Category: UNCATEGORIZED

Tesla, Elon Musk and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission have two weeks to work out their differences and come to a new resolution, a U.S. judge said Thursday at the conclusion of a hearing held to determine whether the automaker’s CEO should be held in contempt for his Twitter use.

The SEC had asked the court to hold Musk in contempt for violating a settlement agreement reached last October over Musk’s now infamous “funding secured” tweet. Under that agreement, Musk is supposed to get approval from Tesla’s board before communicating potentially material information to investors, the agency has argued. The SEC says a February 19 tweet violated the agreement.

Musk contends he didn’t violate the agreement and that the problem lies in the SEC’s interpretation, which he described as “virtually wrong at every level,” in a recent court filing.

As lawyers from Tesla and the SEC argued their points Thursday, U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan’s questioning suggested little patience with the two parties’ inability to reach a resolution, according to TechCrunch’s review of several reported accounts of inside the courtroom, including from Bloomberg and Courthouse News.

Musk told reporters after the hearing that he was “very impressed” with Nathan’s analysis and later when asked whether he would be able to work out problems with the SEC, he replied “Most likely,” Bloomberg reported.

The concerns about the outcome of the hearing, which some worried would result in Musk losing his CEO position, along with disappointing delivery numbers in the first quarter put pressure on Tesla’s share price. Tesla shares fell more than 8 percent to close at $267.78 on Thursday.

The increasingly expensive scuttlebutt between Musk and the SEC began in August when the CEO tweeted that he had “funding secured” for a private takeover of the company at $420 per share.  The SEC filed a complaint in federal district court in September alleging that Musk lied.

Musk and Tesla settled with the SEC without admitting wrongdoing and Tesla agreed to pay a $20 million fine; Musk had to agree to step down as Tesla chairman for a period of at least three years; the company had to appoint two independent directors to the board; and Tesla was also told to put in place a way to monitor Musk’s statements to the public about the company, including via Twitter.

However, the relationship between Musk and the SEC has remained strained. Musk has openly criticized the SEC via Twitter on various occasions, openly mocking the agency at times, even days after the settlement was reached:

In February, the SEC escalated matters and asked a judge to hold Musk in contempt for violating the settlement agreement. Musk tweeted February 19 that Tesla would produce “around” 500,000 cars this year, correcting himself hours later to clarify that he meant the company would be producing at an annualized rate of 500,000 vehicles by year-end.

Beats took its time getting untethered. The last addition to the Powerbeats line arrived in late 2016, right around the same time as the original AirPods. The product shared Apple’s W1 chip, further cementing its place as part of the company, with instant iOS syncing. But the products were once again yolked together with a cable.

A few weeks after the release of the second-generation AirPods, Beats finally unveiled the Powerbeats Pro, the company’s first fully wireless earbuds. Comparisons with Apple’s latest are inevitable. After all, Apple and Beats are one big happy family now, sharing technologies and working together in some capacity.

In many ways, however, Beats remains its own brand. Where the AirPods are a living testament to Apple’s minimalist “just works” approach to hardware, the Pros owe much of their design to the fact that Beats has long targeted athletes with its earbud line. I wouldn’t be too surprised to see promotional campaigns with the likes of LeBron James and Serena Williams sporting the Pros in the near future.

That target demo means that the new headphones have maintained the over the ear hooks found in earlier versions of the headphones. That’s either a good or bad thing, depending on what you’re looking for from a pair of buds. If you want something more minimal, Apple’s got a pair it will happily sell you.

In spite of all of the added plastic, however, the Pros are quite comfortable, even with a pair of glasses on. That’s owed, in part, to the inclusion of swappable silicone tips. Those are coupled with an ergonomic design that fit nicely in my ear. I’ve never had an issue getting AirPods to fit, but their rigid plastic design means they just don’t fit certain ears. That’s going to be much less of an issue here.

The major downside of the form factor, however, is awkward size and shape. They’re fine when you’re wearing them, but the Pros require a large charging case for storage. Really, really large. Like, you’re probably not going to want to attempt to carry these around in your pants pocket large. The placement of the buds inside the case is also a bit awkward and takes some getting used to. It’s not like the AirPods, which neatly slip into place.

The good news, however, is that the stated battery life is ridiculously long here, at nine hours on the buds themselves and 24 hours when combined with the charging case. That means you likely won’t need to take the case with you when you go out for a run in the morning.

