Category: UNCATEGORIZED

AT&T is sweetening the deal on its Unlimited & More Premium plan this week, with the addition of free Spotify Premium. That amounts to a $10 a month savings for those paying the $80 a month for the wireless service. The plan offers one of seven free partner services, including HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, Starz, VRV, Pandora and now Spotify .

There’s fine print, because of course there is. The deal applies specifically to the Unlimited & More Premium plan, while other AT&T subscribers can get a six month trial of Premium for free. After that time, things revert to the regular price.

Existing Spotify Premium subscribers, meanwhile, can keep their account but get the service for free by signing up on all of the proper places on AT&T’s site.

The deal mirrors a similar partnership between Verizon and Apple Music, the services’ largest competitors, respectively. AT&T is currently the U.S.’s largest carrier by a slight edge. Spotify, meanwhile, continues to have a sizable advantage in paid subscriber numbers at more than 100 million, to Apple’s 60 million.

The online campaigning activities of the UK’s new prime minister, Boris Johnson, have already caught the eye of the country’s data protection watchdog.

Responding to concerns about the scope of data processing set out in the Conservative Party’s Privacy Policy being flagged to it by a Twitter user, the Information Commissioner’s Office replied that: “This is something we are aware of and we are making enquiries.”

The Privacy Policy is currently being attached to an online call to action that ask Brits to tell the party what the most “important issue” to them and their family is, alongside submitting their personal data.

Anyone sending their contact details to the party is also asked to pick from a pre-populated list of 18 issues the three most important to them. The list runs the gamut from the National Health Service to brexit, terrorism, the environment, housing, racism and animal welfare, to name a few. The online form also asks responders to select from a list how they voted at the last General Election — to help make the results “representative”. A final question asks which party they would vote for if a General Election were called today.

Speculation is rife in the UK right now that Johnson, who only became PM two weeks ago, is already preparing for a general election. His minority government has been reduced to a majority of just one MP after the party lost a by-election to the Liberal Democrats last week, even as an October 31 brexit-related deadline fast approaches.

People who submit their personal data to the Conservative’s online survey are also asked to share it with friends with “strong views about the issues”, via social sharing buttons for Facebook and Twitter or email.

“By clicking Submit, I agree to the Conservative Party using the information I provide to keep me updated via email, online advertisements and direct mail about the Party’s campaigns and opportunities to get involved,” runs a note under the initial ‘submit — and see more’ button, which also links to the Privacy Policy “for more information”.

If you click through to the Privacy Policy will find a laundry list of examples of types of data the party says it may collect about you — including what it describes as “opinions on topical issues”; “family connections”; “IP address, cookies and other technical information that you may share when you interact with our website”; and “commercially available data – such as consumer, lifestyle, household and behavioural data”.

“We may also collect special categories of information such as: Political Opinions; Voting intentions; Racial or ethnic origin; Religious views,” it further notes, and it goes on to claim its legal basis for processing this type of sensitive data is for supporting and promoting “democratic engagement and our legitimate interest to understand the electorate and identify Conservative supporters”.

Third party sources for acquiring data to feed its political campaigning activity listed in the policy include “social media platforms, where you have made the information public, or you have made the information available in a social media forum run by the Party” and “commercial organisations”, as well as “publicly accessible sources or other public records”.

“We collect data with the intention of using it primarily for political activities,” the policy adds, without specifying examples of what else people’s data might be used for.

It goes on to state that harvested personal data will be combined with other sources of data (including commercially available data) to profile voters — and “make a prediction about your lifestyle and habits”.

This processing will in turn be used to determine whether or not to send a voter campaign materials and, if so, to tailor the messages contained within it. 

In a nutshell this is describing social media microtargeting, such as Facebook ads, but for political purposes; a still unregulated practice that the UK’s information commissioner warned a year ago risks undermining trust in democracy.

Last year Elizabeth Denham went so far as to call for an ‘ethical pause’ in the use of microtargeting tools for political campaigning purposes. But, a quick glance at Facebook’s Ad Library Archive — which it launched in response to concerns about the lack of transparency around political ads on its platform, saying it will imprints of ads sent by political parties for up to seven years — the polar opposite has happened.

