Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, September 23

• Facebook Says It Gave Advertisers Inflated Video Metrics: Facebook Inc. has been giving advertisers an inflated metric for the average time users spent watching a video, a measurement that may have helped boost marketer spending on one of Facebook’s most popular ad products. The company, owner of the world’s largest social network, only counts a video as "viewed" if it has been seen for more than 3 seconds. The metric it gave advertisers for their average video view time incorporated only the people who had watched the video long enough to count as a "view" in the first place, inflating the metric because it didn’t count anyone who didn’t watch, or watched for a shorter time. Facebook’s stock fell more than 1.5 percent in extended trading after the miscalculation was earlier reported in the Wall Street Journal. Facebook had disclosed the mistake in a posting on its advertiser help center web page several weeks ago. Big advertising buyers and marketers are upset about the inflated metric, and asked the company for more details, according to the report in the Journal, citing unidentified people familiar with the situation. The Menlo Park, California-based company has kept revenue surging in part because of enthusiasm for its video ads, which advertisers compare in performance to those on Twitter, YouTube and around the web.

• Apple Inc. has acquired Indian machine-learning startup Tuplejump  as it seeks to expand its expertise in artificial intelligence. The iPhone maker bought the Hyderabad, India-based company in June, according to a person familiar with the deal who asked not to be identified. Tuplejump’s software specializes in processing and analyzing big sets of data quickly. The deal was reported earlier by TechCrunch. The purchase price wasn’t disclosed. Tuplejump has about a dozen employees, many of whom were already based on the west coast of the U.S., the person said. Founder Rohit Rai’s LinkedIn profile says he started working for Apple in May and is now also based in Seattle.

• Yahoo has confirmed a data breach with 500 million accounts stolen, as questions about disclosure to Verizon and users grow: Yahoo confirmed today that it had been subject of a massive hacking attack that exposed the data of at least 500 million users. Recode previously reported that Yahoo was about to reveal the breach and Yahoo had declined to comment when contacted last night. Now, the company is unveiling a situation much worse than expected, although the Recode report noted that it would be. Earlier this summer, Yahoo said it was investigating a data breach in which hackers claimed to have access to 200 million user accounts and one was selling them online. “It’s as bad as that,” said one source. “Worse, really.” The announcement has huge implications on Yahoo’s pending deal to be bought by Verizon for $4.8 billion. Sources at Verizon said they were largely unaware of the severity of the attack until recently and that CEO Marissa Mayer and others did not flag them as to the extent of the issue in the bidding process. You can read that ire clearly between the lines in a statement from Verizon-owned AOL, which is expected to be integrated with Yahoo when the deal is complete. "Within the last two days, we were notified of Yahoo's security incident. We understand that Yahoo is conducting an active investigation of this matter, but we otherwise have limited information and understanding of the impact. We will evaluate as the investigation continues through the lens of overall Verizon interests, including consumers, customers, shareholders and related communities. Until then, we are not in position to further comment." In addition, internal sources at Yahoo said the company had been subjected to a number of previous incidents that were not managed swiftly by CEO Marissa Mayer. One executive close to the situation said that former Yahoo information security head Alex Stamos had tried aggressively to get management to act more strongly at the time, but he had not been successful. The well-regarded techie left Yahoo in mid-2015 for a job as chief security officer at Facebook. This whole incident was first revealed in August when “Peace,” an infamous cybercriminal, advertised the sale of user credentials for some 200 million Yahoo users on the “dark web.” The data included user names, some passwords and personal information like birth dates and other email addresses. At the time, Yahoo said it was “aware of the claim,” but declined to say if it was legitimate. Instead, it opened an investigation, but did not issue a call for a password reset to users.

• Uber rival Grab partners with driverless car firm in Singapore: Users of ride-hailing firm Grab will be able to book driverless cars from Friday as it partners with a start-up testing the technology in Singapore, just days after rival Uber debuted its self-driving vehicles in the United States. The move comes as technology companies and automakers race to build autonomous vehicles and develop new business plans for what is expected to be a long-term makeover of personal transportation. Southeast Asia's Grab said its app will allow select commuters to book and ride start-up nuTonomy's driverless vehicles within a western Singapore district, where the vehicles are being tested, and adjacent neighborhoods. A safety driver and support engineer will ride in each nuTonomy car, the two companies said in a statement. nuTonomy, which started a limited public trial of the first driverless taxi in August in Singapore, has said it hopes to have 100 taxis working commercially in the city-state by 2018. Countries around the world are encouraging the development of autonomous technologies, and Singapore, with its limited land and workforce, is hoping driverless vehicles will encourage its residents to use more shared vehicles and public transport. Grab said its data showed drivers in Singapore are less likely to accept a passenger booking request originating from or destined for remote locations, highlighting the need for "robo-cars" that can meet transportation needs in far-flung areas. If a trip requires travel on roads outside of Singapore's one-north district, the safety driver will take control of the vehicle for that portion of the trip.

• LinkedIn is bringing Lynda.com courses to its news feed and building a messaging bot. LinkedIn is finally bringing Lynda.com — the online education company it bought 18 months ago for $1.5 billion — into its news feed. Beginning Thursday, LinkedIn will start recommending online courses for its members based on things like their jobs and their listed skills, and recommended courses shared by friends of colleagues. Users can take the course on LinkedIn, then add completed courses and new skills to their profiles after completion. CEO Jeff Weiner also teased out a number of upcoming products. Among them: A new LinkedIn messaging bot that will help LinkedIn users schedule and arrange meetings. The bot will pull info from users’ calendars to help find time for people to meet, then suggest physical meeting locations based on where the two people have met in the past. It’s the first such messaging bot from LinkedIn, which is not known for having an advanced messaging product. (It didn’t even announce a text-like messaging feature until a year ago.)

