Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday February 4

• Alibaba ties up with online marketplace lending giant to bring unsecured loans to American businesses looking to order from Alibaba: The companies behind two of the hottest stock market debuts of 2014, Lending Club and the Alibaba Group, are teaming up — to help American companies buy parts from Chinese manufacturers. The two announced on Tuesday that they would form a partnership to provide financing for manufacturers in the United States to buy products and supplies through the Chinese marketplace Alibaba.com. Through Lending Club, the giant of the online marketplace lending industry, those companies can line up from $5,000 to as much as $300,000 for each purchase order. It’s an unusual move meant in part to replace traditional business supply-chain borrowing, at least for the small- to medium-size businesses that look to Alibaba for a portion of their manufacturing. Rather than have to rely on banks or other traditional lenders who require collateral for their financing, these customers can instead use Lending Club’s systems to procure an unsecured loan with near-instant approval. it is a unifying of two of the most talked-about online marketplaces of the moment. Alibaba is one of China’s biggest Internet companies, whose multiple platforms — including Alibaba.com, which is meant for wholesale purchases — draw millions of customers. And Lending Club helped define what once was known as peer-to-peer lending, in which potential investors can go online to be matched with hopeful borrowers. The loans for the new venture, to be called “Alibaba.com e-Credit Line, Powered by Lending Club,” comes at lower interest rates than what others can provide. According to Mr. Laplanche, the new venture offers a monthly interest rate starting at 0.5 percent, about half of what a more traditional lender could provide. But unlike more traditional manufacturing financing options, such as “factoring,” the loans aren’t backed by particular assets. Alibaba had begun searching for a lending partner several months ago, eventually reaching out to both traditional banks and newer market-based lenders. After what amounted to a lengthy audition process, including trips to Alibaba’s offices in China, the Chinese e-commerce giant ultimately chose to go with Lending Club. “First of all, they are also a platform business,” Michael Lee, Alibaba.com’s global marketing and business development director, said in a telephone interview, adding that customers had asked for an simple financing solution for some time. “They are also very transparent with their rate and the way they do business. And they got good feedback from their own users.” For Alibaba, according to Mr. Lee, the hope is that customers will use such financing to make orders at least once a year. And if the system proves as easy to use as both sides hope, it could help convince more American businesses to order from Alibaba.com more often. For Lending Club, the move is meant to help further a move into new kinds of lending. Though it began life by offering debt consolidation loans to help pay off credit cards, the company has pushed to enter new kinds of financing, including elective surgical procedures and small-business loans.

• As RadioShack files for bankruptcy, Amazon is considering buying some of its brick-and-mortar locations: Amazon, aiming to bolster its brick-and-mortar operations, has discussed acquiring some RadioShack Corp. locations after the electronics chain files for bankruptcy, two people with knowledge of the matter said. Amazon has considered using the RadioShack stores as showcases for the Seattle-based company’s hardware, as well as potential pickup and drop-off centers for online customers, said one of the people, who asked not to be named because the deliberations are private. The possible move, discussed as part of RadioShack’s looming trip to bankruptcy court, would represent Amazon’s biggest push into traditional retail. Amazon joins other potential bidders, including Sprint Corp. and the investment group behind Brookstone, in evaluating RadioShack stores, people familiar with the situation said. RadioShack has more than 4,000 U.S. locations and is moving toward a deal to sell a portion and close the rest, according to some of the people. Sprint has discussed buying 1,300 to 2,000, they said.

• Alan Eustace, SVP of Knowledge, is leaving Google: Alan Eustace, a longtime Google employee and its SVP of Knowledge — and also the current world-record holder for making the highest-altitude free-fall jump — is leaving the company. Eustace is not departing for another role elsewhere but is retiring, from what we understand. The news was conveyed to staff by internal memo, and it’s not clear who will be taking over his role and/or if there are any other departures. We’ve been told by a source that Google has been working through a larger reorganization of its business. Eustace had been looking to leave for a while and seized the moment. Things have been moving around at the executive level of Google in the last several months. In October last year (literally the same day Eustace set his skydiving record), several divisions of the company were centralised under Sundar Pichai, including Eustace’s research operations. Shortly after that, Android pioneer Andy Rubin left the company. Other research leaders who have left Google include Sebastian Thrun, who helped found Google X to develop “moonshot” products and technology. He stepped away from his VP and Fellow roles at the company last September to focus more on his education startup Udacity. Google is a company in transition, with the company’s widened focus today on areas like mobile, video, driverless cars, cloud-based services like maps and other apps, and connected home products, expanding its reach it well beyond the search business that was its main operation when Eustace joined in 2002.

