Important Note
Tech Narratives was a subscription website, which offered expert commentary on the day's top tech news from Jan Dawson, along with various other features, for $10/month. As of Monday October 16, 2017, it will no longer be updated. An archive of past content will remain available for the time being. I've written more about this change in the post immediately below, and also here.
Amazon’s Twitch Adding New Features on Mobile App (Jun 29, 2017)
Amazon’s Twitch streaming service is adding a bunch of new features to its streaming app in July, something I missed yesterday. The big addition is streaming live video (though not the usual gameplay video) from the mobile app itself, something which will be useful for direct-to-camera or other vlogging-type content which Twitch is trying to push as it expands beyond its core historical gaming video roots. Twitch also touted 83m downloads of its app, though with just under 10m daily active users, that number feels a bit irrelevant, and merely highlights the fairly small percentage of people who’ve tried the app who use it daily. The 9.7m daily active user number is also a great illustration of how niche a video platform Twitch remains, though it’s clearly very important to the users it does have: they spend an average of 106 minutes per day on the site, which is huge. But given YouTube’s recent 1.5 billion monthly user announcement, it’s clear that Twitch is still a marginal player in the overall video space, even if it’s a much more significant one in the gaming segment specifically. Something else I’d never really looked at before but is stark once you do look is the fact that there’s basically no sign anywhere on Twitch that it has anything to do with Amazon, even on the About page. So it’s clear that, though Amazon likely has some integration plans in mind longer term, for now it’s very much running as a separate independent entity, much as Zappos always has in the e-commerce space.
via TechCrunch
Instagram Uses AI to Filter Spam and Abusive Comments (Jun 29, 2017)
Instagram is announcing today that it’s now using artificial intelligence to filter spam and abusive comments in the app. Wired has a feature (also linked below) which dives deeper into the background here and makes clear that what Instagram is doing here builds on Facebook’s DeepText AI technology, and that Instagram has been working on it for some time. The spam filter works in nine languages, while the comment moderation technology only works in English for now, but both should clean up the Instagram experience. Importantly, though both spam and harassment are issues on Instagram, neither are as bad there because so many people have private accounts – I haven’t seen an official statement from Instagram on this but some research and testing suggests it’s likely between 30 and 50% of the total number of accounts that are private. Those accounts, in turn, are far less likely to receive either spam or abusive comments, since they’ve explicitly chosen to allow those who might comment to follow them. However, for the rest, and especially for celebrities, brands, and so on, these are likely far bigger issues, so cleaning them up in a way that doesn’t require the same massive investment in manual human moderation as Facebook’s core product is a good thing all around.
via Instagram Blog (see also Wired feature)
Charter Launches Sports-Free $20/Month Streaming TV for its Broadband Subs (Jun 29, 2017)
Spectrum TV, which is the brand for television services offered by the entity formed from the merger of Charter, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks, is offering an over the top pay TV streaming service. So far, that probably sounds pretty me-too, but there are two important differences: firstly, the base $20 tier excludes all sports networks, and secondly, because this service is being offered by an existing pay TV provider in its franchise area, it includes the local broadcast channels. The big caveat is that the service is only available to Spectrum broadband subscribers, so this isn’t a national offering, but it’s arguably the most comprehensive set of basic channels offered by any of the streaming services, and sports and premium channels can be added at a pretty reasonable price ($12 for ESPN and others, and $15 for a premium package). I’ve long argued that the existing pay TV providers are in the best position to offer a really compelling streaming TV service, but of course they’re also the least incentivized to do so, because that means potentially cannibalizing their legacy pay TV services. As such, we’ve only seen fairly hamstrung offerings from the big satellite providers (DISH’s Sling and AT&T’s DirecTV Now). But Spectrum’s new service suggests we may finally be seeing some serious movement from the cable guys, and were Comcast to move in this direction too (something it’s been testing on a limited basis so far), I have to believe that would force the remaining telco and satellite players to get more serious about providing comprehensive streaming pay TV services.