Since last year’s warning about democratic processes being undermined by big data mining social media platforms, the ICO has also warned that behavioral ad targeting does not comply with European privacy law. (Though it said it will give the industry time to amend its practices rather than step in to protect people’s rights right now.)

Denham has also been calling for a code of conduct to ensure voters understand how and why they’re being targeted with customized political messages, telling a parliamentary committee enquiry investigating online disinformation early last year that the use of such tools “may have got ahead of where the law is” — and that the chain of entities involved in passing around voters’ data for the purposes of profiling is “much too opaque”.

“I think it might be time for a code of conduct so that everybody is on a level playing field and knows what the rules are,” she said in March 2018, adding that the use of analytics and algorithms to make decisions about the microtargeting of voters “might not have transparency and the law behind them.”

The DCMS later urged government to fast-track changes to electoral law to reflect the use of powerful new voter targeting technologies — including calling for a total ban on microtargeting political ads at so-called ‘lookalike’ audiences online.

The government, then led by Theresa May, gave little heed to the committee’s recommendations.

And from the moment he arrived in Number 10 Downing Street last month, after winning a leadership vote of the Conservative Party’s membership, new prime minister Johnson began running scores of Facebook ads to test voter opinion.

Sky News reported that the Conservative Party ran 280 ads on Facebook platforms on the PM’s first full day in office. At the time of writing the party is still ploughing money into Facebook ads, per Facebook’s Ad Library Archive — shelling out £25,270 in the past seven days alone to run 2,464 ads, per Facebook’s Ad Library Report, which makes it by far the biggest UK advertiser by spend for the period.

The Tories’ latest crop of Facebook ads contain another call to action — this time regarding a Johnson pledge to put 20,000 more police officers on the streets. Any Facebook users who clicks the embedded link is redirected to a Conservative Party webpage described as a ‘New police locator’, which informs them: “We’re recruiting 20,000 new police officers, starting right now. Want to see more police in your area? Put your postcode in to let Boris know.”

But anyone who inputs their personal data into this online form will also be letting the Conservatives know a lot more about them than just that they want more police on their local beat. In small print the website notes that those clicking submit are also agreeing to the party processing their data for its full suite of campaign purposes — as contained in the expansive terms of its Privacy Policy mentioned above.

So, basically, it’s another data grab…

Political microtargeting was of course core to the online modus operandi of the disgraced political data firm, Cambridge Analytica, which infamously paid an app developer to harvest the personal data of millions of Facebook users back in 2014 without their knowledge or consent — in that case using a quiz app wrapper and Facebook’s lack of any enforcement of its platform terms to grab data on millions of voters.

Cambridge Analytica paid data scientists to turn this cache of social media signals into psychological profiles which they matched to public voter register lists — to try to identify the most persuadable voters in key US swing states and bombard them with political messaging on behalf of their client, Donald Trump.

Much like the Conservative Party is doing, Cambridge Analytica sourced data from commercial partners — in its case claiming to have licensed millions of data points from data broker giants such as Acxiom, Experian, Infogroup. (The Conservatives’ privacy policy does not specify which brokers it pays to acquire voter data.)

Aside from data, what’s key to this type of digital political campaigning is the ability, afforded by Facebook’s ad platform, for advertisers to target messages at what are referred to as ‘lookalike audience’ — and do so cheaply and at vast scale. Essentially, Facebook provides its own pervasive surveillance of the 2.2BN+ users on its platforms as a commercial service, letting advertisers pay to identify and target other people with a similar social media usage profile to those whose contact details they already hold, by uploading their details to Facebook.

This means a political party can data-mine its own supporter base to identify the messages that resonant best with different groups within that base, and then flip all that profiling around — using Facebook to dart ads at people who may never in their life have clicked ‘Submit — and see more‘ on a Tory webpage but who happen to share a similar social media profile to others in the party’s target database.

Facebook users currently have no way of blocking being targeted by political advertisers on Facebook, nor indeed no way to generally switch off microtargeted ads which use personal data to select marketing messages.

