TGIF Flux fam! Ya made it 🥳

Here's everything you need to know today - in under 3 minutes.

Today's big stories:

📣Twitter's introducing a TikTok-style video feed

⛽️A shortage of AdBlue could cause havoc on Australia's truckies

🤑Visa is launching a crypto advisory

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Twitter tries new product development method called CTRL C + CTRL V

Background: Twitter has been trying to revamp itself this year. They've introduced a heap of new products and features like live audio convos (Twitter Spaces), a subscription offering (Twitter Blue), and the Tip Jar to pay creators.

What happened: Now, they're testing a new feature that turns the platform's explore page into a TikTok-like video feed. And yep, there will even the famous 'For You' tab to keep you stuck in an hours-long T-hole.

What else: Twitter reckon the new feature will add a ~personal~ touch to explore...but really, it's just about keeping up with TikTok.

So what's the key learning?

💡Gone are the days of huge product innovations. Now it's all a case of the copy cat. Twitter launching a new video feed (ala TikTok) may have seemed like some straight-up copyright theft. But now, it's par for the course.

💡Developing new products is time-consuming, expensive and not to mention risky AF. Copying on the other hand...it's cheap and easy. And these days, being first doesn't necessarily mean you're the best anymore.

💡Instagram's Stories are way more popular than Snap's (despite launching later) and the Apple Watch (which came out after Samsung's smartwatch) took off too.

Turns out Australia hasn't hit rock bottom yet but it will when we run out of 'AdBlue' in 2022

Background: AdBlue is a fluid that forms part of diesel petrol and helps to reduce emissions produced by trucks. And it just so happens that the key ingredient in AdBlue (urea) is also used for fertiliser.

What happened: Recently, China blocked exports of urea to drive down prices in its own country's fertiliser. As a by-product of this, Australia is now in short supply of AdBlue. And it's about to get all Mad Max up in here 🚩🚩🚩🚩

What else: This stuff is likely to run out in February, and if it does, it means a huge portion of Aussie trucks don't have anything to run on. It means we could see shortages of food in supermarkets...delays on furniture orders...and potentially an intense slowdown in the Aussie economy.

So what's the key learning?

💡There is a constant trade-off between importing goods from other countries...or manufacturing within your own country.

💡Importing can often be a LOT cheaper (we're talkin' 20 to 40% cheaper)...But it means you become heavily dependent on those countries.

💡Australia imports around 90% of the ingredients in AdBlue, which means when the brakes are slammed, we've got no backup. As more supply issues start to arise, Australia may need to look at bringing some manufacturing back on home soil.

FEEL THE BIT: Visa launch a crypto advisory firm to help us noobs figure out what's going on

Background: In March this year, Visa started accepting payments in cryptocurrencies and facilitating crypto transactions. It was a pretty huge, progressive step for a relatively old, traditional Visa.

What happened: Now, this crew are launching a new consulting and advisory service to help their clients navigate the world of cryptocurrencies. We're talkin' how to roll out new crypto features...to advice on the latest NFT.

What else: It's just the latest example of Visa pushing deeper into the crypto industry as new trends increase competition in payments.

So what's the key learning?

💡Competitive threats can come in all shapes and sizes. Particularly in the payments industry.

💡For Visa, traditionally its competitors were just ya Mastercards and AmEx. Now, we've got buy now, pay laters...fintech startups...big tech companies...and crypto platforms.

💡Visa sees crypto as a key growth opportunity, but one of the biggest challenges in the crypto space is professional guidance. So, they reckon a crypto consultancy could help grow adoption of bitcoin and other digital currencies into the mainstream. #StayRelevant.