Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, October 7

• Twitter’s Next Hail Mary, Project Lightning, Has Arrived..is Uncannily Similar to Snapchat's Live Stories: Just 24 hours after Jack Dorsey officially took over as the new CEO, Twitter is finally rolling out Project Lightning, the multimedia update it has aggressively pitched for months, to resuscitate growth and get Twitter back on track with Wall Street. In many ways, Lightning is Twitter’s most important product update ever. The new product, which Twitter is now calling Moments, is the kind of product that will shape how Dorsey is remembered in his third stint at the company he helped create. A Moment is a group of tweets stitched together around a specific topic, such as the Super Bowl or a breaking news event. These Moments are curated by Twitter, or Twitter partners like BuzzFeed and the New York Times, and primarily exist within a new tab inside the Twitter app, although they can be shared as links within tweets as well. Moments tend to be multimedia-heavy, with lots of photo and video tweets included, although that isn’t necessarily a requirement. Unlike your Twitter timeline, in which tweets are typically read in reverse chronological order, Moments are constructed in the same way you’d read a book — with a beginning, middle and end. If you’re familiar with Snapchat’s Live Stories feature, which have become very popular with its users, you’ll notice some striking similarities. (Very striking.) The purpose of the product is twofold. For starters, it’s a way for Twitter to play to its strengths by creating more content and engagement around live events, an area where Twitter truly does dominate other social platforms, including Facebook. When you follow a Moment, Twitter will temporarily insert tweets about that topic into your feed from people you don’t actually follow; as soon as the event is over, you’ll stop seeing tweets from those people. There’s no easy way to follow a bunch of people talking about a breaking news event, for example, so Twitter is trying to do that for you. Twitter is also looking for ways to entice new users, and believes Moments may serve as the bait. Twitter can be underwhelming when you first sign up, admits Madhu Muthukumar, product manager for Moments. But if you can immediately follow a Moment — and all the important people contributing to that event — it’s easier to find interesting people and feel like you’re part of the conversation right away, he added.

• Bill Gurley on Tech Bubble: I’m a Pragmatist, Not a Doomsayer:  Bill Gurley, general partner at venture capital firm Benchmark, has developed a reputation as the Nostradamus of Silicon Valley. He has repeatedly called out startups and fellow investors for over-the-top valuations, warning of an impending tech bubble. He isn’t ditching that reputation. “It’s kind of my responsibility to call it out,” the venture capitalist said at the Vanity Fair Summit in San Francisco on Tuesday. “If you’re in a car heading over a cliff and I say, ‘Hey, slow down’ — that’s being a pragmatist, not being a doomsayer.” New York Times reporter Nick Bilton, who moderated the panel, asked Gurley how he squares that view with the fact that Benchmark is among the venture firms priming startups with cash. Gurley’s retort: The founders he backs could raise money in any condition — and could do it even better when funding dries up. “Most of the great CEOs I work with want this to stop. They’re forced to play this game,” he replied. “Great entrepreneurs raise money in any cycle. When there’s less money available, the better entrepreneurs have the advantage.”

• Data Transfer Pact Between U.S. and Europe Is Ruled Invalid: Europe’s highest court on Tuesday struck down an international agreement that allowed companies to move digital information like people’s web search histories and social media updates between the European Union and the United States. The decision left the international operations of companies like Google and Facebook in a sort of legal limbo even as their services continued working as usual. The ruling, by the European Court of Justice, said the so-called safe harbor agreement was flawed because it allowed American government authorities to gain routine access to Europeans’ online information. The court said leaks from Edward J. Snowden, the former contractor for the National Security Agency, made it clear that American intelligence agencies had almost unfettered access to the data, infringing on Europeans’ rights to privacy. The court said data protection regulators in each of the European Union’s 28 countries should have oversight over how companies collect and use online information of their countries’ citizens. European countries have widely varying stances toward privacy. Data protection advocates hailed the ruling. Industry executives and trade groups, though, said the decision left a huge amount of uncertainty for big companies, many of which rely on the easy flow of data for lucrative businesses like online advertising. They called on the European Commission to complete a new safe harbor agreement with the United States, a deal that has been negotiated for more than two years and could limit the fallout from the court’s decision. Some European officials and many of the big technology companies, including Facebook and Microsoft, tried to play down the impact of the ruling. The companies kept their services running, saying that other agreements with the European Union should provide an adequate legal foundation. But those other agreements are now expected to be examined and questioned by some of Europe’s national privacy watchdogs. The potential inquiries could make it hard for companies to transfer Europeans’ information overseas under the current data arrangements. And the ruling appeared to leave smaller companies with fewer legal resources vulnerable to potential privacy violations. “We can’t assume that anything is now safe,” Brian Hengesbaugh, a privacy lawyer with Baker & McKenzie in Chicago who helped to negotiate the original safe harbor agreement. “The ruling is so sweepingly broad that any mechanism used to transfer data from Europe could be under threat.”

