Author: azeeadmin

Facebook Ad Breaks, the social network’s pre-roll and mid-roll video ads, are launching in 21 new countries.

Facebook announced that Ad Breaks were generally available last month in five countries: the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Now it’s adding territories in Europe, Latin and South America and Asia to the list.

Maria Smith, Facebook’s director of product for the news feed and media monetization, noted that Facebook first started testing these ad units more than a year ago.

“We started very conservatively,” she said. “It’s a very new initiative for us … We needed to get the user experience right.”

In particular, she said the company found that that these ads work best with longer videos, which is why there’s now a minimum length of three minutes.

Facebook has rolled out other improvements too, like the ability to automatically detect the best moments to insert the ad (though video publishers can still place the Ad Breaks manually, if they choose).

“As you watch a video, there are points in this video where the pause or Ad Break feels natural to the viewer,” Smith said. “For example, between scenes, or where it doesn’t interrupt speech, where the story line feels good to take a break — those are all signals” used to select Ad Break locations.

Beyond the minimum length for individual videos, Facebook also requires that Pages participating in the Ad Breaks program have at least 10,000 followers and need to have received at least 30,000 one-minute views on videos that are at least one minute long. They also need to meet Facebook’s general monetization standards.

The Ad Breaks sign-up page will now automatically tell creators whether they’re eligible to participate. Smith described these standards as a way to ensure “a really positive experience” for video creators, advertisers and regular users. (After concerns that ads were being played before inappropriate or controversial content, YouTube set a higher bar for eligibility earlier this year, though that’s led to widespread complaints from creators.)

Here are the new countries where Ad Breaks are generally available: Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Peru and Thailand. As part of this expansion, Facebook is adding support for five new languages, namely French, German, Portuguese, Spanish and Thai.

“We’re making sure we’re very thoughtful, rolling this out in phases,” Smith said. “As we get ready to honor our commitment to our partners to enable them to monetize, we’re very excited.”

Last year, we broke the news that Apple was buying the music recognition startup and app Shazam for about $400 million, and nearly one year later, the deal has finally closed. Today, Apple announced that it has completed the acquisition, and that as part of it it would soon be making the service ad free to use for everyone, removing the app’s ad-supported free tier.

“Apple and Shazam have a long history together. Shazam was one of the first apps available when we launched the App Store and has become a favorite app for music fans everywhere,” said Oliver Schusser, Apple’s vice president of Apple Music, in a statement. “With a shared love of music and innovation, we are thrilled to bring our teams together to provide users even more great ways to discover, experience and enjoy music.”

It’s not clear how Apple longer term will integrate Shazam’s core product into its service — a pretty clever piece of technology that can identify a song by hearing a fragment of it. The two main directions appear to be to let it continue to remain a standalone app longer term, or to subsume part or all of it into a bigger Apple Music offering.

Shazam is one of Apple’s biggest acquisitions both in music and overall, and underscores the amount of investment that the iPhone maker is willing to put into expanding its role as a force not just in hardware, but in the services that run on that hardware.

In music, it’s in hot competition with over-the-top providers like Spotify and Pandora (which is now going to be a part of SiriusXM). Other notable Apple acquisitions specifically in music have included the acquisition of Beats, which became the basis of Apple Music, which Apple acquired for $3 billion in 2014.

In May, Apple announced that it has passed the 50 million user mark for Apple Music.

The deal comes three weeks after the EU finally gave a green light to the deal after Apple first made its intention to buy it public. Others that had been interested in buying the UK startup (startup only in name: it was venture-backed to the tune of about $143 million but had been around since 1999).

The app has hundreds of millions of users and had passed 1 billion downloads back in September 2016, but it had never managed to turn a profit.

In September 2017, Shazam reportedly made £40.3 million ($54 million) in revenues in its 2016 fiscal year, which was a turnaround from the declines between FY 2014 and 2015. It made a statutory pre-tax loss of £4 million ($5.3 million) in 2016, which was still a loss but significantly smaller than the £16.6 million loss in FY 2015.

