Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, March 08

• Snapchat Thinks It Will Generate at Least $300 Million in Revenue This Year: Investors are buying into Snapchat’s massive $16 billion valuation because its business is growing significantly. Or at least expected to grow significantly in 2016. Snapchat is targeting between $300 million and $350 million in revenue in 2016, according to multiple sources familiar with the company’s plans. That’s six or seven times the $50 million in revenue Snapchat projected last year. Snapchat’s business is still new and evolving, and advertiser interest is still very experimental. Essentially that means it can be tough to predict incoming revenue with much accuracy, as most advertisers don’t have Snapchat as a staple of their advertising plans. The company hit a $100 million revenue run rate in Q4, according to one source. Advertising is cyclical, and Q4 is usually a strong advertising quarter, but it’s worth noting because the run rate metric gives us a glimpse at how the business is growing. Still, boosting projected revenue like that must mean the businesses is growing at a nice clip. We don’t know if the $16 billion valuation is pegged to this year’s expected revenue, but if it were, that would amount to more than 50 times this year’s sales. Facebook, by comparison, trades at a value of about 17 times its annual revenue.

• Alibaba's Ant Financial could be valued at nearly $60 billion: source Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba arm, Ant Financial Services Group, is seeking a valuation of nearly $60 billion in its current round of funding, a person familiar with the matter said. Ant Financial, which operates the "Alipay" online payment platform, is in talks to raise funds from existing and new investors, which could include CCB International, the person said on Monday. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier on Monday that Ant Financial planned to raise up to 20 billion yuan ($3.07 billion), pegging its valuation at nearly $50 billion. Ant Financial declined comment on the Journal's story. The latest round of funding is expected to be completed by mid-April, the Journal reported. 

• Tech Companies, New and Old, Clamor to Entice Cloud Computing Experts: The hunt for the hard-to-find talent that can build and run the massive data centers behind cloud computing is pitting three generations of companies against one another. Old-guard companies like Oracle, tech’s current giants like Amazon and its peers, as well as Bay Area start-ups are offering big salaries and big perks for cloud computing experts. On the social media site LinkedIn, for example, there are over 130 engineering positions available at Oracle Seattle. Many of them are the kind of jobs that now pay $300,000 to $1 million a year, according to Shannon Anderson, who has been recruiting engineers in Seattle and the Bay Area for 25 years. Seattle and its surrounding towns are a hot spot for this kind of tech talent because they are home to A.W.S., which runs the biggest cloud computing service, and Microsoft, which has a large cloud business called Azure.Google also has a cloud computing office in the area. So does Facebook.“Someone working deep inside Amazon is getting five to 20 recruiting offers a day,” Ms. Anderson said. “Compensation has doubled in five years.” For a recruiter, who is typically paid a percentage of a star engineer’s compensation, “this is a very good time,” she said. Cloud computing, which powers an increasing number of our devices and services, allows a vast collection of computers — often spread around the world — to operate like one giant machine. As other tech sectors show signs of slowing, cloud services have created unprecedented demand for highly educated engineers and mathematicians who can build and operate these flywheels of data. Instead of asking about the latest computer coding languages or how to make a web page load faster, the most important question in tech hiring has become: Can you handle petabytes? That is the data in about 13 billion images, or roughly the amount of printed information that would fit in 20 million file cabinets. In the Bay Area, $125,000 a year is not an uncommon salary for someone newly out of graduate school with the expertise to do cloud computing work. With five years of experience, $300,000 along with a range of stock or job opportunities that greatly inflate the value of those paychecks have become the norm. “It’s an aggressive market,” said Corey Sanders, director of program management at Microsoft Azure. “We are all data engineers now, and we can convince people that this is the best place to learn that.”

• Prompt debuts “a command line for the real world”: In a world suffering from app overload, the Y Combinator-backed startup Prompt introduces a different way to interact with services, make purchases or even control “Internet of Things” devices — all by way of text-based interface. The application, which can be used via SMS, Slack or the web, lets you text to do things like request an Uber, change the temperature on a Nest thermostat, get directions, track flights or packages and a lot more. 

• How Amazon Shames Warehouse Workers for Alleged Theft: While waiting to clock in each morning, workers at some Amazon.com warehouses get a steady stream of company-provided reading: the stories of co-workers fired for theft. In an effort to discourage stealing, Amazon has put up flatscreen TVs that display examples of alleged on-the-job theft, say 11 of the company’s current and former warehouse workers and antitheft staff. The alleged offenders aren’t identified by name. Each is represented by a black silhouette stamped with the word “terminated” and accompanied by details such as when they stole, what they stole, how much it was worth, and how they got caught—changing an outbound package’s address, for example, or stuffing merchandise in their socks. Some of the silhouettes are marked “arrested.” Theft is a persistent concern for Amazon, with warehouses full of small but valuable items and a workforce with high turnover and low pay. Workers interviewed for this story say the range of thefts posted on the screens is as varied as the company’s sprawling catalog: DVDs, an iPad, jewelry, a lighter, makeup, a microwave, phone cases, Pop Rocks, video games. Several recall a post about an employee fired for stealing a co-worker’s lunch. The digital bulletin boards also occasionally display information about firings related to workplace violence. There are cheerier announcements, too, such as updates on incentive bonuses or a message about Black History Month. In some warehouses that don’t have flatscreens, workers say, tales of firings are posted on sheets of paper tacked to bulletin boards or taped to the wall. Many of the workers say the screens aren’t a top concern compared with wages or workload. “Only people that would have something to say about it is people that’s doing wrong,” says Maurice Jones, a warehouse worker who left Amazon in February. “It’s just letting people know that you’re being watched.”  

• Apple users targeted in first known Mac ransomware campaign: Apple customers were targeted by hackers over the weekend in the first campaign against Macintosh computers using a pernicious type of software known as ransomware, researchers with Palo Alto Networks told Reuters on Sunday. Ransomware, one of the fastest-growing types of cyber threats, encrypts data on infected machines, then typically asks users to pay ransoms in hard-to-trace digital currencies to get an electronic key so they can retrieve their data. Palo Alto Threat Intelligence Director Ryan Olson said the "KeRanger" malware, which appeared on Friday, was the first functioning ransomware attacking Apple's Mac computers. "This is the first one in the wild that is definitely functional, encrypts your files and seeks a ransom," Olson said in a telephone interview. Hackers infected Macs through a tainted copy of a popular program known as Transmission, which is used to transfer data through the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing network, Palo Alto said on a blog posted on Sunday afternoon. 

• FCC cracks down on Verizon Wireless for using ‘supercookies’: The Federal Communications Commission is cracking down on Verizon Wireless for using a powerful type of code to track its customers around the Internet, as the agency pushes to increase its role in protecting online privacy. The code, dubbed a "supercookie" by privacy advocates, is almost impossible to disable and could allow almost anyone to follow users around the Web. Under the terms of a settlement agreement announced Monday, Verizon must pay a $1.35 million fine and will only be able to use the tracking mechanism when users connect to Verizon's corporate family of services unless the company gets customers' opt-in consent. Broader use could leave customers' Web habits visible to outsiders. Verizon began putting a unique string of characters into customers' web browsing in 2012 to help target its advertising program. The practice came to the public's attention in late 2014, when it received criticism from privacy advocates who called the code a "supercookie" because the it was almost impossible for users to avoid. The privacy advocates warned then that other companies, or even intelligence agencies, could leverage the super cookies to track wherever people went online. Verizon downplayed that concern at the time, with a spokesperson saying that the code "wouldn’t be able to be used for that." But last January, researcher Jonathan Mayer revealed evidence that others could hijack the supercookie for their own purposes: An online advertising company called Turn was using the codes to help follow people around online, he said. Turn used the supercookie to "respawn" its traditional cookies -- even if users took steps to protect their privacy by removing the cookies. Turn said it would stop and Verizon started offering a way for customers to opt-out of having the supercookie attached to their web traffic. But the FCC had already launched an investigation of Verizon's use of supercookies in December of 2014  -- and later brought Mayer on board as the chief technologist for the agency's enforcement arm. While the Federal Trade Commission is often thought of as the government's primary privacy watch dog, the FCC's power to police online privacy got a major boost last year. As a quirk of how the agency moved to enforce network neutrality rules, broadband providers will be subject to new privacy scrutiny. The FCC is in the process of coming up with a version of its privacy rules that apply to broadband Internet providers, which are expected soon.

Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, August 18

Uber’s Popularity in India Has Led to a Mini Vehicle Boom: Uber has posed a threat to auto sales by enticing car owners to ditch their keys. In India, its popularity has sparked a vehicle boom instead. Maruti Suzuki has seen a surge in demand for its DZire Tour sedan because of the rising popularity of car-booking apps, said R.S. Kalsi, executive director at India’s largest carmaker. Toyota Motor is offering special deals to woo drivers and fleet operators that are boosting orders for its Etios sedan, which starts at 611,000 rupees ($9,400). Uber and other booking apps have announced plans to expand to smaller cities in India, where public transportation is often inadequate. The services have created a boom in demand from for-hire car companies expanding their fleets and from individual operators buying new cars to drive for the apps. “The plans of all these companies are big,” said N. Raja, director and senior vice president for sales and marketing at Toyota’s India unit. “We’re happy to see them talking about expanding the number of cars in the next 12 months.” In the four months through July, Maruti Suzuki’s DZire Tour, sold only as a taxi, surged 152 percent while Toyota’s Etios compact sedan gained 28 percent. Industrywide passenger-vehicle sales expanded 7.5 percent in the same period. The surge in demand for these cheaper models is helping to drive a recovery in vehicle sales in India. Automakers like Maruti Suzuki get about a third of their sales volume from rural areas, where incomes are correlated to rainfall during the monsoon season and a good harvest.

A Gushing Review for Windows 10: "I used to doubt Microsoft. Then I installed Windows 10": I don’t know if I broke a law of computing or committed heresy. But I installed Windows 10 on my Macbook Pro. I had feared that this would condemn me to purgatory in the gates of computing hell. But it has been an incredibly positive experience: my favorite Microsoft Office applications — Outlook, Word, and PowerPoint — work faster than ever before, and I can still use Apple peripherals — a Thunderbolt Display and Thunderbolt external hard drives. The best part is Windows 10 itself: it is a beautifully designed operating system that gives me the best of the past and present — maintaining the usability and familiarity of the old Windows operating system, and letting me download slick apps designed for tablets. Another Microsoft product that I had written off years ago is Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. The jury is still out, but Microsoft’s new browser, Edge, seems faster than Google’s Chrome. I may end up switching browsers as well. What is clear is that Microsoft is back — in full force. This is a good thing; Apple and Google desperately need the competition that Microsoft will once again provide.

Android Has a New Name, ‘Marshmallow,’ but the Same Old Security Problem: Android’s latest version now has its own culinary sobriquet: Marshmallow. But the release of the operating system, announced in May and arriving this fall, doesn’t address one of the biggest issues facing Android — its security model. Last month, a security researcher discovered a software bug, called Stagefright, that could potentially threaten millions of Android devices. Google acknowledge the bug and sent out a patch to manufacturers and carriers to fix. Then last week, a different security firm found another vulnerability; this one was in Google’s patch. Google said it has since released a fix for that hole, which affects Nexus devices. Still, both findings underscore the nagging headache Google has built with an OS so reliant on hardware partners, many of whom are struggling to maintain profits. And it shows that Google will continue to wrestle with the issues as Android moves onto other devices, like cars, wearables and home automation. “The whole Android ecosystem is a mess,” said Aaron Portnoy, vice president of Exodus Intelligence, the firm that spotted the second hole. The primary issue is that Google is not fully in control of its own destiny, with updates typically needing the okay of device makers and carriers before making their way to consumers, who also have to update their devices. Contrast that with Apple, which is largely able to push updates on its own. The security issues facing Google are reminiscent of those that faced Windows back in the day. The operating system, dominant in the PC world, found itself the increasing center of attacks. Adding to the issue was the fact that businesses were reticent to update their servers and PCs without doing independent testing.

4 Major Publishers Can Now Put Ads in Their Online Comment Sections: It was only a matter of time before marketers started squeezing native ads into every nook of a publisher's site, and now Condé Nast, The Wall Street Journal, CNN and Fox News can sell promos that pop up in story comments. Today, Livefyre—a tech company that powers online discussions—is unveiling sponsored comments for big-name media brands like the ones mentioned above. While the idea of in-feed ads isn't new (competitor Disqus launched similar promos last year), Livefyre's ads are sold directly by publishers, opening up a potentially interesting revenue stream for them. "You can distribute more ads into the page, especially if there are 100 comments on the page," said Jordan Kretchmer, Livefyre's founder and CEO. "Typically, by the time the user is down there reading the comments, there's no ads around it—all the ads are up above the fold." In addition to selling the ads, publishers will also control how often they pop up. For example, a media company may only want to serve a promo in one out of every six comments. Of course, plugging ads right next to trolls and negative discussions is a risky move for brands. To control the environment as much as possible, Kretchmer said the majority of his company's clients already use automated moderation tools that weed out spammy posts such as those from rogue e-commerce marketers. "The risk is far less today than it would have been a couple of years ago," he said. Kretchmer also explained the ads are targeted based on editorial content. For example, Nike can set up a campaign that only runs on sports articles. "Users who are reading and leaving comments are the most engaged users on a site," Kretchmer explained. "With customers who have a good, active community, comments are where they spend most of their time, and in a lot of times, [they spend] more time reading the comments than the article itself."

Amazon’s $5 Dash Button Already Hacked To Do Other Stuff Beyond Giving Amazon Money: Need something to spark a bit of creativity this week? How about a super clever hack for Amazon’s $5, single-purpose Dash buttons? The Dash buttons were originally meant to serve as a quick way to reorder household goods you order often (Order a lot of laundry detergent? Stick a Dash button on your washing machine, press it when you’re running low. Bam. Ordered.), but Cloudstitch CTO Ted Benson has found a way to make them do pretty much anything he wants. You can read Benson’s full breakdown right over here, but here’s the gist: Benson noticed that the Dash sends out a unique signal each and every time it’s pressed. Rather than opening up the Dash and modifying the hardware itself (which would probably require all sorts of painful/tedious chip flashing), Benson sniffs the network for that signal. When it’s detected, he can fire a script to do just about whatever he wants. In his demo use case, he’s using it to record when his baby’s diaper gets changed into a Google Spreadsheet, while a second button records when his baby wakes from a nap. To keep the Dash from ordering any products when you press it, you just… don’t configure it to order a product during the inital setup. If you never enter a SKU, it won’t have anything to order. One catch: whereas the factory Dash can act on its own, a modified Dash will need something — a computer, generally — awake and running on your network to sniff out the button presses and respond accordingly. It complicates the equation a bit, but it’s still a fun hack.

Jeff Bezos responds to New York Times article on Amazon's Culture: Amabots and Amholes; employees sobbing at their desks; colleagues spamming the internal employee-review tool in an attempt to eject their managers from the company; cancer survivors returning to work, only to be put on “performance improvement plans.” These and other rich anecdotes made the New York Times broadside against Amazon an entertaining and brutal read, which drew a rebuke from the company’s top dog. Amazon.com Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos wrote a memo to his employees last night contesting the Times article and asking anyone who witnesses such displays of corporate callousness to report it to human resources or e-mail the CEO. “I don’t recognize this Amazon, and I very much hope you don’t, either,” Bezos wrote. “I strongly believe that anyone working in a company that really is like the one described in the NYT would be crazy to stay. I know I would leave such a company.” But there’s now plenty of fodder to support the narrative that the secretive beast is not always a pleasant place to work. While 82 percent of respondents on the job-search site Glassdoor say they approve of the CEO, only 62 percent would recommend a job there to a friend. That’s much lower than Amazon’s peers.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, July 22

• Archived snippets are here, and MP3 versions are here

• Apple Profit Up 38%, but iPhone Sales Disappoint Wall Street: Apple reported double-digit increases in sales and profit for its fiscal third quarter, a rate of growth that is highly unusual for a company of its size. Yet the results still fell short of estimates by Wall Street analysts, who are accustomed to Apple blowing past projections and had been predicting sky-high sales of iPhones and the company’s brand-new Apple Watch. In total, Apple reported a 38 percent increase in profit, to $10.7 billion, from a year ago, with revenue surging 33 percent to $49.6 billion. Sales of the company’s biggest revenue and profit generator, the iPhone, soared 35 percent to 47.5 million units. IPhone sales faced some tough sequential comparisons. The 47.5 million units sold in the quarter was below the roughly 50 million that analysts had calculated Apple would sell, and was also down from the 40 percent growth in the previous quarter and the 46 percent growth two quarters earlier. Still, the rate of growth exceeded the 13 percent increase in the same period a year ago. And while Apple did not share numbers on sales of the Apple Watch, which began selling in April, analysts on Tuesday calculated that the company had sold between 1.5 million and three million watches, far less than the three million to five million watches they had predicted ahead of Apple’s earnings report. Apple’s sales in the quarter were fueled by overseas buyers, with international regions accounting for 64 percent of the quarter’s overall revenue. Sales in the greater China region, one of Apple’s prime growth areas, more than doubled to $13.2 billion. The company also reported healthy growth for its Macintosh computer business. Apple sold 4.8 million Macs, up 9 percent from a year ago. Shares were down 7% in after-hours trading.


