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: Wednesday, June 29

• Lyft Tells Investors to Expect No Growth in Rides for June: Lyft Inc. may be hitting a wall in its war with its richer competitor. Lyft told investors in a recent memo obtained by Bloomberg that it expects the number of rides it handles to be flat or down in June, compared with May. That follows a record month for rides in May. Lyft expects to beat its target for second-quarter ride volume by 35 percent, Lyft told its investors. "This implies June will be flat to slightly down from the record May level given we face traditional seasonality headwinds in June as most college students leave their campuses for the summer," the note said. "Additionally, June represents the first full month without Austin, after pausing operations in the city in May." (Uber and Lyft pulled out of Austin, Texas, after the city passed legislation that would require them to conduct fingerprinted background checks on their drivers.)  One Lyft investor told Bloomberg that, given the company’s heavy losses, if Lyft could sell itself for $5.5 billion -- the value of the company at its latest valuation -- that would be an acceptable price. Qatalyst could also help the startup sell a stake, rather than the whole business. The company also said in the memo that it reached a nearly $1.9 billion annual revenue run rate based on its performance in May. In November, it touted a $1 billion run rate. Revenue run rates apply monthly figures to a 12-month period. Investors use them to gauge the potential for growing businesses.While Lyft expects to lose hundreds of millions this year, Uber has lost money on a much larger scale. In three quarters last year Uber lost $1.7 billion. The company has committed to spending billions in China and India, and Uber has continued to subsidize rides against its global competitors like Didi Chuxing and Ola. Like Lyft, as a private company, Uber’s financials are private.

• Airbnb’s new funding round makes it the second-most valuable startup in the United States: Last year, Airbnb raised $1.5 billion at a $25.5 billion valuation. Earlier this month, the companyraised $1 billion in debt financing. And now, sources close to the company tell Recode, Airbnb is currently raising an undisclosed amount of cash at a $30 billion valuation. Such a deal would make Airbnb the second-most valuable startup in the United States, trailing only the $62.5 billion Uber. The New York Times first reporteddetails of Airbnb’s latest round. With all the new money, Airbnb plans to grow its global operation. Bloomberg has previously reported that the company plans to add booking features later this year for things beyond short-term home rentals (think museums, restaurants, etc.). In the meantime, Airbnb is being kept busy on the legal front. Earlier this week the company filed suit against the city of San Francisco for imposing stiff penalties on home rental registration rules that Airbnb helped write. The company is also locked in a battle with the New York government, where state legislatorsrecently passed a bill that would further restrict the company’s listings.

• Amazon Expands Items on Dash Buttons as Order Rate Doubles: Amazon.com Inc. has added more than 50 new brands to its Dash Button service for instantly reordering everyday items, citing a doubling in the frequency of orders over the last three months. After introducing the WiFi-connected plastic tabsthat can be mounted to the fridge, washing machine or kitchen cupboard in 2015, the online retailing giant has steadily increased the number of brands available for replenishment to more than 150, Amazon said in a statement Thursday. Amazon also expanded its product categories to include toys, such as Play-Doh and NERF darts and added new items like Campbell’s Soup and Cascade dishwashing soap. Members of Amazon Prime, which offers free two-day delivery on many items, are placing orders at a pace of more than twice a minute, Amazon said, up from once a minute three months ago. Total orders increased more than 70 percent in the last three months.

Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, February 25

• Airbnb Admits It Removed 1,500 Listings in New York Before Releasing Data to Regulators: Before Airbnb Inc. shared data on its business in New York City, the home-rental website removed about 1,500 listings controlled by full-time landlords. The company disclosed the removals in a letter to New York state legislators on Wednesday as it faces criticism over becoming a platform for unregulated hotels.  Airbnb said it kicked off 622 hosts as part of the effort in November. The cuts helped portray a rosier picture of its New York City operations in the data released in December. The company had not outlined the extent of its removals when it initially presented the data publicly. The deleted listings accounted for about 4 percent of those offered in the city. Josh Meltzer, the company's head of public policy in New York, wrote in the letter to legislators that the listings "did not reflect Airbnb's vision for our community." Airbnb has faced questions from city officials who have said real-estate developers are using Airbnb to rent out homes instead of selling them to permanent residents. The practice risks driving up housing prices. Airbnb defeated a proposal in San Francisco last year that would have restricted the company's business in its hometown. Airbnb spent $8 million to fight the effort. "In New York City, where housing prices and availability are a critical issue, we want to work with our community and policymakers to help prevent short-term rentals from impacting the availability and cost of permanent housing for city residents," Meltzer wrote in the letter. "While home sharing has been around for centuries, our people-to-people home sharing platform is new. And Airbnb is a young company. We have learned that a one-size fits all approach to cities will not work." Along with the letter to New York lawmakers, Airbnb released updated data on its operations in the city. Of hosts renting their entire homes in New York City, 38 percent of revenue came from those listing two or more homes on the website. Hosts with six or more homes on Airbnb generated 6 percent of revenue.

• Salesforce quarterly revenue beats Wall St expectations: Salesforce.com Inc reported higher-than-expected quarterly revenue and raised its full-year revenue forecast, saying customers were stepping up purchases of its web-based sales and marketing software despite economic uncertainty.Shares of the world's largest maker of online sales software rose 7.2 percent to $67 in after-hours trading.The company raised its full-year revenue forecast to $8.08 billion-$8.12 billion, from $8.0 billon-$8.1 billion, and said forecast adjusted profit of 99 cents to $1.01 per share. Revenue rose 25.3 percent to $1.81 billion, above analysts' estimate of $1.79 billion. In the fourth quarter ended Jan. 31, revenue from sales cloud - a suite of software that allows companies to track leads, forecast and collaborate around sales opportunities - rose 12.3 percent to $708.9 million. The net loss narrowed to $25.5 million, or 4 cents per share, from $65.8 million, or 10 cents per share, a year earlier.

• HP Inc says to accelerate job cuts by 2016: HP Inc said it was accelerating its restructuring program and now expects about 3,000 people will exit by the end of fiscal 2016 instead of over three years as it announced in September. Then, Hewlett-Packard Co had said it expected to cut about 33,300 jobs over three years, of which up to 3,300 were to be cut in HP Inc. It said then that 1,200 people would leave the company by the end of 2016. The restructuring will result in charges and associated cash payments of about $300 million in the current year, the company said. "This move is basically HP Inc embracing the tough pricing environment and shifting their focus to building their portfolio," says Shannon Cross, an analyst for Cross Research. HP Inc (HPQ.N), which houses former Hewlett-Packard Co's legacy hardware business, reported a near 12 percent drop in quarterly revenue, as it struggles with weak demand for PCs and printers. Revenue in the company's personal systems business fell 13 percent in the first quarter ended Jan. 31, while it declined 17 percent in its printing division from a year earlier. PC sales have been falling sharply worldwide, and the launch of Windows 10 has so far failed to rekindle demand. Printer demand has been hurt as corporate customers cut printing costs and consumers shift to mobile devices.

