Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, June 1

• Why you should delete the online accounts you don’t use anymore — right now: Despite falling out of vogue years ago, MySpace — that old precursor to Facebook — still has details on more user accounts than the United States has people. And now a hefty chunk of those account credentials has been leaked to the entire Internet, in a humbling reminder that the Matchbox Twenty-inspired username you probably made in high school is still worth a heck of a lot to companies and criminals. As many as 360 million MySpace accounts turned up for sale Friday in a 33-gigabyte dump online, according to reports that were confirmed Monday by MySpace's parent, Time Inc. The massive leak includes passwords, email addresses and usernames that were swiped from MySpace in a hack dating back to June 2013, before MySpace made a site redesign that closed some security gaps. It's unclear how many of the accounts in the MySpace hack were still "active," in the sense that they belong to people who continue to log into the service today. But chances are at least some of these accounts hadn't been touched for years. The reason this makes you vulnerable is the same reason experts say you shouldn't use the same username and password for every online service — it makes it easy to take one set of stolen credentials and plug them into others, giving hackers potential access to large swaths of your digital life. Personal data from the MySpace breach was going for sale to the tune of thousands of dollars, highlighting how even outdated information can still carry significant value. But whether your old data gets used for marketing, fraud or some other nefarious purpose is still at least partly within your control.

• Inside Uber’s Auto-Lease Machine, Where Almost Anyone Can Get a Car: In its relentless pursuit for growth, Uber needs new drivers, and many of those drivers need cars. To help them get started, Uber has been offering short-term leases since July through a wholly owned Delaware-based subsidiary called Xchange Leasing, LLC. It partners with auto dealerships, advertises to drivers, manages risk, and even pays repo men to chase down cars whose drivers aren't making their payments. Xchange may be key to Uber's continued expansion as it tangles with Lyft in the U.S. and a bevy of competitors abroad. Uber announced a partnership with Toyota last week to finance even more cars. This year, Uber said its financing and discount programs, which include Xchange, will put more than 100,000 drivers on the road. That requires dipping into the vast pool of people with bad or no credit. In a deal led by Goldman Sachs, Xchange received a $1 billion credit facility to fund new car leases, according to a person familiar with the matter. The deal will help Uber grow its U.S. subprime auto leasing business and it will give many of the world's biggest financial institutions exposure to the company's auto leases.  The credit facility is basically a line of credit that Xchange can use to lease out cars to Uber drivers.

• Instagram Adds Business Profiles in Advertising Growth Push: Facebook’s photo-sharing application Instagram is unveiling tools to help businesses differentiate themselves from regular users in a bid to help drive advertising revenue. Instagram, which has been heralded by analysts as a key source of growth for Facebook, will now let businesses create special profiles that will allow customers to contact them directly rather than posting public comments. Instagram will also offer business users new data on which posts are getting the most engagement and give them the ability to turn posts into advertisements. Facebook is working to leverage Instagram’s 400 million monthly users to keep up its pace of revenue growth. Instagram ads are expected to bring in $1.53 billion in revenue in 2016, or 15 percent of Facebook’s total ad sales, according to eMarketer. Instagram has 8.5 million users in Canada, Levine said.

• Microsoft sells patents to Xiaomi, builds 'long-term partnership': Software maker Microsoft  is selling about 1,500 of its patents to Chinese device maker Xiaomi [XTC.UL], a rare departure for the U.S. company and part of what the two companies say is the start of a long-term partnership. The deal, announced on Wednesday, also includes a patent cross-licensing arrangement and a commitment by Xiaomi to install copies of Microsoft software, including Office and Skype, on its phones and tablets. Both companies declined to discuss financial terms of the deal.  Jonathan Tinter, corporate vice president at Microsoft, said the company was keen to tap into Xiaomi's young, affluent and educated users by having its products pre-installed on their devices. He declined to go into detail about the patent deals, but said the overall deal was something "we do only with a few strategic partners." Microsoft has cut licensing deals with many Android device makers over the years, but has had less luck with Chinese manufacturers. Florian Mueller, a patents expert who consulted for Microsoft in the past, said it was rare for Microsoft to actually sell its patents, adding "it's possible Microsoft found it easier to impose its Android patent tax on Xiaomi as part of a broader deal that also involved a transfer of patents." 

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, May 4

• Uber enables global e-hailing through Alipay to fend against Lyft/Didi alliance: Starting today, Uber riders from China won’t have to worry about language barriers or currency when traveling outside of the country. Now, riders will be able to pay for and hail a ride in the Alipay app in the more than 400 cities in which Uber operates. It’s an extension of Uber’s existing partnership with the company, which initially only allowed passengers in China to pay for their rides using Alipay. The move comes just a few weeks after Lyft and China’s Didi launched a similar integration that allows Didi riders to hail a Lyft in the U.S. using the Didi Chuxing (formerly Didi Kuaidi) app, and vice versa. That partnership is part of a larger global ride-hail alliance that also includes South East Asia’s Grab and India’s Ola. The clear winner in this entire situation is Alipay’s affiliate company, Alibaba. That’s because the Chinese e-commerce company is playing both sides of the fence — Alibaba is an investor in both Didi and Lyft, and Ant Financial, which operates Alipay, has had this partnership with Uber since 2014. It’s certainly true that Alibaba has a higher stake in Lyft and Didi beating out Uber, but the transportation industry isn’t a zero-sum game. Since there’s room for both sides to coexist, Alibaba can afford to put bets on Didi and Lyft, and Uber too. But Alipay may be playing favorites. According to company SVP of business Emil Michael, Uber will be the primary featured transportation app on Alipay’s platform outside of the U.S. Alipay is essentially promoting Uber to its 450 million users.

• Instagram is selling a new type of video ad: Instagram has been pushing users to create more video content. Now it’s pushing advertisers to create more video ads. Instagram announced Tuesday that it will soon roll out video carousel ads, a move that will let advertisers share up to five separate videos with one single ad purchase. Each video can be up to 60 seconds long. Instagram already sells carousel ads, the kinds of ads that let users swipe between different pages (often called cards). But video functionality wasn’t available until now. The change aligns with Instagram’s conscious push into video more broadly, a strategy reminiscent of Facebook’s video push a few years back. Instagram is adding video featuresand making video more prominent in search in hopes users will watch more of it. It’s essentially feeding people what it wants them to consume — and video can be good business. If users expect to see videos when they open Instagram, then video ads, which are typically more lucrative than static ads, won’t feel out of place. These new video ads are now in beta and will roll out to all advertisers in the “coming weeks,” according to a company spokesperson.

• Amazon, Web Giants Shift to Report Real Cost of Equity Pay: For more than a decade, technology companies doled out heaps of stock to recruit top talent -- then pretended this wasn’t a normal part of doing business by reporting profit numbers that subtracted the cost. That’s changing as the industry grows up and responds to pressure from regulators and investors. Amazon.com Inc. started breaking out stock-based compensation in the results of its different businesses in the first quarter. This is “the way we now evaluate our business performance and manage our operations,” Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky told analysts after the earnings report last week. Facebook Inc. Chief Financial Officer David Wehner had a similar message. From now on, he said he’ll talk about the social network’s results and other metrics based on U.S. standards known as Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or GAAP, which include equity-based pay costs, instead of a mix of GAAP and non-GAAP numbers. “We view it as a real expense,” he said. Some technology companies, such as Netflix Inc. and Intel Corp., already take this approach, but many don’t. If the shift to focusing on the real bottom line catches on more broadly, it could slice billions of dollars off the reported profits and official forecasts that underpin the technology sector’s lofty market valuations. Facebook stock trades at about 35 times estimated earnings over the next 12 months. Add in equity compensation expense and that price-to-earnings ratio jumps to 50, according to a Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analysis. Amazon would trade at 122 times projected profit, rather than a multiple of 63. Using GAAP numbers, Alphabet Inc. would trade at 26 times forecast profit, versus 21 times, Bernstein estimates. The change also highlights the struggles of smaller Internet companies like Twitter Inc. and LinkedIn Corp. to generate GAAP earnings. Facebook, Amazon and Alphabet may have high stock valuations, but they are also very profitable by GAAP and non-GAAP measures. Twitter shares trade at about 36 times estimated profit, but including stock-based compensation analysts expect it to have a loss over the next 12 months, Bernstein research shows. “Some companies have been egregious with stock compensation,” Fish said, citing LinkedIn, which has relatively high equity-based pay compared to its revenue and earnings. LinkedIn shares have declined 44 percent this year, while rival social network Facebook is up 13 percent.

