Category: UNCATEGORIZED

On the one hand, you’ve got Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey lamenting the “like” button’s existence, and threatening to just kill the thing off entirely for incentivizing the wrong kind of behavior. On the other hand, you have twttr — Twitter’s prototype app where the company is testing new concepts including, most recently, a way to make liking tweets even easier than before.

Confused about Twitter’s product direction? Apparently, so is the company.

In the latest version of the twttr prototype, released on Thursday, users are now able to swipe right to left on any tweet in order to “like” it. Previously, this gesture only worked on tweets in conversation threads, where the engagement buttons had been hidden. With the change, however, the swipe works anywhere — including the Home timeline, the Notifications tab, your Profile page, or even within Twitter Search results. In other words, it becomes a more universal gesture.

This makes sense because once you got used to swiping right, it was confusing that the gesture didn’t work in some places, but did in others. Still, it’s odd to see the company doubling down on making “likes” easier to use — and even rolling out a feature that could increase user engagement with the “Like” button — given Jack Dorsey’s repeated comments about his distaste for “likes” and the conversations around the button’s removal.

Of course, twttr is not supposed to be Dorsey’s vision. Instead, it’s meant to be a new experiment in product development, where users and Twitter’s product teams work together, in the open, to develop, test, and then one day officially launch new features for Twitter.

For the time being, the app is largely focused on redesigning conversation threads. On Twitter today, these get long and unwieldy, and it’s not always clear who’s talking to who. On twttr, however, threads are nested with a thin line connecting the various posts.

The app is also rolling out other, smaller tweaks like labels on tweets within conversations that highlight the original “Author’s” replies, or if a post comes from someone you’re “following.”

And, of course, twttr introduced the “swipe to like” gesture.

While it’s one thing to want to collaborate more directly with the community, it seems strange that twttr is rolling out a feature designed to increase — not decrease — engagement with “likes” at this point in time.

Last August, for example, Dorsey said he wanted to redesign key elements of the social network, including the “like” button and the way Twitter displays follower counts.

“The most important thing that we can do is we look at the incentives that we’re building into our product,” Dorsey had said at the time. “Because they do express a point of view of what we want people to do — and I don’t think they are correct anymore.”

Soon after, at an industry event in October 2018, Dorsey again noted how the “like” button sends the wrong kind of message.

“Right now we have a big ‘like’ button with a heart on it, and we’re incentivizing people to want to drive that up,” said Dorsey. “We have a follower count that was bolded because it felt good twelve years ago, but that’s what people see us saying: that should go up. Is that the right thing?,” he wondered.

While these comments may have seemed like a little navel-gazing over Twitter’s past, a Telegraph report about the “like” button’s removal quickly caught fire. It claimed Dorsey had said the “like” button was going to go away entirely, and caused so much user backlash that Twitter comms had to respond. The company said the idea has been discussed, but it wasn’t something happening “soon.”

Arguably, the “like” button is appreciated by Twitter’s user base, so it’s not surprising that a gesture that could increase its use would become a feature that gets tried out in the community-led twttr prototype app. It’s worth noting, however, how remarkably different the development process is when it’s about what Twitter’s users want, not the CEO.

Hmmm.

Hey, twttr team? Maybe we can get that “edit” button now?

Is your early-stage startup ready for prime time? Do you have what it takes to step onto the Main Stage at Disrupt San Francisco 2019 and compete in Startup Battlefield? Show us what you’ve got and apply here today.

In our premier startup pitch competition, you’ll go up against some of the best early-stage startups and compete for the coveted Disrupt Cup and — here’s the real kicker — $100,000 in equity-free cash.

All participating teams, regardless of where they place, receive invaluable exposure to more than 400 media outlets and hundreds of influential investors hungry to discover the next big thing. That kind of intense attention can change the trajectory of your business. Indeed, 857 startups have competed and collectively raised more than $8.9 billion in funding and produced more than 110 exits. You might recognize some of the companies that launched, like Mint, Dropbox, Yammer, TripIt, Getaround and Cloudflare to name just a few.

Here’s how Startup Battlefield works. Our TechCrunch editors thoroughly vet every application and select approximately 15-30 startups to compete. No need to freak out about your presentation, because you won’t go it alone. Our Battlefield-tested editorial team will coach you extensively until your pitch is primed and refined to perfection. You’ve got nothing to lose. Applying and participating in Startup Battlefield — including the coaching — is free.