Although it is one of the most popular apps in the music category, Apple was not found to be making an antitrust violation in buying it.

Amazon’s Echo Show will apparently also work like a little TV, not just a visual interface for Alexa and her many apps. When the newly announced 10-inch HD screen Echo Show begins shipping next month, it will offer support for Hulu – the first live streaming TV service to work on the screen-based Alexa device. Users will be able to tune into Hulu with Live TV using just their voice, by saying things like “Alexa, play…” followed by the name of TV show, movie or channel.

Amazon also tells us that the streaming won’t be limited to only the new Echo Show devices – the first gen Echo Show will support live streaming, too.

Company execs at Amazon said at an event last week that one of the primary use cases for Echo Show was in the kitchen – and the new device takes particular advantage of that, by offering step-by-step cooking instructions from apps like Kitchen Stories, Allrecipes, Epicurious, Food52, TheKitchn and SideChef.

But there are many other times you’re working in the kitchen, but not following a specific recipe, when you’d rather just have the TV on to keep you entertained instead. That’s where Hulu’s live streaming service comes in. You could have the news on, or a game, or whatever else you want to watch while you prep your meal.

Hulu was one of two TV apps announced for Echo Show, the other being NBC. But Hulu is the only one for now that supports live streamed TV.

As to why Hulu would bother building for what is still a fairly niche Echo device – after all, the top seller is the entry-level Dot, not the Show by any means – the company says it’s about engagement.

Since launching a voice app on Fire TV last November, Hulu says that those who use Alexa watch double the number of hours of content, compared with those who use remotes.

Separately from its live-streaming plans for Echo Show, Hulu also announced a redesigned web version last week. The updated site now supports multiple windows, picture-in-picture mode while browsing, and support for Chromecast.

Adobe Analytics is a sophisticated product, so much so that users might focus on a set of known metrics at the cost of missing key insights. Adobe introduced an AI-fueled virtual assistant called Intelligent Alerts today to help users find deeper insights they might have otherwise missed.

John Bates, director of product management for Adobe Analytics says that in the past, the company has used artificial intelligence and machine learning under the hood of Analytics to help their users understand their customer’s behavior better. This marks the first time, Adobe will be using this technology to understand how the user works with Analytics to offer new data they might not have considered.

“Historically we’ve analyzed the data that we collect on behalf of our customers, on behalf of brands and help provide insights. Now we’re analyzing our users’ behavior within Adobe Analytics, and then mashing them up with those insights that are most relevant and personalized for that individual, based on the signals that we see and how they use our tool,” Bates explained.

Bates says that this isn’t unlike Netflix recommendations, which recommends content based on other shows and movies you’ve watched before, but applying it to the enterprise user, especially someone who really knows their way around Adobe Analytics. That’s because these power users provide the artificial intelligence engine with the strongest signals.

The way it works is the analyst receives some alerts they can dig into to give them additional insights. If they don’t like what they’re seeing, they can tune the system and it should learn over time what the analyst needs in terms of data.

They can configure how often they see the alerts and how many they want to see. This all falls within the realm of Adobe’s artificial intelligence platform they call Sensei. Adobe built Sensei with the idea of injecting intelligence across the Adobe product line.

“It’s really a vision and strategy around how do we take things that data scientists do, and how we inject that into our technology such that an everyday user of Adobe Analytics can leverage the power of these these advanced algorithms to help them better understand their customers and better perform in their jobs,” he said.

Bumble is officially serving the papers in the suit against Tinder parent, Match Group. Bumble had said in March it was filing a suit of $400 million against Match Group for fraudulently obtaining trade secrets, following Match’s suit filed only weeks before, which had claimed patent infringement and misuse of intellectual property.

Match’s original lawsuit said that Bumble had copied “Tinder’s world-changing, card-swipe-based, mutual opt-in premise,” and accused Tinder -turned-Bumble employees Chris Gulczynski and Sarah Mick of copying elements of the design.