• Jet.com Will Launch With Amazon Prices Front and Center: Jet, the new shopping site that launches on Tuesday, promises shoppers “the lowest prices on everything.” To hammer home the point, the online mall will compare its price with Amazon’s price on every one of its product pages. As a way to prove its marketing promise, Jet tested its service with some customers who were given early access by showing its prices against those found on multiple competing websites. But after some people were confused by the appearance of the various competitors, Jet has decided to show its prices against just one competitor, Amazon, which typically has very low prices. “So it’ll be very easy for customers to understand that savings means savings compared to Amazon,” Jet CEO Marc Lore said of the changes in an interview on Monday. “They’re clearly the dominant player, so they’re a great reference point.” Lore said about 90 percent of Jet’s product listings at launch will show Jet’s discounted price compared with Amazon’s lowest price for the same item. The remaining 10 percent of Jet product pages will be updated with Amazon price comparisons over the next two months. There are some caveats. While Amazon often has the lowest prices, it doesn’t always. When that’s the case, Jet will discount the product below the lowest price found elsewhere on the Web, but will still show Amazon’s price for consistency’s sake, the company said. The Amazon prices also won’t factor in the fact that some of the products wouldn’t carry shipping fees for Amazon customers who pay $99 a year for Amazon Prime. Jet, meanwhile, charges $5.99 for orders under $35, while Amazon also charges delivery for orders of this size for non-Prime members. “If you have Prime, you’re not our target customer,” Lore said, explaining the rationale. “You’re getting video, you’re getting faster shipping. It’s a completely different animal.”


• More on the launch of Jet - Jet is here. Let the price wars begin.: After months of testing and tweaking, the e-commerce start-up Jet.com opened its digital storefront on Tuesday, marking the official kickoff of the company's ambitious effort to battle Amazon and Wal-Mart for budget-conscious customers. Jet is taking a new approach to pricing. Its algorithm doesn't simply look at the price of each individual item in your online shopping cart. It looks at all the items you want to buy, as well as your Zip code, to determine which retailer or warehouse can ship that unique combination of items to you the cheapest. Shoppers can only buy things on Jet if they've signed up for a $49-per-year membership. Ad Week reports that in this online store, viewing ads could lead to discounts as Jet.com is lowering bills wherever it can. It's a risky business model. Lore has to get Jet.com to $20 billion in revenue by 2020 to make the site profitable. That kind of revenue means it would have to become one of the most successful e-commerce players in the world. The only money Jet.com would make comes from the $50 membership fee users pay to access the savings, which average about 15 percent on everything from detergent to sofas. The site offers deeper discounts depending on variables such as whether a customer pays with a credit or debit card, whether the order can be filled with an efficient shipping route, and whether the consumer waves the right to return items. All these little options help whittle down the price of a basket of goods.


• A $7 Billion Charge at Microsoft Leads to Its Largest Loss Ever: An accounting charge wiped out Microsoft’s profit for the quarter, leading to its largest loss ever, the company said on Tuesday, making clear the cost of its missteps in the mobile business. The $7.5 billion accounting charge, stemming from Microsoft’s troubled acquisition of Nokia’s cellphone business, was disclosed by the company earlier this month, along with plans to eliminate 7,800 jobs, mostly in the company’s phone operations. While the accounting charge was on paper and will not diminish the company’s huge cash hoard, it was a psychic blow to Microsoft, one of the biggest money makers in tech. Investors, however, seemed to mostly look beyond Microsoft’s struggles in the phone market. They appeared to focus on two of the company’s most important businesses, Windows and Office, which showed some signs of weakness. Those were somewhat offset by strong growth in its cloud services business, Xbox games and Surface tablets. For its fiscal fourth quarter, which ended June 30, Microsoft said its net loss was $3.2 billion, or 40 cents a share, compared with net income of $4.61 billion, or 55 cents a share, during the same period last year. While the company’s stumbles in smartphones have shown the bruising downsides of the hardware business for Microsoft, it had success with other devices, including its Surface tablet, the revenue from which grew 117 percent, to $888 million. Revenue from its Xbox game business rose 27 percent. In total, Microsoft said it had nearly $2 billion in computing and gaming hardware revenue in the quarter. Revenue from Microsoft’s overall commercial cloud business grew 88 percent during the quarter, one of the brightest spots in its results. Microsoft’s shares fell about 4 percent in after-hours trading


• Yahoo Posts Loss, Despite Rise in Its Display Ad Business: Yahoo’s revenue in the second quarter rose 15 percent, the company said on Tuesday. But it spent heavily to achieve the gains, wiping out all of its profits and then some. For the quarter, Yahoo reported revenue of $1.24 billion, up 15 percent from the $1.08 billion it reported in the same quarter last year. But after deducting the share paid to partners, revenue was flat. The company posted a net loss of $22 million, or 2 cents a share, compared with the profit of $270 million, or 26 cents a share, it reported a year ago. Executives also warned that expenses would continue to be high through the rest of the year. “We are investing heavily to grow market share through traffic acquisition,” Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s chief executive, said in a conference call with investors to discuss the results. Yahoo shareholders were unimpressed, sending the company’s stock down more than 1 percent in after-hours trading. Not that Yahoo’s core business — selling advertising — matters much to investors right now. Wall Street is far more interested in the fate of the company’s 15 percent stake in Alibaba, China’s biggest e-commerce company. Yahoo plans to spin off the holdings, worth more than $30 billion, into a separate company called Aabaco Holdings in the fourth quarter. The deal is designed to avoid incurring a capital-gains tax bill, but Wall Street analysts are concerned that the Internal Revenue Service will reject Yahoo’s argument that the spinoff should be tax-free.


• Targeted ads to drive mobile video business, Verizon CFO says: Verizon Communications Inc 's upcoming mobile video service will drive revenue with a combination of highly targeted ads, exclusive content and pay-per-view live concerts and sporting events, Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo said in an interview on Tuesday. Most Americans own a mobile phone and Verizon is looking at offering video content to increase data consumption on mobile devices and grow revenue. The digital video service, which it expects to release this summer, is aimed at families and younger viewers who increasingly view content on mobile devices. The video service will be offered through a mobile app, and will include some free sponsored content, Shammo said.

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, June 26

• Here is an MP3 version of this snippet

• Marketers Will Drool Over Facebook’s New Signup Ads That Auto-Fill Your Email Or Number: Businesses desperately want your email address, but it’s annoying to enter it on mobile. Cue Facebook’s latest News Feed ads. A marketer can buy an ad asking for you to sign-up for a newsletter or request a sales call, and with two-taps you can auto-fill your email address, phone number, or other info you’ve registered with Facebook. Facebook is testing these “Lead Ads” with a small group of businesses around the world to gain feedback before considering rolling them out. Google has tested similar contact form ads for years, but they always required users to manually enter their info. To make Facebook’s ads privacy-friendly, Facebook won’t just hand your info over. You have to click the call-to-action button like “Subscribe,” and then “Submit” your info once you’ve reviewed what was auto-filled. Users can edit that info inside the ads, and businesses only get what’s voluntarily submitted. From there, advertisers can only use the data in accordance with a mini-privacy policy they embed in the ad, and can’t resell it to anyone else. Rather than ads that lead you offsite to fill out sign-up forms, it’s pulling that experience into the News Feed, so when you’re done, you keep right on social networking. Removing the click away and manual data entry could drastically boost conversion rates on these kinds of ads, making them easier to sell at higher prices.


