Month: October 2018

E-cigarette maker Juul recently received a surprise visit from the Food and Drug Administration, CNBC first reported. Last week, the FDA seized thousands of documents from the startup’s headquarters, TechCrunch has confirmed.

The unannounced inspection of the startup’s headquarters on Friday was part of the FDA’s efforts to seek documentation related to Juul’s sales and marketing practices, according to the FDA.

“The purpose of these inspections was to determine compliance with all applicable FDA laws and regulatory requirements,” an FDA spokesperson told TechCrunch. “The new and highly disturbing data we have on youth use demonstrates plainly that e-cigarettes are creating an epidemic of regular nicotine use among teens. It is vital that we take action to understand and address the particular appeal of, and ease of access to, these products among kids.”

This comes after the FDA requested documents from the company in April as part of an inspection of Juul’s marketing practices toward minors. Juul, in a statement to TechCrunch, says it’s committed to preventing underage use and is wanting to engage with the FDA, lawmakers and public health advocates to ensure young people don’t use its products.

Last month, the FDA ordered five companies — Juul being one of them — to outline within 60 days their plans to address underage use of their products. If those companies fail to meet the deadline, the FDA says it will pull its products from shelves.

Walmart is expanding further into apparel with today’s announcement of its plans to acquire the digitally native, women’s plus-size clothing brand ELOQUII for an undisclosed amount. The all-cash deal includes ELOQUII CEO Mariah Chase, her executive team and its 100 employees, who will continue to be based in Long Island City, NY and Columbus, OH. They’ll join Walmart’s U.S. e-commerce organization, reporting to Andy Dunn, SVP of Digital Consumer Brands, Walmart U.S. eCommerce, when the deal closes later this year.

Walmart won’t disclose the deal size, but says it’s larger than its ModCloth acquisition ($75M) but smaller than Bonobos ($310M). That’s in line with Recode’s report claiming the deal is $100 million.

Women’s plus-size fashion is of interest to Walmart because it’s one of the fastest-growing segments of women’s apparel, and an estimated $21 billion market, the retailer explains. More than half of U.S. women ages 18-65 now wear a size 14 or higher, but traditional fashion brands often overlook their needs by limiting clothing options, or failing to address fit.

ELOQUII was founded in 2011 and then relaunched in 2014 as a direct-to-consumer brand catering to this market. Since 2015, the company has seen 3x revenue growth and has achieved a Net Promoter score of near 80.

Beyond simply having the means to address this market with more inventory, ELOQUII is another means for the retailer to reach a segment of online consumers who perhaps wouldn’t have otherwise considered shopping Walmart. This is a similar strategy Walmart made when snatching up other fashion brands, including Bonobos and ModCloth, for example. In fact, Bonobos and ModCloth shoppers were so anti-Walmart in some cases, there was a backlash following their acquisitions.

ELOQUII has grown its online profile thanks to savvy internet marketing and high-profile relationships, like the one with Reese Witherspoon, who partnered on a plus-size collection from her clothing line Draper James. The retailer also tapped other brands like Stone Fox Bridal and Jason Wu – the latter designer who’s a fav of celebs like Karlie Kloss, Diane Kruger, and Lily Aldridge.

It has also listened to and promptly responded to customer feedback as it grew.

“Addressing customers’ vocal requests for fashion-forward styles is something ELOQUII does incredibly well,” notes Dunn, in a blog post about the deal. “For example, they recently uncovered 80% of ELOQUII customers work full-time, and one of the most frequent requests from customers was for fashionable work wear. Embracing the feedback, ELOQUII launched The 9-5 Kit and most recently The Premier Workwear Kit, filling an unmet need in the category and further reinforcing trust with customers in the process,” he says.

Walmart has picked up a number of brands to help it expand its reach and inventory in recent years, including Moosejaw ($51M), ShoeBuy, Jet.com ($3B), Hayneedle, in addition to Bonobos and ModCloth. Most continue to offer their own online stores, though Moosejaw just became the first acquisition to open its own storefront right on Walmart’s site. It also introduced its own Allswell home and bedding digital brand.