• Google Fiber Is Finally Coming to San Francisco: Google Fiber is coming to its own backyard. Well, in moderation. On Wednesday, the high-speed broadband and cable business, announced that it will start servicing “some” apartments, condos and affordable housing units in San Francisco, the urban hub north of its Silicon Valley headquarters. It’s not saying how many connections, when they’ll come or how much they’ll cost.But it is definitely coming, unlike other cities where Fiber has said that it is “exploring” an arrival. That makes San Francisco among the largest metropolitan areas for Fiber, which has, so far, kept to smaller cities clamoring for its service (and where it can more quickly gain broadband market share).It’s a symbolic entry — landing near Silicon Valley — as well as a commercial one: The city is full of tech companies and techies that have also clamored for super fast Internet.Comcast* and AT&T, two of Fiber’s chief competitors, have both announced intentions to bring gigabit Internet to the city. While Fiber has primarily focused on residential lines, it could expand into enterprise services, something Comcast has made a push for.Google is accelerating its enterprise business, which includes a team dedicated to getting startups on Google services. It’s not clear if that includes Fiber, which is housed under the Access subsidiary of Google’s Alphabet. 

• Wow! Facebook’s New Reactions Are Here, but Still No Dislike Button. Facebook has been testing alternatives to the company’s now-famous “Like” button for a few months, and it’s ready to bring those alternatives to the masses. The company is rolling out new reactions like “wow,” “sad” and “haha” to U.S. users beginning Wednesday and the rest of the world shortly after, according to Tom Alison, engineering director for News Feed. It started testing these responses in countries like Spain and Ireland last fall, and while the company said at the time that it was open to adding more emotions it looks like it stuck with the same six it started with. Getting to those six was actually a lengthy process, said Alison. The company has been working on reactions for a year, and crafted the new options based on data about which stickers and user comments were most popular on Facebook. You’ll quickly notice what’s not included in the new list of reactions: A dislike button. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg initially said Facebook was building one, but it turns out that wasn’t actually the case. (Angry!) “I think … ‘anger’ and ‘sad’ actually covered a lot of what we saw people trying to convey,” Alison explained. Why change the “Like” feature at all? Engagement. You may not feel comfortable “Liking” a sad update in your feed, so Facebook wants to give you other options. Alison said it’s “a little early” to tell if engagement increased in countries where Facebook has been testing the new reactions, which probably means it hasn’t. (Facebook would likely broadcast it if engagement were up.) The new feature will be available on iOS and Android phones beginning Wednesday as part of a free app update.

• Uber China Rival Didi Kuaidi Raising $1 Billion at Valuation of More Than $20 Billion: Didi Kuaidi, the biggest ride-hailing company in China, has received at least $1 billion in commitments for a new fundraising round, according to a person familiar with the matter. Once the financing closes, it would value the Uber rival at more than $20 billion, said the person, who asked not to be named because the terms aren't final. The round is oversubscribed, and the company is still negotiating terms with investors, the person said. Didi Kuaidi declined to comment. Didi Kuaidi is spending heavily on adding new drivers and offering competitive fare prices as it aims to stay ahead of Uber Technologies Inc. in China. Uber spent more than $1 billion in the country last year and plans to spend a comparable amount in 2016. In the first three quarters of 2015, Uber lost $1.7 billion, much of that going toward expansion in Asia, Bloomberg Businessweek reported in January. Uber Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick said last week that the company is profitable in the U.S., according to Canadian technology blog BetaKit. It's unclear how the metric was calculated. Didi Kuaidi raised $3 billion last year at a $16.5 billion valuation. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported the Chinese company's latest fundraising round. To take on Uber, Didi Kuaidi has formed an international coalition with the likes of Lyft Inc. in the U.S. and Ola in India. Uber was last valued by investors at $62.5 billion, and the company has raised more than $10 billion in the five years since it started picking up passengers.

Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, December 8

• Alphabet, the company formerly known as Google, revealed a new name for the company’s Life Sciences division: Verily. Alphabet made the branding announcement with a video and a company website that went live on Monday. In it, Verily laid out a multidisciplinary approach to health and longevity, describing disease as a “continuum” that will be fought with experts from different fields and divisions working on hardware such as medical devices, software that might use algorithms to look for health patterns, as well as clinical studies like the Baseline Study of health and disease. The new name for the business is part of Google’s transition to a holding company structure under the parent entity dubbed Alphabet. For those keeping track of Alphabet’s soup of operating companies, Verily is the division that was the Life Sciences unit of Google’s X lab. Life Sciences “graduated” from Google X shortly after Google announced the Alphabet structure. Verily means “truth” or “truly” and the name, according to the spokeswoman, is meant to underscore the company’s mission to”reveal a true picture of health and disease.” Background: For years, Google has been entering new businesses, but struggling to recreate the success it enjoys in search and advertising. In August, Google announced that it would create a new org structure where its traditional businesses (search, advertising, YouTube, maps) would continue to be called Google, while all other businesses would become separate companies. The parent of all of these companies would be called Alphabet. The idea is that the new businesses would get more room to grow and innovate like startups, while the traditional businesses would get higher stock market valuations because of their incredible profitability and size. 

• Can’t Put Down Your Device? That’s by Design: Digital life keeps us hooked with an infinite entertainment stream as its default setting. Tech companies often set it up that way. There’s Facebook beckoning with its bottomless news feed. There’s Netflix autoplaying the next episode in a TV series 10 seconds after the previous one ends. There’s Tinder encouraging us to keep swiping in search of the next potential paramour. And then there are the constant notices and reminders — a friend liked your photo or tweet; a colleague wants to connect with you on LinkedIn; an Evite awaits your response — which automatically induce feelings of social obligation. You damn yourself to distraction if you respond, and to fear of missing out if you don’t. Tech companies tend to present these feedback loops as consumer conveniences. A new Intel TV ad, for instance, shows a young girl in the back of a car growing sad because the laptop on which she was watching a singalong video suddenly runs out of power. The company’s new battery-preserving processor, though, ultimately saves the day, “so you never have to stop watching.” T-Mobile has just introduced BingeOn, a feature that offers subscribers on certain plans unlimited high-speed access to popular streaming video channels. There’s even an industry term for the experts who continually test and tweak apps and sites to better hook consumers, keep them coming back and persuade them to stay longer: growth hackers. 

• Verizon Would Explore Yahoo Deal If It Made Sense, CFO Says: Verizon would explore a possible acquisition of Yahoo! if a deal made sense, Verizon Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo said. Shammo, speaking at an investor conference in New York Monday, said that while it still wasn’t clear what Yahoo’s board has planned for the tech company, Verizon would take a look if it were to be offered up for sale. Yahoo directors met last week to discuss the viability of spinning off its stake in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and whether to seek a buyer for Yahoo’s Web businesses. Verizon acquired AOL for $4.4 billion earlier this year as part of a push into mobile video advertising. Yahoo owns online sports sites, financial and general news and advertising technology including BrightRoll, which Verizon might find attractive at the right price. Impediments to a sale of Yahoo are the fate of its stake in Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce giant, and the tax implications of a sale of that unit. 

