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Advertisers are targeting laid-off Twitter employees again

2016-10-29T16:20:03-04:00

Timing is everything.

Facebook

One of the more unexpected side effects of Twitter’s decision to lay off roughly 350 employees this week: A little extra ad revenue for Facebook.

A law firm looking for some business is trying to reach the hundreds of people Twitter recently laid off to see if they have a claim against the company. To do so, the firm, Aiman-Smith & Marcy, took out a targeted ad — on Facebook.

This isn’t the first time, nor will it be the last, that a company uses targeted advertising as a weird form of digital ambulance chasing. After last year’s Twitter layoffs, startup Pillow, who was hiring, tried to reach the recently unemployed with a targeted tweet the very same day.

Is it too soon? Maybe. But then again, timing is everything.

Facebook will let you turn your face into a pumpkin for Halloween — but only if you use Facebook Live

2016-10-29T14:25:37-04:00

Facebook is adding masks to Live for the first time

Facebook realllllly wants people to use Facebook Live. That’s why it’s running TV commercials for the product and still pays media companies, including Vox Media, which owns Recode, to create live video on the reg.

Facebook

For Halloween, the company came up with another clever way to push its live video agenda: It’s offering fun Halloween-themed, face-distorting masks that can turn you into a pumpkin or skeleton — but only if you’re using Facebook Live.

The new filters are from Facebook’s acquisition of MSQRD back in March, and while you’ve been able to push a live broadcast to Facebook from the MSQRD app before, this is the first time Facebook has built masks directly into its live product.

Face-distorting masks seem like a smart way to lure folks to Facebook Live. They’ve become a killer part of Snapchat’s app over the past year. Plus they can lead to some nice ad revenue.

One other Halloween “treat” from Facebook: The company updated its reactions so they’re now Halloween themed. (Though the update doesn’t seem to be live for everyone just yet.)

Facebook

Vine may be going away, but Vine’s stars had already moved on

2016-10-29T11:22:15-04:00

And that was the problem.

The internet got emotional on Thursday when Twitter unexpectedly announced it was shutting down Vine, the company’s six-second looping video app.

Twitter quickly transformed into a feed full of #RIPVine memorial tributes as users who probably hadn’t used the app in months rushed to share their favorite short videos from the app’s nearly three year existence.

On Vine itself, the site’s numerous “Vine stars” posted their farewell messages, too. Included in almost every one: A plea for users to follow them on their other accounts in places like YouTube, Instagram and Facebook.

And that, in a nutshell, is why Vine is going away. The site’s biggest stars, the folks who made it big because Vine gave them a platform to be funny and creative, had already brought their talents elsewhere by the time Vine announced its own death — places where they could make more money (YouTube), make longer videos (Instagram), or just find the largest audience (Facebook).

Vine clearly left an impact on the internet, but it failed to keep up with the talented creators it helped to spurn.

And that’s too bad. #RIPVine

Soon fixing your robot will be as easy as fixing your car

2016-10-29T10:30:03-04:00

Open-source hardware could democratize the future of robots.

The Robot Operating System, better known as ROS, is an open-source operating system for robots. NASA uses it. Surgical robots are programmed with it. Industrial robots, like the kinds used to manufacture cars, rely on it.

Before ROS was available in 2007, robot applications were programmed in siloed environments, and it was harder for roboticists to collaborate. But with the introduction of a standard, open-source and free operating system, roboticists have been able to move more easily across projects and build on each other’s work.

Now there’s a hardware equivalent of the Robot Operating System — H-ROS. It’s a standardized hardware system for building robots with interoperable parts.

Think of the way cars work — interoperability in parts has democratized expertise in the industry. Mechanics understand the components and don’t necessarily rely on proprietary parts from the manufacturer to repair or soup up a car.

H-ROS was unveiled earlier this month at ROS-Con, an annual meeting of roboticists who program with ROS. Developed in Spain by Erle Robotics, H-ROS was funded by a grant from U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the military program responsible for all kinds of landmark innovations in robotics, including Atlas, the bipedal robot that was developed in collaboration with Boston Dynamics.

The H-ROS components are divided into five categories: Cognition, sensing, actuation, communication and hybrid parts. The idea is that with H-ROS, the components are interoperable and reusable and can be made by various manufacturers. So if a robot breaks down at a factory, with H-ROS parts, an engineer can much more easily fix the robot and replace the part, rather than necessarily having to call the manufacturer.

