Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, August 9

• India ride-hailing firm Ola sideswiped as Uber, Didi team up in China: Didi Chuxing's acquisition of Uber's China business last week reshapes the landscape in Asia's growing ride-hailing sector, and leaves India's Ola more vulnerable to attack by Uber in its $12 billion home market. Four months ago, Ola executives met with Didi hoping the Chinese firm would invest fresh capital to help it fight Uber Technologies Inc which, with its deeper pockets, has made rapid inroads into India. They were told Didi wanted first to sort out its own challenges in China, said a person with direct knowledge of Ola's plans. Didi and Uber have raised and spent billions of dollars in a discount slugfest to win drivers, passengers and market share in China. Didi, now worth around $35 billion, last year invested about $30 million in Ola, which is also backed by Japan's SoftBank Group, and the two are allies in an anti-Uber group that also includes U.S.-based Lyft and Southeast Asia-focused Grab. "This (Didi/Uber China) deal changes the dynamics of how they (Didi) will invest in India," said the person, who didn't want to be named because the discussions were private. If Didi invests more in Ola, it's effectively betting against Uber, its new partner in China, the person said. It's not clear whether Didi would provide equity or debt to Ola, which has raised around $1.3 billion in funding and is valued at over $5 billion. SoftBank Capital, Ola's key investor, faces its own financial issues and is selling assets to raise cash and reduce debt, which may pose another fundraising challenge for Ola, which was aiming to raise another $1 billion this year.After the Didi deal, Uber is even more focused on India, which it has previously called its No. 2 priority overseas market, doubling down on resources, staffing and technology deployed there, said two people familiar with Uber's plans, one of whom is based in the United States.

• Twitter Seeks to Sublease Part of San Francisco Headquarters: Twitter Inc. is offering about a quarter of the space at its San Francisco headquarters complex for sublease, adding to a growing amount of excess offices available in the city as the technology industry cools. About 78,800 square feet (7,320 square meters) is listed for sublease on the seventh floor of 1355 Market St., a renovated 1930s furniture mart, and 104,850 square feet is available along three floors in an adjacent building at One Tenth St., according to marketing materials from Cresa, a commercial real estate firm.Subleasing is becoming more prevalent in San Francisco as venture-capital investments decline and tech firms slow their hiring from a breakneck pace. While the city’s overall office market remains strong, extra space is a warning sign that some companies overestimated their growth rate and are being forced to scale back. An increase in subleasing predated commercial real estate downturns following the 2008 financial crisis and the dot-com bust in the late 1990s.

• Walmart was the only bidder in $3 billion Jet.com acquisition: When news first broke of Walmart’s interest in acquiring Jet.com, the $3 billion price tag was a surprise to many. Why would Walmart pay such a premium for a startup that was unprofitable and just a year old? One hypothesis was that Walmart may have been competing against other bidders for Jet — possibly Alibaba or even Google. Turns out that was not the case, Jet CEO Marc Lore told Recode in an interview Monday afternoon. “This was about trust between Doug and I,” Lore said in reference to Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, noting that the conversations between the two sides began in the spring. “It never occurred to me to go out and get another offer, quite honestly,” he added.  As part of the deal, Lore will take over as head of Walmart.com in addition to Jet, as Recode first reportedSunday evening. Neil Ashe, Walmart’s CEO of global e-commerce, will depart at the end of Walmart’s fiscal year. In a conference call with reporters, McMillon outlined why Walmart found Jet so valuable. It was a combination of the speed of the shopping site’s growth (a $1 billion annualized sales volume run rate within eight months of launch); the expertise of the exec team led by Lore that is joining Walmart in the deal; and the proprietary pricing and back-end technology that is expected to eventually be used in some capacity on Walmart.com.

• LendingClub turmoil takes toll as company posts widening losses: LendingClub Corp on Monday reported its largest quarterly loss in a year as it struggles to bring banks back to its online lending platform following the departure of its chief executive and a scandal involving altered loan documents. LendingClub, which matches borrowers and lenders via an online marketplace, reported a second-quarter loss of $81.4 million, or 21 cents per share, compared to a loss of $4.1 million, or 1 cent per share, a year ago. The company also continued its executive shakeup, with the resignation of Chief Financial Officer Carrie Dolan. Her departure is the first high-profile exit since the departure of Renaud Laplanche, the company's founder, as chief executive on May 9.The second-quarter earnings report follows a tumultuous period for LendingClub, once considered the standard bearer in a new generation of online lenders but which has been pummeled by revelations of lending improprieties, a U.S. Department of Justice investigation, the departure of loan investors and layoffs of 179 employees. "The good thing is (the second quarter) is now behind us," said Scott Sanborn, who took over as president and CEO in June. "We have accomplished quite a bit since the events of May 9." LendingClub's shares were down more than 2 percent at about $4.68 in after-hours trading. That puts the company's market cap at about $1.8 billion, about one-third its market value of about $5.4 billion when it went public in December 2014 in an offering priced at $15 a share.

Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, August 4

• Tesla misses Q2 earnings, delivers 14,402 vehicles: Tesla missed its Q2 earnings targets today in a report released after the close of the market. Tesla executives are not wavering on yearly targets, despite a slower than expected quarter. All of this comes amidst a seemingly never-ending wave of Tesla headlines dominating Silicon Valley over the last few weeks. The energy company born out of an automobile company reported non-GAAP Q2 revenue of $1.56 billion up from last year’s Q2 revenue of $1.2 billion. The company came close but ultimately missed analyst estimates of $1.6 billion. Tesla closed down 0.62 percent today at $225.79. After the news was released, Tesla shares moved up almost instantly in after-hours trading after the news dropped but have been fluctuating up and down by 2 percent since.Wall Street analysts expected an adjusted net loss of $52 cents a share but found themselves with a worse than expected loss of $1.06 per share. Tesla delivered 14,402 new vehicles consisting of 9,764 Model S and 4,638 Model X in Q2, slightly ahead of last month’s estimates. Tesla had originally aimed to deliver 80,000 vehicles by the end of the year. It is growing tougher by the day for the company to hit that goal. On the bright side, the company noted that almost half of Q2 production occurred in the final four weeks of the quarter. Moreover, Tesla had an additional 5,000 cars in transit at the quarter end on their way to be delivered.

• Why it makes sense for Walmart to buy Jet.com — even for $3 billion: Walmart missed out on a Marc Lore company once, when Amazon swooped in to beat it to the purchase of Diapers.com’s parent company several years back. The giant retailer may not let it happen again. Walmart is in talks to acquire Jet.com, Lore’s new startup that has raised more than $800 million in financing in an attempt to build a new online megastore, according to a person familiar with the talks. It is not clear how far along they are. News of the talks was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, which said the tie-up could value Jet at as much as $3 billion. A Walmart spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. A Jet spokesman declined to comment. A $3 billion price tag would be a steep one for Walmart, considering that Jet is largely still unproven and burning more than $20 million a month on advertising alone. A deal would also certainly not be what Lore had in mind when he set out to build a legitimate competitor to Amazon, Walmart and others after his non-compete agreement with the Seattle-based retailer expired two years ago. But it would be a marriage of necessity for both sides, and one that probably makes too much sense not to happen. On the Walmart side, its e-commerce efforts have largely been viewed as a failure in recent years for a retailer of its size and power. Annual revenue for the division is around $14 billion, compared to $99 billion for Amazon, excluding Amazon’s AWS cloud computing unit.Five years ago, it would have seemed possible, but unlikely, that Walmart could catch up with Amazon. Today, that notion is laughable.For Lore and Jet, the deal would be something of a shocker. Lore pocketed dozens of millions of dollars when he sold Diapers.com to Amazon so he doesn’t exactly need the money. That’s one of the reasons his backers believed him when he said his goal was to build a company worth tens of billions. But the hurdles to get there have been significant from the start and perhaps even larger than Lore imagined. Jet only really works long-term as a standalone company if it can convince millions of people to order multiple items at a time to earn discounts; individual product prices aren’t typically better than its competitors.