That’s the core ethical concern in play when Denham talks about the vital need for voters in a democracy to have transparency and control over what’s done with their personal data. “Without a high level of transparency – and therefore trust amongst citizens that their data is being used appropriately – we are at risk of developing a system of voter surveillance by default,” she warned last year.

However the Conservative Party’s privacy policy sidesteps any concerns about its use of microtargeting, with the breeze claim that: “We have determined that this kind of automation and profiling does not create legal or significant effects for you. Nor does it affect the legal rights that you have over your data.”

The software the party is using for online campaigning appears to be NationBuilder: A campaign management software developed in the US a decade ago — which has also been used by the Trump campaign and by both sides of the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign (to name a few of its many clients).

Its privacy policy shares the same format and much of the same language as one used by the Scottish National Party’s yes campaign during Scotland’s independence reference, for instance. (The SNP was an early user of NationBuilder to link social media campaigning to a new web platform in 2011, before going on to secure a majority in the Scottish parliament.)

So the Conservatives are by no means the only UK political entity to be dipping their hands in the cookie jar of social media data. Although they are the governing party right now.

Indeed, a report by the ICO last fall essentially called out all UK political parties for misusing people’s data.

Issues “of particular concern” the regulator raised in that report were:

• the purchasing of marketing lists and lifestyle information from data brokers without sufficient due diligence around those brokers and the degree to which the data has been properly gathered and consented to;
• a lack of fair processing information;
• the use of third-party data analytics companies with insufficient checks that those companies have obtained correct consents for use of data for that purpose;
• assuming ethnicity and/or age and combining this with electoral data sets they hold, raising concerns about data accuracy;
• the provision of contact lists of members to social media companies without appropriate fair processing information and collation of social media with membership lists without adequate privacy assessments

The ICO issued formal warnings to 11 political parties at that time, including warning the Conservative Party about its use of people’s data.

The regulator also said it would commence audits of all 11 parties starting in January. It’s not clear how far along it’s got with that process. We’ve reached out to it with questions.

Last year the Conservative Party quietly discontinued use of a different digital campaign tool for activists, which it had licensed from a US-based add developer called uCampaign. That tool had also been used in US by Republican campaigns including Trump’s.

As we reported last year the Conservative Campaigner app, which was intended for use by party activists, linked to the developer’s own privacy policy — which included clauses granting uCampaign very liberal rights to share app users’ data, with “other organizations, groups, causes, campaigns, political organizations, and our clients that we believe have similar viewpoints, principles or objectives as us”.

Any users of the app who uploaded their phone’s address book were also handing their friends’ data straight to uCampaign to also do as it wished. A few months late, after the Conservative Campaigner app vanished from apps stores, a note was put up online claiming the company was no longer supporting clients in Europe.

Huawei has almost certainly been working on a software contingency plan for some time now, prepping for a worst case scenario. When the U.S. announced that it was blacklisting the Chinese hardware giant earlier this year, those plans were likely accelerated.

One of the things that’s still unclear, however, is what role the company’s Hongmeng OS will fill. Recent reports have suggested that the operating system was built for IoT and other industrial applications. However, the software may also be forked specifically to run on low-end mobile devices.

State-run media outlet Global Times issued a report based on sources this morning suggesting that Hongmeng could appear on a low-end phone later this year. The OS is clearly far less robust than Android in its current state, but could wind up on a new device priced at 2,000 yuan (~$290). The report adds that Huawei is set to reveal the operating system in full later that this week at its Developer Conference in Dongguan, China.

At present, Hongmeng doesn’t appear purpose-built to replace Google’s operating system, but Huawei is getting ready for the possibility of a future that completely cuts the company off from access to U.S.-built hardware and software. For the time being, at least, the company seems focused on continuing to use Android for its high-end flagships, while potentially building out Hongmeng on more entry-level devices.

Wear OS’s struggles have not been the result of a lack of trying from all parties. Google’s been trying in earnest to break into the wearables game for several years, and in spite of some high profile hardware partners, the company has failed to make a dent.