• Alibaba affiliate launches Internet bank for small enterprises: Alibaba's financial affiliate launched on Thursday Internet bank MYbank, targeting the small- and medium-sized Chinese enterprises that have struggled to obtain credit from major financial institutions. MYbank, which is 30-percent owned by Alibaba-linked Ant Financial Services Group, has 4 billion yuan ($644 million) of registered capital and will offer loans of up to 5 million yuan. It will only be able to take in deposits when regulators approve a facial recognition technology that allow its customers to remotely open bank accounts, an Ant Financial spokeswoman told Reuters. MYbank follows in the footsteps of Alibaba arch-rival Tencent Holdings Ltd, which began trial operations of its WeBank, China's first online bank, in January. Credit conditions have remained tight for SMEs, despite a series of policy easing, as banks avoid the companies worst hit by an economic slowdown. State-owned banks have also avoided customers such as farmers and smaller businesses because of the difficulties in assessing their credit worthiness and they have little to offer as collateral.


• Clashes Erupt Across France as Taxi Drivers Protest Uber: Irate taxi drivers blocked roads, burned tires and attacked drivers who they thought were working for Uber, the ride-hailing company, during a day of protests Thursday that disrupted Paris and slowed traffic to a crawl. Fights broke out on streets, a couple of cars were burned and travelers were frustrated all over Paris and in major cities elsewhere in France, where the labor battle snarled several cities’ streets. “Economic terrorism” is the favored term of Parisian taxi drivers for Uber’s lower prices, flexible hours and the way it is operating outside French law. In France the UberPop service is illegal. It allows anyone who wants to become a driver to sign up without a professional chauffeur license and to pick up fares through the Uber smartphone app. Other Uber services are permitted under strict conditions, and the company is contesting the constitutionality of parts of the law limiting UberPop. The company has instructed its drivers to keep working. The French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, who met Thursday evening with the taxi unions, deplored the violence, but saved his most angry words for Uber. He said the company behaved with “arrogance” in its flouting of French law and declared that “the government will never accept the law of the jungle,” referring to Uber’s stark form of competition.


• Amazon wants the Echo to be your personal robot butler: Amazon's fuller ambitions for the Echo and its Alexa cloud-based voice software have become a little clearer. The company announced Thursday that it is opening up the system to developers, so that anyone can design their own programs to work with the sleek cylindrical in-home assistant. The company announced that its new developer's kit will make it easy for programmers to work with the device, even without previous knowledge of how to work with voice-recognition systems. That means amateur and professional developers alike can make programs for themselves. That means they could make custom commands for smart appliances such as thermostats and sprinklers, or custom programs that work with Web sites so you can get news updates fed to your Echo. It also means Amazon's set up the Echo to potentially be the central point from which you run your whole life. The Echo itself can't vacuum your home, but it could theoretically tell your vacuum when to start going. It may not do your dishes, but it can prompt your dishwasher to fire up as well. So while it won't be your robot maid, it could theoretically be your robot butler. Earlier this week, Amazon began selling the Echo widely -- it had previously been an invite-only device. Those moves set Amazon up a little more solidly as a competitor to Apple and Google, which have also laid out ambitions to create hubs for the smart homes of the future. Earlier this week, Apple released a new set of home-related prompts that will work with its Siri voice assistant for individual smart devices -- "turn on the coffee maker" -- as well as for groups of smart devices. So you can tell Siri to "turn off the upstairs lights," for example, if you want to save a little energy while your family is gathered in the living room.


• IBM Pushes Networking and Research to Catch Rivals in the Cloud - Mulls India Data Center: IBM will expand the networking services available through its SoftLayer cloud technology, trying to catch up with deep-pocketed rivals. IBM researchers and engineers are now making regular trips to SoftLayer’s headquarters in Dallas to discuss product plans and get educated about cloud operation, said Marc Jones, SoftLayer’s chief technology officer. Increasing cloud revenue is critical for IBM. It has tried to boost sales for operations like cloud computing and data analytics but that hasn’t been enough to make up for declines in longstanding operations -- such as services and hardware -- and revenue lost from divestitures. The initiative comes almost two years after the Armonk, New York-based company acquired SoftLayer for $2 billion to help IBM compete against Google, Microsoft and Amazon. SoftLayer also plans to open a data center in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and is looking at a location in India.


• Uber growing 40% month-over-month in India: Uber’s Asia Head: Uber may have had its share of challenges in the Indian market, but the ride sharing app has been growing at over 40 per cent month-over-month here. In fact, Bangalore and Kolkata are some of the fastest growing cities for Uber globally, Eric Alexander, Head of Business, Asia, Uber told Techcircle. The team at Uber India has their work cut out. The regulatory overhang over Uber, which started after a passengers’ sexual assault by an Uber driver in December, continues to play out. It has been facing ban calls in Delhi and other places. Earlier, it came under the RBI scanner over its payment system which automatically debited a user’s credit card after a ride.


• Amazon Puts a Store on Wheels, Continues to Flirt With Physical Retail: Amazon continues to explore new ways to bridge the gap between online and offline retail, even if the most recent example seems stunt-ish. The company today is introducing the Amazon Treasure Truck in Seattle, which will carry a limited quantity of one product each day that shoppers can order on Amazon’s app and then collect from the truck at a designated pickup location. The company said the truck will feature hard-to-find, heavily discounted or limited edition products and food, ranging from paddle boards to beach bikes to steak — yes, steak. The Treasure Truck introduction comes as Amazon flirts with physical retail: Amazon product vending machines have popped up in some airports, and a recent patent application lays out a vision for a new kind of technologically advanced retail store.

Daily Tech Snippet: Monday, June 15

• Here is an audio (MP3) version of this snippet, and archived snippets are here. 

• YouTube Takes On Amazon With New Gaming App: Google announced the release this summer of YouTube Gaming, a mobile application and website that will focus on video game videos and live streams. In a blog post, the company said YouTube Games would have individual pages for some 25,000 games as well as pages for particular publishers and gaming celebrities. This arena has become increasingly competitive. There is Twitch, the site where gamers watch each other play live, which Amazon bought for about $1 billion last year. And Twitch is facing competition from sites like MLG.TV, which has poached former Twitch stars like the Call of Duty phenom Matthew “Nadeshot” Haag. YouTube Gaming is the latest example of the website’s efforts to better serve a specific demographic of its customer base, with the goal of encouraging advertisers to spend more money. YouTube has also created an app specifically for kids who watch videos. YouTube is stepping up investments in new services to attract viewers and ad dollars to compete with Amazon, Facebook, Hulu and Spotify. In February, YouTube released YouTube Kids, which can be downloaded onto phones or tablets and includes special parental controls and programs such as Thomas the Tank Engine, Mother Goose Club and Reading Rainbow. It is also testing a stand-alone music service called YouTube Music Key.

• Nielsen Study: The average American used apps for 37.5 hours last quarter -- nearly a full work-week. Nielsen on Thursday released a new study showing that while the number of apps that smartphone-wielding Americans use holds steady at around 26.7 per month, we're spending more time with them overall. The average American used apps for 37 hours and 28 minutes last quarter -- nearly a full work-week. And that's up from 30 hours and 15 minutes just the quarter before and a 63 percent rise over two years, the company said in a blog post. Nielsen dug into its data and found that entertainment apps such as games, music and video seem to be the main culprits of the increase. Overall, smartphone users reported a 26 percent increase in the time they spend using their smartphones for the fun things in life, for an average of 13 hours and 20 minutes per month. Entertainment app users gained 13 million additional users over the past year. And, as a group, they spent nearly three hours more in apps than they did last year. Gaming, meanwhile, was the fastest-growing app category within entertainment. More than three-quarters of entertainment app users reported playing at least one game in the last quarter of 2014. Smartphone owners spend a little more than 10 hours playing games, which can get awfully addictive.Men use more apps than women -- 27.2, on average, versus 26.3 --  but women tend to spend about an hour more using apps overall each month.