Bumble was also founded by CEO Whitney Wolfe, who was also a co-founder at Tinder and had previously sued Tinder for sexual harassment.

Following Match’s suit, Bumble responded then filed a separate action that raised new allegations against Match Group. It said that when Bumble and Match Group were in acquisition talks, Match filed its suit to make Bumble look less attractive to other suitors. Bumble also said that Match Group fraudulently requested for Bumble to provide “confidential and trade secret information” which Match Group said they “needed to provide a higher offer for Bumble,” the suit alleged.

Bumble’s suit also said that no subsequent offer came, and Match Group instead requested and obtained this information solely for “the financial benefit of its dating app businesses.”

And it said that Match Group “published false or disparaging information about Bumble, including statements in the press falsely claiming that Bumble infringed Match’s intellectual property, as well as false statements in the Lawsuit.”

Bumble and Match Group had tried to come to some sort of settlement over the months since the lawsuits were filed, in hopes of finding another solution outside of having to take their claims to court. But with court papers now being served, it appears that’s not going to be the case.

Match Group has had Bumble on its radar as one of its top competitors and a threat to its dating app business led by Tinder. It has tried to acquire Bumble twice, and has been turned down. Last year, for example, Match was in discussions with Bumble over a deal that then valued it at over $1 billion.

In the months since, Bumble has grown significantly as its business continues to expand outside the U.S. The company is now available in English-language countries like Canada, Australia, and the U.K., and is investing in expansions into Germany and Mexico. Latin America andSouth America are also on the roadmap for 2019, and Asia is in the works, as well.

In addition, Bumble has now upped its revenue run rate to $200 million per year. That doesn’t mean Bumble is making $200 million in 2018, only that it has exceeded its original expectations of $150 million in revenue for the year.

The revenues come entirely from Bumble’s in-app subscription business – the app doesn’t run ads.

The app also recently passed 40 million users, Wolfe recently noted on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018 alongside news of Bumble’s new “snooze” feature that allows users to take a time-out from the app. She also spoke of Bumble’s plans to invest in its non-dating businesses, grow its real-world footprint through an expansion of its “Hive” locations, and introduce advertising.

In terms of how this suit will impact Bumble, Wolfe said, “we’re focused on our growth. We’re focused on ending misogyny, and we’re actively pursuing an IPO.”

 

 

 

Groups of UberEats couriers are continuing to strike over pay and calling for a minimum £5 per delivery fee. Several strikes have been reported in London over the past few days, as well as other UK cities including Glasgow, Cardiff and Plymouth.

Late last week Uber revealed a new pay structure which shrinks the per delivery fee it pays gig economy workers carrying out food deliveries on its platform in London, Manchester and Birmingham — to just £2.50.

Adding on the £1.50 per mile fee Uber also gives UberEats couriers means the new minimum delivery fee couriers can expect is just £3.50 — down from the £4 Uber was previously offering UberEats couriers in cities such as Manchester.

The change to its pay structure has triggered a number of wildcat strikes in recent days, with couriers reportedly stopping fulfilling orders and gathering to protest in groups — including outside Uber’s Aldgate East London office.

Additional strikes have been scheduled for today.

Uber says a reduction in the per delivery fee it pays couriers is necessary in order to increase the amount it pays out during busier periods and areas — under its so called ‘Boost’ system.

Boost adds a multiplier to couriers’ pay, depending on order demand. And according to an email Uber sent to couriers last week, which was reviewed by TechCrunch, the company says couriers have been unhappy with Boost, as is — saying they have told it multipliers are “too low and not available in enough places”.

Uber says it talked to “over 300 delivery partners in London” — and was “consistently” told Boost is not helping couriers “make more money the way it’s supposed to”.

As a result it says it’s boosting Boost. “With the new fares and planned Boost multipliers, earning potential is expected to be higher during busy periods and areas than it is today,” it writes.

However it concedes that the new pay structure may shrink couriers’ earnings outside the busy periods that are covered by Boost.