At this point it’s honestly tough to get too excited about a new Fossil smartwatch, but who knows, perhaps we’ve achieved a kind of critical mass this time out. After all, Google plunked down $40 million in January to puck up a chunk of Fossil’s smartwatch R&D — including a device it was currently working on.

That, one imagines, is the Gen 5 that Fossil just announced. The devices arrives in the wake of Qualcomm’s big wearables push with the Snapdragon Wear 3100 chip used in this device, along with some new arrives for Google’s wearable operating system.

So, what does this all mean? Fossil, Google and Qualcomm are all powerhouses in their respective fields, but the trio have a tough road ahead of them. Apple continues to utterly dominate the smartwatch space. Fitbit has made an interesting push of late, even if the last go ‘round was a bit disappointing from a feature and sales perspective. Beyond that, it will be fight for the remainder of the field with the likes of Samsung and Garmin.

Google Assistant is clearly an important part of the push. A new swim proof speaker brings the ability to hear back responses and lets users take calls and get audible alerts. There’s a digital cardiogram on-board, highlighting the company’s attempt to compete with the likes of Fitbit and Apple on the health front, with the ability to monitor for different conditions like diabetes and sleep apnea.

Fossil has also developed a new battery mode that tunes out certain power-draining features in order to extend life to days at a time on a charge. Wear OS’s new Tiles feature, meanwhile, offers easy access to information at a glance.

Design-wise it’s fairly nice — simple but strong. Pretty much what you’d you’d expect out of Fossil, these days.

The new watch is only available in a 44mm version, however, which honestly is a pretty big missed opportunity, as the company is cutting out a large potential market. It’s available starting today at $295.

I didn’t hide my disappointment very well when I saw that Samsung had killed the mechanical spinning bezel for the original Watch Active. Samsung’s watches have been pretty solid in recent years, providing one of the stronger Apple Watch alternatives, especially in the days before Fitbit launched the Versa.

And while I’ve preferred their more minimalist designs (the Gear S2 was a particular high-water mark from that standpoint), the spinning bezel as a navigation device has long been the Tizen watch’s best feature, outshining Apple’s crown.

Announced this morning, the Active 2 addresses the issue — somewhat. The mechanical spinning is still gone, but the company has incorporated haptic feedback into the edges, given a kind of approximation turning the piece. I tried it. It feels okay, assuming it’s a cost-cutting measure. But there’s a certain satisfaction in twisting the older bezel that’s lacking.

Here’s hoping it’s not a design the company plans to implement across the board. Though the company referring to the new version as a “brand new upgrade” doesn’t give me a lot of hope for the poor bezel’s future.

Interestingly, the Galaxy Watch Active 2 isn’t designed to replace either the standard Galaxy Watch or the original Watch Active, which was introduced less than six months back. Rather, it’s a mid-tier device that slots between the two.

I do appreciate the relative minimalism of design. It’s better looking and more comfortable than the bulkier Galaxy Watch. And with 40 and 44 millimeter options, it should fit on a fairly broad range of different wrists.

Among the more interesting additions on the software side is My Style, an addition to the app that takes a photo of what you’re wearing and adjusts the color of the face to match accordingly, coupled with one of five different patterns.

Health is, as ever, an important piece. Heck, it’s right there in the name. Of the 39 different workouts, seven are auto-activated, while a new Running Coach feature offers motivation. There’s also guided meditation and stress level tracking. Interestingly, the handset has the hardware for tracking ECG/EKG, but the functionality won’t be available at launch. Samsung wants to do some opt-in data tracking first, but I suspect a lack of FDA approval also played a role there.

The Active 2 will be available September 27 at $280 for the 40mm version and $300 for the 40mm. Pre-orders start Tuesday. There’s also an LTE version coming in September, with pricing still TBD.

Monzo, the fast-growing challenger U.K. challenger bank that recently soft-launched in the U.S., is disclosing a potential, albeit relatively limited, security oversight that saw customer PINs stored incorrectly within the company’s internal systems.