• Microsoft is making its first-ever laptop: Under the leadership of chief executive Satya Nadella, the message out of Microsoft has been one of collaboration rather than competition. Since Nadella took over in February of last year, the historically sharp-elbowed firm has seemed to soften. A humbler Microsoft emerged, putting a greater focus on helping consumers use its products on whatever device they wanted, rather than being its own cheerleader. But Microsoft showed that its competitive spark is alive and well Tuesday with the announcement that it's making its first-ever laptop. The laptop, called the Surface Book, has a 13.5-inch screen and weighs 3.34 pounds with a detachable keyboard -- clearly putting it in competition with Apple's MacBook Air and the many, many Microsoft partners who make the class of lightweight laptops known as ultrabooks. (So does its starting $1,499 price tag.) The Book can be used as a tablet or as more traditional laptop.

• Samsung Electronics third-quarter profit guidance beats estimates:  Samsung Electronics said on Wednesday its July-September operating profit likely leapt 79.8 percent from a year earlier, beating expectations and pushing the South Korean tech giant's share price sharply higher. Samsung, in a regulatory filing, estimated its third-quarter profit at 7.3 trillion won ($6.29 billion), its first quarterly profit gain in two years and its biggest since the first quarter of 2014. This compared with a 6.7 trillion won profit tipped by a Thomson Reuters SmartEstimate poll of 30 analysts. Samsung's shares opened 4.1 percent higher after the guidance release. Smartphone earnings likely improved from a year earlier, analysts said, partly due to the launch of new lower-end models and the August launch of the Galaxy Note 5. Semiconductor sales were also expected to be strong, driven by the launch of new smartphones including the Galaxy Note 5 and Apple's iPhone 6S models. The weaker South Korean won likely also boosted profits, analysts said. Samsung expects third-quarter revenue to rise by 7.5 percent from a year earlier to 51 trillion won.

• Adobe 2016 forecast disappoints, shares slump: Adobe lowered its profit forecast for 2016 below analyst estimates partly due to a strong dollar, sending its shares down as much as 13 percent in extended trading. The Photoshop maker said it expects full-year revenue of about $5.7 billion and an adjusted profit of $2.70 per share. Analysts on average were expecting revenue of $5.93 billion and earnings of $3.19 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. In 2013, Adobe forecast an adjusted profit of $3 per share for 2016. The company is expecting a $200 million hit on revenue as a result of the stronger dollar, and a $100 million hit as Adobe's "last material businesses are transitioning to ratable revenue." Adobe has been switching to web-based subscriptions from traditional licensed software to help attract more predictable recurring revenue.

• Etsy doubles down on manufacturing as it faces off with Amazon: Etsy, the online store that made its name selling handmade crafts, is trying to stop merchants from defecting as giant rival Amazon.com Inc prepares to attack it on its own ground with a new site for artisanal items called Handmade. But Etsy's policy of allowing sellers to use outside manufacturers continues to anger some of the smaller vendors of handmade items who helped make it successful. Even changes to that policy have done little to address the criticism or hold off defections, analysts and sellers say. "Until now, Etsy sellers had nowhere else to go," said Gil Luria, an analyst at Wedbush Securities based in Los Angeles. "But what Handmade at Amazon represents is a trip back in time to Etsy's original vision." Etsy disputes that sellers had no other outlets, saying it knows that while about half of its sellers sell only on its site, the other half also use other venues - from craft fairs to their own websites. But on average, even those who sell in many venues make the majority of their income on Etsy, the company said. Etsy, launched 10 years ago, became popular as an alternative to Amazon and eBay, tapping into shoppers' appetite for handmade items. But since its April initial public offering, which valued the company at $4 billion, Etsy's shares have fallen by more than 50 percent. And the company's losses doubled in the most recent quarter due in part to rising expenses and the stronger dollar, which dampened demand for U.S. products.

• Facebook Gives Viewers 3 New Ways to Engage With Their Favorite TV Shows, Challenges Twitter for second-screen supremacy: Facebook is trying to steal some of Twitter's thunder, aiming to be the first choice among second-screen viewers, people who watch TV and engage on social media at the same time. So, this morning Facebook—with its 213 million monthly active users in the U.S.—announced new tools aimed at helping TV producers better engage audiences during live broadcasts.  1. Hashtag voting and polling: This feature should get broadcasters the most excited. Instead of being directed toward separate apps within a show's Facebook page, users will be able to vote directly within a top-level post or comment. 2. Photo and video submissions: Facebook is giving viewers or aspiring contestants on competition series the ability to submit photos and videos directly to show pages. Those can be anything from video questions (Fox News used this to solicit questions for August's GOP debate) to funny submissions for late-night talk shows or audition videos. 3. Custom icons: Taking a page from Twitter's playbook, Facebook will create custom icons—much like Twitter's custom emojis—for certain events such as the Oscars, the Emmys, The Bachelorette and sporting events like the Rugby World Cup.