they always have but for an arguably “downgraded” subscription plan.

Hulu, the Disney-owned streaming service, also got a price hike, along with the Disney Bundle and Hulu Live TV.

The main reason Disney+ launched its ad-supported tier was to open up its streaming service to new subscribers. Disney previously said that the new tier will keep the company on track to reach its target of 230-260 million Disney+ subscribers by 2024. The streamer reported an impressive total of 164.2 million global subscribers in Q4 2022, which includes 46.4 million domestic subscribers.

Also, Disney’s direct-to-consumer division lost $1.5 billion, so the ad-supported tier is a potential new revenue stream for the company. The streaming giant boasted in today’s announcement that Disney+ Basic is launching with over 100 advertisers.

“Today, we welcome Disney+ with ads to the largest, most diverse and impactful portfolio in the industry. We are committed to connecting our clients to the best storytelling in the world while delivering innovation and viewer-first experience in streaming now and in the future,” said Rita Ferro, president of Disney Advertising.

Disney+ launches its ad-supported tier to compete with Netflix by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch

Cameo today launched Cameo Kids, its new video messaging service that features personalized videos from popular animated characters like Thomas the Tank Engine, JJ, Cody, Cece and Nina from “CoComelon,” Blippi from “Blippi Wonders,” True from Netflix’s “True and the Rainbow Kingdom,” as well as an animated Santa Claus.

Today’s launch is notable as it marks the company’s first large investment into family entertainment. After a slowdown in business earlier this year that resulted in laying off 25% of its workforce, Cameo is on the hunt to grow its user base.

Cameo Kids will likely unlock a broader audience as shows like “CoComelon” draw in millions of viewers. In February 2022, “CoComelon” accounted for 33.3 billion minutes of viewing across Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and YouTube, per Nielsen.

The celebrity video-sharing service will introduce more and more characters to Cameo Kids on a “rolling basis,” Cameo wrote in its announcement. Parents and their children can get personalized birthday and holiday video greetings for $25 to $30. Video orders are usually delivered within seven days, claims the company.

“We’ve seen jaw-dropping fan reactions to Cameo videos over the last few years including truly wowed children, so we’re excited to spread even more of that joy with this new offering,” said Steven Galanis, Cameo Co-Founder and CEO, in a statement. “We’re building a platform where families can get their kid’s favorite star to not just know their name but share support for every important moment in their child’s life – big and small.”

Cameo partnered with Candle Media to help develop Cameo Kids. The media company was co-founded by former Disney executives Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs. Last year, Candle Media acquired Moonbug Entertainment, the distributor of shows “CoComelon,” “Blippi” and “Little Baby Bum.”

“The creator economy is driven by opportunities for fans to engage directly with their favorite personalities, and we are thrilled to partner with Cameo to allow parents and loved ones to create personalized Cameo videos featuring many of our most popular animated characters from Moonbug, and over time, additional Candle brands and franchises,” added Mayer and Staggs.

Cameo now offers kid-friendly personalized videos from CoComelon, Blippi, Thomas the Tank Engine by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch

Indian financial services firm Paytm said Thursday evening it is considering repurchasing its shares, following a tremulous year that has seen its stock price fall by over 60%.

In a stock exchange filing, Paytm said it will consider a proposal to buyback the fully paid-up equity shares of the company and discuss it in a meeting with board on December 13.

“The management believes that given the company’s prevailing liquidity/ financial position, a buyback may be beneficial for our shareholders. The outcome of the Board meeting will be disseminated to the stock exchanges after conclusion of the Board meeting on December 13, 2022, in accordance with the applicable provisions of the SEBI Listing Regulations,” it said in the filing.

Buybacks are not uncommon and are generally seen as a way companies could reward their shareholders. Many firms have ramped up repurchasing their shares this year, taking advantage of the falling prices in the public markets globally.

The move is especially notable for Paytm, whose shares have fallen over 65% since listing late last year and have never recovered to touch the issue price of $25.2. Its shares ended Thursday at $6.2.

(More to follow)

India’s Paytm considers buying back shares following a rough year by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch

A startup from former Meta employees aims to streamline the content moderation process for companies grappling with some of the internet’s most complex, dangerous challenges.