• Dorsey's Square reports 41.5 percent jump in quarterly revenue: Mobile payments company Square Inc on Wednesday reported a 41.5 percent jump in revenue and diminishing losses as more large merchants make sales using Square's technology, a sign the company has moved beyond serving only pop-up shops and food trucks.Square stock was up more than 14 percent to about $12 in after-hours trading following the second-quarter earnings call. The price at closing bell was $10.44. Square's revenue reached $438.5 million, up 41.5 percent from its earnings of $310.0 million a year earlier. It processed $12.5 billion in payments, up 42 percent from a year ago, mostly due to new and larger retailers using Square, the company said. About 42 percent of total payments is coming from larger retailers, signaling a dramatic transition for Square. The company started seven years ago as a card reader that turns a mobile phone into a payment terminal, and was sold primarily to pop-up stores, coffee shops, food trucks and other small merchants that couldn't afford elaborate payment systems.Square, which went public in November, has expanded to offer an array of services for businesses such as point-of-sale registers, invoice software and loans. Square Capital, the loan program, saw a 123 percent increase over last year, with $189 million in loans made to businesses. Square added five investors to the program, which will provide capital for additional borrowers, said Sarah Friar, Square chief financial officer. About 90 percent of borrowers renew their loans.Friar said Square's familiarity with borrowers - the company lends to merchants it has already done business with - and the low cost of the program distinguishes it from other lenders.Still, the company is not profitable. Its losses narrowed to $27.3 million from $29.6 million during the same period last year.

Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, June 21

• VR is the future of porn, and it’s a creepy future indeed: This got real weird, real fast. And not just because I was demoing the technology in the middle of the E3 floor, surrounded by fellow show-goers. It’s just — well, even after all the explainers in the world, it’s hard to sufficiently brace your mind for all that virtual reality porn entails. It occupied a small space, tucked in the rear of the LA Convention Center, but Naughty America may just have had the one booth capable of rivaling Nintendo’s for sheer show buzz. We must have walked by the thing a dozen times during our three days on the floor, and there was always a small army of show-goers lined up to take it for a spin. Much like, say, your standard first-person shooter, the technology is built around a POV (point-of-view) shot, putting the viewer in the place of the camera. The effect is already a bit jolting (and, at times nausea-inducing) in standard VR, but all of that really goes next level when you look down and you’ve swapped your bits and bobs with someone else’s. The company’s demo cycles through a few short clips, in which the scenery, scenarios and co-stars change, but, well, the view pretty much stays the same. It’s hard to say how much of the initial shock is due to the newness of the technology and how much is firmly entrenched in the uncanny valley, though the company told me that many attendees enjoyed the demo, strange setting and all.Once you get past the somewhat off-putting nature of swapping nether regions with a professional, VR porn does offer an interesting way forward for an industry that, like many others, has been hard hit by the prevalence of free online content.

• Apple May Soon Open Retail Stores in India: After months of delays, Apple is likely to open its first retail stores in India, a fast-growing market for smartphones where the American technology giant has little presence. New rules issued by the Indian government on Monday exempt foreign-owned companies that want to open stores selling a single brand of products from requirements that 30 percent of the content of those products come from India. The exemption, which lasts three years, can be extended to eight years in the case of companies selling “cutting edge” items, such as Apple’s iPhones and Macs. Apple, which makes virtually all of its devices in China, lobbied for months for the loosening, and Timothy D. Cook, the company’s chief executive, discussed it with government officials during his first visit to India last month.An Apple spokesman declined to comment on the issue on Monday. The company has not yet received any formal response from the Indian government on its application to open stores. By themselves, new stores will have little impact on Apple’s small market share in India, beyond serving as a marketing tool. Although Indians will buy an estimated 139 million smartphones this year, Android models that cost less than $120 dominate the market, according to the Gartner research firm.Apple says its sales in India grew 56 percent during its last fiscal quarter, but its cheapest phones typically run $400 or more. Its total annual sales in India were around two million units last year, according to Gartner.

• Chinese Curb Cyberattacks on U.S. Interests, Report Finds: Nine months after President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China agreed to a broad crackdown on cyberespionage aimed at curbing the theft of intellectual property, the first detailed study of Chinese hacking has found a sharp drop-off in almost daily raids on Silicon Valley firms, military contractors and other commercial targets. But the study, conducted by the iSight intelligence unit of FireEye, a company that manages large network breaches, also concluded that the drop-off began a year before Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi announced their accord in the White House Rose Garden. In a conclusion that is largely echoed by American intelligence officials, the study said the change is part of Mr. Xi’s broad effort to bring the Chinese military, which is considered one of the main sponsors of the attacks, further under his control. As a result, the same political forces that may be alleviating the theft of data from American companies are also responsible for Mr. Xi’s stunningly swift crackdown on the Chinese media, bloggers and others who could challenge the Communist Party.

• Wal-Mart to Buy 5% Stake in JD.com as Part of Chinese Deal: Wal-Mart Stores will acquire a 5 percent stake in Asian e-commerce giant JD.com Inc. in a deal that will reshape the U.S. retail chain’s operations in China. As part of the agreement, JD.com will take ownership of Wal-Mart’s Yihaodian online marketplace, the companies said in a statement Monday. The Chinese branch of Sam’s Club also will open a store on JD.com, and the two companies will link up their supply chains. The partnership gives Wal-Mart a fresh start in China after it struggled to adapt to a slowing local economy and a rise in online shopping. Wal-Mart Chief Executive Officer Doug McMillon has said that the company needs to succeed in China, where it estimates that 25 percent of global retail growth will come from in the next five years.A 5 percent stake in JD.com would be worth about $1.5 billion at its current stock price. Wal-Mart will receive about 145 million newly issued Class A shares of JD.com in the transaction. That deal will increase the retailer’s earnings per share by 16 to 19 cents in the second quarter, according to the statement.

• Apple to lose weighting in Russell index, shares could fall: After dropping more than $200 billion in market capitalization in one year, Apple shares could fall further as they are set to lose their weighting and be reclassified in the annual reconstitution of the widely followed Russell indexes. When all is said and done, about $1.3 billion more will be sold in Apple Inc shares at the market close on Friday, when the reconstitution of the Russell indexes takes effect, according to an analysis by Credit Suisse. Because Apple has been aggressively buying back and retiring its stock, outstanding shares have dropped to less than 5.5 billion from 5.8 billion in late June 2015, when the Russell indexes were last recalibrated, according to Reuters data. Apple's weighting in the Russell 1000 will roughly fall to 2.52 percent from 2.77 percent, Credit Suisse said. The decline is due to the combination of fewer shares outstanding and Apple's smaller part of the index's capitalization. The performance of a market-weighted index is more influenced by larger companies, like Apple. Adding to the selling pressure, Apple will be classified as both a value and a growth company at Russell. After the close on Friday, 92 percent of Apple will be considered "growth" and 8 percent "value" according to index provider FTSE Russell, splitting it between two Russell subindexes. The move matters because value managers that peg their investments to the Russell indexes will be buying Apple while growth managers will be selling. Because there are more assets benchmarked to growth than to value, there will be net selling of Apple, said Meera Krishnan, U.S. index strategist at Credit Suisse in New York. She estimated there will be over $850 million of selling in Apple out of the growth component of the Russell 1000 and about $400 million of buying from the value side.