The Powerbeats Pro also sound quite good for a pair of Bluetooth earbuds. The company has spent the last several years working to shake the (deserved) notion that it overcompensates for sound shortcomings with amped up, distorted bass. That’s really a relic from its earlier days. Beats has made great strides to offer better sound, even in a smaller form factor.

I sampled a fairly wide range of genres on the Pros, and was pretty impressed with what I heard. The instrument isolation is nice, and it sounds clear even with bass-heavy hip-hop and dance tracks.

Price may end up being a dealbreaker. At $250, they’re $50 more expensive than the latest AirPods and more than $100 more than the Galaxy Buds. That could end up being a tough pill to swallow.

The Powerbeats Pro are due out next months.

Startups are but one species in a complex regulatory and public policy ecosystem. This ecosystem is larger and more powerfully dynamic than many founders appreciate, with distinct yet overlapping laws at the federal, state and local/city levels, all set against a vast array of public and private interests. Where startup founders see opportunity for disruption in regulated markets, lawyers counsel prudence: regulations exist to promote certain strongly-held public policy objectives which (unlike your startup’s business model) carry the force of law.

Snapshot of the regulatory and public policy ecosystem. Image via Law Office of Daniel McKenzie

Although the canonical “ask forgiveness and not permission” approach taken by Airbnb and Uber circa 2009 might lead founders to conclude it is strategically acceptable to “move fast and break things” (including the law), don’t lose sight of the resulting lawsuits and enforcement actions. If you look closely at Airbnb and Uber today, each have devoted immense resources to building regulatory and policy teams, lobbying, public relations, defending lawsuits, while increasingly looking to work within the law rather than outside it – not to mention, in the case of Uber, a change in leadership as well.

Indeed, more recently, examples of founders and startups running into serious regulatory issues are commonplace: whether in healthcare, where CEO/Co-founder Conrad Parker was forced to resign from Zenefits and later fined approximately $500K; in the securities registration arena, where cryptocurrency startups Airfox and Paragon have each been fined $250K and further could be required to return to investors the millions raised through their respective ICOs; in the social media and privacy realm, where TikTok was recently fined $5.7 million for violating COPPA, or in the antitrust context, where tech giant Google is facing billions in fines from the EU.

Suffice it to say, regulation is not a low-stakes table game. In 2017 alone, according to Duff and Phelps, US financial regulators levied $24.4 billion in penalties against companies and another $621.3 million against individuals. Particularly in today’s highly competitive business landscape, even if your startup can financially absorb the fines for non-compliance, the additional stress and distraction for your team may still inflict serious injury, if not an outright death-blow.

The best way to avoid regulatory setbacks is to first understand relevant regulations and work to develop compliant policies and business practices from the beginning. This article represents a step in that direction, the fifth and final installment in Extra Crunch’s exclusive “Startup Law A to Z” series, following previous articles on corporate matters, intellectual property (IP), customer contracts and employment law.

Given the breadth of activities subject to regulation, however, and the many corresponding regulations across federal, state, and municipal levels, no analysis of any particular regulatory framework would be sufficiently complete here. Instead, the purpose of this article is to provide founders a 30,000-foot view across several dozen applicable laws in key regulatory areas, providing a “lay of the land” such that with some additional navigation and guidance, an optimal course may be charted.

The regulatory areas highlighted here include: (a) Taxes; (b) Securities; (c) Employment; (d) Privacy; (e) Antitrust; (f) Advertising, Commerce and Telecommunications; (g) Intellectual Property; (h) Financial Services and Insurance; and finally (i) Transportation, Health and Safety.

Editor’s note: This guest post is a part of our latest initiative to demystify design and find the best brand designers and agencies in the world who work with early-stage companies — nominate a talented brand designer you’ve worked with.

Chances are you’ve heard one or more of the following statements at work (or some flavor of them):

• “We’re an engineering-driven company.”
• “We’re a product-driven company.”
• “We’re a design-driven company.”

While at first glance the statements above may seem innocuous, what they really imply is a power dynamic where a particular perspective carries more weight and influence in decision-making than others. How did it get that way in the first place? Was the founder a PM in a previous company? Did the first hires all happen to be engineers? Or does the most vocal person happen to be from a particular discipline? These are some examples of how biases get institutionalized. They can get seeded early and compound over time, or happen quickly as new leaders get installed as the company grows.