President Trump Expected to Nominate FCC General Counsel as Final Commissioner (Jun 28, 2017)
A little while ago, I covered the news that Jessica Rosenworcel had been nominated to fill the vacant Democratic slot at the FCC, and posited that a Republican nomination must be coming soon so as to preserve the Republican advantage on the Commission. It now seems as though Brendan Carr, currently acting as general counsel at the FCC and a key ally to Chairman Ajit Pai, will take that last slot. Given the controversy around net neutrality, that majority is critical to making the changes Pai has proposed, and on the basis that both these nominees are likely to be pushed through together, things should work out fine for the Trump administration. As I said while commenting on the Rosenworcel nomination, telecoms policy is one of the few areas where the Trump administration has been able to move quickly without either Congressional or legal barriers, so it will be keen to keep the agenda moving forward quickly. Update: the nomination was confirmed later in the day.
via Recode
Lyft is Catching up to Uber in App Downloads, But Not Because of Uber’s Troubles (Jun 28, 2017)
This content requires a subscription to Tech Narratives. Subscribe now by clicking on this link, or read more about subscriptions here.
LeEco Says Cash Situation Far Worse than Expected (Jun 28, 2017)
This content requires a subscription to Tech Narratives. Subscribe now by clicking on this link, or read more about subscriptions here.
Facebook Launches Discover for Bots and Businesses in Messenger Announced at F8 (Jun 28, 2017)
This content requires a subscription to Tech Narratives. Subscribe now by clicking on this link, or read more about subscriptions here.
Snapchat Places Custom Geofilters Tool Directly in App for Ordinary Users (Jun 28, 2017)
This content requires a subscription to Tech Narratives. Subscribe now by clicking on this link, or read more about subscriptions here.
Qualcomm Demos Under-Display Fingerprint Recognition with Vivo (Jun 28, 2017)
This content requires a subscription to Tech Narratives. Subscribe now by clicking on this link, or read more about subscriptions here.
Facebook Content Moderation Training Docs Show Sometimes Troubling Guidelines (Jun 28, 2017)
This content requires a subscription to Tech Narratives. Subscribe now by clicking on this link, or read more about subscriptions here.
NBCU Takes Some Premier League Soccer Games Off TV Everywhere, Onto $50 Subscription (Jun 27, 2017)
NBCU has announced a new subscription offering for watching England’s Premier League soccer games, which will cost $50 per season when it launches in August this year. The catch is that these games were previously available online and through NBC’s apps to authenticated pay TV subscribers as an additional offering over and above the games shown on its live linear TV channels. So it is taking what used to be a perk for authenticated pay TV subs and making it a separate, $50 service, making this a bid for new revenue from dedicated soccer watchers. What that means in practice is that viewers who care about this will now need to subscribe to TV packages that include the NBCU channels and to this separate subscription if they want to watch all possible games. This is definitely part of a trend towards direct-to-consumer offerings, many of which are coming from traditional players not willing to offer full cord-cutting solutions, which means that they actually end up setting the user experience back instead of moving it forward, as in this case. The traditional TV players continue to be more interested in experimenting and dabbling with services that can provide new revenue than – to use an analogy from a different sport – skating to where the puck will be by offering truly new offerings that allow users more control. I continue to believe that there will come a tipping point when we see real innovation in giving users just what they want because the alternative is rapid decline, but we’re clearly not there yet. But it’s also notable that both Fox (through the deal announced earlier today with Facebook) and NBCU are seeking new ways to monetize their second-tier sports content which otherwise doesn’t appear on TV.
via Recode
Safety Advocates and Carmakers Speak in Congress on Autonomous Driving (Jun 27, 2017)
The US House Energy and Commerce panel held hearings today on proposed legislation to regulate the licensing of autonomous vehicles for testing on roads. There is, of course, quite a bit of that testing going on already in various states throughout the US, but the Congressional effort aims to unify regulation on the topic and create a single set of policies nationally as a result. The carmakers are, in theory, in favor of that, but only if it reflects the lighter-touch approaches currently being taken by states like California, while safety advocates are pushing for tighter regulation, more testing, and generally slowing things down. There are sensible arguments being made on both sides here – no-one, least of all the carmakers, wants high-profile accidents featuring self-driving cars putting the whole field back by years. But given the potential of autonomous driving to increase safety over time, there are also strong safety-centric arguments for allowing reasonable testing to go on without burdensome oversight. Given the current state of US politics, I’m not 100% confident that we’ll get a sensible bit of legislation out of all this, but I do think that it’s inevitable and welcome that we’ll eventually have a national framework for not just testing but ultimately selling autonomous vehicles. Testing is an area that needs to be addressed today, but commercial vehicle sales are several years away and as such there’s time to get this stuff right and no need to rush into anything today. But there are some really thorny issues here that do need to be thought through in great detail, not least questions of liability and responsibility.