The retailer says the ELOQUII deal is expected to close later this quarter. The brand has raised $21 million to date, according to Crunchbase data, from investors including Acton Capital Partners, Greycroft, Grace Beauty Capital, Female Founders Fund, Fabrice Grinda, FJ Labs, Max Ventures, and HDS Capital. However, ELOQUII has actually raised more than that – $42 million, according to Recode.

Remember Prepd? The “lunchbox you won’t be ashamed to carry” raised over $1 million on Kickstarter in 2016, and now it is returning with an iPhone 5c-esque sequel that is both cheaper and more colorful.

Prepd, in case you missed it, isn’t some kind of IOT, smart, next-gen lunchbox. Rather, it’s an unashamedly premium take on the lunchbox built by two designers who were sick of lugging around ugly boxes containing their food. Style aside, it is also designed to keep portions healthy. To date, over 50,000 lunchboxes have been sold worldwide, according to the company.

The new Prepd ‘Colors’ Kickstarter cuts the price of the product to $39 (or $35 for the first 24 hours of the campaign), which is down from $50 in the last Kickstarter . The original version has a recommended retail price of $69 and the new edition is set to sell for $49 after the campaign is over.

The real difference with the new edition is that the elegant bamboo cover of the original version is replaced with a colorful top that uses the same magnetic lock mechanism. Likewise, the same high-quality leak-proof Tritan containers and magnetic reusable cutlery are included in the set.

Founders Chris Place and Will Matters told TechCrunch that they have made a few small optimizations but the goal is to offer some variation — the colors include blue, peach, mint or grey — and make the product more affordable.

“It includes the same benefits of the original product but in a more simple version at a more accessible price point,” Place said in an interview.

“We’re amazed at how many people use it on a regular basis and the changes it makes to their life,” Matters added. “People love it but some say that they can’t justify spending $69 so we wanted to enable more people to get their hands on it.”

Two-and-a-half years is a long time between products, but Hong Kong/U.S-based Place and Matters said they’ve been busy working with retailer and partners, which have included Blue Apron, Bloomingdale’s and Nordstrom. Beyond that, they’ve been partnering with content makers and chefs to develop the companion app that works alongside the lunchbox.

The follow-up act is always tricky, particularly when a project massively exceeded its target as was the case with Prepd. The Kickstarter project is again looking to hit a minimum goal of $25,000 which will cover the tooling and processes to actually build the product. Since Prepd uses Kickstarter in the traditional way — as a platform to validate an idea rather than marketing an existing product — the finished product isn’t due to ship to backers until March 2019, although a number of prototypes have already been developed.

Prepd has bootstrapped itself to date, despite Place and Matters admitting that they have fielded interest from VCs. For now, the duo said they are focused on this Kickstarter campaign but they admitted that they are looking to “energize” their community of lunchbox owners by developing new content for the Prepd app that could include cooking shows or chef live streams.

“We’re looking to harness the community and do what Peloton has done [for cycling] but for cooking,” Place said.

Full details on the new Prepd product can be found on Kickstarter here.

Uber has brought on Nikki Krishnamurthy, Expedia’s former chief people officer, as one of its own. Krishnamurthy is coming on board as chief people officer to replace Liane Hornsey, who resigned in July following a racial discrimination investigation.

According to Reuters, a group of Uber employees of color alleged Hornsey discriminated against Bernard Coleman, Uber’s global head of diversity and inclusion, and unfairly criticized and threatened Bozoma Saint John, who left the company in June. In an email to staff in July, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi did not cite specific reasons for Hornsey’s departure, but simply said she had led the team through a “period of enormous positive change.”

As CPO, Krishnamurthy will oversee the human resources department. That means Bo Young Lee, Uber’s chief diversity officer, will report to her.