Come game day, you’ll have six minutes to pitch your company to a panel of expert VCs and tech leaders — and then answer any questions they may ask. If you survive to the second and final round, it’s lather, rinse and repeat your pitch to a new panel of judges.

All the nerve-wracking action takes place on the Disrupt Main Stage in front of a live audience numbering in the thousands, and it’s also live-streamed around the world (and available later on demand) on TechCrunch.com, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. That kind of media exposure is a gift that keeps on giving.

Other Startup Battlefield benefits include free exhibition space in Startup Alley for all three days of the show, invitations to VIP events, free passes to future TechCrunch events and complimentary subscriptions to Extra Crunch, our new editorial offering that provides in-depth content, coverage, products and events. You will also get connected into the illustrious Startup Battlefield Alumni Community.

Startup Battlefield takes place at Disrupt SF 2019 on October 2-4. Will you hoist the Disrupt Cup? Take your shot and apply to compete in Startup Battlefield today.

If you’re not ready for the Main Stage yet, you can still apply for our TC Top Picks program and receive a free Startup Alley Exhibitor Package.

Yesterday Amazon managed to beat out Wall Street’s already optimistic expectations with another record quarterly revenue. In amongst its victory laps, the company announced intentions to shift its free two-day Prime shipping to one-day.

The move has been a holy grail for the company, which has already pushed parcel services and its own fulfillment centers to their seeming limits with the promise of a two-day turn around. While some one-day and even two-day options do exist on certain offerings (and in other locales like France, Germany, Netherlands), an across the board push to one day delivery in the States is a massive undertaking.

Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky notably hedged his bets a bit with his language. Amazon isn’t committing to a timeframe, instead the exec stated that the e-commerce giant is “currently working on evolving” the program. That statement along was enough to ruffle Wall Street, hitting chief competition Target and Walmart right in the stock ticker, leaving them scrambling to respond (an on-going trend over the past decade or so).

Amazon has notably been building out its fulfillment centers. We recently took a trip to the company’s massive JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island, which still has that new factory smell, with plans to employ an eventual 2,250 people in New York City. That space, along with 25 or so others are home to around 100,000 robotic systems, aimed at streamlining the process. That number is expected to increase with recent moves like the company’s acquisition of Canvas.

But in spite, or perhaps because of the presence of robotics systems, there’s are are pertinent questions about how these sorts of moves will impact human employees. The company recently increased minimum wage for full-time employees following a public dressing down from politicians like Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Since then, however, the company has used the move to challenge the competition to make changes.

Even so, reports of difficult working environments have persisted.

Amazon’s cloud computing unit is making further inroads into Asia after it opened a data center in Hong Kong this week, adding to the seven existing locations where it currently operates across the Asia Pacific and China.

The new entry will likely give the American giant some leg up in its regional battle with Alibaba’s cloud service, which, according to a new Gartner report, was the biggest cloud infrastructure provider in the Asia Pacific last year. But that won’t be the case with all countries, notably China where the cards are often stacked against foreign players.

Amazon Web Services has been operating in China for quite some time, albeit through rough and roundabout routes. A set of cyber laws enacted by Beijing in mid-2017 required foreign companies to store data locally and outsource their hardware parts to Chinese partners. In response, AWS teamed up with two separate local providers based out of Beijing and the hinterland province of Ningxia to run its cloud service while it provides the necessary “technology, guidance and expertise” to the allies. In practice, AWS’s China users are subject to terms and conditions set by its domestic partners.

With two data hubs, AWS managed to carve out a 6 percent share in China’s market for public cloud as an infrastructure service in the first half of 2018, according to research company IDC. Alibaba enjoyed a significant lead with a whopping 43 percent share, exceeding the sum of second to ninth-ranked players.

One main appeal of Alibaba Cloud, as well as many other Chinese offerings, is affordability. “Whether it’s price or service, AWS is at a real disadvantage in China,” Lin Rong, who runs a website called 91Yun that reviews cloud services and runs a forum for cloud computing, told TechCrunch.

In the meantime, an increasing number of Chinese companies are looking to host their servers in neighboring countries for global deployment as they take their apps, mobile games and other internet services overseas. Hong Kong is one popular hosting destination for export businesses, but even on the opposite end of the border, Alibaba has been a prime choice for many Chinese enterprises.

Just like on the mainland, Alibaba Cloud’s Hong Kong service is cheaper than its international rivals; it also delivers lower latency to mainland users than AWS, Lin observes, thanks to its tie-ups with China’s top three network providers.

