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Technology
In September, Salesforce Ventures, the venture of arm of Salesforce, announced a hefty $300 million investment in Automattic, the company behind WordPress, the ubiquitous content management system (CMS). At the same time, the company was putting the finishing touches on Salesforce CMS, an in-house project it released last week.
The question is, why did it choose to do both?
One reason could be that WordPress isn&t just well-liked; italso the worldmost popular content management system, running 34 percent of the world10 billion websites — including this one — according to the company. With Automattic valued at $3 billion, that gives Salesforce Ventures a 10 percent stake.
Given the substantial investment, you wouldn&t have been irrational to at least consider the idea that Salesforce may have had its eye on this company as an acquisition target. In fact, at the time of the funding, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg told TechCrunchRomain Dillet that there could be some partnerships and integrations with Salesforce in the future.
Now we have a Salesforce CMS, and a potential partnership with one of the worldlargest web content management (WCM) tools, and itpossible that the two aren&t necessarily mutually exclusive.
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Read more: Salesforce Ventures invested $300M in Automattic while Salesforce was building a CMS
Write comment (92 Comments)Following the merger of CBS and Viacom announced earlier this year, the combined company today confirmed its plans to restructure its content and digital leadership teams in order to streamline operations. Among the changes, which were first reported by The Wall Street Journal on Sunday, are the departures of Comedy Central head Kent Alterman and Viacom Networks COO Sarah Levy. Meanwhile, CBS Chief Creative Officer David Nevins will add BET to his responsibilities, while president of MTV, VH1, CMT and Logo Chris McCarthy, will now become president of Entertainment - Youth Brands, ViacomCBS Domestic Media Networks.
This will put McCarthy in charge of Comedy Central, Paramount Network, Smithsonian Channel and TV Land brands.
Nevins, in addition to BET, will oversee CBS Television Studios, the CBS Television NetworkEntertainment division, the Showtime Networks, Pop, The CW and the programming of streaming service CBS All Access.
In terms of childrencontent, Nickelodeon President Brian Robbins will oversee kids and young adult-focused programming as president, Kids - Family Entertainment, ViacomCBS Domestic Media Networks. That puts him back in charge of Awesomeness, which he co-founded and sold to Viacom in 2018, in addition to Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, Nick Jr., TeenNick, Nicktoons and Nickelodeon Studios.
ViacomCBS also said that Carolyn Kroll Reidy will continue her role as president and chief executive officer of Simon - Schuster, Inc. And Jim Gianopulos will continue as chairman and chief executive officer of Paramount Pictures, a role that includes oversight of Paramount Animation, Paramount Features, Paramount Players and Paramount TV.
The exec shuffles follow other announcements about the combinations of the two companies& advertising sales and content distribution teams.
In addition, the company had previously announced Joe Ianniello would serve as chairman and CEO of CBS, which includes oversight of CBS Television Network (including CBS Entertainment, CBS News and CBS Sports), CBS Television Studios, CBS Interactive (including CBS All Access) and CBS Television Stations. However, he lost oversight of Showtime and Pop TV to president and CEO of Viacom and ViacomCBS, Bob Bakish.
Also previously reported was that CBS Interactive chief Jim Lanzone had left for Benchmark Capital, to be replaced by Marc DeBevoise. This puts DeBevoise in charge of digital operations, in his new role as President and CEO of CBS Interactive and Chief Digital Officer of ViacomCBS. He will report to Bakish.
Viacom Digital Studios Kelly Day will continue in her role and report to DeBevoise, the company also said today. And CBS CTO Phil Wiser will become ViacomCBS CTO.
The free streaming service Pluto TV, headed by co-founder Tom Ryan, will report to Bakish. (In news unrelated to the exec changes, Pluto TV announced today it will start streaming music videos from Vevo across 10 new channels.)
These leadership changes are meant to consolidate operations while keeping the production arms of CBS Television Studios and Viacomcounterpart, Paramount Television, separated, The WSJ said.
Beyond the exec shuffle itself, ViacomCBS also detailed how it plans to maximize its combined assets. The company announced this morning itputting into place a new &Content Council& that will work to &maximize the use of IP and talent relationships& across the company. The council will be chaired by Nevins and include all the content leaders.
&ViacomCBS will be one of the largest premium content creators in the world, with the capacity to produce content for both our own platforms and for others,& said president and CEO of ViacomCBS Bob Bakish, in a statement. &This talented team of content leaders will work together to ensure we realize the full power of our brands, our deep relationships with the creative community and our intellectual property to drive our growth as a combined company,& he added.
The Viacom-CBS merger is expected to fully close in December.
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Read more: ViacomCBS shakes up its content leadership teams following merger
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NASA next Venus probe could be an atmosphere-skimming robotic stingray designed by the University of Buffalo. UBCRASH Lab, which is the institutionCrashworthinesss for Aerospace Structures and Hybrids laboratory, has been selected by NASA to get early-stage funding as part of a program the agency devised to come up with new and innovative concept designs.
