Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, August 10

• Yelp swings to surprise profit, raises full-year revenue forecast: Consumer review website operator Yelp Inc swung to an unexpected second-quarter profit and raised its full-year revenue forecast as investments in sales and marketing led to more businesses and consumers signing up for its services. The company also gave a better-than-expected revenue forecast for the current quarter and said it partnered with and made a small investment in Nowait, a mobile platform that allows restaurants to manage their waiting lists. Shares of Yelp, whose website and app allow users to rate restaurants and a variety of other businesses, jumped more than 13 percent to $35.90 in extended trading on Tuesday. They hit a 52-week high of $32.90 in regular trading. Yelp posted a net profit of $449,000, or 1 cent per share, for quarter ended June 30, compared with a net loss of $1.3 million a year earlier and $15.5 million in the prior quarter. Revenue rose 29.5 percent to $173.4 million.

• P&G, the biggest advertiser in the world, reminded us why Facebook wants to be TV: Facebook is a giant, mega-successful advertising business. It has 1.7 billion users, and it knows a ton about them, which is why it did $17 billion in ad revenue last year. But despite years of trying to convince advertisers otherwise, Facebook is still not TV — the place advertisers go when they want to spend huge sums on brand advertising, meant to create overall awareness of their products. Instead, Facebook is the place advertisers go for direct response ads: Ads that send you somewhere when you click on them, so you can buy or download something immediately. Facebook is better at DR ads than anyone — see that second sentence at the top — but DR ads are of limited use for some advertisers. We got a reminder of that today, when the Wall Street Journal reported that P&G, the world’s biggest advertiser, was going to pull back on the targeted ads it was running on Facebook, because targeted ads weren’t helping P&G sell Tide and Pampers. But P&G is increasing its TV budget. P&G isn’t cutting back on its overall Facebook spend, and this news isn’t going to be a long-term problem for Facebook.

• Virtual Reality Classrooms Another Way Chinese Kids Gain an Edge: Deep within a building shaped like the Starship Enterprise, a little-known Chinese company is working on the future of education. Vast banks of servers record children at work and play, tracking touchscreen swipes, shrugs and head swivels - amassing a database that will be used to build intimate profiles of millions of kids. This is the Fuzhou hive of NetDragon Websoft Holdings Ltd. a hack-and-slash videogame maker and unlikely candidate to transform learning via headset-mounted virtual reality teachers. It’s one of a growing number of companies from International Business Machines Corp. to Lenovo Group Ltd. studying how to use technology like VR to arrest a fickle child’s attention. (And perhaps someday to make a mint from that data by showing them ads.) China - where parents have been known to try anything to give their kids an edge and tend to be less obsessive about privacy - may be an ideal testing ground for the VR classroom of the future. As it’s envisioned, there’ll be no napping in the back row. Lessons change when software predicts a student’s mind is wandering by spotting an upward tilt of the head. Dull lectures can be immediately livened up with pop quizzes. Even the instructor’s gender can change to suit the audience, such as making the virtual educator male in cultures where teachers are typically men.The notion of adaptive, computer-based teaching has bounced around for more than a decade. Done right, it’s got the potential to fundamentally alter learning. Educators who’ve relied on their gut and visual cues could be replaced or augmented by digital avatars powered by algorithms, which can in turn be replicated across the planet. Advocates argue that the benefits of using machines to scrutinize children and learning to adapt to their foibles will outweigh questions of privacy because soon there won’t be enough human teachers.

• Facebook Blocks Ad Blockers, but It Strives to Make Ads More Relevant: Digital ads pop up online so frequently and ubiquitously that many people are using software to block them. But if you try to stop ads from showing up onFacebook’s desktop website, you will now be out of luck: The social network has found a way to block the ad blockers. On Tuesday, Facebook flipped a switch on its desktop website that essentially renders all ad blockers — the programs that prevent websites from displaying ads on the page when a user visits the site — useless. The change allows the Silicon Valley company to serve ads on its desktop site even to people who have ad-blocking software installed and running.Facebook’s move is set to add to a furious debate about the ethics of ad blocking. On one hand, many digital ads are a nuisance — they slow loading times of web pages and detract from the online experience. Yet the ads also serve as the business foundation for many digital publishers to provide content to readers. Ad blockers have become a threat to publishers including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, which are facing declining advertising revenue. About 200 million people worldwide use ad-blocking software on their desktop computers, according to estimates from PageFair, an anti-ad-blocking start-up. An additional 420 million use ad blockers on their smartphones, the company said. Several digital publishers, including Wired, Forbes and The Times, have begun experimenting with anti-ad-blocking techniques, including asking visitors who use ad blockers to “whitelist” their sites so that ads may still appear.

Daily Tech Snippet: Monday, August 8

• Airbnb raising a reported $850M at a $30B valuation: Almost a year after its last raise of $1.6 billion, the company is said to be adding $850 million to its coffers, according to information obtained by Equidate. While $850 million is a ton of cash, it is not the largest round the company has raised. Last year, the company raised $1.5 billion in one of the largest VC rounds in history. The additional capital would only move Airbnb from the fifth to the forth most valuable tech unicorn at a potential valuation of $30 billion (tear).  Even as a late-stage company, Airbnb has to be increasingly conscious of the capital it takes on. Too much equity dilutes early investors, while too much debt could put investors at risk if valuations were to suddenly tank. Debt as an asset class is paid off before equity. Airbnb has notoriously taken actions to strategically prolong an IPO, bringing on a $1 billion credit faculty last year to support growth without diluting investors. The company previously had an approximate valuation of $27 billion, so while the round is large, it doesn’t deviate from prior anti-dilution strategies. With respect to deals that Airbnb reportedly walked away from, the $850 million dollar deal is tame. The Wall Street Journalreported that Airbnb left money on the table, rejecting a deal that would have valued the company at $34 billion.

• Google keeps finding new and creative ways to piss off Yelp and TripAdvisor: There’s no love lost between Yelp and Google. And, more recently, between TripAdvisor and Google, too. Now, Google is giving those companies a new reason to believe that the search giant is intentionally pushing listings from their review sites way down in search rankings. The most recent brouhaha centers on a new search feature that highlights critic reviews of restaurants from sites like Zagat, which Google owns, as well as “best of” lists from publishers. The end result, as shown below in a tweet from Yelp’s CEO, is that Yelp and TripAdvisor reviews don’t show up even if you scroll down to the second screen of results on a phone. In this instance, you would have to scroll to the third screen to see Yelp reviews.Both Yelp and TripAdvisor have been complainants in the European Union’s case against Google for anticompetitive practices. These companies continue to believe that Google intentionally promotes its own products — like local reviews of restaurants and hotels — over others, including theirs. Google denies this. Google has historically been a large source of traffic for both review companies, so it’s been critical for them to get people to frequent their apps on mobile phones rather than search for local spots through Google. A Google spokeswoman declined to comment.

