Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, April 9

• Apple Watch Reviews: You’ll Want One, but You Don’t Need One: Should you buy an Apple Watch? The first reviews are here. The first reviews of the Apple Watch are in, and the verdict is: This is a good product with a bright future. But maybe don't buy one quite yet. That's not to say the reviews weren't glowing, because they were. Anyone who was hoping that the Watch would flop out of the box and fall short of the high standard that Apple boasts for its products is going to be disappointed. There's also no doubt, from these reviews, that Apple's smartwatch is immediately the best of its kind on the market. "[The] Apple Watch is, above all, a satisfying indulgence," writes Yahoo Tech's David Pogue. "It’s a luxury. You might buy it to bring you pleasure — and it will — much the way you might buy a really nice car, some really nice clothes, or a really nice entrée." Overall, reviewers say that the Watch works well, has the battery life it needs and features such as Apple Pay work well. Plus, the Watch just feels nice. But there are criticisms, and strong ones, about how far the product needs to go to appeal to everyone. At the very least, it certainly is -- to quote the headline on The New York Times' Farhad Manjoo review-- a device that comes into its own after a "steep learning curve." The gripes, as always, are the most telling part of the reviews. Manjoo, for example, warns that this is not necessarily a simple device to understand. That's contrary to Apple's normal reputation -- the iPhone, for example, is a great smartphone for technophobes because it's so easy to navigate. But that's not the market that should (or probably would) pick up the first generation of the Watch. Other criticisms range from the fact that the device is a little slow (Nilay Patel, The Verge) to complaints that it's still a little too clunky to be fashionable (Lauren Goode, Re/Code), which could pose a hurdle for wider adoption. Ed Baig at USA Today says that he also doesn't particularly like making phone calls on it -- though that's not going to stop him from buying one of his own. There are also some greater concerns about smoothly it actually works. Several reviewers said that apps made by companies other than Apple were slow to load and work on the Watch. That will improve over time as software developers get more comfortable with the platform, but is an early hiccup worth noting. It also relies on other Apple software such as the company's Siri voice control software, which Manjoo notes fails to work as often as it's successful. Mashable's Lance Ulanoff says that it's not spectacularly good at working as a fitness tracker, either. That's one of the main draws of the wearable market right now, as products such as Jawbone and Fitbit have shown, and one of the easiest markets for Apple to pick up. The convenience of having a fitness tracker with some phone functions might be enough to win converts, but it seems that, for now, fitness management isn't exactly a killer app for the Watch.

• Alibaba finance arm Ant Financial to launch online private bank in June: Alibaba Group Holding Ltd's finance arm will launch its private internet bank, to be called MYbank in June, Yuan Leiming, Ant Financial's general manager of its finance division, told Reuters in an interview in Beijing on Thursday. Ant Financial will hold a 30 percent stake. Other shareholders will be: Shanghai Fosun Industrial Technology Development Co. Ltd, a subsidiary of Fosun International Ltd, with a 25 percent stake; a subsidiary of Wanxiang Group will hold 18 percent; and Ningbo Jinrun Asset Management will own 16 percent. Alibaba and affiliate Ant have big ambitions for financial services in China, which have traditionally been geared toward larger and state-owned businesses and neglected individuals and smaller enterprises.

• Facebook Launches Dedicated Web Interface For Messenger: Ever try to read a Facebook message on the web and get distracted by your News Feed and notifications? Well now Facebook has a way to let you use Messenger in peace from your web browser. Today it launched Messenger.com as a dedicated chat interface. It’s rolling out worldwide for English users, with support for more languages to come. You can still send messages from Facebook.com as always, but Messenger.com could become a favorite of busy users concerned with productivity, or those that use Facebook to chat with friends but don’t like the social content chaos of its main site. The company tells me the “dedicated desktop messaging experience” is “meant to be complimentary to the Messenger mobile app”. The move follows the launch of Facebook acquisition WhatsApp’s web interface in January. One big question is whether Facebook will release a desktop client for Messenger. That could rescue chat from the crowded web browser and make it instantly accessible with a single click from people’s desktops.

• YouTube Story #2: Google Plots New YouTube Subscription Service as Soon as This Year: Google Inc. plans to offer a subscriber version of YouTube as soon as this year, letting viewers see millions of videos without having to sit through ads. Revenue from the new feature, which will put Google into more direct competition with streaming services such as Netflix Inc. and Hulu LLC, will be shared with video creators, Google told them in an e-mail that was obtained by Bloomberg. The service may debut by the end of the year, said a person with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren't public. "By creating a new paid offering, we'll generate a new source of revenue that will supplement your fast growing advertising service," the letter said. Google has been moving closer to charging users for content; the Web company introduced a subscription-style music service within YouTube in November, and has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on talent and production facilities to boost original content on the video website, which has more than 1 billion monthly viewers. With ad-free subscriptions, Google is moving closer to competing with streaming services, including HBO Now (which debuted this week), for people's attention as they spend more time watching videos on the Web and on mobile devices. YouTube will offer all the same videos without ads for a monthly fee, which hasn't been set yet, according to the note. The service is also likely to include offline access. Google is alerting content creators because it wants them to agree to new terms that would let it include clips in the subscription product. "We're increasingly moving into an age where consumers are learning to avoid advertising," said Rich Greenfield, an analyst at BTIG. "Between DVRs, Netflix and now Amazon, we're increasingly learning to lead an ad-free life." The move to introduce subscriptions is part of a broader shift at Google to generate more income that isn't based on advertising.

