Category: UNCATEGORIZED

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos seems to be really hoping that his streaming service’s forthcoming ‘Lord of the Rings’ original series can match Game of Thrones in terms of fantasy hype. Now, thanks to Deadline, we know the person who will be in the director’s chair for the first couple episodes of this Bezos-beloved project: Juan Antonio (J.A.) Bayona.

Bayona’s last directorial credit is Hollywood blockbuster Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom, the most recent attempt to squeeze some more entertainment juice from the dinosaur film franchise. Before that, however, Bayona directed the critically acclaimed Spanish language film The Orphanage, as well as The Impossible and others.

Bayona will direct the first two episodes of the Amazon Studios Lord of the Rings project, which will take place before the events of The Fellowship of the Ring, the first book by J.R.R. Tolkien in the trilogy upon which the Peter Jackson feature films were based. Like the movies, Amazon’s show will be shot in New Zealand.

Bayona joins feature film writers JD Payne and Patrick McKay on the list of big-screen talent that will help try to ensure that Amazon’s series feels sufficiently epic.

Sophie Alcorn founded her own immigration-focused boutique law firm a few years ago, that has quickly become a go-to resource for founders and tech workers in the Bay Area and beyond.

While immigration paperwork acceptance rates have been dropping for immigration paperwork under tougher requirements set by the Trump Administration, especially for H-1Bs, Alcorn says her firm is able to get 95% through on H-1Bs, with higher rates for some visa types.

In the interview below, she shares some of the secrets of her success, as well as the challenges she’s overcome in the process of building her own company. You also can find dozens of quotes from satisfied clients at the end.

And, if you, a colleague or loved one is looking to immigrate, she also has written up an article for Extra Crunch that breaks down the wide range of visas that you can choose from. You can read it here. 

“I’ve been following a set of simple principles that have guided my work that were maybe overkill under the Obama Administration, but are leading to a really high success rate under the Trump Administration like really giving a shit about our clients, and what their goals are, and what their dreams are, and how immigration can be used as a tool to help them get from point A to point B.

And then that allows us to be more creative about the specific visa route that we want to pursue, and not taking shortcuts that other lawyers might take. Sometimes lawyers do a really skeletal bare bones job on the initial application knowing that they’ll get paid extra when there’s a request for more evidence from the government. We don’t do that.”

On her approach

“I’ve been following a set of simple principles that have guided my work that were maybe overkill under the Obama Administration, but are leading to a really high success rate under the Trump Administration like really giving a shit about our clients, and what their goals are, and what their dreams are, and how immigration can be used as a tool to help them get from point A to point B. And then that allows us to be more creative about the specific visa route that we want to pursue, and not taking shortcuts that other lawyers might take.”

On common startup mistakes

“Sometimes lawyers do a really skeletal bare-bones job on the initial application knowing that they’ll get paid extra when there’s a request for more evidence from the government. We don’t do that.”

Below, you’ll find the rest of the founder reviews, the full interview, and more details like pricing and fee structures. 

Click here to register for Extra Crunch, or log in here.

The immigration process in the U.S. has become a high-stakes undertaking for employers, workers, and entrepreneurs. Predictability has eroded. Processing times have soared. And any mistake or misstep now has dire consequences.

Over the past three years, immigration policies and procedures have been in a state of flux and the process has become more unforgiving for even the smallest mistakes. Putting your best foot forward is crucial. Employers and individuals need to formulate a long-term strategy and backup options to stay protected.

The increase in Requests for Evidence and the backlog for many visa and green card categories has meant longer waiting times. What’s more, the Trump administration’s recent decision to close all USCIS’s international offices—and shift that workload back to the U.S.—is expected to compound the backlogs and delays.

We are seeing these issues affect startups every day. My law firm works with hundreds of startups every year to help them and their employers figure out their immigration paperwork. The overall piece of advice we give is to decide on a specific goal based on a deep understanding of the company and the individual and by examining the options strategically.

Then, you can figure out the right approach for a visa, green card, or citizenship application. Regardless of my personal interest in the matter, now more than ever, I recommend consulting with an experienced immigration attorney who can handle the process with integrity, creativity, compassion, and rigor.

What employers should know

The new normal for immigration means increased employee recruiting and retention costs for employers. However, hiring immigrants remains possible.

App store spending is continuing to grow, although not as quickly as in years past. According to a new report from Sensor Tower, the iOS App Store and Google Play combined brought in $39.7 billion in worldwide app revenue in the first half of 2019 — that’s up 15.4% over the $34.4 billion seen during the first half of last year. However, at that time, the $34.4 billion was a 27.8% increase from 2017’s numbers, then a combined $26.9 billion across both stores.

