Author: azeeadmin

I hate LinkedIn. I open it out of habit and accept everyone who adds me because I don’t know why I wouldn’t. There is no clear benefit to the social network. I’ve never met a recruiter on there. I’ve never gotten a job. The only messages I get are spam from offshore dev teams and crypto announcements. It’s like Facebook without the benefit of maybe seeing a picture of someone’s award-winning chili or dog.

I understand that I’m using LinkedIn wrong. I understand I should cultivate a salon-like list of contacts that I can use to source stories and meet interesting people. But I have my own story-sourcing tools and my own contacts. It’s not even good as a broadcast medium. I have 16,000 connections. I posted this story on LinkedIn and on Medium. It’s a post about how to write a book. If the spammers on LinkedIn would have loved to learn something from a writer, I suspected that would have been it. But no. Check out these read counts:

LinkedIn is a spam garden full of misspelled, grunty requests from international software houses that are looking, primarily, to sell you services. Because it’s LinkedIn it’s super easy to slip past any and all defenses against this spam and so I get messages like these:

[gallery ids="1708969,1708970,1708971,1708972,1708973"]

I don’t know this for sure but I think that somewhere out there is a self-help book about networking that tells introverted desk jockeys to fill their conversations with canned junk. Gail, above, seems nice enough and he’s been doing a really nice job keeping up with all of my anniversaries. But why? What did it get him? Maybe I’ll meet him at a conference and he’ll be able to use it as a point of connection. That might be cool, but I doubt it will happen.

I know people have used LinkedIn to find jobs. I never have. I know people use LinkedIn to sell products. It’s never worked for me. Guys like my buddy Lewis Howes have used it to create mass followings but now Lewis is mostly showing up on Facebook and not LinkedIn. In short, I know people like LinkedIn.

I think it’s hot vomit in a paper bag.

How would I like LinkedIn to be used? Want to see the best pitch I ever got in that dead drop sewer? It’s right here:

Bang.

That’s the best exchange I’ve had on LinkedIn in years. I mean the very best. It’s one that I replied to kindly and with interest. Why? Because I wasn’t someone’s cheery spam message. It was a question that I could help with.

That’s it. It’s an actual conversation. Someone says “Hey, I need help” and the response is a quick “What’s up?” Someone on Twitter said that this exchange stroked my ego. Sure. Why not. But it was also the most human interaction I’ve had on LinkedIn in years.

Rather than get into that, however, I’d like to explain how to pitch someone like me — a busy journalist and entrepreneur who treats LinkedIn like a whack-a-mole weekly chore that has become more a bad habit than necessity.

As I’ve said before and will say forever: selling and PR and gathering customers is about being a human. Want to approach me on Twitter? You say “Hey, I have a question,” you ask it when prompted, and you wait for a response. Sometimes it never comes. You move on. A lot of folks have said they prefer a full chunk of text when the get spammed on services but I disagree. I get enough of that in email. I get enough of that everywhere else online. If you’re going to network with me (or anyone else who is equally cranky) you’re going to have to try something different. You’re going to have to try to be human.

So next time you’re encouraged to Control-V in some copypasta about your business, don’t. Next time you think it might be a good idea to say “Congragulations on fifteen years at Scrablr!” maybe take another tack. LinkedIn isn’t a game. It isn’t an alternative to MailChimp. It’s a conversational tool. Use it that way.

VinFast, Vietnam’s new (and only) automaker, turned to its citizens to decide what its inaugural vehicles should look like. Now, VinFast is sharing the first images of the final product — a sedan and SUV that will debut October 2 at the Paris Motor Show.

The vehicles were officially designed by Italian company Pininfarina, which collaborated with VinFast. Before the design process started in earnest, VinFast took 20 sketches from four Italian car design houses and let the public vote on their favorite in a nationwide poll that attracted 62,000 people. The images below are the ultimate fruits of that early voting on what styling direction VinFast should take.

Both vehicles have a prominent chrome “V” in the center of the grille and LED daytime running lights that create an italicized F-motif. The premium sedan has a long hood and horizontal body lines, while the SUV has a more muscular-looking hood.

VinFast, a unit of Vietnam’s biggest private conglomerate Vingroup JS, has a bit of General Motors DNA. GM sold its Vietnam operations to VinFast earlier this year. Under the agreement, VinFast took ownership of GM’s Hanoi plant and has distribution rights of GM’s Chevrolet brand in Vietnam.

VinFast, whose CEO Jim DeLuca is a former GM executive, will use the plant to produce its own developed vehicles, in addition to a planned plant in Hai Phong. Construction on the Hai Phong factory began in 2017.

Sales of the sedan and SUV are expected to begin in September 2019. The automaker has plans to produce a range of passenger cars and electric scooters, some of which will be exported to foreign markets in the future.