• Alibaba Plans to Create TBO, China’s Version of Netflix, HBO: Alibaba is planning to build China’s version of Netflix and HBO via a new service called Tmall Box Office, as it tries to service 600 million families craving more entertainment content. Tmall Box Office will be offered in about two months through Alibaba's set-top box and smart televisions that carry its operating system, including those manufactured by Haier Group. Some of the content will be produced by the company and some purchased overseas. Alibaba is on a buying spree as it tries to compete with Tencent Holdings for China’s $5.9 billion online video market. Alibaba Pictures Group Ltd. completed a $1.57 billion stake sale in Hong Kong to help finance potential acquisitions in June. Billionaire Chairman Jack Ma visited Hollywood in October to acquire more content. “We want to create a whole new family entertainment experience,” Liu said. “Our goal is to become like Netflix in the U.S, HBO in the U.S.” It was not clear how the service would fit with Youku Tudou, one of China's biggest video streaming platforms in which Alibaba bought a 16.5 percent stake last year. However, unlike the majority of domestic rivals, about 90 percent of TBO's content will be paid for, either by monthly subscription or on a show-by-show basis, Liu said. The remaining 10 percent would be free. Netflix itself is also considering an entry into China, a notoriously difficult task for foreign Internet companies. 

• Reliance readies for an e-Commerce push - talks of B2B marketplace and mobile payments at AGM. Mukesh Ambani said Reliance Retail’s fashion and lifestyle format will roll out its e-commerce property before the end of this year. Reliance Jio, the wireless telephony and data services unit of RIL, is set to launch 4G services by December this year.  RIL will also use Reliance Jio’s internet infrastructure to roll out an e-commerce marketplace platform, group chairman Ambani said at the company’s 41st annual general meeting on Friday. Here’s a peek at upcoming JIO services: Jio Money – Digital payments and money transfer services including a digital wallet. Switch-and-Walk – an app that allows customers to seamlessly change phones. Jio Drive – a cloud app for storing, sync-ing and sharing content between devices and with friends. Jio Play – An HD TV service with hundreds of channels.  Jio Beats – a digital music streaming service, that also allows download and offline listening. Jio Mags - a collection of popular magazines. Jio News – news from leading news publishing houses across multiple languages and categories. 
• Facebook will tweak your news feed based on how long you look at stuff: Facebook is tweaking its algorithms to account for a new metric: the amount of time you spend looking at things in your feed, regardless of whether or not you actively interact with it. Scroll past something without stopping for long, and Facebook’s algorithms will slowly learn that you don’t particularly care for that sort of content. Camp out on a post for a bit, though, and Facebook starts the timer behind the scenes. If you spend more time on this story than you spend on most things in your feed — studying a picture, perusing the comment thread — they’ll take that as a signal that it’s something you care about. Facebook is doing this because it realizes that you probably don’t always like, share or comment on the stuff that pops up in your Facebook feed, even if it’s something you care to see. In other words: those endless baby photos and motivational fitness memes that you tend to scroll right on past? At least theoretically, this change allows Facebook’s algorithms to take the hint without requiring you to lift a finger.

Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, June 11

• Here is an audio (MP3) version of this snippet.

• Facebook expands its Buy Button test; ties up with Shopify. With the news that Google and Pinterest are introducing their own Buy buttons, Facebook has a message: We’re still working on our own version, too. The company on Wednesday announced it is working with e-commerce software company Shopify, which helps companies set up digital storefronts, to expand its Buy button test to a larger number of small businesses that already work with Shopify. Since July, Facebook has been testing the Buy buttons with a few hundred small- and mid-sized businesses.

• Spotify Value Tops $8 Billion as Investors Bet on Streaming: Spotify Ltd. received a valuation topping $8 billion in its latest round of funding as the world’s largest subscription music-streaming service said its number of customers exceeded 75 million. The company raised $526 million from investors including Goldman Sachs, Baillie Gifford, Discovery Capital Management, Lansdowne Partners, Rinkelberg Capital and Senvest Capital for a valuation of $8.5 billion, a person familiar with the matter said. Phone carrier TeliaSonera said Wednesday it invested $115 million. In comparison, Pandora, which runs an ad-supported Web radio, and reported 79.2 million active listeners at the end of the first quarter, has a market value of $3.6 billion. Spotify continues to amass funds as it tries to boost its subscription service before Apple Inc. gains more customers for its updated music offering, unveiled this week. Both Apple and Spotify give users access to more than 30 million songs, and each service costs $9.99 a month. With music purchases shrinking in stores and online, streaming has emerged as the industry’s primary source of growth. Record labels acknowledge its significance, while complaining streaming has failed to replace lost retail sales. Spotify now has more than 20 million paying subscribers and more than 75 million active users, it said in a statement on its website Wednesday. The company said it has paid more than $3 billion in royalties to artists and record labels since its start over six years ago.

• Twitter Advertisers Can Now Target You Based on the Other Apps on Your Phone. For the past six months, Twitter has been collecting data on which smartphone apps its users download. Now, the company is using that data to make some money. Twitter announced on Wednesday that its advertisers can use that app information to target users with ads. Marketers will be able to target you based on the different categories of apps you have downloaded onto your phone as well as how recently you downloaded them. Twitter first announced in November that it was collecting this data, but until now, it wasn’t using it for anything. It’s easy to understand the draw from Twitter’s perspective: If Twitter knows you like Candy Crush, it may assume you like other similar games as well. It’s also easy to understand why this type of targeting may freak some users out. You can block Twitter from collecting this data in settings, but the feature is opt-out, which means the company will gather this information unless you tell it to stop. Twitter won’t, however, have access to information within the apps you download. For example, the company may know you’ve downloaded WhatsApp, but it won’t have access to your messages.

• Microsoft Launches Giant Smart Whiteboard - Picks Unusual Place to Manufacture it - the U.S.: There is nothing ordinary about Surface Hub, a gargantuan touch-screen computer that Microsoft is about to start selling to companies as a high-tech replacement for conference room whiteboards. People in a meeting can scribble on the screen with a stylus and pan around an image using their hands. Everything on the screen, along with video images of meeting participants, can be shared over the Internet with people in other locations. The largest Surface Hub, measuring 84 inches diagonally, looks like an iPad that has gone through a growth spurt. The 4K resolution of the screen produces dazzling images. At $20,000 apiece, a price Microsoft plans to announce on Wednesday, it should. Just as unusual is where Microsoft is building the Surface Hub: Wilsonville, Oregon, just outside Portland and about 200 miles south of the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Wash. That puts the Surface Hub in a rare category, since most of Microsoft’s better-known devices, like the Xbox game console, are made overseas.In recent years, there has been a surge of optimism about the prospect of high-tech manufacturing jobs returning to the United States after some headline-grabbing moves, like Apple’s decision to build its Mac Pro computer in Texas starting in 2013. But they remain outliers in an industry that has outsourced to Asia the making of everything from game consoles to smartphones. The Surface Hub, though, is an illustration of an exotic tech product that its makers believe can be manufactured cost-effectively in the United States. The product is so unusual — representing one of the largest touch screens of its kind — that Microsoft could not find existing assembly lines in Asia to build it on, the company said. At 220 pounds, the largest Surface Hub is expensive to ship long distances. And its already hefty price means any additional labor costs associated with making it in the United States will be harder for customers to detect.

• Hackers May Have Obtained Names of Chinese With Ties to U.S. Government. Chinese hackers who attacked the databases of the Office of Personnel Management may have obtained the names of Chinese relatives, friends and frequent associates of American diplomats and other government officials, information that Beijing could use for blackmail or retaliation. Federal employees who handle national security information are required to list some or all of their foreign contacts, depending on the agency, to receive high-level clearances. Investigators say that the hackers obtained many of the lists, and they are trying to determine how many of those thousands of names were compromised. “They are pumping this through their databases just as the N.S.A. pumps telephone data through their databases,” said James Lewis, a cyberexpert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It gives the Chinese the ability to exploit who is listed as a foreign contact. And if you are a Chinese person who didn’t report your contacts or relationships with an American, you may have a problem.” Officials have conceded in the briefings that most of the compromised data was not encrypted, though they have argued that the attacks were so sophisticated and well hidden that encryption might have done little good.