• Google, Fiat Chrysler to partner on self-driving minivans: Alphabet Inc's Google unit and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV have agreed to work together to build a fleet of 100 self-driving minivans in the most advanced collaboration to date between Silicon Valley and a traditional carmaker, the companies said Tuesday. The deal marks the first time that Google has worked directly with an automaker "to integrate its self-driving system, including its sensors and software, into a passenger vehicle," the companies said in a statement on Tuesday. Google and Fiat Chrysler engineers will work together to fit Google's autonomous driving technology into the Pacifica minivan. Some engineers for both companies will work together at a facility in Southeast Michigan, where Fiat Chrysler has its major North American engineering center, the companies said. Google said it is not sharing proprietary self-driving vehicle technology with Fiat Chrysler, however, and the vehicles will not be offered for sale to the public. The agreement between Google and Fiat Chrysler comes as rival technology and auto companies are accelerating efforts to master the complex hardware and artificial intelligence systems required to allow vehicles to pilot themselves.

• Match Group revenue beats as Tinder attracts more paid users: Dating website operator Match Group Inc reported better-than-expected quarterly revenue on Tuesday, as its popular dating app Tinder attracted more paying users. The company's shares rose 7.3 percent to $11.98 in after-hours trading. Match Group, which also owns Match.com and OkCupid, gets bulk of its revenue from membership fees and paid features. The company said its average paid-member count jumped 36 percent to 5.1 million in the first quarter ended March 31, also helped by the acquisition of PlentyOfFish. Match Group, majority owned by media mogul Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp, agreed to buy Vancouver-based PlentyOfFish for $575 million in July last year. Tinder surpassed 1 million paid members during the quarter. The Dallas-based company's dating business, its biggest, which includes apps such as Tinder, recorded a 24 percent rise in revenue to $260.4 million. Total revenue rose 21.4 percent to $285.3 million. Revenue from the company's non-dating business, which includes educational websites Princeton Review and Tutor.com, was flat at $24.9 million. Up to Tuesday's close of $11.16, Match Group's shares had fallen 7 percent since the company went public in November.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, April 20

• Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs as PC Demand Slumps: Intel, the world’s largest maker of semiconductors, said on Tuesday that it was laying off 12,000 people, about 11 percent of its work force, as it continues to reel from a long downturn in global demand for personal computers. Intel, the world's largest chipmaker, lowered its revenue forecast for the year. It now expects revenue to rise in mid-single digits, down from its previous forecast of mid- to high-single digits. Intel's shares were down 2.2 percent at $30.90 in extended trading. Net revenue rose to $13.70 billion from $12.78 billion. Non-GAAP net revenue came in at $13.80 billion, compared with analysts' average estimate of $13.83 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Adjusted earnings of 54 cents per share topped Wall Street forecasts of 48 cents. Up to Tuesday's close, Intel's shares had fallen 8.4 percent this year. Yet Intel still gets 60 percent of its revenue from chips supplied to PCs, and its profit margins there are not as good as in data center chips, its other major business. The company’s other businesses have small profits, or else lose money. That means PCs are still core to what Intel does. Most of the layoffs, along with things like consolidating facilities and cut projects, are expected to be inside the PC business. Employees who are affected by the restructuring will be notified in the next 60 days, the company said. The layoffs are the largest since 2006, when the company let go 10,500 employees.

• Verizon set to make Yahoo's bidder short list, as Yahoo reports tepid earnings: Verizon Communications Inc was set on Tuesday to advance to the second stage of bidding for Yahoo Inc's core assets, as the U.S. internet company went through offers to put together a short list, people familiar with the matter said. The field had whittled down ahead of Monday's first-round bid deadline as several companies that were mulling an offer, including Comcast Corp and Time Inc, decided to opt out, the people said. Meanhile, Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale, California, said revenue fell 11 percent to $1.09 billion, and its net loss was $99 million, or 10 cents a share, in contrast to revenue of $1.23 billion and net income of $21 million, or 2 cents a share, in the same quarter a year ago.

• Credit Suisse Says Instagram Is Going to Have a Huge Year: Facebook Inc.'s purchase of Instagram Inc. continues to look smarter and smarter. After buying Instagram for $1 billion in 2012, analysts at Credit Suisse Group AG now expect Facebook will get more than triple that price tag in revenue from the photo sharing app this year alone. "We are now forecasting $572.5 million and [circa] $3.2 billion in revenue contribution from Instagram in [the first quarter of 2016] and 2016, respectively," analysts led by Stephen Ju said in a recent note. Instagram and premium video will be a big driver for mobile and desktop ad revenue, the team writes. "Our projection for consolidated ad revenue of $5.24 billion in [the first quarter] reflects our projection for $573 million and $260 million in contribution from Facebook's Instagram and premium video ad product, respectively."  When Facebook acquired the startup, it had roughly 30 million users. Monthly active users have now ballooned to 400 million as of September 2015, topping that of Twitter Inc. Much of the recent expansion has been outside of the U.S.
 

Daily Tech Snippet: March 30

• Beijing Seeks to Tighten Reins on Websites in China: China’s government said on Monday that it would take steps to more strictly manage websites in the country, its latest push to set boundaries in the wider Internet. A draft law posted by one of China’s technology regulators said that websites in the country would have to register domain names with local service providers and with the authorities. It was not clear whether the rule would apply to all websites or only to those hosted on servers in China. Chinese laws can be haphazardly enforced and are usually vague, and because the new rule is only a draft, analysts said they expected the regulator, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, to specify later to whom the law would apply. If the rule applies to all websites, it will have major implications and will effectively cut China out of the global Internet. By creating a domestic registry for websites, the rule would create a system of censorship in which only websites that have specifically registered with the Chinese government would be reachable from within the country. If the law applies only to sites hosted in China, it would still represent a consolidation of power by Beijing. Forcing registration with Chinese entities is likely to create a new boom in domain-name service registrars. At the moment, Alibaba operates China’s primary domain-name service provider, called Wan Wang. The new rule would also enable the Chinese government to keep closer tabs on the real identities of website operators. It would also help Beijing assemble a registry of important websites if China wants to break away from the global registry that unifies the Internet, Mr. Creemers said. The new rules are the latest in a string of measures taken by the Chinese government under President Xi Jinping to assert control over the Internet. This year, regulators created rules to block foreign companies from publishing online content in China without the government’s consent. Regulators also shut down the social media accounts of the sharp-tongued tycoon Ren Zhiqiang.

• Google Fiber is officially adding phone service for $10 a month: Many people can already buy TV and Internet service from Google Fiber. Now, the company that brought gigabit speeds to Austin and Kansas City is moving deeper into the telecom industry by offering its own bundled telephone service. For $10 a month, Google Fiber customers soon will be able to buy an add-on known as Fiber Phone — a service that, according to a company blog post, appears to mimic much of the functionality of Google Voice. Voicemail on Fiber Phone can be automatically transcribed and sent to your email. You'll get unlimited domestic calling, as well as international calls at Google Voice's rates. And you'll have access to one phone number that can be set up to ring all of your phones — whether landline or mobile. A series of leaked emails in January first uncovered Google Fiber's plans to move into phone service. But now the decision is official: Fiber Phone will roll out gradually across all of the company's existing markets. The company declined to name the initial launch markets, saying those details will come later. The service comes with a little black box that sits beside your home phone. It has both ethernet and phone jacks, and will work with most handsets except for old rotary phones, according to Kelly Mason, a company spokesperson. Google Fiber's effort to draw in phone customers highlights how the company is becoming more like traditional service providers even as many telecom companies are looking to become more like Internet content firms. Even providers of cellphone service have been shifting their focus away from voice and toward the more lucrative provision of mobile data. Reports this week suggest T-Mobile may soon unveil new phone plan options that eliminate voice service entirely to give you a bigger bucket of data. Fiber Phone fits within these trends in that it would help customers add some cloud-based functionality to their home phones. But it's not immediately clear why consumers would pick Fiber Phone over Google Voice. The two services share many of the same features, but Fiber Phone carries a subscription cost and requires an at-home installation that you don't need with Google Voice. In this respect, Google Voice might be considered a "better" service.