• Bitfinex exchange customers to get 36 percent haircut, debt token: Crypto-currency exchange Bitfinex, which lost $72 million to hackers last week, told customers on Sunday they would lose just over 36 percent of the assets they had on the platform but would be compensated for these losses with tokens of credit. The Hong Kong-based exchange said losses from the theft would be shared, or "generalized", across all the company's clients and assets, widening the group of those affected announced last week. "This is the closest approximation to what would happen in a liquidation context," Bitfinex said on its website early on Sunday. "Upon logging into the platform, customers will see that they have experienced a generalized loss percentage of 36.067 percent." The company said it would also give all affected clients a "BFX" token crediting their losses that could be redeemed by the exchange or for shares in iFinex, the exchange's parent company. Bitfinex said it would explain its methodology in a later update and that it was talking to investors about how to fully compensate its customers. Hackers stole 119,756 bitcoin from Bitfinex last week in the second-biggest breach of a crypto-currency exchange ever, in U.S. dollar terms. The hack accounted for about 0.75 percent of all bitcoins in circulation. The exchange is the world's largest for trading digital currencies such as bitcoin, litecoin and ether, and is used for its deep liquidity in U.S. dollar/bitcoin trades. It is still not clear how the hackers gained access to the company's customer accounts. However, both Bitfinex and outside experts have dismissed suggestions the breach was due to the security of the blockchain, the decentralized ledger that tracks every bitcoin transaction, and which traditional banks are considering adopting to increase the speed and transparency of their transactions.

Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, February 9

• Facebook Loses a Battle in India Over Its Free Basics Program: For years, Mark Zuckerberg has had a grander vision than just connecting the more than one billion people who already use Facebook: He wants to connect the entire world. That effort hit a major roadblock on Monday, when Indian regulators banned free mobile data programs that favor some Internet services over others. The regulations, issued after months of intense public debate over how to extend the Internet to India’s poorest citizens, effectively block Facebook’s controversial Free Basics program in the country. Free Basics offers people no-fee access to a text-only mobile version of the Facebook social network, as well as to certain news, health, job and other services. Facebook describes the program as a way to introduce the poor and the technologically unskilled to the potential of the Internet. Free Basics came out of Mr. Zuckerberg’s program for universal Internet access, which was started in 2013 under an initiative called Internet.org. The idea was to simplify phone applications to run more efficiently and to offer these apps to users in developing countries. Half a dozen of the world’s tech giants, including Samsung, Nokia, Qualcomm and Ericsson, agreed to work with Facebook as partners on the initiative. Free Basics is now in 38 countries, from Indonesia to Panama. Facebook is investing heavily in other parts of the project, including experiments to deliver cheap Wi-Fi to remote villages and to beam Internet service from high-flying drones. In India, where Facebook already has at least 132 million users, the company began offering Free Basics last year through Reliance Communications, a local mobile phone carrier. A Reliance spokesman could not be reached for comment. The program quickly became the target of critics, who said that it was an attempt to steer unsophisticated new Internet users to Facebook and other services that were working with the company. They argued that Free Basics and other so-called zero rating programs, which are a set of apps or sites that a mobile operator or I.S.P. does not charge customers to use, violated the concept of net neutrality. Facebook embarked on a blitz of paid lobbying and advertising to promote Free Basics, spending millions of dollars in media campaigns to convince locals its offering would be positive for the population. The company ran special banners in the Facebook news feeds of Indian users urging them to petition the government to allow Free Basics. Mr. Zuckerberg personally lobbied against the new rules, including writing an opinion column in The Times of India. Experts said that campaign may have had an adverse effect on Indian thinking. Locals were wary of the company’s unknown long-term plans for advertising or other parts of Facebook’s business.

• Job Site Hired Raises $40 Million and Forecasts Profit by 2017: When Mehul Patel, Hired Inc.'s chief executive officer, began talking to venture capitalists last year for the company's latest fundraising round, they were no longer interested in hearing about market potential or user growth. Investors wanted to know when the job recruitment website would become profitable. Patel tailored his pitch to highlight the ways he'd made his startup run more efficiently while showing that Hired would roughly triple annual revenue in 2016. He forecast a profit by early 2017. "The conversation had really changed from a year ago," he said. Hired faces many larger and more established competitors. CareerBuilder.com, Indeed Inc., LinkedIn Corp., and Monster Worldwide Inc. each control segments of the online jobs market. Monster generated revenue of $770 million in 2014. Although LinkedIn had a rough time last week, the site generated $862 million in just its last quarter. Hired said it has a 2016 revenue "run rate" of $100 million. (The number is generally calculated by using the performance during one period as the basis to project a full year.) Hired is cost-free for job seekers, who create profiles listing their skills and backgrounds. About 4 percent of applicants are accepted. Recruiters from companies such as American Express Co., Comcast Corp., and Facebook Inc., pay to target those high-skill candidates and send them offers via e-mail. Since it began in 2012, Hired has expanded from tech workers in San Francisco to sales, marketing, and other professionals in 15 cities. The company has acquired two small startups in Paris and Melbourne to help it continue expanding internationally. Patel said he's constantly looking for ways to cut costs. The startup has moved three times in as many years because it was unwilling to commit to a long-term lease. The chairs at the company's San Francisco office are mostly from Ikea. Patel said he bought a Herman Miller model for his home office from a startup that shut down during the first dot-com crash. "That's still my office chair," he said. "It reminds me not to let things get too crazy."

• Sacked! Twitter and Facebook Experience a Super Bowl Down Round: Sunday’s Super Bowl was, to put it bluntly, pretty boring. That was reflected on the Internet as well: Despite it being the 50th Super Bowl and most likely the last game for future Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning, both Facebook and Twitter saw significantly less Super Bowl chatter than they did last year. Facebook reported that 60 million people created some 200 million posts, comments and “likes” throughout the game. Those numbers are down from last year, when 65 million people generated 265 million posts, comments and likes. That’s about 25 percent less activity for those keeping score. Twitter had it even worse. Much worse, in fact. Roughly 3.8 million people created 16.9 million tweets during the game, according to Nielsen. That’s down from 25.1 million tweets sent during last year’s game, a drop of roughly 33 percent*. In fact, Twitter didn’t even share its total tweet metrics this year like it did in 2015. The company also didn’t immediately reply to our request for comment on Nielsen’s numbers. Yes, a lousy game doesn’t help. But a dip like this is not a great sign for either platform, both of which offered new features this year intended to increase engagement for a game just like this. On Twitter, that feature is Moments, a curated stream of tweets around a particular event. On Facebook, it’s Sports Stadium, a new area of the app dedicated to following live sporting events and talking with your friends about them. (The new feature had some technical difficulties Sunday afternoon.) Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey will be hit hardest from a poor showing like this. User conversations around live events are where Twitter is supposed to dominate. This kind of regression is exactly why the company stock is at an all-time low; investors are concerned about slowing user growth and the resulting engagement. Those same investors are bracing for the company’s earnings this week, and it could have used a nice Super Bowl boost to highlight on the earnings call. Apparently it’ll need to find something else. 

• Zenefits CEO Parker Conrad Out Amid Compliance Concerns:  There’s a big shuffle happening at Zenefits today — with Zenefits CEO Parker Conrad exiting the company and COO David Sacks taking over. Conrad is also stepping down as a director of the company. In an email to employees, Sacks noted that compliance issues that have plagued the company contributed to Conrad’s exit. Zenefits has hit significant turbulence, including missing revenue targets according to a Wall Street Journal report, and also running into issues with regulators. Regulatory issues have plagued the company, as has been reported by BuzzFeed. Zenefits allowed unlicensed brokers to sell health insurance, leading to at least one commissioner to investigate the company in Washington State, according to a BuzzFeed report. Most recently, BuzzFeed reported 80 percent of the company’s deals in Washington State were done by unlicensed brokers.