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, May 20

• Warren Buffett Stake Suggests Apple Is All Grown Up: With this week’s imprimatur from the legendary investor Warren Buffett, it should now be official: Apple, the world’s largest company by market capitalization and a symbol of American technological innovation, is a “value” stock. That may prove to be a decidedly mixed blessing. Mr. Buffett is the world’s most prominent and successful proponent of value investing — an approach that seeks stocks that are undervalued and sell for less than their “intrinsic value,” as Benjamin Graham put it his 1949 classic “The Intelligent Investor.” Mr. Buffett credits Mr. Graham with shaping his own approach to investing. So value investors took notice when Mr. Buffett’s holding company,Berkshire Hathaway, disclosed it had invested $1 billion in Apple stock during the last quarter. “We’ve just looked at it again,” said Bill Smead, who manages the Smead Value Fund, one of the most successful large-cap value mutual funds over the last five years, according to Morningstar. “Anybody that discounts the thinking at Berkshire Hathaway does so at their peril, in my opinion.” Value stocks are typically unpopular among many investors, their shares often battered by disappointing short-term revenue and earnings results. They usually trade at very low price-to-earnings ratios, a common valuation measure. Nonetheless, some academic studies have suggested that over time, they outperform other stocks, in part because expectations are so low. Today there are numerous value investors, value mutual funds and value exchange-traded funds that pursue variations of the strategy, many of them probably now considering adding Apple to their portfolios, if they haven’t already. Apple “is going to attract more value investors,” said Toni Sacconaghi, a senior analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein who covers Apple. “They’re looking for beaten-down stocks with negative sentiment. Apple has traded below a market multiple for years and sentiment has become increasingly pessimistic, especially over the past month.”

• Walmart Outperforms Estimates, but Online Retail Lags: Walmart reported on Thursday that its quarterly revenue had risen 0.9 percent, exceeding analysts’ forecasts and signaling that its strategies to combat a tough retail environment were working. The results were particularly striking after dismal earnings reports by several retail chains last week, and Walmart’s shares shot up nearly 10 percent.Amazon does much more business than Walmart.com, Mr. Saunders said, and yet it still reports double-digit growth. Amazon reported that net product sales rose 13 percent, to $79.3 billion in 2015, while Walmart reported that global annual e-commerce revenue had risen 12 percent to $13.7 billion in its latest fiscal year. In other areas, Walmart significantly outperformed its peers.Over all, Walmart reported that profit fell to $3.08 billion, or 98 cents a share, compared with $3.34 billion, or $1.03 a share, a year earlier. That beat expectations of 88 cents a share, according to analysts polled by Thomson Reuters. Revenue was $115.9 billion; analysts had expected $113.2 billion.“Walmart, especially with apparel, did better than other retailers for a really stressful period,” Mr. Sosnick said.

• Salesforce Surges as Big Money Deals Help Drive Sales Growth: Salesforce.com Inc. is targeting the biggest of customers to get big itself. The company, once known for selling business productivity software to small- and medium-sized clients, is getting more traction with large companies while drawing closer to an annual sales goal of $10 billion. Salesforce said Wednesday it landed the most large deals ever in a three-month period during the fiscal first quarter, including one worth at least $100 million. The company also forecast revenue in the current quarter that topped analysts’ estimates, sending shares up the most in almost three months Thursday. Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff is benefiting from a multiyear effort to persuade corporations to adopt software delivered over the Internet, or the cloud. During a call with analysts, the company touted new deals with Samsung Electronics Co., Uber Technologies Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. that expanded on existing relationships. Salesforce jumped 4.1 percent to $81.09, at the close in New York, the biggest advance since Feb. 25. That brings the gains for the year to 3.4 percent. Sales will be $2.01 billion to $2.02 billion in the fiscal second quarter, the San Francisco-based company said in a statement. Analysts on average had estimated $1.98 billion, according to data complied by Bloomberg. Revenue increased 27 percent to $1.92 billion in the fiscal first quarter ended April 30, topping the average estimate of $1.89 billion.

• Samsung to partner with Alibaba on mobile payments in China: Samsung Electronics said it had struck a deal with a Alibaba Group Holding for owners of its phones to be able to more easily make payments with Alipay accounts - a move it hopes will boost sales in the world's biggest smartphone market. Users of Samsung Pay will also have the option of paying with their Alipay accounts without having separately access the Alipay application. Alipay, which is operated by Alibaba unit Ant Financial Services Group, has 450 million active registered users. Samsung, the world's top smartphone maker, launched its own mobile payment system, Samsung Pay, in China in March, about one month after Apple Inc launched Apple Pay.But Alipay's dominant position has meant that it will be difficult for any latecomers in mobile payments to gain significant ground just on their own. Samsung has been losing out to Chinese rivals Huawei and Xiaomi as well as Apple and no longer ranks among the top five smartphone brands in China, according to market researcher Strategy Analytics.

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, December 11

• Twitter Aims to Show Advertising to Much Wider Audience: Twitter has long argued that its reach and influence extends far beyond the 320 million people who log into its social media service at least once a month. Tweets are embedded on thousands of other websites and apps, emailed, displayed on television and published in newspapers. Now the company plans to start making money from the vast number of people who are not signed in to the service but may click on a tweet they find through a web search or that is sent to them via email or text — an audience Twitter estimates at more than 500 million people worldwide. In a blog post on Thursday, the company said it has begun showing advertising to some of those casual viewers when they click on the link to a tweet or visit a Twitter user’s profile page. About 60 advertisers are participating initially, with the ads, known as promoted tweets, aimed at people in the United States, Britain, Japan and Australia. But the program, which has been in development for more than a year, is expected to ramp up quickly. These ads, which will be on the desktop web version of Twitter at first, won’t be quite as finely targeted as typical Twitter ads, relying on context, like other pages people have recently browsed, for targeting. Twitter estimates that each of these “logged out” users could be worth $2.50 a year to advertisers, compared with about $4 a year for active users. Wall Street, which has been focused mostly on Twitter’s lack of growth in active users, sees lots of potential in the program, and Twitter’s stock rose almost 7 percent on Thursday.

• GoPro's First Drone, Due Out in 2016, Will Be Called 'Karma': GoPro recently said it will debut its first drone in early 2016, and now the company has announced the brand name—Karma. On Wednesday, the company made the revelation by pushing a one-minute YouTube teaser. The video is a cut-up of the unbranded two-minute clip that GoPro uploaded to the video site on Oct. 28, when it originally disclosed its latest hardware. The longer spot has garnered nearly 4 million views since then. There's not much information about the drone—in terms of what it looks like or how much it will cost—in the video or on its dedicated website. But developing and marketing the product makes a lot of sense since so many GoPro enthusiasts have been attaching the high-def camcorders to drones made by other hardware companies. There are literally thousands of videos from such productions on YouTube.  

• Facebook to Publish Designs for `Big Sur' AI Computer Hardware: Facebook’s use of artificial intelligence, which ranges from tools for image recognition to the filtering of the news feeds for its social network, demands special computing infrastructure. The company recently began building custom servers for its artificial intelligence workload and Thursday announced it would release the designs for that powerful hardware to the world -- for free. The company said the plan to open-source the blueprints of the servers -- called “Big Sur” -- would help other companies and researchers benefit from the incessant tweaking of Facebook’s developers. This follows  Google’s release last month of a software tool for building AI systems named TensorFlow. The servers are built around graphical processing units from Nvidia Corp. GPUs are widely used in artificial intelligence because the chips have far more individual processing cores on them than traditional processors produced by Intel Corp., making them adept at the dumb-but-numerous calculations required by AI software.

• Wal-Mart adds to mobile wallet frenzy with 'Walmart Pay': Wal-Mart launched its own mobile payment service Walmart Pay on Thursday, potentially dealing a sharp blow to the ambitions of a mobile wallet the company had been co-developing with a consortium of retailers. The mobile payments space in the U.S. has seen a flurry of new launches and partnerships in the past year but has failed to gain traction as customer and merchant adoption have been sluggish. CurrentC - whose developers included Wal-Mart, Target and Best Buy among others - was likely to prove strong competition to Apple's Apple Pay because it was developed as a single payment solution that could be used at many retailers and integrate their loyalty programs. But years of delay, a data breach and management changes hurt its prospects. An increasingly bigger worry for CurrentC is the end of its exclusive partnership with most of its members, which means they can now accept other mobile payment options at their stores. A survey released by data firm InfoScout found Apple Pay use to be at its lowest rate since the firm started tracking it. Shoppers used it this past Black Friday for only 2.7 percent of eligible transactions.

