Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, June 17

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• How A US Interest Rate Hike Could Deflate The Tech Boom: The technology industry has benefited from low interest rates, contributing to the creation of more than 100 unicorns, startups valued at more than $1 billion. Now that economists predict a rate hike as soon as September, investors question whether the move will do what seemingly nothing else has been able to accomplish -- cool off the sector.The U.S. central bank has kept benchmark rates near zero since 2008, before companies such as Uber, Snapchat and Pinterest even existed. That means most of today’s startups haven’t been tested in an economy in which borrowing costs fluctuate. Young companies may find it harder to raise capital. It also could add stock-market volatility, making it harder to hold an initial public offering. Even the biggest beneficiaries of the boom see a shakeout coming. Chris Sacca, an investor in companies including Twitter and Uber, said too much money is flowing to technology startups that will fail in a coming industry slowdown. “Bad deals are being done,” Sacca said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “It’s kind of inevitable that the funds right now that are putting a lot of this money to work here aren’t going to see it all back.”


• As Delivery Costs Rise, Amazon Is Building An App To Let Normal People Deliver Packages For Pay: The Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon is working on an app internally that would allow the average consumer to make a little cash by picking up Amazon packages at various retail locations and dropping them off at their final destination. WSJ’s sources did not have a timeline for the release of this product, internally called ‘On My Way,’ and were unsure whether it would launch at all. Amazon offers its own lockers program, with pick-up stations in various locations (like parking garages) and 7-Eleven stores that are rented out by Amazon. Customers can choose to have their package shipped to one of these lockers for pick-up at their convenience. The WSJ reports that Amazon would likely use a similar logistics structure for the rumored On My Way app, letting users pick up and deliver packages from a convenient location to make some extra money. Besides the standard shipping (or two-day for Prime members), Amazon has fiddled with the idea of letting Uber drivers and yellow cabs deliver products same-day, as well as using bike messengers and third-party delivery services for Prime Now and AmazonFresh, both of which function within hours-long (and not days-long) delivery windows. The company has even talked about launching a fleet of drones to deliver parcels, though that flight faces its own delays.


• Snapchat Turns Geofilters Into An Ad Unit: Snapchat may have finally found a way to monetize that its users will actually like. The company is now extending its custom geofilters to businesses as a monetization strategy. On Monday, McDonald’s became the first company to pay Snapchat to run a geofilter advertising campaign. Now, McDonald’s branded geofilters will be available for users to use at any of the over 14,000 McDonald’s stores in the U.S. Added as a feature in 2014, geofilters allow Snapchat users to add a location-specific filter to photos or videos. These filters quickly became a popular way to tell friends where a snapchat was taken, and now over one million snapchats a day are decorated with a geofilter. While users have been able to propose and submit potential geofilters since December, the company says only about one-third of submissions are approved. This new program will allow companies to bypass the user submission process, as well as add geofilters to thousands of locations at once. While geofilters paid for by companies will be denoted with a tiny “Sponsored” imprint, they otherwise will function exactly the same as existing filters.


• Uber is getting serious about maps, and it has poached the former head of Google Maps to lead the charge.: Brian McClendon, a Google engineering VP and 10-year company veteran, will be overseeing Uber’s new Pittsburgh center, staffed by engineers recruited from Carnegie Mellon’s National Robotics Engineering Center. Uber has taken several steps recently to strengthen its mapping technology. In March it acquired deCarta, a nearly decade old company that powers the mapping technology behind location-based services like General Motors’ OnStar navigation system. Uber also recently put in a bid for Nokia’s Here mapping technology, going head to head with the likes of a consortium of German automotive companies for the property. Almost everything Uber does relies on geospatial software, from its estimated car arrival times to directions for drivers to its UberPool system for matching travelers who want to share rides. Understandably, the company doesn’t want to rely solely on Google and Apple, as it currently does, for the technology that underlies its system, particularly in a time when Google’s and Uber’s initiatives are starting to overlap. McClendon was one of the rare Googlers to join the search giant via an acquisition and stay for several years. He arrived in 2004 with the purchase of Keyhole, part of a trio of companies Google swept up before the public birth of Maps. Keyhole’s technology became Google Earth. Its co-founder, John Hanke, also stayed at Google, where, in 2010, he was given oversight of the internal incubator Niantic Labs. McClendon was given purview over Google’s “Geo” products, which include Maps, Earth and Street View. He was one of the few execs to lead a product portfolio who was not an SVP or part of the inner circle of CEO Larry Page. Amid Google’s sweeping reorganization last October, McClendon was replaced by Jen Fitzpatrick, another engineering VP, who has been with Google since 1999. His mapping background made him a prime recruitment target for Uber.