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, April 1st

• Where's the lane? Self-driving cars confused by shabby U.S. roadways, Volvo CEO is not amused: Volvo's North American CEO, Lex Kerssemakers, lost his cool as the automaker's semi-autonomous prototype sporadically refused to drive itself during a press event at the Los Angeles Auto Show. "It can't find the lane markings!" Kerssemakers griped to Mayor Eric Garcetti, who was at the wheel. "You need to paint the bloody roads here!" Shoddy infrastructure has become a roadblock to the development of self-driving cars, vexing engineers and adding time and cost. Poor markings and uneven signage on the 3 million miles of paved roads in the United States are forcing automakers to develop more sophisticated sensors and maps to compensate, industry executives say. Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently called the mundane issue of faded lane markings "crazy," complaining they confused his semi-autonomous cars. In other developed countries, greater standardization of road signs and markings makes it easier for robot cars to navigate. In the U.S., however, traffic lights can be aligned vertically, horizontally or "dog-house" style in two columns. Pavement markings use paint with different degrees of reflectivity - or don't exist at all. "If the lane fades, all hell breaks loose," said Christoph Mertz, a research scientist at Carnegie Mellon University. "But cars have to handle these weird circumstances and have three different ways of doing things in case one fails." To make up for roadway aberrations, carmakers and their suppliers are incorporating multiple sensors, maps and data into their cars, all of which adds cost. Mercedes says the "drive pilot" system found in its recently unveiled luxury E Class 2017 sedans works even with no lane markings. The system - which incorporates 23 sensors - takes into account guard rails, barriers, and other cars to keep cars in their lanes up to 84 miles (135km) per hour, under "suitable circumstances." Boston Consulting Group estimates that initial semi-autonomous features add $4,000 to a car's price.

• Facebook’s Live Video Effort Entices Media Companies: When severe weather passed through the Atlanta area early this month, Brad Nitz, a meteorologist for a local television station, WSB-TV, fed viewers live video updates on the station’s website, as he has done for years. But then he did something new: He turned away from the television camera and addressed an iPhone that was streaming him live — on Facebook. And the station’s social media manager, Jonathan Anker, watched this new Facebook audience swell. At its peak, the stream reached 8,800 viewers at once, and the segment has been played more than 77,000 times in total, far more than the station’s typical online audience. The numbers, Mr. Anker said, were “seriously out of whack, in a delightful way.” Experiences like this have media companies swooning over the possibilities of posting live video to Facebook, a feature made widely available two months ago. For years, companies have searched for ways to unlock three tough questions: How do you attract people to live online videos? How do you reach people on their mobile devices? And how do you get more out of Facebook’s 1.6 billion users? Now, they hope, they have found a key for all three. Yet it is also raising some questions inside the companies about if — and when — they will see any meaningful money come from the push. The feature, called Facebook Live, has largely lived under the radar so far. But it is one of the company’s highest-priority projects, according to three people directly involved with the initiative, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Internally, Facebook Live is seen as a way to move beyond hosting conversations about television and live events to becoming a venue for both. Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, has made Facebook Live one of his pet projects, two of the people said, devoting significant resources and effort to the initiative. Facebook plans to announce a suite of new features and partners in early April and at F8, Facebook’s developer conference in San Francisco later in the month. Facebook, though, has prioritized getting live video in front of as many users as possible. The company has been eager to talk with media companies about getting started with streaming, but remains vague in conversations about revenue sharing or subscription models. It is pushing a build-first, make-money-later philosophy, one that can be frustrating to media partners, particularly those struggling to navigate broader changes in the online media industry. But whatever the frustrations, they are outweighed by the prospect of reaching Facebook’s huge audience.

• LinkedIn Buddies Up Closer to Lynda.com, Adds Course Recommendations Based on Your Career: LinkedIn is finding more ways to pair its professional network with Lynda.com, the online video library it bought for $1.5 billion last April. The most recent integration: LinkedIn is using data around which jobs are most popular among its users to suggest collections of videos that can help train someone interested in that career. If you were interested in becoming a Web designer, for example, Lynda.com could now recommend a collection of classes to help you learn the skills necessary for that job. Some extra revenue would be great news for the company, and would also help justify the $1.5 billion it paid for the video library last year. It’s one of the reasons LinkedIn is also putting Lynda.com courses on Virgin America flights. LinkedIn stock has fallen by nearly 50 percent since the start of the year, and just this week Barclay’s analyst Paul Vogel downgraded the stock over fear of slowing revenue growth. It’s unclear whether a “shopping list” of videos will actually open any wallets, but it certainly can’t hurt.

• Government report details Theranos quality control issues: A government report released late Thursday accuses Theranos of producing inaccurate test results, of failing to meet its own lab standards and hiring unqualified personnel. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service visited Theranos’ main facilities in Newark, California last November and found the one drop blood test startup’s machines produced wildly inaccurate test results – including one for cancer detection, according to a redacted version of the report put out by the Wall Street Journal. The newly released 121-page report, obtained in full by the WSJ details quality control issues – including the failure to meet Theranos own standards. According to the report, erratic test results were frequent when tested in July 2014, and from February to June of 2015 on Theranos’ proprietary blood test machine Edison. One example – a test to measure a hormone affecting testosterone levels failed 87 percent of the time when run on Edison. It is unfathomable Theranos would be allowed to run test results for the public during this time. and these new details provide an inside look at some very real issues surrounding Theranos as a company, particularly around its code-named Edison technology – the supporting reason for the company’s $9 billion valuation.