Discovered on Friday, the “bug” has now been squashed after being spotted by one of Monzo’s security engineers, co-founder and CEO Tom Blomfield told me on a call just a few moments ago. He said that even though an audit hasn’t surfaced any fraud as a result, the upstart bank was emailing affected customers to inform them what had happened and to advise that they change their PIN, because being totally transparent “is the right thing to do”.

In a blog post just published, Monzo provides the following context for the bug, including who could access customer app PINs as a result:

We ask for your PIN whenever you want to make a payment, or do anything else that’s sensitive on your Monzo account.

And as your bank, we keep a record of your PIN so we can check you’ve entered it correctly. We store them in a particularly secure part of our systems, and tightly control who at Monzo can access them.

On Friday 2nd August, we discovered that we’d also been recording some people’s PINs in a different part of our internal systems (in encrypted log files). Engineers at Monzo have access to these log files as part of their job.

Monzo says it has since deleted the PIN information that was stored in this way, and that by 5:25am on Saturday morning, it had released updates to the Monzo apps. “Over the weekend, we then worked to delete the information that we’d stored incorrectly, which we finished on Monday morning,” writes the bank.

Next step: emailing the half a million customers affected, less than a fifth of U.K. Monzo customers.

“If we’ve contacted you to tell you that you’ve been affected, you should head to a cash machine to change your PIN to a new number as a precaution,” advises Monzo. “You can do this by putting your Monzo card into the cash machine, entering your old PIN and choosing ‘PIN services’. Then choose ‘Select a new PIN’ and change it to a new number”.

If goes without saying that if you are a Monzo user and spot anything unusual on your account, you should get in touch with Monzo immediately via in-app chat or by calling the phone number listed on your Monzo debit card.

More to follow…

Mesosphere was born as the commercial face of the open source Mesos project. It was surely a clever solution to make virtual machines run much more efficiently, but times change and companies change. Today the company announced it was changing its name to Day2IQ or D2IQ for short, and fixing its sights on Kubernetes and cloud native, which have grown quickly in the years since Mesos appeared on the scene.

D2IQ CEO Mike Fey says that the name reflects the company’s new approach. Instead of focusing entirely on the Mesos project, it wants to concentrate on helping more mature organizations adopt cloud native technologies.

“We felt like the Mesosphere name was somewhat of constrictive. It made statements about the company that really allocated us to a given technology, instead of to our core mission, which is supporting successful Day Two operations, making cloud native a viable approach not just for the early adopters, but for everybody,” Fey explained.

Fey is careful to point out that the company will continue to support the Mesos-driven DC/OS solution, but the general focus of the company has shifted, and the new name is meant to illustrate that. “The Mesos product line is still doing well, and there are things that it does that nothing else can deliver on yet. So we’re not abandoning that totally, but we do see that Kubernetes is very powerful, and the community behind it is amazing, and we want to be a value added member of that community,” he said.

He adds that this is not about jumping on the cloud native bandwagon all of a sudden. He points out his company has had a Kubernetes product for more than a year running on top of DC/OS, and it has been a contributing member to the cloud native community.

It’s not just about a name change and refocusing the company and the brand, it also involves several new cloud native products that the company has built to serve the type of audience, the more mature organization, that the new name was inspired by.

For starters, it’s introducing its own flavor of Kubernetes called Konvoy, which it says, provides an “enterprise-grade Kubernetes experience.” The company will also provide a support and training layer, which it believes is a key missing piece, and one that is required by larger organizations looking to move to cloud native.

In addition, it is offering a data integration layer, which is designed to help integrate large amounts of data in a cloud-native fashion. To that end, it is introducing a Beta of Kudo, an open source cloud-native tool for building stateful operations in Kubernetes. The company has already donated this tool to the Cloud Native Computing foundation, the open source organization that houses Kubernetes and other cloud native projects.

The company faces stiff competition in this space from some heavy hitters like the newly combined IBM and Red Hat, but it believes by adhering to a strong open source ethos, it can move beyond its Mesos roots to become a player in the cloud native space. Time will tell if it made a good bet.

The boards of Just Eat and Takeaway.com have reached agreement to combine their two European food delivery businesses.