Whether intentional or not, these imbalances can disempower other disciplines, create fiefdoms, and erode trust between colleagues. Over time, these divisions kill productivity and quality. Internal factions waste valuable time and energy jockeying for influence and control, while the product gets fragmented and confusing for users.

On the flip side, when disciplines and teams are aligned there is less value placed on which person or discipline “made the call.” Over time, teams move quickly, learn together, get through iteration cycles effortlessly, spend more time producing high-quality results that reach users, and less time infighting. It’s like being in a state of flow, but for teams. So what is it that these high-performing teams align on? You’ve probably heard it before, but it’s worth unpacking:

The user.

Ideally, the most important driver of decisions isn’t one person or discipline in your organization—it should be your user. Your job is to help them navigate. Everyone building the product or making decisions about it, regardless of discipline, should understand who they’re building for, and why what they’re doing is contributing to improving that user’s experience.

User-centric thinking is the hallmark of the world-class companies because they love and obsess about you—the user. Amazon calls this customer obsession. Ideo calls this human-centered design. During my time at Pinterest, the most important company value was to “Put Pinners first.”

By focusing on serving the user, it removes the pressure on any individual or discipline to always make the right call. Focusing on what is right for the user, rather than who is right removes ego from the equation. Users ultimately decide anyway—they vote with their behavior and attitudes.

Serving your users better is a goal with no finish line. Understand that the decisions you make will sometimes improve their experiences and sometimes degrade them. Nobody has 100% hit rate, and nobody can predict the future with complete certainty. In a culture of good decision-making, the goal isn’t to get any single decision exactly right (although that’s always nice), but to make consistently good (and better) decisions over time, especially the important ones.

So how do you get your company oriented around users? Consider three important factors: (1) people with the right mindset, (2) an approach to balanced decision-making that starts with users, and (3) the mechanics and properties of high-quality decisions.

1. Identify and empower T-shaped people

Differences in opinion are inevitable. But in order to have consistently productive discussions, debates, disagreements, and ultimately decisions, you’ll need T-shaped people. A T-shaped person refers to someone who has a deep domain expertise in at least one field (the depth of their T), as well as a strong ability to collaborate with people across other areas of expertise (the breadth of their T). Here’s some examples of T-shaped people, who might also happen to make a strong team:

T-shaped people tend to be the best teammates—they have deep knowledge that they are willing to share and explain to their counterparts, as well as a built-in curiosity that welcomes new perspectives. This is especially important in leadership and decision-making roles. What’s more, their curiosity and empathy doesn’t just apply to their colleagues, it naturally extends to users.

What T-shaped people realize is that no single person or discipline is more important than the other, nor should they strive to be. Sure, there are moments where one’s expertise makes their input more credible, but It’s how their collective talents serve the user that ultimately matter most. People (and hopefully T-shaped people) are the most basic ingredients of your culture. Choose wisely.

Ways to identify T-shaped people

• Look for curiosity and empathy. Top quality execution and results are a given, but don’t stop looking there. What was the user problem they were trying to solve? How did they arrived at that solution? What were the insights that led them to take their projects in a particular direction? What promising directions did they decide not to pursue, and why? Were they involved in research and understanding the users? Can they clearly articulate the needs of the customer? Does it feel like they know them intimately and care?
• Look for humility. On projects, what assumptions did they make that were completely wrong? How did the user or other disciplines show them a different and valuable perspective? Do they share the credit? Did they help others succeed? Individual talent is important, but building great products is a team sport.

2. Make balanced decisions that start with users

User-centered (aka customer-centric, human-centered) thinking is a way of framing problems with a clear starting point: understanding and empathizing with user needs. If T-shaped people are your basic ingredients, then the user-centered thinking is a recipe—a way to combine and enhance the ingredients to produce amazing results. Here’s what it looks like:

Have your team start by asking “what is the user problem we’re trying to solve?” It’s a deceivingly simple focusing mechanism. It may take some rigorous debate to align on the right problem, but once that happens, decisions from all disciplines have a clear tie back to driving user value first—making the product faster, cheaper, more efficient, more delightful, easier to understand—then orienting their collective effort around providing that value.

Less user-centric teams will do the opposite: look for ways to make their own work easier or more efficient, look to optimize their own sub-team metrics, or satisfy their own personal curiosities—and leave the user to orient themselves around their organizational efficiencies. If you’ve ever felt a broken sign-up flow or confusing onboarding experience, then you know what I’m talking about.

While user-centric thinking starts with users, no single lens is more important than the others. It’s entirely possible to satisfy a user completely, while simultaneously killing your business. That’s not a good decision. Or you could dream up amazing ways to delight your user, but in ways that aren’t achievable with today’s technology—that’s no good either. The overlap of  perspectives is what leads to effective decisions and great solutions. T-shaped decision-makers will know how to make those appropriate tradeoffs.

3. Make high-quality decisions

Evaluating decisions through multiple lenses is important to getting to consistently good, balanced decisions over time. What decision best satisfies your user’s needs, is good for the business (overall, not just for your sub-team or business unit), and technically sound? The overlap is where high-quality decisions are born. But there are additional mechanics and properties that make decisions high-quality.

In my experience, high-quality product decisions are:

• User-centric. First and foremost, rooted in understanding and serving user needs. Not just listening to what users say or watching what they do, but understanding how they think and feel.
• Considered. They proactively seek input from, and communicate with, relevant stakeholders and examine the possibilities through multiple lenses before making decisions. They anticipate immediate effects, but also secondary and tertiary effects as well.
• Balanced. It’s good for the user, good for the business overall, and technically sound.
• Timely. They don’t take too long, but they aren’t made in haste either.
• Calculated. It’s important to take risks, but don’t bet the farm unless it’s absolutely necessary. Start small and learn. Double down when it works, readjust when it doesn’t.
• Communicated before action. They are stated as clearly as possible up-front, before taking action. Their rationale is shared, citing intended effects and flagging major risks.
• Humble. Good decisions focus on what is right, not who is right. They embrace failure as part of the process, so long as there is valuable learning. For example, a decision may yield a learning that helps you not to pursue a particular direction, saving valuable time and effort.
• Monitored. They are tracked closely to manage both positive and negative effects.
• Shared broadly. Their results and learnings are examined and shared broadly (and especially with affected parties), whether results are good or bad; intended or unintended—giving future decisions a stronger starting point.

The case for culture

Very few companies, and even fewer startups, stand the test of time. Products and services today are all dynamic, and expected to evolve with the changing landscape of fickle users and emerging technologies. With limited time and resources, I can already hear people saying, “this seems like a lot of work” and ask, “can we really afford to invest this much thought and energy into culture?”

The bottom line is building great products is hard work. And it’s work that never ends, if you’re doing it well. Over time, your product will morph in small and big ways with each new version, to the point where it may be unrecognizable from your starting point. So what will persist, and why? Your culture—the people, their shared attitudes, values, goals, practices, and decisions—will determine that. So isn’t that worth investing in as much as the product itself? In the end, they’re one in the same.

Bumble is the latest digital brand to try to extend its reach through a print publication. The dating app maker today announced the launch of Bumble Mag, a lifestyle publication it produced in partnership with Hearst that offers stories and advice about dating, careers, friendship and more to Bumble’s over 50 million users.

On the cover of the 100-page premiere issue is Lauren Chan, a fashion entrepreneur behind the plus-size workwear line called Henning.

Inside, the magazine is organized into four sections that align with the Bumble app’s different modes: “You First,” “You + BFFs,” “You + Dating” and “You + Bizz.” Here, readers will find celebrity interviews, features, advice, product guides, “daily mantras,” and more.

Contributors in this month’s debut issue include Bumble advisor and the star of the brand’s first Super Bowl campaign, Serena Williams; writers, actresses and Bumble Creative Directors Erin and Sara Foster; Man Repeller founder Leandra Medine; jewelry designer Jennifer Meyer; and Away luggage co-founder Jen Rubio.

A digital brand taking to print is no longer a unique occurence.

Airbnb has Airbnb Magazine, which arrives in the mail; Unilever’s Dollar Shave Club runs Mel Magazine; mattress brand Casper created Woolly Magazine in partnership with McSweeney’s; luggage brand Away has Here Magazine; Uber has rolled out several print magazines, including Vehicle, Arriving Now, and Momentum; and even Facebook launched a print magazine, Grow, aimed at business leaders.

For Bumble, the magazine offers the company a way to introduce its brand to new customers as well as extend its relationship with existing users out in the real world. This is part of Bumble’s larger efforts in developing an offline component to its business. The company also runs pop-ups, hosts events, and has spoken of plans to launch more physical locations – “Hives,” in Bumble lingo – sometime this year.

These moves also speak to Bumble’s aspiration to be more than just another dating app and Tinder rival.

The company instead wants to be known more broadly as a women-centric lifestyle brand where its users can network online and off, in all aspects of their lives – not just dating. For example, its Bumble BFF service helps women make new friends, while Bumble Bizz  is focused on business networking.

The company says the new magazine will be distributed by its 3,000+ brand ambassadors – marketers and event hosts who work with Bumble to promote its brand. Users can also request a free copy of the first issue within the app.

For Hearst, print efforts from online brands like Bumble represent a new line of business at a time when print is being challenged by digital solutions, like Kindle Unlimited or Apple News+, which are trying to transition print magazine subscribers to go digital-only.

“Bumble is at the forefront of inspiring women to make connections and take initiative in all aspects of their lives with its positive message of empowerment,” said HearstMade Editorial Director, Brett Hill, in a statement. “The magazine is a perfect example of how HearstMade is changing the face of custom publishing with hyper-targeted content that reflects the brand’s ethos in the most authentic way.”

Bumble Mag becomes available nationwide on Friday, April 5, says Bumble.

Snap is unlocking a new revenue stream while giving you something to do in between chats and Stories. Today Snapchat debuts its Snap Games platform that lets you play real-time, multiplayer games while texting and talking with your friends. The platform is based off Snap’s secret late-2017 acquisition of PrettyGreat, an Australian game studio with talent from Halfbrick which built Fruit Ninja. That team built Bitmoji Party, a Mario Party-style mini-game fest, to show off the platform that includes five games from developers like Zynga and ZeptoLab.

To monetize the platform, Snapchat will let users opt in to watching six-second unskippable commercials that reward them with a power up or bonus in-game currency. Snapchat will share revenue from the ads with developers, though it refused to specify the split. But down the line it’s easy to imagine Snapchat selling cosmetic upgrades via in-app purchases akin to Fortnite.

Snap announced the new Snap Games platform at its first-ever press event, the Snap Partner Summit in Los Angeles where it also announced an augmented reality utility platform called Scan, an ads network, and a way to put its Stories in otther apps.

Snapchat’s found an answer to the revenue problem stemming from its halted growth: it will show its ads in other apps with the launch of Snapchat Ad Kit and the Snapchat Audience Network. And rather than watching as other apps spin up their own knock-off versions of its camera and Stories, it will let apps like Tinder and Houseparty host Stories inside their own products that users can share to from the Snapchat camera with Stories Kit. They’ll both be launching later this year, and developers interested in monetization and engagement help can apply for access.

Snapchat debuted the big new additions to its Snap Kit at its first-ever press event in Los Angeles, the Snap Partner Summit where it also announced a new augmented reality utility platform called Scan. Over 200 apps have already integrated the privacy-safe Snap Kit that lets users login to other apps with Snapchat, bring their Bitmoji, view Our Stories content, and share stickers back to Snapchat.

But later this year, developers will be able to earn money off of Snap Kit with Ad Kit. Developers will integrate Snapchat’s SDK, and then Snap’s advertisers will be able to extend their ad buys to reach both Snapchat users and non-users in other apps. Snapchat will split the ad revenue with developers, but refused to hint at what the divide will be, as it’s still gauging developer interest. The move is straight out of Facebook’s playbook, essentially copying the functionality and name of Facebook’s Audience Network.

There are still big questions about exactly how Snapchat will reach and track ad views of non-users, and how it will be able to provide brands with the analytics they need while maintaining user privacy. But simply by making Snapchat’s somewhat proprietary vertical vdieo ad units reusable elsewhere, it could prove it has a scale to be worth advertisers’ time. The lack of scale has often scared buyers away from Snapchat. But now Snap CEO Evan Spiegel says that “In the United States, Snapchat now reaches nearly 75 percent of all 13-34 year-olds, and we reach 90 percent of 13-24 year-olds. In fact, we reach more 13-24 year-olds than Facebook or Instagram in the United States, the UK, France, Canada, and Australia.”