• Verizon enlists AOL CEO to explore Yahoo deal: Bloomberg: Verizon Communications has given Tim Armstrong, chief executive officer of its AOL unit, a leading role in exploring a possible bid for Yahoo's assets, Bloomberg reported, citing a person with knowledge of the situation. Verizon, the largest U.S. wireless carrier, hasn't hired bankers to conduct an offer and there have been no formal talks, according to the report. Yahoo said last week that it would consider "strategic alternatives" for its core Internet business, even as it continues with its plan to revamp the business and spin it off. Yahoo's core business, which includes popular services like Yahoo Mail and its news and sports sites, could attract private equity firms, media and telecom companies or firms like Softbank, analysts had said. Verizon's Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo said in December that the U.S. wireless carrier could look at buying Yahoo's core business if it was a good fit. Earlier this year, Verizon bought AOL Inc in a $4.4 billion deal to push into targeted advertising and mobile video. Verizon's shares were down 1.1 percent, while Yahoo's shares were down 4 percent in afternoon trading on Monday.

• Yelp posts smaller-than-expected loss; CFO to step down; Shares plunge: Consumer review website operator Yelp Inc reported a smaller-than-expected loss on Monday, but its shares slumped 11 percent, swept up in a broader selloff in the technology sector coupled with a weak adjusted EBITDA forecast. The company said results were released about 3 hours ahead of schedule during trading hours on Monday, due to an error by PR Newswire, leading to a spike in volatility in its shares. Yelp also said Chief Financial Officer Rob Krolik would step down later this year but did not elaborate. Krolik, who joined in 2011, will continue in his role until Dec. 15, 2016, or until a replacement is hired, the company said in a statement. Yelp's revenue rose about 40 percent in the fourth quarter, topping analysts' estimates, helped by the strength in its advertising business and a rise in mobile usage. Local advertising accounts in the quarter rose 32 percent to about 111,000, in line with estimates from market research firm FactSet StreetAccount. Revenue rose to $153.7 million from $109.9 million. Yelp reported a net loss of $22.2 million, or 29 cents per share, for the quarter ended Dec. 31, compared with a profit of $32.7 million, or 42 cents per share, a year earlier.

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, December 18

• Big IPO, Tiny Payout for Many Startup Workers: Side deals and volatile shares make stock options a bigger gamble for startup employees.The frustrated expectations of early employees have become a common thread in the latest round of technology IPOs. It used to be “the get-rich story happened for people who joined in the early days,” says Saar Gur, general partner at Charles River Ventures. Now they can be among the few left behind. Many executives, early investors, and even later investors are able to cash out before the rank and file, or bargain for guarantees that help ensure a bonanza. Whatever happens with an IPO, executives tend to hang on to enough equity to guarantee huge payouts when they sell their shares. Most early investors get a chance to sell options on secondary markets before a company’s IPO. Later investors increasingly demand preferential treatment, including agreements that if an IPO underperforms the terms of their investment, they’ll be made whole with an equivalent amount of additional shares. Late-stage investors in both Box and Square had such so-called ratchet agreements in place, further devaluing locked-up employee equity. When those kinds of deals are in place, employees often find their payouts disappointing because they’re so diluted, says Clara Sieg, a partner at Revolution Ventures. Box and Square declined to comment for this story. Ordinary employees are typically without meaningful financial protections or even a clear sense of what their equity stakes mean, says Chris Zaharis, who’s worked at startups for about 20 years and as a volunteer teaches people about their equity rights. Options grants often don’t come with information on strike prices (discounts on shares), preferential treatment, or even the total number of shares outstanding. “People on average overestimate what they are going to make by about 10X,” he says.

• Driverless Cars Have A Crash Rate Twice As High As Regular Cars - Because They Always Follow The Rules. They  The self-driving car, that cutting-edge creation that’s supposed to lead to a world without accidents, is achieving the exact opposite right now: The vehicles have racked up a crash rate double that of those with human drivers. The glitch? They obey the law all the time, as in, without exception. This may sound like the right way to program a robot to drive a car, but good luck trying to merge onto a chaotic, jam-packed highway with traffic flying along well above the speed limit. It tends not to work out well. As the accidents have piled up -- all minor scrape-ups for now -- the arguments among programmers at places like Google  and Carnegie Mellon University are heating up: Should they teach the cars how to commit infractions from time to time to stay out of trouble? “It’s a constant debate inside our group,” said Raj Rajkumar, co-director of the General Motors-Carnegie Mellon Autonomous Driving Collaborative Research Lab in Pittsburgh. Turns out, though, their accident rates are twice as high as for regular cars, according to a study by the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Driverless vehicles have never been at fault, the study found: They’re usually hit from behind in slow-speed crashes by inattentive or aggressive humans unaccustomed to machine motorists that always follow the rules and proceed with caution. Last year, Rajkumar offered test drives to members of Congress in his lab’s self-driving Cadillac SRX sport utility vehicle. The Caddy performed perfectly, except when it had to merge onto I-395 South and swing across three lanes of traffic in 150 yards (137 meters) to head toward the Pentagon. The car’s cameras and laser sensors detected traffic in a 360-degree view but didn’t know how to trust that drivers would make room in the ceaseless flow, so the human minder had to take control to complete the maneuver.

• Brazil court lifts suspension of Facebook's WhatsApp service: A Brazilian judge on Thursday ordered the lifting of a 48-hour suspension of the services in Brazil of Facebook Inc's WhatsApp phone-messaging application, overturning an order from a lower court. The ban, which went into effect at midnight Wednesday, lasted about 12 hours until an appeals court judge overturned it. The interruption of WhatsApp's text message and Internet telephone service caused outrage in Latin America's largest country, where the company estimates it has 100 million personal users, and led to angry exchanges on the floor of Congress. WhatsApp is installed on 92.5 percent of Android devices in Brazil, making it the most installed app in the country, according to SimilarWeb, an internet intelligence and marketing company. Rival messaging system Telegram said on Twitter that it received 1 million downloads in Brazil in one day due to the outage. Telegram was installed on 2.35 percent of android devices before the blackout and Facebook Messenger on 74 percent, SimilarWeb said. A judge in Sao Bernardo do Campo, an industrial suburb of Sao Paulo, had ordered the suspension of WhatsApp's services from midnight on Wednesday (0200 GMT Thursday). The order was made after the California-based company, despite a fine, failed to comply with two judicial rulings to share information in a criminal case. 

• Apple names Jeff Williams COO, a job once held by Tim Cook: Apple Inc promoted longtime executive Jeff Williams to the role of chief operating officer, reinstating the title previously held by Chief Executive Tim Cook, as part of a series of changes to the company's leadership team. Williams, who joined Apple in 1998, previously served as senior vice president of operations and oversaw development of the Apple Watch, the company's first new product since the iPad. "Jeff is hands-down the best operations executive I've ever worked with," Cook said in a statement. While it was unclear if the appointment meant Apple was grooming Williams to be Cook's successor, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a source, that the move did not necessarily signal that.

• Yelp, OpenTable part ways amid heightened competition: Review site Yelp Inc and restaurant reservation service OpenTable have quietly ended a long-running partnership, the companies confirmed on Thursday, as the one-time allies increasingly eye each other's businesses. The companies parted ways in April under mounting competition, with OpenTable facing new rivals to its reservation business and Yelp dogged with questions about stalling growth. Both companies are trying to take charge of the entire customer experience, said an analyst. "If they have to share that customer with someone else, it threatens their long-term viability," he said. The companies halted a deal that since 2010 had allowed users to make OpenTable reservations through Yelp, home to a trove of reviews from diners.