“Nikki brings unparalleled experience in building a culture centered around transparency, respect and diversity,” Khosrowshahi said in a blog post. “She is a trusted partner who will help our management team as we evolve our culture, ensuring Uber continues to be a place where employees are supported and welcomed, and where they can grow and thrive.”

Krishnamurthy left Expedia back in June after working at the company for eight years. At the time, it wasn’t clear where she was headed, but GeekWire noted that Krishnamurthy had “liked” a LinkedIn post from Khosrowshahi that detailed Uber’s approach to cultural change. She joins former Expedia colleague Barney Harford, who joined Uber as its first chief operating officer last December.

One of the the overlooked tidbits in amongst the flurry of Note 9 news was Samsung’s plan to offer an S Pen SDK for developers. The company made good on its promise today, issuing a full break down of the different functionality over here.

Of course, all of this is made possible by the fact the proprietary stylus has learned a few new tricks for this latest generation of the popular phablet. The addition of bluetooth low energy and an on-board battery that gets around half an hour of battery life (or 200 clicks) from a 40 second charge help the thing double as a remote.

In demos, Samsung showed the pen control things like music playback and slideshow presentations. In my own review, I found it handy — if a bit awkward — to hold a stylus while going for a run.

The SDK opens the pen up to third-parties, and it will be interesting to see what they’re able to do with the “unmatched freedom and functionality” to take selfies and the like with a small piece of plastic and a single button.

Apple Business Chat launched earlier this year as a way for consumers to communicate directly with businesses on Apple’s messaging platform. Today the company announced it was expanding the program to add new businesses and support for additional countries.

When it launched in January, business partners included Discover, Hilton, Lowe’s and Wells Fargo. Today’s announcement includes the likes of Burberry, West Elm, Kimpton Hotels, and Vodafone Germany.

The program, which remains in Beta, added 15 new companies today in the US and 15 internationally including in the UK, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada, Italy, Australia and France.

Since the launch, companies have been coming up with creative ways to interact directly with customers in a chat setting that many users prefer over telephone trees and staticy wait music (I know I do).

For instance, Four Seasons, which launched Business Chat in July, is expanding usage to 88 properties across the globe with the ability to chat in more than 100 languages with reported average response times of around 90 seconds.

Apple previously added features like Apple Pay to iMessage to make it easy for consumers to transact directly with business in a fully digital way. If for instance, your customer service rep helps you find the perfect item, you can purchase it right then and there with Apple Pay in a fully digital payment system without having to supply a credit card in the chat interface.

Photo: Apple

What’s more, the CSR could share a link, photo or video to let you see more information on the item you’re interested in or to help you fix a problem with an item you already own. All of this can take place in iMessage, a tool millions of iPhone and iPad owners are comfortable using with friends and family.

To interact with Business Chat, customers are given messaging as a choice in contact information. If they touch this option, the interaction opens in iMessage and customers can conduct a conversation with the brand’s CSR, just as they would with friends.

Touch Message to move to iMessage conversation. Photo: Apple

This link to customer service and sales through a chat interface also fits well with the partnership with Salesforce announced last week and with the company’s overall push to the enterprise. Salesforce president and chief product officer, Bret Taylor described how Apple Business Chat could integrate with Salesforce’s Service Bot platform, which was introduced in 2017 to allow companies to build integrated automated and human response systems.

The bots could provide a first level of service and if the customer required more personal support, there could be an option to switch to Apple Business Chat.

Apple Business Chat requires iOS 11.3 or higher.

Facebook is introducing new tools to tackle online bullying, the company announced this morning. Specifically, it’s rolling out a way for people to hide or delete multiple comments at once from the options menu of a post, and is beginning to test new ways to more easily search and block offensive words from showing up in comments. It’s also rolling out a new way to report bullying on behalf of others and is offering the opportunity to appeal decisions related to bullying and harassment.