The stringray-style spacecraft design would have &wings& that can flap in the high winds of the upper atmosphere of Venus, according to UB, which would allow controlled flight thatpossible with high efficiency. Using this design, the BREEZE design (as itcalled) would be able to make its way all the way around Venus every four to six days, powering itself back up every two to three days while spending time on the sun-illuminated side of the planet.
Each &day& on Venus is longer than a year on Earth, because of the way it orbits the Sun. That means that typical spacecraft design wouldn&t necessarily be able to stay aloft and powered in the planetatmosphere using existing strategies for propulsion and mobility.
BREEZE is still a long way from actually dipping in and out of Venusian clouds, but this acknowledgment and award from NASA means itone step closer along the path to development.
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Read more: Stingray-inspired spacecraft could eventually probe the atmosphere of Venus
Write comment (100 Comments)After 24 hours of frenzied buying and selling, and weeks of aggressive advertising and promotions before it, the Alibaba Group said today its sales hit another record high on Singles& Day, the biggest shopping day on the planet.
The Chinese e-commerce giant said its platforms sold goods worth 268 billion yuan, or $38.4 billion today, easily exceeding last yearrecord $30.7 billion haul. Electronics gadgets and fashion items were among the most sold goods in the 11th edition of the Singles& Day annual event, company executives said in an interview.
More than half a billion people from a number of countries participate in the event, which is Chinaequivalent to Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Except… Singles& Day is much larger. The five-day Black Friday clocked less than $25 billion in sales last year. Cyber Monday clocked less than $8 billion. Alibaba Group said earlier today that it had netted its first $1 billion in sales in just 68 seconds and first $10 billion in half an hour.
To bridge people in China and those living elsewhere, Alibaba also maintains a number of dedicated websites. AliExpress sells goods from Chinese brands to international residents; Tmall sells goods from global brands to China; and Taobao sells Chinese brands& goods to people in China. Lazada, a subsidiary of Alibaba Group that caters to Southeast Asian markets, saw the number of buyers and merchants double this year. &This year, both buyers and merchants have more than doubled and we&ve already seen a series of record-breaking moments. We&re looking forward to sharing even more good news,& said Yin Jing,co-president of Lazada.
The retail giant said earlier today that dozens of brands, including Apple, L&Oreal and Dyson, had received more than 100 million yuan, or $14 million, in pre-orders.
The shopping glitz hosted a number of celebrities, including Taylor Swift and Asian pop icon GEM, to generate buzz. This year, the Hangzhou-headquartered firm also focused on live-streaming via its platform, a phenomenon that has gained significant traction in China.
In a live-streamed video, Kim Kardashian announced last week that her fragrance brand KKW will be sold on Tmall this Singles& Day.
One figure who was missing from the action was Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba Group, who retired in September this year. In previous years, Ma hasnot only delivered powerful speeches but also put on performances for employees and customers.
At a press briefing an hour ago, Alibaba Chief Technology Officer Jeff Zhang described 11.11 as an &airplane flying at turbo speed,& adding that making this supposed airplane more efficient has been the companybiggest focus.
One such improvement is a logistics network, which is still a laggard for the technology giant. Last week, Alibaba Group announced it was investing an additional $3.3 billion in logistics unit Cainiao, which it co-founded with a number of other companies six years ago.
The biggest challenge for Alibaba remains the expansion of JD.com and Pinduoduo, both of which have better hold over the smaller cities and towns and more organized logistics networks. The three of them are locked in an intense battle, with each one bandying out billions of dollars in discounts to lure — and sustain — customers every year.
Like Alibaba, JD.com and Pinduoduo also host similar campaigns each year. JD.comsales, which began November 1, had crossed $23.6 billion as of early today. This model has also been replicated by Amazon and Walmart -owned Flipkart in India, Qoo10 in Singapore and 11th Street in South Korea.
Todaymilestone should help Alibaba win some more confidence from shareholders when it begins selling shares worth $15 billion in Hong Kong later this month.
Singles& Day event falls on November 11 every year and is also known as &double 11.& The event is dedicated to people who are not in a relationship.
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Read more: Alibaba’s Singles’ Day sales top $38 billion
Write comment (94 Comments)Twitter drafts a deepfake policy that would label and warn, but not always remove, manipulated media
Twitter last month said it was introducing a new policy to help fight deepfakes and other &manipulated media& that involve photos, videos or audio thatbeen significantly altered to change its original meaning or purpose, or those that make it seem like something happened that actually did not. Today, Twitter is sharing a draft of its new policy and opening it up for public input before it goes live.
The policy is meant to address the growing problem with deepfakes on todayinternet.
