Twitter has a record-breaking week as users looked for news of protests and COVID-19

Civil unrest due to the nationwide George Floyd protests drove Twitter to see a record number of new installs this week, according to data from two app store intelligence firms, Apptopia and Sensor Tower. While the firms’ exact findings differed in terms of the total number of new downloads or when records were broken, the firms agreed that Twitter’s app had its largest-ever week, globally.

Twitter’s usage is on the rise because of the immediacy around news-sharing its platform provides. This was in particular demand amid the George Floyd protests in the U.S., as protestors used Twitter to share live images and videos of the demonstrations, the fires and looting, instances of police brutality, and more. Meanwhile, non-protestors downloaded the app in order to watch the events unfold directly and get unfiltered, breaking news.

According to data from Sensor Tower, Twitter saw just over a million installs on Monday and around 1 million new installs on Tuesday — making Monday the day seeing the most single-day installs since at least January 1, 2014, when the firm began recording app store data. At its peak, U.S. installs this week were at a four-year high. On Wednesday, Sensor Tower estimates Twitter installs declined a bit causing the app to rank slightly lower on app store global charts.

Apptopia, on the other hand, found that Twitter topped its record for installs on Wednesday with 677,000 worldwide downloads. This included a near-record download figure of 140,000 installs in the U.S., with a larger number of installs coming from international markets, including the U.K., India, Brazil, and Mexico. However, this U.S. download figure was the second-highest daily install number for the U.S. in Twitter’s lifetime, the firm said.

The truth between these two firms’ different numbers is probably somewhere in the middle. Sensor Tower routinely comes in with higher figures from Apptopia, but from a broader viewpoint, the two firms tend to see the same overall in trends. In this week’s case, they both point to a breakout week for Twitter’s mobile app download growth.

While it may seem odd that Twitter saw more installs in non-U.S. markets, it is an indication that the world is watching these events unfold. But it’s also perhaps something of a perfect storm for Twitter demand, because the civil unrest isn’t the only driver for the international installs.

Many countries are also dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, with Brazil being particularly hard hit right now, for example. That could be fueling other increased interest in the app, given its news-driven nature.

In addition to breaking download numbers, Apptopia also noted that yesterday was a record for daily active users on Twitter in the U.S., when some 40 million people in the U.S. logged into the app.

For comparison’s sake, Twitter reported its app had 31 million “monetizable” daily active users (mDAUs) in the U.S. in Q4 2019, which grew to 33 million in Q1 2020. An mDAU isn’t exactly the same metric as a daily active user. Rather, it’s a metric Twitter invented to count the number of logged-in users on its platforms that are capable of displaying ads. However, it’s now the only way Twitter reports its user data so it’s the closest comparison that can be offered.

To what extent these spikes in installs and usage play out longer-term for Twitter remain to be seen, and we won’t know specifics until Twitter reports its updated metrics in its next quarterly earnings.

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Daily Crunch: Snapchat says it won’t promote Trump

Snapchat is the latest social media company to take on the president, Fitbit gets approval for its emergency ventilator and we review the new Sonos soundbar.

Here’s your Daily Crunch for June 4, 2020.

1. Snapchat is no longer promoting Trump’s posts

Snap announced that it will not be promoting content from President Donald Trump’s Snapchat account in its Discover tab, following statements from Trump last week on Twitter threatening that protestors could be met with “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons.”

The move is particularly interesting because social media platforms tend to only discipline popular accounts when they’ve violated the rules on their own platform. In a statement, a Snapchat spokesperson said, “We will not amplify voices who incite racial violence and injustice by giving them free promotion on Discover.”

2. Fitbit gains FDA authorization for its low-cost emergency ventilator

Ventilators like Fitbit’s Flow aren’t designed to replace existing, traditional medical ventilators. Instead, they’re intended as stopgaps, to be used only when that hardware isn’t available in quantities needed to treat patients.

3. The Sonos Arc is an outstanding soundbar, on its own or with friends

Darrell Etherington says the Arc is the company’s best-ever home theater sound device. It’s designed to integrate wirelessly with your Sonos home audio system, as well as accepting audio from your TV or A/V receiver via HDMI Audio Return Channel.

4. Top cybersecurity VCs share how COVID-19 has changed investing

The cybersecurity industry remains largely unscathed. In fact, some cybersecurity businesses are doing better than ever because the industry has emerged as one of the few constants we all need — even during a pandemic. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

5. Amazon reportedly considering $2 billion stake in Indian telecom operator Bharti Airtel

Amazon may follow Facebook’s footsteps in securing a slice of India’s booming telecom market. The e-commerce giant is in early-stage talks to buy a 5% stake worth at least $2 billion in Bharti Airtel, the third-largest telecom operator in India, according to Reuters.

6. Unpacking ZoomInfo’s IPO as the firm starts to trade

What makes ZoomInfo worth $8 billion? Alex Wilhelm looks at the company’s IPO document and tries to make sense of what he calls “a goat rodeo of differing relationships and voting rights and debts.” (Extra Crunch membership required.)

7. Andreessen Horowitz launches $2.2M fund to invest in underserved founders

The Talent x Opportunity fund, which a16z says was in the works for six months, starts with $2.2 million in donations from the firm’s partners. TxO will be invested in a small group of seed-stage startups the first year and expand in size going forward.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

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All Facebook users can now access a tool to port data to Google Photos

Facebook’s photo transfer tool is now available globally half a year on from an initial rollout in Europe, the company said today.

The data portability feature enables users of the social network to directly port a copy of their photos to Google’s eponymous photo storage service via encrypted transfer, rather than needing to download and manually upload photos themselves — thereby reducing the hassle involved with switching to a rival service.

Facebook users can find the option to “Transfer a copy of your photos and videos” under the Your Facebook Information settings menu.

This is the same menu where the company has long enabled users to download a copy of a range of information related to their use of its service (including photos). However there’s little that can be done with that data dump. Whereas the direct photo transfer mechanism shrinks the friction involved in account switching.

