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Technology
Extra pay for tech professionals who&ve attained non-certified skills is nearing a 19-year high, adding an average of 9.4% to their salary. But if you really want to pad your paycheck, blockchain skills may be the way to go, according to a new report from from Foote Partners.
The market value for IT workers with blockchain skills increased by 6.3% in the six months through Oct. 1, 2019 and a whopping 13.3% for the full year & &well above average,& according to the Foote Partners research.
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Away CEO Steph Korey is stepping down following The Vergereport of toxic culture at the luggage startup. Taking her spot is Stuart Haselden, COO at Lululemon, The Wall Street Journal reports. Haseldenlast day at Lululemon will be Jan. 10, 2020. Korey will remain on board as executive chairman.
Following The Vergestory, which described a workplace where Korey was known for berating employees via Slack, Korey tweeted last week that she was &making things right& at the company.
&I&m not proud of my behavior in those moments, and I&m sincerely sorry for what I said and how I said it,& she tweeted. &It was wrong, plain and simple.&
She added that she had also been working with an executive coach since those incidents the report highlighted. According to The Wall Street Journal, Away had been looking for Koreyreplacement since the spring.
Away declined to comment but confirmed the news.
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When Chris Williams founded entertainment platform Pocketwatch in 2017, he was certain that no one had yet found the right way to work with the generation of childrentalent finding its audience on platforms like YouTube.
Convinced that packaging creators under one umbrella and leveraging the expanding reach of even more media platforms could reshape the way childrencontent was produced, the former Maker Studios and Disney executive launched his company to offer emerging social media talent more avenues to create entertainment that resonates with young audiences.
On the back of the breakout success of Ryan World, a YouTube channel which counted 33.6 billion views and more than 22 million subscribers as of early November, it appears that Williams was on the right track. As he looks out at the childrenmedia landscape today, Williams says he sees the same forces at work that compelled him to create the business in the first place. If anything, he says, the trends are only accelerating.
The first is the exodus of children from traditional linear viewing platforms to on-demand entertainment. The rise of subscription streaming services, including Disney+, HBO Max and Apple Plus — combined with the continued demand for new childrenprogramming on Netflix — is creating a bigger market for childrenprogramming.
&If you&re a subscription-based service, what kids& content does for you is it prevents churn,& says Williams.
Thatdrawing attention from new, ad-supported streaming providers like the Roku Channel, PlutoTV and SamsungTV Plus, which are also thirsty for childrenstorytelling. Williams says he sees fertile ground for new programming among the ad-based, video-on-demand services. &Kids and family content tends to be the most highly engaging that creates consumption in homes. That creates a lot of opportunities for advertisers.&
The Roku Channel and Viacom PlutoTV service show that therestill demand for ad-supported, on-demand alternatives that are more curated than just YouTube. Ita potential opportunity for more startups, as well as an opportunity for studios looking to pitch their talent and programming.
&When we&ve launched a new 24-7 video channel and AVOD library and omni services… [we] know that content is surrounded by other premium content,& says Williams.
For all of the opportunities these new platforms bring, Williams says YouTube isn&t going anywhere as one of the dominant new forces in childrenentertainment, despite its many, many woes. In fact, one of Williams& new initiatives at Pocketwatch is predicated on changes that YouTube is seemingly making in terms of the programming that it promotes with its algorithms.
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Write comment (91 Comments)YouTube is asking the U.S. Federal Trade Commission for further clarification and better guidance to help video creators understand how to comply with the FTCguidelines set forth as part of YouTubesettlement with the regulator over its violations of childrenprivacy laws. The FTC in September imposed a historic fine of $170 million for YouTubeviolations of COPPA (the U.S. ChildrenOnline Privacy Protection Act). It additionally required YouTube creators to now properly identify any child-directed content on the platform.
To comply with the ruling, YouTube created a system where creators could either label their entire channel as child-directed, or they could identify only certain videos as being directed at children, as needed. Videos that are considered child-directed content would then be prohibited from collecting personal data from viewers. This limited creators& ability to leverage Googlehighly profitable behavioral advertising technology on videos kids were likely to watch.
As a result, YouTube creators have been in an uproar since the ruling, arguing that ittoo difficult to tell the difference between whatchild-directed content and whatnot. Several popular categories of YouTube videos — like gaming, toy reviews and family vlogging, for instance — fall under gray areas, where they&re watched by children and adults alike. But because the FTCruling left creators held liable for any future violations, YouTube could only advise creators to consult a lawyer to help them work through the rulingimpact on their own channels.
Today, YouTube says itasking the FTC to provide more clarity.
&Currently, the FTCguidance requires platforms must treat anyone watching primarily child-directed content as children under 13. This does not match what we see on YouTube, where adults watch favorite cartoons from their childhood or teachers look for content to share with their students,& noted YouTube in an announcement. &Creators of such videos have also conveyed the value of product features that wouldn&t be supported on their content. For example, creators have expressed the value of using comments to get helpful feedback from older viewers. This is why we support allowing platforms to treat adults as adults if there are measures in place to help confirm that the user is an adult viewing kids& content,& the company said.
Specifically, YouTube wants the FTC to clarify whatto be done when adults are watching kids& content. It also wants to know whatto be done about content that doesn&t intentionally target kids — like videos in the gaming, DIY and art space, for example — if those videos end up attracting a young audience. Are these also to be labeled &made for kids,& even though thatnot their intention?, YouTube asks.