• Amazon Expands Buttons for Reordering Essentials -- Like Doritos: Amazon.com Inc. is expanding the number of products available for instant re-ordering through its wireless Dash Buttons, citing high customer demand. After last year rolling out the WiFi-connected plastic tabs that can be mounted to the fridge, washing machine or kitchen cupboard, the online retailing giant is increasing the number of brands that can be re-ordered by pushing a button to more than 100, Amazon said in a statement Thursday. Now Amazon Prime customers who suddenly find themselves low on supplies -- from Trojan condoms to Doritos chips, Energizer batteries, Purina dog food and more -- can hit the button to reorder the product and get it delivered for free. The buttons cost $4.99 each, with the cost reimbursed after the first order through Dash. When the buttons were first introduced in March 2015 they were met with some skepticism as to whether people would want or use them. But Amazon said orders placed through Dash have grown by more than 75 percent in the last three months alone and now take place more than once a minute. 

• Inside the Little-Known Japan Firm Helping the FBI Crack iPhones: The little-known Japanese company at the center of a legal tussle between Apple Inc. and the U.S. government over the hacking of an iPhone built its business on pinball game machines and stumbled into the mobile phone security business almost by accident. Cellebrite Mobile Synchronization Ltd. worked with the FBI to crack an iPhone connected in a terrorist attack, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified as the matter is private. Neither Cellebrite nor the FBI have confirmed the link, and a spokesman from parent Sun Corp. on Thursday said the company isn’t able to comment on specific criminal cases. Sun, based in a small town of 100,000 southwest of Tokyo, has been building pinball-like game machines found in Japan’s pachinko parlors since the 1970s but has often displayed bigger tech ambitions. The Konan, Aichi-based company developed personal computers in the late 1970s, computer games and more recently, iPhone mahjong apps. In 2007, as sales slumped, Sun acquired Petah Tikva, Israel-based Cellebrite. Cellebrite hadn’t ventured into forensics at the time, and the purchase was mainly to add phone-to-phone data transfer to Sun’s fledgling telecommunications business, said the Japanese company’s spokesman Hidefumi Sugaya. When Cellebrite later took on investigative agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation as clients, the business took off, he said in a telephone interview. Today, the bulk of Sun’s mobile data solutions business comes from Cellebrite, said Sugaya. "Although the FBI didn’t get a legal decision that would require Apple to hack around its own security software, it created a situation where they can go to third parties to do that," said Matt Larson, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. "Companies like Cellebrite may have found a niche industry of assisting the FBI unlock personal devices in select cases moving forward." Cellebrite sells hardware and software for extracting data from hand-held devices, even if it has been encrypted or deleted. It employs more than 500 people and has offices in Israel, the U.S., Brazil, Germany, Singapore and the U.K., according to its website.Founded in 1999, Cellebrite was bought by Sun Corp. for a reported $17.5 million. 

• Huawei 2015 revenue jumps 37 percent, strongest in seven years: China's Huawei on Friday posted its strongest revenue growth since 2008 as China's adoption of fourth-generation (4G) mobile technology and strong smartphone sales worldwide boosted sales for one of the world's largest telecom equipment makers. The Shenzhen-based company said global revenue rose 37 percent to 395 billion yuan ($61.10 billion) in 2015, slightly above its forecast of 390 billion yuan. Net profit rose 32 percent to 36.9 billion yuan, from 27.9 billion yuan a year earlier, while operating margins dipped to 11.6 percent from 11.9 percent.Revenue in Huawei's carrier business, which competes with Sweden's Ericsson for the top spot globally for telecommunication equipment, increased 21.4 percent in 2015 on strong demand for 4G telecommunication equipment. In Huawei's enterprise division, which builds private networks for companies and organizations, revenue rose 43.8 percent.

Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, March 17 2016

• Flipkart and Amazon may have explored sale talks, say sources: Flipkart reportedly considered selling itself to Amazon, upending the notion that India’s largest online retailer would go full distance as an independent Internet giant. half-a-dozen sources told ET of the discussions between Flipkart and Amazon, and emphasised there is no reason to believe that a deal will be struck or that talks are still ongoing between the two. The talks were held until as recently as the last quarter of 2015, one of the sources said. ET was not able to determine the exact timeline of these talks or if they were initiated by one of Flipkart's investors. Flipkart itself denied that it is up for sale, or that it is in the market for capital. Three of the sources, who are top-level executives in venture capital and private equity firms, said Amazon made a preliminary offer of up to $8 billion to acquire Flipkart, nearly half of its previous stated valuation of $15.2 billion. A mutual fund managed by Morgan Stanley slashed the value of its Flipkart shares by 27% last month to about $11 billion, increasing speculation that new investors will back the company at a lower valuation. Flipkart-Amazon talks went cold after the offer was perceived to be too low, but the sources said the situation can change given Alibaba's interest in Flipkart.