Facebook debuted the feature in Ireland at the back end of last year, going on to open it up to more international markets earlier this year and grant access to users in the US and Canada come April.

Now all Facebook users can tap in — though the choice of where you can port your photos remains limited to Google Photos. So it’s not the kind of data portability that’s of any help to startup services (yet).

Facebook has said support for other services is being built out. However this requires collaborating developers to build the necessary adapters for photos APIs. Which in turn depends on wider participation in an underpinning open source effort, called the Data Transfer Project (DTP).

The wider context around the DTP — which kicked off in 2018, backed by a number of tech giants all keen to hitch their wagon to the notion of greasing platform-to-platform data portability — is the fact regulators in the US and Europe are paying closer attention to the deleterious impact of platform power on competition and markets.

Putting some resource into data portability looks like a collective strategy by powerful players to try to manage and fend off antitrust action that might otherwise see dominant empires broken up in the interests of rebalancing digital markets.

If platforms can make a plausible case that their users aren’t locked into their walled gardens because network effects force them to stay but can simply push a button to move their stuff and waltz elsewhere, they will hope to shrink their antitrust risk and water down the case for sweeping reforms of digital regulations.

Europe is certainly looking closely at updating its rulebook to tackle platform power — with legislative proposals wrapping digital services slated before the end of the year.

EU lawmakers are also specifically consulting on whether the bloc needs a new tool in its antitrust arsenal to tackle the problem of tipping markets in the digital sphere — where a dominant player consolidates a market position to such an extent that it becomes difficult to reverse. The proposed new power would enable European antitrust regulators to speed up interventions by letting them impose behavioural and structural remedies without needing to make a finding of infringement first.

Given all that, it would be interesting to know how many Facebook users have actually made use of the photo porting tool in the half-year since it launched to a sub-set of users.

A Facebook spokesman told us he did not have “specific numbers to share at this time” — but claimed it’s seen “many” users making photo transfers via the tool.

“We’ve received some positive feedback from stakeholders who have been giving feedback on the product throughout the rollout,” the spokesman added. “We hope that will continue to increase as more people are aware of the tool and new destinations and data types are added.”

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All Facebook users can now access a tool to port data to Google Photos

Facebook’s photo transfer tool is now available globally half a year on from an initial rollout in Europe, the company said today.

The data portability feature enables users of the social network to directly port a copy of their photos to Google’s eponymous photo storage service via encrypted transfer, rather than needing to download and manually upload photos themselves — thereby reducing the hassle involved with switching to a rival service.

Facebook users can find the option to “Transfer a copy of your photos and videos” under the Your Facebook Information settings menu.

This is the same menu where the company has long enabled users to download a copy of a range of information related to their use of its service (including photos). However there’s little that can be done with that data dump. Whereas the direct photo transfer mechanism shrinks the friction involved in account switching.

Facebook debuted the feature in Ireland at the back end of last year, going on to open it up to more international markets earlier this year and grant access to users in the US and Canada come April.

Now all Facebook users can tap in — though the choice of where you can port your photos remains limited to Google Photos. So it’s not the kind of data portability that’s of any help to startup services (yet).

Facebook has said support for other services is being built out. However this requires collaborating developers to build the necessary adapters for photos APIs. Which in turn depends on wider participation in an underpinning open source effort, called the Data Transfer Project (DTP).

The wider context around the DTP — which kicked off in 2018, backed by a number of tech giants all keen to hitch their wagon to the notion of greasing platform-to-platform data portability — is the fact regulators in the US and Europe are paying closer attention to the deleterious impact of platform power on competition and markets.

Putting some resource into data portability looks like a collective strategy by powerful players to try to manage and fend off antitrust action that might otherwise see dominant empires broken up in the interests of rebalancing digital markets.

If platforms can make a plausible case that their users aren’t locked into their walled gardens because network effects force them to stay but can simply push a button to move their stuff and waltz elsewhere, they will hope to shrink their antitrust risk and water down the case for sweeping reforms of digital regulations.

Europe is certainly looking closely at updating its rulebook to tackle platform power — with legislative proposals wrapping digital services slated before the end of the year.

EU lawmakers are also specifically consulting on whether the bloc needs a new tool in its antitrust arsenal to tackle the problem of tipping markets in the digital sphere — where a dominant player consolidates a market position to such an extent that it becomes difficult to reverse. The proposed new power would enable European antitrust regulators to speed up interventions by letting them impose behavioural and structural remedies without needing to make a finding of infringement first.

Given all that, it would be interesting to know how many Facebook users have actually made use of the photo porting tool in the half-year since it launched to a sub-set of users.

A Facebook spokesman told us he did not have “specific numbers to share at this time” — but claimed it’s seen “many” users making photo transfers via the tool.

“We’ve received some positive feedback from stakeholders who have been giving feedback on the product throughout the rollout,” the spokesman added. “We hope that will continue to increase as more people are aware of the tool and new destinations and data types are added.”

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Cowboy releases updated e-bike with new carbon belt

Electric-bike maker Cowboy has released a new iteration of its bike, the Cowboy 3. It’s a relatively small update that should make the experience better for newcomers. The first orders will be delivered at the end of July and the Cowboy 3 is now slightly more expensive at €2,290 or £1,990 ($2,500).

The bike still looks a lot like the Cowboy 2 that I reviewed last year. It has a triangle-shaped aluminum frame with integrated pill-shaped lights. The handlebar is still perfectly straight like on a mountain bike.

Compared to the previous generation, the company has replaced the rubber and fiberglass belt with a carbon belt. It should be good to go for 30,000km.

Like on the previous bike, there are no gears or buttons to control motor assistance. As soon as you start pedaling, motor assistance kicks in automatically.

But the gear ratio has been tweaked on this version. It’s now a bit lower, which means it’ll be easier to start pedaling at a traffic light. It’s going to have an impact on your top speed though as electric-bikes assist you up to a certain speed and you have to rely on your good old feet above that legal limit.