Apple’s App Store continues to massively outpace Google Play on consumer spending, the report also found.

In the first half of 2019, global consumers spent $25.5 billion on the iOS App Store, up 13.2% year-over-year from the $22.6 billion spent in the first half of 2018. Last year, the growth in consumer spending was 26.8%, for comparison’s sake.

Still, Apple’s estimated $25.5 billion in the first half of 2019 is 80% higher than Google Play’s estimated gross revenue of $14.2 billion — the latter, a 19.6% increase from the first half of 2018.

The major factor in the slowing growth is iOS in China, which contributed to the slowdown in total growth. However, Sensor Tower expects to see China returning to positive growth over the next 12 months, we’re told.

To a smaller extent, the downturn could be attributed to changes with one of the top-earning apps across both app stores: Netflix.

Last year, Netflix dropped in-app subscription sign-ups for Android users. Then, at the end of December 2018, it did so for iOS users, too. That doesn’t immediately drop its revenue to zero, of course — it will continue to generate revenue from existing subscribers. But the number will decline, especially as Netflix expands globally without an in-app purchase option, and as lapsed subscribers return to renew online with Netflix directly.

In the first half of 2019, Netflix was the second highest-earning non-game app with consumer spending of $339 million, Sensor Tower estimates. (We should point out the firm bases its estimates on a 70/30 split between Netflix and Apple’s App Store that drops to 85/15 after the first year. To account for the mix of old and new subscribers, Sensor Tower factors in a 25% cut. But Daring Fireball’s John Gruber claims Netflix had a special relationship with Apple where it had an 85/15 cut from year one.)

In any event, Netflix’s contribution to the app stores’ revenue is on the decline.

In the first half of last year, Netflix had been the No. 1 non-game app for revenue. This year, that spot went to Tinder, which pulled in an estimated $497 million across the iOS App Store and Google Play, combined. That’s up 32% over the first half of 2018.

But Tinder’s dominance could be a trend that doesn’t last.

According to recent data from eMarketer, dating app audiences have been growing slower than expected, causing the analyst firm to revise its user estimates downward. It now expects that 25.1 million U.S. adults will use a dating app monthly this year, down from its previous forecast of 25.4 million. It also expects that only 21% of U.S. single adults will use a dating app at all in 2019, and that will only grow to 23% by 2023.

That means Tinder’s time at the top could be overrun by newcomers in later months, especially as new streaming services get off the ground (assuming they offer in-app subscriptions); if TikTok starts taking monetization seriously; or if any other large apps from China find global audiences outside of China’s third-party app stores.

For example, Tencent Video grossed $278 million globally in the first half of 2019, outside of the third-party Chinese Android app stores. That made it the third-largest non-game app by revenue. And Chinese video platform iQIYI and YouTube were the No. 4 and No. 5 top-grossing apps, respectively.

Meanwhile, iOS app installs actually declined in the first half of the year, following the first quarter that saw a decline in downloads, Q1 2019, attributed to the downturn in China.

The App Store in the first half of 2019 accounted for 14.8 billion of the total 56.7 billion app installs.

Google Play installs in the first half of the year grew 16.4% to 41.9 billion, or about 2.8 times greater than the iOS volume.

The most downloaded apps in the first half of 2019 were the same as before: WhatsApp, Messenger, and Facebook led the top charts. But TikTok inched ahead of Instagram for the No. 4 spot, and it saw its installs grow around 28% to nearly 344 million worldwide.

In terms of mobile gaming specifically, spending was up 11.3% year-over-year in the first half of 2019, reaching $29.6 billion across the iOS App Store and Google Play. Thanks to the fallout of the game licensing freeze in China, App Store revenue growth for games was at $17.6 billion, or 7.8% year-over-year growth. Google Play game spending grew by 16.8% to $12 billion.

The top-grossing games, in order, were Tencent’s Honor of Kings, Fate/Grand Order, Monster Strike, Candy Crush Saga, and PUBG Mobile.

Meanwhile, the most downloaded games were Color Bump 3D, Garena Free Fire, and PUBG Mobile.

Image credits: Sensor Tower

App store spending is continuing to grow, although not as quickly as in years past. According to a new report from Sensor Tower, the iOS App Store and Google Play combined brought in $39.7 billion in worldwide app revenue in the first half of 2019 — that’s up 15.4% over the $34.4 billion seen during the first half of last year. However, at that time, the $34.4 billion was a 27.8% increase from 2017’s numbers, then a combined $26.9 billion across both stores.

