The Daily Crunch 11/28/16

Can you buy an entire audience cohort? That question and more in The Daily Crunch for November 28, 2016.

1. CNN tries to buy the YouTuber generation

Well okay maybe not the WHOLE generation but they did acquire Beme, which I'm guessing was probably just what it took to actually acquire co-founder Casey Neistat. Neistat's done well with YouTube audiences via his daily vlog and other projects, and CNN badly wants to be relevant to YouTube's audience.

The problem is that CNN has tried acquisitions as a path to digital relevance in the past, but to no great effect. Neistat also missed the mark once already with Beme (it was never going to succeed on its own), so it seems unlikely that pairing that vision up with an old media institution is going to light any fires.

2. Uber's app no longer works in China

Good luck getting around in China, U.S. visitors – as of today the Uber app used by the rest of the world no longer works in China. It's part of the transition of Uber's China business to Didi Chuxing, but Didi's saying an international version of its own Uber apps will come sometime in the future.

3. Black Friday rockets to new record

Black Friday was big for online shopping – the biggest year yet, in fact. And mobile earned around a third of the total spent online, which is gigantic. A few more years of this and local news outlets will have no stampedes at Walmart to film on the day itself.

4. Who watches the Watch Dogs, though?

Watch Dogs kind of sucked as a game, but Watch Dogs 2 is great! Sequels do sometimes surpass their predecessors, and the San Francisco/Silicon Valley setting of Watch Dogs 2, along with its willingness to actually be funny, make it great.

5. Japan's $173 million bet on supercomputing

You get what you pay for, and Japan wants to buy itself a spot back atop the world's supercomputing powers with a new 130 petaflop computer with a $173 million price tag. That's a little over $1 million per petaflop, I'm not sure how that fits in with standard currency conversion rates.

6. Samsung considers split

Samsung's investors are looking for a potential split of the company into two separate entities. The smartphone and electronics giant may well propose that among options it's considering to raise shareholder value in an announcement to investors tomorrow.