The wheels and tires have been slightly tweaked as well. Instead of off-the-shelf Panaracer tires, Cowboy is now using custom-made tires with a puncture protection layer. Rims are larger as well.

The saddle, hydraulic brakes and brake pads remain unchanged. The Cowboy 3 still features a detachable battery, something that is still missing from VanMoof’s e-bikes and the newly announced Gogoro Eeyo e-bikes.

Overall, the bike weighs 16.9kg. It now comes in three colors — black and two shades of grey.

New and existing Cowboy customers will be able to download a new version of the app with a handful of new features. You’ll be able to turn on auto-unlock to… automatically unlock your bike when you approach without having to open the app on your phone.

With theft detection, users will receive a notification as soon as your bike is moving. There will be a new crash detection feature that notifies an emergency contact and an air quality indicator in the app.

A bike lover’s take on the Cowboy e-bike

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The Sonos Arc is an outstanding soundbar, on its own or with friends

Sonos has been releasing new hardware at a remarkably consistent and frequent pace the past couple of years, and what’s even more impressive is that these new releases are consistently excellent performers. The new Sonos Arc soundbar definitely fits that pattern, delivering the company’s best ever home theater sound device with performance that should convert even diehard 5.1 traditionalists.

Basics

The Sonos Arc is a soundbar that’s designed to integrate wirelessly with your Sonos home audio system, as well as accepting audio from your TV or A/V receiver via HDMI Audio Return Channel (ARC). Just about every modern TV should have at least one HDMI ARC port, and basically that just means that in addition to acting as a standard HDMI input for video sources, it can also offer audio output to a connected speaker or stereo system.

The Arc also comes with an HDMI to optical digital audio adapter in case your setup lacks ARC support (if a TV doesn’t have that, it almost surely has a TOSLINK digital audio output port) to cover all the bases. It also works as a wireless speaker that connects via Sonos’ dedicated mesh networking tech to other Sonos speakers you may have, so that it’s one more addressable multi-room speaker in a whole home wireless audio setup.

Arc can also be combined with other Sonos speakers, including the Sonos Sub, as well as Sonos One, One SL, Play:1 and others for setting up a more complete wireless 5.1 setup with a subwoofer and two rears. That’s an optional enhancement, however, and not necessary to take advantage of the Sonos Arc’s excellent virtual surround rendering, which with this new hardware also includes Dolby Atmos surround sound encoding for the first time on a Sonos soundbar.

Design

The Sonos Arc really comes from the modern design pedigree that Sonos has put into its hardware releases since the debut of the Sonos One, which means monoblock coloring (in either black or white), smooth lines and rounded hole grill designs that look a lot more contemporary than the contrast color grills on the Play:1 for example.

Arc looks like a spiritual successor to the Sonos Beam, the first Sonos soundbar to feature a built-in mic and support for virtual voice assistants including Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa. But it’s also a lot larger than the Sonos Beam at 45″ long – much more like the Sonos Playbar and Playable that marked the company’s entry into the category.

For a sense of how long it is, it runs almost the full length of my LG 65″ C7 OLED TV. It’s also a bit taller than the Sonos Beam, coming in at 3.4″. For my use, that was still short enough that it doesn’t obscure any of the TV’s display when it’s sitting on a TV bench in front of the television from my regular viewing angle, but your mileage may vary, and if you had a similar setup with the Beam, just note that you’ll need a bit more clearance with the Arc.

The larger size isn’t just for show – it helps Sonos delivery much better sound vs. the lower-priced Beam. Inside the Arc, there are 11 drivers, including two upwards-facing ones, and two that face out either end of the long cylindrical soundbar. The end effect of all of these drivers, and the true distance separation that’s made possible by its long profile, is much more effective left/right/rear sound separation.

On the back, there’s a vent bar that provides additional sound quality improvements and holds the mounting outlets for attaching the Arc to a compatible wall mount. Either wall-mounted or resting atop furniture, the Arc is an attractive piece of hardware, and with just two cables required to run to power and the TV, it’s a minimal solution to home theater clutter that should mesh well with most home decor.

Performance

I mentioned this briefly above, but it’s amazing what the Sonos Arc can accomplish in terms of sound separation and virtual surround immersion with just a single speaker. It’s easily the best sound rendering I’ve experienced from a Sonos soundbar, and likely the best audio quality from a soundbar I’ve heard, period.

Stereo sound field testing shows that audio tracks really well left-to-right, and the Dolby Atmos support really shows its benefits when you have content that offers it. Speech intelligibility is also really fantastic on the soundbar alone, whereas with the Beam, I’ve found that it can suffer in some situations unless you have a Sonos Sub added to your system to take care of the low end frequencies and allow the soundbar to produce better clarity on the high end.

The Arc definitely benefits from pairing it with a Sonos Sub and other Sonos speakers acting as rears, but the soundbar on its own is a much better performer than anything Sonos has previously offered, in case you’re looking to save some money or you just want to focus on the most minimal sound setup possible that isn’t just terrible built-in TV speakers.

Sonos has also included a microphone on the Arc, which allows you to use it with either Alexa or Google Assistant to play music, turn on the TV, and do plenty more. It’s a great feature that’s optional, if you’d rather leave the mic off or not connect any assistants, and for me it’s perfectly suited to a device that essentially sits at the center of the living room experience. The mic seems very able to pick up commands even in a large room when you’re quite far away from it, so it could be the only voice-enabled smart speaker you require in even a large open-concept living/dining/kitchen space.

The Arc also acts as an Apple AirPlay 2 speaker out of the box, which means you can use it wireless. For minimalists, this is yet another selling point, since it means you can use it wirelessly with an Apple TV mounted to the back of your TV for instance – ridding yourself of one more wire if you want. It’s also super easy to stream any music or audio from your phone to the Arc as a result, even without opening up the Sonos app.

The updated Sonos app

Speaking of that app, the Sonos Arc is exclusively compatible with Sonos’ new, forthcoming mobile app, which arrives on June 8. This app will live alongside the existing one, which will continue to be available in order to support older, legacy Sonos hardware that won’t work with the more modern version.