Daily Tech Snippet: Monday, November 30 2015

• Thanksgiving Final Results – OmniChannel Strikes Back: This morning we are releasing the final results from Thanksgiving 2015. What stands out is the Omnichannel players with stores and online marketplaces (Best Buy, Sears, etc.) did extremely well.  This indicates that these ‘Brick and Clicks’ retailers were really able to tie their store and online promotions together with great success. This data is date-shifted to compare Thanksgiving this year  (Nov 26) vs. last year (Nov 27).  In summary, Thanksgiving 2015 blew the doors off, coming in at 43.4% y/y growth compared to 20.1% last year – more than twice the rate of growth.  The trick is while we know that Thanksgiving 2015 was very strong, we don’t know if this will continue through the entire Cyber Five and through all of Holiday 15, or if consumers are shopping much earlier than last year and will taper off as we get past Thanksgiving.  Omnichannel marketplaces led the pack with Google Shopping and Amazon also outperforming. From a device perspective, Smartphones were 58% of traffic compared to last year’s Thanksgiving 35% and a new high water mark for this device type in our data.  From an order perspective, smartphone came in at 37% which was also more than double last year, although conversion rates continue to lag desktop and tablet considerably. Conclusion: consumers not only increased their Thanksgiving sales, but they utilized their smartphones heavily and favored omnichannel retailers.

• Kobe Bryant Takes NBA Retirement News to Twitter, Not TV. Chris Sacca Is Pumped: On Sunday, outgoing NBA star Kobe Bryant opted not to make his expected retirement announcement on broadcast TV. Instead, he went for social media, posting his retirement poem on Facebook and Twitter simultaneously. It links to Players Tribune, a site for athletes from fellow superstar Derek Jeter, which subsequently crashed after the Kobe post. It took about an hour for Twitter to add the news to its Moments tab. (Facebook’s trending section, at least for me, does not have the news, but is teasing a split between NFLer Tim Tebow and a former Miss USA over “lack of sex.”)It took about an hour for Twitter to add the news to its Moments tab. (Facebook’s trending section, at least for me, does not have the news, but is teasing a split between NFLer Tim Tebow and a former Miss USA over “lack of sex.”)

• Amazon releases video showcasing unmanned delivery drones:  Amazon has unveiled what its unmanned drones for package delivery would look like with a video launched on Sunday on the prototype of technology it announced two years ago. The promotional clip, narrated by television show host Jeremy Clarkson, shows a family receiving in about 30 minutes replacement soccer shoes for the one chewed up by its dog. "In time, there will be a whole family of Amazon drones. Different designs for different environments," Clarkson says. The video shows the box containing the shoes ordered by the family fitting seamlessly into the body of the drone. It then rises vertically, in helicopter style, for nearly 400 feet, according to Clarkson, after which it assumes a horizontal orientation, flying like an airplane. Clarkson said the drone in the clip could fly for 15 miles. It was equipped with what he called "sense-and-avoid technology" to sense, then avoid, obstacles in its path. The video shows the drone approaching its targeted landing spot, dropping the package, then taking off again, presumably to return where it came from. The launch of the video appeared to be timed ahead of "Cyber Monday", one of the biggest shopping events for electronics retailers. Amazon did not say when it hoped to have the drones in service.

• Judge Dismisses Yelp Suit Brought by Shareholders: Yelp won the dismissal of a lawsuit by shareholders who claimed they had been fraudulently misled about the authenticity and quality of its reviews, and who accused Yelp of manipulating those reviews to favor paying advertisers. In a Nov. 24 decision, United States District Court Judge Jon S. Tigar in San Francisco said reasonable investors would understand that not all Yelp reviews are real, particularly given the company’s admission that its technology to screen user-generated content is not foolproof. In April, Judge Tigar dismissed an earlier version of the complaint, which sought class-action status. He said the plaintiffs could not sue again because any amendment would be “futile.” Yelp lets users rate restaurants and other businesses on a five-star scale. Positive reviews can bolster sales and negative reviews can harm sales, especially if viewers perceive the reviews as unbiased. Shareholders led by Joseph Curry accused Yelp of inflating its share price by falsely promoting the reliability of its reviews, as part of a calculated strategy to extort businesses into buying ads or making payments in exchange for removing bad or fake reviews. But the judge said only 11 of the complaints accused Yelp of offering to manipulate reviews in exchange for fees, a small number.

Daily Tech Snippet: Monday, November 23, 2015

• Once Valued At $4.5B,  LivingSocial Offers a Cautionary Tale to Today’s Unicorns: The first thing you see when walking into the headquarters of LivingSocial is row upon row of mostly empty desks, broken up by small street signs that employees once needed to find one another when the office teemed with people. One row, “BYFAD Lane,” was named after a start-up, BuyYourFriendADrink, which LivingSocial acquired to get into the daily deals business. Other signs, such as “Sky Diving Street,” were named for some of the hottest discount coupons that the company once provided. On a recent visit, some desks were piled high with boxes of employee belongings, the detritus left behind after a round of layoffs that eliminated one-fifth of the work force. In one refrigerator, the milk was six months old. The technology industry’s boom over the last few years has been defined by the rise of “unicorns,” the private companies that investors have valued at $1 billion or more. Before the term came into vogue, LivingSocial was among the biggest unicorns of its day. It now offers a glimpse of what some of today’s unicorns might look like several years down the road if things go awry. Just four years ago, LivingSocial and its larger rival Groupon grew rapidly on a simple pitch: The companies would match customers to local businesses with a daily deal in users’ inboxes, like half off at a local deli or a two-for-one massage promotion. LivingSocial and Groupon would take a cut of each transaction. Venture capitalists anointed daily deals as the way that the Internet would invade local business, and by late 2011 LivingSocial had raised more than $800 million and reached a valuation of $4.5 billion, according to data from the research firm VC Experts. The company counted Amazon and the mutual fund giant T. Rowe Price among its investors. LivingSocial spent heavily, blanketing the airwaves with TV ad campaigns. Riding a wave of momentum, the company explored going public. Today, LivingSocial is more unicorpse than unicorn. The company never filed for an initial public offering and consumer fervor for daily deals has cooled. T. Rowe Price has written down its stake in LivingSocial to nearly zero, data from Morningstar shows. The company’s work force has shrunk to around 800 employees from 4,500 at its peak in 2011. Groupon, which did go public, is trading at more than 85 percent below its I.P.O. price.

• Airbnb raises $100 million in funding, Valuation stays flat at $25.5B: source: Apartment-sharing startup Airbnb Inc has raised over $100 million in a new round of funding, a source close to the company said. Airbnb, once a startup selling cereal, expects to achieve profitability in 2016, the source said. Airbnb revenue doubled to $340 million in the third quarter on bookings of $2.2 billion, the source said. The company expects revenue of $900 million this year. The round was done at the same $25.5 billion valuation as the previous funding round over the summer, indicating that unicorns, or private tech companies worth $1 billion or more, are finding it tougher to convince investors to buy shares at continuously escalating valuations.

• Snapchat's lackluster ad business threatens $16 billion valuation: Snapchat, maker of a free mobile app that lets users send videos and messages that disappear in seconds, is struggling to gain traction with advertisers, fuelling investor concern that its $16 billion valuation isn't justified by a business that hasn't yet shown it has a steady source of income. Even in a world where upwards of 140 private companies are reckoned to be worth $1 billion or more, Snapchat's outsized value stands out. Fidelity Investments' decision to slash the estimated value of its Snapchat stake by 25 percent in the third quarter exacerbated concern about the company's ability to meet advertisers' expectations. For Snapchat advertisers, the question is whether prices that can reach more than $500,000 for some ads is worth it when the company lags competitors in targeting specific consumers and measuring how ads perform. "If Snapchat doesn't get that figured out, they're in trouble," said Nick Godfrey, chief operating officer at RAIN, a digital strategy agency. Snapchat lost more than $128 million in the first 11 months of 2014, according to a financial statement leaked earlier this year, which also showed Snapchat had revenue of $3.1 million. Its advertising business began in mid-October. Tech media outlet Re/code estimated that Snapchat's revenue could reach $50 million in 2015, citing sources familiar with the company. Snapchat doesn't comment on its revenue or its losses. The company has raised $1.2 billion from investors, ample resources to develop its advertising techniques. But time may be limited as the company is in early discussions for an IPO, according to sources. Snapchat's $16 billion valuation was calculated at its most recent funding round in May based on how much investors were willing to pay for shares.