• Instagram’s New Algorithm Means the Free Ride May Be Over for Brands: Instagram is testing a new algorithm, which means the company is (or soon will be) choosing which posts users see in their feed and in what order. That could be a good thing for users. It means that, if the algorithm works, you should see the best photos and videos every time you open the app. For brands, though, especially those that rely on the app to reach their customers for free, the algorithm news is less than stellar. Influencers are getting nervous too. That’s because an algorithm gives Instagram control over what you see, but also what you don’t see. The fear among some brands is that the new Instagram algorithm will relegate their posts to the sidelines. What happened with Facebook is this: It originally encouraged brands and businesses to build followings for their Pages, and even offered ad units specifically intended to acquire more “fans.” The idea was that more followers meant more people would see the company’s posts in their feed, so brands paid willingly to acquire them. Then Facebook slowly pulled the rug. Little by little it changed its algorithm until posts from brand Pages were seen by just a fraction of users who followed the Page. In 2012, Facebook announced organic posts only reached 16 percent of a Page’s fans, and encouraged brands to pay to sponsor their posts instead. Brands are bracing for a similar change with Instagram.

• No One Wants to Be ‘the Next Square’ Anymore: Makers of once-prominent credit card readers are retrenching or outright folding after Square’s disappointing IPO. A year ago, being known as the “Square of Canada” was a badge of honor. Payfirma Corp.’s smartphone-compatible credit card readers were in high demand, and local investors supplied the Vancouver startup with $13 million in funding. Like Jack Dorsey, the chief executive officer of Square Inc. (and Twitter Inc.), Payfirma CEO Michael Gokturk said he was aiming for “hypergrowth.” Gokturk doubled his staff to 80, including a chief operating officer formerly of Intuit Inc., and started talking about an initial public offering. But by November, being the “Square of” anywhere suddenly wasn’t such a hot title. That month, Square sold shares in an IPO that valued the company at about $2.9 billion, less than half its private valuation from a year earlier. In the runup to the IPO, analysts began questioning whether the card-reader maker should really be priced like a high-flying tech company. Its stock price is hovering around $13, right where it was after its first day of trading. “Now that they started going through the rigors of a public market, you can see that their market is actually quite limited,” said Gil Luria, an analyst at Wedbush Securities. “It’s going to be much harder going forward for companies that try to emulate their model to raise capital.” 

• Snapchat Adds Voice, Video Calling to Mobile Messaging App:  Snapchat, operator of a popular social-messaging app, released an update that steps up competition with Facebook Inc., owner of rival mobile communication services Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. Los Angeles-based Snapchat bolstered its chat function with multimedia features including voice and video calling and digital stickers. Called Chat 2.0, the feature emulates "face-to-face communication," while making it easier to switch between video chatting, texting and calling, Snapchat said Tuesday in a blog post. WhatsApp introduced voice calls last year, but users are still waiting for video calling. Facebook’s Messenger communications app added this video capability in April. Last week, Fortune reported Snapchat acquired Bitstrips, a Toronto-based maker of personalized avatars or "bitmojis." Snapchat declined to comment on the acquisition, which Fortune said was worth about $100 million. The deal suggests Snapchat will make its stickers more customizable in the future.

• Spotify Expected to Sign $1 Billion Financing Deal: Spotify is about to close on a $1 billion deal that would double the amount of financing the music-streaming company has raised since its founding a decade ago, people briefed on the matter said Tuesday. The money comes in the form of convertible debt, which allows Spotify’s investors to change their securities into equity at a future date, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deal was not yet public. By using convertible debt, Spotify obtains the funds, without needing to change its valuation. The terms of the debt, however, may put pressure on the company to go public sooner. The company had an equity value of $8.4 billion last year. Funds associated with the private equity firm TPG as well as the investment firm Dragoneer put in $750 million of the $1 billion, with the rest coming from other institutional investors, the people said. The transaction, which was placed by Goldman Sachs, is expected to close on Friday, they said. The terms give the investors the ability to convert to equity at a discount to an initial public offering price, two of the people briefed on the matter said. The discount increases if Spotify waits longer than a year to do so, they said. The coupon payment on the debt would also continue to rise over time, the people said. The deal is similar to the one that Goldman Sachs arranged for Uber in January 2015. The ride-hailing company raised $1.6 billion in convertible debt. Should the company not go public within a certain time, the interest rate on those securities would climb. TPG Special Situations Partners, an $18 billion fund within TPG that does transactions other than leveraged buyouts, participated in the deal, as did TPG Growth, which has invested in other start-ups like Uber and Airbnb. Spotify may use the funds for acquisitions, investments and international expansion, the people said.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, March 16

• Sony PlayStation VR to launch globally in October, cost $399: Sony Corp announced on Tuesday that its virtual reality headset for PlayStation will launch globally in October for $399, a move that undercuts its biggest competitor by hundreds of dollars. Andrew House, head of Sony's gaming division, made the announcement during a press event at the Video Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, where virtual reality gaming counterpart Oculus Rift announced its headset a day earlier. The headset, a visor-style frame with a 5.7 inch (14.5 centimeters) screen, includes 360 degree head tracking, a 100 degree field of vision and latency of 18 milliseconds between the time a user's head moves and the time they see the correct image. At $399,the package is notably less than the $599 price announced Monday by Facebook-owned virtual reality company Oculus Rift. Oculus will also sell bundles that include an Oculus Ready PC and a Rift for preorder in February starting at $1,499. The company said more than 230 developers are building content for the PlayStation VR device and 50 games are expected to be ready by the launch date. Users can download the Playroom VR at the PlayStation store and play six free games. The company has also teamed up with development company EA Sports and Lucasfilm for a Star Wars Battlefront game that will be released as a PlayStation VR exclusive.

• Uber Could Give Us a Lesson in Productivity: In Los Angeles, traditional taxi drivers have a passenger in the car for 40.7 percent of the miles they drive. By contrast, Uber drivers have a passenger in the car for 64.2 percent of their miles, or a 58 percent higher capacity utilization rate. In Seattle, the other city surveyed with mileage data, Uber drivers were 41 percent more productive. When measured by time, Uber drivers in Boston, San Francisco and New York on average have a passenger in their car about half the time their smartphone app is turned on. That compares to a range of 32 percent of the shift for taxi drivers in Boston to 49.5 percent for cabbies in New York. The service's use of internet-based mobile technology to connect passengers and drivers certainly contributes to its efficiency, according to the report. It makes sense: tapping your smartphone screen a few minutes before you need a ride is often easier than waiting on a street corner and hoping an empty cab drives past. Meanwhile Uber allows drivers to set their own shifts, and when combined with their use of so-called surge pricing that increases fares during times of increased ridership, supply and demand are more smoothly matched. Uber drivers are also exempt from regulations that prevent taxi drivers who drop off a passenger in a jurisdiction outside the one that granted their occupational license from picking up another customer in the same location. Given their 38 percent advantage, Uber drivers could charge 28 percent less than traditional taxis and still earn the same amount per hour under certain assumptions, including ignoring fixed costs, according to Cramer and Krueger. That may be one reason investors last year valued the company at $62.5 billion, more than Ford Motor Co.,  General Motors Co., and 80 percent of companies in the S&P 500.

• Instagram is switching its feed from chronological to best posts first: The average Instagram user misses 70 percent of what’s in their feed, including great photos with tons of Likes and posts by their best friends. So today Instagram announced it will start rearranging the order of posts in its feed. Rather than strictly reverse chronological, Instagram will order posts “based on the likelihood you’ll be interested in the content, your relationship with the person posting and the timeliness of the post.” The testing will start out slowly; at least at first “all the posts will still be there, just in a different order.” But eventually, low-quality posts might be filtered out entirely. The changes mean if you don’t check your feed until the next morning but a friend whose photos you usually Like posted something awesome the night before, it could appear at the top of your feed even if it is hours old. This is essentially how Facebook’s feed works, and how Twitter recently reconfigured its feed to work. On the one hand, the relevancy-optimized Instagram feed will make sure you don’t miss great content even if you don’t neurotically check it all the time. You’ll be able to follow more accounts without worrying about them drowning out your favorites. And it will be easier to keep up with international friends who might normally post while you’re asleep. At the same time, remixing the feed will make Instagram less useful as a real-time content feed because the most recent posts won’t necessarily be at the top. Users will have to worry about making their posts good enough to be chosen by the algorithm or their posts could be de-prioritized. And brands might lose the reach of a previously reliable marketing channel, the same way they did with Facebook Pages. Filtered feeds tend to score more attention from users, as there are few boring posts that push them to close the app and do something else. And at this point, Instagram is so ingrained in people’s lives that they’re unlikely to ditch it over this change. But with Instagram and Twitter both moving to algorithmically sorted feeds, getting seen on social media will become more of a competition than ever.