This new Sonos app, which I used as a beta during the testing period for the Sonos Arc, is not as dramatic a change as I was expecting. The app definitely offers a better, cleaner and more modern interface, but everything is still located pretty much where you’d expect it to be if you were a user of the existing version. Most of the changes are probably happening under the hood, where the app is presumably designed to work with the more modern chipsets, higher memory and updated wireless technology of more recently-released Sonos speakers and accessories.

Long story short, the new app is a pleasant, fresh take on a familiar control system that seems both more performant and aesthetically better suited to modern Sonos speakers like the Arc. Even in beta, it didn’t give me any problems during my two weeks testing the Arc, and worked perfectly with all my services and voice assistants.

Bottom line

The Sonos Arc is definitely a premium soundbar, with a $799 price tag and great audio quality to match. It’s a fantastic successor to the Playbar and Playbase that exceeds both of those in every regard, and a great companion to the Beam that means Sonos’ home theater lineup now offers excellent options for a range of budgets.

If you want the best, most versatile and well-designed wireless soundbar available, the Sonos Arc is the speaker for you.

Read Full Article

The Sonos Arc is an outstanding soundbar, on its own or with friends

Sonos has been releasing new hardware at a remarkably consistent and frequent pace the past couple of years, and what’s even more impressive is that these new releases are consistently excellent performers. The new Sonos Arc soundbar definitely fits that pattern, delivering the company’s best ever home theater sound device with performance that should convert even diehard 5.1 traditionalists.

Basics

The Sonos Arc is a soundbar that’s designed to integrate wirelessly with your Sonos home audio system, as well as accepting audio from your TV or A/V receiver via HDMI Audio Return Channel (ARC). Just about every modern TV should have at least one HDMI ARC port, and basically that just means that in addition to acting as a standard HDMI input for video sources, it can also offer audio output to a connected speaker or stereo system.

The Arc also comes with an HDMI to optical digital audio adapter in case your setup lacks ARC support (if a TV doesn’t have that, it almost surely has a TOSLINK digital audio output port) to cover all the bases. It also works as a wireless speaker that connects via Sonos’ dedicated mesh networking tech to other Sonos speakers you may have, so that it’s one more addressable multi-room speaker in a whole home wireless audio setup.

Arc can also be combined with other Sonos speakers, including the Sonos Sub, as well as Sonos One, One SL, Play:1 and others for setting up a more complete wireless 5.1 setup with a subwoofer and two rears. That’s an optional enhancement, however, and not necessary to take advantage of the Sonos Arc’s excellent virtual surround rendering, which with this new hardware also includes Dolby Atmos surround sound encoding for the first time on a Sonos soundbar.

Design

The Sonos Arc really comes from the modern design pedigree that Sonos has put into its hardware releases since the debut of the Sonos One, which means monoblock coloring (in either black or white), smooth lines and rounded hole grill designs that look a lot more contemporary than the contrast color grills on the Play:1 for example.

Arc looks like a spiritual successor to the Sonos Beam, the first Sonos soundbar to feature a built-in mic and support for virtual voice assistants including Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa. But it’s also a lot larger than the Sonos Beam at 45″ long – much more like the Sonos Playbar and Playable that marked the company’s entry into the category.

For a sense of how long it is, it runs almost the full length of my LG 65″ C7 OLED TV. It’s also a bit taller than the Sonos Beam, coming in at 3.4″. For my use, that was still short enough that it doesn’t obscure any of the TV’s display when it’s sitting on a TV bench in front of the television from my regular viewing angle, but your mileage may vary, and if you had a similar setup with the Beam, just note that you’ll need a bit more clearance with the Arc.

The larger size isn’t just for show – it helps Sonos delivery much better sound vs. the lower-priced Beam. Inside the Arc, there are 11 drivers, including two upwards-facing ones, and two that face out either end of the long cylindrical soundbar. The end effect of all of these drivers, and the true distance separation that’s made possible by its long profile, is much more effective left/right/rear sound separation.

On the back, there’s a vent bar that provides additional sound quality improvements and holds the mounting outlets for attaching the Arc to a compatible wall mount. Either wall-mounted or resting atop furniture, the Arc is an attractive piece of hardware, and with just two cables required to run to power and the TV, it’s a minimal solution to home theater clutter that should mesh well with most home decor.

Performance

I mentioned this briefly above, but it’s amazing what the Sonos Arc can accomplish in terms of sound separation and virtual surround immersion with just a single speaker. It’s easily the best sound rendering I’ve experienced from a Sonos soundbar, and likely the best audio quality from a soundbar I’ve heard, period.

Stereo sound field testing shows that audio tracks really well left-to-right, and the Dolby Atmos support really shows its benefits when you have content that offers it. Speech intelligibility is also really fantastic on the soundbar alone, whereas with the Beam, I’ve found that it can suffer in some situations unless you have a Sonos Sub added to your system to take care of the low end frequencies and allow the soundbar to produce better clarity on the high end.

The Arc definitely benefits from pairing it with a Sonos Sub and other Sonos speakers acting as rears, but the soundbar on its own is a much better performer than anything Sonos has previously offered, in case you’re looking to save some money or you just want to focus on the most minimal sound setup possible that isn’t just terrible built-in TV speakers.

Sonos has also included a microphone on the Arc, which allows you to use it with either Alexa or Google Assistant to play music, turn on the TV, and do plenty more. It’s a great feature that’s optional, if you’d rather leave the mic off or not connect any assistants, and for me it’s perfectly suited to a device that essentially sits at the center of the living room experience. The mic seems very able to pick up commands even in a large room when you’re quite far away from it, so it could be the only voice-enabled smart speaker you require in even a large open-concept living/dining/kitchen space.

The Arc also acts as an Apple AirPlay 2 speaker out of the box, which means you can use it wireless. For minimalists, this is yet another selling point, since it means you can use it wirelessly with an Apple TV mounted to the back of your TV for instance – ridding yourself of one more wire if you want. It’s also super easy to stream any music or audio from your phone to the Arc as a result, even without opening up the Sonos app.

The updated Sonos app

Speaking of that app, the Sonos Arc is exclusively compatible with Sonos’ new, forthcoming mobile app, which arrives on June 8. This app will live alongside the existing one, which will continue to be available in order to support older, legacy Sonos hardware that won’t work with the more modern version.

This new Sonos app, which I used as a beta during the testing period for the Sonos Arc, is not as dramatic a change as I was expecting. The app definitely offers a better, cleaner and more modern interface, but everything is still located pretty much where you’d expect it to be if you were a user of the existing version. Most of the changes are probably happening under the hood, where the app is presumably designed to work with the more modern chipsets, higher memory and updated wireless technology of more recently-released Sonos speakers and accessories.

Long story short, the new app is a pleasant, fresh take on a familiar control system that seems both more performant and aesthetically better suited to modern Sonos speakers like the Arc. Even in beta, it didn’t give me any problems during my two weeks testing the Arc, and worked perfectly with all my services and voice assistants.

Bottom line

The Sonos Arc is definitely a premium soundbar, with a $799 price tag and great audio quality to match. It’s a fantastic successor to the Playbar and Playbase that exceeds both of those in every regard, and a great companion to the Beam that means Sonos’ home theater lineup now offers excellent options for a range of budgets.

If you want the best, most versatile and well-designed wireless soundbar available, the Sonos Arc is the speaker for you.

Read Full Article

Intraday Trading Calls for 5-June-2020

Intraday Trading Calls for 5-June-2020

Please click on the following link to view full post.

https://marketctl.blogspot.com/2020/06/intraday-trading-calls-for-5-june-2020.html

Via https://marketctl.blogspot.com/

Live Intraday Trading on 4-June-2020 (Profit 10600)

Live Intraday Trading on 4-June-2020 (Profit 10600)

Please click on the following link to view full post.

https://marketctl.blogspot.com/2020/06/live-intraday-trading-on-4-june-2020.html

Via https://marketctl.blogspot.com/

Amazon reportedly considering $2 billion stake in Indian telecom operator Bharti Airtel

Amazon.com may follow its American peer Facebook’s footsteps in securing a slice of India’s booming telecom market.

The e-commerce giant, which has invested over $6.5 billion in India, is in early-stage talks to buy a 5% stake worth at least $2 billion in Bharti Airtel, the third-largest telecom operator in India, according to unnamed sources cited by Reuters.

Amazon did not respond to a request for comment. While Bharti Airtel said, “We routinely work with all digital and OTT players and have deep engagement with them to bring their products, content and services for our wide customer base. Beyond that there is no other activity to report.”

Amazon’s interest in Bharti Airtel comes as Google is said to be in separate talks to buy stake in Vodafone Idea, the second largest telecom operator in India. In April, their rival Facebook bought a 9.99% stake in the nation’s top telecom operator, Reliance Jio Platforms. According to local media reports, Microsoft is also in talks with Reliance Jio Platforms and could invest as much as $2 billion.

Facebook’s investment shows India is a major new battleground for Big Tech, said Amit Pau, a former Vodafone Global Group MD and now COO and Partner at Accloud.

“Facebook’s focused attack on Amazon in Indian e-commerce through its partnership with Jio Platforms is the firing gun of an epic showdown between the world’s biggest companies that will see Indian consumers win better services through digitization and boost the economy,” he said.

The American giants have formed multiple partnerships with telecom operators in India, a key overseas market for them, over the years to expand their reach in the nation.

Microsoft has a partnership with Reliance Jio to bring Office 365 to millions of small businesses at subsidized cost. Google maintains a similar partnership with Airtel for its Google Cloud suite.

Amazon, which leads the cloud market in India, currently does not maintain any similar deal with a telecom operator — though it had a partnership with Bharti Airtel in the past.

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Learn How to Make Money From Home With This $30 eBay Sellers Guide

While physical stores have been shuttered over the past few weeks, many people have recently started shopping online. As a result, the e-commerce industry is booming, with 129% year-over-year growth in the U.S. and Canada. If you would like to jump on this lucrative trend, The Essential eBay Sellers Blueprint Bundle can help. The bundle includes four courses that teach you exactly how top sellers make money, and it’s now only $30 at MakeUseOf Deals.

Make Money from Home

The great thing about platforms like eBay and Amazon is that you can start making money on day one. All you need is something to sell, and an understanding of how to attract customers.

This bundle helps you get started, with 13 hours of tutorials from top e-commerce pros. Through concise video lessons, you discover how to research the market and source trending products. This includes finding physical stock and sourcing products for dropshipping, where you allow someone else to handle the logistics.

The courses also show you how to upload products, create a compelling sales pitch, and optimize your copy for search. These tips are tried and tested by top sellers, meaning you can put them into action immediately.

The Perfect Blueprint for $30

These courses are worth $796 in total, but you can grab the bundle now for just $30 with lifetime access included.

Prices subject to change

Read the full article: Learn How to Make Money From Home With This $30 eBay Sellers Guide

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You Can Now Watch More Free TV on The Roku Channel

The Roku Channel now offers more than 100 channels for free. Which means cord-cutters and other fans of free stuff now have more content to choose from. And to help users navigate the free stuff, Roku has also launched a Live TV Channel Guide.

In 2017, Roku launched The Roku Channel. This was a free, ad-supported channel full of movies. It has since evolved into a hub full of channels showing a diverse range of content. Most of which is free to watch if you’re willing to put up with the occasional ad.

The Roku Channel Expands Yet Again

As of the start of June 2020, The Roku Channel boasts more than 100 channels in the US. This is thanks to an expansion adding another 40 channels. These include The Bob Ross Channel, Vanity Fair, Wired, XUMO Free Movies, Redbox Free Movies, and Reuters.