via Bloomberg
Uber’s Leasing Company Referrals in NYC Lead to Predatory Contracts (Jun 27, 2017)
This content requires a subscription to Tech Narratives. Subscribe now by clicking on this link, or read more about subscriptions here.
Facebook Hits 2 Billion Monthly Active Users (Jun 27, 2017)
It’s a milestone I’ve been anticipating since Facebook’s last earnings call in May: Facebook has hit 2 billion monthly active users, up from 1.936 billion at the end of March, signifying slightly faster growth in Q2 this year than last year, and putting Facebook MAUs at around 27% of the world’s total population. In and of itself, the milestone is no more important than any other number Facebook might have reported – there’s no magic to two billion – but it’s indicative of Facebook’s massive reach, which continues to grow more quickly over time. As I said back in May, Facebook is the first company ever to have announced two billion regular users for any product, though Google search has to be close, and other Google products such as Android and YouTube have been officially pegged at 2 billion active devices and 1.5 billion monthly users respectively. What’s perhaps even more interesting is the way Facebook itself seems to be downplaying the milestone – Mark Zuckerberg’s post on the topic is very brief, while Facebook’s corporate post (linked below) quickly glosses over the number and goes back to the company’s recent focus on community and using its enormous influence explicitly for good. Partly, I think that reflects a new humility on the part of Zuckerberg about the mixed influence Facebook has had on the world, but I also wonder if it wants to avoid painting a target on its own back from an antitrust and broader regulatory perspective, especially in light of the EU action against Google this morning. Lastly, it’s worth talking briefly about where that growth is coming from, and where it will come from in future. Facebook’s first billion came roughly half from North America and Europe, and half from the rest of the world, while just 16% of its second billion came from those first two regions, and 84% came from Asia and the Rest of the World, with nearly half the total coming from Asia. That picture is only going to skew even more in that direction going forward, with Asia in particular and the Rest of World region to a lesser extent driving over 90% of growth. That means more Internet.org-type activities to grow the addressable market, but it also means that growth in users won’t bring nearly the revenue growth past user growth has, because ad spend and incomes are far lower in many of the markets where Facebook will grow going forward. Update: I’ve just published a deeper dive on Facebook’s first, second, and third billions on Beyond Devices here.
via Facebook
Verizon Seeking Customer Data from Wireless Rivals to Bolster Ad Platform (Jun 27, 2017)
This content requires a subscription to Tech Narratives. Subscribe now by clicking on this link, or read more about subscriptions here.
Facebook Secures TV Rights for Less Interesting Champions League Soccer Games Through Fox (Jun 27, 2017)
Facebook has been dabbling in sports rights here and there, and already has a deal for a twenty Major League Baseball games during the 2017 season. Now, it also has a deal to show some European Champions League games in the US through Fox, which owns the TV rights. The games Facebook shows will be the the lower profile ones which aren’t shown on live TV but which have been available through Fox’s streaming apps. Given that the focus is on these lower-tier games, it also has no rights to the last two rounds of the tournament, which features the top club soccer teams from throughout Europe. The article here from Bloomberg talks up the amount of social activity around soccer on Facebook, but of course the US is famously resistant to soccer, so only a fraction of the overall numbers relate to the US specifically. I certainly count myself among those who watch the Champions League here in the US, but almost exclusively the top-tier team I support, which almost certainly won’t be featured in any of the games Facebook shows. And that’s the challenge here – this deal sounds good in principle, and for any fans of relatively obscure European teams who happen to be living in the US (or who watch soccer indiscriminately regardless of the teams playing) this might be a nice value-add on Facebook. But this doesn’t seem likely to attract much bigger audiences than the MLB games on Friday nights.