• Rovio’s CEO Steps Down After Just Over a Year: Last August Pekka Rantala took over the role of Rovio CEO from co-founder Mikael Hed, but just over a year later he’s already stepping down. He’s to be replaced by Kati Levoranta, former chief legal officer for the Angry Birds maker. Rantala says that “I feel now the time is right for me to step aside and move on to new challenges.” Despite being in the role for a relatively short period, Rantala presided over a tumultuous time for the game developer. Last October the company laid off 130 employees, and followed that up with 260 more job cuts in August, more than 30 percent of its workforce. The initial, unexpected success of Angry Birds caused the company to expand in many directions, yet it never managed to follow up Angry Birds with another big hit.

Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, November 24

• The U.S releases draft regulations for drones: Proposed Regulations for Drones Are Released in the US: On Monday, the Federal Aviation Administration, scurrying to prepare for hundreds of thousands of more drones flying into the air, released a list of recommendations for how to better monitor recreational use of the machines. Under the proposal, most drone owners would have to register the machines with the federal government, which would place the information in a national database, the first such requirements. The recommendations, from a task force created by the agency, would be the biggest step yet by the government to deal with the proliferation of recreational drones, which are usually used for harmless purposes but have also been tools for mischief and serious wrongdoing, and pose a risk to airborne jets. The F.A.A. is widely expected to approve the bulk of the recommendations in the next month, just in time for Christmas. On Monday, the Federal Aviation Administration, scurrying to prepare for hundreds of thousands of more drones flying into the air, released a list of recommendations for how to better monitor recreational use of the machines. Under the proposal, most drone owners would have to register the machines with the federal government, which would place the information in a national database, the first such requirements. The recommendations, from a task force created by the agency, would be the biggest step yet by the government to deal with the proliferation of recreational drones, which are usually used for harmless purposes but have also been tools for mischief and serious wrongdoing, and pose a risk to airborne jets. The F.A.A. is widely expected to approve the bulk of the recommendations in the next month, just in time for Christmas. The government already has rules that limit the use of drones for commercial purposes, like delivering packages. But attention has turned to recreational use more recently, as drones, many of them the size of a laptop computer, have emerged as a must-have item for thousands of people. The Consumer Technology Association, a trade group, has estimated that 400,000 drones will be sold this holiday season in the United States.

• Deliveroo, an On-Demand Food Delivery Service, Raises $100 Million: On Monday, Deliveroo, an on-demand food delivery service based in London, announced that it had raised $100 million from investors, including DST Global, an early backer of Facebook, to help push the service into new markets, particularly in Asia and the Middle East. In total, the start-up has now raised roughly $200 million since its creation in 2012. Just about four months ago, Deliveroo raised $70 million to expand beyond its British roots. The company provides a one-size-fits-all offering for nontech savvy restaurants that includes food packaging, delivery drivers and other support so individuals can order the restaurants’ food through smartphones. As part of the new fund raising, Deliveroo expects to branch out into highly populated cities across Asia, including Hong Kong and Singapore. Mr. Shu said there were no plans in the short term to offer the service in the United States, though the start-up now operates in 50 cities in 12 countries, primarily in Europe. While online food delivery companies like GrubHub and Just Eat, its European counterpart, have allowed people to order food through smartphones for years, a new generation of start-ups like Deliveroo are trying to extend that offering to restaurants that do not have their own delivery logistics. That group includes Delivery Hero, based in Berlin, which also offers a fleet of drivers and other logistical support to restaurants looking to expand into online orders. Delivery Hero is valued at $3.1 billion and operates across Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. Other tech companies, including Uber, the ride-booking service, now offer similar products. Yet for Mr. Shu of Deliveroo, these rivals are only a small fraction of his overall competition, which also includes people cooking for themselves at home and traditional restaurants.

• Amazon Makes Holiday Shopping Season Tough for Target and Walmart: Neither Target nor Walmart needed a reminder about the distance between their online businesses and Amazon’s. Their third-quarter sales numbers provided it anyway. Walmart’s online sales grew just 10 percent in the third quarter, slower than the 15 percent industry average, while Target’s grew 20 percent, well below the company’s stated goal of 30 percent, the companies announced last week. These numbers might not spell all-out trouble if it weren’t for Amazon’s performance during the same period: The company’s electronics and general merchandise business — basically the core of its retail operation — grew 35 percent in North America in the quarter, marking the segment’s highest growth rate in several years. The third-quarter headwinds of the traditional retailers coupled with Amazon’s momentum makes this e-commerce holiday season an even more critical one for Walmart and Target. It doesn’t help that Amazon’s huge logistics investments over the last few years mean it can flex its muscles the most during the holiday with its arsenal of express shipping capabilities when customers are often looking for last-minute gifts. If Walmart and Target going to close the gap, now has to be the time. But history isn’t on their side.

Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, October 27

• Reuters Exclusive: Wal-Mart seeks to test drones for home delivery, pickup: Wal-Mart applied Monday to U.S. regulators for permission to test drones for home delivery, curbside pickup and checking warehouse inventories, a sign it plans to go head-to-head with Amazon in using drones to fill and deliver online orders. The world's largest retailer by revenue has for several months been conducting indoor tests of small unmanned aircraft systems – the term regulators use for drones - and is now seeking for the first time to test the machines outdoors. It plans to use drones manufactured by China's SZ DJI. In addition to having drones take inventory of trailers outside its warehouses and perform other tasks aimed at making its distribution system more efficient, Wal-Mart is asking the Federal Aviation Administration for permission to research drone use in "deliveries to customers at Walmart facilities, as well as to consumer homes," according to a copy of the application reviewed by Reuters. The move comes as Amazon.com, Google and other companies test drones in the expectation that the FAA will soon establish rules for their widespread commercial use. FAA Deputy Administrator Michael Whitaker said in June that the agency expected to finalize regulations within the next 12 months, faster than previously planned. Commercial drone use is currently illegal, though companies can apply for exemptions.

• 'Bottomed Out' Alibaba Set for Best Month After Post-IPO Crash: Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. looks like it may be bottoming out after suffering the worst post-IPO crash ever. Shares are heading for their best month ever, and analysts have raised their sales projections in the past four weeks. Results due Tuesday are expected to show revenue growth of 27 percent in the September quarter, while in the background China’s leaders draft plans for stimulating the economy during the next five years. Chairman Jack Ma pulled off a record initial public offering as investors backed his bet on e-commerce and Alibaba catapulted to the top of the market in China. Then the domestic economy slowed to its weakest growth in 25 years, prompting the billionaire to calm investor fears that at one point erased $150 billion from its market value -- the equivalent of an International Business Machines Corp. The stock fell to a record low of $57.20 on Sept. 29, or 16 percent below its IPO price. Since then it has surged 33 percent, closing Monday at $76.35, up 1 percent for the day. That has come as at least four analysts covering Alibaba raised estimates. Sales in the September quarter are expected to be 21.4 billion yuan ($3.4 billion), with adjusted earnings-per-share of 3.44 yuan, according to estimates. New cloud-based services for merchants to reach consumers and an expansion of entertainment and local-services businesses are central tenets of Ma’s growth strategy. Increased promotions on Tmall.com and Taobao Marketplace are driving e-commerce ahead of next month’s Singles’ Day, the country’s biggest shopping event. The company also offered $4.6 billion for the rest of Youku Tudou Inc., a YouTube-like website, to add content it can stream to Internet users and to bolster revenue beyond e-commerce. Alibaba is expanding its London office to serve as its European hub and opening up in France and Germany.