The channels offering free content include news, sports, kids, and lifestyle programming. And there’s also Spanish-language channels, including AFV Español, América TeVé, Latido Music, Love Nature Español, MOOVIEMEX by Pongalo, and Pongalo NovelaClub.

“Now more than ever it’s important for our users to have easy access to free content, such as news, and the ability to find it quickly. We’re excited to enhance the streaming experience through a Live Channel TV Guide and bring more free content from The Roku Channel to the forefront.”
— Ashley Hovey, Director, AVOD Growth, Roku.

With so many channels and so many thousands of hours of programming available on them, Roku has also launched a new Live TV Channel Guide. As the name suggests, this lets you see at a glance what’s playing on the live TV channels now and in the future.

The Live TV Channel Guide is accessible via a new Live TV tile on The Roku Channel. You can also press left on your Roku remote to open it when watching something. When you open it you’ll see a list of channels, plus what’s playing now and in the future.

The Best Streaming TV Services to Watch

The Roku Channel is one of the best streaming TV services. There are plenty of others, both free and paid, so don’t bother watching content that doesn’t interest you. With its broad range of channels and TV guide, The Roku Channel is a good place to start though.

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Google and Walmart’s PhonePe establish dominance in India’s mobile payments market as WhatsApp Pay struggles to launch

In India, it’s Google and Walmart-owned PhonePe that are racing neck-and-neck to be the top player in the mobile payments market, while Facebook remains mired in a regulatory maze for WhatsApp Pay’s rollout.

In May, more than 75 million users transacted on Google Pay app, ahead of PhonePe’s 60 million users, and SoftBank-backed Paytm’s 30 million users, people familiar with the companies’ figures told TechCrunch.

Google still lags Paytm’s reach with merchants, but the Android-maker has maintained its overall lead in recent months despite every player losing momentum due to one of the most stringent lockdowns globally in place in India. Google declined to comment.

Paytm, once the dominant player in India, has been struggling to sustain its user base for nearly two years. The company had about 60 million transacting users in January last year, said people familiar with the matter.

Data sets consider transacting users to be those who have made at least one payment through the app in a month. It’s a coveted metric and is different from the much more popular monthly active users, or MAU, that various firms use to share their performance. A portion of those labeled as monthly active users do not make any transaction on the app.

India’s homegrown payment firm, Paytm, has struggled to grow in recent years in part because of a mandate by India’s central bank to mobile wallet firms — the middlemen between users and banks — to perform know-your-client (KYC) verification of users, which created confusion among many, some of the people said. These woes come despite the firm’s fundraising success, which amounts to more than $3 billion.

In a statement, a Paytm spokesperson said, “When it comes to mobile wallets one has to remember the fact that Paytm was the company that set up the infrastructure to do KYC and has been able to complete over 100 million KYCs by physically meeting customers.”

Paytm has long benefited from integration with popular services such as Uber, and food delivery startups Swiggy and Zomato, but fewer than 10 million of Paytm’s monthly transacting users have relied on this feature in recent months.

Two executives, who like everyone else spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of retribution, also said that Paytm resisted the idea of adopting Unified Payments Interface. That’s the nearly two-year-old payments infrastructure built and backed by a collation of banks in India that enables money to be sent directly between accounts at different banks and eliminates the need for a separate mobile wallet.

Paytm’s delays in adopting the standard left room for Google and PhonePe, another early adopter of UPI, to seize the opportunity.

Paytm, which adopted UPI a year after Google and PhonePe, refuted the characterization that it resisted joining UPI ecosystem.

“We are the company that cherishes innovation and technology that can transform the lives of millions. We understand the importance of financial technology and for this very reason, we have always been the champion and supporter of UPI. We, however, launched it on Paytm later than our peers because it took a little longer for us to get the approval to start UPI based services,“ a spokesperson said.

A sign for Paytm online payment method, operated by One97 Communications Ltd., is displayed at a street stall selling accessories in Bengaluru, India, on Saturday, Feb. 4, 2017. Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Missing from the fray is Facebook, which counts India as its biggest market by user count. The company began talks with banks to enter India’s mobile payments market, estimated to reach $1 trillion by 2023 (according to Credit Suisse), through WhatsApp as early as 2017. WhatsApp is the most popular smartphone app in India with over 400 million users in the country.

Facebook launched WhatsApp Pay to a million users in the following year, but has been locked in a regulatory battle since to expand the payments service to the rest of its users. Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said WhatsApp Pay would roll out nationwide by end of last year, but the firm is yet to secure all approvals — and new challenges keep cropping up. WhatsApp declined to comment.

PhonePe, which was conceived only a year before WhatsApp set eyes to India’s mobile payments, has consistently grown as it added several third-party services. These include leading food and grocery delivery services Swiggy and Grofers, ride-hailing giant Ola, ticketing and staying players Ixigo and Oyo Hotels, in a so-called super app strategy. In November, about 63 million users were active on PhonePe, 45 million of whom transacted through the app.

Karthik Raghupathy, the head of business at PhonePe, confirmed the company’s transacting users to TechCrunch.

Three factors contributed to the growth of PhonePe, he said in an interview. “The rise of smartphones and mobile data adoption in recent years; early adoption to UPI at a time when most mobile payments firms in India were betting on virtual mobile-wallet model; and taking an open-ecosystem approach,” he said.

“We opened our consumer base to all our merchant partners very early on. Our philosophy was that we would not enter categories such as online ticketing for movies and travel, and instead work with market leaders on those fronts,” he explained.

“We also went to the market with a completely open, interoperable QR code that enabled merchants and businesses to use just one QR code to accept payments from any app — not just ours. Prior to this, you would see a neighborhood store maintain several QR codes to support a number of payment apps. Over the years, our approach has become the industry norm,” he said, adding that PhonePe has been similarly open to other wallets and payments options as well.

But despite the growth and its open approach, PhonePe has still struggled to win the confidence of investors in recent quarters. Stoking investors’ fears is the lack of a clear business model for mobile payments firms in India.

