Friday December 5, 2014

• Uber raises $1.2B of new funding, valuation of $40B (>Tesla, 4x of AirBnb) also raises $1B convertible debt (with hint of IPO less than 4 years away): Uber closed a new $1.2 billion round of financing on Thursday, with investors valuing the company at a staggering $40 billion. That puts a new mountain of cash on top of the $1.5 billion that Uber had already raised. The company is now valued at four times that of other elite Silicon Valley startups, such as Airbnb Inc. Uber’s value also dwarfs Tesla Motors Inc. (TSLA), which has a market capitalization of $28.6 billion. General Motors Co., the largest U.S. automaker, has a $53.2 billion market capitalization. Uber is also building its finances with a more than $1 billion convertible debt sale to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS)’s wealth management clients. The clients are getting a chance to buy a six-year bond in Uber that will convert into equity at a 20 percent to 30 percent discount to the company’s valuation at the time of an initial public offering, said people with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified because the details are private. Goldman Sachs isn’t investing its own money in the debt, said the people. The convertible bond carries a coupon that increases over time if Uber hasn’t gone public within 4 years, said the people. “It’s interesting that, with the convertible debt, Uber is putting itself under pressure to go public within 4 years,” Sanwal said.

• "Create-to-consume" (aka "Reply to unlock") failed, so Facebook relaunches Slingshot with easier Discovery; to be (even) more like Snapchat: Facebook first launched Slingshot back in June with an innovative, if a bit friction-full, feature where you had to reply with a photo or video to see one a friend had sent you. It was one of the early releases from Facebook’s Creative Labs project for experimenting with mobile app design. While I found it fun at first, the annoyance of having to create to consume eventually whittled down the small initial user base, and I haven’t received a Sling in months. The update in September that dropped the reply-to-unlock requirement did nothing to reinvigorate the community.Today Facebook took yet another swipe at Snapchat with the re-release of its ephemeral sharing app Slingshot for iOS and Android. Now you follow people like on Twitter, but you can still privately message. If you pull down the camera, you’ll see a grid of shots from the last 24 hours by people you follow — a lot like Snapchat Stories. The difference is you can immediately see big visual previews of friends’ Slings rather than having to open them to reveal what they’ve been up to like on Snapchat. And spying the success of Snapchat Stories stars, Slingshot has a discovery center for finding cool people to follow.

• Yahoo's mobile efforts paying off; will overtake Twitter in mobile ads next year, move to 3rd after Google, Facebook: Yahoo is now projected to be the largest gainer of U.S. mobile-ad market share between 2014 and 2016, according to new data from EMarketer Inc. out today. Yahoo’s mobile-ad slice will climb to 3.74 percent in 2015 and to 4.2 percent in 2016. While still tiny, it’s enough to push Yahoo ahead of current number three player Twitter, which will have 3.69 percent market share next year and 3.8 percent in 2016. Google Inc. (GOOG) and Facebook Inc. (FB) remain the biggest U.S. mobile-ad companies, with 35 percent and 17 percent shares next year respectively. The numbers show how an effort by Mayer to marshal resources and refocus the company on mobile is starting to pay off, making Yahoo relevant in a digital-advertising area that’s projected to reach almost $60 billion in the U.S. in 2018 from $19 billion this year. In October, Mayer broke out Yahoo’s mobile revenue for the first time, reporting third-quarter sales of more than $200 million, with gross revenue in mobile set to exceed $1.2 billion this year.

• Mobile shoppers care about: efficient checkout: As users take to mobile platforms in greater numbers, retailers are learning that small-screen shoppers are different: They buy fewer things and have less patience for a checkout process that is anything less than incredibly efficient. Also, while shoppers did plenty of browsing this holiday season on their cellphones, tablets and PCs still reigned for actually making purchases. Smartphones accounted for 34.7 percent of traffic on Black Friday, but just 11.8 percent of sales.  Also, bad signs for Google: Tablet shoppers were more likely to reach the company's site through a search engine this holiday season, while smartphone users were more likely to come from Facebook or other social media.