There’s an old internet adage, “don’t feed the trolls.”

It means you shouldn’t engage with disruptive commenters – those who are making ridiculous, rude, and offensive statements designed to anger or attack others. But on Facebook, no one seems to heed this rule. As soon as a troll’s comment appears, it quickly becomes the top comment on the post as everyone piles on to tell them how wrong and rude they are.

While people’s inability to ignore trolls is part of the problem here, an even larger factor is that Facebook built out a massive social network of now over 2 billion users before it took the time to thoughtfully consider what sort of tools are needed to address online abuse.

While it may feel like bullying and harassment has increased on Facebook thanks to the current political climate – it’s always been there…and at scale. The issue is especially troubling considering the ramifications that continued bullying and abuse can have on online users – it can be a factor in troubled teens’ decisions towards self-harm and suicide, for example. (And Facebook users can be kids of just 13, per its official rules.)

At its worse, online hate speech spreading across Facebook has contributed to genocide.

It’s irresponsible, at this point, for large scale social platforms to not make anti-abuse tools one of their biggest priorities.

The first of Facebook’s new additions will allow users to better control how people interact with their posts. They’ll now have a way to hide or delete multiple comments at once from the options menu of the post. Currently, you can remove a single comment at a time – which makes it difficult to moderate posts that have a lot of activity, or where one user has continued to post abusive remarks throughout a number of conversation threads.

This feature is rolling out now on desktop and Android and will hit iOS in “the coming months.”

An upcoming feature will also introduce the ability to search and block offensive words, Facebook says.

Instagram has offered offensive word blocking tools for years, and implemented A.I. to detect and hide offensive words in comments. That Facebook is just now getting around to improving its own tools on this front is notable, in terms of the delays involved here.

Facebook didn’t say when offensive language blocking tools would be made public.

Another new tool will allow friends and family to report bullying and harassment on behalf of victims via the menu above the post in question. Facebook’s Community Operations team will review the post, keep the report anonymous, and determine whether it violates the company’s Community Standards, it says.

Facebook says it added this option because some people don’t feel comfortable reporting a bully or harasser themselves.

On the flip side, Facebook will allow those dinged for being abusive to request an appeal.

Earlier this year, Facebook said it was rolling out a new process that allowed people to request a second review of their photo, video or post that had been removed for violation of the Community Standards. Now this appeals process is expanding to bullying and harassment violations. This could help combat reports where people submit items for being abusive that are really just unpopular statements, but not necessarily those that would constitute online harassment.

The appeals process can also be used to request Facebook take a second look at content that it declined to take down the first time. This is useful because Facebook often makes a bad decision the first time around – erroneously blocking things like the Declaration of Independence as hate speech, or posts made by online activists.

Another notable change is that Facebook is ramping up its protection for public figures.

Online, including on Facebook, anyone who gains a following has been subject to a slightly different set of rules than private individuals. To some extent, this is necessary – politicians, for example, still have to hear from constituents, even when those constituents are sharing their thoughts a rude or harassing fashion.

But the attacks on public figures often go too far. Earlier this year, Facebook expanded protections on young public figures, and now it will turn its attention to better protecting “severe” attacks that directly engage other public figures, as well. (The company didn’t define how it measures severity.)

Facebook’s post also highlighted a recent partnership with the National Parent Teachers Association in the US to facilitate 200 community events in cities in every state to address tech-related challenges faced by families, including bullying prevention. It’s also now offering a peer-to-peer online safety and anti-bullying program to every secondary school in the UK, through partners. And it supports a program in India that has educated tens of thousands of young people about online safety, thoughtful sharing, and privacy and security, the company claims.

It’s good that Facebook will roll out improved tools around bullying. But it should have done so ages ago.

Because of Facebook’s size and scale – it also runs Instagram, and messaging platforms Messenger and WhatsApp – it has already set the tone for much of online culture.