Two hundred and fifty million people are using Pinterest every month, up from 200 million last September, according to new numbers the company shared this morning. The visual search giant is also reporting that more than half of its users and 80 percent of new sign-ups come from outside the U.S.

“Pins,” or items saved to the site, are growing, too. There are now 175 billion of them, a 75 percent increase YoY.

To facilitate that growth, Pinterest has been on a hiring spree. It now has more than 1,500 employees, a 32 percent increase from last year.

The company has secured more than $1 billion in venture capital funding, most recently raising $150 million at a $12.3 billion valuation. Many expected it would make its highly anticipated public debut in early 2018, but that ship has sailed at this point. Now, reports indicate Pinterest is looking at a mid-2019 IPO and expects to reach $1 billion in annual revenue for the first time.

Those numbers should help it garner support on Wall Street, as will this nugget: The part of Pinterest that includes items for purchase on retailer sites is the fastest growing part of the platform, up 115 percent in the last year. The company’s key sell to VCs has been that its visual search tool converts users to buyers, but with Instagram going full speed ahead as an e-commerce platform, it will take data points like that one to convince investors it’s worthy of that $12.3 billion valuation.

Pinterest has been busy expanding as it presumably gears up for an IPO. In March, it introduced the following tab, where users could view only the content from brands and people they follow. It also added the Pinterest Propel program as part of an effort to create more local content for its users. And it implemented full-screen video ads to beef up its advertising options — an area where it competes directly with Facebook and Google.

Wednesday is Apple’s big product release day, where analysts expect the company to release the next edition of the iPhone. While the usual upgrades to the screen, CPU, and storage are expected as always, one major lingering question is how the company is going to handle 5G, the next-generation telecommunications standard.

The conventional wisdom among analysts is that Apple will ignore 5G in 2018 and 2019 just as it took extra time to rollout 3G and 4G chipsets in its phones. A typical example of this analysis comes from Chris Smith at BGR, who says that “We already saw what Apple did when 4G LTE came out. The company waited for carriers actually to offer decent coverage before launching the first 4G iPhone. That was the iPhone 5, by the way, which launched more than a year after the first Android-based LTE phones came out.”

I’m not nearly as convinced. There are many reasons for Apple to ignore the tech this year, which I will get to in a moment, but one major factor could drive an earlier discussion of 5G than expected: Apple’s growth markets, particularly in China.

China is becoming one of Apple’s most important markets for its smartphones, and particularly for its flagship iPhone X. It’s greater China revenue in the third quarter of this year was $9.6 billion, and its operating income from the region was just shy of Europe’s. More importantly, greater China is just slightly behind the Americas as the fastest-growing region for Apple’s sales.

That makes 5G a particularly challenging issue for the company. China has made 5G leadership a critical pillar of its industrial strategy, and many analysts believe the country will set the pace for 5G rollouts globally. Furthermore, Chinese consumers are deeply interested in buying premium products and experiences, and adoption for 5G is expected to be strong and rapid.

With the technical specifications around the 5G standard complete, companies are racing to build the chipsets and deploy the infrastructure necessary to enable this new standard in smartphones and other devices. Early networks are expected to be deployed in 2019, and chipset maker Qualcomm has publicly unveiled more than a dozen handset manufacturers who are partnering with it on 5G. For instance, Vivo, a Chinese smartphone manufacturer, announced today that it was developing its first “pre-commercial 5G smartphones” for launch next year.

The speed and timing of the 5G rollout is awkward for Apple, which has traditionally timed its iPhone events for September. It almost certainly will make no announcements this week, but its next iPhone launch would likely be September 2019 — giving Chinese handset manufacturers with early 5G devices nearly exclusive access to the local market for the first three quarters of next year.

Apple would find itself falling behind its competitors in a fast-moving and critical growth market. While the company has built a brand in the country with devoted fans, its place in the market is not nearly as secure as in the U.S., particularly as the trade war between the two nations reaches a fevered pitch.

There’s no doubt that the challenges for Apple to include the technology are immense. First is the patent licensing cost, which Jeremy Horwitz at VentureBeat put at roughly $21 per device, up from around $9 for 4G. Second, the leading American company in 5G is believed to be Qualcomm, which Apple has been fighting in a long-running patent war, to the point that the company has been actively trying to remove Qualcomm equipment from its phones. Apple’s name was notably absent from Qualcomm’s 5G partner list.

While some early chip designs are available, they are hardly ready for primetime, and certainly not for a flagship phone like the iPhone X. Nor do I expect that Apple will imply on Wednesday that the company will support 5G in future releases and dampen enthusiasm for its newly-released devices. No one wants to be told that next year’s devices are going to be better than one released just minutes ago.