• JPMorgan Chase says it is building a rival to Apple Pay: JPMorgan Chase said on Monday it will soon launch its own competitor to Apple Pay that will allow consumers to pay retailers using their smartphones in stores, and it has already won the endorsement of a major group of merchants. The largest U.S. bank is the latest company to try to profit from the prevalence of smartphones, which many financial executives believe will one day be consumers' preferred way to pay for everything from milk and eggs at the supermarket to a rental car at an airport. The companies that figure out how to convince consumers to stop pulling credit cards out of their wallets and start paying with their phones stand to earn vast sums by taking a percentage of the trillions of dollars that consumers spend annually. No clear front-runner has emerged in the business yet. Chase believes its smart phone application, known as Chase Pay, has one key advantage: the caliber of retailers it has brought on board, Gordon Smith, chief executive of the bank's consumer business, told Reuters. Chase has signed a deal with the Merchant Customer Exchange, a group of major retailers including Wal-Mart Stores Inc, (WMT.N) the largest U.S. retailer, and Best Buy Co Inc (BBY.N) to accept payments through the bank's technology. Retailers included in the Merchant Customer Exchange ring up more than $1 trillion of sales per year and have over 100,000 outlets. Rivals like Apply Pay have struggled to sign up retailers to accept their payments. In June, Reuters interviewed the top 100 U.S. retailers and found that two-thirds said they did not plan to accept Apple Pay this year. Apple Pay's website lists Best Buy in its "Coming Soon" section but has no mention of Wal-Mart. Chase signed up the Merchant Customer Exchange mainly by promising to cut retailers' costs, Smith said. Whenever a consumer pays for something with plastic, the retailer pays fees to banks and credit card networks to process the transaction. Chase is willing to accept a lower fee for Chase Pay transactions than for other transactions, and hopes to make up the difference by getting more volume over its network, Smith said.

Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, May 14

• New Facebook Ads Come With a Call Button to Ring Up Businesses: Facebook has built a "call" button people can tap to call businesses directly from an ad. More than 30 million businesses have Facebook pages, and now they can add the instant call button or a "get directions" button in marketing campaigns. The buttons open more direct-response marketing opportunities on Facebook, which previously only offered businesses the ability to ask users for Likes. Facebook is calling them "local awareness ads," and they can target users by neighborhood. "Our new local awareness objective is the first Facebook ad objective created explicitly for local businesses," Facebook said in its post today announcing the new features. Local businesses can set up a campaign with the new buttons from their Facebook pages and see the results. According to Facebook, the ads reach the most people for the least money. One example showed an unnamed advertiser spending $40, reaching 6,500 people and generating six calls. Of course, Facebook is not the first to offer a call button. Google's search gives users call and directions links, and Twitter also has similar offerings. Facebook topped 2 million advertisers earlier this year, and it credited much of its new business to a focus on small and medium-size businesses.

• Wal-Mart to Challenge Amazon Prime With $50 Shipping Service: Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will offer a $50-a-year unlimited free-shipping service for online customers starting this summer, seeking to challenge the $99 Prime service offered by retail rival Amazon.com Inc. The service will be available by invitation only in select markets, said Ravi Jariwala, a spokesman for Bentonville, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart. More than 1 million items -- including apparel, sporting goods, electronics and toys -- will be available for delivery in three days or less, Jariwala said. Jariwala declined to say what markets will be included in the initial test of the service, how long it will last or how many people will be invited. The move ratchets up competition in e-commerce, where Wal-Mart has been trying to make inroads. While the company is the world’s largest retail chain, Amazon dominates online shopping. Prime has emerged as a key weapon for Seattle-based Amazon because it keeps customers loyal, making it ripe for imitation. In the U.S., customers pay $99 a year for Amazon Prime membership, which includes delivery discounts and online streaming of movies, television shows and music. Prime membership grew by more than 50 percent in 2014 from a base of “tens of millions,” according to Amazon. Prime members also spend more than occasional shoppers. For that reason, Amazon is trying to boost Prime membership with new perks. In December, it introduced same-day delivery for Prime members in Manhattan and has since expanded the service to additional cities, including Dallas and Miami. Macquarie Research analyst Ben Schachter estimated last month that Amazon has at least 35 million Prime members and that approximately 50 percent of U.S. households will have a membership by 2020. Wal-Mart, meanwhile, is trying to pull out of a broader slump and improve customer service. The company cut its sales forecast in February, and higher spending on wages and other investments have raised concerns for investors. Wal-Mart shares declined 1 percent to $78.16 at the close in New York on Wednesday. They have dropped 9 percent so far this year.

• Cisco Earnings: Quarterly Revenue $12.1B, +5% Y/Y; Net Income $2.4B; Shares Flat; Analysts Hail Cisco's Resilience: Cisco Systems delivered gains in quarterly profit and sales on Wednesday that slightly surpassed Wall Street’s expectations. The company reported a 12 percent increase in net profit, to $2.4 billion. Its operating earnings of 54 cents a share were just above analysts’ consensus estimate of 53 cents a share, as compiled by Thomson Reuters. Revenue rose 5 percent, to $12.1 billion, essentially in line with the average analyst forecast of $12.07 billion. Parts of the business were weak: Sales to telecommunications and cable companies were off by 7 percent and sales in emerging markets slipped, particularly in Russia and China. Cisco shares were down slightly in after-hours trading. Over the last year, Cisco shares have climbed 28 percent. Over the years, Cisco rivals have surfaced from Silicon Valley to China. But Cisco has managed to stay on top. “Its scale and breadth are extremely hard to replicate,” said Amitabh Passi, an analyst at UBS. That heft amounts to what Pierre Ferragu, an analyst for the research firm Sanford C. Bernstein, called “a powerful platform advantage” in a report last week.

• Its OK to Fail - India learns to 'fail fast' as tech start-up culture takes root: After ping pong tables, motivational posters and casual dress codes, India's tech start-ups are following Silicon Valley's lead and embracing the "fail fast" culture credited with fuelling creativity and success in the United States. Taking failure as a norm is a major cultural shift in India, where high-achieving children are typically expected to take steady jobs at recognized firms. A failed venture hurts family status and even marriage prospects. But that nascent acceptance, fueled by returning engineers and billions of dollars in venture fund investment, is for many observers a sign that India's $150 billion tech industry is coming of age, moving from a back office powerhouse to a creative force. "There is obviously increased acceptance," said Raghunandan G, co-founder of TaxiForSure, which was sold to rival Ola this year. He is now investing in others' early stage ventures. "My co-founder Aprameya (Radhakrishna) used to have lines of prospective brides to meet ... the moment we started our own company, all those prospective alliances disappeared. No one wanted their daughters to marry a start-up guy." Srikanth Chunduri returned to India after studying at Duke University in the United States, and is now working on his second venture. "I think what's encouraging is that acceptance of failure is increasing despite the very deep-rooted Asian culture where failure is a big no," he said. The shift has come about, executives say, as engineers began returning from Silicon Valley to cash in on India's own boom, as hundreds of millions of Indians go online. "Investors too want to find the next Flipkart, and most of them come from Silicon Valley backgrounds, so they bring that culture," said Stewart Noakes, co-founder of TechHub, a global community and workspace for tech entrepreneurs. "That's changing the Indian norms. It's becoming ok to fail and try again."

• Amazon Unveils Advertising Platform for Mobile-App Developers: Amazon.com Inc. unveiled a new advertising platform for mobile-applications developers, a push by the largest Web retailer to grab a bigger piece of the smartphone advertising market dominated by Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. The service lets developers promote their apps on Android smartphones and tablets as well as Amazon tablets, paying Amazon each time a user clicks an advertisement displayed through the system. Campaigns start at $100. Amazon is a small player in the $28.7 billion U.S. mobile-advertising industry. The Seattle-based company has less than a 1 percent share of the market, compared with Google’s 35 percent and Facebook’s 17 percent, according to EMarketer Inc. Spending to market apps alone is projected to rise 80 percent this year to $3 billion, with Facebook leading that category.

