Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday February 18

• Winds of economic change in India: as rivals falter, India’s economy is surging ahead: China’s economy is slowing. Brazil is struggling as commodity prices plunge. Russia, facing Western sanctions and weak oil revenue, is headed into a recession. As other big developing markets stumble, India is emerging as one of the few hopes for global growth. The stock market and rupee are surging. Multinational companies are looking to expand their Indian operations or start new ones. The growth in India’s economy, long a laggard, just matched China’s pace in recent months. India is riding high on the early success of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a raft of new business-friendly policies instituted in his first eight months. Small factories no longer need to shut down every year for government inspectors to spend a day checking boilers. Foreign investment rules have been relaxed for insurers, military contractors and real estate companies. A broad tax overhaul is underway. Renewed optimism from outside investors is spurring business expansion in cities around the country like Tiruppur, a hub of India’s yarn and textile industry. “Most of the factories in Tiruppur are doubling or tripling their capacity, and these are huge factories,” said Pritam Sanghai, the director of Arjay Apparel Industries.

• Alibaba's stock price has dipped below its first day close; is down 27% from its Nov 2014 peak: Alibaba, which held one of last year’s most high-profile initial public offerings, has drawn investors wanting to benefit from e-commerce traffic in China, the world’s largest Internet market. The company has come under pressure from shareholders in recent weeks after it reported quarterly revenue that failed to meet analysts’ estimates. The stock fell 2.5 percent to $86.85 at Tuesday’s close in New York, less than the closing price of $93.89 on Sept. 19, its first day of trading, though still above the initial sale price of $68. Starboard Value LP, an activist hedge fund, also acquired an Alibaba stake of 400,000 shares in the fourth quarter. The investor earlier took a stake in Yahoo! Inc., which owns about 15 percent of Alibaba, and pushed for the Web portal to monetize the stake in a tax-friendly manner. Last month, Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo said it would spin off the Chinese holdings in a deal that should wrap up by the end of the year. Hedge fund Tiger Global Management acquired 5.8 million shares, or 0.24 percent of Hangzhou, China-based Alibaba, at the end of last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Sands Capital Management more than doubled its stake to 19.6 million shares, or 0.8 percent. T. Rowe Price reduced its holdings by 17 percent to 22.3 million shares, a 0.9 percent stake.

• Snapchat seeking $500M in funding, at $19B valuation; would make it the 3rd most valuable venture-backed firm, after Xiaomi and Uber: (More coverage here and here) Snapchat is looking to raise as much as $500 million in a new funding round that would value the mobile messaging company at up to $19 billion, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing a person with knowledge of the matter. The latest valuation is a massive increase for the company, which Facebook Inc offered to buy for $3 billion in late 2013. Snapchat's previous funding round, completed late last year, valued the company at more than $10 billion. Executives of the company, which allows its more than 100 million users to send messages that disappear after a few seconds, are in advanced talks with fund managers, the person told Bloomberg. (bloom.bg/1AiWtif) The investments being discussed would value Snapchat between $16 billion and $19 billion overall, Bloomberg reported. The drastic increase in valuation comes as Snapchat continues to add to its active user base and extends its service. Last month it added videos and articles by mainstream media outlets such as CNN and ESPN, bringing Snapchat into closer competition with Facebook Inc and Twitter Inc. It is also the latest evidence of a surge in venture capital financing for technology companies, that has produced some eye-popping valuations. Even at $19 billion, Snapchat would only be the third-most valuable tech startup that does not trade its shares publicly. According to research firm CB Insights, Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi is worth $46 billion and app-based taxi service Uber is valued at $41 billion.

• Kickstarter secret to its reputation for accurate reviews: Lots of human intervention: Kickstarter Sheds Some Light On The Mechanics Of Its Semi-Automated Review Process Kickstarter has provided a look at how the reconfigured review system the put in place last year has worked out for them, providing some counterarguments to the opinion held in some corners of the Internet that Kickstarter has done away with a review system entirely, throwing open the gates to the wildlings of the north and other nefarious characters. In fact, Kickstarter says that the new process still results in the vast majority of projects submitted getting in front of human eyes, based on over six months’ worth of data. The system uses an algorithm as a first line of automated review, which is designed to select for things that are mostly cookie-cutter and overwhelmingly likely to get the nod form a real person anyway, according to the site. That means that of 69,015 submissions made since the introduction of this system, 27,897 were cleared by the algorithm for direct activation, and a further 6,265 of those actually requested human feedback from Kickstarter before pressing the big green button, meaning only 31 percent of projects launched without human involvement post-approval process change. That leaves 69 percent of projects benefiting from some kind of human intervention, and Kickstarter wants users to know that the human side is still a key part of what it’s offering. The blog post detailing the pool of stats from Yancey Strickler also talks about how the algorithm in use is continually being refined, and the purpose of it in the first place was to free up human reviewer time to give them more attention to offer help when and where it’s most needed. A recent investigative report from Yahoo! Tech’s Dan Tynan found that Kickstarter was the most resistant to attempts to create fake funding campaigns aimed at potentially defrauding backers, and with this much human intervention it begins to make sense why. But that doesn’t change the fact that Kickstarter can often resemble a pre-order mechanism, despite the fact that it very clearly isn’t.