• What AlphaGo’s sly move says about machine creativity: AlphaGo, the computer system Google engineers trained to master the ancient game of Go, needed only one move to make it abundantly clear that it has left humans in its dust. The move came Thursday, in the second game of AlphaGo’s 4-1 landmark victory over South Korean Lee Sedol, one of the world’s best Go players. About an hour into the match, AlphaGo placed one of its stones in a nontraditional spot on the board that surprised those watching. “I don’t really know if it’s a good or bad move,” said Michael Redmond, a commentator on a live English broadcast. “It’s a very strange move.” Redmond, one of the Western world’s best Go players, could only crack a smile. “I thought it was a mistake,” his broadcast partner, Chris Garlock, said with a laugh. Sedol, however, was more serious. He stared at the board, then got up from the table and left the room. As Sedol returned after a few minutes and pondered his next move, it became clear that AlphaGo’s move was no mistake. It might be strange, but it definitely wasn’t bad. It was brilliant.  Sedol would take almost 16 minutes to make his next move. He would never recover, losing the match. “Almost no human pro would’ve thought of it, I think,” Redmond said after the match. Pedro Domingos, a computer science professor at the University of Washington and author of “The Master Algorithm,” saw a parallel between AlphaGo’s style and how chess prodigy Bobby Fischer was feared because his early moves were considered too foolish to even be made. But as Fischer’s matches wore on, the ill-advised moves suddenly looked genius. “If that’s not creative, then what is?” Domingos asked. He sees machines delivering creative results, and they’re just getting started. Domingos believes a computer eventually will write a best-selling book. And he thinks there’s a 50-50 chance that a computer writes a hit pop song in the next decade, given advances in artificial intelligence techniques and computing power.Domingos said such advances shouldn’t come as a surprise, as machines increasingly demonstrate that creativity isn’t magical and distinctly human.

• Apple looks to Google’s Cloud Platform as it diversifies its infrastructure: Rumors are flying today that Apple is moving part of its cloud business from AWS to Google’s Cloud Platform. We did some asking around and yes, it does appear that Apple has made some moves to diversify its iCloud storage, tapping Google for some of that business. This is another huge win for Google and a — at the very least perceived — loss of ground for AWS, which has watched as Dropbox moved large parts of its US storage business in-house and Spotify moved at least part of its business to Google, too. If you’re keeping score, it’s been a good month for Google and especially the new head of its cloud business Diane Greene. High profile clients like Spotify and Apple would certainly make it more attractive to other enterprise customers. Google’s Cloud Platform may have the power of Google’s data center technology behind it, but that hasn’t yet helped the company in competing against AWS and Microsoft’s Azure platform. AWS has the advantage of an early start and Azure profits from Microsoft’s existing sales channels and it’s focus on hybrid cloud technologies. And even with the power of Microsoft behind it, though, Azure remains a distant second in the cloud business. One industry insider who chose not to be identified, however, told TechCrunch that Apple was definitely exploring its options around public cloud vendors, looking at Microsoft Azure and Google, but it had not made any firm decisions yet. It’s worth noting that Apple already uses  Azure (and AWS) for iCloud services and media serving. Whether Apple will continue moving off of AWS and onto other platforms is anyone’s guess. But at the moment it appears that this is a matter of diversifying its portfolio of cloud suppliers. Another wrinkle here is that Apple is currently expanding its data center in Prineville, Oregon, and is also expected to invest heavily in new data centers in both the U.S. and Europe. If that’s the case, moving from AWS to Google, then Google to Prineville wouldn’t seem to make sense. Why not just wait until the data center construction is complete?If Apple is indeed simply looking to diversify its infrastructure, though, then adding Google (on top of Azure, AWS and its own data centers) would be a fairly logical move. It’s also possible that Apple is only looking at some very specific services on the Google cloud, with theBigQuery data analytics platform being the prime suspect here.


• Morgan Stanley Downgrades LinkedIn, Slashes Price Target by 34 Percent: Why we were wrong" isn't a phrase one might want to include when sending out a note to clients, but it's what Morgan Stanley analysts were forced to deploy on Wednesday morning as they downgraded LinkedIn Corp. The shift from "overweight' to "equalweight," is the latest in a series of cuts for LinkedIn after it reported lackluster earnings last month that sent shares tumbling by more than 40 percent the following day.  "With its current product offering, LinkedIn isn't likely to be as big of a platform as we previously thought," the team, led by Brian Nowak, said. "We are reducing our price target to $125 [per] share (from $190) as well, driven by our lower long-term cash flow forecasts and increased execution uncertainty." Two key factors that had kept Morgan Stanley bullish are now abating. The first was growth in LinkedIn's Talent Solutions segment, which includes such things as subscription revenue. Nowak and his team now believe that growth has slowed both domestically and internationally for this segment and that the increased focus on small- and medium-sized businesses betokens that LinkedIn is hitting a peak when it comes to larger companies. The second was the monetization potential in new segments, known as Lynda and Sales Navigator. Recent events have caused the team to grow skeptical.

• Oracle Increases Buyback Program by $10 Billion:  Oracle reported a higher-than-expected quarterly profit and increased its stock buyback program by $10 billion. Oracle, like other established tech companies, is moving its business to the cloud by providing services remotely through data centers versus selling installed software. Total cloud revenue rose 39.5 percent to $735 million, accounting for about 8 percent of Oracle’s total revenue. Net income fell to $2.14 billion, or 50 cents a share, in the third quarter, from $2.50 billion, or 56 cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding items, the company reported a profit of 64 cents a share. Revenue fell 3.4 percent to $9.01 billion. Shares rose more than 4 percent in after-hours trading.