• Yelp Surges as Investors See Bargain Buying Opportunity: Yelp Inc. shares surged the most in six months Friday as investors see the customer-review website at bargain prices after it lost almost half of its value this year. Shares jumped 11 percent to close at $31.21 in New York, the biggest increase since May 7 and the highest price since July 28. Yelp shares plummeted July 29 after the company cut its revenue forecast and said it would stop selling national brand advertising. The stock is down 43 percent this year. Yelp Chief Executive Officer Jeremy Stoppelman is trying to convince investors the company is on the right track by boosting its local advertising sales force and pulling back from banner ads from national brands that aren’t getting responses from Yelp users. The move is part of Yelp’s shift to mobile users, who make up a larger portion of its audience than desktop users.

• Google aims for China launch of Google Play app store next year: Google, part of Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O), aims to launch the China version of its Google Play smartphone app store next year, according to people familiar with the matter, its first major foray in the market since ending localized product support in 2010. The Google Play app store would be set up specifically for China, and not connected to overseas versions of Google Play, two of the people said. They said Google intends to comply with Chinese laws on filtering content that might be viewed as sensitive by the ruling Communist Party, and laws requiring the company to store the app store's data within China.

• Jawbone Lays Off 60, 15% Of Staff Globally, Closes NY Office. Some difficult news this week for Jawbone, maker of fitness trackers, speakers and Bluetooth headsets. TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that the company yesterday laid off around 60 employees, or 15% of staff. It’s a global round of layoffs affecting all areas of the business; and as part of it Jawbone is also closing down its New York office (which was concentrated on marketing) and downsizing satellite operations in Sunnyvale and Pittsburgh. In an emailed statement, a spokesperson said the layoffs are part of a wider “streamlining.” From what we understand, there are no specific product areas being cut as part of this restructuring. The company, in other words, will continue to sell its Jambox speakers and the Era headset, along with related accessories. More generally, however, Jawbone has been increasingly focusing is R&D, product and marketing attention on its range of UP fitness trackers.

Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, October 29

• Flipboard's Fanfare Fades as Executives Exit, Sale Talks Stall: Flipboard Inc. debuted in 2010 with the kind of fanfare any startup would envy. The news-reading app piggybacked perfectly on the debut of Apple’s iPad tablet and Steve Jobs’s promise of a new era for digital media. Critics loved Flipboard’s magazine-like layout, created by one of the first software designers of the iPhone, and investors poured money into the company. Almost five years later, Flipboard is struggling to live up to the praise. Several senior executives have departed, including co-founder Evan Doll, and talks to sell the company haven’t reached the finish line, according to people familiar with the plans, who asked not be named discussing private matters. Flipboard’s woes are indicative of a larger malaise gripping startups across the technology landscape as questions emerge about the sustainability of the tech-investment boom. Flipboard is performing well enough -- and, after raising more capital earlier this year, is at no risk of going out of business -- but is no longer a breakaway hit. People are finding media through their Facebook or Twitter feeds, limiting the need for a stand-alone application like Flipboard. Meanwhile, advertising rates -- the company’s main revenue stream-- have been in decline. While Flipboard’s reading app was a showpiece for the iPad five years ago, the company is now working to adjust to a changing digital-news market and live up to its $800 million valuation. Other companies facing similar questions about whether they can make good on early investor expectations -- and lofty private-market valuations -- include online storage service Dropbox Inc., note-taking company Evernote Corp., music-streaming service Deezer SA and blood-testing company Theranos Inc., said Anand Sanwal, chief executive officer of CB Insights, a firm that tracks startup investing. The companies face a challenge in that they could be too expensive for another company to buy, yet may not have the business fundamentals to justify their valuations to public investors through an initial public offering, he said.

• Samsung Deploys Cash Pile With $10 Billion Buyback, Capex Boost, As Phones Fail To Revive Growth: Samsung Electronics is tapping its $50 billion cash pile to buy back shares and invest in its components business after struggles in the smartphone division battered investors. Shares surged. The company will buy back and cancel 11.3 trillion won ($10 billion) of shares and boost capital spending by 14 percent this year, Samsung said Thursday. The announcements came after the company posted profit that trailed analyst estimates. Capital expenditure will rise to 27 trillion won this year as the company invests in chips and display plants.  Samsung is struggling for an answer to Apple Inc. in high-end smartphones, trying price cuts, a $120 rebate program and new models to tempt consumers from buying iPhones. That has prompted a renewed focus on making components for earnings growth, with new semiconductor and display plants to get its parts into other vendors devices. Samsung said it will increase capital spending after posting profit that missed analysts’ estimates as price cuts on new Galaxy S6 smartphones failed to sway consumers from buying iPhones. Capital expenditure will rise 14 percent to 27 trillion won ($24 billion) this year, the company said Thursday. Net income, excluding minority interests, was 5.31 trillion won ($4.7 billion) in the third quarter with profit to fall in the current period, Samsung said. Increased marketing spending, including a $120 rebate program, hasn’t sparked sales of the premium devices that generate fatter profit margins. Samsung is investing in computer chip plants as it tries to revive Galaxy smartphone demand through a new mobile payment service and by releasing larger devices at least a month before the new iPhones to recapture market share from Apple Inc. Shares of Samsung rose 4.9 percent in Seoul, the highest since May. The rally erased their decline for the year.

• Ebay Exceeds Expectations While Paypal Flops: PayPal CEO Dan Schulman defended his strategy of inking deals with big merchants and smartphone applications and offering free peer-to-peer payments as investors sent shares down on concerns the efforts are hurting the company’s quarterly profit. PayPal, in its first quarter as a stand-alone company separate from EBay Inc., said it added 4 million accounts to reach 173 million users. Its total payments volume gained 20 percent to $69.7 billion from a year earlier. But investors reacted to the company’s declining take rate, a measure of how much money PayPal keeps from each payment made on its platform. That metric fell to 3.24 percent in the third quarter from 3.39 percent a year earlier, the company reported Wednesday in a statement, and shares dropped as much as 7.8 percent in extended trading. The goal of the July split with EBay was to make sure that each company could focus on their main businesses. EBay last week reported quarterly profit and sales that topped analysts’ estimates and raised its outlook, sending shares up the most in 10 years. PayPal’s strategy is to attract more customers and merchants and offer them expanded services as competition in the payments industry intensifies with startups Square Inc. and Stripe Inc. as well has Apple Inc. and Google Inc. who are trying to create digital wallets. Even JPMorgan Chase & Co., entered the digital payments race Monday. PayPal is processing more payments in stores like Macy’s and on popular smartphone applications like Uber and Airbnb. But PayPal keeps less money from each transaction because the clients that bring bigger volume to the payments company also have the leverage to negotiate lower rates. The downside of that strategy was on display when Square disclosed its money-losing relationship with Starbucks Corp. The challenge for Schulman is to differentiate PayPal as competition intensifies. Among the additional services the company offers is a merchant cash advance program called PayPal Working Capital, which gives preapproved loans to businesses that process payments through PayPal. PayPal also is getting into the international money-transfer business by purchasing Xoom Corp. for $890 million in a deal announced in July.