• Twitter stock jumped more than 6% as investors cheered its ad distribution deals for Promoted Tweets on Flipboard, Yahoo Japan. The stock was up on Tuesday after the social media company said its promoted tweets will appear on third-party mobile apps and websites under a new advertising distribution program. The syndication program will broaden the reach of Twitter's ads beyond the 284 million monthly users who access its service every month, Twitter said. Its first partners are newsreader app Flipboard and Yahoo Japan. "For the thousands of brands already advertising on Twitter, these new partnerships open a significant opportunity to extend the reach of their message to a larger audience," Twitter said in a post on its official blog. Twitter is due to report its fourth-quarter financial results on Thursday. The company's stock price has been under pressure, down roughly 40 percent from its 52-week high of $67.24, on investor concerns that it is struggling to add new users to its service. Promoted tweets are going to show up outside of Twitter for the first time, the company announced today, revealing part of its strategy for increasing ad exposure that had been been limited to its own site and apps. Now, it will serve paid Twitter messages to partner sites and apps, including Flipboard and Yahoo Japan, partly owned by Yahoo. Both Web properties already have strong Twitter integrations with sections devoted to streams of activity powered by the social messaging site. Twitter said its Promoted Tweets would show up in those Twitter content areas on the third-party sites, as well as in other sections of the sites, and the ads would have the "same look and feel that is native" to the experiences on them. Twitter also said brands would be able to use the same targeting data and creative they use on its platform to reach users with these syndicated tweets. It is clear why Twitter is looking to expand its ad business off its own ad platform, a strategy it started wholly embracing when it bought the ad network MoPub in 2013: It needs to find larger audiences than it attracts on its own. With MoPub, Twitter has said it can hit more than 1 billion users on mobile devices across various Web properties. While announcing syndicated Promoted Tweets, it said that last quarter tweets generated 185 billion impressions outside Twitter.

• Tencent blocked key Alibaba apps ahead of the Spring Festival Holiday: As China’s massive Spring Festival holiday approaches, the folks at Tencent WeChat have been busy pressing the delete key on links between their app and a number of Alibaba services. First, Sina Tech reported that WeChat had shut down a sharing like with Alibaba’s Alipay that allowed Alipay users to send digital Spring Festival red envelopes of money to WeChat friends. Now, it appears WeChat has also shut down sharing connections with Alibaba music apps Xiami and Tiantian Dongting, meaning users can no longer share content from those apps directly with their WeChat friends. The Alipay closure is less of a surprise, as the two companies have been slugging it out over red envelopes for a couple of years now. WeChat has its own red-envelope-sending service, so stopping Alipay users from sending money easily to their WeChat friends makes some sense. If WeChat users can’t send money through Alipay, they might just send it through WeChat’s built-in service. That way Tencent, rather than Alibaba, earns money from the transaction. And with the Spring Festival holiday fast approaching, red envelope transactions will soon reach their yearlong high. It’s less clear why WeChat has closed its sharing connections with Alibaba music apps Xiami and Tiantian Dongting. No app-specific reason is apparent, but Tencent and Alibaba have been rivals for some time. Now it seems Tencent is declaring all-out war on Alibaba, and shutting down the connections between Alibaba’s apps and its own uber-popular social platform.

• It's been a decade since Amazon introduced its Prime service, which waives fees for two-day shipping and includes perks such as access to Amazon's streaming video library -- for $99 per year. When Amazon first announced Prime in a 2005 earnings call, skeptics wondered how the company would make the then-$79 annual fee palatable to consumers -- and how it was going to foot the bill if the program caught on. A decade later, Amazon says Prime memberships number in the tens of millions and are growing. Over the past year alone, memberships have shot up 53 percent. On the day after Christmas, Amazon said 10 million people had signed up for Prime "this holiday season." Greg Greeley, the vice president of Amazon Prime Global: Prime introduced three concepts. It had two-day shipping at a time when people expected to pay for shipping and still not get their items for four to seven business days. It was very predictable: We put it on the Web site that if you ordered in the next 3 hours and 20 min., for example, you could have it in two days. And it was an unlimited, single membership fee that made fast delivery an everyday experience instead of an occasional indulgence. They are much more engaged. One of the benefits to them and us is that we’re top of mind -- they don’t have to drive around for a hard-to-find item. On the app or on the PC, they're engaged on the other benefits as well. Prime offerings are always either [fulfilled by Amazon] or retail.