• Box Spikes 9% On Strong FQ1 Revenue Growth, Narrowing Losses. Cloud storage provider Box raised its full-year forecast as more customers subscribed to its content-sharing platform. Box raised its full-year forecast to $286 million-$290 million from $281 million-$285 million earlier. Shares of the company, whose customers include AstraZeneca, General Electric and Chevron , rose about 8.7 percent in extended trading on Wednesday. The company said it surpassed 37 million registered users, compared with 34 million at the end of the fourth quarter. The number of paying users grew 70 percent from a year earlier, and now accounts for more than 10 percent of total users, the company said. The online file-sharing and personal cloud content management service for businesses leverages a "freemium" business model, providing up to 10 GB of free storage for personal accounts and charging for additional space. In April, Box launched its premium security service, which lets businesses control their encryption keys, the encoding tools used to keep data safe. The company's main competitors include privately held Dropbox, Microsoft's OneDrive, Citrix Systems ShareFile and Google's Drive.

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, June 5

• Here is an audio (MP3) version of this snippet on SoundCloud

• The Apple Watch will hit retail stores on June 26: Apple said it would start selling some models of its watch at its retail stores this month, and also roll out the gadget in seven more countries. The watch has been on display in Apple stores around the world since April 10, when it became available for preorder online and at shops including trendy fashion boutiques in Paris, London and Tokyo. Apple had directed people to order online, preventing long queues around its stores that have become a norm with the company's rollout of new products. Apple Watch will be launched in Italy, Mexico, Spain, South Korea, Singapore, Switzerland and Taiwan on June 26, the company said. The watch is currently available in the United States, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan and the UK. Apart from online stores, customers in these countries can also buy the devices at Apple's retail stores and some authorized resellers. The company has not given any sales figures for the watch since it began taking orders, but has often said demand was outstripping supply. "The response to Apple Watch has surpassed our expectations in every way," said Jeff Williams, senior vice president of operations. "We're also making great progress with the backlog of Apple Watch orders."

• Amazon's e-gifting offering launched quietly recently: Amazon Allowance, which recently debuted without much fanfare, lets people set up monthly or weekly payments to credit their kids' — or anyone else's — Amazon account with a cash balance, like a gift card. That saves parents from having to find cash, write a check or a make a bank transfer, and gives the recipient a way to shop on the website without a credit or debit card. The initiative is significant in a few ways. The e-giving (electronic gift card) market is projected to reach $14 billion in 2017, up from $6 billion last year, according to CEB, and U.S. retailers, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp. and JC Penney Co. have all made e-gifting a part of their strategy. It's also a way to get younger shoppers accustomed to buying things on Amazon. And with Apple Inc. and Google Inc. aiming to turn smartphones into digital wallets, Amazon needs to keep shoppers close. Amazon account holders will be able able to set up one-time and recurring allowances for "family, friends, or employees that are age 13 and above," according to the website. The recipient must have an Amazon account (a parent or guardian will have to help set up an account for those under 17). People can also set up allowances for themselves to budget or save up for a purchase. "Sending money to family or friends can be a frustrating process," said Manish Bansal, general manager of gift certificates at Seattle-based Amazon. "A lot of early customers are using Amazon Allowances as a way to budget —whether through one-time or recurring allowances. We’re also seeing parents using Amazon Allowances to send money to college kids who need help buying textbooks and dorm essentials."

• Snapdeal, GoJavas to pick up return orders in 90 minutes: E-commerce marketplace Snapdeal, and QuickDel Logistics, which operates under the GoJavas brand, have launched a new service that will ensure pick up of return or replacement e-commerce orders within 90 minutes of intimation. The new service, christened ‘go-90′, has gone live in 15 cities, as per a press statement. GoJavas was previously a part of Jabong, a lifestyle e-tailer incubated by Rocket Internet. The move is seen as another step towards stimulating online shopping in the country since returns are seen as a major challenge. Reportedly, around 5-9 per cent of all e-commerce orders end up being returned in India.

• Facebook Launches Facebook Lite - A Stripped Down Android App For The Developing World: Today, Facebook is launching a bare-bones, low-resolution version of its Android app that works well on crummy networks or outdated phones, and burns much less data than its normal smartphone apps. It will roll out today in Asia, and come to parts of Latin America, Africa, and Europe in the coming weeks. Facebook Lite is designed specifically for the developing world to help the social network on-board its next billion users. Facebook Lite doesn’t offer data-intensive features like videos or Nearby Friends. But if users are willing to accept that and lower-resolution image thumbnails, they can access Facebook quick, smooth, and cheap from the most remote corners of the planet. Roughly a year back, that’s when we realized that our current Facebook experiences needed a lot more work, specifically in emerging markets and more specifically where networks are bad” Facebook Lite’s product manager Vijay Shankar tells me. So Facebook set out on two parallel paths. First, it would try optimize its flagship apps to load faster with less data. It’s already shrunk down its main Android app. Second, Shankar tells me “We floated another idea. What if we were building this from scratch for emerging markets? How do we completely re-architect this?” Rather than imagine what the problems in these areas were, Shankar says “we did a lot of research on the ground and spent a lot of time in Africa, and India and Indonesia.” The team discovered the solution would need three things: One, to work on any Android phone, regardless of storage space, RAM, and CPU. Two, to load fast even on 2G mobile connections, which is what 4 billion people on earth are stuck with. Three, to use as little data as possible, as the prohibitive cost of data plans is actually the largest barrier to Internet usage, not network access. The main way Facebook makes the app use less data is by never pre-loading full-resolution images. Photos and link preview thumbnails in the News Feed appear a bit grainy at first. They’ll load in full-res if tapped, but Facebook only wants to do those big data pulls if people volunteer for them. If you try to post a photo to Facebook Lite, the app compresses the image and then sends it in the background, so its small and you don’t have to spend the wait time staring at the screen. “Every roundtrip to the server is painful” Shankar says, so “we’re very careful about what features and experiences we offer in the app.” There will be some ads, but several of Facebook’s top formats like app install ads won’t be in Facebook Lite. Advertisers might not love the idea of their creative assets being compressed into low-res. But otherwise, users would probably scroll past them before they even load. Today, Facebook Lite begins its official global rollout. At under 1 megabyte in size, Shankar says it can be downloaded in seconds for cheap on even slow 2G connections. I played with it for a few minutes, and was surprised by how slick and full-featured it was despite the compromises.

• Coke's New Twitter Ads Call Out Viewers by Name As Social Promos Get Personal. Coca-Cola has been buying Promoted Tweets that show up in viewers' Twitter feeds and address them by their first names. The ad copy starts with: "Hey [NAME], #ShareACoke is back! Order..." You can see the full promo in the above image. The new tactic is part of a larger, ongoing "Share a Coke" campaign that debuted earlier this spring. The company is encouraging people to buy 8-ounce bottles of the soda, personalized with their names, for $5 apiece. Coke wasn't available for comment. But it appears the Atlanta-based soda giant is employing Twitter's Tailored Audiences platform in an innovative way to create this targeted style of advertising. Twitter deferred to Coca-Cola about the campaign and didn't state whether other brands were using the personalized call to action. But it would certainly interest any marketer that is looking to increase its click-through rates on the microblogging platform.

• Alibaba has tied up with China's largest loan restructurer to sell bad debt online. Alibaba will cooperate with the biggest state-owned loan restructurer to dispose of more than 4 billion yuan ($645 million) of non-performing assets on its online shopping platform Taobao. China Cinda Asset Management, which announced the tieup with Ma last week, saw profits rise 32 percent to a record in 2014. China’s non-performing loans climbed by an unprecedented 140 billion yuan in the first quarter to 982.5 billion yuan, the most since 2008 and almost the size of Vietnam’s economy. UBS and Standard Chartered are among companies that bought stakes in Cinda before its 2013 public share sale as a stepping stone into the distressed asset market. Cinda’s market value of $23 billion is now larger than KKR’s $19.1 billion. Cinda already sold two bad loans on Alibaba’s retail site Taobao in April for a combined 24.5 million yuan, according to a China Banking Regulatory Commission statement at the time. Four more were auctioned last month for 31.4 million yuan. One of the soured loans auctioned in May was originally from Agricultural Bank of China Ltd. with a clothing company in the eastern Zhejiang province as the debtor. Cinda disclosed details such as the name of the borrower, the principal amount, accrued interest and guarantors of the loan on Taobao. Bidders were advised to look at the loan documents and check the collaterals before auction. Both individuals as well as institutions were allowed to bid. “Alibaba’s online loan auction platform broadens the investor base for bad loans and therefore will lead to better price discovery for distressed assets,” said Liao Qiang, a banking analyst at Standard & Poor’s in Beijing. The legal complexities involved in unwinding such debts and the need to divulge information publicly may limit growth in online auctions, according to KPMG’s Gleave. “Alibaba’s auction site is just a market place,” he said. “Whether that’s a good way to trade bad debts is still to be seen.”