• Facebook Begins Testing Instant Articles From News Publishers: Facebook’s long-rumored plan to directly host articles from news organizations will start on Wednesday, concluding months of delicate negotiations between the Internet giant and publishers that covet its huge audience but fear its growing power. Nine media companies, including NBC News and The New York Times, have agreed to the deal, despite concerns that their participation could eventually undermine their own businesses. The program will begin with a few articles but is expected to expand quickly. Users of iPhones will see glossy cover videos and photos tagged with map coordinates. Most important for impatient smartphone users, the company says, the so-called instant articles will load up to 10 times faster than they normally would since readers stay on Facebook rather than follow a link to another site Facebook has gone to unusual lengths to court the publishers participating in the project, some details of which were previously published by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. The news publishers can either sell and embed advertisements in the articles, keeping all of the revenue, or allow Facebook to sell ads, with the social network getting 30 percent of the proceeds. Facebook is also permitting the news companies to collect data about the people reading the articles with the same tools they use to track visitors to their own sites. For publishers, the Facebook initiative represents the latest in a series of existential balancing acts. The social network, which has more than 1.4 billion active users worldwide, captures more attention of mobile users — and prompts more visits to news sites — than virtually any other service. Publishers have little choice but to cooperate with Facebook, said Vivian Schiller, a former executive at NBC, The New York Times and Twitter who now advises media companies and brands. “That’s where the audience is,” Ms. Schiller said. “It’s too massive to ignore.” But Facebook’s role as a powerful distributor of news makes many people in the industry uneasy. The fear is that it could become more of a destination than their own sites for the work they produce, drawing away readers and advertising. Facebook clearly plays an important role as a gatekeeper to news. Nearly half of American Internet users said they got news about politics and government on Facebook during the course of a week, almost as many as got such news from local television, according to a survey last year by the Pew Research Center. Facebook has a long history of changing the algorithm that determines what people see in their feeds. Zynga, the mobile gaming company, built its business on Facebook only to lose much of its traffic when the company changed the rules to make a user’s game activity less visible to friends. Last year, Facebook decided to downgrade the prominence of viral content like cat videos and promote “high quality” news content. A month ago, it changed course again to highlight personal posts by users’ friends and family.

• Diverging Internet Usage Patterns: Facebook, Instagram Rule in the US, Messaging Apps Score Elsewhere: Messaging apps are becoming the most heavily-used type of app in a majority of key markets worldwide, based on both smartphone sessions and time spent in apps. However, according to new data from App Annie, the U.S. is an exception to that trend. Here, Facebook still dominates in terms of smartphone sessions, while both Facebook and Instagram led by time spent in apps. The data collected was based on Android sessions in the first quarter of this year, so it’s not necessarily a full picture of the mobile application ecosystem or app usage – but it is sourced from one of the industry’s largest datasets on mobile data. In fact, App Annie’s dataset recently grew following its acquisition of mobile measurement firm Mobidia last week. The firm is able to now detail app usage data from millions of users across 60 countries. With Mobidia and App Annie’s data combined, the company put out its first-ever report examining usage-level trends regarding mobile applications, which looked, in particular, at countries like the U.S., U.K., Germany, Japan, and South Korea. Not surprisingly, given that smartphones are primarily communication devices, the report found that within every key market, apps in the Communication and Social categories accounted for at least 40% of smartphone sessions on Android. And that trend was similar to how users spent time in apps, says App Annie. In the U.S., Social remained the top category based on sessions per active user, thanks to Facebook’s prominent position here. But in the U.K., Germany, Japan, and South Korea, Communication was in the #1 position, referring to their preference for messaging apps.

Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday January 15

• Facebook Ad Clicks Are Shifting to Mobile, so Why Aren't Conversions? Because users still convert on desktops - and as mobile traffic grows, overall conversions fall: 64 percent of Facebook ad clicks occurred on mobile devices during 2014's fourth quarter, just 34 percent of the social media giant's conversions—either a sale, download or completed lead-gen form—came from smartphones and tablets. This new stat, from Marin Software's quarterly Global Online Advertising Index, means nearly two-thirds of all Facebook ad conversions are happening on desktops even though the digital platform's usage is increasingly skewing toward mobile. The same study found that 39 percent of clicks on paid search ads from sites like Google were via mobile devices, yet 31 percent of the paid search category's purchases came from mobile viewers. So the clicks/conversions ratio clearly favors Google over Facebook. In Q4, Marin found that Facebook's desktop ads got a 1.1 percent conversion rate, while its mobile ads rendered a 0.3 percent conversion rate. Conversely, paid search on Google and other engines achieved a 10.1 percent conversion rate for desktop ads and a 6.6 percent conversion rate for smartphones and tablets. The reasons behind Google's appeal to direct marketers are obvious when looking at those numbers. But Marin CMO Matt Ackley touted Facebook's branding potential. "The disparity points to the value in Facebook advertising being closer to television or print than performance-marketing channels," he said. "Clicks on mobile ads are greater than desktop ads, indicating Facebook mobile ads are a great way for a retailer to build brand awareness and reach consumers on mobile devices. Consumers are not device or channel exclusive. They move from search to social sites." Therein may lie a challenge for Facebook: persuading retailers that their social ads can help search ads perform better. Meanwhile, there's absolutely no doubt that search is going mobile. Marin's data offers further proof, stating that as much as 49 percent of marketers' paid search budget is being manifested via tablet and smartphone. Finally, check out the software player's chart below that shows clickthrough rates for different marketing mediums.

Source: Adweek

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• Indian eCommerce pricing analytics Boomerang opines: Amazon.com is not always the cheapest place to buy everything. And neither is Wal-Mart. Both giants bill themselves as places for good deals, but a new report from retail analytics firm Boomerang Commerce compares their strategies and sheds light on the ways they engineer pricing to get that reputation. What the authors find is that Amazon has carefully priced some items low, while leaving others more expensive -- in some cases, much more expensive -- to bolster its reputation as a place for deals. For instance, items with high consumer ratings tend to be priced lower than what you'd find at Wal-Mart. Boomerang provided the example of the Belkin N450 Dual Band Wireless N Router (despite the complex name, it's just a standard WiFi router). On Amazon, it gets only 3.5 stars and is ranked 4,285 in the electronics department. Its price: $56.43. Wal-Mart's Web site has it for $39.99. Also, stuff that's highly visible -- products that either customers rave about or Amazon itself promotes -- also tend to be cheaper than at other places. But items that you wouldn't naturally associate with online retail, such as tires for cars, aren't cheap at all. And accessory items to highly promoted products -- think cable connectors for your new flat-screen TV -- aren't always that cheap. And then there's this: Amazon seems to know, likely by studying billions of shopping transactions, exactly the time of year when many people will buy an item even if the price is high, the study said. For instance, the online retailer seemed to know that a lot of people would be buying HDMI cables in the fall and the run-up to Christmas. Boomerang found that a pack of Twisted Veins HDMI cables went from just under $5 in the summer to more than $8 before Christmas. (Amazon.com chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos is the owner of The Washington Post.) The good folks at Boomerang created a chart that shows how prices interact with people's perceptions of Amazon and Wal-Mart. Below, the firm's chart shows common categories of products -- listed in the left column. The next column looks at what percentage of each category of products are sold by both retailers. The last two columns show how customers perceive the price differences between the two retailers (PPI stands for Price Perception Index). in the war for perception, Wal-Mart consistently beats Amazon in several categories, including automotive products, pet-related items, and household and home goods. People think those items will be cheaper at the big-box store than they are on Amazon's site. And that perception appears to have encouraged Amazon to leave the prices of those items high. Amazon, meanwhile, takes the low-price perception prize for video games, toys and a variety of electronic goods such as wearable tech, accessories, phones, GPS units and cameras. And the researchers indeed could find examples where perception matched reality. The two retailers are more or less evenly matched when it comes to computers, televisions, cellphones and sports equipment, according to the report. In a statement, Amazon called the Boomerang paper “flawed” and said that Amazon is “obsessed” with providing low prices for its consumers.