Apple’s App Store continues to massively outpace Google Play on consumer spending, the report also found.

In the first half of 2019, global consumers spent $25.5 billion on the iOS App Store, up 13.2% year-over-year from the $22.6 billion spent in the first half of 2018. Last year, the growth in consumer spending was 26.8%, for comparison’s sake.

Still, Apple’s estimated $25.5 billion in the first half of 2019 is 80% higher than Google Play’s estimated gross revenue of $14.2 billion — the latter, a 19.6% increase from the first half of 2018.

The major factor in the slowing growth is iOS in China, which contributed to the slowdown in total growth. However, Sensor Tower expects to see China returning to positive growth over the next 12 months, we’re told.

To a smaller extent, the downturn could be attributed to changes with one of the top-earning apps across both app stores: Netflix.

Last year, Netflix dropped in-app subscription sign-ups for Android users. Then, at the end of December 2018, it did so for iOS users, too. That doesn’t immediately drop its revenue to zero, of course — it will continue to generate revenue from existing subscribers. But the number will decline, especially as Netflix expands globally without an in-app purchase option, and as lapsed subscribers return to renew online with Netflix directly.

In the first half of 2019, Netflix was the second highest-earning non-game app with consumer spending of $339 million, Sensor Tower estimates. (We should point out the firm bases its estimates on a 70/30 split between Netflix and Apple’s App Store that drops to 85/15 after the first year. To account for the mix of old and new subscribers, Sensor Tower factors in a 25% cut. But Daring Fireball’s John Gruber claims Netflix had a special relationship with Apple where it had an 85/15 cut from year one.)

In any event, Netflix’s contribution to the app stores’ revenue is on the decline.

In the first half of last year, Netflix had been the No. 1 non-game app for revenue. This year, that spot went to Tinder, which pulled in an estimated $497 million across the iOS App Store and Google Play, combined. That’s up 32% over the first half of 2018.

But Tinder’s dominance could be a trend that doesn’t last.

According to recent data from eMarketer, dating app audiences have been growing slower than expected, causing the analyst firm to revise its user estimates downward. It now expects that 25.1 million U.S. adults will use a dating app monthly this year, down from its previous forecast of 25.4 million. It also expects that only 21% of U.S. single adults will use a dating app at all in 2019, and that will only grow to 23% by 2023.

That means Tinder’s time at the top could be overrun by newcomers in later months, especially as new streaming services get off the ground (assuming they offer in-app subscriptions); if TikTok starts taking monetization seriously; or if any other large apps from China find global audiences outside of China’s third-party app stores.

For example, Tencent Video grossed $278 million globally in the first half of 2019, outside of the third-party Chinese Android app stores. That made it the third-largest non-game app by revenue. And Chinese video platform iQIYI and YouTube were the No. 4 and No. 5 top-grossing apps, respectively.

Meanwhile, iOS app installs actually declined in the first half of the year, following the first quarter that saw a decline in downloads, Q1 2019, attributed to the downturn in China.

The App Store in the first half of 2019 accounted for 14.8 billion of the total 56.7 billion app installs.

Google Play installs in the first half of the year grew 16.4% to 41.9 billion, or about 2.8 times greater than the iOS volume.

The most downloaded apps in the first half of 2019 were the same as before: WhatsApp, Messenger, and Facebook led the top charts. But TikTok inched ahead of Instagram for the No. 4 spot, and it saw its installs grow around 28% to nearly 344 million worldwide.

In terms of mobile gaming specifically, spending was up 11.3% year-over-year in the first half of 2019, reaching $29.6 billion across the iOS App Store and Google Play. Thanks to the fallout of the game licensing freeze in China, App Store revenue growth for games was at $17.6 billion, or 7.8% year-over-year growth. Google Play game spending grew by 16.8% to $12 billion.

The top-grossing games, in order, were Tencent’s Honor of Kings, Fate/Grand Order, Monster Strike, Candy Crush Saga, and PUBG Mobile.

Meanwhile, the most downloaded games were Color Bump 3D, Garena Free Fire, and PUBG Mobile.

Image credits: Sensor Tower

Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, has enabled tens of millions of people — if not more — to come online for the first time with his disruptive telecom network. He has changed how many Indians, once thrifty about each megabyte they spent browsing the internet, consume mobile data today.