The pair of publicly listed companies announced they were in talks to combine their businesses a week ago, saying then that talks were at an advanced stage.

Today they said their boards have reached agreement on the terms of “a recommended all-share combination”, and both will be recommending unanimously that shareholders vote in favor of the merger at respective meetings.

Meetings to seek shareholder approval are to be held no later than 20 December, and the pair say they expect the merger to be completed in Q4, assuming shareholders give the green light.

“The Combination would create one of the largest food delivery companies in the world, with scale, strategic vision, industry-leading capabilities, leading positions in attractive markets and a diversified geographic presence,” they write in today’s note, adding that the merger has “compelling strategic logic” and represents “an attractive opportunity” for both to build on “the strong individual platforms of Just Eat and Takeaway.com with the potential to deliver substantial benefits to respective shareholders, consumers,  employees and other stakeholders”.

Commenting in a statement, Jitse Groen, CEO of Takeaway.com, also said: “The Combination of Just Eat and Takeaway.com creates one of the world’s largest and most powerful food delivery websites. It will become a formidable company that will make an impact on tens of millions of consumers across the globe; it will be at the forefront of product and tech development in the sector, and it will lead the way in its relationship with its consumers, restaurant partners, its staff, and its delivery drivers. It is a dreamed combination, created by the sector’s dream team, and I can only be grateful for the opportunity of leading it.”

In another supporting statement, Just Eat’s chairman Mike Evans added: “The Board believes that this is a compelling offer for Just Eat shareholders which will create a global leader in a dynamic and rapidly growing sector. Our businesses have a shared philosophy and culture, and together we will create one of the world’s largest online food delivery platforms with leading positions in key markets. With a significant commitment to the UK and to the employees of Just Eat, we believe the new combination and proven leadership team will allow us to better serve our millions of consumers and thousands of restaurant partners around the world. Just Eat will be a driving force in the creation of an exciting global leader and I am looking forward to working with Jitse and the talented Takeaway.com team to seize this opportunity together.”

Under the agreed terms, Just Eat shareholders will be entitled to receive 0.09744 Takeaway.com shares for each Just Eat share which they state implies a value for Just Eat of 731 pence per Just Eat share based on Takeaway.com’s closing share price on 26 July 2019 of €83.55 — representing a premium of 15% to Just Eat’s closing share price on 26 July 2019 (ahead head of the announcement of the merger talks).

While, following completion, Just Eat Shareholders will own approximately 52.15% and Takeaway.com Shareholders will own approximately 47.85% of the combined group — which is set to be called Just Eat Takeaway.com N.V., and will be headquartered in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands.

The pair say the current intention is to maintain “a number” of Just Eat’s current headquarter functions in London (they do not state how many or which), and “a significant part of its operations in the United Kingdom, including its existing operations in London, Borehamwood and Bristol”.

“A full assessment of the Combined Group’s other locations has not yet been conducted, and as a result, there are no specific plans in relation to these other locations,” they add.

A two-tier board structure is planned for the merged entity, with a management board and supervisory board, both of which will comprise a mix of members from the Takeaway.com boards and from the Just Eat board — including current Takeaway.com CEO Groen assuming the role of CEO of the combined group and Paul Harrison, the current CFO of Just Eat, taking up the CFO role for the merged entity, while Takeaway.com’s current CFO, Brent Wissink, will become co-COO of the combined group, along with Takeaway.com’s current COO Jörg Gerbig.

For the supervisory board, the plan is for current Just Eat chairman Evans to take the chairman role, while Adriaan Nühn, currently the chairman of the Takeaway.com supervisory board, will be vice-chairman and senior independent non-executive director.

The supervisory board will also comprise three independent non-executive members identified by Just Eat and two non-executive members identified by Takeaway.com.

The pair say approval will be sought for the listing and admission to trading of the enlarged share capital of the Combined Group on the Premium Segment of the London Stock Exchange’s Main Market for listed securities; and of the new Takeaway.com shares on Euronext Amsterdam; and inclusion of the Combined Group in the FTSE 100 Index and FTSE All-Share Index.