• Twitter Unleashes Autoplay Video Ads With a 100% Viewability Promise: If not completely viewable, brands won't be charged: Twitter is ready to serve autoplay video, which has the potential to change up the experience on the platform with richer and more engaging media. The company has taken a hard stand on viewability standards: It is promising only to charge on video ads that have been seen 100 percent in full view of the user. Autoplay video has become a standard format in social media and one that is supported by advertisers, who like the fact that their content makes more of an impact. Here are some of the key numbers Twitter revealed about its tests regarding autoplay video: Users were 2.5 times more likely to prefer autoplay over click-to-view or thumbnail previews on videos. Ad recall was 14 percent greater on autoplay-promoted videos versus other formats. Completion rates were seven times greater on autoplay compared to other formats.


• Google Highlights Cloud Capabilities as GCP Beats AWS, Microsoft to Win HTC as Customer: At an event Tuesday for Google Cloud Platform — Google’s name for the computing, storage and networking it sells to business — Google will name the Taiwanese phone maker HTC as a customer. HTC has used Google to build a new kind of computing architecture that enables smartphone apps to update data fast and reliably to many devices at once, and look efficient even when the phones get poor reception. HTC also looked at the cloud offerings of AWS and Microsoft Azure, along with IBM and Alibaba. Google was the dark horse, because it does not operate in China, and HTC wanted to be everywhere in the world. Google’s technical dedication won the day. “The other salesmen just wanted to take orders,” Google is talking more openly about companies that use its cloud business, and revealing more about its computing resources, perhaps the largest on the planet. These include disclosures about Google’s ultrafast fiber network, its big data resources, and the computers and software it has built for itself. The disclosures follow earlier moves by Google Cloud Platform, as the search company’s cloud computing business is called, to show off its data analysis capabilities. The aim is to position Google as a company capable of handling the biggest and toughest computational exercises, lightning fast. Each cloud player is now reflecting the nature of its core business. Amazon, a retailer, is offering computing at scale and ease of use in data analysis. Microsoft, with decades of business ties, stresses its interoperability with current systems and data tools. And IBM has lots of high-level data analysts. Google Cloud Platform has built out specialties in areas like manufacturing, genomics and media to handle industry-specific needs on a global basis.


• Airbnb Says Chinese Travelers Are Fastest-Growing Users: Airbnb is drawing more customers from China, Chief Technology Officer Nathan Blecharczyk said. The firm has built relationships with Chinese consumers when they travel abroad, he said. The group represents Airbnb's fastest growing category, according to Blecharczyk.The San Francisco-based company doubled the number of properties it lists in Cuba to 2,000 within 45 days after debuting in the country, Blecharczyk said. Airbnb, which started in the country after President Barack Obama took steps to open relations with the communist nation, said last month Cuba was its fastest-growing market.


• Adobe earnings: revenue $1.16 billion, up 9% YoY; shares fall 2%: Photoshop maker Adobe reported that total revenue for quarter ending May 29th rose 8.8 percent to $1.16 billion, in line with analysts' average estimate. Net income rose to $147.5 million from $88 million in the year-ago quarter. The firm recorded better-than-expected profit for the sixth straight quarter, helped by a 12 percent sequential jump in annualized recurring revenue in its digital media segment. However, the company's shares fell about 2 percent in extended trading after it forecast lower-than-expected revenue and profit for the current quarter. Adobe is switching from traditional box licenses to web-based subscriptions for its Creative Cloud software bundle for more predictable recurring revenue. Online subscriptions let customers access the latest software versions for a monthly payment. The company said it expects revenue in its print and publishing business to be relatively flat in the current quarter with the second. Adobe earlier on Tuesday launched Adobe Stock, a collection of 40 million photographs, illustrations and graphics, available in 36 countries and 13 languages.