*By Michael Teich*
Walmart's reported plans to launch a streaming video service may prove futile, said The Information reporter Jessica Toonkel. After all, the retailer, she told Cheddar on Wednesday, is late to the game.
"Netflix and Amazon have been doing this for a while," Toonkel said. "This is a really hard business to get into."
Toonkel broke news this week that Walmart may develop a subscription-based video service to compete with Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. The retailer is considering a price point below $8 per month and may also include an ad-supported free service.
What's the likelihood that Walmart will actually enter the streaming business? That depends on its willingness to spend billions of dollars, Toonkel explained. But after generating $17 billion in cash last year, the company potentially has enough ammo to match Netflix's aggressive spending budget, pegged at $8 billion for 2018.
But it's not just a matter of cash flow, Toonkel said. "They have a lot of money, clearly, but they also have investors that might not be as patient as investors in Netflix."
Walmart's last attempt to enter video content faltered ー in 2010 the retailer acquired Vudu, a video-on-demand service that currently offers a combined 100,000 movie titles and television series. But analytics firm comScore reported that users spent only 18,000 hours on the platform in May, just 2 percent of the total hours spent on Netflix and 6 percent of hours spent watching Amazon in the same period.
For the full segment, [click here.](https://cheddar.com/videos/walmart-could-launch-video-streaming-platform)
Elon Musk says Twitter is still losing cash because advertising has dropped by half. In a reply to a tweet offering business advice, Musk tweeted Saturday, “We’re still negative cash flow, due to (about a) 50% drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load.”
A First Amendment group sued Texas Governor Greg Abbott and others on Thursday over the state’s TikTok ban on official devices, arguing the prohibition – which extends to public universities – is unconstitutional and impedes academic freedom.
We've all heard the phrase time equals money. Well, Shopify has rolled out a meeting cost calculator in efforts to encourage people to empty their calendars of those unnecessary meetings.
ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and The Associated Press said Thursday that they've made a deal for the artificial intelligence company to license AP's archive of news stories.
Alexander Mashinsky, the former CEO of the failed cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius Network, has been arrested on federal fraud charges, including wire fraud, according to CNBC.
Threads could bring in $8 billion in annual revenue, according to analysis, after it reached about 100 million users days after its launch. Cheddar News explains.