• Beyond Swipe Right: The Pickup Line Gets a Makeover: Thanks to the popular dating app Tinder, a one-size-fits-all gesture of approval, swipe right, has in theory replaced awkward fumbles at an opening conversational gambit. But in fact, the migration of courtship online has resulted in a refinement of pickup lines far beyond ’70s singles-bar relics like “Hey baby, what’s your sign?” and “Are those space pants? Because your butt is out of this world.” The simple “Hi” and its variations are the surest ways to end a conversation; they’re too generic and, lately, indistinguishable from the way bots initiate contact. Only those with the most flattering profile pictures can get away with generic questions like “How was your weekend?” A more common approach in Tinder-land is to quickly skim the other person’s profile and find something to comment on — a detail from a photo, or a line of profile text. Statements tend to work better than questions as conversation starters; they’re less personal and invite reactions and commentary rather than disclosure. With the help of a friend, Brent Bailey, 24, a programmer in New York, came up with a successful opener to someone who mentioned her life being “a bit messy” in her profile. “I could make your life a whole lot messier,” he responded. Mr. Bailey said he was more successful with crowd-sourced pickup lines. “As a rule, my friends are way less concerned about my dignity, so they usually come up with something way more interesting than I would,” he said. On the dating service Bumble, where women must initiate all conversations, Ms. Smothers decided to try what she called a “dumb troll-y” gimmick — asking every match if he was a feminist. Men loved it, and she got a high response rate she has yet to match.

• LivingSocial is laying off more than half of its workers: LivingSocial will cut more than half of its workforce, according to anannouncement from the company saying it has completed its "initial phase of turnaround." The move is the latest sign of the decline of "daily deal" sites once thought of as the next big thing for online shopping. The sites typically offered users heavily discounted vouchers at local businesses in exchange for a cut of deal sales. But some business complained that the model wasn't actually a good deal for them -- and consumers seemed to tire of the flood of emails sent by the services. The latest job cuts are part of a series of layoffs. The local company cut 400 jobs in 2014 and another 200 in October of last year. Competitor Groupon has also struggled: In September it announced it would lay off 1,100 people -- roughly 10 percent of its workforce -- and close operations in six countries. LivingSocial plans to move away from the voucher business, but hopes to expand "card-linked" discounts, according to the press release. The company is trying out a program called Restaurant Plus in handful of cities that works by letting customers reserve a deal with payment card information on file, but not charging them for it until it's actually used.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, March 16

• Sony PlayStation VR to launch globally in October, cost $399: Sony Corp announced on Tuesday that its virtual reality headset for PlayStation will launch globally in October for $399, a move that undercuts its biggest competitor by hundreds of dollars. Andrew House, head of Sony's gaming division, made the announcement during a press event at the Video Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, where virtual reality gaming counterpart Oculus Rift announced its headset a day earlier. The headset, a visor-style frame with a 5.7 inch (14.5 centimeters) screen, includes 360 degree head tracking, a 100 degree field of vision and latency of 18 milliseconds between the time a user's head moves and the time they see the correct image. At $399,the package is notably less than the $599 price announced Monday by Facebook-owned virtual reality company Oculus Rift. Oculus will also sell bundles that include an Oculus Ready PC and a Rift for preorder in February starting at $1,499. The company said more than 230 developers are building content for the PlayStation VR device and 50 games are expected to be ready by the launch date. Users can download the Playroom VR at the PlayStation store and play six free games. The company has also teamed up with development company EA Sports and Lucasfilm for a Star Wars Battlefront game that will be released as a PlayStation VR exclusive.

• Uber Could Give Us a Lesson in Productivity: In Los Angeles, traditional taxi drivers have a passenger in the car for 40.7 percent of the miles they drive. By contrast, Uber drivers have a passenger in the car for 64.2 percent of their miles, or a 58 percent higher capacity utilization rate. In Seattle, the other city surveyed with mileage data, Uber drivers were 41 percent more productive. When measured by time, Uber drivers in Boston, San Francisco and New York on average have a passenger in their car about half the time their smartphone app is turned on. That compares to a range of 32 percent of the shift for taxi drivers in Boston to 49.5 percent for cabbies in New York. The service's use of internet-based mobile technology to connect passengers and drivers certainly contributes to its efficiency, according to the report. It makes sense: tapping your smartphone screen a few minutes before you need a ride is often easier than waiting on a street corner and hoping an empty cab drives past. Meanwhile Uber allows drivers to set their own shifts, and when combined with their use of so-called surge pricing that increases fares during times of increased ridership, supply and demand are more smoothly matched. Uber drivers are also exempt from regulations that prevent taxi drivers who drop off a passenger in a jurisdiction outside the one that granted their occupational license from picking up another customer in the same location. Given their 38 percent advantage, Uber drivers could charge 28 percent less than traditional taxis and still earn the same amount per hour under certain assumptions, including ignoring fixed costs, according to Cramer and Krueger. That may be one reason investors last year valued the company at $62.5 billion, more than Ford Motor Co.,  General Motors Co., and 80 percent of companies in the S&P 500.