At the very least, AWS’s foray into Hong Kong will heighten competition among cloud services targeting locally based companies. There are few places in the world where competition in cloud is as fierce, suggested Keith Yau, founder of Bootdev, a cloud-based platform for running websites.

“Hong Kong now has all the big cloud companies — Azure, AWS and Alibaba Cloud — as well as Google Cloud Platform, which is very unusual for any city in the world,” he told TechCrunch.

Hong Kong as a hub for international trade and financial services, alongside the government’s recent push to attract more tech-focused companies, means a substantial demand for data storing and processing power. Amazon, being “best in tech among all cloud services,” suggested Cyrus Wong, a data scientist at Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education, will likely win some share away from existing players.

“Hong Kong is globally recognized as a leading financial tech hub and one of the top places where startups build their businesses, so we’ve had many customers asking us for an AWS Region in Hong Kong so they can build their businesses on the world’s leading cloud with the broadest and deepest feature set,” read a statement from Peter DeSantis, vice president of global infrastructure and customer support for AWS.

According to the Gartner report, AWS currently ranks second to Alibaba Cloud across the Asia Pacific. Its share declined 0.2 percent to 11 percent in 2018, while Alibaba Cloud added 4.7 percent to bring its slice to nearly 19.6 percent.

Slack has filed to go public via a direct listing. Similar to what Spotify did last year, this means that the company won’t have a traditional IPO, and will instead allow existing shareholders to sell their stock to investors.

The company’s S-1 filing says it plans to make $100 million worth of shares available, but that’s probably a placeholder figure.

The S-1 offers data about the company’s financial performance, reporting a net loss of $138.9 million and revenue of $400.6 million in the fiscal year ending January 31, 2019. That’s compared to a loss of $140.1 million on revenue of $220.5 million for the year before.

The company attributes these losses to its decision “to invest in growing our business to capitalize on our market opportunity,” and notes that they’re shrinking as a percentage of revenue.

Slack also says that in the three months ending on January 31, it had more than 10 million daily active users across more than 600,000 organizations — 88,000 on the paid plan and 550,000 on the free plan.

In the filing, the company says the Slack team created the product to meet its own collaboration needs.

“Since our public launch in 2014, it has become apparent that organizations worldwide have similar needs, and are now finding the solution with Slack,” it says. “Our growth is largely due to word-of-mouth recommendations. Slack usage inside organizations of all kinds is typically initially driven bottoms-up, by end users. Despite this, we (and the rest of the world) still have a hard time explaining Slack. It’s been called an operating system for teams, a hub for collaboration, a connective tissue across the organization, and much else. Fundamentally, it is a new layer of the business technology stack in a category that is still being defined.”

The company suggests that the total market opportunity for Slack and other makers of workplace collaboration software is $28 billion, and it plans to grow through strategies like expanding its footprint within organizations already using Slack, investing in more enterprise features, expanding internationally and growing the developer ecosystem.

The risk factors mentioned in the filing sound pretty boilerplate and/or similar to other Internet companies going public, like the aforementioned net losses and the fact that its current growth rate might not be sustainable, as well as new compliance risks under Europe’s GDPR.

Slack has previously raised a total of $1.2 billion in funding, according to Crunchbase, from investors including Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Social Capital, SoftBank, Google Ventures and Kleiner Perkins.

Amazon is prepping a high-fidelity music streaming service for a launch by year-end, according to a report from Music Business Worldwide — a site which also accurately reported Amazon’s recent launch of the free, ad-supported Amazon Music service for Echo device owners. As for the high-fidelity service, the plan is to charge around $15 per month for this “better than CD quality” offering — which could present a direct challenge to TIDAL.

It seems Amazon wants to cover the market both at the low-end and the high, by offering direct competitors to services like Pandora, Spotify, Apple Music, and now, TIDAL.

The company’s investment in music not only allows for new revenue streams through advertising and subscriptions, it also provides a direct connection to Amazon’s smart speakers: its Echo line of devices. For consumers pinching pennies, the ad-supported service streaming over an Echo Dot may be good enough. But those who bought, say, a stereo pair of Echo Plus devices and an Echo Sub, may want a better-quality music subscription, too.

Currently, those audiophiles may have sought out something like TIDAL. The service’s Hi-Fi tier is $19.99 per month for CD-quality streams at 44.1 kHz / 16 bit. TIDAL also offers a Masters quality tier at 96 kHz / 24 bit. Deezer, meanwhile, streams 16-bit FLAC files.