“With the new fees, this also means that payments may be lower outside of typical mealtimes or in quieter areas, when there are fewer orders waiting to be picked up,” it writes.

“It makes sense that more money is available to be made during mealtimes and busy areas, something we’ve heard partners recognise, and is reflected in these changes. We recommend partners check for Boost in the partner app before going online. That’s the best indication of when and where we expect to see demand for food delivery.”

Uber is also not quantifying exactly how much of an increase couriers will get under the new increased Boost multiplier. Nor exactly how Boost’s availability is being expanded as claimed (we’ve asked Uber to clarify the expansion of Boost and it told us it will send more details within a hour; we’ll update this report when we have them).

This is likely because Boost is a moving target — with a dynamic “live map” in couriers’ apps showing “the current Boosts for each zone”.

Uber’s explainer of the feature also notes that the multipliers “will change based on the time of day, and the day of the week, to help show you when and where it’s expected to be busiest”. (It gives example of 1.5x and 2x Boosts on its website — but without greater transparency from the company it’s impossible to know how representative those multipliers are or are not.)

So Uber making opaque Boost ‘increases’ at the same time as delivering a big reduction to per delivery fees make it pretty easy to see why riders are not happy.

The company has tried to smooth the way for the pay structure tweaks by offering a temporary minimum payment guarantee (for the next six weeks; until November 4) to offer couriers an earnings back-stop — in case they do not earn up to the peak minimums it expects them to (between £9p/h and £11 p/h, depending on time/day).

If couriers don’t earn the listed minimums Uber says it will “top them up” to the stated amounts.

However this top-up also comes with caveats and conditions and is not universally available to all couriers — with the following restrictions applied, according to Uber’s email to couriers:

To receive a minimum payment guarantee per hour, for every hour a partner spends online during an incentive period, they need to 1) confirm at least 80% of delivery requests received by them; and 2) complete at least one delivery.

“Of course, partners are entirely free to choose if, when and where to go online and whether or not they want to participate in this incentive,” the company adds — a caveat that’s essential given Uber does not want the thousands of “delivery partners” it relies upon to fulfil orders being legally classified as workers, rather than the independent contractors it claims they are.

How tightly a company controls labor can determine employment classifications. And worker status for riders on gig economy food delivery platforms would load millions in additional costs onto these businesses, regionally — such as meaning they’d be required to pay the UK minimum wage plus additional benefits such as holiday and sick pay.

(A legal challenge to Deliveroo’s employment classification of riders last year was not successful. However the UK high court recently agreed a union could challenge its opposition to collective bargaining — on human rights grounds.)

How platform companies use technology to manage remote workforces of contractors is certainly facing increasing legal scrutiny in Europe.

Uber lost a 2016 employment tribunal in the UK brought by a group of drivers for its ride-hailing business — who the courts judged to be workers, not contractors. (Though Uber continues to appeal.)

One of the key selling points gig economy platforms shout about when trying to attract fresh ‘partners’ to fulfil their platform propositions is the claim they offer ‘flexible’ work opportunities. But exactly how much real-world flexibility there is if earnings are so tightly tied to demand at least starts to look debatable.

Being free to work for a pittance unless you work within narrow and shifting hours of peak demand doesn’t sound quite so ‘free’ — and looks rather more precarious.

There’s also growing political awareness (again, at least in Europe) that individuals gigging via platforms risk being exploited by asymmetrical platform power — as a recent report into rival food delivery platform Deliveroo, carried out by UK MP Frank Field, suggested.

Field likened Deliveroo’s model to casual labor practices at British dockyards until the middle of the 20th century — with a few winning out at the expense of very many more who lose out.

UberEats pay structure changes suggest couriers willing and able to work during peak periods might gain but only at the expense of those who can’t deliver what the algorithm wants.