Instead, I expect Apple will use smoke signals to clearly demonstrate that it intends to remain at the cutting edge of 5G deployment. That could include joining certain industry trade groups, testing the technology in a more public fashion, and potentially releasing a roadmap next year, say at its Worldwide Developers Conference, which is traditionally held in June and thus earlier in the year than its September iPhone events.

What would be concerning though is if we get to the end of 2018 and into 2019 with nary a peep from the company about its plans for the technology. Given its commitment to China, as well as its leading position within the smartphone market, the company has to engage on the technologies around 5G in a public manner in order to prevent a loss in its competitive position.

Ultimately, much will depend on China Mobile and other telcos in China as well as around the world on how fast they can deploy 5G infrastructure (sadly, it looks increasingly like the U.S. faces a bumpy road in that direction). Beyond gold iPhone rumors, 5G may well be the first time that China drives the company’s product roadmaps, and it should be wary of finding itself on the defensive.

Facebook Lite, the social network’s product for people in areas with low connectivity or limited internet, is making Community Help available to people in more than 100 countries. Facebook Lite uses less data, and installs and loads faster than the standard Facebook app. Facebook Lite also works on lower-end devices and slower internet networks.

Facebook first launched Community Help last February to help people find and give help in the areas of food, shelter and transportation in the aftermath of natural disasters and building fires — two types of crises in which Safety Check would likely be activated.

“Our priority is to build tools that provide people with ways to get the help they need to recover and rebuild after a crisis,” Facebook Crisis Response Product Manager Jeong-Suh Choi said in a release. “By making Community Help available on Facebook Lite, event more people can get the help they need in times of crisis.”

This past February, Facebook beefed up its efforts to enable companies like Lyft, Chase, International Medical Corps and Save the Children to provide similar services to people in crisis.

Evaneos, the online marketplace for tailor-made travel experiences, has picked up $80 million in Series D funding. Leading the round is Partech, and Level Equity, with participation from Quadrille Capital, and existing backers XAnge, Serena Capital, and Bpifrance.

The injection of cash is to be used to international development, including increasing headcount from the current 180 employees. It brings total funding to around $108 million since being founded in 2009.

Competing primarily with traditional tour operators, Evaneos offers a marketplace for tailored travel experiences that claims to cut out the middle-person -– that is, the tour operators and major travel agencies -– by connecting travellers directly with a community of local travel agents. Through the site you can browse a range of holiday ideas, then contact a local agent living in the destination country to design a tailor-made itinerary.

The draw for consumers is more personalized travel experiences, while local agencies benefit from an additional source of direct revenue, retaining more income for the local economy. Evaneos counts 1,300 local partners based in 160 destinations, and says it aims to add another 500 in 2009.

The product is available in 9 European countries, and Evaneos name checks Germany, France, Italy, Spain & the U.K. as particularly competitive but where it is seeing most business. To date, more than 300,000 travellers have used Evaneos to create and book a trip.

Meanwhile, personalised travel remains a hot sector for investors. In June, TourRadar, the Vienna, Austria-headquartered online travel agency (OTA) that also targets the multi-day touring market, raised $50 million in Series C funding led by the Silicon Valley growth VC firm TCV.

Intel today is announcing another acquisition as it continues to pick up talent and IP to bolster its next generation of computing chips beyond legacy PCs. The company has acquired NetSpeed Systems, a startup that makes system-on-chip (SoC) design tools and interconnect fabric intellectual property (IP). The company will be joining Intel’s Silicon Engineering Group, and its co-founder and CEO, Sundari Mitra, herself an Intel vet, will be coming on as a VP at Intel where she will continue to lead her team.

Terms of the deal are not being disclosed, but for some context, during NetSpeed’s last fundraise in 2016 (a $10 million Series C) it had a post-money valuation of $60 million, according to data from PitchBook.

SoC is a central part of how newer connected devices are being made. Moving away from traditional motherboards to create all-in-one chips that include processing, memory, input/output and storage is an essential cornerstone when building ever-smaller and more effcient devices. This is an area where Intel is already active but against others like Nvidia and Qualcomm many believe it has some catching up to do, and so this acquisition in important in that context.

“Intel is designing more products with more specialized features than ever before, which is incredibly exciting for Intel architects and for our customers,” said Jim Keller, senior vice president and general manager of the Silicon Engineering Group at Intel, in a statement. “The challenge is synthesizing a broader set of IP blocks for optimal performance while reining in design time and cost. NetSpeed’s proven network-on-chip technology addresses this challenge, and we’re excited to now have their IP and expertise in-house.”