• Yahoo Says Shutting Down Maps Service Site, Other Tools: Maps.yahoo.com will close at the end of June, Amotz Maimon, chief architect at the Sunnyvale, California-based company, said in a blog post. Yahoo will still support mapping as part of other services including search and the photo-sharing website Flickr. Yahoo also is paring back or ending support for other sites and services, including mail support for older versions of Apple Inc.’s iPhone operating system. The company is shuttering market-specific media properties, including Yahoo Music in France and Canada and the home page for the Philippines. In addition, it will end support for creation of Pipes, a Web-content gathering tool. Yahoo Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer is looking for ways to keep costs under control as she works to turn around the company she has led for almost three years.

• Facebook Messenger Ditches Constant Mapping To Lay Groundwork For More Location Features. Facebook is removing the confusing, slightly creepy always-on location sharing feature in Messenger for a more explicit, one-time way to share where you are or will be. Location will no longer be a “second class citizen”, Messenger Head Of Product Stan Chudnovsky tells me. Instead, Messenger has big plans for GPS features, saying “What we’re launching is the foundation of everything that’s coming.” For example, “You might want to make reservations. How are we all getting there? Maybe there’s a transportation service somehow” Chudnovsky hints. When I ask if Messenger might build on Uber’s API to let you instantly book rides, he coyly replied “I didn’t say that, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like what you’re saying.” The new design for location sharing in Messenger is rolling out today for everyone on iOS and Android. It banishes the blue arrow and any way to constantly share your coordinates. It’s replaced with a pin button alongside those for sending photos, stickers, or money, or an option in the three-dot More drawer. Tapping it pulls up a map with your current location pinned, which you can send to friends with one more tap. This makes it easy to tell a friend “Here’s where I am, come meet me.” By dragging the map, you can change the pin’s location. That lets you pick a meetup spot. You can also use suggestion of nearby Facebook Places like local businesses, or search for one to set the pin to a specific destination. Chudnovsky says trying to do something similar by opening Google Maps would take “7 taps, 2 app switches, and 150% frustration.”

• Computer Scientists Are Astir After Baidu Team Is Barred From A.I. Competition: A group of researchers at the Chinese web services company Baidu have been barred from participating in an international competition for artificial intelligence technology after organizers discovered that the Baidu scientists broke the contest’s rules. The competition, which is known as the “Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge,” is organized annually by computer scientists at Stanford University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Michigan. It requires that computer systems created by the teams classify the objects in a set of digital images into 1,000 different categories. The rules of the contest permit each team to run test versions of their programs twice weekly ahead of a final submission as they train their programs to “learn” what they are seeing. However, on Tuesday, the contest organizers posted a public statement noting that between November and May 30, different accounts had been used by the Baidu team to submit more than 200 times to the contest server, “far exceeding the specified limit of two submissions per week.” This year, Baidu announced that it had built a custom supercomputer named Minwa with the intention of dedicating it to the image recognition contest. Baidu researchers subsequently made a series of announcements about the success of the computer, including one playing up a result more accurate than an earlier score by Google scientists. On May 4, Baidu posted an article on its technology blog headlined “Baidu Achieves Top Results on Image Recognition Challenge.” The article has since been removed.

• Zomato’s revenue and operating loss more than tripled last year; Meritnation’s growth slowed to a crawl: Zomato, which recently expanded to allow food orders online and has been aggressively expanding overseas with as many as nine firms in its kitty in the past 12 months alone, saw operating revenue rise over three times from INR 30.6 crore in FY14 to INR 96.7 crore last year. Its operating EBITDA loss in the same period also more than tripled to INR 136 crore from INR 41.39 crore in the year ended March 31, 2014. Operating revenue growth for Meritnation was just 6.5 per cent to INR 21.59 crore. However, the firm managed to restrict its operating losses which declined by a fifth to INR 22.72 crore.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, April 29

• Twitter Q1 earnings: $436M, +74% Y/Y, net loss $162M; shares crash 18% on weakness in both engagement and monetization: Twitter posted weaker-than-expected financial results for the first quarter on Tuesday and told investors to reduce their expectations for the rest of the year. The quarterly report, which was supposed to be published after the stock market closed, was obtained early and posted on Twitter by the financial analytics firm Selerity. The release sent Twitter shares plunging. Trading was briefly halted so the company could disseminate its results. That steepened the drop, and the stock ended the day down about 18 percent. Twitter’s revenue grew 74 percent in the quarter, but that was less than the 97 percent growth seen in the fourth quarter and below the company’s own forecasts. Executives attributed the slowdown to a transition to a new advertising model that priced certain ads based on the result, such as whether the viewer downloaded an app, instead of whether the person simply clicked on it. Analysts said, however, that the shortfall suggested that the real-time network might be less useful than competitors for what are called direct-response ads. “Do people want to leave what they are doing on Twitter and do something else like buy something?” said Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst at the research firm eMarketer. “Direct-response advertisers haven’t figured out the best way to use Twitter, and Twitter hasn’t figured out the best way to market to them.” The quarterly results may renew calls for the resignation of Twitter’s chief executive, Dick Costolo, who has been under fire from some investors ever since the company’s initial public offering in the fall of 2013. “User growth doesn’t appear to be notably improving, and now monetization is failing to live up to expectations,” said Richard Greenfield, an analyst with BTIG Research. “That’s why the stock is selling off so hard. The question is, How much of this is Twitter’s own missteps versus how much of this is peers such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat eating into their advertising?” Twitter said that 302 million people used its service at least once a month during the first quarter. That is up from 288 million in December and in line with recent trends. But the figure failed to impress investors, who have been eager to see results from recent changes Twitter has made to help newcomers better understand how to use its service. Twitter’s revenue, most of which derives from advertising, came in at $436 million in the first quarter, up from $250 million in the same quarter a year ago. That was well below the $457 million that Wall Street analysts had expected, according to estimates collected by S&P Capital IQ. The company also continued to lose money in the first quarter: $162 million, or 25 cents a share. Excluding stock-based compensation and certain other expenses, however, the company reported a profit of $46.5 million, or 7 cents a share. On that basis, Wall Street had expected Twitter to earn 4 cents a share.

• Twitter CEO faces a crisis of confidence: Twitter Inc.’s chief executive officer failed to foresee a slowdown that forced the social-media company to miss analysts’ first-quarter revenue estimates and cut its 2015 sales forecast, and the stock slumped 18 percent. While this isn’t the first time Twitter has fallen short on promised results, investors had been told that new features and services, as well as a management overhaul, were starting to pay off. Now, with results missing projections and executives warning of a “slow start” to April user additions, analysts are asking whether Twitter’s potential market is limited and about management’s ability to lure more users and advertisers“Management will again have to address credibility concerns,” Mark Mahaney, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, wrote in a note to investors. The quarter’s performance “raises the question of how much visibility into advertiser and consumer demand for its offerings Twitter really has,” he said. As Twitter has evolved, Costolo has also sought to explain changes in how the company’s performance should be measured. He usually has a positive business reason for why a number went down. For example, after a slump in timeline views, a metric that Twitter touted as a key figure before its November 2013 initial public offering, Costolo said product improvements had made clicks less necessary, deflating the importance of a number that was supposed to measure user interest. That figure no longer appears on earnings releases, and Twitter hasn’t replaced it with a new metric to track engagement. As Twitter’s monthly active user growth slowed, Costolo responded by saying that it didn’t show the whole picture because 500 million people also visit Twitter’s website each month without logging in. Now, Twitter has decided to tweak the metric, it said on the conference call, making historical comparisons more difficult. The company is adding to the total user count people who access Twitter and send tweets via SMS, or text messaging, in emerging markets, reasoning that they will one day become regular users when upgrading their phones. The change, which will start this quarter, would have added 6 million more people to the prior period’s total count.