For years, it has permitted back-and-forth heated discussions to devolve into harassment and bullying. It has sacrificed people’s mental health and wellness at the alter of “increased engagements” on its site – a metric that impacts its bottom line. Newer platforms, like Twitter, later emerged without having to live up to any sort of standards around reasonable and thoughtful discussions, thanks to Facebook’s inattention or slow reactions to dealing with hate speech and abuse.

“Everyone deserves to feel safe on Facebook, and it’s important that we help people who encounter bullying and harassment online,” writes Antigone Davis, Facebook’s Global Head of Safety, in the company’s announcement. “We know our job is never done when it comes to keeping people safe, and we’ll continue listening to feedback on how we can build better tools and improve our policies.”

What happens when a cast of Oscar contenders like Tom Hardy, Riz Ahmed and Michelle Williams are turned loose to chew the scenery of a (seemingly wryly self-aware) B movie?

Audiences get “Venom”, the latest bid from Sony Pictures to create its own superhero mega-franchise now that storylines for the studio’s web-slinging centerpiece have merged into the cast of thousands populating Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Audiences may remember the character Venom as the nemesis in “Spider-Man 3”, the last (and least) of the original Spider-Man movies directed by Sam Raimi and starring Tobey Maguire.

There are echoes of its cinematic predecessor in the current “Venom”, but instead of setting up the character of Eddie Brock, and his alter-ego, Venom, as a nemesis to Peter Parker and Spider-Man, the new reboot focuses solely on Brock.

A “loose cannon” in the reporting world, Brock’s bona fides as a righter of wrongs are established early in a montage sequence that has him reporting on the seedy underbelly of a stylized San Francisco, ruled by technology companies that have run more than slightly amok over the city’s population.

Brock’s nemesis, played by the Emmy award-winning British actor Riz Ahmed, is “Carlton Drake” a billionaire tech mogul whose wealth is built on the backs of the city’s poor. They serve as fodder for Drake’s experiments, meant to save humanity from destruction at the hands of disease, climate change, and overpopulation. And they’re the focal point of Brock’s reporting.

Drake’s plans to save the world have a whiff of Elon Musk, as he fantasizes about extraterrestrial colonization, sending space ships up to explore other planets that may be suitable for human life — or asteroids that may be suitable for mining.

In these heady times where startups like SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Planetary Resources are planning colonization and asteroid mining missions, the plot point isn’t as far-fetched as some might think. But the alien life-form known as a symbiote, which Drake’s crew of astronauts takes back for study and (human) experimentation is still squarely in the realm of comic books.

Those symbiotes are what give the movie its propellant force, as Drake experiments on humans to try and find suitable hosts for the super-powered aliens (who feed on human organs) to bond with — thus creating a new super species that can survive the coming environmental apocalypse and ensuing space colonization.

Brock, while working to uncover the dastardly deeds of this mad scientist, becomes one of those unwitting hosts — and thus imbued with super powers, fights the good fight with the help of his former fiancee, in an unlikely turn for Michelle Williams, to save the earth, and himself.

With Ahmed forced to deliver clunkers like, “Oh my God, they’re beautiful!” when first confronted with the alien species; or “Release the drones!” during a particularly satisfying chase sequence where his minions are tracking an alien-infected Brock (made the more enjoyable for the wanton destruction of San Francisco), “Venom” could have been terrible.

But the movie aims for the kind of tongue-in-cheek humor that made Deadpool a hit with audiences … and it mostly succeeds. Hardy delivers a performance that’s shot through with some great physical comedy and sight gags, and the levity goes a long way to lightening what could have been an exercise in morbidity given the darkness of an alien-infected, organ eating anti-hero at the movie’s core. 

To be clear, Venom doesn’t quite hit the meta-movie high notes that made Deadpool a smash, but powered by the performances from Williams and Hardy (who seem to have chemistry) and a script that aims for humor and hijinks and (seemingly) embraces the camp within its source material, Sony should have a solid foundation on which to build a new superhero franchise.