• Dropbox Shuts Down E-Mail and Photo Apps as It Gets Back to Businesses: The cloud storage company is increasing its focus on corporate customers as it tries to develop a sustainable business. Cloud storage provider Dropbox is killing off two applications it introduced to much fanfare, including a photo-sharing app released last year. The San Francisco company has placed more focus recently on creating tools companies are willing to pay for, while these apps were designed with everyday consumers in mind. The photo app, called Carousel, offered to automatically back up photos stored on a phone and display them alongside images already stored in a Dropbox account. The other app, an e-mail and task manager called Mailbox, came through an acquisition Dropbox made in 2013. The company said in a statement that features from each app will make their way into other Dropbox services. After achieving a valuation of $10 billion in a financing round last year, Dropbox is under pressure to increase its revenue and eventually go public or sell itself. Fidelity Investments and BlackRock wrote down the stakes of their Dropbox investments this year. Dropbox has tried to straddle two missions in recent years: to build a product beloved by consumers and to create a service that satisfies businesses' unique needs. The former strategy, which includes these apps, has fallen somewhat out of favor since the company brought in Chief Operating Officer Dennis Woodside from Google last year. Both Carousel and Mailbox competed unsuccessfully with much more popular services from Google and Apple. Mailbox will shut down on Feb. 26, 2016, and Carousel on March 31, 2016. 

• Airbnb Officially Confirms Gargantuan $1.5 Billion Funding Round in SEC Filing:  Home rental service and unofficial sharing economy mascot Airbnb has made its $1.5 billion funding round official in an SEC document today. The Wall Street Journal first reported news of the equity offering back in June, writing that it set the company’s value at more than $25 billion. The round makes Airbnb the third-most valuable privately held tech company in the world, after Uber (worth $62.5 billion) and the Chinese phone maker Xiaomi (valued at around $45 billion). Airbnb’s lead investors in this round were reportedly General Atlantic, Hillhouse Capital Group and Tiger Global Management, which together composed a third of the Airbnb shares sold. Airbnb is raising giant sums like this and putting off an IPO because the startup — like other highly-valued darlings of Silicon Valley — wants to put its resources into emerging markets around the world, especially China. The company is also busy putting out political fires in its more well-saturated markets like San Francisco and New York City, and is in the process of building a (likely expensive) global political organizing operation to protect its revenue streams. Onstage at the Code Conference earlier this year, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said that he thinks an IPO is still a couple years away. 

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, 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.

Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, September 29

• Google launches ad format linked to Gmail: During a presentation on Monday, Google announced a product that will let marketers target ad campaigns to consumers using their email addresses. The program, called Customer Match, lets companies upload a list of customers’ email addresses gleaned, for example, from its loyalty membership program. The company can show specific ads to these customers when they are signed into Google.

• Exclusive: Airbnb to double bookings to 80 million this year - investors: Airbnb is expected to double its nightly bookings this year, investors familiar with the company's performance said, a sign that the home and room renting site's battles with regulators have yet to dent its rapid global growth. The website is expected to have about 80 million nights booked this year, up from about 40 million in 2014, according to the investors, who declined to be named. This pace of growth is expected to continue or accelerate, the investors said. The company says it has more than 1.5 million listings - homes, apartments, guest rooms, even houseboats and tree houses - in more than 34,000 cities in 190 countries. "It's a global phenom," said Keith Rabois, a partner at Khosla Ventures who made an early personal investment in Airbnb in 2010. "(It) is going to continue to grow at a substantially higher rate than other businesses."

• Uber’s Chinese rival Didi Kuaidi invests in Ola: Didi Kuaidi, which competes with Uber  for a slice of China’s taxi-hailing market, has invested an undisclosed amount in India’s largest cab aggregator Ola. The investment is said to be part of the recent $225 million funding round led by Ola’s existing investors Falcon Edge Capital, Tiger Global Management and Japan’s SoftBank.  Ola claims to complete more than 750,000 daily rides in the country while Uber claims to offer around 200,000 rides. Ola has set an ambitious target of reaching one million drivers on its platform in three years. Currently, it has over 100,000 drivers, a number that has grown from 10,000 a year ago. Didi Kuaidi was formed after China’s largest taxi-hailing firms – Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache – merged in February this year. Till date Didi Kuaidi has raised $4.4 billion in seven rounds of funding from marquee investors such as Alibaba, Temasek Holdings, Tencent Holdings and others.

• Yahoo to spin off Alibaba stake despite no U.S. tax ruling: Yahoo said on Monday it would proceed with the planned spinoff of its stake in Alibaba even though the IRS has declined to rule on whether the transaction would be tax free. Yahoo's shares rose 4 percent to $28.71 in extended trading. The Web search company said earlier this month the IRS had denied its request for a private letter ruling on whether the spinoff of its stake in the Chinese e-commerce giant would be considered tax free. Based on Alibaba's Monday close of $59.24, Yahoo's 384 million shares of Alibaba are worth $22.75 billion. The value of the stake is slightly less than Yahoo's market capitalization of about $25.98 billion based on 941 million shares outstanding on July 31 and Monday's close. Many analysts say Yahoo's core business is worth close to nothing without its Asian assets. As of Monday's close, Yahoo's shares have declined a little more than 45 percent this year. Alibaba's shares have fallen nearly 45 percent over the same period.

• Apple iPhone 6s Breaks First-Weekend Sales Record: On Monday, Apple said it had sold more than 13 million new iPhone 6s and 6s Plus devices since they became available for sale on Friday, a record for first-weekend sales. That was up from the 10 million iPhones sold last year during the first weekend that the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were sold. Any increase in sales was most likely helped by the geography of the markets where the new iPhones became available. This year, the iPhones went on sale in a dozen countries and territories, including China, which is one of Apple’s biggest markets. Last year, China was not among the countries that sold the iPhone on the first weekend, apparently because the devices had not received approval from Chinese regulators. Adding China to the product introduction more than doubled the initial market size, according to Walter Piecyk, an analyst at BTIG Research. Jan Dawson, the chief analyst at Jackdaw Research, said he also expected first-weekend sales to be higher than last year because the period for ordering the new iPhones before their sale date was longer than that for the previous generation of the device. The sales numbers slightly outpaced some Wall Street estimates. Daniel Ives, an analyst at FBR Capital, projected that Apple would sell 13 million phones on the opening weekend, and he said that Wall Street had expected that Apple would sell about 12 million. Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray had predicted sales of 12 million to 13 million. First-weekend sales help indicate overall iPhone demand, an important measure given that the device accounts for the majority of Apple’s revenue. The initial sales also are a marker for how well the new smartphones may do during the end-of-year holiday season, which is typically the most significant sales period for consumer product companies. This year, UBS estimates that Apple will sell 78.4 million iPhones in the December quarter, up four million from last year, while FBR predicts the sale of 77 million iPhones.