• Oracle raises $10B in debt as tech majors borrow to sweeten equity with dividends, buybacks: Oracle sold $10 billion of notes on Tuesday, including the software maker’s first bond that will mature in 40 years, at yields that were lower than originally offered, according to a person with knowledge of the deal. Amgen, the world’s second-biggest biotech company, issued $1.25 billion in 30-year securities at its lowest coupon for that maturity as a part of a $3.5 billion debt sale, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Both borrowers raised debt to return capital to their equity investors. The highest-rated companies that have been building up their balance sheets after the financial crisis are showing willingness to borrow to satisfy stock investors pushing them to lift share prices. And even as the Federal Reserve moves closer to raising interest rates, forecasts that the U.S. central bank will wait until September, is encouraging borrowers to embrace yields on corporate bonds that are hovering near record lows. Apple Inc. said Monday it may tap debt markets to fund share buybacks. Investors are rewarding companies that have hoarded cash and tightened spending. The ratio of net debt to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization for companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index is near the lowest levels on record. Oracle last month boosted its dividend for the first time since 2013 by 25 percent to 15 cents a share, up from the prior payout of 12 cents. Oracle, based in Redwood City, California, last sold bonds in June, when it issued $10 billion. The company sold the new debt in six parts, with the $1.25 billion 40-year portion yielding 170 basis points more than similar-maturity Treasuries, 10 basis points less than where the deal was initially marketed. Apple unveiled a plan Monday to boost its share-buyback authorization by $50 billion to $140 billion, and increasing the company’s dividend by 11 percent. Cupertino, California-based Apple has issued the equivalent of $40.35 billion of bonds since April 2013, when it sold $17 billion in what at the time was the biggest corporate-bond offering ever.

• Microsoft might be approaching a substantial goodwill impairment from the Nokia purchase: Microsoft made waves recently by disclosing in its quarterly 10-Q document that its Phone business, which generates billions in yearly revenue, isn’t performing as well as it expected. As Microsoft is carrying billions of dollars of goodwill related to the Nokia purchase on its books, the warning landed like a brick in a puddle of lukewarm slop. History as prelude in this case is the aQuantive boondoggle, during which Microsoft wrote of billions of dollars of value relating to that purchase. As Business Insider’s Matt Weinberger recently wrote: “[T]he last time Microsoft used language like this in an earnings report was back in 2012, three months before it took a $6.2 billion charge to its bottom line for its aQuantive acquisition.” Microsoft currently counts quite a lot of goodwill as an intangible asset on its books. In its most recent quarters, the dollar amount of goodwill sourced from the Nokia deal, in which Microsoft bought the majority of the Finnish company’s hardware assets, sat around the $5.4 billion mark. That’s about a quarter of the company’s total goodwill, which it reports as just over $21.7 billion. Microsoft may not be forced to write down any goodwill relating to the Nokia deal. Or it may have to write down quite a lot. In terms of scale, how bad could the damage be? A massive write down could tank a quarter of the company’s profit, using normal accounting methods (GAAP). Using adjusted metrics, Microsoft could take the non-cash charge in stride, more shamefaced than materially castigated. On a GAAP basis, things get more interesting. The $5.4 billion in goodwill that the company currently counts as an asset is more than the company’s last-quarter GAAP profit. So, in theory, a massive write down could erase a full quarter’s profits both per-share and in aggregate. We can look back to the aQuantive write down to see the potential impact. Here’s Microsoft, from the fourth quarter of its fiscal 2012. In short, the write down essentially erased the company’s profit for the quarter.

• In sharp reversal, US retailer Best Buy will start accepting Apple Pay in all stores: Best Buy announced on Monday that it now accepts Apple Pay payments for purchases made inside its smartphone app, and by the end of the year will accept payments made in its brick-and-mortar stores using the Apple Pay mobile wallet. A Best Buy spokesman said in a statement that the electronics retailer wanted to give customers as many options as possible in how they pay for goods and services. The company also plans to open a technology innovation office in the Seattle area to work on mobile technology issues, the spokesman said. That is a sharp reversal from just a few months ago, when major retailers like Rite-Aid and CVS abruptly shut off the ability to accept Apple Pay payments in their retail stores. Best Buy has not accepted Apple Pay payments in the past. The issue was not whether these companies want a mobile wallet to catch on. More than 50 retailers, including Walmart, Best Buy and Gap, started working together years ago to develop CurrentC, a smartphone-based payments product still in development. The hope was that for members of the consortium, also called the Merchant Customer Exchange or MCX, accepting mobile payments through their CurrentC app could be a way to help retailers understand more about their customers’ shopping habits and, potentially, let merchants avoid the high fees they pay when processing credit card transactions. However, when Apple Pay made its debut, MCX retail partners were contractually bound not to accept alternative mobile wallet payments, according to two retailers involved in MCX, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the details of the partnership are private. That meant that even though the CurrentC product is still unreleased, partner retailers would not be able to take Apple Pay or Google Wallet transactions. Some of those exclusivity agreements will expire soon, people close to the coalition said, which could explain why Best Buy will accept Apple Pay in stores this year.

• PremjiInvest may lead $50M fresh investment in grocery e-tailer BigBasket. PremjiInvest, the private investment arm of Wipro Ltd chairman Azim Premji, is in discussions to lead a $50 million (Rs 312 crore) Series C investment round in Bangalore-based SuperMarket Grocery Supplies, which owns and operates online groceries marketplace – BigBasket.com, sources told Techcircle.in. According to senior investment bankers who are aware of the discussions, this fresh round of funding is expected to be wrapped within three months. Request for views on the development from the management of BigBasket and PremjiInvest did not elicit any response. This comes within seven months of BigBasket raising Rs 200 crore ($32.9 million) in its Series B round of funding from a clutch of investors including Helion Venture Partners and Mumbai-based Zodius Capital. After establishing its presence in its home market Bangalore, it has expanded into Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad and Chennai. It is expected to enter Delhi soon. The firm still has cash from the last round but would need a larger stash not just to enter new markets but to create a war-chest to fight fresh competitors, including some which follow an asset-light hyper-local grocery delivery marketplace. In the grocery e-commerce space ZopNow raised $10 million from Dragoneer Investment Group with participation from the existing investors Accel Partners, Qualcomm Ventures and Times Internet. ZopNow, which earlier competed head on with BigBasket, has pivoted to become an asset-light business and partners with offline hypermarket chain HyperCity to pick products and deliver to consumers who order online. Then there are a bunch of delivery startups which essentially connects users to local grocers. Grofers raised $45 million across two rounds since January this year; PepperTap raised $10 million while LocalBanya also got fresh funding. BigBasket is understood to have closed FY15 with a top-line of Rs 250 crore, with a run-rate of 6,000 orders a day with average billing of Rs 1,500 per customer. It had generated sales of around Rs 70 crore in the year ended March 31, 2014, according to VCCEdge, the data research platform of VCCircle.

• Indonesian startup Cubeacon aims to be pioneer in iBeacon technology: Cubeacon wants to be Indonesia’s pioneer in iBeacon technology: It’s a rare thing to hear about software-as-a-service (SaaS) ventures from Indonesia, and even more rare to hear about hardware innovation. But Cubeacon combines both. It focuses on customer loyalty management with a hardware component based on Apple’s iBeacon technology. The startup may be so far ahead of the curve in Indonesia that its CEO Tiyo Avianto is focusing Cubeacon’s distribution in the Japanese market for the time being. Cubeacon uses a BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) sensor that was introduced by Apple under the name of iBeacon in 2013. iBeacon sensors are made to be placed indoors, for instance inside a shop. These sensors can detect a customer’s position within the shop very precisely, and they can send offers or information relevant to that location directly to a customer’s phone (so long as they have Bluetooth turned on). Potentially, hundreds of sensor units can be installed across one location. Along with its sensor units, which Cubeacon calls a Cubeacon Box, the company delivers customizable software which shop owners can configure depending on their context and requirements, for example to receive analytics and maps, and to deliver custom ads, or push notifications. “At this time we can produce about 2,500 Cubeacon units per month,” Avianto says. Cubeacon hopes to tap into the big budgets that major companies have at hand for their customer loyalty programs. “Cubeacon exists to bring a different experience to customer loyalty,” he says. Cubeacon’s revenue is based on hardware unit sales, but it also charges for its software on a subscription-based model. For large companies, Cubeacon’s software can be white labelled, meaning that it can be branded and adapted to suit the firm’s needs. It even allows the integration of other iBeacon-based devices, which makes the software attractive for developer companies who are already experts in the technology.