• Instagram is switching its feed from chronological to best posts first: The average Instagram user misses 70 percent of what’s in their feed, including great photos with tons of Likes and posts by their best friends. So today Instagram announced it will start rearranging the order of posts in its feed. Rather than strictly reverse chronological, Instagram will order posts “based on the likelihood you’ll be interested in the content, your relationship with the person posting and the timeliness of the post.” The testing will start out slowly; at least at first “all the posts will still be there, just in a different order.” But eventually, low-quality posts might be filtered out entirely. The changes mean if you don’t check your feed until the next morning but a friend whose photos you usually Like posted something awesome the night before, it could appear at the top of your feed even if it is hours old. This is essentially how Facebook’s feed works, and how Twitter recently reconfigured its feed to work. On the one hand, the relevancy-optimized Instagram feed will make sure you don’t miss great content even if you don’t neurotically check it all the time. You’ll be able to follow more accounts without worrying about them drowning out your favorites. And it will be easier to keep up with international friends who might normally post while you’re asleep. At the same time, remixing the feed will make Instagram less useful as a real-time content feed because the most recent posts won’t necessarily be at the top. Users will have to worry about making their posts good enough to be chosen by the algorithm or their posts could be de-prioritized. And brands might lose the reach of a previously reliable marketing channel, the same way they did with Facebook Pages. Filtered feeds tend to score more attention from users, as there are few boring posts that push them to close the app and do something else. And at this point, Instagram is so ingrained in people’s lives that they’re unlikely to ditch it over this change. But with Instagram and Twitter both moving to algorithmically sorted feeds, getting seen on social media will become more of a competition than ever.

• LinkedIn’s Lynda.com Videos Are Now Free on Some Commercial Flights: Here’s a tip for helping your video content stand out online: Make sure people see it when they don’t have many other options. That’s exactly what LinkedIn is doing to promote Lynda.com, the library of online classes it bought last year for a whopping $1.5 billion. LinkedIn announced Tuesday that it’s partnering with Virgin America to offer those classes for free to in-flight passengers. Beginning in April, a handful of classes will be free on all Virgin flights, and the entire Lynda.com library will be free for flights with higher quality Wi-Fi technology. No money is changing hands as part of the partnership, according to a LinkedIn spokesperson, but the potential benefits to LinkedIn are simple enough to understand. You’ll still need a Lynda.com account to watch videos, so it may help LinkedIn sign up more users. Plus, the competition for eyeballs on an airplane is usually pretty weak. The chance to learn a new skill or brush up on stress management may seem more appealing than random episodes of “Deadliest Catch” or “Cupcake Wars,” especially to business travelers. It’s basically a free opportunity to introduce its video library to potential new users — in the hope they will like the videos enough to pay for them sometime later down the road. If not, it still doesn’t cost LinkedIn anything in the process. It has offered free Lynda.com courses before. But this move does show how serious the company is about generating attention for Lynda.com. It paid a lot of money for the online classroom, and now it’s working to make it all back.

• Uber India Is Working on Offering Ride-Booking on Snapdeal: Uber’s India arm is in talks to partner with Indian e-commerce platform Snapdeal, multiple sources told Re/code. If a deal is reached, Snapdeal shoppers in India would be able to hail an Uber from within the newest iteration of Snapdeal’s app, these people said. As of March 9, Snapdeal had only released its new app to a select group of its customers, but indicated in a company blog post it would soon roll out to a larger group of users. The newest version of the Snapdeal app already includes integrations with travel booking service Cleartrip, food-delivery service Zomato and bus-booking service Redbus. As Snapdeal CEO Kunal Bahl told Re/code last April, the company believes it can differentiate from e-commerce competitors Flipkart and Amazon by broadening its focus beyond selling physical retail products. Last year, Snapdeal acquired FreeCharge, a recharge service for prepaid phones, and RupeePower, a comparison site for credit cards and loans. “What’s the delta between retail and consumption?” Bahl asked rhetorically. “It’s things like financial services, education, utilities, health care. But today, all everyone is doing is products.”

• India Opens Market for Solar Battery Makers Such as Tesla: India plans for the first time to include energy storage as a requirement when a solar project is tendered this month, opening what could become a significant new market to battery makers such as Tesla Motors Inc., Samsung SDI Co. and Panasonic Corp. The state-owned Solar Energy Corp. of India, which is responsible for implementing the government’s green targets, will ask bidders to include a storage component in 100 megawatts of the 750 megawatts of solar capacity tendered in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, Managing Director Ashvini Kumar said in an interview. The intention of the pilot program is to reduce fluctuations in electricity supply in order to make possible the transfer of clean energy between states. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has set a goal of 175 gigawatts of clean energy by 2022. The Andhra Pradesh project include 15 minutes of storage each for two solar installations. Warehousing power is considered a crucial component of India’s green targets. The requirement, if more broadly adopted, has the potential to invigorate the storage market because of India’s outsized ambitions for the industry. It would give manufacturers the scale they need to help bring down costs of battery storage that are holding back wider adoption.