PhonePe executives held talks to raise capital last year that would have valued it at $8 billion, but the negotiations fell apart. Similar talks early this year, which would have valued PhonePe at $3 billion, which hasn’t been previously reported, also fell apart, three people familiar with the matter said. Raghupathy and a PhonePe spokesperson declined to comment on the company’s fundraising plans.

For now, Walmart has agreed to continue to bankroll the payments app, which became part of the retail group with Flipkart acquisition in 2018.

As UPI gained inroads in the market, banks have done away with any promotional incentives to mobile payments players, one of their only revenue sources.

At an event in Bangalore late last year, Sajith Sivanandan, managing director and business head of Google Pay and Next Billion User Initiatives, said current local rules have forced Google Pay to operate without a clear business model in India.

Coronavirus takes its toll on payments companies

The coronavirus pandemic that prompted New Delhi to order a nationwide lockdown in late March preceded a significant, but predictable, drop in mobile payments usage in the following weeks. But while Paytm continues to struggle in bouncing back, PhonePe and Google Pay have fully recovered as India eased some restrictions.

About 120 million UPI transactions occurred on Paytm in the month of May, down from 127 million in April and 186 million in March, according to data compiled by NPCI, the body that oversees UPI, and obtained by TechCrunch. (Paytm maintains a mobile wallet business, which contributes to its overall transacting users.)

Google Pay, which only supports UPI payments, facilitated 540 million transactions in May, up from 434 million in April and 515 million in March. PhonePe’s 454 million March figure slid to 368 million in April, but it turned the corner, with 460 million transactions last month. An NPCI spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

PhonePe and Google Pay together accounted for about 83% of all UPI transactions in India last month.

Industry executives working at rival firms said it would be a mistake to dismiss Paytm, the one-time leader of the mobile payments market in India.

Paytm has cut its marketing expenses and aggressively chased merchants in recent quarters. Earlier this year, it unveiled a range of gadgets, including a device that displays QR check-out codes that comes with a calculator and USB charger, a jukebox that provides voice confirmations of transactions and services to streamline inventory management for merchants.

Merchants who use these devices pay a recurring fee to Paytm, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, co-founder and chief executive of the firm told TechCrunch in an interview earlier this year. Paytm has also entered several businesses, such as movie and travel ticketing, lending, games and e-commerce, and set up a digital payments bank over the years.

“Everyone knows Paytm. Paytm is synonymous with digital payments in India. And outside, there’s a perceived notion that it’s truly the Alipay of India,” an executive at a rival firm said.

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How to Spot and Avoid Fake Virus and Malware Warnings

As you use your computer and browse the web, you may occasionally run into infection warnings that appear to be legitimate. These anti-malware warning messages—appropriately called “scareware”—are designed to force you into installing fake anti-malware programs that are actually malware in disguise.

While scareware can be, well, scary, let’s explore how to tell if a virus warning is real.

3 Most Common Fake Virus Warnings

While fake virus alerts could theoretically crop up in any manner, history has shown that three types frequently appear. As such, if you can learn to spot these, you should be safe.

1. Website Advertisements Disguised as Virus Scanners

Image Credit: Ron A. Parker/Flickr

Advertisement designers will sometimes resort to underhand tactics to persuade you to click. Some shady antivirus companies will get you to visit their website by showing you a fake alert. For example, the image above shows a webpage modeled to look like a virus scanner.

Malware-laden advertisements, known as “malvertisements,” aren’t anything new; however, they can still be scary. When browsing a webpage, you might see flashing ads that claim to know your IP address, where you live, and that your PC has thousands of virus infections.

It’s important to note that a malvertisement that claims to know your location isn’t anything special. After all, your IP address tells every website you visit where you’re connecting from. This is why, if you access a US-based store, they may ask if you want to visit the UK version instead.

The only solution is to ignore these adverts. No self-respecting anti-malware company would ever report their alerts through a website ad, nor can a company know what kind of infections are on your system simply by you visiting a webpage.

2. Browser Popups Claiming to Be Virus Scanners

Image Credit: Atomicdragon136/Wikimedia

Banner ads are admittedly easy to notice and avoid, but there’s another form of advertisement that’s more convincing.

These popups often copy the actual appearances of warnings from real anti-malware software. What’s worse is that these popups often disguise their “X” buttons and show a fake one. If you click on the fake “X,” it counts as if you clicked the ad itself.

You can usually tell that a popup is fake because it will be over-the-top in its scariness. It will tell you that you must “act immediately” to prevent the destruction of your computer or the loss of your data. The urgency is only there because they want you to act without thinking.

3. System Tray Notifications Pretending to Be Operating System Warnings

A rarer but more severe form of scareware appears in the system tray as a notification, usually telling you that there’s a massive infection in your system that needs to be resolved pronto. Unfortunately, these can be pretty convincing.

Windows 8 and 10 both use toast notifications instead of balloon notifications, but they’re still vulnerable to fake messages. Full-screen videos or browsers can also show fake warnings.

Ultimately, the warning signs of a fake popup apply here as well. Look for over-the-top scariness and a sense of urgency that makes you want to act immediately. That’s a good sign that the warning isn’t real.

What to Do If You Suspect a Fake Alert

If you ever encounter one of the alert types mentioned above, don’t worry. It’s not the end of the world. Here’s a simple checklist of what you should do ensure you circumnavigate the alert safely.

Don’t Click the Fake Alert

The worst thing you can do is to act hastily and accidentally do something that you’ll come to regret. Even if the alarm is flashing distressing words at you, don’t click it right away. This is how scareware works best, by preying on your fear and getting a reaction before you realize what you’re doing.

Make Sure It’s a Fake Warning

Next, be sure the warning is actually fake, and not a legitimate warning. Common giveaways include fake-sounding product names, features, vague promises, and a high frequency of alerts—more than once per day.

