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February 7, 2018, 8:30 AM
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| Olivia Zaleski / Bloomberg: |
Inside the battle among Airbnb investors and executives over whether to remain private or IPO; sources say founders and early employees cashed ~$350M of equity — Investors and executives disagreed over when to take the home-rental company public. The stay-private crowd is winning.
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VentureBeat, Skift, and Business Insider
Tweets: @jasonlk, @klendathucap, @sonyaellenmann, @jyarow, @mims, and @tomgara
| Wall Street Journal: |
Sources: Goldman Sachs is in talks with Apple to offer financing to Apple gadget shoppers, using its retail point-of-sale financing arm Marcus — Wall Street firm would lend to shoppers buying expensive Apple gadgets — As Apple Inc.'s AAPL 4.18% investment bank, Goldman Sachs GS 3.85% Group Inc … | Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet: |
Microsoft is offering OneDrive for Business for free to select businesses for the length of their existing contracts with Google/Box/Dropbox, for up to 3 years — Microsoft has a new OneDrive-for-Business compete offer for organizations which currently use some of its rivals' cloud storage services.| Casey Newton / The Verge: |
A pollster Facebook hired in April '17, who quit after 6 months, says his role was to measure Zuckerberg's approval ratings and track speeches amid US tour — Why Tavis McGinn quit after six months — Tavis McGinn applied for a job at Facebook last year hoping to work in market research.
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SiliconANGLE, New York Magazine, Business Insider, and Axios
Tweets: @mims, @dnvolz, @officebeats, @willoremus, @kevinroose, @nitashatiku, @knguyen, @sarahfrier, @caseynewton, @geoffreyfowler, @dhh, and @caseynewton
| Motherboard: |
Pornhub says it's banning AI-generated fake porn videos because they're “nonconsensual”, yet such “deepfake” videos are still available via site search results — In its search of a platform that will host fake porn videos of celebrities created with a machine learning algorithm …
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Motherboard, The Verge, Engadget, The Guardian, TechSpot, Firstpost, The Next Web, Gizmodo, International Business Times, and Mashable
Tweets: @miltonjfigueroa, @digiphile, @rachel_pick, and @annemariebridy
| Snap Investor Relations: |
Snap reports Q4 revenue of $285.7M, up 72% YoY, as DAUs rise 8.9M to 187M, up 18% YoY; net loss of $350M, up 106% YoY — 02/06/18 VENICE, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)— Snap Inc. (NYSE: SNAP) today announced financial results for the quarter and full year ended December 31, 2017.
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Business Insider, New York Times, CNBC, The Verge, Recode, Silicon Republic, Engadget, TechCrunch, ZDNet, TheStreet, Social Media Today, Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check, TechCrunch, Fortune, Wall Street Journal, GeekWire, Forbes, Axios, and Business Insider
Tweets: @cnbcnow, @kantrowitz, @joshconstine, @lexnfx, @lexnfx, @lexnfx, @lexnfx, @lexnfx, @lexnfx, @alexeheath, @alexeheath, @lexnfx, @joshconstine, @recode, @cnbcnow, @lexnfx, and @lexnfx
| Nick Statt / The Verge: |
Alphabet names Dinesh Jain, former COO of TWC, as CEO of Access, its high-speed internet unit that includes Fiber; Jain is Access' third CEO in under two years — Another new CEO at Access as Alphabet struggles to figure out the future of Google Fiber — Google parent company Alphabet … | Peter Kafka / Recode: |
Streaming service ESPN Plus launching next month at $4.99/mo; sources say it won't have ESPN cable channels' content, which still requires ESPN subscription — How much would you pay for sports you weren't watching on TV? — Want to pay for a subscription to ESPN without paying for a subscription to other cable channels?
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CNBC, Variety, The Verge, 9to5Mac, Axios, Engadget, and Droid Life
Tweets: @soccermarketing and @xpangler
| Craig Silverman / BuzzFeed: |
Russian trolls posed as black activists on Tumblr and generated hundreds of thousands of interactions with anti-Hillary Clinton, pro-Bernie Sanders content — Tumblrs run by Russian trolls generated hundreds of thousands of interactions with anti-Hillary Clinton, pro-Bernie Sanders content.| Eric Zimmerman / The Keyword: |
Google begins rolling out ability to book flights and hotels directly from search results — Planning a trip involves lots of searching for flights, hotels, things to do, itineraries and more. The process is often cumbersome because we have to use multiple tools to gather everything we need—especially on a mobile phone.
