😎 10 biggest stories in tech in 2021
Tech CEOs left, metaverse and NFT became buzzwords, chip shortage and supply chain crisis are here to stay
👋 Welcome to FWIW by David Tvrdon, your weekly tech, media & audio digest.
In the following three editions of this newsletter, I will be looking back at the top 10 stories of the year. In this first installment, I’ll be focusing on tech, next up will be media, and finally audio. We will get back to a regular weekly news schedule in the new year.
The list below is in no particular order of importance, I just thought it’s better with a number.
1. Twitter permanently banned Trump 👍
Former US president’s @realDonaldTrump Twitter account and the way he used it has caused many headaches and as many uncomfortable situations in the past few years.
The lifetime Twitter ban came after the president incited a mob that broke into the US Capitol building, disrupting Congress’ certification of Joe Biden as the President Elect.
In response to the Oversight Board, Facebook suspended Trump’s account for two years; it will only be reinstated if conditions permit
2. Tech founders and OGs find other hobbies 🚀
In 2021, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, left the CEO position to Andy Jassy, the former leader of AWS. I wrote about the legacy of Jeff Bezos in this newsletter in February.
Bezos has built Amazon from scratch, from just a simple idea - the internet is growing exponentially. Many have called him ‘the best CEO in tech history’. After he left the CEO chair, Bezos has turned to his non-profits. He said he wanted to spend more time on The Washington Post, and Blue Origin. And anyone who has been following his Instagram account noticed he now leads a very celebrity-like lifestyle.
This year also Twitter’s co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey left the company and many (including me) have been asking since - What’s next for Twitter?
And just to note it is truly the end of an era for US tech, Andreessen Horowitz founders begin the slow process of stepping back. Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen, the founders of the high-profile Silicon Valley venture firm a16z, have bought homes in Las Vegas and are cutting down on board memberships. A16z has backed many of the world-beating startups of the past decade, including Airbnb, Coinbase, GitHub, Slack, and Stripe. As Bloomberg Business week reported, there isn’t an obvious successor at a16z. Though, Andreessen and Horowitz disputed this news on Twitter.
3. Chip shortage and supply chain crisis 🦠
It began all the way in 2020 with the start of the pandemic. Factories from Asia to Europe and North America halted production, then masks and protective gear had to be delivered from China to the entire world causing a shortage of shipping containers.
Also, people started buying more furniture and stuff that wasn’t so much in demand before, so factories started producing those, and quickly a wave of these goods overwhelmed ports.
Shortages of one thing have turned into shortages of others. A dearth of computer chips, for example, has forced major automakers to slash production, while even delaying the manufacture of medical devices. Put together, these issues hit big and small companies alike. It is the reason why you couldn’t buy a PS5, why there are Amazon package delays or why Apple won’t hit a record quarter of new iPhones sold.
The New York Times has an excellent explainer on the beginning of the supply chain crisis. Also, listen to this podcast with a professor of management practices at Harvard Business School explaining the chip shortage.
4. Big Tech got bigger 😮📈
Not very surprising but big technology companies were one of the biggest winners of 2021, their stock soared, so did their valuation and many reported historically excellent earnings.
Microsoft, Apple, Google owner Alphabet, Amazon and Tesla were collectively worth almost $10trn. That's nearly a quarter of the combined $41.8trn market cap of the entire S&P 500.
5. Facebook scandals and the rise of TikTok 🤨
I cannot count all the scandals that the media has reported on in regard to social networks, but perhaps the biggest of 2021 have been the revelations leaked by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. First, she worked with Wall Street Journal on Facebook Files, and later formed a consortium called Facebook Papers giving access to leaked documents to more newsrooms.
The rise of TikTok has been another big part of the conversation, the app his 1 billion users in September and just kept growing. Just recently, the 'TikTok Algo 101' was revealed by The New York Times.
6. Everyone is building a metaverse 🤖
I think it is fair to say ‘metaverse‘ has become a buzzword in 2021. Facebook renamed itself Meta to signal the metaverse. Microsoft announced it is building a metaverse for work.
Meanwhile, Roblox more than tripled its valuation and many kept mentioning it as an example of a functioning metaverse. Don’t forget Epic Games as another contender and Reuters has a helpful list of all the companies that have joined the race to the metaverse.
7. Crypto, web3, NFTs, meme stocks 🤪
I know, I know, some will say all these things should not be bundled together but it’s my list and I am simply putting them as different pieces of a single story and that is ‘how the internet and society is changing’. We (I) do not fully understand where it’s going and it’s in this weird place.
Cryptocurrency has been a big topic. Even in my home country, Slovakia, Google Search trends for 2021 showed ‘how to buy bitcoin‘ as one of the breakthrough searches. Further afield, El Salvador became the first country to make Bitcoin a national currency.
There has been a lot of talk about web3. Here’s a good web3 explainer, and here’s an interview with the person who coined the term.
NFT became the word of the year. In March, a digital artwork named "Everydays: The First 5000 days" sold for $69.3m via Christie's, making its creator, graphic designer Mike Winkelmann, better known as Beeple, one of the art market's most valuable living artists. And some have argued that a future with digital scarcity might be a good thing.
And finally, meme stocks dominated the conversation in tech news on and off for almost the whole year. Meme stocks refer to a select few stocks that gain sudden popularity on the internet and lead to sky-high prices and unusually high trading volume.
8. More tech regulation and fines 💰
Lawmakers and regulators finally became so upset with Big Tech that 2021 marks the year they started pushing for some (possibly) game-changing regulation.
The EU’s Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act are two heavily debated pieces of legislation unveiled last year by the European Commission that seek to curb the power of Big Tech.
South Korea passed a bill limiting Apple and Google control over app store payments.
The Financial Times has a topic called Technology regulation, if you start looking at just the headlines in 2021, you will find stories of multiple fines given out this year.
9. Internet outages 🛑
More than ever before I felt the internet outages this year. There have been several big AWS outages, some Google Cloud outages, Apple outages and most notably the global outage of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp that lasted for over five hours.
All these outages highlighted the degree to which many of the internet’s most popular services rely on cloud computing infrastructure handled by a very small number of large companies. According to Gartner, 80% of the cloud market is handled by just five companies. Amazon, with a 41% share, is the biggest.
10. The billionaires kick off space tourism 🧑🚀
Billionaires Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson launched themselves into space, even though their space flights lasted for a few minutes, both have been closely watched and described as the start of space tourism.
Bezos has his Blue Origin, Branson has the Virgin Galactic space company.
The third to launch some tourists into space was Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
With all of those launches, 2021 will be remembered as the first milestone of space tourism.
Of course, this is a very subjective rundown of the biggest tech topics of 2021. I know a bunch of stuff is missing but that’s the thing with lists, the good ones only give you a finite number of points. If you think something should have been included and it’s not, just hit reply and let me know.
❓ Poll: What do you consider the biggest tech story of 2021?
🙌 Thanks. I used HandyPolls to create this poll (instructions).
Last poll results: What do you think of e-scooters? 24% haven’t used them and 24% hate them, 18% said they are ok, 17% love them and 17% don’t care.
🙏 And big thanks to Celine Bijleveld who helped me edit this newsletter. You can follow her on Substack here.