Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, September 23

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

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

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

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

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