The FTC had shared some guidance in November, which YouTube passed along to creators. But YouTube says itnot enough as it doesn&t help creators to understand whatto be done about this &mixed audience& content.
YouTube says it supports platforms treating adults who view primarily child-directed video content as adults, as long as there are measures in place to help confirm the user is an adult. It didn&t suggest what those measures would be, though possibly this could involve users logged in to an adult-owned Google account or perhaps an age-gate measure of some sort.
YouTube submitted its statements as a part of the FTCcomment period on the agencyreview of the COPPA Rule, which has been extended until December 11, 2019. The FTC is giving commenters additional time to submit comments and an alternative mechanism to file them as the federal governmentRegulations.gov portal is temporarily inaccessible. Instead, commenters can submit their thoughts via email to the address This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., with the subject line &COPPA comment.& These must be submitted before 11:59 PM ET on December 11, the FTC says.
YouTubeannouncement, however, pointed commenters to the FTCwebsite, which isn&t working right now.
&We strongly support COPPAgoal of providing robust protections for kids and their privacy. We also believe COPPA would benefit from updates and clarifications that better reflect how kids and families use technology today, while still allowing access to a wide range of content that helps them learn, grow and explore. We continue to engage on this issue with the FTC and other lawmakers (we previously participated in the FTCpublic workshop) and are committed to continue [sic] doing so,& said YouTube.
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AWS held its annual re:Invent customer conference last week in Las Vegas. Being Vegas, there was pageantry aplenty, of course, but this yearmodel felt a bit different than in years past, lacking the onslaught of major announcements we are used to getting at this event.
Perhaps the pace of innovation could finally be slowing, but the company still had a few messages for attendees. For starters, AWS CEO Andy Jassy made it clear hetired of the slow pace of change inside the enterprise. In Jassyview, the time for incremental change is over, and ittime to start moving to the cloud faster.
AWS also placed a couple of big bets this year in Vegas to help make that happen. The first involves AI and machine learning. The second, moving computing to the edge, closer to the business than the traditional cloud allows.
The question is what is driving these strategies? AWS had a clear head start in the cloud, and owns a third of the market, more than double its closest rival, Microsoft. The good news is that the market is still growing and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. The bad news for AWS is that it can probably see Google and Microsoft beginning to resonate with more customers, and itlooking for new ways to get a piece of the untapped part of the market to choose AWS.
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Write comment (96 Comments)Berlin-headquartered streaming guide JustWatch has grown to more than 10 million users across 38 countries in less than five years. Now, itexpanding its U.S. presence with the acquisition of New York-based rival GoWatchIt, from Plexus Entertainment. Deal terms were not revealed but were a mixture of cash and stock for the smaller operation, which had just eight people on board.
JustWatch says its interest was mostly in the commercial team based in New York. As a result of the acquisition, GoWatchIt founder and CEO David Larkin will remain in New York and will become JustWatchSVP Marketing and Strategy.
GoWatchIt is one of now several services that offer a comprehensive guide to movies and TV aimed at helping people find things to watch across an increasingly fragmented streaming landscape, which now includes new services like Apple TV+ and Disney+, and soon, NBCUPeacock and WarnerMediaHBO Max. As a result of all the new entries, it has become more difficult for consumers to know whatavailable, where it streams and how much it costs. Plus, consumers also want help in finding new shows and movies across services that are personalized to their own interests.
This is where services like GoWatchIt and JustWatch came in.
GoWatchIt was founded in 2011 as a guide to streaming content, as well as digital content and even movies playing in theaters. The service additionally offered an API to partner sites that wanted to inform their visitors and readers where content was available. These partners included The New York Times, National Cine Media and Common Sense Media, among others.
According to JustWatch, the acquisition of GoWatchIt made sense as the U.S. had already grown to become JustWatchlargest market in terms of user numbers. However, the acquisition wasn&t about gaining market share, the company tells TechCrunch. It was more about the B2B partners and clients and the commercial team, particularly founder David Larkin, whose new job will have him marketing JustWatch B2B products like the partner API, competitive VOD market intelligence and JustWatchentertainment advertising products in the U.S.
&We are very happy with the acquisition of GoWatchIt and to welcome David Larkin at JustWatch,& noted JustWatch founder and CEO David Croyé, in a statement. &We have already known each other for several years and I&m excited to work with David to increase our footprint in the US. His network in the streaming industry will help us find many more partners for our B2B data and API offerings,& he said.
GoWatchIt was backed by Scout Ventures and other private funding.
Its total team was just eight people, but only two are joining JustWatch, as the technical staff wasn&t needed. JustWatch today has a team of more than 50 in Berlin who will continue to run its product development and technology.
In addition, the GoWatchIt website will be closed in the near future, with traffic redirected to JustWatch.com instead. Partner sites using the GoWatchIt API will be transitioned to the JustWatch API, as well.
&I&m excited to join JustWatch from New York and help to accelerate the growth with my industry experience and network,& said Larkin. &Over the last years, JustWatch has grown very fast to become the biggest streaming guide worldwide. The streaming wars are heating up and the biggest growth will come from outside the U.S. JustWatch is the only truly international player to help users find out what to watch and where to watch it.&
JustWatch competes with a range of services in this market, including Reelgood, which just raised $6.75 million for its own streaming guide; TV Time, which has raised $65 million (according to Crunchbase); and many other apps and services, all aiming to be consumers& go-to platform.
JustWatch is nearing the launch of new TV apps for Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Android TV, which will be available in the days ahead.
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