Friday, January 31, 2020

Daily Crunch - Facebook's profits disappoint

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Thursday, January 30, 2020 By Anthony Ha

Facebook hits 2.5B users in Q4 but shares sink from slow profits

In its latest quarterly earnings report, Facebook said it now reaches 2.5 billion monthly users, up 2% from Q3 2019. And it brought in $21.08 billion in revenue, up 25% year-over-year.

But profits aren’t growing as quickly as Wall Street would like. One big source of those expenses? Headcount grew 26% year-over-year to 44,942, and Facebook now has over 1,000 engineers working on privacy.

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Facebook hits 2.5B users in Q4 but shares sink from slow profits image

Avast shuts down marketing analytics subsidiary Jumpshot amid controversy over selling user data

It was recently revealed that the Czech-based cybersecurity specialist was cultivating another controversial revenue stream: harvesting and selling user data, some of it amassed by way of its security tools.

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Bring the 4th LVMH Innovation Award home

Sponsored by LVMH

The world's #1 Luxury Group is looking for the most disruptive startups dedicated to "Crafting the Customer Experience of Tomorrow". The 30 finalists will get to showcase their solutions at the VivaTech event in Paris, France, June 11-13, 2020. Apply now.

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Study of YouTube comments finds evidence of radicalization effect

The study, carried out by researchers at Switzerland's Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne and the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil, found evidence that users who engaged with “Alt-lite”/”Intellectual Dark Web” right-wing content migrated to commenting on the most fringe far-right content.

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Study of YouTube comments finds evidence of radicalization effect image

Microsoft shares rise after it beats revenue, profit expectations, Azure posts 62% growth

Microsoft reported its fiscal 2020 second quarter (calendar Q4 2019) results yesterday, including revenue of $36.9 billion (up 14%), net income of $11.6 billion (up 38%) and diluted earnings per share of $1.51.

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Snapchat launches Bitmoji TV: zany 4-min cartoons of your avatar

Snapchat is betting that narcissism will drive viewership for its new weekly videos that put you and your friends' customizable Bitmoji avatars into a flurry of silly animated situations. Bitmoji TV will premiere on Saturday morning.

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Snapchat launches Bitmoji TV: zany 4-min cartoons of your avatar image

Practice Fusion, once backed by top VCs, pushed doctors to prescribe opioids in kickback scheme

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Practice Fusion solicited and received pay from an (unnamed for now) major opioid company in exchange for using its EHR software to influence doctors in the act of prescribing opioid pain medications.

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Where top VCs are investing in travel, tourism and hospitality tech

To get a temperature check on the state of the travel market, the outlook for fundraising and which sub-sectors might present the most attractive opportunities for startups today, we asked five leading VCs at firms spanning early to growth stages to share what's exciting them most and where they see opportunity in travel, tourism and hospitality tech. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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Thursday, January 30, 2020

Daily Crunch - Apple revenue keeps rising

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Wednesday, January 29, 2020 By Anthony Ha

Happy Wednesday

Apple reports better-than-expected earnings, SpaceX launches another batch of satellites and a mobile messaging startup raises $70 million. Here’s your Daily Crunch for January 29, 2020.

Apple shares rise after company reports better-than-expected revenue of $91.8B

Apple has worked in recent years to lessen its dependence on the iPhone, in part through services and smaller electronics. This is doubly true as the company posted a year-over-year decline in Mac revenue.

In its latest earnings report, the company highlighted its smaller-device and home category, with CEO Tim Cook saying his company posted "all-time records for Services and Wearables."

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Apple shares rise after company reports better-than-expected revenue of $91.8B image

Image Credits: Getty Images

Onboarding, customer service, engagement and retention: Infobip does it all

Sponsored by Infobip

In the age of digital connectedness, consumers expect efficient and personalized interactions with brands. First impressions matter. Infobip has an in-house cloud communications platform designed for companies with consumer-facing needs.

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SpaceX successfully launches 60 more satellites for its Starlink satellite internet constellation

SpaceX has launched yet another batch of 60 Starlink satellites — its third production batch of the orbital communication spacecraft, and its second batch this year alone. After the last batch went up in early January, SpaceX became the largest private satellite operator in the world, and now it's just extending its lead.

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Mobile messaging startup Attentive raises another $70M

It’s been less than six months since Attentive raised a $40 million Series B. CEO Brian Long told me that he wasn't planning to raise money again so soon, but things were going even better than expected, with a client list that has grown to more than 750 businesses.

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Mobile messaging startup Attentive raises another $70M image

Image Credits: Attentive

For alternative meat manufacturer Beyond Meat, fast food chains giveth and taketh away

On the same day that the Tim Horton's restaurant chain is dropping Beyond Meat products from its menus, Beyond Meat and KFC announced the expansion of a pilot run at new stores in Nashville, Tenn., Charlotte, N.C. and across Kentucky.

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A conversation with 'the most ambitious female VC in Europe'

We talk to Ophelia Brown, whose Blossom Capital just raised a new $185 million fund. The interview covers topics like her investment thesis, why Europe is at an "inflection point," diversity in the investor community and the increasing money coming into Europe from American VCs. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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A conversation with 'the most ambitious female VC in Europe' image

No pan-EU Huawei ban as Commission endorses 5G risk mitigation plan

The move is another blow for the Trump administration’s efforts to demolish trust in Chinese-made technology, with the U.K. government also announcing yesterday that it would not be banning so-called "high risk" providers from supplying 5G networks.

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Kenshō Healthcare publicly launches its 'antithesis of Goop'

While Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle brand startup serves up a heady mix of unverified pseudo-scientific claims alongside long-standing holistic practices, the founders of Kenshō Healthcare say they’re focused on the verified and verifiable claims coming out of the medical community.

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Wednesday, January 29, 2020

Daily Crunch - Facebook expands privacy options

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Tuesday, January 28, 2020 By Anthony Ha

Happy Monday

Facebook makes good on a privacy promise made in 2018, ServiceNow acquires an AI startup and Flipboard is moving into local news. Here’s your Daily Crunch for January 28, 2020.

All users can now access Facebook's tool for controlling which apps and sites can share data for ad-targeting

Facebook is making its "Off-Facebook Activity" tool, which allows users to manage and delete the data that third-party websites and apps share with Facebook, available to all users worldwide. The feature was first introduced in 2018 at Facebook's annual developer conference, but only launched to users in select geographies last year.

As Facebook explains today, other businesses send Facebook information about your activity on their sites and apps, which Facebook then uses to show you relevant ads. With the new Off-Facebook Activity tool, you can see a summary of that information and clear it from your account.

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All users can now access Facebook's tool for controlling which apps and sites can share data for ad-targeting image

Image Credits: Getty Images

Learn to Lead Through a Crisis

Sponsored by Columbia Business School

Recognizing that crisis situations require a different set of leadership skills than normal conditions, prepare yourself for the challenge of navigating through difficult times in our three-day Crisis Leadership program.

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ServiceNow acquires conversational AI startup Passage AI

Passage AI helps customers build chatbots in multiple languages, something that should come in handy as ServiceNow continues to modernize its digital service platform.

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Flipboard expands into local news

The goal with the new offering is to give Flipboard users an easy way to catch up with local news, sports, dining, real estate, transportation and weather from a variety of sources, including local newspapers, local TV stations, radio stations, college news sites and even blogs.

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Flipboard expands into local news image

Tech valuations versus tech-enabled valuations: 2020 IPO edition

The value of tech-enabled companies is coming into focus as several American unicorns test the public markets, with data showing that some venture-backed companies that are often grouped with technology companies are in fact worth just a fraction of their tech-first cousins. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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With Tony Fadell's help, Advano is building battery components to power an electric future

The technology was innovative enough to earn the Louisiana-based startup a place in Y Combinator's accelerator. It has now attracted the attention of Mitsui Kinzoku, which is investing in the company as a strategic partner, and Tony Fadell, the famous product designer known as “the father of the iPod” and the founder of the smart thermostat company Nest.

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With Tony Fadell's help, Advano is building battery components to power an electric future image

Image Credits: Getty Images under a Christophe Morin license.

Scroll launches its subscription offering ad-free access across 300 partner sites

CEO Tony Haile previously led analytics company Chartbeat, and he said he founded Scroll because of his frustration with the way news sites were becoming dragged down by ads and trackers — and despite those performance-slowing/privacy-defying practices, publications were still struggling to make money.

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Filmic's DoubleTake app brings simultaneous camera shooting to the iPhone 11

The most visually compelling use here is Shot/Reverse Shot, which takes video from both the rear-facing and front-facing cameras at once. Obviously there's going to be a gulf in image quality between the front and back, but the ability to do both simultaneously opens up some pretty fascinating possibilities.

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