Daily Tech Snippet: Friday January 2

• Snapchat is raising funds in an unusual manner - has raised $485M from >23 Investors since April 2014, valuation >$10B, 200M MAU:  “[Snapchat] goes after individual investors at different valuations. It’s a rolling investment and a rolling close. In theory you could say he’s already done 40 rounds.” (40 is likely figurative rather than literal.) What this means is that, if it’s true, then yes, Snapchat may have raised nearly $500 million in the last six months. Of that $500 million, it may be that only 75% of it is closed, and with portions at different valuations, some getting in pre-$10-billion, like Yahoo, and some above it and closer to $20 billion.The SEC filing notes that the date of first sale was in April 2014. We’ve also heard that the current post money valuation is $20 billion, although others have disputed this and said it’s closer to $10 billion. The cash is much-needed. One source said that Snapchat has an over $30 million-per-year burn rate, and pays half of that to Google Apps Engine to host all its photos, though this number seems low to us. Another noted that at one point the company was paying $3 million each month in legal fees alone. Snapchat’s had its share of lawsuits. Monthly Active Users are now at 200M, up from 100M in August. Amazon was not one of the investors in this round

• 'While you were away' - Twitter's recap feature is rolling out to significant numbers of users: ‘While you were away’ works much like Facebook’s Timeline and is the first major non-chronological feature to hit Twitter. Back in November, the company said it would look at the ‘best’ tweets from your network since you last opened Twitter, and put them at the top of your timeline so you don’t miss them. The algorithm that Twitter uses to source your ‘best’ tweets from your friends is crucial to its success. As someone who doesn’t use Twitter every minute of every day, I’d appreciate a recap but only if it is able to surface content that is relevant and interesting to me. There are already some services that exist solely to do that, while Twitter has email alerts for the purpose too. Nuzzel, for example, taps into your Facebook and Twitter network to surface news stories and other items that are popular with people you know. I’m skeptical that Twitter’s feature can be as effective, particularly since it only serves up a single tweet and that takes up precious real-estate at the top of your feed. Nonetheless, the addition looks like it will be more useful for users than many of Twitter’s recent features — which include sponsored accounts appearing in following lists, tweets from people you don’t follow in your timeline, and a test that meddled with the retweet button.

• VMWare, Workday testing a data-driven technology to predict employee attrition: VMware has been testing a new prediction technology from Workday, which makes software for human resources departments. The system delivers notifications about when employees might be getting ready to quit, and allows managers to intervene before it's too late. It looks for trends within employee activity, when promotions were last handed out, regional factors, changes in the industry and other data to make its predictions. The recommendations can improve over time as employers train the system. "We've had some great results to date with the data,” Amy Gannaway, VMware’s senior director for worldwide human resources information systems, said at a Workday conference in September. The tool gave VMware "a very high percentage" of accurate predictions for which employees would leave the company, she said.

• The Indian Railways will soon launch an iOS app, as mobile travel bookings are surging in India: According to a report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IMRB International, the number of mobile Internet users has witnessed a steady rise to 159 million in October. This is estimated to reach 173 million by the end of December. There were 119 million users in urban India accessing the Internet on mobile devices in October. Rural India is not that far behind, with a base of 40 million mobile Internet users in October 2013. Indian Railways, which has the largest share in online bookings, is witnessing surge of mobile bookings as well. According to sources at IRCTC, its mobile ticket booking app receives 8,000-9,000 bookings a day through mobiles. The numbers are low compared with the 600,000 tickets booked online every day, but officials say they expect this segment to grow. "Our mobile app has been downloaded 15,00,000 times on the Windows platform. On Android it has been downloaded 10,00,000 times. In a month's time we will be launching an app for iOS too," says a senior official on condition of anonymity.

• The 10 Most Innovative Digital Ad Products of 2014: (1) Google Shopping Campaigns took on Amazon with Product Listing Ads in early 2014, and then AdSense for Shopping, which shows product ads on third-party websites, in September 2014. (2) Snapchat's sponsored updates and live feed, which crowdsources Snapchat messages at events like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, now features commercials mixed in with the snaps from everyday users. For instance, Amazon sponsored Black Friday on Snapchat. (3) Instagram's autoplay sponsored videos, and brands from Disney to Electronic Arts to Banana Republic were the first to try them out. The video offering comes on top of sponsored photos, which were first served in 2013. (4) Facebook's Premium Video Ads didn't fully launch until March. These ads are autoplaying videos that are attracting a number of brands such as Macy's during Christmas. Video is the future of Facebook, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and billions of videos from users and marketers are seen everyday.(5) Twitter's app-install ads and e-commerce ads that have Buy Now buttons and video ads with View Now, and the list of potential actions is only growing. (6) Tumblr Sponsored Dot: Tumblr was full of new ad ideas this year, perhaps the most intriguing was the Sponsored Dot (that period at the end of its logo). Now, brands can buy it, dressing their logo as the punctuation mark for special occasions, like Starbucks did on National Coffee Day. (7) Kik Promoted Chats: The paid chats launched this year and let properties like Funny or Die and electronics brands like Skullcandy to message one-on-one with followers who opt in. It's a new kind of marketing built for mobile and messaging, two increasingly relevant areas. (8) Pinterest's Promoted Pins are the platform's first ad product, which launched fully earlier this year after being tested in late 2013. Brands like Kraft, Dell, Home Depot and Walmart are paying to boost their Pins, and there are now self-serve tools, too, for managing marketing campaigns on the platform. (9) Pandora's Sponsored Listening product, which offers users ad-free listening for an hour in return for watching a sponsored clip. In October, Fox helped promote new shows on Pandora with the help of the format. (10) Google Giferator: shows that Google is allowing advertisers to be more creative on the digital platform. The Giferator was generating dynamic ads in real time that could be highly targeted to select audiences. The ad technology was developed as part of Google's Art, Copy and Code program, where it tries to blend the creative and technical sides of digital advertising. Also, the Giferator let users create their own Gifs, a format that marketers couldn't get enough of this year.