• LinkedIn’s Lynda.com Videos Are Now Free on Some Commercial Flights: Here’s a tip for helping your video content stand out online: Make sure people see it when they don’t have many other options. That’s exactly what LinkedIn is doing to promote Lynda.com, the library of online classes it bought last year for a whopping $1.5 billion. LinkedIn announced Tuesday that it’s partnering with Virgin America to offer those classes for free to in-flight passengers. Beginning in April, a handful of classes will be free on all Virgin flights, and the entire Lynda.com library will be free for flights with higher quality Wi-Fi technology. No money is changing hands as part of the partnership, according to a LinkedIn spokesperson, but the potential benefits to LinkedIn are simple enough to understand. You’ll still need a Lynda.com account to watch videos, so it may help LinkedIn sign up more users. Plus, the competition for eyeballs on an airplane is usually pretty weak. The chance to learn a new skill or brush up on stress management may seem more appealing than random episodes of “Deadliest Catch” or “Cupcake Wars,” especially to business travelers. It’s basically a free opportunity to introduce its video library to potential new users — in the hope they will like the videos enough to pay for them sometime later down the road. If not, it still doesn’t cost LinkedIn anything in the process. It has offered free Lynda.com courses before. But this move does show how serious the company is about generating attention for Lynda.com. It paid a lot of money for the online classroom, and now it’s working to make it all back.

• Uber India Is Working on Offering Ride-Booking on Snapdeal: Uber’s India arm is in talks to partner with Indian e-commerce platform Snapdeal, multiple sources told Re/code. If a deal is reached, Snapdeal shoppers in India would be able to hail an Uber from within the newest iteration of Snapdeal’s app, these people said. As of March 9, Snapdeal had only released its new app to a select group of its customers, but indicated in a company blog post it would soon roll out to a larger group of users. The newest version of the Snapdeal app already includes integrations with travel booking service Cleartrip, food-delivery service Zomato and bus-booking service Redbus. As Snapdeal CEO Kunal Bahl told Re/code last April, the company believes it can differentiate from e-commerce competitors Flipkart and Amazon by broadening its focus beyond selling physical retail products. Last year, Snapdeal acquired FreeCharge, a recharge service for prepaid phones, and RupeePower, a comparison site for credit cards and loans. “What’s the delta between retail and consumption?” Bahl asked rhetorically. “It’s things like financial services, education, utilities, health care. But today, all everyone is doing is products.”

• India Opens Market for Solar Battery Makers Such as Tesla: India plans for the first time to include energy storage as a requirement when a solar project is tendered this month, opening what could become a significant new market to battery makers such as Tesla Motors Inc., Samsung SDI Co. and Panasonic Corp. The state-owned Solar Energy Corp. of India, which is responsible for implementing the government’s green targets, will ask bidders to include a storage component in 100 megawatts of the 750 megawatts of solar capacity tendered in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, Managing Director Ashvini Kumar said in an interview. The intention of the pilot program is to reduce fluctuations in electricity supply in order to make possible the transfer of clean energy between states. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has set a goal of 175 gigawatts of clean energy by 2022. The Andhra Pradesh project include 15 minutes of storage each for two solar installations. Warehousing power is considered a crucial component of India’s green targets. The requirement, if more broadly adopted, has the potential to invigorate the storage market because of India’s outsized ambitions for the industry. It would give manufacturers the scale they need to help bring down costs of battery storage that are holding back wider adoption.

Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, November 3

• Snapchat’s new Terms of Service freaked people out because no one reads them: Snapchat updated its Terms of Service last week, and the Internet freaked out a little bit. Some users interpreted changes to mean the company could now hang on to users' private messages, broadcast them publicly and sell them to third parties. The pushback grew so loud that Snapchat took to its blog Sunday to explain itself, saying that private Snaps and Chats are still automatically deleted from its servers once viewed or expired. But, Snapchat said, its new Terms of Service granted the company "broad license" to user content. The company said those clauses are meant to apply to images and videos users share publicly for its "Live Stories" feature, which may be syndicated across other platforms. The new policy was also expanded to account for its Replay feature, which charges users who want to rewatch videos more than once, the blog post said.

• Instagram is jumping into the curation business, too: Over the weekend, Instagram took a page from the playbook of social media competitors and made a curated stream, based around Halloween videos, that pulled together clips submitted by its users. As Twitter and Snapchat have done before it, Instagram used the stream to highlight unique content on its network that users may not catch if they were just scrolling through their own apps. The trend toward curation makes quite a bit of sense. Sure, part of the fun of being on a real-time social network is being able to jump into the stream at any time and get plugged in to whatever's happening at that moment. But that can be overwhelming for new users, and even more experienced ones who want to zero in on a particular topic. On days such as Halloween — where everyone is posting similar videos for comparison — it seems like a smart thing to do to briefly bring the whole network together.

• Dell eyes $10 billion asset sales ahead of EMC merger: Dell Inc is preparing to sell around $10 billion in non-core assets, including software and services, to reduce the heavy debt load it will be taking on to buy EMC Corp (EMC.N), according to people familiar with the matter. Dell, which will assume $49.5 billion of debt once the merger with EMC is completed, has communicated the plan to credit rating agencies in recent days, the people said on Monday. Assets Dell could sell include Quest Software, which helps with information technology (IT) management; SonicWall, an e-mail encryption and data security provider; back-up solutions unit AppAssure; as well as IT services provider Perot Systems, the people said. The divestitures will not include Dell's hardware assets such as servers, which are crucial in its quest to dominate the large enterprise market through its merger with EMC, as well as compete more effectively with the likes of Cisco Systems Inc (CSCO.O) and International Business Machines Corp (IBM.N), the people added.

• Fitbit Crushes Expectations In Q3, But A Follow-On Equity Offering Drags Its Shares Down: Following the bell, Fitbit announced its third-quarter financial performance, including revenue of $409.3 million, and earnings per share using normal accounting methods of $0.19. The company’s adjusted profit totaled $0.24 per share. The results are notably strong. Investors had expected the company to report a far-slimmer $0.10 adjusted per-share profit off of revenue of just $350.97. Shares in the company, however, are sharply lower in after-hours trading, off nearly 9 percent as of the time of writing. What is going on? Despite a smashing quarter, Fitbit’s equity is getting whacked by what, so far as TechCrunch can tell at current tip, is planned liquidity for current shareholders, a newly announced follow-on offering, and legal friction. Starting with the legal point, Jawbone and Fitbit have a legal back and forth going, with the latest news being a counterclaim filed by the former. Fitbit has a pending patent infringement case on the books, but Jawbone has denied all allegations…using the fun word “frivolous.”

• Google Says Chromebooks and Chrome Operating Systems Aren’t Going Away: Rumors of the demise of the Chrome operating system have not just been exaggerated but are simply untrue, Google said on Monday in a rare public response to an earlier report. A report on Thursday in the Wall Street Journal claimed Google is preparing to merge its Chrome OS, which powers the Web-centric Chromebook laptops, with its mobile OS Android. After the story landed, Hiroshi Lockheimer, Google’s SVP who runs both Android and Chrome, pushed back on it, tweeting that the company is “very committed” to the desktop operating system.

Daily Tech Snippet: Monday, November 2

• Meg Whitman Seeks Reinvention for HP as It Prepares for Split: When HP splits in two on Sunday after a year of planning, what is left will bear little resemblance to the engineering-driven company founded more than 75 years ago in a garage not far from Stanford University. On one side will be HP Inc., which will largely consist of personal computers and printers. On the other, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, or HPE, which will sell the computer servers, data storage, networking, software and consulting services that run a modern company. Each company is expected to have annual revenue of about $50 billion and will be among America’s 500 largest public companies. Neither will have the standing as one of the most innovative operations in the world that the old HP enjoyed for decades.