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, February 5

• LinkedIn Shares Plummet 30% After Sales Outlook Trails Estimates: LinkedIn Corp. shares lost almost a third of their value after the professional networking site forecast a year of slower revenue growth amid signs of weakness in sales of advertising and marketing tools. Revenue will be about $820 million in the first quarter, and $3.6 billion to $3.65 billion for 2016, the company said in a statement Thursday. That missed analysts’ average estimate for $867.1 million and $3.9 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. LinkedIn had 414 million users in the fourth quarter, up from 396 million in the prior period. While Chief Executive Officer Jeff Weiner has made investments to diversify the business, like acquiring education website Lynda.com for $1.5 billion last year, it will be a while before those efforts contribute meaningfully to revenue. In the meantime, LinkedIn is facing a slowdown in its marketing-services business, which companies use to find potential customers, show them ads and relevant information and generate sales leads. Sales to recruiters, who use LinkedIn to find candidates for jobs, are also slowing. LinkedIn is narrowing its focus in some areas, which is hurting sales. For example, it’s discontinuing a tool that helps marketers find leads, incorporating the technology into its sponsored content business instead, contributing to a slowdown in its marketing solutions business. Revenue in the marketing solutions division rose 20 percent in the fourth quarter to $183 million. The professional-networking website is also facing slower economic growth in Europe and Asia, though it said China is its fastest-growing country for new members. The company has a standalone app for Chinese users and has devoted much of its efforts over the past year to push deeper into that market. For the fourth quarter, LinkedIn reported a loss attributable to common shareholders of $8.43 million, compared with the average estimate for $50.2 million. Revenue climbed 34 percent to $862 million, topping the prediction for $857.4 million. 

• Spotify Links Up With Amazon’s Echo: It took a while, but Spotify and Amazon have started playing nicely: The streaming music service is now integrated into the Echo, Amazon’s connected speaker/shopping stimulator/robot spy machine you willingly install in your own house. Previously you could get Spotify working on Echo, but only if you worked at it. Now you can ask Alexa, Amazon’s AI assistant, to play Spotify, or you can control it from the Spotify app on your phone. The only catch is that the integration only works for the 20 million to 25 million people who are paying Spotify subscribers, not the ones using the free, ad-supported version of the service. That sort of makes sense, since the Echo doesn’t have any place to show the display ads that run on the free version of Spotify; on the other hand, Echo is integrated with Pandora, which also has display ads.

• Software maker Atlassian's revenue up 45 percent: Australian Atlassian reported a 44.7 percent increase in quarterly revenue as more customers purchased its software that help companies collaborate and manage their operations. Net income inched up to $5.1 million in the second quarter ended Dec. 31 from $5.0 million a year earlier. On a per shares basis, profit was flat at 3 cents. Atlassian, which listed on the Nasdaq in December, said revenue rose to $109.7 million from $75.8 million. The company added more than 2,600 net new customers in the quarter.

• Indian IT services growth seeng slowing: Indian IT services exports are likely to grow at a slower pace next fiscal year than in the recent past as global clients rein in technology spending, an industry lobby group said on Thursday. The cutback on routine IT services is likely to push firms including Tata Consultancy Services Ltd and Infosys Ltd to sharpen their focus on high-margin digital services, analytics and artificial intelligence to cushion the impact on earnings. India's IT and software services export revenue is likely to grow by 10-12 percent in the fiscal year beginning on April 1 to as much as $121 billion, the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) said. Exports in the current fiscal year ending March are estimated to grow 12.3 percent to $108 billion, at the lower end of Nasscom's projection, with digital services seen up 19 percent. IT services growth seen slowing as clients curb spending. The shift towards new services could also trigger a wave of mergers and acquisitions in the sector, after Indian IT companies spent $2.4 billion on digital deals in 2015 - three times higher than the year before, Nasscom said. "To acquire digital skills companies will have to re-skill employees and acquire new technologies and that is likely to continue," it said. Including domestic sales, total revenue of the Indian IT sector, which accounts for 9.3 percent of the country's economic output, likely rose 8.3 percent to $143 billion in the fiscal year ending March 31, Nasscom said.

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, July 31

• Uber to invest $1 billion in India: FT: Online ride hailing service Uber is set to invest $1 billion in India, which will bring its investment on par with that in China, the Financial Times reported. Uber said that this move would help its service reach 1 million daily rides by March 2016, the first time the company has set such target for India, FT said. Amit Jain, president of Uber India, said the company was "extremely bullish" on the Indian market and that it continues to see a 40 percent monthly growth, FT reported. Jain also added that the company will expand service beyond the 18 cities in which it operates, the largest number in any country outside of the United States. On Wednesday, Uber launched its own auto leasing subsidiary in an effort to sign up more drivers, injecting the fast-growing ride services company directly into the financial services sector for the first time.


• LinkedIn Shares Slip on Concerns Lynda Buy Masks a Slowdown: LinkedIn shares fell after the company attributed a bump in its annual revenue forecast to its acquisition of the education website Lynda.com, raising concerns that growth is slowing in its main business. LinkedIn said full-year sales would be about $2.94 billion, beating the $2.91 billion average of analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg. As part of the forecast, the company more than doubled expectations for revenue from the Lynda.com acquisition to $90 million for the year, raising questions about whether the professional-networking website’s core business was expected to slow. The company acquired Lynda.com for $1.5 billion while it also reorganized its sales force and changed advertising methods -- expensive moves that may take time to produce benefits. The Lynda.com purchase and LinkedIn’s efforts to promote news content are intended to make the website valuable to people even when they aren’t looking for jobs. LinkedIn initially rose as much as 15 percent in extended trading after the earnings were released, only to erase those gains and fall as low as 9 percent to $207 during the company’s conference call with investors. Second-quarter sales increased 33 percent to $711.7 million, while analysts’ estimated $679.9 million. LinkedIn’s loss widened to $67.7 million, or 53 cents, from $1.03 million, or 1 cent, a year earlier, the Mountain View, California-based company said. LinkedIn’s Talent Solutions business was its fastest-growing segment in the quarter, gaining 38 percent to $433 million after the sales force shake-up. The jobs site, which reported 380 million users, said those people spent 60 percent more time on LinkedIn than they did a year earlier. The company reduced the amount of e-mails it sends out by 40 percent to reduce complaints and improve the quality of the experience. The company said its China-based site now has more than 10 million members.