• Yelp - struggling so far this year - beats Street expectations on revenue sending shares up 7%: Yelp reported a bigger-than-expected 40 percent jump in quarterly revenue as more local businesses advertised on Yelp.com, its consumer review website. Shares of the company, whose website and app allow users to rate restaurants and a variety of other businesses, rose about 7 percent after the bell on Wednesday. To Wednesday's close of $22.07, Yelp's stock had fallen nearly 60 percent this year. San Francisco-based Yelp, which gets about four-fifths of its revenue from local advertisers, said the number of local advertising accounts rose about 37 percent to 104,200 in the third quarter. Yelp has been investing to grow its website beyond user reviews by investing in services such as restaurant reservations, food ordering and delivery. The company reported a net loss attributable to common stockholders of $8.1 million, or 11 cents per share, for the quarter ended Sept. 30, compared with a profit of $3.6 million, or 5 cents per share, a year earlier. Revenue rose to $143.6 million from $102.5 million.

• Verizon says Internet of Things revenue at $500 million year-to-date. Aimed at connecting to the Internet everything from household devices to industrial machines, the business is growing at a "double-digit" rate, Mike Lanman, senior vice president of enterprise products at Verizon said at an event in San Francisco. "A large portion of our revenue comes through connectivity but a significant part of it comes from the application layer already," he said in a phone interview after introducing a platform to help customers develop applications in healthcare, agriculture, utilities and connected cars. Last year, Verizon's annual revenue from the business totaled $585 million. The global Internet of Things market is expected to grow to $1.7 trillion in 2020 from $656 billion in 2014, according to market research firm IDC. Examples include Verizon's fleet management tracking application and a partnership with Intel Corp (INTC.O) to provide water management sensors in vineyards, Lanman said. At the event, Verizon also unveiled a chip that Lanman said halves the cost of connecting low data usage devices like dog trackers to high-speed networks. AT&T has also been working on growing its "Internet of Things" business and previously launched initiatives such as a cloud-based data-analytics platform for companies and a global SIM card for connected cars. AT&T said last week it added 1.6 million connected devices including 1 million connected cars in the third quarter of 2015.

• Alphabet, Indonesian companies to expand Web access via balloons: Alphabet, the new holding company for Google, has teamed up with three Indonesian telecommunications companies to expand Internet access in that country using solar-powered balloons. Alphabet officials, including co-founder Sergey Brin, and representatives from Indonesian companies Telkomsel, XL Axiata Tbk PT (EXCL.JK) and Indosat Tbk PT (ISAT.JK) signed an agreement Wednesday to bring so-called Project Loon to the nation of 250 million people. The project sends solar-powered balloons 16,000 feet (5,000 meters) into the air to deliver Internet access through radio frequency signals to antennae connected to buildings on the ground. The balloons use algorithms to find the best winds to carry them along their charted course. Project Loon is part of Alphabet's secretive X division, where the company experiments with far-off technologies dubbed "moonshots" such as its self-driving car technology. Alphabet and its partners will deploy hundreds of balloons in 2016 over the country of more than 17,000 islands in an effort to determine where gaps in service lie as part of the tests before full-scale service is launched. The U.S. tech company has already tested the project in Brazil, New Zealand and Australia but with only a single carrier. Project Loon Vice President Mike Cassidy said the Indonesian partnership marks the first time it will send signals from multiple telecommunications companies through a single balloon, and that it will be the service's largest deployment to date and could eventually reach 100 million users. Cassidy said the effort is also a model for how Alphabet will move the product into the commercial market. He said the telecommunications companies will use the trial period to determine pricing and billing while Google works out technical issues.

• GoPro Plunges 15% After-Hours Following Q3 Earnings Miss: GoPro took a dive Wednesday after releasing Q3 financials that disappointed street expectations. At the market’s close, GoPro reported a miss on its Q3 earnings, posting an adjusted $0.25 per share on $400.3 million non-GAAP revenue during the period. Those figures compared to street expectations of a $0.29 per-share profit, and revenue of $433.6 million. The action camera maker’s $400.3 revenues represented a 43% year-over-year increase from $280.0 in Q3 2015, with EPS also up significantly from $0.12 in the corresponding quarter last year. The company shipped 1.6 million camera devices in Q3, up 46% from Q3 2014, but still less than the street had expected. Interestingly, GoPro emphasized how important foreign markets, specifically China, had been to the company’s growth. Sales outside of the U.S. reportedly made up more than 50% of the company’s revenue. The company said China was “the fastest growing market in GoPro’s history.”

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.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, July 29

• Archived snippets are here, and MP3 versions are here

• Twitter Shares Surge on Earnings Beat, then Slump on Slowing User Growth: After reporting quarterly sales that topped estimates, interim Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey and Chief Financial Officer Anthony Noto struck a critical tone, saying user growth won’t improve until the social-media company reaches a mass market -- something that will take a mixture of product improvements and marketing. The company’s efforts so far have had minimal success, they said. Shares dropped 11 percent in extended trading, after climbing as much as 12 percent following the earnings release. n the second quarter, revenue rose 61 percent to $502.4 million, the social-media company said Tuesday in a statement. That exceeded analysts’ average projection for $481.9 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Twitter’s net loss narrowed to $136.7 million, or 21 cents a share. Profit excluding certain items was 7 cents, compared with the 4 cents analysts estimated. On a conference call, executives quashed any initial optimism generated by the report by confronting Twitter’s underlying problem: It’s much smaller than the competition. The company today reported 316 million monthly users, while Facebook has 1.4 billion. Twitter recently started counting feature-phone users in emerging markets as part of its tally. Without that extra boost, Twitter’s user count was 304 million. Noto said Twitter changed its tone on the call because growth slowed so meaningfully, the company wanted to explain how it’s working to address the deceleration. “In the past we may not have had the growth that investors wanted us to have, but it was still quite strong. And this quarter we barely had any growth.”


• Yelp Plunges After Reducing Sales Forecast, Ending Brand Ads: Yelp, the customer-review website, plunged as much as 18 percent when it reduced its revenue forecasts and said it will stop selling national brand advertising. Yelp lowered its third-quarter sales forecast to a range of $139 million to $142 million, below analysts’ average estimate of $152.7 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Annual revenue was projected at $544 million to $550 million from an April forecast of $574 million to $579 million. The website attracts more than 160 million visitors looking for customer reviews about local businesses. National brand advertising revenue decreased 8 percent to $8.3 million in the second quarter and Yelp will phase out those sales by the end of the year to focus on its core local advertising. Yelp shares fell in April after the company reported declining advertising sales. The shares rebounded in May following reports that Yelp was exploring a possible sale. Yelp reported a net loss of $1.3 million, or 2 cents a share in the quarter, from a profit of $2.7 million, or 4 cents a share, a year earlier. “I certainly think they can survive, as to whether or not they can flourish time will tell,”


• Akamai forecasts revenue, profit below estimates; shares sink: Online content distributor Akamai Technologies forecast third-quarter revenue and profit below estimates, citing a stronger dollar. Shares of Akamai, which claims to deliver between 15 and 30 percent of all Web traffic, fell as much as 13 percent in after-hours trading on Tuesday. The company's second-quarter profit fell nearly 8 percent after 11 quarters of growth, as costs rose. Akamai, whose customers include MTV Networks and online home rental marketplace Airbnb, forecast an adjusted profit of 56-58 cents per share and revenue of $543 million-$555 million for the current quarter. Akamai and rivals Limelight Networks and Level 3 Communications face increasing competition as companies such as Amazon, Netflix and Comcast enter the content delivery market. Akamai has been trying to differentiate itself by investing in cloud security services, as well as investing to expand its content delivery platform to better handle rising video traffic. Revenue rose 13.6 percent to $540.7 million, beating the average estimate of $540.4 million. Overall net income fell to $67.2 million, or 37 cents per share, from $72.9 million, or 40 cents per share, a year earlier. Up to Tuesday's close of $73.65, Akamai's shares had risen about 17 percent this year.