• With Instagram’s Boomerang, making gifs is easier than ever: It’s a gif world, and we’re just living in it. Those short, looping (often loopy) animated files pop up just about everywhere on the Web and in social media. Now, it’s easier than ever to make them yourself. Instagram’s new app, Boomerang, makes it very easy to make your own 1-second gifs for sharing on Instagram, Facebook and your phone’s camera roll. The process couldn’t be simpler. Just find something moving that you want to shoot, hit the capture button and keep as still as you can for a second or so. You can shoot from either rear-facing or front-facing camera. To work, the app will need permission to access those cameras, as well as your phone’s storage. Free, for iOS and Android.

• Uber Germany retreats to Berlin, Munich: Taxi-hailing service Uber Technologies is making a retreat in Germany to the cities of Berlin and Munich as it grapples with a ban from using unlicensed cab drivers. Uber will for now suspend services in Hamburg, Frankfurt and Duesseldorf, it said in a statement on Friday, citing a difficult regulatory environment. A German court in March banned Uber from running services using unlicensed cab drivers and set stiff fines for any violations of local transport laws by the pioneering online taxi firm. The company in Germany has since limited itself to drivers that hold a passenger transport license, among other legal requirements, through its UberX and UberBlack smartphone apps, but it has run into a shortage of suppliers of ride services.

• Zomato CEO warns may not meet revenue goal, pulls up sales team: Zomato, the restaurant listing and services company which is valued around $1 billion, might fail to meet its sales target for the current financial year, according to an email co-founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal sent to the staff on Friday. In a long mail that Goyal first sent to the company’s sales team and later forwarded to all employees, he talked about the underperformance of the sales team and how it might result in the company missing its revenue targets. “We are far behind the numbers that we promised our investors for this financial year (year ending March 2016) – our investors have said that so far, we have always delivered what we have promised. We are close to not living up to that for the first time in the last 5 years,” Goyal said in the email. The email came a fortnight after the company sacked about 300 employees globally, or 10 per cent of its total workforce. Zomato has also been facing difficulties in retaining top-level staff as a number of senior executives have left the company after short stints.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, September 23

• The Risk of a Billion-Dollar Valuation in Silicon Valley: Deep inside a Silicon Valley unicorn lurks a time bomb. It is a peculiarity of venture capital financing that the engine that pumps money into a promising start-up can later cause the same start-up to self-destruct. With all the hoopla and debate over sky-high valuations of technology start-ups, it is worth keeping in mind that the switch that helps to drive those surging valuations can also be turned off. The “bomb,” so to speak, is known as a liquidation preference. In every financing round, the money that a venture capital firm invests is not given freely. The firm and the start-up will negotiate terms of protection. Negotiable terms include voting rights, seats on the start-up’s board and assurances that a future fund-raising won’t unduly dilute the venture capital firms’ stake. The liquidation preference is among the most important of these protections. This feature provides that the venture capital firm’s investment will be repaid before the founders and employees are rewarded. If the firm has particular leverage, it can negotiate an even more protective form, known as the senior liquidation preference, which provides that the firm will be paid not only before the common stockholders but also before anyone else who bought preferred stock in earlier rounds. These provisions apply in a sale but not in an initial public offering of stock. The idea is to ensure that even if the investment does not perform well, the venture investor will still get back its initial money. According to a recent survey by the law firm Fenwick & West of 37 unicorns — private companies with valuations of $1 billion or more — every investment had a liquidation preference. Higher valuations create higher expectations, and failure to meet them can set off a downward spiral and a forced sale. In that event, the venture capitalists are paid first, leaving “unicorpses” in their wake and the founders with nothing. And don’t expect I.P.O.s to save these companies. Some unicorns, like Honest Company, have terms that require minimum I.P.O. prices for the V.C. investors that they just won’t be able to meet anytime soon. As these valuations go up and down, remember that reaching a $1 billion valuation is not all good news for a start-up. Instead, it can simply mean that the newly foaled unicorn has made a Faustian bargain.

• Instagram Hits 400 Million Monthly Users, Mostly Outside U.S.  Instagram has passed 400 million monthly active users, mostly by adding people in countries outside the U.S. That compares with Twitter Inc.’s 316 million and Pinterest Inc.’s 100 million. Instagram’s number increased from the 300 million mark reached nine months ago, according to the company. Facebook has 1.49 billion monthly active users. More than 75 percent of Instagram’s users live outside the U.S., with most of the new participants coming from Brazil, Japan and Indonesia, the company said.  As it expands, the photo-sharing application has started to ramp up its advertising business, taking advantage of Facebook’s network of tools and marketers to increase its offerings and global reach. At the beginning of this month, Instagram advertised in eight countries. By the end, they’ll be making money in more than 200, the company has said.

• The tech behind how Volkswagen tricked emissions tests: Volkswagen isn’t hiding from its emissions cheating scandal, which the company now says affects some 11 million diesel cars worldwide. “Let’s be clear about this: Our company was dishonest with the EPA and the California Air Resources Board and with all of you,” Volkswagen U.S. chief Michael Horn said Monday night. “In my German words, we have totally screwed up.” Thanks for finally coming clean, VW. But how exactly did the technology behind Volkswagen’s so-called defeat device actually work? Regulators allege that Volkswagen installed software into its cars that allowed the autos to circumvent EPA tests. But that still doesn’t explain how VW vehicles were able to determine when they were being subjected to an emissions test in the first place. To understand more about how Volkswagen cheated, we have to know a bit about the EPA’s testing process. When carmakers test their vehicles against EPA standards, they place a car on rollers and then perform a series of specific maneuvers prescribed by federal regulations. Among the most common tests for passenger cars is the Urban Dynamometer Driving Schedule (UDDS), which simulates 7.5 miles of urban driving. In the first 505 seconds of the test, the driver pushes the car to highway-level speeds. The second phase of the test looks more like what you’d see in stop-and-go city traffic. In all these tests, the driver has to stay within two miles per hour of the required speed at any given moment. Along the way, the testers collect emissions data. There's a dizzying array of other tests that cars sometimes face. There’s a test to simulate aggressive driving, which tops out at some 80 miles an hour, and a test that simulates urban driving on a hot summer day, with the air conditioning on full blast. There’s a cold-start test, where you begin the test with everything in the car turned off. There’s a hot-start test. There’s something called a New York City cycle, which simulates driving in a busy downtown area where you never get above 30 mph. And then there’s the Federal Test Procedure, a 30-minute test that mixes various elements of the other tests. In the end, the detailed requirements for each test gave Volkswagen the advance knowledge it needed to teach its cars when to behave more cleanly. By measuring how long the engine was running, the vehicle’s speeds, and even seemingly esoteric factors, such as the position of the steering wheel and barometric pressure, Volkswagen vehicles could understand they were being tested and so adjusted their engine performance to pass the tests, according to the EPA. Using a special engine setting for vehicle tests isn’t all that unusual, according to Consumer Reports. Most new vehicles do something similar because otherwise vehicles might interpret some of the testing procedures, like traction issues from being on rollers, as dangerous. But the problem here is that the EPA says the carmaker used its testing mode in an inappropriate attempt to beat the system.

• Quirky, an Invention Start-Up, Files for Bankruptcy:  Quirky, an ambitious crowdsourced invention start-up, which raised $185 million from investors that included General Electric and leading venture capital firms, filed for bankruptcy on Tuesday. The failure of the company, based in New York, will surely raise questions about how far the crowd-based model of innovation and product development, made possible by the Internet, can go. Other companies are using crowdsourcing to make physical goods, from Threadless for T-shirt designs to Local Motors for automobiles. None, though, were doing it as broadly and across as wide a range of products as Quirky. The company said on Tuesday that it was seeking protection from its creditors while it arranged a sale of “substantially all its assets.” Quirky said that it already had an initial bid of $15 million for its Wink subsidiary, which was created last year. Wink makes software so that an array of Internet-connected home devices, as varied as thermostats and door locks, can be controlled from a smartphone app. Quirky had some success, with revenue rising sharply last year to about $100 million. But the scale of its ambitions — managing a sprawling community of inventors, transforming raw ideas into product designs, and orchestrating manufacturing and distribution — proved daunting and too costly.

