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Chess.com has a new subscription option for chess families and tight-knit players: a friends and family plan. The site, where players around the world can face off against live opponents, play bots, and solve chess puzzles, introduced its group tier in January, offering a players a discount on its top-tier offerings with the aim of winning the long-term loyalty game. For $199.99 a year, Chess.com’s “Friends and Family” Diamond Premium plan offers up to four people access to feature’s like an ad-free site experience, chess lessons, game reviews, and insights into how to improve their skills that would run an individual subscriber $120 a year. Its good for consumers, because it brings down the average cost of the membership, says Erik Allebest, founder and CEO of Chess.com. But then its also good for the business and for retention, because people tend to stick together and stay members together. Who wants to cancel a membership and then have all their friends lose their benefits? Squaring the economics Chess.com’s subscriptions are more easily compared to music streamers that video platformswith companies like Netflix and Max taking action to curb password sharing. Like an avid music fan who doesn’t want a friend or family member’s taste throwing off their recommendations, Chess.com users guard their ratingand passwordsfiercely. Nobody wants to share their chess login[someone could] play a game and mess up their rating, Allebest says. It becomes more important to have a friends and family plan, because you dont just get to share your password and do it that way. Music streamers also offer an example of how the group subscription economics could play out. In 2016, Spotify delighted customers by dropping their family plans price to just $14.99 per month. The move kept them competitive with Apple, but over time, the price has crept upit now sits at $19.99 per month. That hasn’t had a negative affect on the number of people signing up for it, though. On its most recent quarterly earnings call, Spotify co-president and chief business officer Alex Nordstrom noted that its family plan is “making up a big proportion of [our] subscriber base.” Allebest estimates that with its current all-time high of approximately 1.5 million paying subscribers, Chess.com’s premium accounts make up about 80% of the sites revenue. The new friends and family plan could eat into that bottom line in the short term, but sees long-term loyalty as something worth an early revenue hit. If its $199 for up to four people, maybe six people in the future, youre getting fewer dollars per person, Allebest says. The bet is that youll get lower dollars-per-user, but youll get a longer lifetime subscription. Seeing what works Allebest says the site is no stranger to experimenting with different ways to attract and retain players. The company offers gift subscriptionsan effort he calls “moderately successful”and micro-tests a variety of new features among Chess.com’s Beta Club of power users. Were not innovating dramatically here, Allebest says. But we are testing it. We tried a lower price. Were going to try adding more seats to it.” Their metric of success will be subscriber turnover, or “churn” rates. Allebest says that he’s “constantly monitoring” the company’s churn, though he declined to share a specific churn rate. Itll take a year, he estimates, until they know just how successful the program is. But Allebest is confident that the program will work out, as they continue to fine-tune it to be the best value. I feel like paying a subscription for a service that provides utility in your life is fair, he says. “[Were] trying to find the right balance.”
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E-Commerce
A U.S. judge will consider on Monday the fate of President Donald Trump’s buyout offer to two million federal workers as Trump presses ahead with an unprecedented effort to dismantle government agencies and downsize the federal workforce. U.S. District Judge George O’Toole in Boston will hear arguments in a lawsuit brought by federal workers’ unions which claim the Trump administration’s “deferred resignation” offer to government civilian employees is illegal because the U.S. Congress has not approved funding for the scheme. Trump has tasked Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, with overseeing the purge of employees through the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The actions of DOGE, which is not a government department, have sown panic in Washington and triggered public protests and a flood of calls from angry voters to Congress worried about the access Musk’s team has been given to sensitive information in government computer systems that contain data on government payments to Americans and personal details of federal workers. Musk aides have taken senior positions at key government agencies while the billionaire has pushed for the dismantling of others, including USAID, America’s humanitarian and development aid agency, and the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, the consumer watchdog set up in 2010 after the global financial crisis. EDUCATION DEPARTMENT, PENTAGON NEXT Opposition Democrats and federal employee unions have decried the power Trump has bestowed on South African-born Musk, who appears largely unaccountable except to Trump himself. Trump says Musk does not operate unilaterally but only with his blessing. Musk and his team of young staff appear to be far exceeding the mandate