• As Online Data Theft Escalates, Banks Look to Retailers to Bear the Losses On Sept. 1 last year, the website Rescator, known as the “Amazon.com of the black market,” alerted its customers that huge quantities of stolen debit and credit card data would go on sale the next day. “Load your accounts and prepare for an avalanche of cash!” the website urged. The next day, two batches of cardholder data were reportedly sold, according to legal documents. The website claimed the cards were 100 percent valid and working. Demand was so high that the website temporarily crashed. Over the next few days, several more batches of card data were sold. On Sept. 8, Home Depot issued a news release admitting its data systems had been breached. By then, the damage had been done. Approximately 56 million sets of card data had been stolen, some of which were sold on the black market and remained valid for several days. At a small credit union in California, fraudulent charges of more than $100,000 were posted in just three minutes after the card information was sold on the black market. A bank reported $300,000 in suspicious charges in two hours to the security blog Krebs on Security, which connected Home Depot with the stolen cards before the retailer did. A year later, the full tally of the Home Depot data breach remains unknown. Some estimate the fraudulent charges total well into the billions of dollars. Over the last couple of years, retailing has been a rich hunting ground for online criminals. They hacked into numerous companies, including Neiman Marcus, Sally Beauty and the crafts store Michaels. But the orchestrated theft at Target in late 2013, followed a few months later by the Home Depot data breach, eclipsed all of the others. So far, there have been no arrests in the Target and Home Depot breaches. As the size and scope of such attacks at retailers has grown, so have the losses, which have been largely shouldered by financial institutions. Now some small banks and others want Home Depot and those companies that suffer data breaches to pay.

• Google Virtual-Reality System Aims to Enliven As Tech Majors Eye Education: As part of a class last year on “Romeo and Juliet,” Jennie Choi, an English teacher at Mariano Azuela Elementary School in Chicago, took her sixth-grade students on a tour of Verona, the Italian city where Shakespeare’s play transpires. During the excursion, Ms. Choi asked her class to examine the variegated facade of a centuries-old building, known on tourist maps as “Juliet’s House,” where the family that may have been the inspiration for the fictional heroine once lived. She also encouraged her sixth graders to scrutinize the deteriorated tomb where they could imagine the Juliet character had died. But the students did not have to leave their Chicago classroom to take in the play’s Italian backdrop. Instead, as part of a pilot project for a new Google virtual field trip system for schools, Ms. Choi’s students tried out virtual-reality viewers — composed of cardboard and a cellphone — while their teacher used an app to guide them through stereoscopic vistas of the Italian town. The introduction of Google’s virtual-reality kits for classrooms highlights the growing importance of the education sector to major technology companies — and the mounting competition among them. In 2006, for instance, Google introduced Apps for Education, a bundle of cloud-based email, calendar and document-sharing products available free to schools. Now, 45 million students and teachers around the world use the apps, the company said. Microsoft has also developed a substantial school audience for its email, search, calendar, Skype and other software. This month, Microsoft introduced several new products for education customers, including a note-taking app called OneNote Class Notebook. But the advent of Google Expeditions is also indicative of an industry strategy shift. Some leading tech companies have recently made a decision to focus on designing products specifically for classroom use, rather than simply modifying their existing consumer or enterprise products and then marketing them to schools. Last year, Google introduced Classroom, a free app that teachers can use to create, collect and comment on student assignments. This month, Facebook announced that company engineers were working with Summit Public Schools in California on software to customize learning to individual students. Google engineers similarly worked with teachers to develop virtual-reality field trips based on course curriculums

• Academia Pushes A New Kind of Peer Review For Research With ‘Sessions’: For several years, Richard Price has had a quixotic dream to make cutting-edge academic research universally available to everyone. “I want a world where a 19-year-old kid in China can access a paper he’s interested in about lithium ion batteries on his phone on the subway and it’s validated by others and it’s in his own language,” Price said. Price has amassed 25 million users on his platform, Academia, which disseminates and validates research papers. Now he’s trying to take it to the next level with a feature called Sessions, which is a form of peer review that exists entirely online on Academia. “If you speak to academics, they will complain about the publishing system,” he said. “It can take 12 months to get the peer review done. Our grand vision for the publishing experience is that an academic should be able to get work published in 24 hours that is already peer reviewed by two people.” Academia has been trialling ‘Sessions’ with a select number of members but now it’s fully rolled out, with as many as 6,000 sessions going on simultaneously every day. Sessions allows select groups of academics to privately discuss a working paper for 20 days. It tries to mimic the dynamics of a conference where a researcher discusses their work with a select peer group in a question-and-answer session. Price said that there were a couple of features that were absolutely necessary to make this work. One is that it’s private, so that comments are not searchable on Google and academics have the ability to respond to critics personally before they revise their work. The other is that it’s not just a comment box at the bottom of PDF. Sessions’ comments are on the right-hand bar of the page and they are annotations that refer to specific sentences of paragraphs (kind of like Medium’s commenting format). There is also a time limit of 20 days so that there’s pressure for other academics to respond quickly. Lastly, Academia is its own distribution network and it can pull in other relevant researchers to comment on a person’s paper. Instead of cold-calling or e-mailing dozens of people, an academic can reach out to other researchers who have high author or paper rankings. Conceptually, Academia’s Paper Rank is comparable to Google’s Page Rank with citations and linking built in as a form of validation. The company, which has 26 employees, has raised around $18 million from investors including Khosla, Spark Capital and True Ventures.

• Are Marketers Finally Getting the Hang of Location-Based Mobile Ads? Essence talks up lessons from Google work: Until recently, location-based advertising has remained a small part of mobile ad budgets, primarily because it's difficult to pinpoint the exact person with the right type of ad on the fly. So, it was interesting that during an Advertising Week panel this morning about programmatic advertising, Essence digital agency and mobile advertising company xAd talked about their recent work for Google's search app (which also won Adweek's Media Plan of the Year award) as an example of how some initial hiccups led to successful place-based mobile ads. To promote Google's search app, Essence ran a campaign that pulled in 23 bits of custom data—including weather, time, location and photos—for each ad impression to show how Google search results are personalized to particular users. According to Essence, the campaign generated a 53 percent engagement rate and boosted brand awareness by 9 percent. That said, it was also the first time Essence ran a campaign pulling in multiple pieces of data in real time, causing plenty of logistical problems early on. For example, just because the campaign was targeted toward cities including London, it didn't mean the ads were actually served to people in London. With those learnings under the agency's belt, Christina Yoo, associate programmatic media director at Essence, talked about how a new version of the location-based campaign is now using better targeting tactics alongside programmatic buying. "In the beginning, one of our biggest problems was getting accuracy at scale," Yoo said. "We want to have these perfect [location-based] experiences for the individual, but we also want to make sure that the information that we're getting is accurate." After blanketing Google's ads based on a phone's latitude-longitude, the Essence and xAd teams drilled down into specific groups of consumers, targeting the ads by polygons—mapped plots of land—and mini data profiles about consumers. The mobile promos were also bought through programmatic private marketplaces.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, August 19

Foxconn, Alibaba, others invest $500M in Snapdeal; eBay pares stake: Online marketplace Snapdeal raised $500 million in fresh funding led by iPhone manufacturer Foxconn, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and existing investor SoftBank. Its other existing investors Temasek, BlackRock, Myriad and PremjiInvest also participated in this round, as per a press statement. Separately, e-commerce giant eBay said it has sold a portion of its holding in Snapdeal, 18 months after leading a $134 million funding round in the Gurgaon-based company. Snapdeal will use the money to expand geographical reach and enhance services in a bid to better compete with well-funded rivals such as US-headquartered Amazon and Bangalore-based Flipkart. The announcement confirms a previous report that said Snapdeal has raised $500 million, citing sources. With the latest funding, Alibaba is now backing two companies (Snapdeal and Paytm) who are directly slugging it out for supremacy in India’s consumer internet space.