In an FAQ about the new pay structure for UberEats, Uber couches the amendments as designed to help riders “make the most out of your time spent on the app”, writing: “While the minimum fees have been reduced, we’ve also increased Boost multipliers and made it available in more parts of the city during busy mealtimes. We believe this will allow you to make better earnings when restaurants have the greatest need for your service, and make the most out of your time spent on the app.”

“We’ll also be hosting Earnings Advice Sessions, where our Experts will provide tips on how to maximise your time online. Be on the lookout for more information on how to sign up for one of those sessions,” it adds, showing how the company is offering casual sessions intended to encourage certain work patterns among giggers — while continuing to assert they are just independent contractors, not more tightly controlled workers.

The GMB Union, which is backing UberEats’ couriers’ calls for a £5 per delivery fee and holding a protest outside Uber’s office today, said it’s expecting 1,000 drivers to join in the demonstration.

The union criticised Uber for “heaping more misery on drivers with reductions masked as increases” under the new pay structure. “People now expect food to be delivered on demand without the human cost that goes with such a service,” added regional officer Steve Garelick in a statement. “Uber must sit up and listen to those who provide this service.”

Two years ago Deliveroo couriers staged similar strike protests after the company trialed a new pricing structure.

Microsoft, SAP and Adobe today announced a new partnership: the Open Data Initiative. This alliance, which is a clear attack against Salesforce, aims to create a single data model for consumer data that is then portable between platforms. That, the companies argue, will provide more transparency and privacy controls for consumers, but the core idea here is to make it easier for enterprises to move their customers’ data around.

That data could be standard CRM data, but also information about purchase behavior and other information about customers. Right now, moving that data between platforms is often hard, given that there’s no standard way for structuring it. That’s holding back what these companies can do with their data, of course, and in this age of machine learning, data is everything.

“We want this to be an open framework”, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said during his keynote at the company’s annual Ignite conference. “We are very excited about the potential here about what truly putting customers in control of their own data for our entire industry,” he added.

The exact details of how this is meant to work are a bit vague right now, though. Unsurprisingly, Adobe plans to use this model for its Customer Experience Platform, while Microsoft will build it into its Dynamics 365 CRM service and SAP will support it on its Hana database platform and CRM platforms, too. Underneath all of this is a single data model and then, of course, Microsoft Azure — at least on the Microsoft side.

“Adobe, Microsoft and SAP are partnering to reimagine the customer experience management category,” said Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen. “Together we will give enterprises the ability to harness and action massive volumes of customer data to deliver personalized, real-time customer experiences at scale.”

Together, these three companies have the footprint to challenge Salesforce’s hold on the CRM market and create a new standard. SAP, especially, has put a lot of emphasis on the CRM market lately and while that’s growing fast, it’s still far behind Salesforce.

A new feature in the latest version of Google Chrome that logs users into the browser when they sign in to a Google site has come under fire.

Until recently, it was the user’s choice to log-in to the browser. Now, any time that you sign in to a Google site in Chrome 69 — like Google Search, Gmail or YouTube — Chrome will also log you in, too.

But the change has left users unclear why the “feature” was pushed on them in the first place. Many security folks have already panned the move as unwanted behavior, arguing it violates their privacy. Some users had good reasons not to want to be logged into Chrome, but now Chrome seems to takes that decision away from the user.

Matthew Green, a cryptography professor at Johns Hopkins, rebuked the move in a blog post over the weekend, arguing that the new “forced login” feature blurs the once-strong barrier between “never logged in” and “signed in” — and erodes user trust.

“Where Facebook will routinely change privacy settings and apologize later, Google has upheld clear privacy policies that it doesn’t routinely change,” said Green. “Sure, when it collects, it collects gobs of data, but in the cases where Google explicitly makes user security and privacy promises — it tends to keep them.”

“This seems to be changing,” he said.

Google staff defended the change on Twitter, said there was little to worry about — that the change was designed to only alert the user that they were logged in, and that the browser wouldn’t sync their bookmarks, browsing history and passwords across devices without permission.

