Web Work Weekly: All Eyes on Bitcoin and Video

From the Featured Article Series:
Web Work Weekly

By Milo Cruz | Last Updated: December 11, 2017

Successful entrepreneurs need to keep their fingers on the pulse of their chosen industries, but that can be difficult with the rapid-fire shifts in business and tech. Here are the top stories from the past week to get you up to speed on emerging trends, hot developments, and more from all over the web.

The Growing Bitcoin Bubble?

Jaws are dropping all over the web as bitcoin continues its unprecedented surge. Business Insider reports that the digital currency has hit $15,000 as of 10:50 AM GMT on December 7. That marks a meteoric $3,000 increase in value over just 36 hours, putting the whole cryptocurrency market at over $400 billion. Unsurprisingly, top firms like Coinbase saw user counts surging into the tens of millions in less than two days.

However, the future isn’t looking all rosy for the bitcoin. In a statement on Bloomberg TV, the chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland, Sir Howard Davies, cautioned investors against going all-in on the cryptocurrency bull run. Davies described bitcoin as “a frothy investment bubble” fraught with risks that central banks ought to be warning investors about.

Some more quick hits:

The Pivot to Video Continues

More and more web media is shifting to video, and Amazon is responding in a big way. The company ended November with an announced expansion of Amazon Web Services to better support cloud-based video encoding and delivery across the internet. The announcement follows Amazon’s 2015 acquisition of Elemental, a startup that focused on video services.

Amazon’s expanded services will include:

  • Media Convert, a transcoding service
  • Media Live, a live video encoder for streaming
  • Media Protect, for digital rights management
  • Media Store, cloud storage for video-optimized files

Meanwhile, YouTube announced that it’s extending its Community feature to all users with 10K+ subscribers.  The announcement also marks YouTube’s jump onto the “Stories” format train with its own take, called “Reels.”