While the hardware specs aren’t public yet, the inventors are in conversations with component manufacturers now.

If H-ROS does take off, it could seriously democratize the future of robotics.

Watch the full presentation on H-ROS here:

DraftKings and FanDuel are close to merging

2016-10-28T22:03:55-04:00

The two fantasy sports sites are in serious talks, according to sources.

Fantasy sports sites DraftKings and FanDuel are headed toward a merger, according to multiple sources.

The two sides are in serious conversations about teaming up, and things could materialize sometime soon. A report from ESPN on Friday said that a deal was "imminent," though our sources say the details are still being ironed out.

Probably the most important detail to this whole deal is who becomes CEO of the new joint entity. DraftKings CEO Jason Robins and FanDuel chief Nigel Eccles have pretty much despised one another over the years. That has obviously thawed enough to get conversations this far, but selecting the CEO was always an obstacle to a possible merger.

One of the other reasons a deal hasn't materialized before is that both companies are tangled up in legal battles around the country where some states have argued they are operating gambling businesses, not games of skill. The most notable fight took place in New York, but those issues were finally resolved earlier this week.

A DraftKings spokesperson sent Recode the following statement.

As we have stated previously, a potential combination would be interesting to consider. However, as a matter of policy, we don't comment on rumors or speculation, and there can be no assurances at this time that any discussion about a combination would result in an agreement or merger.

A FanDuel spokesperson declined to comment.

Obama is pledging more than $2 million to train coal miners to pilot drones

2016-10-28T15:33:20-04:00

$28 million in federal grants are going toward workforce redevelopment programs across Appalachia.

As the U.S. transitions to more sustainable forms of energy, the Obama administration has been steadily investing in retraining programs for people who used to work for the once-booming American coal industry, where states like West Virginia and Kentucky are losing thousands of jobs a year.

This week, the White House announced nearly $28 million in federal grants to fund 42 workforce and economic redevelopment projects in Appalachian states hit hardest, including $1.5 million to build a new education and technology training center in Tennessee and $2.2 million to train former coal workers to fly drones in southwest Virginia.

By including drone pilot training in federal workforce redevelopment programs, the Obama administration is sending a clear signal that it projects drones will soon become a key component of the American economy.

The $2.2 million will go toward positioning southwestern Virginia as a “national destination for the development of a drone-operator workforce to support the emerging drone industry.”

It was in Wise County, in southwest Virginia, where NASA partnered with the Remote Area Medical clinic to conduct the very first medical delivery drone flight in the United States in 2015.

This round of grant making is the second installment of the White House’s economic redevelopment plan for coal country. In August of this year, $38.8 million in federal funds were steered into 29 different projects, with $2.8 million to build a new workforce technology training program in Kentucky and $2.3 million to support a small-business development center in West Virginia.

Amazon is bringing Prime to China, where it has struggled for market share

2016-10-28T14:38:00-04:00

Don’t be confused: India is still Amazon’s No. 1 overseas market.

Over the last two years, India has supplanted China as Amazon’s most important international market of the future. But Jeff Bezos’s company apparently still sees enough present opportunity in China to invest in new big projects there today.

Amazon on Friday unveiled its popular Amazon Prime membership program in China, a market where it has long struggled to crack the dominance of Alibaba or the rise of another competitor, JD.com.

Amazon Prime will cost Chinese shoppers 388 yuan a year, or about $57, according to Bloomberg. That’s cheaper than the $99 U.S. shoppers pay for Prime, but the program perks aren’t the same in both markets.

China’s version of Prime does not include any digital content — video and music streaming — the way it does in the U.S. Instead, the program focuses on giving free shipping to consumers who place orders of more than 200 yuan — or around $29 — from a catalogue of millions of overseas products. There is strong demand in China for products from Western brands.

Still, the launch of Prime in China is somewhat surprising considering how long Amazon has already been in the market and how much it has struggled there to date. Research firms estimate that Amazon only owns 1 percent to 3 percent of China’s e-commerce market, more than a decade into its efforts there.

That’s because the Chinese e-commerce market has long been dominated by Alibaba, which operates the Taobao shopping site where cheap, no-name brands are popular, as well as the Tmall site where many big Western brands have set up shop.

In recent years, another e-commerce site, JD.com, has also risen in popularity. JD has a market cap of more than $36 billion and recently acquired Walmart’s e-commerce business in China. Walmart now owns nearly 11 percent of JD.com.