It’s unclear where Amazon’s high-fidelity service will fit in, as the bit rate isn’t known.

However, discussions are still in the early stages, the report notes — only one major record company is on board so far.

If Amazon proceeds to launch this high-fidelity service, it will have price points and feature sets that span the music streaming market from free to paid to premium. That will help the company retain customers who may have otherwise jumped to a competitor for a differentiated offering. As a further incentive, Amazon could also choose to offer deals and discounts to its premium offering to those buying its smart speakers or subscribing to Prime — much as it does today with its $3.99 / month Amazon Music Unlimited plan tied to a single Echo device.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This week Kate Clark and Alex Wilhelm dug into the latest, namely big news on the fund front from folks you know, two China-based companies going public on domestic exchanges, and what’s next in the long-running sagas of getting Uber and Slack public.

First up Kate talked us through the latest at Kleiner Perkins and Mary Meeker’s new growth fund, called Bond Capital. Alex has some more great context on that here, for interested parties, Kate has more here.

Next, we turned to the F-1 filings of Luckin Coffee and DouYu, two China-based companies joining the list of firms from the country that have chosen to go public here in the United States. With Luckin’s filing, we have a fascinating look into the costs of building a hyper-growth company; as you can imagine, Luckin running pretty steep deficits, but adding revenue incredibly quickly on a year-over-year basis. DouYo is fascinating for a different reason, namely that it only recently began generating gross profit. And in 2018, when it did begin to create some margin to cover its operating costs, it didn’t make much.

DouYu works in the live streaming and esports worlds, places where Twitch and Huya (another China-based company that went public in the States) have found success.

Finally, we had two domestic public offerings to dig into. Slack, an exit we’ve long anticipated, is supposed to drop its S-1 today. If that’s the case Alex and Kate will be back at their mics to bring you the highlights from that filing. And then there’s Uber .

To cap off a fun show, we chatted through the impending Uber debut. We expect the company to set a price range tomorrow, but if early reports are correct, the firm could be sandbagging a bit in hopes of raising its price next week. Lyft reports earnings on May 7, giving Uber a somewhat tight window to jump through if it wants to control its own narrative. (If Lyft’s earnings fall short, for example, and Uber hasn’t gone public by that point, it could be forced to lower its own pricing.)

That’s all we got for now. We’ll probably be back later today with an Equity shot. Stay cool!

In what seems like a historic moment in crypto, New York State Attorney General (NYSAG) office has announced that it is investigating iFinex, the company behind exchange Bitfinex and stablecoin Tether, over an alleged $850 million fraud.

Attorney General Letitia James’ office said on Thursday that it is looking how the company (apparently) lost $850 million which is said to have gone missing through a deal with Panama-based Crypto Capital. iFinex reportedly selected Crypto Capital as a payment processor to handle customer payouts after a series of banks refused to do business, including Wells Fargo which had previously taken transfers from its Taiwan-based accounts.

When it became evident that the money wouldn’t be returned, iFinex is said to have taken “at least” $700 million from the reserves that (apparently) back Tether, which is pegged against the U.S. dollar. The deal was not declared to investors.

“Those transactions treat Tether’s cash reserves as Bitfinex’s corporate slush fund, and are being used to hide Bitfinex’s massive, undisclosed losses and inability to handle customer withdrawals,” Attorney General James’ office argued in a release.

iFinex also stands accused of allowing New York-based investors to use Bitfinex to trade Tether without holding a license to operate in the state of New York.

In response, iFinex has claimed that “the New York Attorney General’s court filings were written in bad faith and are riddled with false assertions.”

“We have been informed that these Crypto Capital amounts are not lost but have been, in fact, seized and safeguarded. We are and have been actively working to exercise our rights and remedies and get those funds released. Sadly, the New York Attorney General’s office seems to be intent on undermining those efforts to the detriment of our customers,” the company said in a statement.

Tether and Bitfinex have long attracted suspicion within the crypto space and beyond. Tether has been accused of moving the market by printing new tokens. It’s somewhat ironic, then, that news of the investigation sent crypto prices down.

At the time of writing, the price of Bitcoin is down four percent over 24 hours while Ethereum is down six percent. In fairness, given the scale of the alleged fraud, and involvement of a branch of the U.S. government, those losses seem quite minimal.

The author owns a small amount of cryptocurrency. Enough to gain an understanding, not enough to change a life.

Uber, the transportation-on-demand behemoth, today filed its much-anticipated updated S-1 today where it announced that it would be pricing its initial public offering at $44-50 per share.

Selling 180M common shares, Uber plans to raise between $7.9 billion and $9 billion ahead of its public debut on the NYSE, valuing it at $84 billion — squarely in the middle of the $80-90 billion that was projected as late as yesterday.

Separately, there was a surprise announcement in the S-1: PayPal said it would make a $500 million investment in the company in a private placement, as part of an extension of the partnership between the two, whether they will develop new digital wallet services.

PayPal has been working with Uber providing payment services since 2013 and is its lead processing partner in the US and Australia (but not the only one globally).

The $500 million placement is being made at the same valuation as the IPO price range, Uber said.

“In April 2019, we entered into a stock purchase agreement with PayPal, Inc. (“PayPal”), pursuant to which PayPal will purchase $500 million of our common stock from us in a private placement at a price per share equal to the initial public offering price,” Uber notes. “The sale of the shares in the private placement is subject to certain closing conditions, including the closing of this offering and certain regulatory approvals. Concurrently, and subject to the closing of the private placement, we and PayPal extended our global partnership through the execution of an addendum to our existing commercial agreement. We and PayPal intend to explore future commercial payment collaborations, including the development of our digital wallet.”

“This is another significant milestone on our journey to be a platform partner of choice, helping to enable global commerce by connecting the world’s leading marketplaces and payment networks,” said PayPal president and CEO Dan Schulman in a statement.

In addition to the 180 million shares in the IPO, Uber notes that the underwriters have the option to purchase up to an additional 27 million shares of common stock from the selling stockholders solely to cover over-allotments, if any.

Additionally, Uber notes that it requested the underwriters to reserve up to 5.4 billion shares — three percent of the 180 million — through a directed share program to certain qualifying Drivers in the United States.

Uber’s pricing is more than three times the amount of Lyft’s $2.34 billion IPO, making it one of the largest IPOs in the U.S. since Alibaba’s debut on the public markets in 2014.

In 2018, Uber reported 2018 revenues of $11.27 billion, net income of $997 million and adjusted EBITDA losses of $1.85 billion. Uber, which filed for its IPO two weeks ago, will list on the New York Stock Exchange in May.

More to come.

China’s Ctrip, the world’s second largest online travel company, is doubling down on India after it announced a deal to increase its ownership of travel company MakeMyTrip to nearly half.

Ctrip will boost its ownership of MakeMyTrip, which is listed on the Nasdaq like Ctrip, to 49 percent through an exchange deal that sees Naspers, the South African internet giant and early backer of Tencent, swap its shares for 5.6 percent of Ctrip. Ctrip said the investment leaves it with four percent of MakeMyTrip’s voting power.

On paper, each stake is worth around $1.3 billion. MakeMyTrip has a current market cap of $2.69 billion while Ctrip’s current share price gives it an overall valuation of $23.5 billion. In the industry, only Booking Holdings is valued higher with a current market cap of $84 billion.

There’s a long history between the three companies. Ctrip and Naspers invested $330 million into MakeMyTrip two years ago, a move that saw Naspers deepen its involvement after its portfolio company Ibibo merged with MakeMyTrip in January 2017. Prior to that, Ctrip invested $180 million into the India company in January 2016.

“Over the past years we have witnessed the great achievements of MakeMyTrip, and we are confident that MakeMyTrip will extend its success in the future,” read a statement from James Liang, co-founder and executive chairman of Ctrip.

“We are also delighted to welcome Naspers to become our shareholder. Ctrip will continue to work hard to create greater value to our customers, our partners and all shareholders,” added Ctrip CEO Jane Sun.

MakeMyTrip co-founder and co-CEO Rajesh Magow said the deal would take his company’s partnership with Ctrip “to the next level.”

The deal comes as Naspers prepares to list its international business, which includes advertising giant OLX and stakes in numerous internet companies, in the Netherlands.

Ctrip’s past deals have included the $1.74 billion acquisition of Scotland-based Skyscanner and the undisclosed purchase of U.S-based travel discovery app Trip.com. It has also invested $463 million in China Eastern Airlines and swapped shares with Chinese rival Qunar.

Today’s share swap deal is forecast to close in this current Q2, according to an announcement from Ctrip.