“Based on initial discussions with FTSE, Takeaway.com and Just Eat anticipate that the Combined Group would be eligible for inclusion in the FTSE 100 Index and the FTSE All-Share Index from completion of the Combination,” they add.

Sonderangebot! That sounds like a super-cool robotics startup you’d find at Disrupt Berlin 2019, right? But it’s German for special offer — and that’s super cool, too. Our premier tech conference takes place on 11-12 December, and we want to make attending Disrupt Berlin as easy on the budget as possible. Hence, our buy-now-pay-later Sonderangebot!

It’s our super early-bird season and, depending on which Disrupt Berlin pass you buy, you can save up to €600. But now you have the option to stretch your payments over four months and avoid an upfront layout of your hard-earned cash. Buy your passes here.

Here’s how our buy-now-pay-later installment plan works. Follow the normal process to purchase your pass. When it comes time to pay, select the payment plan option. You pay 25% of the pass price (plus fees) now and then pay off the remaining balance in three equal monthly payments.

Note: Discounted student, government or nonprofit Innovator passes do not qualify for payment installments.

Want to bring your whole team to Disrupt Berlin? Combine the buy-now-pay-later option with our group discounts for even more bottom-line comfort.

Perhaps you’re keen to introduce your early-stage startup to 3,000+ attendees — from more than 50 countries — as they stream through our exhibit hall. Yes? Then scoop up a super early-bird Startup Alley Exhibitor Package for €745 + VAT and yes, you can take advantage of the payment plan option.

Whatever startup role describes you — founder, investor, industry leader, developer or technologist — you can lock in your pass price and experience all the excitement and action of Disrupt Berlin 2019. Dive into two full days of hands-on workshops, product demonstrations, top-notch speakers, moderated Q&A sessions and world-class networking.

We’ll announce more exciting news in the weeks ahead — like how you can apply to compete in Startup Battlefield or earn a coveted spot as a TC Top Pick and exhibit in Startup Alley for free. Join our mailing list to stay in the loop.

We’re in the process of building our roster of Disrupt Berlin speakers, and TechCrunch editors want to hear your recommendations. Opportunities are limited, so submit your suggestions as soon as possible. The team reviews submissions on a rolling basis and when they’ve reviewed yours, you’ll receive the editorial decision by email.

Disrupt Berlin 2019 takes place on 11-12 December, and you can give your budget breathing room with our buy-now-pay-later installment plan. Buy your passes, take advantage of this Sonderangebot, and we’ll see you in Berlin!

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt Berlin 2019? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

Fever, a startup that uses proprietary algorithms to help companies plan events, announced today that it has raised $35 million led by Rakuten Capital, the investment arm of Japanese internet giant Rakuten . Other investors in the round, which brings Fever’s total raised to $70 million, included Atresmedia, Accel and Michael Zeisser, the former chairman of U.S. investments for Alibaba Group. Zeisser will also join Fever’s board.

Based in Madrid and London, Fever’s app generates personalized events listings for users and feeds into its Secret Media Network, which also collects user data from the company’s social media channel. The anonymized data is then analyzed using Fever’s algorithms to help companies plan events like “The Alice in Wonderland MaddHatter G&T” in Hollywood, the Halloween-theme “House of Spirits in Los Angeles and “Candlelight Concerts,” classical music shows aimed at young audiences.

The company now claims 25 million unique users per month across its main markets in London, New York, Paris and Madrid, and plans to use its new funding to expand into new cities.

In an email, Fever CEO Ignacio Bachiller told TechCrunch that Fever plans to expand into Chicago and Barcelona next (it launched in Paris, Los Angeles, Lisbon and Manchester last year). Then it will launch in new markets every couple of months, mostly in the United States and Europe this year and also in Asia next year. He added that one way Fever differentiates from other event discovery platforms is that it does not focus on discount-driven events and that there is no other platform currently “using firsthand discovery behavioral data to inform what new experiences to create by predicting demand. Basically, there is no Netflix for experiences.”

Bachiller also says that Fever may potentially collaborate with other Rakuten portfolio companies to help SMBs increase engagement with their customers.