• Stripe, Digital Payments Start-Up, Raises New Funding and Partners With Visa: Stripe is gaining more financial allies to help it take on the digital payments industry. The start-up, based in San Francisco, said on Tuesday that it had raised new funding from investors like Visa, American Express and Sequoia Capital, among others, valuing the young company at $5 billion. That is a significant jump for Stripe, coming roughly six months after it garnered $70 million at a $3.5 billion valuation. Stripe declined to disclose the amount of new funding, except to say it was “less than $100 million.” Founded five years ago, Stripe has quickly gained traction by offering simple software and services for online small and medium-size businesses. Similar to Square and PayPal, Stripe accepts credit and debit cards for merchants who have not taken them previously. Stripe charges a small fee per transaction. On Tuesday Stripe also announced a partnership with Visa, one of the world’s largest credit card companies, in which the two will work on ways to improve digital transactions. The companies said they expected to collaborate on initiatives like payments security, as well as software like website “buy buttons.” Stripe said it would rely on Visa’s global footprint to expand its international availability. Stripe is currently available to businesses in more than 25 countries, and hopes to expand further with help from Visa. That Visa is partnering with Stripe instead of a larger payments processor is something of a coup for the start-up. Visa has become increasingly wary of other payments companies, such as PayPal, which processed more than $220 billion in online transactions last year and this month was spun off from its onetime parent, eBay. While PayPal has handled online credit transactions since the early days of e-commerce, Visa said it became concerned by PayPal’s ability to siphon customer relationships away from card companies and steer customers to debit transactions, in which PayPal sees healthier profit margins.


• LinkedIn, Notorious for Sending Too Many Emails, Cuts Back: On Monday, LinkedIn decided that less is more. In a blog post, the site acknowledged its history of overzealous email habits and said it was taking steps to reduce the amount that users would receive. Among the examples, users who receive too many requests to connect will now get just one weekly digest, and users who subscribe to several of the site’s groups will get updates in a streamlined format. “For every 10 emails we used to send, we’ve removed 4 of them,” Aatif Awan wrote in the post. “Already, member’s complaints have been cut in half.”


• Price Is Only One Weapon Amazon Is Using to Win the Cloud War: Remember how a few months ago there was talk of a “price war”in the world of cloud computing services? It’s over and all the signs point to Amazon having won. As we reported last week, Amazon posted a stunning 81 percent rise in revenue at its Amazon Web Services cloud computing unit, along with a five-fold surge in the unit’s operating income, giving it an operating margin of 21 percent. During the quarter Amazon said it cut prices on many of its cloud services for the 49th time since the service launched in 2006. Meanwhile, at least one of Amazon’s rivals — Microsoft’s cloud computing service Azure — raised some of its prices in Europe and Australia. Portions of emails to Azure customers published by the Dublin-based blogger Aidan Finn earlier this month detailed price increases of 11 percent in Europe and up to 26 percent in Australia. The last time Amazon gave a ballpark estimate for how many customers it had on AWS was late last year when it said it had more than one million active customers. It hasn’t updated that figure since then. Whatever the number, it suggests that the average revenue per customer is on the rise. If Amazon’s margins are increasing it implies that its operational costs are coming down at the same time that its customer count is going up. Logically speaking, that implies that quality of service might suffer. There’s a few reasons that it doesn’t, and it has to do with how Amazon’s costs come down as it scales up. As Amazon’s cloud footprint grows, its fixed costs per customer on things like commodity memory chips and electricity decrease. The more chips and power it buys, the more negotiating leverage it has to squeeze a good deal from suppliers. Meanwhile, business and administrative costs associated with keeping the system running — billing and personnel, for example — shrink as more customers sign on and processes become more efficient. Finally, there’s more that those customers can do with AWS all the time. Amazon has added 350 individual new features to AWS in the first half of the year. Two new services include one called AWS Device Farm which allows mobile app developers to run their software on simulated Android mobile phones. At its current pace it will by sometime this fall have added about 700. And the pace at which those features are being added is increasing too. Last year it added 516 new features. The year before that, it was 280, and the year before that 159.

Daily Tech Snippet: Monday, July 27

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• Yelp Cries Foul at Google’s Mobile App Ad Declaration: Those ads that splash on your phone, nudging you to install an app? You know the ones. Earlier this week, Google released an internal study showing that these app download “interstitials” were not merely obnoxious but ineffective, hindering the intended goal of encouraging app installation. Google said it was retiring them and asked the mobile Internet to do the same. Some were pleased. Some were not. Firmly in the latter camp is Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp CEO and frequent Google sparring partner. On Friday, he pointed to the study and cried hypocrite. Here’s the background: Google’s test paired the full-page ads against subtler banner promotions on mobile websites. Nine percent of mobile users tapped through to the app from the first ads, while 69 percent ran away from the site. With the second version, Google reported an uptick of 17 percent in traffic to the app. Innocuous enough. But Stoppelman is not just accusing Google of a double standard (running its own app ads while nixing others). Behind his beef is the suspicion, percolating in the mobile industry now, that Google is trying to replicate its Web search position with apps. In the past year, Google has pushed aggressively to index the entirety of the app world, while positioning itself, through deep-linking features like the upcoming Now on Tap, as the facilitator. And with Google as facilitator, that leaves less room for other app go-betweens, a la Yelp. It doesn’t help Google’s case here that the interstitial study relied on its own Google+ social app, a Google application that, to be kind, is not terribly in demand.


• Using Algorithms to Determine Character: A company in Palo Alto, Calif., called Upstart has over the last 15 months lent $135 million to people with mostly negligible credit ratings. Typically, they are recent graduates without mortgages, car payments or credit card settlements. Those are among the things that normally earn a good or bad credit score, but these people haven’t been in the working world that long. So Upstart looks at their SAT scores, what colleges they attended, their majors and their grade-point averages. As much as job prospects, the company is assessing personality. “If you take two people with the same job and circumstances, like whether they have kids, five years later the one who had the higher G.P.A. is more likely to pay a debt,” said Paul Gu, Upstart’s co-founder and head of product. “It’s not whether you can pay. It’s a question of how important you see your obligation.” The idea, validated by data, is that people who did things like double-checking the homework or studying extra in case there was a pop quiz are thorough and likely to honor their debts. Analytics, meet judgment of people. “I guess you could call it character, though we haven’t used that label,” said Mr. Gu, who is 24. The same personality dynamic holds for people go to great schools or have top grades. Douglas Merrill, the founder and chief executive of ZestFinance, is a former Google executive whose company writes loans to subprime borrowers through nonstandard data signals. One signal is whether someone has ever given up a prepaid wireless phone number. Where housing is often uncertain, those numbers are a more reliable way to find you than addresses; giving one up may indicate you are willing (or have been forced) to disappear from family or potential employers. That is a bad sign. Zest recently branched into “near prime” borrowers, who have either fallen from the prime category or risen from subprime. The question is why these people have changed categories, and Zest tries to figure out if a potentially reliable borrower has had some temporary bad luck, like a one-time medical expense. “‘Character’ is a loaded term, but there is an important difference between ability to pay and willingness to pay,” said Mr. Merrill. “If all you look at is financial transactions, it’s hard to say much about willingness.”