Upstarts Raid Giants for Talent in Silicon Valley: The unicorns, a class of hot start-ups valued at $1 billion or more, are all aggressively pursuing the best and brightest minds in Silicon Valley with promises of talked-about workplaces and eye-popping payouts. Amid a general scramble for talent, Google, the Internet search company, has undergone specific raids from unicorns for engineers who specialize in crucial technologies like mapping. In particular, Uber — the largest unicorn, with a valuation of more than $50 billion — has plundered Google’s mapping unit over the last 12 months, aiming to bolster its own map research. Airbnb, the popular short-term rental start-up, has gone on a more general hiring spree, poaching more than 100 workers. While the unicorns typically pick off small groups of engineers at a time, making little impression on a large company’s total employee numbers, the poaching attacks are often aimed at siphoning off the best talent in strategic technologies. That can sting the likes of a Google, where executives have said one skilled engineer can be worth many times the average. To snag employees from large rivals, unicorns have a simple recruiting pitch: They are on a path to success, as illustrated by their rising valuations. Many offer generous equity packages of restricted stock units that can later translate to big paydays for employees if the unicorn goes public or is sold — a lure that neither Google nor any other public tech company can dangle. Also, the unicorns say they are far more fleet-footed and cutting-edge than large organizations.

Alibaba Cash-Burning Buybacks Make Internet Bonds China’s Worst: China’s Internet bonds are lagging behind as disappointing earnings and plans for buybacks to shore up slumping shares fuel concern finances will deteriorate. Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce company, announced a $4 billion share repurchase last week, while Baidu, its most-popular search engine, unveiled a $1 billion plan in July. Their bonds have contributed to a 0.4 percent loss on technology notes this quarter, the worst sector in a Bank of America Merrill Lynch investment-grade dollar note index for China that gained 0.4 percent. That’s a turnaround after Baidu’s 2012 debut in global debt markets gave it a self-proclaimed “war chest” and Alibaba’s $8 billion sale in 2014 became Asia’s biggest corporate dollar bond offering. The companies’ shares have slumped at least 9 percent this quarter as authorities tighten controls on Web content and crack down on fake goods online. “Companies such as Baidu and Alibaba came out with weaker results, and have announced cash-burning buybacks or acquisitions, which triggered a sell-off,” said Anthony Leung, a credit analyst at Nomura Holdings Inc. in Hong Kong, said. “In addition, regular negative headlines such as the sale of counterfeit goods, have hurt their bonds.”

Lenovo Joins Smartphone Compatriots for ’Make in India’: Lenovo started making smartphones in India, becoming the largest Chinese company to produce mobile devices there after the government raised import taxes. Lenovo will use contract manufacturer Flex’s factory outside the southeastern city of Chennai for its Lenovo and Motorola brands, Amar Babu, chairman of Lenovo India, said Tuesday in a phone interview. The brands will have a combined annual capacity of 6 million units, Lenovo said in a statement. Foxconn Technology Group this year began producing smartphones in India for China’s Xiaomi and OnePlus after the Indian government raised taxes on some foreign-made goods to attract investment in manufacturing. Lenovo’s announcement marks the largest Chinese name yet to be lured by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Make in India campaign as competitors vie for a share of the world’s third-largest smartphone market. “Output from the plants is focused mainly on serving the Indian market,” Babu said. Lenovo has no immediate plans to develop phones specifically for India, he said. Lenovo considered adding smartphone manufacturing to its own personal-computer plant in Puducherry in the southeast before deciding to outsource to Flex’s existing factory in Sriperumbudur, Babu said.

Airbnb partners with China Broadband, Sequoia to expand in China: Online home-rental marketplace Airbnb Inc said on Tuesday it was partnering with investment firms China Broadband Capital and Sequoia China to expand into the Chinese market and find a chief executive for its operations in the country. The company, which was recently reported to have completed a $1.5 billion private funding round, said in a blog post it was also working with a larger group of investors, including Horizon Ventures, GGV Capital and China-based Hillhouse Capital. Airbnb, which matches people wishing to rent out all or part of their homes to temporary guests, has grown quickly and is valued at more than $20 billion. Airbnb said the number of outbound Chinese travelers using its service grew 700 percent in the past year. China Broadband and Sequoia China will help it customize technology for the Chinese market and establish a "localized presence" in the country, it added.

Twitter to accelerate push for content partnerships in Asia: Twitter said on Tuesday it plans to accelerate its push for content partnerships in Asia Pacific and the Middle East. It has appointed a Singapore-based executive, Rishi Jaitly, to boost teams in major markets such as Australia, India, and Japan as well as to expand into Greater China and Southeast Asia, the company said in a statement. Jaitly was previously Twitter's market director for India and Southeast Asia. Twitter has been aggressively expanding its capabilities to carry pictures, video and interactive content.

Kik Takes $50 Million Investment From WeChat Parent Company Tencent, Hits $1 Billion Valuation: Kik Takes $50 Million Investment From WeChat Parent Company Tencent, Hits $1 Billion Valuation. The app has 240 million registered users and claims that 40 percent of American teenagers are actively on Kik. The deal doesn’t mean the two apps are planning to integrate, but they will have a strategic partnership moving forward, according to Kik co-founder Chris Best. That means sharing things like data and app information, he added. He also said that Kik won’t be targeting China anytime soon (seems obvious now given WeChat’s foothold there) but plans to use the money to grow the company’s employee base.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, June 17

• Here is an audio version of this snippet

• How A US Interest Rate Hike Could Deflate The Tech Boom: The technology industry has benefited from low interest rates, contributing to the creation of more than 100 unicorns, startups valued at more than $1 billion. Now that economists predict a rate hike as soon as September, investors question whether the move will do what seemingly nothing else has been able to accomplish -- cool off the sector.The U.S. central bank has kept benchmark rates near zero since 2008, before companies such as Uber, Snapchat and Pinterest even existed. That means most of today’s startups haven’t been tested in an economy in which borrowing costs fluctuate. Young companies may find it harder to raise capital. It also could add stock-market volatility, making it harder to hold an initial public offering. Even the biggest beneficiaries of the boom see a shakeout coming. Chris Sacca, an investor in companies including Twitter and Uber, said too much money is flowing to technology startups that will fail in a coming industry slowdown. “Bad deals are being done,” Sacca said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “It’s kind of inevitable that the funds right now that are putting a lot of this money to work here aren’t going to see it all back.”