Intel has made a series of acquisitions to speed up development of newer chips to work in connected objects and smaller devices beyond the PCs that helped the company make its name. Another recent acquisition in the same vein include eASIC for IoT chipsets, which Intel acquired in July. Intel has also been acquiring startups in other areas where it hopes to make a bigger mark, such as deep learning (case in point: its acquisition of Movidius in August).

NetSpeed has been around since 2011 and Intel was one of its investors and customers.

“Intel has been a great customer of NetSpeed’s, and I’m thrilled to once again be joining the company,” said Mitra, in a statement. “Intel is world class at designing and optimizing the performance of custom silicon at scale. As part of Intel’s silicon engineering group, we’re excited to help invent new products that will be a foundation for computing’s future.”

Intel said it will to honor NetSpeed’s existing customer contracts, but it also sounds like it the company will not be seeking future business as Intel integrates the company into its bigger business.

False rumors forwarded on WhatsApp have led angry mobs to murder strangers in India, but the Facebook-owned chat app is still racing to add users in the country. Today it launched a feature phone version of WhatsApp for JioPhone 1 and 2’s KaiOS, which are designed to support 22 of India’s vast array of native languages. Users will be able to send text, photos, videos, and voice messages with end-to-end encryption, though it will lack advanced features like augmented reality and Snapchat Stories-style Status updates.

WhatsApp was supposed to launch alongside the JioPhone 2 that debuted last month for roughly $41, but was delayed. 40 million JioPhone 1s had already been sold. Coming to JioPhone should open up a big new growth vector for WhatsApp as it strives to grow its 1.5 billion user count towards the big 2 billion milestone. Meanwhile, it could make the Reliance-owned Jio mobile network more appealing. WhatsApp rolls out on the JioPhone AppStore today and should be available to everyone by September 20th.

WhatsApp has scrambled to safeguard its app after numerous reports of rumors circulated on its app about gangs and child abductors led angry mobs to kill people in the streets. Five nomads were recently beaten to death in a rural village called Rainpada after residents watched inaccurate videos forwarded through WhatsApp about kidnappers supposedly rolling through the area, BuzzFeed reports.

WhatsApp recently limited how many people you can forward a message to, and began a radio PSA campaign in Hindi on 46 India stations warning people to verify things they hear on WhatsApp before acting on them. But it’s clear that parent company Facebook still sees spreading WhatsApp as part of its mission to bring the world closer together, even as that comes at a cost.

Jio’s “transition” phones that offer a few third-party apps but not full-fledged smartphone capabilities, alongside its affordable mobile data, have significantly reduced the cost and friction of being online in India. But with that access comes newfound dangers, especially if not combined with news literacy and digital skills education that could help users spot false information before it sparks violence.

Increasingly the tech world is learning that connecting people to the Internet also means connecting them to the worst elements of humanity. That will necessitate a new wave of pessimists and cynics as product managers in order to predict and thwart ways to abuse software instead of allowing idealists to blindly build tools that can be weaponized.

Uber announced today that it has hired Coca-Cola veteran Rebecca Messina to serve as its chief marketing officer. Messina is the first person to hold that title at Uber and will work with its international marketing teams on Uber’s branding and marketing strategies.

Messina will oversee marketing for Uber as it gets ready for an initial public offering that is expected to take place next year. Messina’s appointment is another sign that Uber is building its roster for a stock market debut. Last month, it announced that Nelson J. Chai, former CEO of Warranty Group, will be its new chief financial officer after a long search.

Messina’s tasks include helping to repair Uber’s reputation, which is still smarting from last year’s upheaval, including the resignation of co-founder Travis Kalanick and accusations of a toxic work culture.

While Messina is the first person to hold the CMO title at Uber, Bozoma Saint John previously served as Uber’s first chief brand officer for about a year after joining in June 2017. At that point, Uber was in the midst of a crisis, including numerous reports about sexual harassment, that contributed to the resignation of co-founder Travis Kalanick as CEO. Saint John left Uber in June 2018 after being offered the chief marketing officer position at entertainment industry giant Endeavor.

Prior to joining Uber, Messina was global chief marketing officer at spirits company Beam Suntory, a position she had held since 2014. Before that, she spent 22 years at the Coca-Cola Company, where her last role was senior vice president of marketing and innovation for ventures and emerging brands.

In Uber’s announcement, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said “I’m thrilled to welcome Rebecca to Uber. She’s exactly the right leader to build our marketing efforts globally and to showcase the ways Uber is igniting opportunities for our customers around the world.”

In her own statement, Messina said “Joining Uber is a once in a lifetime opportunity and a true privilege. My focus has always been on three things: people, growth and brands. Uber checks all three boxes: a rapidly growing global business, with the opportunity to build an iconic brand alongside a team that’s committed to transforming the future of mobility. I couldn’t be more excited about what lies ahead.”