This series is designed to bring together a variety of shorter, readily available podcasts to introduce a topic from recent headlines and inspire discussion.

From Facebook changing its company name to Meta to Epic’s (company behind Fortnite) battle with Apple’s App Store policies, there have been many tech and social media headlines in the past couple of months. In this post, we dive into some of these headlines and have coupled them with some open-ended questions.

Here are two 2-4 minute Marketplace podcasts discussing these headlines.

• 2/2 Marketplace Morning Report Big Tech is starting to invest heavily in the metaverse
• 1/18 Marketplace Here’s why Microsoft is buying Activision Blizzard

Here are some relevant Marketplace Minute podcasts.

• 2/4 Morning Brief Meta suffers biggest loss in market value in one day following earnings announcement (2/3 Closing Bell) showcases Facebook’s disappointing performance.
• 2/2 Morning Brief Among many corporate earnings announcements, Alphabet’s earnings jumped 36%. 
• 2/1 Morning Brief New York Times to buy Wordle.
• 1/31 Closing Bell Sony to buy Bungie and (Microsoft to buy Activision-Blizzard).
• 1/28 Morning Briefing 34 States support Epic in their legal battle with Apple.

Assignment:

Determine how much time you want to devote to this activity, and select podcasts to provide students with background information. 

Have students then tackle these discussion questions. This can be done individually, in groups, or as a class. Encourage students to cite examples from the podcasts in their responses.

1. There are some common themes or issues woven through these stories.  Students can discuss how each company is impacted by them.
   1. Ad Revenue:
      1. How has Apple’s privacy changes impacted the companies that rely on this as a primary source of revene?
      2. How is Meta planning to boost ad revenue?
      3. What alternative revenue models could these companies use?
      4. What is the value of a free game like Wordle to the NYT?
   2. Consolidation of players/monopoly power
      1. How will the consolidation of players impact the consumers of things like video games?
      2. Does “bigger” mean more innovation or less?
      3. Who has more power, the game producer of the company that controls your access to the game?
         

If you use this assignment in your class, please let us know how it went!

About the Authors

Ren Makino

Ren started interning at NGPF in 2014, and worked part-time through high school and college. With his knowledge growing alongside NGPF, he joined the team to work full-time after graduating from college in 2020. He is also the producer of the NGPF podcast. During his free time, he likes to try out coffees from different roasters across the world.

Beth Tallman

Beth Tallman entered the working world armed with an MBA in finance and thoroughly enjoyed her first career working in manufacturing and telecommunications, including a stint overseas. She took advantage of an involuntary separation to try teaching high school math, something she had always dreamed of doing. When fate stepped in once again, Beth jumped on the opportunity to combine her passion for numbers, money, and education to develop curriculum and teach personal finance at Oberlin College. Beth now spends her time writing on personal finance and financial education, conducts student workshops, and develops finance curricula and educational content. She is also the Treasurer of Ohio Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy.