| Facebook had a good quarter, and Mark Zuckerberg is obsessed with video. That and more in The Daily Crunch for February 2, 2017. Also I saw my shadow this morning so technological winter will last for six more weeks or however that works. 1. Facebook beats, scores big Facebook is doing well, growing its monthly active users to even more absurd highs, and also growing its advertising revenue. The company's daily active user growth seems to be keeping up with last year, too, which is impressive when you're already looking at over a billion. ARPU is growing, too, with North America propping up the rest of the world on this metric. You're worth about $20 per month to FB if you live in either the U.S. or Canada, it turns out. 
2. Facebook will look to become a YouTube killer "Video" was the word of the day for the earnings call, where Zuckerberg was really eager about the word and the actual media content on his platform. It sounds like they're more eager to get user-generated content than originals like Netflix and Amazon offer, but I still wouldn't discount them creating their own high-quality media to attract more viewers. 3. Instagram going multi-photo Another Facebook property is doing some interesting things – Instagram is showing signs it could let users add multiple images to a single post in the future, which is great news if you're looking at all those cool galleries in Instagram ads and wanting that for yourself. Some critics say Instagram is overcomplicating their product, but that's just old people being afraid of change and shortsighted, and the numbers definitely don't back that up. 4. Oculus must pay ZeniMax $500 million after losing lawsuit Oculus has to pay ZeniMax $500 million after losing a lawsuit, but it's not as bad as that might seem to a normal human. The amount is actually not that much for Facebook, and did not impact their share price so stockholders weren't bothered. Plus they don't have to admit they stole anything as a result of the decision, and both Palmer Luckey and Brendan Iribe are on the hook for $200 million of that amount in total. In other words, FB got off really light here, and this probably will have no impact on the ultimate success or failure of Oculus. 5. This bat bot is horrifyingly cool Soft robots are almost invariably scary as heck, while also being very cool. This Bat Bot from the California Institute of Technology in partnership with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign fits that mould. 6. Slack goes Grid Slack has launched Enterprise Grid, an enterprise version of its platform that will make it a lot easier to get into organization that require increased security and governance options. This is a huge move, as I personally know of some very large organizations who have looked at Slack longingly but couldn't do it without a managed version. 7. Sheryl Sandberg takes heat for not opposing Trump Facebook's COO Sheryl Sandberg sat down with Recode's Kara Swisher, who grilled her on her silence on the Women's March and her seeming ambivalence about Trump. Based on social media reaction I saw, a lot of prominent feminist tech writers weren't thrilled with her responses. | 
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.