But many of these first time internet users are increasingly struggling with grasping the nuances of the internet — often ending up trusting everything they see online and, in extreme cases, causing major chaos in the nation. Ambani now wants to help these people understand the ins and outs of the digital world.

His telecom network Reliance Jio announced today a literacy program called ‘Digital Udaan’ for first time internet users in India. The two-and-a-half-year-old telecom network, which has amassed more than 300 million subscribers, said it has partnered with Facebook to create “the largest ever digital literacy program” that will offer audio-visual training in 10 regional languages.

As part of the Digital Udaan program, Reliance Jio will hold training sessions to help its users learn about internet safety, and how they should engage with popular services and its devices. The operator said it will hold these sessions each Saturday and also provide training videos and information brochures to users.

Reliance Jio said Facebook helped it build and curate modules that are relevant for people in cities and small towns in India. In the first phase of the program, Jio will conduct these training sessions in about 200 different locations across 13 states. It will then expand it to over 7,000 locations where “millions of JioPhone users and other first-time internet users” live.

“Facebook is an ally in this mission, and we are delighted to partner with Jio in attracting new Internet users and creating mechanisms for them to unleash the power of that access,” Ajit Mohan, VP and MD of Facebook India, said in a statement. Facebook and WhatsApp count India, where they reach about 350 million users, as their largest and fastest growing market. There are more than 500 million internet users in India.

Akash Ambani, Director of Reliance Jio, said he hopes to “help eradicate barriers of information asymmetry and provide accessibility in real time. It is a program for inclusive information, education and entertainment, where no Indian will be left out of this digital drive. Jio envisions to take this to every town and village of India, achieving 100% digital literacy in the country.”

Reliance Jio, through its free voice calls and low-data prices, has significantly helped accelerate the growth of India’s internet and smartphone ecosystem. The platform has brought the nation, now the world’s second largest internet and smartphone market, to a point that many thought would have taken more than five years to reach.

But this growth has also accompanied new sets of challenges. WhatsApp, which is the most popular app in India, continues to grapple with spread of false information in the nation, for instance. Other social media services are facing similar challenges as well. Last year, WhatsApp began to air TV commercials in India to help users become more cautious about the messages they share on its service. It also partnered with Reliance Jio to pay for teams of performers to travel across India and hold roadshows to help people better understand the rampant rise of fake news.

In a recent interview, Samsung CEO DJ Koh noted that the company was hard at work on Galaxy Fold fixes (he also said people won’t be using smartphones in five years, so who knows?). And now, a report from Bloomberg confirms that the company has put the finishing touches on those fixes two months after the handset was originally set to debut.

So now what? We still don’t have a date. We’ve been seeing promises that a firmer timeline for release would arrive in “coming weeks” for what seems like months now. But those “people familiar with the matter” who told the site that the phone is finally read for prime time aren’t offering any additional info on timeframe.

Instead, it looks like the company’s plans are to — at very least — have its first foldable available in time for the holidays. At just under $2,000, that’s a pretty hefty ask for a stocking stuffer. Given that Samsung has now officially confirmed its Note 10 event for August 7, it might well just wait for that big show to confirm the release date — especially if we’re not expecting the see it hit retail until Q4.

Samsung’s been through worse, of course. The Note 7 debacle was a bigger black eye both in terms of timing and scope. But the initial spate of problems with the handset felt like as much of an indictment of the category as Samsung’s methods. Even Huawei used it as an opportunity to put its Mate X through more rigorous testing. Whatever the case, the revolution is going to take even longer to unfold than expected.

This summer has blessed us with a wealth of awesome television options, from Big Little Lies to Chernobyl to The Handmaid’s Tale. And the good times keep rollin’. Tomorrow, Stranger Things Season 3 drops on Netflix.

To celebrate, it would appear that Epic Games is adding portals in Fortnite’s Mega Mall.

Netflix’s Chris Lee, director of interactive games, confirmed that there would be more crossover goodness on a panel at E3 after fans noticed the Scoops Ahoy ice cream store, which is the same name of the ice cream parlor in the show, in the Fortnite Mega Mall. Today, portals (that look like the ones leading to the Upside Down in the show) were also added to the Mega Mall.

These portals don’t actually transport you to the Upside Down, but rather to a separate shop in the Mega Mall.

Based on Fortnite’s past collaborations — the game did an in-game promo with Avengers: Endgame, Avengers: Infinity War, and John Wick 3, to name a few — we can expect to see plenty more Stranger Things content on The Island starting tomorrow.