• Apple orders 5-6M watches from its Asian suppliers: Apple Inc (AAPL.O) has asked its Asian suppliers to make 5-6 million units of its three Apple Watch models for the first-quarter, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Taiwan-based Quanta Computer Inc (2382.TW), the sole assembler of the Apple Watch, started mass production earlier this year to get ready for an April launch, the Journal said. (on.wsj.com/17MpwkR) Thousands will work round the clock during the Chinese New Year holidays at Quanta's factory in Changshu, China, the newspaper reported, quoting one person. Apple said it does not comment on rumor or speculation. The iPhone maker's shares rose as much as 1.9 percent to a record $129.45 on the Nasdaq on Tuesday morning. The entry-level Apple Watch Sport model accounts for half the production order, while the mid-tiered Apple Watch will count for a third, one person told the WSJ. The high-end Apple Watch Edition with 18-karat gold casing, is expected to have relatively small orders in the first quarter, but Apple plans to produce more than 1 million units per month in the second quarter, the Journal reported, citing the person. The Apple Watch, starting at $349, can receive phone calls and messages, play music, serve as a digital wallet to pay for goods and monitor heart rates via special sensors.

• Facebook edges yet closer to eCommerce with Dynamic Product Ads for Data-Minded Retailers: Merchants like Target can upload catalogs and then zero in on consumers.Facebook is giving Target and other retailers a new way to market to its 1.4 billion users. It's called product ads—yet another ad format that Facebook says sets it apart from rivals like Google because it can harness the social network's popularity and behavioral and location data on consumers. The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company announced the marketing offering today, calling product ads "a solution designed to help businesses promote multiple products, or their entire catalogs, across all the devices their customers use: phones, tablets and desktop computers." Businesses will be able to upload their product catalogs and let Facebook generate ads for items while targeting them to users. These product ads could rival Google's shopping ads, which have evidently performed well for retailers in search. In a blog post, Facebook explained further: "Advertisers can curate ads as they see fit. For instance, they can highlight products that were viewed on their website/mobile app or showcase best-selling products. Or they can create a multi-product ad that highlights the different benefits of a single product." Like Google, Facebook's system will also recognize when products are out of stock and stop advertising them. Target and Shutterfly are among the first merchants testing Facebook product ads.

• JCPenney's 4 Cent Video Ads on Twitter Could Threaten YouTube's Longtime Dominance Retailer shows how social is changing: JCPenney's Twitter was behind its most successful social program—not Facebook or YouTube—and credited the platform's new video creation and viewing capabilities. The retailer only paid 4 cents for every view, an astoundingly low sum for digital video ads. Ad industry insiders familiar with social media rates said video ads elsewhere cost up to $1 a view. "Some brands are seeing 2 cents per view on Twitter, which is very effective," said one ad industry exec not authorized to speak about rates on the record. JCPenney's holiday campaign "Just Got Jingled" featured videos of customers receiving surprise gifts from strangers in stores. Needless to say, the Internet is fond of such random acts of kindness, even when they are part of a branded marketing stunt. The retailer caught the results on camera and promoted them on Twitter, which recently developed in-app, native video tools. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has made video capabilities for brands, celebrities, media and everyday users a priority, which is why the company bought SnappyTV last year and Niche last week. The former is a technology that powers Twitter's in-house video, and the latter manages Web celebrities to help them make money by selling ads against their videos. In its JCPenney report, Twitter revealed a rare peek at how one of its first Promoted Video ad campaigns performed. Here's how it worked: JCPenney let strangers pick fellow shoppers in stores and paid for their items at checkout. The retailer promoted the videos on Twitter and targeted them based on users' shopping profiles and interest in holiday deals. The retailer sent promoted tweets to Twitter users discussing the holidays, and adjusted messaging on the fly. The video generated more than 3 million views on the social media site (more than on YouTube), according to JCPenney. At 4 cents a view, the campaign would add up to about $120,000. Nine out of 10 impressions were unpaid, organic tweets viewed by users without the promoted tag. There were 16 million impressions, in all, on the promoted tweet.

• Samsung has $56B in cash, and is looking to do acquisitions rather than return money to investors: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd aims to use its $56 billion cash pile to fund growth including acquisitions, the tech giant's investor relations chief said, even as more shareholders clamor for bigger dividends. While the South Korean company's profit declined in 2014 for the first time in three years as its lead in smartphones was challenged by Apple Inc, investors were cheered by a 40 percent dividend boost and its first share buyback since 2007. But Robert Yi, Samsung's head of investor relations, signaled that shareholders should not expect the same in 2015 as the company keeps its focus on growth. "Dividends and other forms of shareholder returns are responsibilities that the company has for shareholders, so we will make efforts to meet them. But our primary objective is growth and that is what we are communicating to our shareholders," Yi told Reuters in an interview. Samsung has become an increasingly active shopper, striking 10 deals in two years. Even so, its purchases have been small, prompting calls from some investors for bigger deals to revive growth momentum. "We are primarily focused on M&A deals for companies that would be good fits to Samsung's current businesses, and we believe that know-how and experience accrued from such transactions will make bigger M&A deals possible going forward," Yi said. Samsung Electronics held cash of 61.8 trillion won ($56.14 billion) at the end of 2014.