• China's taxi app wars intensify: Alibaba-Backed Taxi App Said to Be Raising $500 Million: A taxi-booking service backed by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (BABA), is raising more than $500 million to expand in China, according to a person familiar with the matter. The Hangzhou-based company will issue new shares and receive investment from Alibaba, SoftBank Corp. (9984) and Tiger Global Management LLC, the person said, asking not to be identified because the matter is private. Kuaidi would be valued at more than $2 billion, the person said. Kuaidi competes with Uber Technologies Inc. and Didi Taxi, which is backed by Tencent Holdings Ltd. (700), for the 500 million people in China using mobile phones to access the Internet for services and entertainment. Kuaidi prefers to pursue an initial public offering rather than be bought in a takeover, the company said in July. Kuaidi’s taxi booking app attracted 100 million users, who place about 3 million orders a day, according to an e-mailed statement from the company in July, which are the latest figures available. The service has more than 1 million drivers in about 300 cities. Kuaidi also introduced Yi Hao Zhuan Che, a luxury car-booking service, last year to compete with Uber. The San Francisco-based company’s valuation reached $40 billion in its latest fundraising round. Background: China’s taxi app market is dominated by two apps – Kuaidi Dache and Didi Dache. They both focus on regulated, licensed cabs, and so have avoided much of the legal issues that have beset Uber. In December last year, Didi Dache flagged down US$700 million in funding, making it the second highest funded taxi app in the world, netting more than Lyft, GrabTaxi and Ola. Tencent has put money into Didi Dache, turning taxi apps into a new frontier in the wide-scale battle between Alibaba and Tencent. Last summer Kuaidi Dache ventured into Uber’s area by launching a high-end on-demand car service called Kuaidi One. Kuaidi Dache now covers over 1 million taxis in more than 300 cities in China, including Hong Kong.

• Snapchat maybe getting ahead of itself in its ad monetization efforts: charges more than YouTube, advertisers balk at poor reporting: Snapchat Is Asking Brands for $750,000 to Advertise and Won't Budge Some brands balk at paying top dollar for one day of disappearing ads. Snapchat is asking brands for $750,000 a day for its new ads, according to multiple industry sources who have heard the pitch, and some say that's too expensive for the young app. "They [Snapchat] have minimums, and they are very firm on them," said one agency executive who has talked with Snapchat about advertising. "From a monetization perspective, they are looking for fewer, bigger, better." However, there are drawbacks to Snapchat ads, including the platform's lack of sophistication, sources said. Snapchat has limited reporting capabilities, for one; it can't even tell brands how many men versus women saw an ad, and there are no age breakouts, the executive said. Also, brands are wary of paying top asking prices when their ads disappear, sources said. (Users can view a Snapchat post briefly, then it vanishes in a snap.) "It's very hard for marketers to get their hands around advertising that is so ephemeral," the source said. Snapchat has been trying to address data and reporting, and to be fair it is still very early in its ad business rollout. Last week, the service released its first study done with the help of MillwardBrown that showed users enjoyed the app's first round of ads and that the ads helped boost brand awareness. "I'm a big fan of Snapchat, but they are going to market with rates that are significantly higher than what's competitive out there," a top executive at a major brand said. "It is difficult to go forward with a deal with Snapchat at the prices they are quoting." Snapchat is asking for rates that are higher than a masthead on YouTube, where a day costs about $500,000, another source said.

• Rumors swirl that Samsung will buy Blackberry for its patents; Blackberry stock surges, then falls on Samsung denial: Samsung Electronics recently offered to buy BlackBerry Ltd for as much as $7.5 billion, seeking its valuable patents as it battles Apple in the corporate market, according to a person familiar with the matter and documents seen by Reuters. Representatives from the two companies, which are working with advisers, met last week to discuss a potential transaction, the source said, asking not to be identified because the conversations are private. The Waterloo, Ontario-based company said in a statement that it "has not engaged in discussions with Samsung with respect to any possible offer to purchase BlackBerry. Shares of BlackBerry, which soared nearly 30 percent following the Reuters report, fell back about 15 percent in after-hours electronic trading following the statement. Samsung also told Reuters in Seoul that it has no plans to acquire Blackberry. "Media reports of the acquisition are groundless," a company spokeswoman said. BlackBerry, a one-time investor darling that pioneered smartphones, has regained some of its lost swagger under Chief Executive John Chen, who is leading a bid to regain market share it has lost to Apple Inc, Google Inc and Samsung. “To get a hold of the BlackBerry network and all its secure features, that would be a real coup for Samsung, looking to differentiate themselves from Apple and from others," he said. BlackBerry's patent portfolio is composed of roughly 44,000 patents, worth more than $1.43 billion in net book value as of August last year, although many analysts think they could be worth much more. Edward Snyder, managing director of Charter Equity Research, said it made sense for Samsung to target BlackBerry's patents in its outgoing battle with Apple and others, and that it likely would need to bid for the whole company because BlackBerry management did not want to only sell specific assets. "Samsung will have to buy the whole thing and then and shutter what they don't need,” he said. In the third quarter, revenue at BlackBerry, which is increasingly focusing on providing services like secure corporate networks, fell to $793 million from $1.19 billion a year earlier, falling short of analysts' expectations of $931.5 million.

• Zomato is in talks to raise $100M: Zomato Media Pvt Ltd, the company behind the popular restaurant listing and review site Zomato.com, is in talks to raise $100 million (Rs 625 crore) in a fresh funding, says a Reuters report quoting its co-founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal. This comes close on the heels of Zomato sealing its sixth acquisition in as many months and its biggest yet of restaurant information and table booking property Urbanspoon in the US for $52 million (Rs 325 crore). In November last year, Zomato had raised $60 million in funding at a pre-money valuation of $600 million from existing investors

• Investors Put $186 Million Into Lynda.com, an Online Tutorial Service, as US education startups get hot: Investor confidence in the education technology sector suddenly looks a lot more serious — at least for digital learning companies with proven business models. Lynda.com, an online video tutorial service that provides professional skills training to individuals and enterprise clients, announced Wednesday morning that it had raised $186 million in financing. The round was led by TPG Capital, a private investment firm. The sum dwarfs the largest ed tech financing deal of last year; in that deal, Pluralsight, another online training platform for professional skill development, raised $135 million from venture capital and private equity firms. The amount raised by Lynda.com also represents the largest ed tech financing deal in the last six years, according to CB Insights, a venture capital database that has been tracking the sector since 2009. Industry analysts said the Lynda deal was notable for other reasons, too. “It’s interesting, for one thing, that the round was led by TPG, a private investor likely to do more research on the market and revenue model than an early-stage investor focused on growth,” said Matthew Wong, a research analyst at CB Insights. Founded in 1995 as a training program for web design, Lynda.com is hardly a start-up. The company currently offers 5,700 courses online in English and other languages for professionals in business subjects like management; technology skills like programming and web development; and creative fields like video and photography. Lynda.com generated more than $150 million in revenue in 2014, Mr. Robison said, and has been profitable since 1997. He added that the company planned to spend the capital it raised on acquiring firms that specialize in technical and business skills training for professionals; on expanding internationally; and on improving the product experience for subscribers.

• Indian capital market regulator Sebi is working on crowdfunding guidelines: SEBI is is holding consultations for “evolving guidelines” on crowd funding that will help start ups raise funds. Crowd-funding typically involves young entrepreneurs and small groups of people raising funds for their ventures through various online platforms involving individuals as well as organisations. Sebi whole-time member Rajeev Agarwal today said the regulator “was evolving guidelines in consultation with government for funding arrangements for star up entrepreneurs”. The market regulator had, in July last year, come out with draft norms on crowd funding. Under the proposed norms, the issuer entities and their promoters and directors would need to meet ‘fit and proper’ criteria of Sebi, while they can not use multiple platforms to raise such funds within a year, among others. According to Sebi, there is a need for funding for SME through alternative sources as 2008 global financial crisis made it difficult for banks to lend money to the ventures or start-ups, which may have high risk element. However, Sebi said there is possibility of systemic risk associated with crowd-funding as well as chances that investors could be defrauded.