• YouTube Story #2: YouTube video-sharing service is adding tools to make advertisements running on mobile devices more interactive, while cutting down on errant clicks. YouTube’s TrueView ads, which give visitors the option of skipping promotional clips before they’re over, will add a feature called cards to let advertisers highlight related content during videos, YouTube said Wednesday in a blog post. The new tools will also allow direct links to outside websites on mobile devices or desktop computers. In the past, only ads on desktops showed links and annotations. All YouTube video ads will also limit clickable links to boxes near the edge of the video player. In the past, viewers could click on any part of the display, making it more likely that they might accidentally engage with the video with a tap of a finger or mouse. Google is investing in YouTube’s services as it seeks to attract marketers to its platform amid competition from rivals such as Hulu LLC and Facebook Inc. The number of advertisers using TrueView ads, which aim to give users more control over how they watch promotions, jumped 45 percent last year, the Mountain View, California-based company said. The new tools aim to make it simpler for marketers to make their clips more engaging on any device, said Phil Farhi, the director of product for YouTube ads. “It allows us to do interactivity in a cross-screen world,” Farhi said in an interview. “The advertiser doesn’t have to create new assets for every screen.”

• Measuring Social ‘Trust’ to Make Loans: Alternative consumer lenders tend to fit into one of two camps: peer-to-peer marketplaces like Lending Tree and Prosper, and start-ups using data science to parse credit risk, like Affirm, Earnest and Zest Finance.Vouch Financial, which is emerging from its pilot testing phase this week, has an unusual spin on the data science approach. Big data lenders often analyze a person’s social network on LinkedIn or Facebook as one signal, among many, for hints about how reliable a payer a loan candidate is likely to be. But Vouch wants you to construct a social network of people who trust you financially — people who will, yes, vouch for you.The Vouch formula looks to back to a bygone era of banking when community bankers routinely asked their customers for “social character” references before granting loans. “We’ve taken that principle and digitized it,” said Yee Lee, co-founder and chief executive of Vouch.It also borrows from the concept of co-signing for loans, when a relative or friend is liable for repayment if the borrower turns out to be a deadbeat.Founded in 2013, Vouch made its first loan last October. By now, Mr. Lee said, Vouch has made “hundreds” of loans ranging in size from $500 to $15,000. They are installment loans with repayment typically stretched over 12 to 36 months.Borrowers build online trust networks by sending messages to friends and family members to vouch for them, and typically to commit some amount of money if the borrower does not repay. The people in the network are not asked to co-sign the loan in a traditional sense. But they are asked to explain their relationship to the person and commit an amount of money they will pay if the borrower does not repay. The commitment can be as little as $25 but has been up to $1,000 or more.So joining a person’s vouch network is an expression of trust in that person with a dollar amount placed on it. The vouchers sign an electronic agreement to pay, if necessary, that is legally enforceable, Mr. Lee explained.The members of a trust network fill out online surveys, identifying themselves — which is then verified by Vouch — and they agree to have their own credit histories looked up. Several thousand people, Mr. Lee said, have already joined the company’s networks of reciprocal trust. “We’re ingesting a lot of data,” Mr. Lee said.The company is really just getting started, but the idea is to collect data on trust signals and experience on lending, and build increasingly refined and accurate predictive models. Richard Lewis, Vouch’s chief risk officer, said the goal was to bring the concept of community banking reference checks into the digital age. “We want to make it analytic, quantifiable, scalable and fair,” he said. Mr. Lee provided a simplified example of different trust networks and lending decisions: Take two young people, both 22 years old, both living in Westwood, Calif., and both with 620 FICO scores — just into subprime territory by the traditional FICO yardstick of creditworthiness, which relies heavily on a person’s credit history. One borrower is a young man and has assembled a 10-person network. It’s a sizable number of trust connections, but they all come from the same address, the fraternity house at the university from which the borrower recently graduated. The second loan candidate is a young woman with only three people in her network. But one is her mother who is willing to vouch $1,000, and Mom has an 800 FICO score. And the other two people in her network live in Austin, Tex., and Newark., and have the same last name as the young woman. The 22-year-old young woman, Mr. Lee observed, would get somewhat better terms on her loan, given the strength rather than the breadth of her trust network. The start-up’s borrowers range in age from their 20s to 50s, across a demographic spectrum, but the most common loan use so far has been to pay off high-rate credit card debt, Mr. Lee said. Vouch has apparently done a lot of spade work with regulators. It is chartered, Mr. Lee said, in 50 states. To date, it has raised $3.6 million from venture capital firms including IDG Ventures and Greylock Partners.