• The Plot Twist: E-Book Sales Slip and Print Is Far From Dead: Five years ago, the book world was seized by collective panic over the uncertain future of print. As readers migrated to new digital devices, e-book sales soared, up 1,260 percent between 2008 and 2010, alarming booksellers that watched consumers use their stores to find titles they would later buy online. Print sales dwindled, bookstores struggled to stay open, and publishers and authors feared that cheaper e-books would cannibalize their business. Then in 2011, the industry’s fears were realized when Borders declared bankruptcy. Now, there are signs that some e-book adopters are returning to print, or becoming hybrid readers, who juggle devices and paper. E-book sales fell by 10 percent in the first five months of this year, according to the Association of American Publishers, which collects data from nearly 1,200 publishers. Digital books accounted last year for around 20 percent of the market, roughly the same as they did a few years ago. E-books’ declining popularity may signal that publishing, while not immune to technological upheaval, will weather the tidal wave of digital technology better than other forms of media, like music and television. E-book subscription services, modeled on companies like Netflix and Pandora, have struggled to convert book lovers into digital binge readers, and some have shut down. Sales of dedicated e-reading devices have plunged as consumers migrated to tablets and smartphones. And according to some surveys, young readers who are digital natives still prefer reading on paper. The surprising resilience of print has provided a lift to many booksellers. Independent bookstores, which were battered by the recession and competition from Amazon, are showing strong signs of resurgence. The American Booksellers Association counted 1,712 member stores in 2,227 locations in 2015, up from 1,410 in 1,660 locations five years ago.

• Payments Businesses Are Damn Hard: The Cover App Edition: Cover, a young payments app, is accepted in 350 restaurants in four cities. It has processed more than $10 million in transactions since the beginning of the year. But it will record, at most, just $150,000 in revenue in 2015 after passing on a big cut of its fees to other financial institutions, its founder says. So go the economics of a young payments business. And so ends Cover’s life as a stand-alone company. Founder Mark Egerman said today that his startup has sold to European competitor Velocity in a small deal, after passing on taking on more venture capital under less-than-great terms. “Payments is really a hard business,” Egerman said flatly. Cover allows diners to pay for a meal by pressing a few buttons in a smartphone app at partnering restaurants instead of handing over a credit card or cash. The company generates revenue by charging restaurants 3 percent of the price of each meal. But, like many payment processing businesses, Cover passes along about two-thirds of that fee to banks and other financial institutions behind the scenes. So on a $100 meal, Cover’s cut is $3, but it only keeps $1 for itself. Then it has to pay for all of its expenses. If that doesn’t sound sustainable for a small, venture-backed company, that’s because it’s not. (Cover has raised about $7 million.) Cover’s fate underscores how hard it is to build sustainable payment-processing businesses without enormous transaction volume, and why even much bigger payments startups such as Square and Stripe are diversifying their product offerings to beef up profit margins and create new e-commerce markets. Square processes more than $30 billion in brick-and-mortar transactions each year, charging merchants a 2.75 percent fee for each transaction. Like Cover, it passes on about two-thirds of that fee to other financial players in the payments ecosystem, including banks and credit card companies. To supplement this business as it readies for an IPO and to live up to its $6 billion valuation, the company has unveiled a host of products to create new revenue streams with better profit margins. Its cash-advance business, Square Capital, was doling out $1 million a day as of August. It is also selling software products to merchants through monthly subscriptions — another avenue to move past the minor margins of the payments business. Stripe, the online payments company, has said it processes billions of dollars in payments, but it already has a $5 billion valuation. Its one and only revenue source is still the 2.9 percent cut it takes of most transactions, plus a flat 30-cent fee. It, too, is looking for new areas of growth from new types of commerce.

• Groupon to Cut About 1,100 Jobs Worldwide:  Groupon, operator of a daily deals website, said it would cut about 1,100 jobs globally as it restructures outside North America. Groupon is shutting operations in Morocco, Panama, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Taiwan, Thailand and Uruguay after exiting Greece and Turkey, the company said in a separate blog post on Tuesday. Groupon, which had about 11,800 employees globally at the end of December, said that it expected to complete the job cuts, mainly in sales and customer service, by September 2016. A strong dollar has hurt companies with a large presence in markets outside the United States. Markets outside North America accounted for about 43 percent of Groupon’s revenue in 2014. The company said in April it would sell a 46 percent stake in its South Korean business as part of its turnaround efforts. “I think it’s actually a good thing for investors to hear that they’re taking some more cuts out of their international operations,” Topeka Capital Markets analyst Blake Harper said. Groupon, once the leader in the online coupons market, has also been struggling to boost sales as competitive deals on online marketplaces operated by Amazon and eBay make its coupons less attractive to shoppers. The company has started selling products on its website. Groupon said it expected to incur pretax charges of up to $35 million, including $22 million-$24 million in the third quarter, related to the job cuts.

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday August 28

Uber China closes $1 billion fundraising round at $7 billion valuation: sources: Uber’s China arm has closed its $1 billion fundraising round early, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, with investors still hopeful for the U.S.-based ride service despite strong domestic competition in the car-hailing market. The deal was oversubscribed, said the second source directly familiar with the fundraising. According to a fundraising document seen by Reuters last week, this round values Uber China at $7 billion, with the unit planning to list on the mainland by 2020.

One Billion People Log In to Facebook for First Time: For the first time, a billion people used Facebook in a single day on Monday. Facebook’s chief, Mark Zuckerberg, observed the occasion with a post on his Facebook page, saying that one out of seven people on Earth logged in to the social network to connect with their friends and family. The one billion figure is different from the daily user numbers Facebook discloses each quarter when it reports its financial results. Those are the average number of daily users, counted over a 30-day period. Facebook had 968 million daily active users in June. Most people on Facebook live outside the United States and Canada.

YouTube gets super serious about gaming videos: Enter player two: YouTube stepped into the world of game-streaming Wednesday with the official launch of YouTube Gaming -- its answer to Amazon's popular gaming site, Twitch. The new section of YouTube allows gaming companies and everyday gamers to share live or recorded videos about the games of the moment. It also gives YouTube an official home for video game content as the business of watching other people play video games continues to gain popularity. Google first announced it would launch YouTube Gaming early this summer, ahead of the industry's big Electronic Entertainment Expo trade show, known more widely as E3. The debut comes a year after Google lost a bidding war with Amazon to buy Twitch, the Web's current leader in video game streaming. Amazon bought Twitch last August for nearly $1 billion dollars. Twitch is Google's main competition here. But YouTube isn't starting from scratch: it already has a huge amount of gaming content across its site. The company boasts "billions" of views across its site and says that time its users spend with gaming videos is up 75 percent in the past year. ZEFR, a technology firm that crunches YouTube data, estimates that videos of the walkthrough genre of what is known as "Let's Play" has garnered 40 billion views in the lifetime of YouTube.

Shazura: A More Efficient Way to Search Images: While most image-search software finds photos using keywords or phrases, Shazura’s binary system behaves more like the human brain, visually matching images that look the same with greater speed and efficiency. Pérez de la Coba, an electrical engineer by training, began coding Shazura in 2011 out of frustration. She’d snapped a photo of a pair of shoes she wanted but had trouble finding them online with existing image-comparison services such as Google’s. Upload a file, outline what you want to search for, and Shazura’s algorithm converts the image to a lengthy “numeric signature” containing extensive descriptive information. The number for a willow, say, is distinct from that for a cypress, or a green bag from a blue one. By cutting out the intermediary translation steps, Shazura sifts through a customer’s image database more quickly and accurately and uses less computing power than traditional search engines. Without having to rely on keyword tags or extensive if-then instructions, Shazura can make large-scale image searches much easier for government agencies, advertisers, or social networks, says Pérez de la Coba. Shazura has raised $1.2 million from investors and so far the 10-employee company has licensed its technology to clothiers El Corte Inglés and RichRelevance.