Thursday, November 20, 2014

• India Post to launch real-time parcel tracking, shipped 85K units for Amazon in October : India Post, which has the biggest network and serves the last mile, is boosting its infrastructure for real-time tracking of parcels through satellites using a new technology. The Postal Department will also soon start an SMS facility to inform customers about delivery status of their parcels. India Post, which is already in tie-ups with e-commerce majors Amazon and Snapdeal, will also have security gadgets like CCTV and access control systems to ensure safety of articles. Amazon started booking parcels at one place with India Post in 2013 which has now expanded to five locations by October 2014. “Amazon shipped 7,000 parcels in January this year. By October, the number of article booked in a month by Amazon increased to about 85,000. Snapdeal sends 2000-3000 parcels per day. Naaptol is giving about Rs 25 crore business to India Post per annum,” the official said. India Post is offering cash collection on delivery facility of product to 200 customers. “Since December 2013 approximately India Post has collected Rs 280 crore as cash on delivery amount and paid to the e-commerce companies,” the official said.

• Alibaba will sell its first-ever $8B bond offering on Thursday, attractively low yields of 110bp over Treasuries for the five-year tranche: It is looking to sell up to seven tranches, including five fixed-rate bonds ranging from three to 20-year maturities and two floating-rate notes with three and five-year maturities, which bankers and investors expect to be the most sought after of the year. "Alibaba will have no problem attracting the attention of every investor base around the world," said one bond syndicate manager. "They've done a good job of coming out with enough spread over what would be fair value to make sure they get the size done." Alibaba, highly rated for a Chinese corporate at A1/A+/A+, has been sounding out investors this week in Asia, Europe and the US and is believed to have a huge order book already in place before officially starting the marketing phase in Asia overnight. Two market sources said initial indications of interest were at US$10bn. Alibaba's high Single A ratings will help as the company pitches itself as a comparable to blue-chip names like Oracle, Amazon and Cisco, rather than its lower-rated Chinese internet peers Tencent Holdings and Baidu.

• Asian shoppers lead the world in 'showrooming': Implication: location-based targeting which is red-hot in the US (news here and here) could be even hotter here: Asia’s shoppers are experts at “showrooming” – the phenomenon of looking at items at a brick-and-mortar store whilst simultaneously checking the prices available online. According to data from Google’s Consumer Barometer survey (shown in a new post on Google’s APAC blog), this showrooming is most prevalent in less developed tech markets, where you might expect it the least. The top showroomers are Vietnam’s shoppers. 40 percent of them stand in a store whilst cross-checking the prices online. South Korea is second.

• Walmart Amends Price Matching Policy After Cheap PS4 Debacle, excludes marketplace vendors, third-party sellers, membership or auction sites: Yesterday, some individuals figured out that they could print out an $89.99 Amazon marketplace listing for a brand new PS4 and get the company to sell them the console for the bargain price, considering that it usually retails for $399.99. Price matching guarantees are a common marketing tactic, but Walmart's policy was especially lax, extending to any legitimate retailer including third-party companies.  The retailer said Wednesday that it is limiting its generous Walmart Ad Match Guarantee to just selected retailers, none of which include marketplace vendors, third-party sellers, membership sites or auction sites.  Walmart will continue to match the lowest price on Walmart.com and 30 selected retailers, including Amazon.com. However, for an Amazon product to qualify, it must be sold and fulfilled by the online retailer.

• A button for faster payment collection on e-commerce sites: PayUMoney (earlier PayUPaisa) has introduced a ‘Pay with PayUMoney’ button to let online shoppers complete purchases with just a few clicks. The new feature will basically let e-tailers embed a button within their websites and blogs so that users can make payments without having to navigate away. According to the company, the button’s look and design can be customised as per the website’s design to collect details of customers. Its design also enables the same button to work for both web and mobile. PayU India further claims that over 2,188 merchants have already created the button for collecting payments. E-tailers who want to add the PayUMoney button on their sites / blogs can do so by logging in to PayUMoney and in the merchant dashboard going to PayUMoney tools. Post that, they can click on the PayUMoney button in order to create new button. The e-tailers can then specify the amount and customise the look and feel of the button. They can also add a custom field to collect more information about the customer. Once that is done, e-tailers can embed the button into their website and start collecting payments.

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

• Alibaba extends Taobao and Alipay to Australian merchants seeking to sell in China; focus on food & agri: Alibaba announced today that China’s biggest online payment system and online marketplace officially launched their respective channels for Australian merchants to sell their goods to Chinese customers. Taobao’s Australian channel will focus on selling food and agricultural imports. “With increasing concerns for food safety and higher levels of disposable income, Chinese consumers are keen on purchasing healthy, safe food and beverages from overseas,” says the press release. These products will be sourced by Melbourne-based Zoyu Digital. The ecommerce titan explains Alipay Australia will work with a joint venture partner called Paybang “to continue serving local businesses targeting China’s booming consumer base and facilitating cross-border trade between the two countries.” Despite media reports to the contrary, Alibaba did not mention launching a localized version of Taobao or Alipay for Australian consumers to shop on. However, Alibaba says it will work with Australia Post to sell Alipay Purchase Cards at 4,400 retail outlets so Aussie shoppers can buy stuff on Tmall and Taobao.

• Walmart has been quietly building up its own ad network and apps for comparison shopping: Walmart Exchange WMX is a platform available to brands that sell products at Walmart. Agencies buying ads for Walmart’s brands can use the tool to serve online ads in real-time based on shopper data, promising SKU-level measurement for marketers. Walmart’s media agency MediaVest also has access to WMX to manage its digital media buys on behalf of the retailer. Since launching, Monahan said that WMX is rolling out new features weekly that track the performance of campaigns. Meanwhile, @WalmartLabs is credited for cranking out mobile apps, e-commerce and social tools for shoppers. Just this year, it has rolled out a new e-commerce site, an app revamp that pulls in local inventory and a program called Savings Catcher. Savings Catcher is an app that scans a receipt to find prices at competing stores. If the app finds a cheaper price, shoppers get money back in the form of a gift card.

• Zomato closed $60M in funding; post-money valuation of $660 million: Zomato, the restaurant search and discovery service, has closed a further $60 million in funding, giving the company a post-money valuation of $660 million. Investment comes from India’s Vy Capital, and existing backers Info Edge, and Sequoia Capital. It takes total funding to over $113 million.

• Uber has walked into a storm of adverse publicity: An article from BuzzFeed this week alleged that an Uber executive floated the idea of hiring opposition researchers to dig up information on particularly critical journalists. But it needn’t have gone to such great lengths to get dirt -- its vast data stores might already contain that sort of insight. In fact, Buzzfeed also alleged that the general manager of Ubers New York City operations tapped into the user profile of one of its reporters, without the reporter’s permission, “to make points in the course of a discussion of Uber policies.”

• 5 early stage Indian startups that were picked by TLabs (an accelerator and early stage seed-fund) 1. Vidooly: Vidooly is an intelligent YouTube marketing and analytics suite for content creators, brands, and multi-channel networks 2. Wibe: Wibe recommends relevant videos to users while they read on the web. It is currently offered as a browser extension compatible with popular websites such as Google, Wikipedia, and Amazon. 3. Neuron: Neuron is a big data tool that examines a brand’s social presence (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest), picks up users who are interested in its products, and then uses deep learning to figure out which users are potential customers. 4. Flynx: Flynx is a floating browser for Android that makes multi-tasking effortless while browsing the web on mobile devices. It will load web pages in the background without obstructing current work-flow. 5. Mobapper: Mobapper creates native iPhone, Android, Windows, and Blackberry apps for your WordPress website instantly. No coding is required. It can seamlessly integrate with your existing website and fetch content automatically. In the previous batch, TLabs backed FashUpp, Ghar360, GreedyGame, ParallelDots, Spayee, Vidgyor, and Take Zero.