1010Computers | Computer Repair & IT Support

1 … 1,029 1,030 1,031 1,032 1,033 … 2,384

Jeffrey Katzenberg’s NewTV closes a billion-dollar round, says report

Published July 26, 2018

Jeffrey Katzenberg’s new mobile video startup NewTV, which snagged Meg Whitman as CEO in January, has now closed on $1 billion in funding, according to a report out today in CNN. Investors in the round include Disney, 21st Century Fox, Warner Bros, Entertainment One and other media companies, with a combined $200 million investment, while institutional investors from the U.S. and China made up the rest.

The news follows a May report from Bloomberg, which said NewTV had then raised around $800 million. It had also said 21st Century Fox and Warner Bros. were investors.

Last fall, an SEC filing revealed WndrCo was looking to raise as much as $2 billion. That could indicate that the round CNN is reporting is still in the process of raising.

NewTV declined to comment, when TechCrunch reached them for confirmation.

Details are still fairly sparse on NewTV, which is being incubated by Katzenberg’s WndrCo, a holding company that’s also invested in startups including Mixcloud, Axios, Node, Flowspace, Whistle Sports, and TYT Network.

So far, we know NewTV aims to bring high-quality Hollywood production values and storytelling to mobile, but in a different format. Instead of producing regular-length TV shows, it aims to release content in “bite-sized formats of 10 minutes or less.” This will also involve custom-designed technology built specifically for mobile, it claims.

But it’s unclear why – beyond having Katzenberg and now Whitman’s names attached – this makes the company worth a billion dollar investment. The market for this type of content hasn’t really been proven out. After all, today’s youngest video consumers are happy with YouTube – their TV alternative of sorts – which is filled with short-form video.

And while YouTubers’ grasp of production values and storytelling chops may fall short of “Hollywood” standards, streaming services like Amazon, Netflix, Hulu and others are filling in the gaps in terms of quality, and are growing sizable subscriber bases.

If there is actually demand for “high-quality short-form” video, it seems content producers could just sell to existing distributors directly.

It’s also unclear for now if NewTV aims to own and distribute its content to others, act as its own standalone streaming service, or plans for a mixture of both.

In any event, as CNN points out, even a large round like this is a small bet for the bigger media companies involved. In addition, they don’t want to miss a shot at backing Katzenberg’s latest – especially given his prior successes at Paramount, Disney and DreamWorks.

Powered by WPeMatico

GitHub and Google reaffirm partnership with Cloud Build CI/CD tool integration

Published July 26, 2018

When Microsoft acquired GitHub for $7.5 billion smackeroos in June, it sent some shock waves through the developer community as it is a key code repository. Google certainly took notice, but the two companies continue to work closely together. Today at Google Next, they announced an expansion of their partnership around Google’s new CI/CD tool, Cloud Build, which was unveiled this week at the conference.

Politics aside, the purpose of the integration is to make life easier for developers by reducing the need to switch between tools. If GitHub recognizes a Docker file without a corresponding CI/CD tool, the developer will be prompted to grab one from the GitHub Marketplace with Google Cloud Build offered prominently as one of the suggested tools.

Photo: GitHub

Should the developer choose to install Cloud Build, that’s where the tight integration comes into play. Developers can run Cloud Build against their code directly from GitHub, and the results will appear directly in the GitHub interface. They won’t have to switch applications to make this work together, and that should go a long way toward saving developer time and effort.

Google Cloud Build. Photo: Google

This is part of GitHub’s new “Smart Recommendations,” which will be rolling out to users in the coming months.

Melody Meckfessel, VP of Engineering for Google Cloud says that the two companies have a history and a context and they have always worked extremely well together on an engineer-to-engineer level. “We have been working together from an engineering standpoint for so many years. We both believe in doing the right thing for developers. We believe that success as it relates to cloud adoption comes from collaborating in the ecosystem,” she said.

Given that close relationship, it had to be disappointing on some level when Microsoft acquired GitHub. In fact, Google Cloud head, Diane Greene expressed sadness about the deal in an interview with CNBC earlier this week, but GitHub’s SVP of Technology Jason Warner believes that Microsoft will be a good steward and that the relationship with Google will remain strong.

Warner says the company’s founding principles were about not getting locked in to any particularly platform and he doesn’t see that changing after the acquisition is finalized. “One of the things that was critical in any discussion about an acquisition was that GitHub shall remain an open platform,” Warner explained.

He indicated that today’s announcement is just a starting point, and the two companies intend to build on this integration moving forward. “We worked pretty closely on this together. This announcement is a nod to some of the future oriented partnerships that we will be announcing later in the year,” he said. And that partnership should continue unabated, even after the Microsoft acquisition is finalized later this year.

Powered by WPeMatico

IGTV carousel funnels Instagram feed traffic to buried videos

Published July 26, 2018

IGTV didn’t get the benefit of being splayed out atop Instagram like Stories did. Instead, the long-form video hub is a bit more distant, located in a standalone app as well as behind a static orange button on the main app’s homescreen. That means users can go right on tapping and scrolling through Instagram without coming across IGTV’s longer videos, which range up to an hour.

IGTV has only been out a month and Instagram’s feed has been around for eight years, so it makes sense to try to push views from the app’s core feature to this new one. That’s why Instagram is experimenting with a way to show off a carousel of IGTV videos in its main app’s feed. Spotted by app researcher Jane Manchun Wong, we asked Instagram about it. A spokesperson confirmed it was testing the carousel, and provided this statement: “We’re always testing new and different ways to surface interesting content for people on Instagram.”

The IGTV carousel appears below the Stories tray, pushing down the traditional feed so less of the first photo or video immediately appears on the screen. It shows a preview tile of the IGTV videos with overlaid titles and lengths, plus the creator’s name and profile pic. They look similar to Snapchat’s Discover page and the carousels of “Recent Stories” Instagram began running mid-feed last year.

By teasing IGTV’s actual content rather than just slapping a logo button atop the screen, Instagram might get more users to check out the feature and standalone app. More views could in turn lure more content from creators. If they don’t see IGTV’s audience as significant, they won’t go to the trouble of shooting long-form vertical video for the platform or editing their landscape Instagram feed and YouTube videos for the format.

Given yesterday’s bloodbath of a Facebook earnings report, there’s more pressure than ever on Instagram to pull its weight. Facebook sunk to its slowest growth rate in history, losing users in Europe and going flat in North America. In fact, it revealed a new “family of apps audience” metric of 2.5 billion people using at least one of Facebook’s apps (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger) to distract from the bad news. That stat will let Facebook hide how younger users are abandoning it in favor of Instagram.

The big concern is that vertical videos and Stories are the future of content creation and consumption, but Facebook hasn’t figured out how to monetize these formats as well as its tried-and-true News Feed ads. Concerns about eyeballs shifting away from feeds faster than ad dollars contributed to Facebook’s 20 percent share price drop erasing $120 billion in market cap.

But Facebook’s saving grace, and the reason the stock might bounce back, is that it ruthlessly cloned Snapchat Stories for two years before it was obvious that it had to and now has 1.1 billion daily Stories users across its apps. If Facebook said Stories were the future but it was way behind, it could have been beaten down even worse by Wall Street.

Still, short-form Stories are best paired with short-form Stories ads. If it can make IGTV a hit, it could run longer or unskippable ads that earn it more. So you can expect to see more and more of IGTV in the Instagram feed.

Powered by WPeMatico

Facebook acquires Redkix to enhance communications on Workplace by Facebook

Published July 26, 2018

Facebook had a rough day yesterday when its stock plunged after a poor earnings report. What better way to pick yourself up and dust yourself off than to buy a little something for yourself. Today the company announced it has acquired Redkix, a startup that provides tools to communicate more effectively by combining email with a more formal collaboration tool. The companies did not reveal the acquisition price.

Redkix burst out of the gate two years ago with a $17 million seed round, a hefty seed amount by any measure. What prompted this kind of investment was a tool that combined a collaboration tool like Slack or Workplace by Facebook with email. People could collaborate in Redkix itself, or if you weren’t a registered user, you could still participate by email, providing a more seamless way to work together.

Alan Lepofsky, who covers enterprise collaboration at Constellation Research, sees this tool as providing a key missing link. “Redkix is a great solution for bridging the worlds between traditional email messaging and more modern conversational messaging. Not all enterprises are ready to simply switch from one to the other, and Redkix allows for users to work in whichever method they want, seamlessly communicating with the other,” Lepofsky told TechCrunch.

As is often the case with these kinds of acquisitions, the company bought the technology  itself along with the team that created it. This means that the Redkix team including the CEO and CTO will join Facebook and they will very likely be shutting down the application after the acquisition is finalized.

Lepofsky thinks that enterprises that are adopting Facebook’s enterprise tool will be able to more seamlessly transition between the two modes of communication, the Workplace by Facebook tool and email, as they prefer.

Although a deal like this has probably been in the works for some time, after yesterday’s earning’s debacle, Facebook could be looking for ways to enhance its revenue in areas beyond the core Facebook platform. The enterprise collaboration tool does offer a possible way to do that in the future, and if they can find a way to incorporate email into it, it could make it a more attractive and broader offering.

Facebook is competing with Slack, the darling of this space and others like Microsoft, Cisco and Google around communications and collaboration. When it launched in 2015, it was trying to take that core Facebook product and put it in a business context, something Slack had been doing since the beginning.

To succeed in business, Facebook had to think differently than as a consumer tool, driven by advertising revenue and had to convince large organizations that they understood their requirements. Today, Facebook claims 30,000 organizations are using the tool and over time they have built in integrations to other key enterprise products, and keep enhancing it.

Perhaps with today’s acquisition, they can offer a more flexible way to interact with the platform and could increase those numbers over time.

Powered by WPeMatico

Snapchat ‘Storytellers’ finally pairs creators with advertisers

Published July 26, 2018

Snapchat is arriving very late to the game of courting influencers. Now it hopes to boost ad spend by connecting businesses with its top independent creators, but it won’t take a cut of deals it helps arrange. Today Snap Inc. launches its “Snapchat Storytellers” pilot program that will introduce brands to five of the app’s most popular content makers, including Mplatco, Cyrene Q and Shonduras. They’ll star in ads for Stories and Discover or provide creative direction to brands with their expertise, gleaned from gathering audiences of millions over the past few years, in exchange for cash. Top creators can often earn tens of thousands of dollars or more for deals with brands.

The program is late but a smart move for Snapchat, as it needs to educate businesses about how to make great Stories ads. These often require stylish vertical video that’s a big creative jump from the tiny photo, link and text ads many are accustomed to, or even the pithy landscape videos they’ve learned to make for YouTube or Facebook. If creators can help brands make great-looking ads that perform well, those businesses will be more likely to spend a lot more on Snapchat.

That’s critical for the public company, which lost $385 million last quarter and missed its revenue estimate by $14 million when it brought in $230 million. With Facebook’s Snapchat Stories clones from Instagram and WhatsApp depressing Snap’s user growth rate to a measly 2.9 percent (its lowest rate ever), the company will have to figure out how to squeeze more dollars out of each user it already has. If it can’t do that with better ad creative and performance, it will be forced to rely on annoying unskippable Stories ads, which it rolled out to more businesses yesterday.

Meanwhile, if Snap extends the program to more creators, it could be a good way to help them monetize and stay loyal to the platform. YouTube has long offered ad revenue shares and Facebook’s ad breaks let creators insert commercials into their videos for a cut of the money. Both are experimenting with subscription patronage and tipping options to help creators earn money. Facebook recently launched its Brand Collabs manager that offers an entire search engine of creators that brands can sort by audience demographics.

But Snapchat still doesn’t have any of these options, and its Storytellers program looks half-hearted in comparison. As the social media influencer space matures, many creators are sick of giving away their content for free, and will bring their best work to whichever network helps get them paid.

Still, Snap will take a relatively hands-off approach in terms of how deals between brands and creators are struck. It’s not going to take a cut, nor will creators get locked into exclusivity contracts with Snap or the businesses. Basically, Snap is adding the five creators that include Geeohsnap and Georgio Copter to its Creative Partners list alongside ad agencies and creative studios. If advertisers express interest in a creator, Snap will make an introduction, then leave them to work out the deal.

It’s dumbfounding that Snapchat waited this long to launch this program, and it didn’t even come up with it. It was the endearingly weird former Vine star Shonduras that suggested Snapchat build the program during its first Creators Summit back in May. That shows how out of touch with the creator community Snap was until now. If it can’t grow its user count quickly, it should be doing everything it can to keep creators and advertisers from straying to Facebook’s Stories platforms with a lot more users.

[Correction: Nicholas Megalis made “Gummy Money,” not Shonduras.]

Powered by WPeMatico

Samsung teases Note 9’s extended battery life in new video spot

Published July 26, 2018

Based on the many, many Galaxy Note 9 leaks we’ve seen in the past few weeks and months, it seems like a pretty safe bet that the upcoming phablet won’t look all that different from its predecessors. The phablet does, however, appear to have a lot going on under the hood.

The most recent piece of news hinted at a massive 4,000 mAh battery — marking a 700 mAh jump over its predecessor. That’s some pretty rarified on-board battery air right there. The first in a series of quick video spots for the handset does appear to confirm an increased capacity, without going into any specifics. And, naturally, it takes Apple to task in the process. That’s just Samsung’s MO these days. 

A sizable jump in battery is notable for one key reason, of course. Samsung’s been pretty cautious on that front ever since all of those Note 7s started exploding a few years back. The company apologized profusely, before instituting a bunch of new safety mechanisms in the process. Since then, it hasn’t…played with fire, so to speak.

From the looks of it, however, the company’s August 9 event could change all of that.

Powered by WPeMatico

LG Mobile’s losses continue but now sales are falling too

Published July 26, 2018

Korean electronics giant LG is soaring to new heights, but its mobile division continues to lag well behind the rest of the company and the signs aren’t promising.

LG’s latest financials released today recorded another quarter of success with operating profit jumping 16 percent year-on-year to hit KRW 771 billion ($715.1 million) as overall sales rose 3.2 percent across the group. LG said its sales and profit for the first half of 2018 are at all-time highs but — and you knew a but was coming… — its smartphone division remains a significant loss-maker.

The company’s mobile and communications division — which houses LG Mobile — posted yet another quarter in the red. Sales of KRW 2.07 trillion ($1.92 billion) represented an annual drop of 23 percent, while the division carded an operating loss of KRW 185.4 billion, or $171.95 million.

That’s compared to a quarterly profit of KRW 407 billion ($377.48 million) for LG’s home entertainment business and a KRW 457.2 billion ($424.04 million) profit for its home appliance unit, which are LG’s two stand-out business units.

There’s nothing new here, losses are commonplace for LG Mobile.

It hasn’t been break-even or profitable since 2014. Those losses have been cut by some degree since the company shook up the division with new leadership in November 2017, but there’s plenty to worry about with sales dipping noticeably over the past two quarters of business.

This time around in Q2, LG put its mobile losses down to “the slowing growth of the global smartphone market and a decline in mid- to low-end smartphone sales in Latin America.” While it claimed that the size of the operating loss was down to investments in sales and marketing ahead of the release of its next flagship devices.

There’s a hint a reorganization — perhaps even layoffs — as the company added that it would “seek to further improve its business structure” as it aims prepares to push its LG G7 ThinQ and LG V35 ThinQ devices worldwide and get ready for those new launches.

More changes are on their way, you’d imagine, as LG is surely looking for a way to stem the bleeding but also retain a mobile business has certainly been iconic despite its struggles in recent times. Perhaps the answer is a downsizing in a similar style to Sony in 2016. Back then, the Japanese firm was losing even more than LG is per quarter but it began to be more strategic with its new device launches and target sales markets. The end result of that strategy was an end to the big losses and a more sustainable mobile business.

Powered by WPeMatico

Apple’s Search Ads expand to six more markets in Europe and Asia

Published July 25, 2018

In December, Apple introduced a new pay-per-install ad product called Search Ads Basic aimed at smaller developers, to complement the existing Search Ads product, which then became known as Search Ads Advanced. Today, the company is expanding Search Ads to more countries, including France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and Spain, bringing the total number of countries where Search Ads is available to thirteen.

In addition to the U.S., Search Ads Advanced had already expanded to Australia, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Switzerland, and the U.K.

Developers in the newly supported countries will be able to create campaigns using Search Ads Advanced starting on July 25, 2018 at 4 PM PDT, with those campaigns appearing on the App Store starting August 1, 2018 at 4 PM PDT.

Meanwhile, Search Ads Basic will be available across all thirteen supported countries starting on August 22, 2018 at 10 AM PDT.

To encourage sign-ups, Apple is offering first-time advertisers a $100 USD credit to try out the product.

While the first version of Search Ads launched back in October 2016 in the U.S., the idea behind the newer “Basic” product was to offer developers a different – and simpler – means of reaching potential customers.

Search Ads was originally designed to allow developers to target users’ keyword searches, combined with other factors like location, gender or whether or not they had installed the app in the past. Developers would pay when users tapped on those targeted ads.

With the launch of Search Ads Basic, it’s easier to set up campaigns.

Developers only have to enter the app to be advertised, the campaign’s budget, and how much they want to pay per install. Apple helps by suggesting the max developers should pay using historical data. Then, developers only pay for actual installs, not taps.

Although the App Store was redesigned with the launch of iOS 11 to offer improved discoverability, search is still a key way people find out about apps.

Apple says that over 70 percent of App Store visitors use search to discover apps, in fact, and 65 percent of all downloads come directly from an App Store search.

The ads work well, too, as they have an over 50 percent conversion rate, on average, says Apple.

Apple’s advantage over the pay-per-install ads found elsewhere on the web isn’t only the ads’ placement – at the top of App Store searches, where they’re identified with a blue background and “Ad” icon – it also manages this without violating user privacy. That is, it doesn’t build specific profiles on individuals for ad targeting purposes, and it doesn’t share user data with developers. By its nature, this makes the system GDPR compliant.

In addition, Apple only places an ad when it’s relevant to a user’s search – developers can’t pay more to have their ad shown more often across less relevant searches, which offers a more level playing field.

Apple didn’t say when Search Ads would reach other countries, but with the new expansions it has some of the top markets now covered.

 

Powered by WPeMatico

Facebook loses $120 billion in market cap after awful Q2 earnings

Published July 25, 2018

Facebook’s share price fell over 20 percent in after-hours trading today after the company announced its slowest-ever user growth rate and a scary warning that its revenue growth would rapidly decelerate. Before today’s brutal Q2 earnings, Facebook’s share price closed today at $217.50 – a record high — but fell to around $172 after the earnings call. That’s a market cap drop of roughly $123 billion. In two hours, Facebook lost more value than most startups and even public companies are ever worth.

Here’s the full story on Facebook’s disastrous Q2 2018 earnings:

So why did Facebook’s share price sink like a stone? There are five big reasons:

Slowest-Ever User Growth Rate – Facebook’s monthly user count grew just 1.54, compared to 3.14 last quarter. Daily active users grew even slower at 1.44 percent, compared to 3.42 percent last quarter. For reference, 2.18 percent was its previous slowest DAU growth rate back in Q4 2017. Suddenly hitting this wall could limit Facebook’s total user count over the long-run, and its revenue with it. Facebook tried to distract from these facts by announcing a new “family of apps audience” metric of 2.5 billion people using at least one of its apps, which will hide the shift of users from Facebook to Instagram and WhatsApp.

User Count Shrank In Europe, Flat In US & Canada – Facebook saw its first-ever decline in monthly user count in Europe, from 377 million to 376 million. It got stuck at 241 million in the US & Canada after similarly pausing at 239 million in Q4 2017. Those are Facebook’s two most lucrative markets, with it earning $25.91 per user in North America and $8.76 in Europe. If those markets stall, even swift growth in the Rest Of World region where it earns just $1.91 per user won’t save it.

Decelerating Revenue Growth – Facebook’s revenue grew a remarkable 42 percent year-over-year this quarter. But CFO David Wehner warned that metric would decelerate by high single-digit percentage per quarter over the coming quarters. Wehner said a combination of currency headwinds, new privacy controls, and new experiences like Stories will contribute to the deceleration. This news is what caused Facebook’s share price to drop from -7 percent to `-20 percent.

Privacy And Well-Being – Q2 saw the debut of Europe’s GDPR that forced Facebook to change its privacy policies and get users to agree to how it collects data about them. Wehner blamed GDPR for Facebook loss of users in Europe. That law and Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal led the company to have to improve its privacy controls. These could make it tougher for Facebook to target people with ads or show their content to more people.