• As Delivery Costs Rise, Amazon Is Building An App To Let Normal People Deliver Packages For Pay: The Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon is working on an app internally that would allow the average consumer to make a little cash by picking up Amazon packages at various retail locations and dropping them off at their final destination. WSJ’s sources did not have a timeline for the release of this product, internally called ‘On My Way,’ and were unsure whether it would launch at all. Amazon offers its own lockers program, with pick-up stations in various locations (like parking garages) and 7-Eleven stores that are rented out by Amazon. Customers can choose to have their package shipped to one of these lockers for pick-up at their convenience. The WSJ reports that Amazon would likely use a similar logistics structure for the rumored On My Way app, letting users pick up and deliver packages from a convenient location to make some extra money. Besides the standard shipping (or two-day for Prime members), Amazon has fiddled with the idea of letting Uber drivers and yellow cabs deliver products same-day, as well as using bike messengers and third-party delivery services for Prime Now and AmazonFresh, both of which function within hours-long (and not days-long) delivery windows. The company has even talked about launching a fleet of drones to deliver parcels, though that flight faces its own delays.


• Snapchat Turns Geofilters Into An Ad Unit: Snapchat may have finally found a way to monetize that its users will actually like. The company is now extending its custom geofilters to businesses as a monetization strategy. On Monday, McDonald’s became the first company to pay Snapchat to run a geofilter advertising campaign. Now, McDonald’s branded geofilters will be available for users to use at any of the over 14,000 McDonald’s stores in the U.S. Added as a feature in 2014, geofilters allow Snapchat users to add a location-specific filter to photos or videos. These filters quickly became a popular way to tell friends where a snapchat was taken, and now over one million snapchats a day are decorated with a geofilter. While users have been able to propose and submit potential geofilters since December, the company says only about one-third of submissions are approved. This new program will allow companies to bypass the user submission process, as well as add geofilters to thousands of locations at once. While geofilters paid for by companies will be denoted with a tiny “Sponsored” imprint, they otherwise will function exactly the same as existing filters.


• Uber is getting serious about maps, and it has poached the former head of Google Maps to lead the charge.: Brian McClendon, a Google engineering VP and 10-year company veteran, will be overseeing Uber’s new Pittsburgh center, staffed by engineers recruited from Carnegie Mellon’s National Robotics Engineering Center. Uber has taken several steps recently to strengthen its mapping technology. In March it acquired deCarta, a nearly decade old company that powers the mapping technology behind location-based services like General Motors’ OnStar navigation system. Uber also recently put in a bid for Nokia’s Here mapping technology, going head to head with the likes of a consortium of German automotive companies for the property. Almost everything Uber does relies on geospatial software, from its estimated car arrival times to directions for drivers to its UberPool system for matching travelers who want to share rides. Understandably, the company doesn’t want to rely solely on Google and Apple, as it currently does, for the technology that underlies its system, particularly in a time when Google’s and Uber’s initiatives are starting to overlap. McClendon was one of the rare Googlers to join the search giant via an acquisition and stay for several years. He arrived in 2004 with the purchase of Keyhole, part of a trio of companies Google swept up before the public birth of Maps. Keyhole’s technology became Google Earth. Its co-founder, John Hanke, also stayed at Google, where, in 2010, he was given oversight of the internal incubator Niantic Labs. McClendon was given purview over Google’s “Geo” products, which include Maps, Earth and Street View. He was one of the few execs to lead a product portfolio who was not an SVP or part of the inner circle of CEO Larry Page. Amid Google’s sweeping reorganization last October, McClendon was replaced by Jen Fitzpatrick, another engineering VP, who has been with Google since 1999. His mapping background made him a prime recruitment target for Uber.


• Twitter Unleashes Autoplay Video Ads With a 100% Viewability Promise: If not completely viewable, brands won't be charged: Twitter is ready to serve autoplay video, which has the potential to change up the experience on the platform with richer and more engaging media. The company has taken a hard stand on viewability standards: It is promising only to charge on video ads that have been seen 100 percent in full view of the user. Autoplay video has become a standard format in social media and one that is supported by advertisers, who like the fact that their content makes more of an impact. Here are some of the key numbers Twitter revealed about its tests regarding autoplay video: Users were 2.5 times more likely to prefer autoplay over click-to-view or thumbnail previews on videos. Ad recall was 14 percent greater on autoplay-promoted videos versus other formats. Completion rates were seven times greater on autoplay compared to other formats.


• Google Highlights Cloud Capabilities as GCP Beats AWS, Microsoft to Win HTC as Customer: At an event Tuesday for Google Cloud Platform — Google’s name for the computing, storage and networking it sells to business — Google will name the Taiwanese phone maker HTC as a customer. HTC has used Google to build a new kind of computing architecture that enables smartphone apps to update data fast and reliably to many devices at once, and look efficient even when the phones get poor reception. HTC also looked at the cloud offerings of AWS and Microsoft Azure, along with IBM and Alibaba. Google was the dark horse, because it does not operate in China, and HTC wanted to be everywhere in the world. Google’s technical dedication won the day. “The other salesmen just wanted to take orders,” Google is talking more openly about companies that use its cloud business, and revealing more about its computing resources, perhaps the largest on the planet. These include disclosures about Google’s ultrafast fiber network, its big data resources, and the computers and software it has built for itself. The disclosures follow earlier moves by Google Cloud Platform, as the search company’s cloud computing business is called, to show off its data analysis capabilities. The aim is to position Google as a company capable of handling the biggest and toughest computational exercises, lightning fast. Each cloud player is now reflecting the nature of its core business. Amazon, a retailer, is offering computing at scale and ease of use in data analysis. Microsoft, with decades of business ties, stresses its interoperability with current systems and data tools. And IBM has lots of high-level data analysts. Google Cloud Platform has built out specialties in areas like manufacturing, genomics and media to handle industry-specific needs on a global basis.


• Airbnb Says Chinese Travelers Are Fastest-Growing Users: Airbnb is drawing more customers from China, Chief Technology Officer Nathan Blecharczyk said. The firm has built relationships with Chinese consumers when they travel abroad, he said. The group represents Airbnb's fastest growing category, according to Blecharczyk.The San Francisco-based company doubled the number of properties it lists in Cuba to 2,000 within 45 days after debuting in the country, Blecharczyk said. Airbnb, which started in the country after President Barack Obama took steps to open relations with the communist nation, said last month Cuba was its fastest-growing market.


• Adobe earnings: revenue $1.16 billion, up 9% YoY; shares fall 2%: Photoshop maker Adobe reported that total revenue for quarter ending May 29th rose 8.8 percent to $1.16 billion, in line with analysts' average estimate. Net income rose to $147.5 million from $88 million in the year-ago quarter. The firm recorded better-than-expected profit for the sixth straight quarter, helped by a 12 percent sequential jump in annualized recurring revenue in its digital media segment. However, the company's shares fell about 2 percent in extended trading after it forecast lower-than-expected revenue and profit for the current quarter. Adobe is switching from traditional box licenses to web-based subscriptions for its Creative Cloud software bundle for more predictable recurring revenue. Online subscriptions let customers access the latest software versions for a monthly payment. The company said it expects revenue in its print and publishing business to be relatively flat in the current quarter with the second. Adobe earlier on Tuesday launched Adobe Stock, a collection of 40 million photographs, illustrations and graphics, available in 36 countries and 13 languages.