To keep those users engaged even outside of Snapchat, it’s adding App Stories through Story Kit. Snapchat users will see an option to share to integrated apps after they create a photo or video. Those Stories will then appear in custom places in other apps. You’ll see Snaps injected alongside people’s photos when you’re browsing potential matches in Tinder. You can see what friends on group chat social network Houseparty are doing when they not on the app. And you can see video recommendations from explorers on AdventureAide.

Point and shoot? No, point and interact. Snapchat can now help with your homework. The app’s camera is becoming the foundation of an augmented reality developer platform known as “Scan”. Snap today announced partnerships with Photomath to add the ability to solve math problems, and Giphy for detecting objects which then spawn related GIFs on screen. Scan will roll out to all Snapchat users soon, and developers interested in joining the platform can contact Snap.

Snapchat Scan spawns Giphy GIFs based on what’s around you

Previously, Snapchat’s camera could identify songs with Shazam and recognize objects so you could buy them on Amazon. But now instead of just offering a few scattered tools, Snapchat is crystallizing its plan to let you reveal hidden information about the world around you.

“Our camera lets the natural light from our world penetrate the darkness of the Internet . . . as we use the Internet more and more in our daily lives, we need a way to make it a bit more human” said Snap CEO Evan Spiegel at the company’s first ever press event, the Snap Partner Summit.

Scan with Photomath solves math problems

Others like Blippar have tried to build AR utility platforms, but they lacked the community and daily use necessary to already be top of mind when people want to scan something. But Snap CEO Evan Spiegel today revealed that “In the United States, Snapchat now reaches nearly 75 percent of all 13-34 year-olds, and we reach 90 percent of 13-24 year-olds. In fact, we reach more 13-24 year-olds than Facebook or Instagram in the United States, the UK, France, Canada, and Australia.”

The comparison data comes Facebook’s ad manager estimates which aren’t always totally accurate. Still, the stats demonstrate that amongst the audience likely to explore the world via augmented reality, Snapchat is huge.

When users tap and hold on the Snapchat camera, they’ll start to Scan their surroundings. Answers to math equations will magically appear. If you view a $10 bill, Hamilton will come alive and sing a song from the musical. Scan a slice of pizza and a dancing Giphy pizza slice appears. Users will also see the new Snapchat AR Bar with dedicated buttons to Scan, create a lens, or explore the 400,000 AR Lenses created by Snapchat’s community. 75 percent of Snap’s 186 million daily users play with Lenses each day, combining into 15 billion total plays to date. Scan was built off the acquisition of a startup called Scan.me, which until now has powered Snap’s QR Snapcodes that let people add friends or unlock Lenses.

Snap’s new AR Bar

Outside of utility, Snapchat is also adding a slew of new creative AR features to keep that audience entertained and loyal that are launching today. For example, it’s launching Landmarkers, which uses point cloud data from user submitted Our Stories of major landmarks to power animated AR transformations of famous places. Now the Eiffel Tower, Buckingham Palace, LA’s Chinese Theater, DC’s Capitol Building, and NYC’s Flatiron Building can spew rainbows, shoot lightning, and more.

Snapchat’s new Landmarkers

For developers and Lens creators using Snap’s Lens Studio tools, Snap is launching new Creator Profiles where they can show off all the Lenses they’ve contributed. They’ll all have access to new AR templates for hand, body, and pet effects that take care of all the hardcore computer science. Creators just add in their graphical assets like a mustache for dogs, fireballs that shoot out of people’s hands, or rainbows that appear over someone when they hold their arms out.

Snapchat’s new Lens Creator profiles

Snap will even surface relevant community Lenses in the Lens Carousel based on what its Scans pick up. One place it falls short though is there’s no direct monetization opportunities for independent Lens creators, beyond Snap occasionally connecting the best AR artists to brands for paid Lens development deals. Snapchat admits it will need to create better incentives long-term.

At a big press briefing yesterday, the company’s top execs explained that growth isn’t Snapchat’s success metric any more. That’s convenient considering the launch of Instagram Stories cut Snap’s growth from 17 percent per quarter to it actually losing users and only stabilizing this quarter. Instead he says deepening user engagement, and thereby the ad revenue users generate, is Snap’s path forward.

The more Snap gets users playing with augmented reality filters and the better development tools it provides, the more brands and devs will pay to promote their Lenses in the Lens Carousel or through video ads where users swipe up to try a Lens.