Facebook's Instagram adds new photo sizes to keep users, attract ads: Instagram has added new layout options in addition to its signature square for pictures and videos in a bid to attract more advertisers and to stop users defecting to more flexible services such as Snapchat. The move is the first major alteration to the photo-sharing, social media service since Facebook Inc bought it for $1 billion in 2012, and addresses the wishes of many of its 300 million users, who have been constrained by the square format. One in five photos and videos posted on the service do not fit the square format, Instagram said in a blog post. "Friends get cut out of group shots, the subject of your video feels cramped and you can’t capture the Golden Gate Bridge from end to end," it said. From Thursday, Instagram's web-based service and its mobile apps running on Google Inc's Android system and Apple Inc's iOS will allow portrait and landscape formats, giving both users and paying advertisers more options. The move should help Instagram in its battle with newer rivals such as Snapchat for users in the fast-moving messaging and media-sharing market. At the same time, it should attract more advertising revenue for Instagram, which said in June it would open its platform to all advertisers by the end of the year, rather than just to select brands. Instagram is expected to generate nearly $600 million in advertising revenue by the end of this year and $2.8 billion in 2017, according to projections from research firm eMarketer.

Apple is closing in on Fitbit: Apple, which launched the Apple Watch in June, is within striking distance of leader Fitbit Inc in the wearable devices market, market research firm IDC said. Apple shipped 3.6 million Apple Watches in the second quarter of 2015, just behind Fitbit's 4.4 million wearable fitness and health trackers, IDC said. The Apple Watch, which sports many health-related features and apps, is seen as the biggest rival to Fitbit's trackers. Shipments of wearable devices more than tripled to 18.1 million units in the second quarter, IDC said. "It's worth noting that Fitbit only sells basic wearables - a category that is expected to lose share over the next few years, leaving Apple poised to become the next market leader for all wearables," the IDC report said. Fitbit Inc's stock market listing in June got a rousing response from investors, with shares jumping as much as 60 percent. They closed at $38.40 on Wednesday, nearly double their IPO price.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, June 24

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• Gloves Off in China as Banks, Alibaba Invade Each Other’s Turf: This week, Alibaba is launching MYbank, an online lender that will tap into Chinese savers’ record $7.8 trillion of deposits and a banking revenue stream that’s forecast to double by 2020. Banks have been striking back by pushing into the business Ma pioneered in China, online malls. The moves are blurring the lines between banking and e-commerce as China’s government continues encouraging competition in the finance industry and as Chinese increasingly use computers and mobile phones to bank and shop. “China’s banks have woken up and realized that the challenge from Alibaba’s entry into banking is for real,” said David He, a Hong Kong-based partner and managing director at Boston Consulting Group Inc. “For them, doing e-commerce is a defense as well as a counterattack.” Banking giant ICBC, which as the world’s most profitable company dwarfs Alibaba’s net income by more than 10 times, set up a platform allowing retailers to sell the bank’s customers wine, shampoo, appliances and more. China Construction Bank, Agricultural Bank of China and others are also getting into the action. ICBC’s site, called Easy to Buy, is forecasting sales of 300 billion yuan this year, after tallying 130 billion yuan so far since January. By comparison at Alibaba, its Tmall logged 763 billion yuan in sales last year. JD.com ranked second at 260 billion yuan.


• Google launches free streaming service ahead of Apple Music debut: Google launched a free version of its music streaming service on Tuesday, as it sought to upstage the debut of Apple's rival service next week. Google Play Music has offered a $9.99 per month subscription service for two years but Tuesday's launch is the first free version of the streaming service. It is available online and will be available on Android and iOS by the end of the week, Elias Roman, Google product manager, said. Apple said earlier this month it would launch a music streaming service on June 30 for $9.99 per month along with a $14.99 per month family plan, with a free three-month trial. As with other streaming services, such as Spotify and Rhapsody, Google Play Music curates playlists. Users can tailor playlists based on genre, artist or even activity, such as hosting a pool party or "having fun at work. Unlike Google's subscription music service, the free service will carry ads, be unavailable offline and exclude certain songs.


• Instagram Overhauls Search Feature to Surface More Trending News: Instagram unveiled a massive overhaul to its search feature on Tuesday in an effort to bring users into the app more often, particularly during breaking news events. The new feature lets users search for images by location and includes a section for trending places and hashtags, none of which was available before. The trending places feature will surface both local and national trends so topics will differ based on your location. Instagram is also getting into the curation game that has become popular with other social networks like Snapchat and Twitter over the past few months. Instagram will feature two themed, rotating categories at a time with titles like “Extreme Athletes” or “Towering Rocks.” The images in these feeds will be selected based on a mix of computer algorithm and human curation by the company’s community team. Instagram is often lauded for its simplicity. But in the case of Instagram’s old search feature, simplicity may have actually been holding the app back. The old version of the app allowed for hashtag and people searches, but required different tabs for each. The new search feature will return hashtags, people and locations all from the same search bar in addition to the new trending sections. A useful search tab should benefit Instagram in multiple ways. For starters, it’ll help people find more content they want to see and make the app more useful in the process. More importantly may be the trending places and hashtags feature. Systrom says that Instagram can be a place for news, where people go to learn about and follow along with the day’s important trending topics.


• Report suggests millions of Uber rides in China are fakes reported by drivers in order to collect Uber’s high driver subsidies.: A new report on Chinese tech site Tencent Tech suggests that millions of Uber’s booked rides in the country are fakes – fraudulent fares reported by drivers in order to collect Uber’s high driver subsidies. Faking fares – which some drivers refer to as “acupuncture” – works like this: first, you buy an Uber driver account. There are plenty available for sale on sites like Taobao, and many even come with helpful “how to fake rides” guides. Once you’ve got your account, you partner up with a passenger using the consumer Uber app. With location services turned off, the passenger submits a fare from point A to point B. You drive the fare with no passenger, return the money paid by the passenger, and then split the driver subsidies Uber will pay you – which may be several times the price of the fare itself. This “acupuncture” phenomenon it doesn’t only affect Uber. But drivers told Tencent Tech that because Uber’s subsidies are the highest, virtually all of the faking right now is taking place on Uber’s platform because it is the most profitable. Uber reportedly does have the technological capability to shut down fake rides entirely, but is concerned that doing so would slow its genuine organic growth because being overly strict could result in false positives, banning real drivers and passengers who aren’t cheating the system.


• Qualcomm in Venture With Chinese Chip Maker: China’s largest maker of chips has a new plan to help it close a wide gap with rivals, and the company has found some unlikely partners to help. The company, the Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, also known as S.M.I.C., said on Tuesday that it would form a new company with a leading Belgian microelectronics research center and Qualcomm, the American chip giant, to help it develop and produce new generations of advanced semiconductors that work as the brains of numerous electronics products, like smartphones and servers. Four months ago, China imposed a $975 million fine on Qualcomm, saying it violated anti-monopoly law, and forced it to reduce sharply the licensing fees it charges Chinese smartphone makers for its communications chips. This really is Qualcomm playing nice with the Chinese government,” said Mark Hung, a semiconductor analyst with Gartner. Chinese companies like SMIC. have greatly lagged behind rivals like Samsung Electronics and Intel, partly because of export restrictions on the sophisticated tools and machines required to produce the most advanced chips. In 2013, China imported $232 billion worth of semiconductor materials, more than it spent on petroleum. To close the gap, Beijing has pledged a huge amount of resources. “The Chinese government has been very persistent and insistent in their policies. They want local chip manufacturing there, and this is another leak in the dike. It’s another part of the steady progress on their side.”

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, June 3

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• Instagram to Open Its Photo Feed to Ads: Instagram is cranking up its money machine, and that means a lot more ads in your photo feed. Facebook, which bought Instagram in 2012, has kept the mobile photo-sharing service mostly free of advertising, allowing only a handful of big brands to put a few carefully drafted commercial messages on the service. But on Tuesday, the company announced plans to open the Instagram feed to all advertisers, from the local tattoo parlor to global food makers, later this year. Marketers will be able to target ads to the service’s 300 million users by interest, age, gender and other factors, just as they can on Facebook. Instagram will also begin testing a type of ad that allows viewers to click on a link to buy a product or install an app that is advertised. The commercialization of Instagram, while sure to disappoint some users, was probably inevitable. Major social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest have committed to keep their services free to users, and they have turned to advertising to pay the bills. Instagram offered its first ads in November 2013, but since it has been subsidized by Facebook, it has had time to develop an ad strategy. Many retailers already use third-party workarounds, such as Curalate’s Like2Buy tool, to allow fans to shop their Instagram feeds. Visitors to the Instagram pages of Target, Nordstrom, Forever 21, Williams-Sonoma and other retailers can click on a special link that the store posts in its account description that leads to a mirror image of its Instagram feed — but one where photos are clickable and link to product pages where a shopper can buy the items.