given to them by an executive order Trump signed when he took office on January 20, in which DOGE was asked to provide recommendations on how to modernize technology used by the federal government. Last week Judge O’Toole temporarily paused the Thursday deadline for workers to accept Trump’s buyout plan, which offers employees pay through September if they resign now. While unions have urged members not to accept the offer, saying the Trump administration cannot be trusted to honor it, more than 65,000 government employees have so far opted to take it as of Friday. Reuters has been unable to independently verify that number, which does not include a breakdown of workers from each agency. O’Toole could decide on another temporary pause to the program, bar it outright, or allow it to proceed. A CFPB employee sounded downbeat on Sunday, saying even if the judge blocks the buyout program, he and fellow staff believe they will likely lose their jobs anyway. Russell Vought, Trump’s new acting director of the CFPB, sent an email to workers on Saturday night ordering them to cease virtually all work. On Sunday, workers received another email telling them the agency would be closed for a week starting on Monday. A labor union that represents CFPB workers filed a lawsuit late on Sunday to block Vought’s actions, arguing that he was violating Congress’s authority to set and fund the agency’s mission. The agency regulates consumer financial products and has long incurred the ire of conservatives, who view its existence as government overreach. On Friday, the same day his staff were reported to have entered the agency, Musk posted “CFPB RIP” on X, his social media platform. Trump said on Sunday he expected Musk to find billions of dollars of waste in military spending once he instructs the billionaire to turn his sights on the Pentagon. The aggressive moves by Trump and Musk are bringing new lawsuits on an almost daily basis. An effort to hollow out USAID is partially on hold after a judge’s ruling, and Trump’s effort to freeze trillions of dollars in federal loans, grants and other financial assistance has also been paused in a separate case. On Saturday a judge temporarily blocked DOGE from accessing government systems used to process trillions of dollars in payments at the Treasury Department. Tim Reid and Nate Raymond, Reuters
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E-Commerce
President Donald Tumps recent declaration that he has ordered the Treasury Department to stop minting new pennies has raised legal and constitutional questions. Lets rip the waste out of our great nations budget, even if its a penny at a time, he said in a post on Truth Social, adding that pennies literally cost us more than 2 cents. While Trump has touted the move as a necessary cost-saving measure, his authority to unilaterally eliminate a form of U.S. currency is far from clear. Elon Musk, who is somehow infiltrating American policy now, has targeted the penny through his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). According to a post on X, DOGE claims the penny costs over 3 cents to make, with taxpayers shouldering a $179 million bill in 2023 alone. The U.S. Mint produced over 4.5 billion pennies in fiscal year 2023, accounting for nearly 40% of the 11.4 billion coins minted for circulation. The role of Congress in currency decisions The power to regulate coinage and currency specifications is explicitly granted to Congress under Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. Historically, decisions about the size, composition, and discontinuation of U.S. coins have required congressional approval. For example, the elimination of the half-cent coin in 1857 was enacted through legislation, not an executive order. The Coinage Act of 1792, along with subsequent amendments, sets clear parameters for the issuance of currency, including the penny. The Act grants Congressnot the presidentthe power to establish and modify coinage. Any fundamental changes to the pennys production, including discontinuation, would likely require an act of Congress rather than a directive from the White House. Executive authority over the U.S. mint The U.S. Mint operates under the Department of the Treasury, which falls within the executive branch. The president has the ability to direct executive agencies, but those directives must align with existing laws passed by Congress. While Trump may have the power to temporarily pause the production of pennies through administrative discretion, outright elimination of the coin would require legislative action. If Trump attempts to proceed without congressional approval, the move could be contested by lawmakers who view it as an overreach of executive power. Broader implications of discontinuing the penny Beyond the legal debate, Trumps announcement raises larger questions about the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches. If a president can unilaterally end production of a coin, what other aspects of federal monetary policy could be subject to executive whims? While many economists have long argued that eliminating the penny makes sense from a financial perspective (given that its production cost exceeds its face value), the process for doing so has proven has proven elusive for decades. If Trump wishes to end penny production permanently, he will likely need to convince Congress to pass the necessary legislation.
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E-Commerce
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