As Amazon has struggled in China, it has vowed to invest $5 billion in India, the world’s second-most populous nation where there is not yet a dominant e-commerce power. At the Code Conference in May, Jeff Bezos said Amazon has passed along some high-level learnings from its stumbles in China to help inform its India strategy.

"We mostly tried to roll out what worked well for us in Japan, Germany, the U.K., Spain, France, Italy, the U.S., etc., and it needed more local market customization," he said of the company's approach in China. "If you want me to give one meta-lesson, it's that one."

Amazon’s moves could start a price war among music streaming services

2016-10-28T14:30:03-04:00

Music as a loss leader is back.

After months of rumors, Amazon finally announced the details of its new music streaming service, which joins an already crowded market. While the price for the standalone music service is $10 per month, in line with all the other services, there are two other offers that set it apart. For Prime subscribers, the price is an additional $8 per month, on top of existing yearly fees, and for users who own an Amazon Echo, the price drops even further, to $4 per month. That’s right: Music is back as a loss leader.

The precedent for this goes all the way back to the physical era, when record stores offered deep discounts on new or popular albums in order to draw customers into shops, and then upsell them on buying other albums. The stores figured they would make up the difference with increased profits from increased traffic, and for many years, this worked like a charm. It was only when the CD era started to die off that things took a turn for the worse, and big-box stores started getting into price wars that smaller players couldn’t afford.

Back then, the new album as a loss leader was a catalyst for sales of other music or unrelated goods — if you came to Target to buy a CD, for example, you might pick up some laundry detergent while you were there, as well. But with the launch of the iPod, music became a loss leader for a device that was specifically tied to that music. Sure, there were other MP3 players in the market, and it was possible to listen to music from other sources on an iPod, but many mainstream consumers chose the path of least resistance and stocked up at the iTunes store. Ninety-nine cent downloads were never the endgame for Apple — the device that cost several hundred dollars was always what they wanted to sell, and music was just a means to an end.

The big question for Amazon is whether the promise of deeply discounted streaming can move the needle enough to get Echo consumers to subscribe for one device only. In terms of devices, the iPod had very few mainstream competitors, but the Echo competes with Google Home, Apple’s upcoming Siri speaker, Sonos and other speakers as well as people simply choosing to look things up rather than saying them aloud. And the iPod was primarily a music device, whereas the Echo can be used for multiple purposes, so the tie to music feels less direct here. My two cents is that Echo devices will work best for the consumer looking for the “lean-back” listening experience, like the experience radio delivers. Asking Alexa to play a certain station requires a lot less work for the user than deciding what song, on what album, by what artist they’re interested in hearing.

That being said, there may be an audience of Echo users who could be convinced that a few bucks a month is a great deal for the ability to say, “Alexa, play this song.” But it’s harder to see people being swayed by a cheaper streaming service when it comes to the Echo acquiring new users if they weren’t already interested — especially for one device only. (Also, these devices, in my opinion, are best suited for a lean-back listening scenario in general — like radio.)

The question of whether this will lead to a price war among streaming services is an interesting one to consider, but Amazon might be the only company that can pull this off. Unless Spotify or Apple Music deeply integrate with a piece of hardware, it doesn’t make sense for them to spend so much up front, especially when paths of profitability for streaming services are rocky at best. What Amazon is doing here isn’t new, and it will be interesting to see if the trend of music as a loss leader is one that was worth bringing back.

Scott Keeney, a.k.a. DJ Skee, is a renowned radio DJ, host of Skee TV and founder of the groundbreaking Dash Radio, a curator-led digital broadcast platform that merges the best of terrestrial and internet radio. DJ Skee has generated more than one billion media impressions in under a decade, and has more than 500,000 social network followers. Reach him @djskee.

Who gets your vote? Facebook wants to help you decide.

2016-10-28T14:00:03-04:00

The company is rolling out a new election product less than two weeks before ballots are due.

You know who's running for president. How could you not?

But do you know where they stand on the issues? Do you know who's running for Congress in your district? Or which propositions are on your ballot?

Facebook thinks it can teach you — or at least point you to info so you can teach yourself. The social giant rolled out a new election product Friday that lets you browse the issues and races from your specific ballot, then share with friends who and what you're voting for.

Discussing politics on social media can be stressful; few people believe social platforms like Facebook actually improve political discourse. The hope is that this new election page will provide an alternative to your News Feed as a place to learn about the issues.