Daily Tech Snippet: Monday, March 23

• Fidelity, T. Rowe Price, BlackRock, all giant US money managers, are adding Uber, Airbnb, Pinterest and other private tech investments to mainstream portfolios: Tech Money Sends Funds on the Hunt for Unicorns: The retirement accounts of millions of Americans have long contained shares of stalwart companies like General Electric, Ford and Coca-Cola. Today, they are likely to include riskier private stocks from Silicon Valley start-ups like Uber, Airbnb and Pinterest. Big money managers including Fidelity Investments, T. Rowe Price and BlackRock have all struck deals worth billions of dollars to acquire shares of these private companies that are then pooled into mutual funds that go into the 401(k)’s and individual retirement accounts of many Americans. With private tech companies growing faster than companies on the stock market, the money managers are aiming to get a piece of the action. Fidelity’s Contrafund includes $204 million in Pinterest shares, $162 million in Uber shares, and $24 million in Airbnb shares. Over all, there were 29 deals last year in which a mutual fund bought into a private company, and they were worth a collective $4.7 billion, according to CB Insights. That was up from six such deals, worth a combined $296 million, in 2012. T. Rowe Price was the most active big investor, making 17 investments in private tech companies. Because these tech companies are not required to issue financial reports and are not traded on traditional exchanges, they are the sort of speculative investments not normally found in retirement accounts. Increasingly, however, investors are betting that these companies will be bought or go public at prices that exceed their latest funding rounds, a prospect that is anything but guaranteed. “I think it goes beyond what mutual funds were set up to do,” said Leonard Rosenthal, a professor of finance at Bentley University in Waltham, Mass. “It’s great for the portfolio manager, but it’s not necessarily in the interest of the shareholders of the fund. If investors are looking for a portfolio of risky securities, there are plenty of stocks to trade in the public market.” The dilemma for big fund managers is that fast-growing technology companies are so reluctant to sell private stock to the public that there is now a term — “unicorns,” reflecting just how wonderful and magical they are considered to be — for the dozens of private firms worth $1 billion or more. Several, including the ride-hailing company Uber, the room rental site Airbnb and the digital scrapbook Pinterest are worth more than $10 billion. Those lofty valuations, combined with the eagerness investors show in bidding them up, have created a shadowy market for private stock issued to tech companies’ early investors and employees. For the last few years, mutual funds have sat on the sidelines. Now, they are racing to get in. “More and more, the big lopsided growth is happening away from the public markets,” said Andrew Boyd, head of global capital equity markets at Fidelity. Take Uber, which was valued around $40 billion in its latest round of financing, up from $3.5 billion in mid-2013. That is more than 1,000 percent growth, compared with 28 percent for the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index over the same time period.

• China’s Internet Boom seems to fade: Half of the 14 Chinese dot-coms that debuted in the U.S. last year are now trading below their initial sale prices. Even Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., one of those still up in price, has dropped 28 percent from its record high in November. On average, the 14 Chinese shares are down 3.1 percent this year, compared with a 6.1 percent advance in the Nasdaq. Investor confidence, so high when Alibaba brought its record $25 billion initial public offering to market last September, is being undermined now by a wave of poor earnings at Chinese technology companies. Those that went public last year including Weibo Corp., the microblogging service, and mobile dating app developer Momo Inc. have failed to deliver the revenue investors were expecting. Sixteen of 28 Internet and technology firms in Bloomberg’s China benchmark reported fourth-quarter earnings below analysts’ forecasts, including search engine Baidu Inc. and video website Youku Tudou Inc. The percentage of stocks that slid below their IPO levels this year was the highest since 2011, when a series of corporate scandals eroded investor confidence, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

• Shoppers on Lazada last year spent $350 million as ecommerce booms in Southeast Asia: Rocket Internet’s Amazon-esque Lazada saw more than US$350 million in consumer purchases in 2014, group CEO Maximillian Bittner tells Tech in Asia. US$70 million of that spending (termed gross merchandise volume, or GMV) happened in December alone, due to Christmas and special promotions like the 12/12 sales day. The 2014 spending tally represents strong growth for Lazada from US$89 million in 2013. Lazada is this week celebrating its third anniversary. It operates in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Lazada started out doing only direct sales to consumers from its own warehouses, but that changed in the fall of 2013 as the company launched a marketplace for third-party merchants. Those merchants now take in 70 to 75 percent of the consumer spending on the estore, Bittner reveals. They’re a “core driver of growth” on Lazada, he adds. There are now 15,000 merchants using the site as an online storefront. “It’s not a target to be a 100 percent marketplace,” Bittner emphasizes. “It depends on the best price for consumers” and other factors such as whether Lazada itself or third-party merchants have better purchasing power. Indonesia is Southeast Asia’s largest single market, and Bittner says the archipelago is the top market for Lazada. Indonesia’s shoppers made up over 30 percent of Lazada’s 2014 spending tally. While Indonesia has an array of homegrown rivals to Lazada – from well-funded Tokopedia to the new Matahari Mall – Bittner says the nation is not necessarily a tougher market than the other Southeast Asian countries. “There’s a growing dynamic of excitement” about Indonesia’s ecommerce scene right now, adds Bittner. He adds that exclusive online gadget sales for brands like Xiaomi and Motorola have helped Lazada greatly in Indonesia. Xiaomi uses Lazada as its sole sales channel in both Indonesia and the Philippines.

• Touted by some as the next Facebook, Meerkat is living the dream of every app creator. Three weeks after launching, it is enjoying viral growth. It’s been the talk of SXSW. Presidential candidates and celebrities are using it. It’s been called the new technology that will affect the 2016 presidential election. Prominent investors want to help fund it. 1. Its numbers are multiplying. Meerkat told me Thursday that its user base is growing 30 to 40 percent a day since SXSW started March 13. It signed up 120,000 users in its first two weeks, so should be closing in on the one million user mark. (Thirty-five percent daily growth compounded over a week would put it just short of one million) 2. Its founder is a genuinely likable guy. In a recent interview with Re/code, chief executive Ben Rubin corrected an interviewer who credited him as “the man behind the app Meerkat,” saying “We’re the team behind the app Meerkat.” 3. Meerkat is obsessed with making its user comfortable. If you talk with anyone on the Meerkat team, they’ll almost certainly use the word “comfortable.” It’s a value that’s guided their decisions, including embracing the trend toward vertical video on smartphones. “We wanted to lower the barrier to entry and make the behavior as comfortable and as familiar as possible given that the medium is still pretty unfamiliar to a lot of people within the context of social media,” community director Ryan Cooley told me at SXSW. Rubin made a really interesting parallel between smartphone live-streaming and the first photographs, during a recent interview with host Ryan Hoover on Product Hunt Radio. “When the first cameras arrived, people weren’t smiling. It was weird to smile in a picture. People don’t have that habit of taking a picture or being in a picture. It evolved,” Rubin said. “With live video, we don’t have this habit. My mother didn’t live stream, I didn’t live stream when I was a kid.” The challenge for Meerkat is to make everyone — especially people who aren’t early adopters– comfortable with live streaming. Because Meerkat videos aren’t stored and can’t be rewatched later, it’s a less intimidating experience. You don’t have to worry about slipping up, and having that mistake be re-lived forever. You simply hit a button on your phone, and suddenly people are digitally right there with you.