• More On Instagram's Monetization: Instagram Unleashes a Fully Operational Ad Business With shopping links and Facebook-powered targeting: Instagram's ad business is growing up fast thanks to a boost of new technology from Facebook. Today, the popular photo-sharing app with more than 300 million users and counting is opening up to potentially millions of advertisers, with more ad styles and sophisticated targeting tools first honed by its parent company. Instagram is launching ads with "Shop Now" buttons and other messages that link outside the app so users can take marketable action. Also, there's a new API—software platform—that lets marketing partners automate the advertising process. The API comes polished—able to manage, track and measure marketing campaigns—thanks to borrowed technology and lessons learned from Facebook, said James Quarles, Instagram's global head of business and brand development. Advertisers can reach users based on more than just their ages and genders, targeting interests gleaned from Facebook profiles. "We have benefitted greatly from being a part of Facebook," Quarles said. "It would have taken us years to build this tech stack for ourselves. So, we're fortunate to be able to take select pieces of Facebook's tech stack."

• Amazon Debuts Free Shipping on Small Goods, No Minimum Order: Amazon.com is introducing free shipping on thousands of popular, smaller items -- makeup, mobile phone accessories, earplugs -- in its Web store, without requiring a minimum order. The new initiative applies to all customers, including those not enrolled in Amazon Prime, the annual membership program that includes two-day shipping, the company said on Tuesday. Amazon is using the free shipping program to target cost-conscious shoppers, a group that EBay Inc. is courting. Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos has focused on increasing the value of the $99-a-year Prime membership, adding same-day delivery in big cities, video streaming and music. By offering free shipping, the Seattle-based online retailer will be able to target a wider pool of customers and market its services, including Prime membership. The new offer gives online shoppers an opportunity to order inexpensive goods one at a time without worrying that shipping costs are more than the price of the item or feeling compelled to buy additional products to meet a free-shipping threshold. The service covers items that weigh 8 ounces (230 grams) or less, which usually cost no more than $10. Delivery will take four to eight business days from a new shipping hub in Florence, Kentucky, specifically stocked for the program dubbed Fulfillment by Amazon Small and Light.

• Pinterest Brings E-Commerce to Social Scrapbooking With ‘Buy It’ Button: Pinterest, the online social scrapbooking service, has long claimed to help people discover new things in the real world. Soon users will be able to buy those things, too. The San Francisco company announced Tuesday that it would offer the ability to buy products from inside of pinned items, in what is its first foray into e-commerce on its service. The new product, named “buyable pins,” allows sellers large and small to place a “Buy it” button on items that they post to the site. Founded in 2009 by the entrepreneur Ben Silbermann and some of his colleagues, Pinterest quickly caught on as a sort of digital scrapbook where people could save things that drew their interest online. A user may come across an interesting pair of jeans on the web, for example, and “pin” a photo of those jeans to a Pinterest board. The idea was that users could collect items that they may find or buy later. But there was no way to purchase items directly on Pinterest, so for many users, the idea of buying their saved items was largely aspirational. That changes with buyable pins, as Pinterest, which has raised more than $1.3 billion in venture capital, works to justify its valuation of $11 billion. While the company does not disclose its number of users, estimates place its audience in the United States at more than 75 million, according to the online analytics firm comScore. With buyable pins, Pinterest has teamed up with major retailers like Cole Haan, Ethan Allen, Kate Spade and Macy’s. More than two million blue “Buy it” buttons will appear on products posted to Pinterest by these companies. Payments made through the service will be powered by Stripe, an e-commerce start-up that focuses on small and midsize online businesses. Braintree, a payments processing company owned by PayPal, will also handle processing. Other merchants will be able to sell items on Pinterest using Shopify, which does the heavy lifting of online commerce for smaller, independent businesses. The move is a major moneymaking opportunity for Pinterest and perhaps an obvious one for the company, which has been around for close to six years but has only recently pushed heavily into generating revenue. In December, the company introduced its first major advertising effort with its “promoted pins” product; the announcement Tuesday is the company’s first real effort at building an e-commerce site. Pinterest does not plan to make money off e-commerce the traditional way, by taking a cut of retailers’ transactions. Instead, the company said, it would make money selling promoted-pins advertisements to retailers, who can then insert buyable pins into those ads.

• Tech boom lures Indian engineers back home: Kunal Bahl's American dream was coming together in late 2007. He had Ivy League degrees in business and engineering, a debut job at Microsoft Corp. and a roadmap to the career he’d always wanted in Silicon Valley. Then his application for a U.S. visa was rejected and he was kicked out the country. Lucky for him. Back in India, he got over the shock and founded a company in New Delhi with a childhood friend. Today Snapdeal.com is one of the most highly valued startups in the world’s third-largest economy, valued at about $5 billion. The 31-year-old is one of the thousands of a generation of engineers and entrepreneurs who quit America for home — some by choice, some because of U.S. immigration barriers — to find a technology industry with more green-field opportunities than Silicon Valley. Many Indians aren’t leaving at all, or are going to the U.S. for degrees from Harvard and Stanford with no plans to stay after graduation. India's booming startup culture probably wouldn’t feel any affects if the H-1B floodgates suddenly opened. The super-growth potential these days is east, not west. While only about 19 percent of Indians are connected to the Internet, their numbers are mushrooming. Economic output is expanding at an annual rate of more than 7 percent, and by some projections the country's population will reach 1.6 billion to surpass China’s by 2050. India is hard to resist. Google engineering executives Peeyush Ranjan and Punit Soni recently left the company and California for home, moving to Bangalore to join Flipkart, India's largest e-commerce company and Snapdeal’s main domestic rival. Namita Gupta departed Facebook for Zomato, a restaurant-search service based in New Delhi. The trend is a dramatic shift from the 1980s and 1990s, when a graduate education and employment in the U.S. were the brass rings for engineers like Satya Nadella, Microsoft's chief executive officer. Now for anyone interested in programming or e-commerce or mobile-device apps, India "is like the late 1990s in the U.S.," says Bahl. Venture capitalists and hedge funds are swooping in with aims to profit on startups like Snapdeal. Venture financing in Indian tech companies hit $1.9 billion in the fourth quarter, almost six times the $325 million in the year-earlier period, according to CB Insights. Hedge funds, investment firms and asset managers have pumped $3.8 billion into 26 Indian tech startups since the beginning of last year, according to data compiled by Bengaluru-based Tracxn. "Investors are writing big checks even by Valley standards."

• Russia's Internet Research Agency deploys an army of well-paid “trolls” that seek to wreak havoc all around the Internet - The New York Times investigates. A New York Times report investigates a shadowy organization in St. Petersburg, Russia, that spreads false information on the Internet. It has gone by a few names, but I will refer to it by its best known: the Internet Research Agency. The agency had become known for employing hundreds of Russians to post pro-Kremlin propaganda online under fake identities, including on Twitter, in order to create the illusion of a massive army of supporters; it has often been called a “troll farm.” The word “troll” was popularized in the early 1990s to denounce the people who derailed conversation on Usenet discussion lists with interminable flame wars, or spammed chat rooms with streams of disgusting photos, choking users with a cloud of filth. As the Internet has grown, the problem posed by trolls has grown more salient even as their tactics have remained remarkably constant. Today an ISIS supporter might adopt a pseudonym to harass a critical journalist on Twitter, or a right-wing agitator in the United States might smear demonstrations against police brutality by posing as a thieving, violent protester. Any major conflict is accompanied by a raging online battle between trolls on both sides. As former employees describe it, the Internet Research Agency had industrialized the art of trolling. Management was obsessed with statistics — page views, number of posts, a blog’s place on LiveJournal’s traffic charts — and team leaders compelled hard work through a system of bonuses and fines. “It was a very strong corporate feeling,” Savchuk says. Her schedule gave her two 12-hour days in a row, followed by two days off. Over those two shifts she had to meet a quota of five political posts, 10 nonpolitical posts and 150 to 200 comments on other workers’ posts. The grueling schedule wore her down. She began to feel queasy, she said, posting vitriol about opposition leaders of whom she had no actual opinion, or writing nasty words about Ukrainians when some of her closest acquaintances, including her own ex-husband, were Ukrainian. Russia’s information war might be thought of as the biggest trolling operation in history, and its target is nothing less than the utility of the Internet as a democratic space.