Cinder, which likes to describe itself as an “operating system for trust and safety,” boasts years of combined experience in security and content policy work. That includes CEO and co-founder Glen Wise, a former red team engineer at Meta, Philip Brennan and Declan Cummings, who worked on threat intelligence at Meta, and Brian Fishman, the former director of Facebook’s counterterrorism and dangerous organizations team.

Cinder is backed by venture firm Accel, which led a seed round in May and a $12.8 million Series A this month, with participation from Y Combinator. The company was created in January of this year and has raised a total of $14 million to date.

Speaking with TechCrunch, Wise likened Cinder to business software platforms like Salesforce and Zendesk that can pull scattered sets of data together into a single user interface. But with Cinder, instead of sales or customer service teams tracking and sifting data, content moderators and other members of a company’s trust and safety teams can centralize a sensitive workflow into one purpose-built tool.

Wise says that companies without robust workflows in place for trust and safety right now awkwardly rely on systems that were built for different use cases, like bug tracking.

“I started talking to a lot of heads of trust and safety [and] a lot of other large internet companies, honestly a lot outside of social media as well, and they were struggling with operationally how to solve a lot of this, Wise told TechCrunch. “They would hire really smart people but they’d be stuck in spreadsheets, they’d be stuck in SQL statements and be stuck in this kind of world of the past, because they had no tools custom built for this.”

If a content moderator using one of those systems wants to review a social media post, for example, they’d have to leave that environment and follow a URL to view the content in question before coming back into the bug tracking tool to view any relevant context and provide their input.

“Then like an hour and a half later, they can actually make a decision, Wise said. “And so we want to do all of that out of the box.” Wise says that so far Cinder mostly appeals to large companies that have established trust and safety operations or ones in the process of figuring out what those workflows should look like.

For social networks and other companies hosting user-generated content, the threats that trust and safety teams face are as complex as they are varied. Companies building out trust and safety must weave together expertise on everything from targeted harassment and hate groups to child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and state-sponsored influence operations.

Making moderation decisions in those areas can be as simple as flagging a single text post that uses a racial slur — a decision that might only take a few seconds — or as nuanced as linking together hundreds of accounts operating a covert government-sponsored influence campaign over the course of many months.

While some content is outright illegal, with official detection and reporting workflows to reflect that, most enforcement decisions fall to private companies to sort out. And as we’ve seen time and time again in recent years, the rules that define what content is allowed online and what content isn’t are living documents that respond, double back and evolve in real-time.

Cinder aims to centralize those policies and the necessary context, enabling straightforward decision making at scale while still facilitating “dynamic investigations” — the kind of work that a disinformation campaign or a coordinated effort to undermine an election might require. The platform doesn’t do any detection itself and it doesn’t set the rules, that’s all up to the companies that license its software. (For now, Cinder isn’t naming any of its clients.)

Wise also notes that because Cinder was designed for the content review process, the company has been able to accommodate the human element of some of the web’s most emotionally demanding work, building for those needs “from the ground up.” That includes emerging industry-standard practices like blurring and grayscaling or prompting moderators to take a break after viewing something particularly challenging. Those interventions and others can mitigate what might otherwise be lasting harm to content reviewers.

“I think a lot of people understand how hard of a job it is to be a moderator and to look at a lot of this content,” Wise told TechCrunch. “What’s been really rewarding about this is that companies are really trying to invest in safety measures and are looking to a third party to help provide them.”

Beyond moderator safety concerns, Wise says Cinder is built with security and privacy considered at every level, which comes naturally to a team with a strong security pedigree. He describes a “robust” permissioning system within the software that makes it possible to obscure sensitive identifying information or other data easily, allowing different levels of access to pre-defined groups.

“We have a few customers on board and using the product and they’re really happy about it,” Wise said. “People never really had the tools built for this… and people are really excited to see that, okay, there’s a company of people who’ve done this before, who can help build for the exact use case, which has been really great.”

Cinder’s content moderation software is custom-built for trust and safety teams by Taylor Hatmaker originally published on TechCrunch

Metagood, a for-profit social impact NFT startup, has raised $5 million in its pre-seed round, the team exclusively told TechCrunch.

“We launched the company on the concept of using NFTs as an expression where everyone does good things for each other and the good stuff is tokenized and exchangeable,” Bill Tai, co-founder and chairman of Metagood, said to TechCrunch.

The company launched its flagship NFT collection OnChainMonkey to create tokenized value for community members. It also aims to give members the chance to promote and fund social good projects through its DAO, which raised 2,000 ETH in just one year, he added.