• Google launches Retail Search Ad with local inventory offering: Early success as Sears Hometown store visits jumped 122 percent: Sears Hometown and Outlet Stores, a retailer fighting for every sale, has evidently found a weapon in Google's Local Inventory Ads that it says works to drive consumers to its stores. The digital marketing product is still fairly new from the search giant, launched last year, and holds the promise of finally helping brick-and-mortar brands take advantage of the online world rather than always getting beaten by it. With that in mind, the Sears spinoff company has been running Google's shopping ads that target by location and reveal whether a product is actually in a location. As part of a Google report today, the retail company claimed that such information has worked to generate 122 percent more visits to its 1,240 shops under the Sears Hometown and Outlet Stores brand. The Hoffman Estates, Ill.-based chain's click-through rate was 16 percent higher on inventory ads when compared to other ad products. "The ad unit is terrific for a mobile experience," said David Buckley, CMO of Sears Hometown and Outlet Stores. "It's highly relevant to where you are, and it's served with an image, price attributes, and how far you're standing from that product. It's the ultimate search ad product for mobile. You can't ask for more than that."

• Ola diversifies to add a mobile-only food ordering option: Online cab booking service Ola (formerly Olacabs), run by Mumbai-based ANI Technologies Pvt Ltd, has expanded its business area by adding a location-based online food delivery option under Ola Cafe. Unlike its core business, where one can book a cab ride through the web or through the mobile app, the food ordering option is restricted to its app, making it a mobile-only feature. The new feature is available on the latest update of the Ola app. The firm said this is currently in beta stage. The company plans to go pan-India but, to begin with, it has started the service in four cities — Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalore. Moreover this is not for ordering from restaurants across the city but only from those located near to the user and in some identified areas. The service can be availed from 12 pm to 11 pm. The company did not disclose the number of restaurants it has tied up so far. It did not say if it proposes to use cabs in the vicinity, which do no have a passenger on board yet, to make the deliveries. Users can pay by either Ola money (it’s closed online wallet) or cash on delivery. The delivery person will call customers to confirm the address, just the way a driver of cab or auto currently calls to confirm addresses for pick-ups. Users can also track the person handling the food delivery via the app, like one can do a cab approaching the user.

• Hackers Attack GreatFire.org, a Workaround for Websites Censored in China: For years, a group of anonymous activists known as GreatFire.org has monitored online censorship in China, provided access to blocked websites and collected messages deleted by censors. This week, unidentified hackers have tried to put an end to those activists’ efforts with an unprecedented attack. In a post to its blog Thursday, GreatFire.org said it has experienced a massive so-called denial of service attack. The method is one that hackers frequently use to foil websites by flooding them with multiple requests — so many that they go offline and viewers see a blank page. GreatFire.org creates encrypted versions of 12 websites that are blocked in China. These are known as mirrored websites and grant users within China access to the content. On Thursday, GreatFire.org said it was receiving 2.6 billion requests an hour for its mirrored websites. On Friday, access to the mirrored websites was inconsistent in China. GreatFire.org’s name is inspired by the Great Firewall, the term often used to describe China’s Internet censorship. About two million people in China access GreatFire’s websites each month, a co-founder of the group who uses the pseudonym Charlie Smith, wrote in an email exchange. It was unclear who was responsible for the attack, which began Tuesday from inside and outside China, Mr. Smith wrote. GreatFire.org noted in its blog post that its tactics were the recent subject of a report in The Wall Street Journal, which appeared online Monday. The timing for the attack was a mystery. “Maybe that WSJ story,” Mr. Smith wrote. “Maybe because there have been some excellent Chinese-language news pieces and perhaps somebody who supports the authorities took issue with them. In the past there has rarely been rhyme or reason on the timing of such attacks.” GreatFire.org’s mirroring services provide unrestricted access within China to a range of websites, including itself and the Chinese language version of The New York Times, which has been regularly blocked in China. Some of the others are Deutsche Welle, BBC News, China Digital Times, Google.com, and Boxun, a Chinese-language news website. GreatFire.org says it does not mirror The Wall Street Journal. GreatFire.org works directly with some, but not all, of the websites it mirrors. GreatFire.org is partly funded by Open Technology Fund, a United States government-financed initiative under Radio Free Asia. Last year it provided $114,000 in funding, according to its website. Mr. Smith declined to comment on any financial backing. The Chinese government has in the last year ramped up efforts to prevent its citizens from accessing critical news coverage from abroad and from communicating on social media platforms that the government cannot directly censor. China has long disrupted many of Google’s services. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube remain blocked. LinkedIn agreed to censor its content to operate in the Chinese market last year. GreatFire’s mirroring websites circumvent the Great Firewall by channeling Internet traffic through cloud services, such as one available from Amazon. The difficulty for the Chinese government is that it can’t just shut off Amazon’s service, because it is used broadly by many major Chinese corporations. Emails to the Chinese Foreign Ministry and the Chinese embassy in Washington went unanswered as of Friday evening.

• Web-hosting giant GoDaddy files for $481M IPO, seeking $2.87B valuation: US-based GoDaddy.Inc, an internet domain registrar and web hosting solutions provider, has fixed the price band for its initial public offer (IPO) which may raise $480.7 million, including the portion allocated to the underwriters. It proposes to list on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), as per a disclosure this week. The firm is offering shares at $17-19 a unit which would value the company as much as $2.87 billion. GoDaddy first attempted to go public in 2006 but ultimately withdrew. It had refiled for an IPO in June 2014. The IPO proceeds will primarily be used for repaying some of the debt the company. took on as part of a 2011 buyout by private-equity firms Silver Lake, KKR & Co. and TCV Investments. GoDaddy currently manages 57 million domains which accounts for around 21 per cent of the world’s registered domains. Since its buyout, it has acquired other services, including Mad Mimi, which helps small businesses promote themselves by email, and Locu, which makes software that manages business-contact information across sites like Yelp and OpenTable. Services made up 8 per cent of its revenue in 2014. The company’s revenue last year was $1.4 billion, up from $1.1 billion in 2013. Its 2014 net loss, which included $85 million in interest costs to service debt, narrowed to $143 million from $200 million a year earlier. As of December 31, 2014, it had approximately 12.7 million customers, and in 2014, it added more than 1.1 million customers. In 2014, the firm generated $1.7 billion in total bookings up from $939 million in 2010, representing a compound annual growth rate, or CAGR, of 16 per cent.