Green conceded that although Google is not syncing data from the beginning, the user interface makes it difficult to know if browser data is shared with Google once a user is logged in. The “dark pattern” of the browser’s logged-in user interface now makes it possible to trick a user into switching on sync by mistake. Once your data is shared, there’s little a user can do to pull back. Without giving his explicit consent to have his data synced in future, he said Google could later decide, as it did with the “forced login” feature, to switch on the browser sync feature without telling anyone.

“Just because you’re violating my privacy doesn’t make it OK to add a massive new violation,” he said.

Other security experts agreed with Green, with some promising to switch browsers.

Trust is a fickle thing. Chrome isn’t just seen as secure and trustworthy, but many see it as neutral, Green said — a free and open source tool, rather than an extension of Google other core businesses. By breaking down that “sacred wall” between the two has users rattled — and some wanting to switch from Chrome altogether.

What may have been a helpful feature on paper to stop users from accidentally using someone else’s account on a shared computer has blown up in Google’s faces — and not because of the decision, but because users weren’t given a choice.

This wild, 3D-printed self-solving Rubik’s cube is amazing. To make it work, a Japanese inventor used servo motors and Arduino boards to actuate the cube as it solves itself. Sadly, there isn’t much of a build description available but it looks to be very compact and surprisingly fast.

There is a description of the project on DMM-Make and you can watch the little cube scoot around a table as it solves itself in less than a minute. The creator also built the Human Controller, a cute system for controlling a human as they walk down the street, and the Human Crane Game which is equally inexplicable. If this Ru-bot is real and ready for prime time it could be an amazing Kickstarter.

International shipping has changed little in the last century – it’s slow and opaque, with many processes carried out manually and on paper. Most supply chain teams still rely on phone calls and emails to do their job. The whole things stuck in the 20th Century. It’s estimated that the average shipper spends over 40 hours per month – the equivalent of 7 working days – manually chasing the various parties along their supply chain for action.

We’ve seen many startups try to tackle shipping and freight in the last few years but very few got anywhere because the industry is very resistant to change. The key to winning in this market would be to leap-frog legacy operating systems and improve customer-facing supply chain visibility and analytics.

Zencargo, the digital freight forwarder, thinks it may have the answer, and so do its investors. Today it announces its ‘seed plus’ round, led by London’s LocalGlobe, with participation from Samos Investments (founded by the Marquess of Salisbury) and Picus Capital, bringing total funds raised to over $4m.

The company works – which works with businesses ranging from high-growth scaleups to FTSE-listed businesses – will use the new funding to accelerate its product development process and build a presence in China.

The idea is simple and disruptive.

Zencargo makes it completely free for companies to digitise their supply chain. Its platform includes end-to-end visibility for shipments from purchase order to delivery, addressing the issue of fragmented suppliers and manual processes.

Instead of real offices, Zencargo’s customers utilise its “Virtual Local Offices” to gain visibility during production around the world.

Customers include wearable technology giant Catapult and mattress-in-a-box brand Simba. Catapult says it has used ZenCargo to expand its supply chain to over 50 countries, with 98% of all shipments arriving on time.

Tom Hook, supply chain and operations manager at Catapult, says Zencargo’s platform “helped us digitise our complete shipping operation overnight. Their technology acts like an extension of our team; helping to increase visibility into our supply chain, minimising the amount of admin and communication required and allowing us to focus on developing and improving the way we operate rather than continually chasing it.”

Richard Fattal, cofounder of Zencargo, says: “We’ve attracted a lot of fast-growing digital companies led by a new generation of business leaders. These are the kind of companies that are driving productivity growth in the UK and elsewhere and we are enjoying helping them operate with greater efficiency.”

The company was founded by Alex Hersham, Zencargo’s CEO, and Fattal, with CTO Jan Reithmeyer. Hersham worked for Cerberus Capital Management, a US Private Equity with $40bn under management, running the shipping business, buying and leasing ships back to the shipping lines. Richard is the third generation in his family to make a career in international trade; his grandfather owned a freight forwarding business and his father was a commodities trader.