Its DAO distributed 55 ETH, or $68,500 at current prices, to 28 projects across 10 weeks in its “Season 1,” Amanda Terry, co-founder of Metagood, said to TechCrunch. Some of its projects include funding the rehabilitation of a skate park in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with art from OnChainMonkey and helping Afghan refugees evacuate to Italy.

Investors in the recent funding round include Animoca Brands, Morgan Creek Capital founder and CEO Mark Yusko, and Virgin Group investment manager Freddie Andrewes, to name a few.

“We appeal to a certain kind of person that wants to have a positive impact on the world,” Tai said. “Many of our investors have experienced good success in their careers and want to use their influence to do other good things in the world.”

Previous investors include a number of high-profile celebrities or executives like actor Owen Wilson, Virgin Unite chair Holly Branson, and Rotten Tomatoes co-founders Patrick Lee and Stephen Wang, as well as crypto investments from Dapper Labs co-founder Roham Gharegozlou, Axie Infinity co-founder Jeffrey Zirlin and The Sandbox co-founder Sebastien Borget, among others.

“Holly Branson sees this as a vehicle to extend what she’s doing,” Tai said. “That’s the common theme here. Culturally, we attract good-hearted people that want to lead the world into better places.”

The capital will be used toward growing the company, hiring new talent, and building OnChainMonkey’s community and tools, Terry said. “We’ve been profitable off our pre-seed but we want to keep growing. We’re sitting on about 3,000 ETH from our public mint and other revenues.”

Metagood believes that web3 can be a positive force in creating an economy of good karma, where people are rewarded for doing good things, Tai said. The startup aims to combine rewards through charitable giving and the prices of the OnChainMonkey NFTs. “As the karma spreads, the economy grows.”

The DAO model allows for a maximum amount of funds to go toward projects— and fast, Tai said.

The skate park mentioned above is an example of a “micro charity grant that would be very hard to administer with a large organization, and we were able to pull that off within days,” Tai said.

“We want the rubber to meet the road between causes and giving, Tai said. “We can address things that large centralized charity organizations who have a lot of authorities can’t do. […] It wouldn’t surprise me if years from now we would be doing thousands of these a year.”

NFT-focused startup Metagood raises $5 million to grow ‘social good’ impact by Jacquelyn Melinek originally published on TechCrunch

It seems perhaps the rules of fairness your parents taught you as children also apply to large multi-billion dollar defense contracts. This week the DoD announced that it was awarding four big tech companies – Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Oracle – an equal opportunity to share in a $9 billion contract to bring the department to the cloud.

The new program, which is dubbed the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC), has a five and a half year window through 2028 with the four companies having an equal opportunity to access the $9 billion in funds, but with none being actually allocated as of yet to any of them.

“No funds will be obligated at the time of award; funds will be obligated on individual orders as they are issued,” the department said in a statement.

“The purpose of this contract is to provide the Department of Defense with enterprise-wide globally available cloud services across all security domains and classification levels, from the strategic level to the tactical edge.”

Whether this new contract solves the issues that arose around the original ill-fated DoD cloud procurement deal remains unclear. For those of you unfamiliar with the saga, the DoD cloud journey has been a long and twisted one.

It began in 2018 when the department announced the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure orJEDI for short. The cutesie Star Wars reference aside, the deal came under intense scrutiny because of its winner-take-all component, which immediately had companies complaining and jockeying for position for what was a $10 billion deal.

Oracle, which you’ll note has equal access in this deal, was particularly vocal, complaining that Amazon had an unfair advantage for a variety of reasons. In the end, it wasn’t Amazon that won the deal though, it was Microsoft. But that wasn’t the end of the story as Amazon challenged the result in court, claiming the previous president had a bias against former Amazon board chair (and former CEO) Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post newspaper.

After a lot of additional drama, the department finally pulled the plug on the whole thing in July 2021 and went back to square one.

And this week’s announcement is the culmination of that decision. The fact that it left the entire thing open-ended this time begs the question how this will all finally get resolved, but we have another five years to figure it out and see if the DoD can finally enter the cloud age without making the four major players (really, three and Oracle) unhappy again with who gets what.

Maybe mom really was right, and life isn’t cut up into equal pieces of pie.

This time, the DoD gives four tech titans equal shot at piece of $9B cloud contract by Ron Miller originally published on TechCrunch