Fortnite has a growing revenue opportunity from these types of native advertising/marketing promotions. The Verge cites analyst firm SuperAnalytics in saying that Epic earned $2.4 billion in 2018, estimating the revenue earned from in-game purchases and BattlePass subscriptions. There was no mention of advertising revenue, however, which seems to be a growing segment for the company.

And let’s not forget, Netflix considers Fortnite to be bigger competition than HBO or Hulu. So it’s no surprise then, maybe, that Netflix is heading on over to The Island to promote one of its most popular original series this July 4 holiday.

Just two weeks after the UK’s Information Commissioner published a damning report setting out major privacy and other concerns about programmatic advertising, today the country’s Competition and Markets Authority poured more cold water on the digital advertising industry that could have a direct impact not just on digital advertising leaders like Google and Facebook, but the wider ecosystem of companies that form the adtech market.

The CMA has today launched an investigation to assess “three broad potential sources of harm to consumers in connection with the market for digital advertising”: the extent of market power held by platform providers; consumers’ control over their data; and competition in the space.

Or, in its own words:

“to what extent online platforms have market power in user-facing markets, and what impact this has on consumers; whether consumers are able and willing to control how data about them is used and collected by online platforms; and whether competition in the digital advertising market may be distorted by any market power held by platforms.”

If competition, data protection or other violations are found, this could have a direct impact on the companies involved. The CMA has a track record of using its investigations to mandate changes at the company level, with one recent example being its order to Facebook and eBay to crack down on fake reviews. If companies fail to comply, there is then scope to use the evidence the CMA has amassed of illegal activity to take them to court and levy fines.

The online advertising industry is a massive beast that fuels a large part of how we interact online, with companies that account for the majority of our online activity, such as Facebook and Google, also some of the biggest names in digital ads. In the US, it’s predicted that digital ads will overtake spend on traditional marketing sometime this year, and the state of affairs in the UK is not far behind.

But while advertising is the great cash cow of the online world, it’s not all green fields and sunshine. Many consumers are not happy about the extent of commercial profiling, and — at a time when we are faced with daily examples of data breaches — even less so at how murky the business of online advertising really is. That’s before considering regulatory frameworks like GDPR that have also helped to raise awareness.

The launch of the investigation comes some four months after Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, wrote to the CMA asking for it to launch an investigation. That request came on the heels of an independent review commissioned by the government recommended the investigation.

In the end, the CMA has coincided this investigation with the launch of its wider Digital Markets Strategy, a new framework that it has created to navigate the new and often tricky waters of providing consumer protection while at the same time fostering digital innovation. (The recent controversy around Superhuman is just the latest example of the contradiction that can sometimes exist between the two.)

The CMA said that it will be accepting comments relevant to the topic and the three areas it has outlined until the end of this month — July 30. To get a full picture of the situation, the CMA says it wants to hear from the full spectrum of organizations and businesses impacted, including online platforms themselves, advertisers, publishers, intermediaries within the ad tech stack, representative professional bodies, government and consumer groups.

These need to come in writing and can be emailed to onlineplatforms@cma.gov.uk.

From August to December, the CMA will then evaluate what it receives. If it decides that there is no need for further investigation, the CMA says that it will publish a statement closing the matter by January 2, 2020. If it decides that it will dig deeper, the resulting report will come out by July 2, 2020.

One important caveat: the investigation and any subsequent actions that might get taken are dependent on the UK not being spun into chaos over a no-deal Brexit, where the UK exits the European Union with no trade, immigration or other agreements in place. Such a situation could create unexpected (extra) work for different government organizations, which would likely take precedence over this, making this yet another example of how the Brexit mess is getting in the way of actually useful work getting done.

Listen up, youngsters. Back in my day we had a thing called album art. You’d buy a record and just stare at that thing for hours on end. You’d read the linear notes and check the credits for familiar names. These days Discogs offers a reasonable approximation of the latter, but streaming services have been pretty lacking on that front.

Tidal introduced a new feature this week designed to offer a bit more insight into those folks working behind the scenes to make the studio magic happen. Rather than serving up on the info on an album by album basis, however, it’s accessed through the artist page. That means information is going to be a lot more prevalent for more prominent artists. For more obscure studio musicians and such, Discogs is still your friend.

From there, you can filter songs based on the role they played on a given track — so, songwriter, producer, musician, et al. There’s also a miscellaneous category for things like art work and A&R — those things that are a little less directly involved in the songwriting process. It’s a nice step in recognizing some of the information that’s been lost as albums have made the shift from physical formats to digital streaming.

It’s also a nice little differentiator for a streaming service that could certainly use it.