But that engagement is also critical to beating Facebook and Instagram to the next phase of AR. Instagram Stories might have 500 million daily users, but they’re mostly applying AR to their face, not to interact with the world. Snapchat needs as many fun AR entertainment experiences like Landmarkers as possible to normalize AR exploration, which will unlock the potential of the Scan platform. That could one day fuel affiliate fees from AR commerce sales and other revenue streams.

Plus, Snapchat says Lenses are coded to be compatible with not just iOS and Android, but future AR hardware platforms. To build the biggest repository of AR experiences, Snapchat needs help, as I wrote two years ago that Snap’s anti-developer attitude was an augmented liability. Now it’s finally building the tools and platform to harness a legion of developers to fill the physical world with imaginary wonder. “If we can show the right Lens in the right moment, we can inspire a whole new world of creativity” concludes Snap co-founder Bobby Murphy

Beresheet, Israel’s privately funded, engineered, and launched mission to the Moon’s surface, has successfully entered lunar orbit after a month and a half in transit. The craft will now adjust its orbit in preparation for landing on April 11.

The craft was launched on February 21 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9, accelerating towards the moon in an ever-widening Earth orbit. In a testament to the exactitude of the engineers at SpaceIL, the organization that created the craft, Beresheet finished its burn and entered an elliptical lunar orbit within 9 minutes of the time it was predicted to do so before launch. That’s some rocket science!

The next step in the plan is to reduce the size of the craft’s lunar orbit with successive burns, to the point where it can safely make a single final burn and drop to the surface.

“The lunar capture is an historic event in and of itself — but it also joins Israel in a seven-nation club that has entered the moon’s orbit,” said SpaceIL’s Morris Kahn in a statement. “A week from today, we’ll make more history by landing on the moon, joining three superpowers who have done so.”

Those superpowers are of course the U.S., Russia, and China, the latter of which touched down on the moon just earlier this year, on the far (not “dark”) side of the moon to boot.

But Beresheet would be the first private concern to have a soft landing on the moon — and not just privately conceived and funded, but engineered and launched by private industry as well. It’s a powerful indication of the strength of the global space community. At under $100M, it’s been quite cheap as well.

Assuming all goes well, the lander will land in the Mare Serenitatis, or Sea of Serenity, and poke around for a few days. It’s equipped with some experimental instruments, but as the lander will cease operating after a short time, it isn’t anything crucial or long-term.

Science, however, is only the secondary goal of the mission. It is primarily for national pride and the advancement of the Israeli space community that Beresheet was launched, and to that end it has already been a success. Stay tuned a week from today when the lander descends to the surface.

Political ads on social networks have become a lot more complicated in France after the French parliament passed the so-called “fake news law” in late 2018. But the French government didn’t expect Twitter to refuse an ad telling you to register to vote for the European election in May.

Among other things, the fake news law says that you can’t run a political ad without complying to a new set of rules. For instance, social networks have to display who is paying for those campaigns. Social networks also have to say how much money they receive for those campaigns.

As Next INpact noted, Twitter has updated its terms of service on February 1st to say that all political campaigning ads are forbidden in France.

Maybe Twitter isn’t ready yet to display this information. Maybe Twitter thinks public interest campaigns related to an election are political ads. But there’s one thing for sure — Twitter can refuse any ad on its own website.

But the minister of culture, the minister of digital and the minister of the interior all complained about Twitter’s decision… on Twitter.

This morning, Cédric O, the newly appointed digital minister talked with Twitter executives to convince them to change their mind. And it worked — Twitter has updated its terms of service and this decision could have broader consequences in other European countries.

A Twitter spokesperson sent me the following statement:

Promoting and protecting the integrity of #EUelection2019 is a core part of our mission for the next few months. That includes encouraging voter participation. Following enactment of the “Manipulation de l’information” law, we decided to prohibit all issue based advertising targeting France, which included Get Out The Vote type campaigns. Following consideration, we have now decided to allow campaigns aimed at encouraging voter participation. We are please to make this clarification and will continue to promote and protect the integrity of the #EUelection2019 conversation in the coming months.

I interviewed Cédric O yesterday and he thinks terms of service give too much power to social networks. “When Facebook updates its terms of service, it has regulatory effects — it nearly becomes legislation — for 2 billion people,” he said. Maybe it’s time to end the big lie of terms of service.