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Beyond Search, Digital Trends, MediaNama, Android Authority, SiliconANGLE, PhoneDog.com, Android Central, Engadget, 9to5Google, and The Verge. Tweets: @calbucci
| Paul Sawers / VentureBeat: |
New York-based Mirror raises $13M from Spark Capital and others for building an at-home mirror-like device that can stream live or on-demand fitness classes — The health club industry generates around $83 billion in revenue globally each year, according to figures from the International Health …
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TechCrunch, Business Wire, New York Business Journal, StartupWorld, NewsCenter.io, Inc.com, FinSMEs, and PE Hub Blog. Tweets: @seamlessiot
| Theodore Schleifer / Recode: |
SoftBank's technology funds, the $100B Vision Fund and $6B Delta Fund, have already invested ~$40B of their $106B target; Vision Fund has invested in 26 firms — They said it couldn't be done. — Longtime Silicon Valley hands are still aghast that an investing firm can find … | Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch: |
Apple's Shazam takeover triggers competition review by the European Commission, following request by seven European countries — The European Commission has announced a review of Apple's acquisition of music discovery service Shazam — agreeing to a request made by several countries to weigh competition concerns.| Brian Heater / TechCrunch: |
Netgear says it will spin off its Arlo security camera wing into a standalone business by the second half of 2018 and is planning an IPO for Arlo — Netgear announced this afternoon that it plans to spin off its Arlo wing into a standalone business. The networking hardware giant's board …
More:
GlobeNewswire News Room, The Register, ZDNet, and Silicon Valley Business …. Tweets: @benbajarin
| Daisuke Wakabayashi / New York Times: |
In Waymo v. Uber trial, former Uber CEO Kalanick testifies he tried to find a way to let Levandowski start a company and still feel like he hired him — SAN FRANCISCO — Basketball players have pickup games. Rappers have freestyle cyphers. Tech entrepreneurs, according to the former chief executive …
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BuzzFeed, CNET, Los Angeles Times, CNET, Associated Press, Naked Security, Ars Technica, and Recode
| Alfred Lee / The Information: |
Sources: in Q3 2017, Spotify made €1B in revenue, putting it on track for €4B in full year revenue, up 40% YoY, and had an operating loss between €70M and €90M — Spotify generated a billion euros ($1.2 billion) in revenue in the third quarter of 2017, according to two investors briefed on the numbers.| Zack Whittaker / ZDNet: |
Researcher finds flaw in Hotspot Shield, a VPN with ~500M users, that can reveal a user's WiFi network name, country, and more; fix coming in update next week — The virtual private network says it provides a way to browse the web “anonymously and privately,” but a security researcher …
Tweets: @zackwhittaker
| BitMEX Blog: |
BitMEX Research looks at the history of Ripple, its company disputes, and says the technology behind its distributed consensus system is essentially centralized — Abstract: In this piece, we briefly look over the history of Ripple and examine various disputes between the founders and partner companies …
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The Next Web
| Nilay Patel / The Verge: |
Apple HomePod review: best-in-class sound for $349 and above, looks great, but Siri only works with Apple Music, bad support for third-party services — I don't think I've ever described a tech product as “lonely” before, but it's the word I thought about the most as I was reviewing Apple's new HomePod.
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Tech Times, Daring Fireball, 9to5Mac, Counterpoint Research, What Hi-Fi?, Recode, International Business Times, Wall Street Journal, The Mac Observer, The Loop, Slate, Fortune, TechCrunch, MacDailyNews, USA Today, AppAdvice.com, iPhone in Canada Blog, BGR, Cult of Mac, AppleInsider, Quartz, iDownloadBlog.com, iPhone Hacks, CNET, Digg, MacRumors, Lifehacker, RAIN News, TechSpot, Variety, iMore, The Independent, Business Insider, SlashGear, CNBC, Bloomberg, Business Insider, MacRumors, TechConnect, BGR, and New York Magazine
| Ben Lovejoy / 9to5Mac: |
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Computerworld, MacRumors, Business Insider, Pocket-lint, MacDailyNews, PYMNTS.com, The Verge, InvestorPlace, and Cult of Mac
Tweets: @tim_cook, @drbarnard, @marcoarment, @benbajarin, @marcoarment, @stevekovach, and @verge
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