“The problem with News Feed is that there’s often a lot of controversial or vitriolic discussion around politics. People in the comments may be less than polite,” Jeremy Galen, a product marketing manager at Facebook who helped launch the new feature, told Recode. “So what we’re building here is this kind of utility ... that gives you the chance to ask questions and get better informed for [election day].”

Facebook wants you to know it’s not presenting anything biased. It’s pulling info from candidate pages and the Center for Technology and Civic Life, a non-partisan, nonprofit organization hoping to “increase civic participation.” So there you go.

Worth noting about the new product is that it requires users to offer up their home address in order for Facebook to determine which issues and races are on your ballot. That obviously won’t sit well with all users, but Galen says your address won’t be visible on your public profile. It will live on Facebook’s servers, though, which means the company could use that information down the line for “other civic engagement products,” Galen said.

Galen wouldn’t disclose what those products will be, but mentioned things like “connecting with elected officials” and mid-term elections.

The new feature is live starting Friday, and exists here or as a separate election tab in the Facebook toolbar.

Facebook

The PC that would not die

2016-10-28T12:00:03-04:00

At 35, the personal computer is not only not dead, it has never been stronger or more attractive.

A version of this essay was originally published at Tech.pinions, a website dedicated to informed opinions, insight and perspective on the tech industry.

By all rights, it should be dead by now. I mean, really: A market based on a tech product that first came to market over 35 years ago?

And yet here we stand in the waning days of October 2016, and the biggest news expected to come out of the tech industry this week are PC announcements from two of the largest companies in the world: Apple and Microsoft. It’s like we’re in some kind of a weird time warp. (Of course, the Cubs are poised to win their first World Series in over 100 years, so who knows?)

The development must be particularly surprising to those who bought into the whole “PC is dead” school of thought. According to the proselytizers of this movement, tablets should have clearly taken over the world by now. But that sure didn’t happen. While PC shipments have certainly taken their lumps, tablets never reached anything close to PCs from a shipments perspective. In fact, tablet shipments have now been declining for more than three years.

After tablets, smartwatches were supposed to be the next-generation personal computing device. Recent shipment data from IDC, however, suggests that smartwatches are in for an even worse fate than tablets. A little more than a year and a half after being widely introduced to the market, smartwatch shipments are tanking. Not exactly a good sign for what was supposed to be the “next big thing.”

Of course, PCs continue to face their challenges as well, particularly consumer PCs. After peaking in Q4 of 2011, worldwide PC shipments have been on a slow, steady decline ever since. Interestingly, however, U.S. PC shipments have actually turned around recently, and are now on a modestly increasing growth curve.

The reason for this is that PCs have continued to prove their usefulness and value to a wide range of people, especially in business environments. PCs are certainly not the only computing device that people are using anymore, but for many, they remain the go-to productivity device, and for others, they still play an important role.

To put it simply, there’s just something to be said for the large-screen computing experience that only PCs can truly provide. More importantly, it’s not clear to me that there’s anything poised to truly replace that experience in the near term.

Another big reason for the PC’s longevity is that it has been on a path of constant and relatively consistent evolution since its earliest days. Driven in part by the semiconductor manufacturing advances enabled by Moore’s law, a great deal of credit also needs to be given to chip designers at Intel, AMD and nVidia, among others, who have created incredibly powerful devices. Similarly, OS and application software advances by Apple, Microsoft and many others have created environments that more than a billion people are able to use to work, play and communicate with on a daily basis.

There have also been impressive improvements in the physical designs of PCs. After a few false starts at delivering thin-and-light notebooks, for example, the super-slim ultrabook offerings from the likes of Dell (XPS13), HP (Spectre X360) and Lenovo (ThinkPad X1) have caught up to and arguably even surpassed Apple’s still-impressive MacBook Air. At the same time, to the surprise of many, Microsoft’s Surface has successfully spawned a whole new array of 2-in-1 and convertible PC designs that has brought new life to the PC market as well. It’s easy to take for granted now, but you can finally get the combination of performance, weight, size and battery life that many have always wanted in a PC.

Frankly, PCs have actually never been stronger or more attractive tech devices — it’s more like a personal computer renaissance than a personal computer extinction. The fact that we’ll likely be talking about the latest additions to this market later this week says a great deal about the role that PCs still have to play.

Bob O’Donnell is the founder and chief analyst of Technalysis Research LLC, a technology consulting and market research firm that provides strategic consulting and market research services to the technology industry and professional financial community. Reach him @bobodtech.