And it needs one. As Spider-Man’s scripting swings off into the arms of Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe, Sony appears to be looking to some of the lesser-known corners and characters in the Spideyverse so it can write its own destiny. Next up for the studio is Morbius: the Living Vampire, which has landed Jared Leto in the lead role, according to recent reports.

Following on the heels of Disney’s surprise breakout hit with “Guardians of the Galaxy” and Fox’s big box office bonanza with “Deadpool” (both lesser known titles in the Marvel catalog), the practice of going with something a bit more off-the-beaten path when it comes to superhero sagas may not be a bad idea.

Perhaps Venom benefited from the extremely low expectations that had been set for it, but the movie managed to score big with the preview audience that attended last night’s premier.

Maybe you’ve never heard about Tiny, but chances are, you’ve used its products. Tiny is the company behind the text editors you’ve likely used in WordPress, Marketo, Zendesk, Atlassian and other products. The company is actually the result of the merger of Moxiecode, the two-person team behind the open source TinyMCE editor, and Ephox, the company behind the Textbox.io editor. Ephox was the larger company in this deal, but TinyMCE had a significantly larger user base, so Tiny’s focus is now almost exclusively on that.

And the future of Tiny looks bright thanks to a $4 million funding round led by BlueRun Ventures, the company announced today (in addition to a number of new products). Tiny CEO Andrew Roberts told me the round mostly came together thanks to personal connections. While both Ephox and Moxiecode were profitable, now seemed like the right time to try to push for growth.

Roberts also noted that the merger itself is a sign of the company’s ambitions. “I think we’ve always been searching for how we could get that hockey stick growth to kick in,” he said. “I don’t think we would’ve done the merger if we weren’t hungry for that next level of success. So after two or three years [after the merger], we started to feel like we had the signs of a business that could grow into something significant and big and with some good numbers behind it. So were: ‘alright, now is the time.'”

While Tiny continues to offer its free open-source editor, it offers a cloud-hosted version of its service with a fee based on the number of users for developers who want the company to handle the backend infrastructure, as well as a self-hosted version that Tiny charges for based on the number of servers it runs on.

Roberts noted that quite a few developers try to build their own text editors. Yet handling all the edge cases and ensuring compatibility is actually quite hard. He estimates that it would take two or three years to build a new text editor from the ground up.

As part of today’s announcement, Tiny is also launching a number of new products. The most important of those from a business perspective is surely Tiny Drive, a file storage service that developers can integrate with the TinyMCE editor. Tiny Drive offers all of the file storage features that one would expect, including the ability to handle images and other assets. Tiny Drive uses AWS’s S3 file storage service and CloudFront CDN to distribute files.

Also new is the Tiny App Directory, which Roberts likened to the Slack App Directory. The idea here is to offer a curated list of TinyMCE plugins. For now, there is no revenue sharing here or any other advanced features, but it’s definitely a play for creating a larger ecosystem around the editor.

Tiny also today announced the first developer preview of the TinyMCE 5 editor. The updated editor features a new user interface that gives the editor a more modern look. Developers can customize it to their hearts’ content, with plenty of compatible plugins and advanced features to extend the editor based on their specific needs. There’s also now an emoticon plugin.

Talking about customized editors: You’re probably aware of WordPress’ efforts to modernize its text editor. The new editor, called Gutenberg, focuses more on page building than the current one, but as Roberts stressed, the underlying rich text editor is still based on the TinyMCE libraries. He noted that even the classic version, though, was always a subset of TinyMCE’s editor. What’s maybe even more important for Tiny as a company, though, is that none of WordPress’ changes will influence its business, even though WordPress and TinyMCE have long had what he describes as a “symbiotic relationship.”

“Tiny’s core business comes from a mix of software vendors, large enterprises, and agencies building custom solutions for clients that has little to do with the WordPress ecosystem,” he notes. “It is a popular and commercially viable project in its own right.”