Daily Tech Snippet: Monday, July 6

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• Euro markets set for major jolt after Greek 'No', look to ECB for calm: European stock and bond markets are set to take a sharp hit on Monday after Greece voted 'No' to harsh bailout conditions, and bankers said the European Central Bank's response was now key to the extent of contagion. "The ECB has the capacity to limit the spread of contagion. But we might still see a fall of 3 percent on European markets on Monday," said Antonin Jullier, head of equity trading strategy at Citi. With no immediate prospect of a bailout for the Greek government, its banks need further help to avoid collapsing. Oil prices tumbled as the US dollar strengthened. European officials are putting the onus on the Greek government to make the next move as Chancellor Angela Merkel heads to Paris on Monday for talks with President Francois Hollande to map out a way forward for Greece.


• After weeks of turmoil, China stocks rocket 8 percent at open after weekend rescue moves: China's stock markets rose 8% at the start of a make-or-break week after officials rolled out an unprecedented series of steps at the weekend to prevent a full-blown stock market crash that would threaten the world's second-largest economy. The government is anxiously awaiting the market opening on Monday to see if the new measures will halt a 30 percent plunge in the last three weeks, or if panicky investors who borrowed heavily to speculate on stocks will continue to sell. In an extraordinary weekend of policy moves, brokerages and fund managers vowed to buy massive amounts of stocks, helped by China's state-backed margin finance company which in turn would be aided by a direct line of liquidity from the central bank. China has also orchestrated a halt to new share issues, with dozens of firms scrapping their IPO plans in separate but similarly worded statements over the weekend, in a tactic authorities have used before to support markets. The Shanghai Composite Index had surged more than 150 percent in the 12 months prior to June 12 as investors assessed that monetary stimulus would revive China’s economy. Now, those hopes seem to be fading, and Chinese equity markets are plunging. The Shanghai Composite Index fell 5.8 percent Friday, bringing the decline since its June 12 peak to 29 percent. More than $2.8 trillion of value has been erased from the Chinese stock market during that time, an abrupt end to the longest bull market in the nation’s history. Stocks entered a bear market on June 29 as leveraged investors headed for the exits; China’s securities regulator that day urged investors to be rational. In response, China is suspending initial public offerings, creating a market stabilization fund and telling investors not to panic in an effort to shore up its stock market, which has had the largest three-week drop since 1992. According to company filings to the exchanges Saturday evening, 10 companies will suspend IPOs on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and 18 will do the same at the Shenzen Stock Exchange. Halting IPOs may stem the diversion of funds away from current listings. The move came hours after major Chinese brokerage firms pledged billions of dollars to form a stock market rescue fund.


• New, Simple ‘Buy’ Buttons Aim to Entice Mobile Shoppers: Despite spending close to three hours of each day staring at their mobile phones, Americans continue to do the vast majority of their online shopping through desktop and laptop computers, which have larger screens and physical keyboards that are more amenable to browsing and typing in credit card numbers. Mobile phones are projected to account for about half the time Americans spend online this year, but only about one-fifth of retail e-commerce sales, according to eMarketer. Now several companies, including Google, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, are trying to bridge the gap between mobile browsing and desktop purchasing with a simple “buy” button. Buy buttons have been around since the early days of the web, of course, notably with Amazon’s “One-Click Ordering,” where people set up a button that runs their credit card and ships whatever they have bought to a designated address. But these new buy buttons allow technology companies to act as middlemen between mobile shoppers and retailers — extending one-click ordering to thousands of small retailers and eliminating exasperating typing on a phone’s touch screen. The logic for the companies working on the new buy buttons is that, in an increasingly mobile world, where people do less typing and more tapping, a more predictable checkout process will drive sales by reducing “friction,” which is a technology industry euphemism for any inconvenience, no matter how small, that might cause people to wonder why they are opening their wallets.


• Alibaba Arm Eyes More Capital to Build China Finance Empire: Ant Financial, which dominates e-commerce payments in China, was said to be valued at over $40 billion in its latest round -- making it one of the world’s largest private tech companies. It manages the nation’s biggest money market fund Yu’E Bao and is targeting smaller borrowers to tap a market overlooked by traditional banks. Investors may be drawn by Ant Financial’s exponential growth. Since it began life as Alipay in 2004, the company has become the country’s largest online provider of financial services, helped by its role as the preferred payment method across Alibaba platforms. It has since expanded into adjacent industries such as insurance and online credit. One of the more aggressive of China’s new breed of online finance companies, Ant Financial’s maneuvers have courted controversy in the past. Ma spun off Alipay into a new company he controlled in 2011, citing the risk of foreign ownership of domestic financial firms. Major shareholder Yahoo protested and said it was caught unaware.