Deepfakes have proliferated thanks to advances made in artificial intelligence that have made it easier to produce convincing fake videos, audio and other digital content. Anyone with a computer and internet connection can now create this sort of fake media. The technology can be dangerous when used as propaganda, or to make someone believe something is real which is not. In politics, deepfakes can be used to undermine a candidatereputation, by making them say and do things they never said or did.
A deepfake of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg went viral earlier this year, after Facebook refused to pull down a doctored video that showed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stumbling over her words was tweeted by Trump.
In early October, two members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner (D-VA) and Marco Rubio (R-FL), called on major tech companies to develop a plan to combat deepfakes on their platforms. The senators asked 11 tech companies — including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit and LinkedIn — to come up with a plan to develop industry standards for &sharing, removing, archiving, and confronting the sharing of synthetic content as soon as possible.&
Twitter later in the month announced its plans to seek public feedback on the policy. Meanwhile, Amazon joined up with Facebook and Microsoft to support the DeepFake Detection challenge (DFDC), which aims to develop new approaches to detect manipulated media.
Today, Twitter is detailing a draft of its deepfakes policy. The company says that when it sees synthetic or manipulated media thatintentionally trying to mislead or confuse people it will:
- place a notice next to Tweets that share synthetic or manipulated media;
- warn people before they share or like Tweets with synthetic or manipulated media; or
- add a link & for example, to a news article or Twitter Moment & so that people can read more about why various sources believe the media is synthetic or manipulated.
Twitter says if a deepfake could threaten someonephysical safety or lead to serious harm, it may also remove it.
The company is accepting feedback by way of a survey as well as on Twitter itself, by way of the #TwitterPolicyFeedback hashtag.
The survey asks questions like whether altered photos and videos should be removed entirely, have warning labels, or not be removed at all. And it asks whether certain actions are acceptable, like hiding tweets or alerting people if they&re about to share a deepfake. It also asks when it should remove a tweet with misleading media. The policy Twitter created says tweets will be removed if the tweet threatens someonephysical safety, but will otherwise be labeled. The survey suggests some other times a tweet could be pulled — like if it threatens someonemental health, privacy, dignity, property and more.
The survey takes five minutes to complete and is available in English, Japanese, Portuguese, Arabic, Hindi and Spanish.
What isn&t clear, however, is how Twitter will be able to detect the deepfakes published on its platform, given that detection techniques aren&t perfect and often lag behind the newer and more advanced creation methods. On this front, Twitter invites those who want to partner with it on detection solutions to fill out a form.
Twitter is accepting feedback on its deepfakes policy from now until Wednesday, November 27 at 11:59 p.m. GMT. At that time, it will review the feedback received and make adjustments to the policy, as needed. The policy will then be incorporated into TwitterRules with a 30-day notice before the change goes live.
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SpaceX successfully launched its first batch of production Starlink satellites today, sending 60 of the small satellites to their target orbit aboard a Falcon 9 rocket. These 60 satellites follow 60 launched in May, but whereas those, and two launched last year, were for testing purposes, this new batch is the first in a series of launches that will ready the constellation for providing internet service to consumers.
The launch took place at Cape Canaveral in Florida, and the Falcon 9 rocket used included a booster stage that has flown not once, not twice — but three times previously. This is its fourth use, which is a record for SpaceX. Whatmore, SpaceX recovered the booster via controlled landing on its seafaring drone ship &Of Course I Still Love You& in the Atlantic Ocean, which means itpossible the booster could be turned around and re-used still another time — they&re designed to support up to 10 flights in total.
Thatnot the only record for this launch, and for SpaceXre-usable rocketry program in general: This flight used a previously flown fairing for the first time ever (for any rocket company) during this mission. This fairing was flown during the Falcon Heavy Arabsat-6A mission that happened in April. Re-flying the fairing could save SpaceX around $6 million per launch, per estimates CEO Elon Musk has previously shared.
SpaceX had also originally sought to recover the fairing, or protective covering used to shield the payload of Starlink satellites on its way out of Earthatmosphere. The plan was to catch both halves using ocean-based catcher ships designed for the purpose, dubbed &Ms. Tree& and &Ms. Chief,& but conditions rendered that attempt impossible for this particular launch.
As for Starlink, SpaceX is looking to as many as tens of thousands of satellites to populate its broadband-beaming connectivity network. The goal is to operate a global constellation that provides connectivity via orbital satellites handing off connections to one another as they circle the globe — a different approach from current geostationary satellite connectivity, in which few large satellites essentially sit over one part of the Earth and provide connections just to that region.
Elon Musk tweeted earlier this year using a connection provided by a Starlink satellite for the first time, and the company aims to launch service for customers in the U.S. and Canada following six total launches of Starlink satellites like this one, with service expanding globally after a planned 24 similar launches.
Developing…
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