Meanwhile, Facebook has continued to adopt the “Time Well Spent” philosophy, removing click-bait news and crappy viral videos that lead to passive internet content consumption that studies say is unhealthy. Instead, Facebook is pushing features like Watch Party where users actively interact with each other. Those might not produce as much time on site and subsequent ad views, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the changes are “positive and we’re going to continue in this direction.”

The Shift To Stories – Facebook estimates that by in 2019, sharing via ephemeral vertical Stories slideshows will surpass sharing via feeds. The problem is that advertisers may be slower than users to make that shift. “Will this monetize at the same rate as News Feed? We honestly don’t know” COO Sheryl Sandberg said. Stories ads might be full-screen and more immersive, but they don’t show off links to online stores as well, nor are they as well optimized from decades of banner ad experience by the industry.

Luckily, even though Snapchat invented the Stories format, Facebook has far more people using it each day, with 150 million Stories users on Facebook, 70 million on Messenger, 400 million on Instagram, and 450 million on WhatsApp . If Facebook does manage to figure out Stories ads, it could dominate, but it could take years for its advertiser count and ad prices to rise to offset the shift away from feeds.

Powered by WPeMatico

FameGame wants to recreate reality TV for a mobile age

Published July 25, 2018

The pre-social media phenomenon that was early 2000s American Idol might be a weird place to spend a lot of focus when it comes to thinking about the future. But it’s also worth noting how little these types of shows adapted to build themselves into the fabric of live social commentary. Twitter has offered a nice second screen for thirsty users, but what would reality TV look like if it was built for the smartphone?

The team behind FameGame is aiming to answer these very fascinating/worrying questions with their new app which envisions the rebirth of live reality TV on your smartphone. The company’s first offering seems to be a mix of American Idol, Musical.ly and HQ Trivia with young users vying to flex their talents and social media prowess to win cash and glory.

The startup sees live gamified engagement as a social outlet that existing apps and platforms aren’t making much of a dent in. FameGame CEO Alexandra Botez grew interested in the concept after getting into live-streaming herself playing chess on Twitch and seeing the potential of bringing users closer to less gaming-focused verticals.

“We thought that the interactivity of live gaming could also be applied to make conventional TV more entertaining,” Botez tells TechCrunch. “We think Musical.ly and Instagram are pretty big so it’s hard for them to change their infrastructure in such a way that they make the type of immersive experience that we’ve created with FameGame.”

FameGame plays the game of fame by getting users to submit self-shot smartphone videos of their talents. The challenges differ by week but one contest may be focused on dance skills while another may be focused on lip-syncing. After an initial submission period, users can check out what’s been uploaded and vote for their favorites which will be included in a live show that’s hosted at 5:00 PM PT every day.

Cash prizes are at stake, but the real emphasis seems to be on social validation. Winners will also get a shoutout from a Musical.ly “celebrity” user and a big emphasis is put on the host shouting out users and their handles to drive attention their way. The whole design seems to take some pretty clear, erm, inspiration from HQ Trivia but the live voting component adds a more impactful community vibe to it though once users see they aren’t included amongst the finalists, it might be hard to hold onto viewers.

The startup’s efforts are going to start with a focus on the crowd that has helped catapult apps like Instagram and Musical.ly to rabid success. “We decided to go with young teenage girls because they are really obsessed with becoming famous on social media and they spend a lot of time on Musical.ly posting videos and not necessarily getting the gratification that they might want,” CTO Ruben Mayer-Hirshfeld tells me.

There are certainly some unique challenges with catering to such a young user base, especially from a safety standpoint. The company is going to curate the few videos that go into the live show, but there isn’t any screening happening in between user submission and user voting aside from a reporting button so the burden is ultimately put on a young user base to decide what crosses the line.

FameGame is just the start for the company’s ambitions. Botez tells me that there are a number of different TV show formats that seem ripe for the live social mobile elements, but that the main focus is getting excited teens on FameGame right now and seeing whether the format can catch steam and move beyond what’s out there already.

Powered by WPeMatico

1 … 1,029 1,030 1,031 1,032 1,033 … 2,384