Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, June 30

• Facebook to Change News Feed to Focus on Friends and Family: For years, Facebook has courted publishers of all sizes, asking them to depend more and more on the social media giant to expand their audiences. Now, Facebook has a new message for publishers: Tamp down your expectations. Facebook said on Wednesday that it planned to make a series of changes to its news feed algorithm so that it will more favorably promote content posted by the friends and family of users. The side effect of those changes, the company said, is that content posted by publishers will show up less prominently in news feeds, resulting in significantly less traffic to the hundreds of news media sites that have come to rely on Facebook. The move underscores the never-ending algorithm-tweaking that Facebook undertakes to maintain interest in its news feed, the company’s marquee feature that is seen by more than 1.65 billion users every month. It is also a reminder that while Facebook is vastly important to the long-term growth of news media companies, from older outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post to upstarts like BuzzFeed, Vice and Vox Media, publishers rank lower on Facebook’s list of priorities.

• Landing with a bump? Germany's Rocket falls back to earth: When German e-commerce investor Rocket Internet launched Jumia in 2012 as a would-be African Amazon, it was optimistic that a rapidly expanding middle class would quickly shift from street markets to shopping online. Four years on, falling sales for sites like Jumia and slower growth from Nigeria to Russia and Brazil is casting doubt on Rocket Internet's ambition to become the world's biggest Internet company outside the United States and China. Jumia made a loss of 17 million euros ($18.8 million) in the first three months of 2016 on sales that fell more than a third. The devaluation of Nigeria's naira last week is a new blow for Jumia, which now operates in more than 20 countries in Africa. Revenue growth has also slowed at most of Rocket Internet's other 11 leading start-ups, ranging from furniture e-commerce and food delivery in Europe to online fashion in markets from India to Latin America and the Middle East. That is the consequence of Rocket's shift to rein in spending on marketing and logistics as it seeks to stem losses which it said peaked at 1 billion euros in 2015. As a result, shareholders have cast doubt on the valuation Rocket has put on its portfolio and questioned the strategy of sending business school graduates to set up 150 start-ups in more than 110 countries in just a few years. Exclusive interviews with shareholders reveal growing scepticism about Rocket's sprawling empire as emerging markets sour and technology stocks cool. Its share price has fallen 39 percent this year.

• Google Capital Makes First Public Company Investment in Care.com. Shares in Care.com Inc soared 18 percent in extended trading, after the home care provider announced a $46.35 million investment from Google Capital, the growth equity arm of Alphabet Inc. Google Capital’s investment makes it the largest shareholder in Care.com, and Laela Sturdy, a partner at the fund, will join the company’s board, Care.com said Wednesday in a statement. The company provides child, adult, senior, pet and home-care services and had a market capitalization of $276 million as of Wednesday. Google Capital was founded in 2013 and has invested in numerous private companies. It pairs its companies with advisers spread across Alphabet, and in the last six months has tapped 300 different people to give advice to its companies, Sturdy said. This deal marks its first investment in a public company.Care.com said it used a portion of the Google Capital investment to repurchase 3.7 million shares of its common stock from Matrix Partners at a price of $8.25 per share, a 5 percent discount to the 30-day volume-weighted average price. It also issued a new series of convertible preferred stock to Google Capital at an initial conversion price of $10.50 per share. Dividends on the stock will accrue at 5.5 percent annually, the company said. Matrix had been an investor since 2006 and wanted to make some divestments, so it was a good time to do a buyback, said Sheila Marcelo, Care.com chairwoman and chief executive officer. “It helps us reduce pressure on our stock,” she said.

• It’s official: Kleiner just pulled off a $1.4 billion fundraise: So much for losing its mojo. Despite twists and turns in recent years that have sometimes rivaled those of a telenovela, and even with its most famous member, John Doerr, no longer a general partner, Kleiner Perkins has raised two new funds totaling $1.4 billion, show newly processed SEC filings. The firm’s digital growth fund — its third — has secured $1 billion in commitments. The capital will be managed by Mary Meeker, Ted Schlein, Mood Rowghani and Noah Knauf, who very recently joined Kleiner from Warburg Pincus. Kleiner’s newest (17th!) early-stage fund, meanwhile, has closed with $400 million in commitments. As you’ve read here recently, Kleiner’s early-stage team now features five general partners: Schlein, Mike Abbott, Eric Feng, Beth Seidenberg and Wen Hsieh.