Maybe it was the bullish jobs report. Maybe it was the drumbeat of mammoth fundraising rounds for private tech companies.
Whatever the reasons, The Information subscribers are notably more optimistic about the overall economy than a month ago—and in a more upbeat mood about the tech sector too. In December’s monthly sentiment survey, 41 percent of respondents said they were more optimistic about the economy than the previous month, while only 13 percent were less so. That’s compared to November when 25 percent were more optimistic and 24 percent were less.
Regarding individual companies, Uber paid the price of executive Emil Michael’s comments about digging up dirt on reporters and the ensuing media firestorm. The service fell from a score of 30 to 0, driven mostly by those neutral last month going negative. Its positives were still quite high. (To calculate the score, we take the percentage of users more optimistic minus the percentage less optimistic.)
It’s worth noting that the survey period also included the on-demand ride company’s announcement of a record-breaking round of funding valuing the company at $40 billion. (The fact that it didn’t impress The Information readers says a lot about expectations for private tech companies right now.) But it didn’t include some of the more recent news of Spain and India moving to shut down the company.
Other companies that showed a clear uptick in enthusiasm: Airbnb’s score rose from 15 percent to 29 percent. Snapchat and Amazon also saw meaningful increases. The latter could be from a combination of the holiday season and rare public remarks from CEO Jeff Bezos, who defended the company plowing back its profits into the business.
Twitter and Square saw slight improvements—although sentiment was still quite negative.
On TV watching, our rotating survey topic for this month, our subscribers showed a moderate willingness to pay for over-the-top HBO, with the preponderance saying they would pay between $5 and $10. (The Information has previously reported that HBO is expected to charge around $15 a month for its service without a pay-TV subscription, about $6 more than Netflix’s main plan.)
The data suggest that even readers who value subscription services, as The Information subscribers do, may get stingier as more entertainment companies ask them to pay up. Spotify’s aggressive promotions right now (three months for 99 cents as opposed to $30) had us wondering whether the company may lower prices more permanently.
Seventy percent of respondents paid for cable service—a healthy percentage, but the 30 percent that don’t is nothing to ignore. It’s roughly double the percentage of U.S. households that have cut the cord to watch Internet video, according to an Experian report.