Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, November 5

• Facebook Revenue Surges 41%, as Ads and Users Keep Growing: It takes money, the adage goes, to make money. And Facebook is spending a lot of dollars to do just that. The social media giant on Wednesday posted another quarter of robust revenue growth — up 41 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, to $4.5 billion — fueled by its mobile advertising business and an increase in daily users. Net profit rose to $896 million, up 11 percent from a year ago. The revenue and profit increases came alongside a surge in spending. Facebook’s expenses totaled more than $3 billion in the third quarter, a 62 percent leap from a year earlier, meaning that spending growth is outpacing sales growth. The company, based in Menlo Park, Calif., emphasized that it had no intention of slowing that down as it invested heavily in hiring, marketing, new technologies and other initiatives.

• Airbnb and Uber Mobilize Vast User Base to Sway Policy: Over the last few years, so-called sharing companies like Airbnb and Uber — online platforms that allow strangers to pay one another for a room or a ride — have established footholds in thousands of communities well before local regulators have figured out how to deal with them. Now, as cities grapple with the growth of these services and try to pass rules for how they should operate, the companies are fighting back by turning their users into a vast political operation that can be mobilized at any sign of a threat. Airbnb offered the latest and most vociferous example of this on Wednesday. Fresh off defeating a San Francisco measure that would have severely curtailed the company’s business in its hometown, Airbnb staged a news conference that functioned as a warning shot to other cities thinking about proposing new regulations. The event was billed as a debriefing to discuss the defeat of Proposition F, which would have toughened existing rules for the service by, among other things, cutting the number of nights people could rent out rooms in their homes. In this city of about 840,000 people, roughly $8 million was raised by groups opposed to Proposition F — about eight times the amount raised by the proposition’s backers, according to records filed with the San Francisco Ethics Commission. Airbnb is preparing for more fights. Mr. Lehane said the company was working to organize voting blocs in other cities where it operates. By the end of next year, he said, the company has a goal of creating 100 “clubs” made up of Airbnb home-sharers — sort of like local unions. Companies like Airbnb and Uber have become multibillion-dollar companies by employing a kind of guerrilla growth strategy in which they set up a modest team of workers in a city and immediately start providing their services to the public, whether local laws allow them to or not.

• Jet.com to Raise Funds Valuing the Amazon Rival at $1.5 Billion: Jet.com, the much-hyped Amazon.com competitor, is close to raising $500 million to $550 million in a funding round led by Fidelity Investments, according to a person familiar with the plans. The investment would give the year-old online shopping startup a valuation of at least $1.5 billion, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the deal isn't finalized. Founded by a former Amazon executive, Jet is aggressively trying to undercut its chief rival’s prices and attract customers quickly. To achieve that goal, it had raised $220 million before selling a single product and abandoned its subscription membership fee a few months after opening its doors in July. Jet is attracting a loyal following by offering customers unique ways to save on orders, including discounts for paying with a debit card or waiving their right to return products they buy, said Scot Wingo, chairman of ChannelAdvisor. Customers can also amass savings by loading up their carts with more items, which minimizes the number of shipments.

• Alibaba, Baidu Turn `Kingmakers' as China Sees Dealmaking Surge: To understand why China is in the midst of a surge in dealmaking and why that won’t slow down anytime soon, consider the arranged marriage of two of the country’s largest travel websites. Qunar Cayman Islands Ltd. and Ctrip.com International Ltd. were bitter rivals for years, bickering in public and sacrificing profits to grab customers in the growing China market. Then Qunar’s largest shareholder, Baidu Inc., forced it into a deal that gave Ctrip control over the combined entity, according to a person familiar with the matter. Qunar’s management learned their fate only two days before the announcement, the person said. China’s Internet market, after a surge in startups and record venture-capital investments, is entering a new phase of consolidation as investors grow weary of money-losing battles for customers and push for profitability. Acquisitions by Chinese companies rose 75 percent this year to $413.2 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, with domestic deals in the Internet industry nearly quadrupling to $55.6 billion.

• Facebook Hits 8 Billion Daily Video Views, Doubling From 4 Billion In April: Facebook video viewership is growing by leaps and bounds. It now sees 8 billion average daily video views from 500 million users. That’s up from just 4 billion video views per day in April. Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement on the call to investors followingFacebook’s blockbuster Q3 2015 earnings report. Some might contend that this stat isn’t totally accurate since Facebook counts just 3 seconds of watching as a “view”. But the 100% growth in seven months shows that even when controlling for this limitation of the metric, users are still voraciously consuming videos. Even at just 3 seconds per view, Facebook is generating 760 years of watch time each day. That means there’s a ton of space for Facebook to lure in TV commercial dollars that are shifting to digital. It also has an opportunity to grow viewership further with an ongoing test where it pays a revenue share to top video creators.