• Facebook and Other Tech Giants Expand Internet Access in Africa: Africa has become a hotbed of experimentation by big American technology companies as well as local start-ups. In addition to Facebook’s efforts, which included developing a Swahili language version of Facebook, Google, Microsoft and IBM have all been promoting tech projects on the continent. Google, for example, has built a high-speed, fiber-optic Internet network in Kampala, Uganda. But unlike the similar Google Fiber project in major American cities, Google doesn’t offer the service, called Project Link, directly to Ugandans but instead sells access cheap on a wholesale basis to local Internet providers. The result was a sharp drop in the price of Internet access in Kampala as new entrants competed with the traditional carriers to offer services. Microsoft has been supporting various projects to transmit Internet signals via “white spaces,” which are basically unused portions of the television broadcast spectrum. On Friday, the company announced that it was working with the United States government’s Overseas Private Investment Corporation to provide financing to Mawingu Networks to build solar-powered Internet access stations across rural Kenya using white spaces technology. And IBM said on Saturday that it would begin a formal program to assist entrepreneurs in Nairobi’s iHub innovation and collaboration space. And Africa seems to have brought a bit of kumbaya to the traditional tech rivals. “It’s the one place where I have seen Microsoft and Google and Facebook as allies,”


• Facebook partnership a boon for video technology firm Bidalgo: Facebook marketing partner Bidalgo targets a tripling in sales in 2015 as its new technology to automate the process of making personalized online video advertising benefits from Facebook's growing share of the video market. Facebook is becoming a leader in the video market as users prefer to watch video ads over static images, said Peleg Israeli, general manager of Bidalgo's Israeli operations. Videos are expensive to make and an advertiser usually makes only one or two versions. The Bidalgo executive said his company's technology, called ADaptation, can automatically turn one video into as many versions as needed, so that targeted audiences will see images they respond to most. For example, a German audience might see a German flag in one video while users in France will see their flag. Automated videos will give Facebook an advantage over Google's YouTube, as Facebook's core technology can identify users "in the most accurate way". U.S.-Israeli Bidalgo's technology targets mobile app and game developers, who have been quick to adopt mobile advertising. Clients include online gaming firm 888 Holdings and Zynga. Bidalgo, which has 40 employees, has been profitable for about a year, with a target of $100 million in sales this year, Israeli said. It competes with San Francisco-based Ampush and Boston-based Nanigans. Companies wishing to advertise on Facebook must bid for users that they wish to see their advertising. Bidalgo's algorithms test an ad against multiple audiences to understand which segments are relevant and what is the right price the advertiser should offer.

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, July 3

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• Twitter Pushes Ads With A New Button Atop Mobile Users’ Profiles: Twitter’s latest push to monetize its service has led to the rollout of a new “Twitter Ads” button, which is now prominently appearing on user profile pages on both the iOS and Android client applications. The newly added button, which some users may have initially mistaken as a shortcut to Twitter analytics, is found right next to the “Edit profile” button, the account switcher and the Settings icon. By clicking on the Ads button, users are offered the ability to manage their Twitter ad campaigns while on the go. That’s a different tactic–and perhaps a more overzealous one–than the one Facebook took when it introduced a way to manage Facebook ads via smartphones earlier this year. The company launched a dedicated Facebook Ads Manager App which not only allowed current advertisers to track the way their ad campaigns were performing, but actually brought the creation process itself to mobile phones. Here, users could write ad text, upload photos, and even target their desired audience right from the app itself. Not everyone is happy with the change, which some Twitter users are calling “desperate,” or “ugly.” And it’s hard to find fault with those sentiments. If you’re not currently running a Twitter ad campaign, the feature does nothing more than let you know that this button serves as a place where you can manage an ad campaign in the future – it doesn’t go so far as to allow users to actually get started building their first campaign from the app itself.


• Twitter Launches "Personas", Aiming To Make It Easier for Advertisers to Target Audience Niches: Twitter wants to make targeting easier for advertisers, so today it unveiled a feature called "personas," which lets brands target groups of consumers based on whether they have college degrees, are parents, make more or less than $100,000 or run small businesses, to name a few. More specifically, marketers can not only target college grads but also pinpoint such alums based on their gender, location and interests. Advertisers could piece together similar targeting parameters on Twitter in the past, but now they can build more precise campaigns with just a mouse click or two. The San Francisco-based tech company is leveraging ongoing partnerships with data companies Acxiom and Datalogix to bring such targeting options to the table. The development is reminiscent of Facebook's people-based marketing product moves of 2014, when it rolled out "Audience Insights" and other similar products. Personas and the campaign insights are now available to advertisers, globally.


• Yelp Sale Process to Stall as Founder Decides to Wait; Stock Slumps: Yelp, which hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to find a buyer, has temporarily decided not to pursue a sale. The consumer-review website has had several interested suitors but isn’t pursuing a transaction in the immediate future. The firm may pursue a deal again if co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Jeremy Stoppelman changes his mind, one of the people said. Yelp dropped 12 percent in afternoon trading in New York, giving the company a market value of about $2.8 billion. Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal reported in May that Yelp was working with a bank to explore a sale. Yelp hired Goldman Sachs after receiving takeover interest.


• Xiaomi reports sequential sales fall, putting full-year goal in doubt: China's top smartphone maker Xiaomi on Thursday reported semi-annual sales that for the first time were lower than the previous six months, jeopardising its full-year target and hinting at a slowdown in its mainstay domestic market. The firm said it sold 34.7 million handsets in January-June versus 35.0 million in July-December - the first sequential fall since the company began disclosing six-month figures in 2013. For 2015, it aims for minimum sales of 80 million smartphones. Smartphone shipments in China - where Xiaomi is No. 1 - fell in the first quarter for the first time in six years, though it was unclear whether the drop signalled the start of a downward trend, researcher IDC said in May. Beijing-based Xiaomi has been expanding overseas to relieve the pressure at home, focusing on India, Southeast Asia and, from next week, Brazil.


• Venture Investment In Healthcare Declines Through Q2 After Record 2014: After a record-breaking year of growth in 2014, venture capital investors in healthcare seem to have settled into a groove. They invested roughly $2.8 billion in healthcare technologies through the second quarter of 2015, down from $3.3 billion over the same period last year, according to a study from Startup Health. Nearly $6.8 billion went into healthcare technologies that year, up from $3 billion the year before. Driven by twin engines of government legislation and technology innovation around wearable devices and data, venture capital investments in healthcare went up like a rocket in 2014. Now, the industry seems to be catching its breath a bit. Investments in healthcare technology actually held steady in the second quarter at $1.8 billion after a $500 million decline year-on-year in the first quarter. An examination of some of the companies that have raised the most money and successfully exited: Zenefits and Oscar Health , which are tackling the regulatory changes brought on by the Affordable Care Act, raised more than respectable $500 million and $145 million rounds, respectively. While Nant Health, a company using big data analytics for genomic sequencing, and HealthCatalyst, which uses data to track health across populations, both scored big with their own big rounds of $200 million and $70 million. On the wearables side, the FitBit public offering proved that even public markets were interested in the wearable health opportunity.