• Tesla Rises After Second-Quarter Deliveries Top Forecast: Tesla Motors gained the most since April after the electric-car maker beat its car-sales forecast for the second consecutive quarter with a 52 percent surge in the three months through June. The shares rose 4 percent at the close in New York for the biggest daily advance since April 27. Tesla has climbed 26 percent this year, outpacing the Russell 1000 Index’s 1.3 percent increase. Tesla delivered 11,507 Model S sedans in the second quarter, according to a statement of preliminary figures Thursday. The Palo Alto, California-based company predicted in May that it would sell 10,000 to 11,000 of the cars, its only model, during the period. The preliminary total brings first-half sales to 21,552, less than 40 percent of Tesla’s full-year target of 55,000 vehicles. Output and deliveries are projected to increase with the introduction of the Model X sport utility vehicle this quarter. “Tesla still has to deliver on the Model X promise,” Dan Dolev, a Jefferies analyst, said in a telephone interview. With the Model S, “the execution is there, the demand is there, the delivery is there, so that all these areas are positive is encouraging.”


• Housing crisis puts SoftBank in a spot amidst its headline grabbing announcements: The fall of Housing.com from one of the hottest tech startups in India to a big public relations disaster has been quick, thanks to its just ousted CEO Rahul Yadav. And this has put the largest owner of Housing—Japanese internet giant SoftBank, one of the biggest internet investors from Asia with $70B in revenue—in a delicate spot. Only six months ago it wrote a $90 million cheque for this college startup in exchange of a 32.5 per cent stake, but it appears SoftBank is already exploring a sale. Sources familiar with developments at the online real estate company said Quikr-Housing.com deal, as reported by VCCircle, is in works but it may not be easy to fructify due to several reasons including a mismatch in valuation expectations. SoftBank, Housing’s biggest stakeholder, is said to be seeking a price of $350 million which none of its rivals would want to cough up considering the startup’s main asset is its product and technology and not so much the business (revenues). As an immediate sale may prove to be daunting, sources say SoftBank’s current priority would be to stabilise the affairs at the startup while also increase the monetisation efforts rather than stepping up the sell-off initiatives. “They wanted to make a big bang entry into India with a $1 billion investment, make a splash, and get a meeting with (Prime Minister) Modi..,” said a venture capital investor who manages a diverse portfolio, indicating the Japanese giant might have made a mistake in a hurry to invest.


• Reddit Moderators Revolt Over Site's Firing of Popular Talent Director Victoria Taylor: Hundreds of Reddit's community forums—called subreddits—have been made inaccessible to the public in protest after the San Francisco-based company dismissed its director of talent, Victoria Taylor, who ran its Ask Me Anything (AMA) feature. The extremely popular AMA subreddit has been temporarily shut down by its moderators, while the reasons for Taylor's exit haven't been revealed. According to Business Insider, Reddit user "Karmanaut" posted about Taylor's departure, stating: "We have been really blindsided by all of this. As a result, we will need to go through our processes and see what can be done without her." The Business Insider story added that Taylor replied in a subbredit thread that she was "dazed" by the development but planned to stay in the public relations/communications field. For the AMA program, she has been credited for booking everyone from Hollywood stars like Madonna and Will Ferrell to political players such as President Barack Obama and conservative commentator Ann Coulter. Taylor was widely beloved by Redditors for cultivating such an intriguing mix of content. Reddit may be wise to shed more light on Taylor's departure sooner rather than later, otherwise the subject could continue to explode throughout the July 4 weekend. Already, many users are threatening to leave Reddit for good in an exodus similar to the user backlash that gutted competing site Digg in 2010.


• Reports that Amazon is trying Special Price Discounts on Prime, possibly to challenge Jet, the Hot Discount Shopping Site: The last time the companies run by Jeff Bezos and Marc Lore squared off, there were fireworks. We’re about to see what happens the second time around. The first time, Amazon instigated a pricing war with Lore’s company, Diapers.com, ultimately pressuring it into a $550 million sale to Amazon. It wasn’t exactly the outcome Lore was hoping for, but was a pretty good exit nonetheless. Now, as Lore’s new, members-only shopping site Jet.com preps for its public launch, there are some signs that Bezos once again doesn’t plan to sit aside idly. In the last few months, Amazon has been offering discounts on different products as exclusive deals for members of Prime, its two-day shipping and streaming media program. Last week, reports surfaced showing that Amazon was giving special discounts on video games to Prime members. Amazon has sporadically offered special discounts to Prime members in the past, such as exclusive discounts on Vizio TVs dating back to 2013. But the timing of the current set of discounts across multiple product categories could have to do with the fact that Jet, which is operating in private beta currently, is also a membership program built on the idea of discount pricing. For $50 a year, Jet is promising its members the best prices on the Web thanks to a complex system of discounting by stripping costs out of the order fulfillment and shipping process of e-commerce.