Also, keep an eye out for traits such as poor English. Any reputable antivirus software will ensure their English is perfect. For example, take a look at this fake antivirus alert and see how many grammatical errors you can spot:

Image Credit: Michael Ragsdale/Flickr

The biggest giveaway is an alert that demands money immediately. For example, it can ask you to purchase a security product, upgrade a product you don’t actually have, or wire money somewhere. While reputable free antivirus programs may prod you to buy a product or subscription, they’re not as brash as a malvertisement.

Search for the Antivirus Product’s Name

If you don’t recognize the product name, search for it. If it’s legitimate, it will rank somewhere on the first page of results. If you can’t find any mention of it, or if there are a lot of other people asking about the legitimacy of the same product name, then it’s probably fake.

Close Your Browser and Check the Alert Again

If the alert popped up while you were browsing the web, don’t click on the “X” to close it. Instead, close your browser altogether (either through the Task Manager or by right-clicking on your browser in the taskbar). If the alert closes with the browser, it was fake.

Perform a Full Virus Scan on Your System

Spotting a fake malware alert doesn’t necessarily mean that your system has malware on it; however, malware infections can cause fake virus scanner ads to pop up. As a result, it’s a good idea to do a virus scan; doubly so if you haven’t been checking your computer’s hygiene recently.

Fortunately, these days, you don’t need to pay up for an effective virus scan. Just grab one of the free antivirus programs we recommend for everyday use.

If you find that the malware won’t go away, you may need a more advanced solution. Check out our complete malware removal guide for tips on how to give your PC a decent scrubbing.

Keep Yourself Safe From Online Threats

Scareware, as the name suggests, can be scary for a user. If you see one, don’t give in to their demands; after all, that’s exactly how they trap you in the first place. Fortunately, now you know how to tell if a virus is fake, and what to do if you see one.

If you want to keep yourself safe online, be sure to ask yourself these security-related questions.

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The path to ending systemic racism in the US | Dr. Phillip Atiba Goff, Rashad Robinson, Dr. Bernice King, Anthony D. Romero

The path to ending systemic racism in the US | Dr. Phillip Atiba Goff, Rashad Robinson, Dr. Bernice King, Anthony D. Romero

In a time of mourning and anger over the ongoing violence inflicted on Black communities by police in the US and the lack of accountability from national leadership, what is the path forward? Sharing urgent insights into this historic moment, Dr. Phillip Atiba Goff, Rashad Robinson, Dr. Bernice King and Anthony D. Romero discuss dismantling the systems of oppression and racism responsible for tragedies like the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and far too many others -- and explore how the US can start to live up to its ideals. (This discussion, hosted by head of TED Chris Anderson and current affairs curator Whitney Pennington Rodgers, was recorded on June 3, 2020.)

Click the above link to download the TED talk.

Eventual Consistency

Eventual Consistency

How tech companies can help combat the pandemic and reshape public health | Karen DeSalvo

How tech companies can help combat the pandemic and reshape public health | Karen DeSalvo

Karen DeSalvo, the chief health officer at Google, explains the partnership between big tech and public health in slowing the spread of COVID-19 -- and discusses a new contact tracing technology recently rolled out by Google and Apple that aims to ease the burden on health workers and provide scientists critical time to create a vaccine. (This virtual conversation, hosted by current affairs curator Whitney Pennington Rodgers and head of TED Chris Anderson, was recorded on May 27, 2020.)

Click the above link to download the TED talk.

Snapchat is no longer promoting Trump’s posts

Snap announced this morning that it will not be promoting content from President Trump’s Snapchat account in its Discover tab following statements from Trump last week on Twitter, which threatened that protestors could be met with “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons.”

The move is notable for many reasons, but is particularly interesting because social media platforms have tended to only discipline popular accounts when they’ve violated the rules on their own platform. Snapchat users will still be able to access content from Trump’s feed if they subscribe to it or search specifically for the account. At this point Snap is simply limiting his account to organic reach and stripping him from their curated feed.

“We will not amplify voices who incite racial violence and injustice by giving them free promotion on Discover,” a Snapchat spokesperson said in a statement.

In response to the move, Trump’s campaign accused Snapchat of “actively engaging in voter suppression.”

Snapchat’s personalized Discover feed sources content from news publishers and accounts on the service but often skews more toward entertainment news compared to competing products like Twitter’s curated Moments threads, which focuses heavily on breaking news.

Earlier this week, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel shared a letter regarding the recent protests, noting that he was “heartbroken and enraged by the treatment of black people and people of color in America.” In the letter posted to Snap’s site, Spiegel also called for the establishment of a “diverse, non-partisan Commission on Truth, Reconciliation, and Reparations.”

Snap’s decision here comes after Twitter hid one of Trump’s tweets regarding the Minneapolis protests on the basis of it violating Twitter rules for “glorifying violence.” Twitter had previously added fact checks to two of Trump’s tweets related to mail-in voting. Facebook came under fire internally this week after CEO Mark Zuckerberg declined to remove the same content that Twitter had on the basis of newsworthiness, a move that prompted some employees to stage a remote walk-out and pushed company leadership, including Zuckerberg, to host a company meeting on the topic.

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How to attract more than 10 million TikTok followers in 5 months

Adam Guild Contributor

Adam Guild is a growth marketing expert and the founder of Placepull.

More posts by this contributor

• Founders who share insights can build industry trust at scale

Imagine going from zero followers to 10,000,000+ followers in less than five months. I have watched somebody do exactly that.

My brother Topper Guild is already reaping the benefits of fame: People stop him in the street for photos and he’s been offered thousands of dollars to promote brands and befriend celebrities.

In less than 150 days, he went from being a high school sophomore to earning more than a Harvard MBA and working with his idols like boxer Ryan Garcia. In time, he also leveraged his following to score more than 100,000,000 views for direct-to-consumer brands like FashionNova and NUGGS.

How did he do it? And how would he advise you?

Consumer startups can apply these same strategies, tactics and ideas to grow quickly on TikTok, which is not nearly as saturated as Instagram and offers faster growth rates.

Let’s dive right into the principles he used to grow (that you can use too).

Do what works

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