• Social Media Stocks and Their Unforgiving Investors: Several social media stocks took a pummeling on Wednesday, with Yelp plunging 25 percent and Twitter dropping 15 percent after both companies issued quarterly earnings that disappointed investors in one way or another. On top of that, Facebook’s shares fell slightly in after-hours trading after it posted financial results that included a surge in spending and a forecast of slowing revenue growth. Few should be surprised by the stock reaction. Investors have demonstrated for many months that they are unforgiving of any stumble by technology companies that became alluring because they had portrayed themselves as high growth. See what happened last quarter with LinkedIn, Yelp and Twitter, which all plummeted more than 20 percent shortly after reporting results that surprised investors (and not in a good way). At the time, Vindu Goel and Mike Isaac wrote that “shareholders increasingly have little tolerance for the slightest misstep” by social-media companies — something that was once again made very clear this week.


• In rural China, shoppers go online - with a little help: Cheng Yonghao left his village in central Henan province almost 20 years ago, not expecting to return. He's now back home, and this week opened a village store to help locals shop online. Cheng is just one of an army of local recruits who are part of Alibaba Group's big bet on rural e-commerce as China's internet giants invest billions in outpost service hubs to tap a market twice the size of the United States. E-commerce growth in the countryside now outpaces that in major cities, though fewer than one tenth of online purchases made on Alibaba platforms were shipped to rural areas in the first quarter of this year. Alibaba estimates the potential market at 460 billion yuan ($74 billion) by next year. Rival JD.com also says that developing rural e-commerce is a key strategy this year. While the rewards are enticing, few are making money yet. "We don't know when our rural e-commerce operations will become profitable, but there's value in what we're doing, there's consumer demand," Gao Hongbing, director of Alibaba's research arm, told reporters earlier this month. Before it can reap the rewards, Alibaba is having to teach a rural population - which tends to be older, poorer and less comfortable with technology - how to browse and buy. Alibaba has been on a recruitment drive to find and train local 'partners', who set up service centers in their home villages, helping locals shop online. Partners - mostly younger, educated, and more familiar with navigating websites like Taobao, Alibaba's online emporium - go through a written exam, computer test and interview. More than 1,000 applied for one batch of 50 jobs, said one applicant from Henan. Training takes place at local government business offices over 2-3 days in groups of around four dozen. Trainees are asked about their aspirations and how they can reach their potential.


• MakeMyTrip sales growth skids in Q1, lowers revenue guidance for the year: MakeMyTrip reported a slow net revenue growth of just 7.5 per cent (14.7 per cent in constant currency) for the first quarter ended June 30, 2015 over the year-ago period. This was due to a mere 2.8 per cent rise in net revenues from hotels and packages segment (10.4 per cent in constant currency). Net revenues from the air ticketing business rose 10.8 per cent (17.6 per cent in constant currency). Overall net revenue as captured by revenue less service cost, a key metrics for OTAs like MakeMyTrip, rose 27.5 per cent (28.4 per cent in constant currency) in Q4 FY15 and 36.3 per cent in Q1 FY15. Net revenues for the last quarter stood at $38.1 million. Overall revenues declined 1.2. per cent (roe 5.2 per cent in constant currency) to $93.6 million in the quarter while gross bookings, which represent the total amount paid by a customer while booking on its platform, rose 8.3 per cent (15.6 per cent in constant currency) to $467.8 million. In terms if operating stats, booking transactions in its hotels and packages segment rose 14.4 per cent to 430,100. This was overshadowed by a robust 45.6 per cent rise in air ticketing transactions that rose to 1.6 million last quarter. The transaction growth in air ticketing business was largely driven by special fares offered by Indian domestic carriers. The firm also saw its net margins from the air ticketing segment shrink from 5.8 per cent in Q1 FY15 to 5.5 per cent last quarter. Net margins in the hotels and packages segment, however, increased from 11.9 per cent in the quarter ended June 30, 2014 to 13.3 per cent. This was also in line with net revenue margin of 13.2 per cent for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2015. Operating loss almost doubled from $3.4 million to $6.1 million while adjusted operating loss (excluding employee share-based compensation costs, merger and acquisitions related expenses and amortisation of acquisition related intangibles) stood at $1.6 million compared with operating profit of $0.3 million in the quarter ended June 30, 2014


• Baidu Plans $1 Billion Buyback to Bolster Slipping Stock Price: Baidu, China’s biggest Internet search engine company, said on Thursday it will buy back shares worth $1 billion after the company’s stock price slid following a weak earnings report earlier this week. The repurchases will take place over the next 12 months and be funded from the company’s existing cash balance, New York-listed Baidu said in a statement. Baidu shares have fallen 14 percent since July 27, when it reported lower-than-expected second-quarter profit. The company’s plan to spend aggressively on connecting online smartphone users to offline services raised investor concerns on margins, triggering the shares’ worst two-day drop since late 2008. Baidu said last month it would invest $3.2 billion in linking mobile internet users to nearby offline services such as buying cinema tickets, booking taxis, getting restaurant deals. But these O2O services are eroding the healthy margins Baidu enjoyed from its core search business.