via Bloomberg
Pandora Confirms CEO and Two Other Execs Stepping Down and Closes Service in ANZ (Jun 27, 2017)
The main news item linked below just confirms the reports from over the weekend which I covered yesterday, which suggested Tim Westergren would be stepping down shortly. In the end, it seems he’s stepping down both as CEO and from the board immediately, rather than sticking around, so the CFO will take his place. One thing that wasn’t reported over the weekend is that two other execs – the President and CMO – are also leaving. And lastly, former Viacom, Sling Media and News Corp exec and current media commentator Jason Hirschhorn is joining the board. One quick note: though Recode makes it sound like Hirschhorn is replacing Westergren on the board, Pandora’s press release makes clear he’s filling another recently created opening on the board (which I take to be replacing Pete Gotcher, who stepped down in May). The fact that other execs are also leaving reinforces my sense from yesterday that all this is driven by a clash with soon to be part-owners SiriusXM, but it’s still not entirely clear whether they truly jumped or were pushed. Either way, I continue to be believe we’ll see some big changes. On that note, Australian site Ad News reported that Pandora would shortly shut down its operations in Australia and New Zealand, and Billboard later got confirmation from the company that that’s the case. That would be just the kind of strategic refocusing I’d expect to see over the next few weeks and months.
via Recode
★ Sprint Enters Exclusive Talks with Charter, Comcast for Partnership or Merger (Jun 27, 2017)
This content requires a subscription to Tech Narratives. Subscribe now by clicking on this link, or read more about subscriptions here.
★ EU Fines Google €2.4bn ($2.7bn) Over Favoring Google Shopping in Search Results (Jun 27, 2017)
The EU has three open antitrust cases against Google, and has just announced its final decision in one of those cases, which concerns Google Shopping. Very briefly, EU law doesn’t punish dominance in a market per se, but does place limits on certain behavior by dominant companies, specifically those which give their other products and services an unfair advantage. The EU has concluded firstly that Google search is dominant in the EU, and secondly that Google abused that dominance by favoring its Google Shopping feature over other “comparison shopping services”. It has therefore set a €2.4 billion ($2.7bn) fine based on revenue from Google Shopping in 13 countries where it’s available since as long ago as 2008, with a threat to levy an additional 5% of Alphabet’s total revenue going forward if Google doesn’t comply with its directives within 90 days. Other than the fine, the directive says Google has to stop favoring Google Shopping over other comparison shopping services, presumably either by eliminating the Shopping box that appears at the top and merely allowing Google Shopping results to appear with the other blue links below, or by featuring every available comparison shopping service in that box at the top and letting users choose. Predictably, Google has said it feels the decision is wrong and may appeal.
On, then, to what this all means. Firstly, this is just the first in three separate cases, and I’ve previously written in depth about the one that concerns Android here and here. In its decision, the EU explicitly says that this case sets a precedent, which certainly suggests it’s likely to find and act similarly in the other two cases. Secondly, the fine is substantial, but ultimately not the biggest punishment for Google here. Rather, the most significant outcome is restrictions on promoting other Google services in search, which applies for today onto to Shopping but by implication would also affect other linked products that get prominent promotion in search results, whether Maps, News, or potentially other categories too. Put that together with the precedent point, and we’re very likely to see similar restrictions on bundling and promoting other services in Android and possibly other areas too. Thirdly, the decision is notable for a very European approach to defining markets, which I mentioned in one of those earlier pieces on Android: the EU tends to define markets in ways normal people probably wouldn’t, because that allows it to make findings that otherwise couldn’t be made. In this case, it’s defining Google Shopping as a comparison shopping service rather than just a more useful way to present shopping-related search results and/or ads, which is how Google sees them. Once you define Google Shopping in that way, then of course Google is unfairly promoting Google Shopping over other comparison shopping services – can you even name any others? Google’s own algorithm, which benefits only from being as good as possible, rarely ranks any others above the fourth page of organic search results, suggesting their limited relevance. But as long as the EU is determined to take that approach, I see very little Google can do to fight against this decision, because it’s based on a market definition the EU gets to decide on, and which Google is essentially powerless to change. Overall, this feels like something of a watershed moment in Google’s relationship with the EU – I think any appeal is very unlikely to succeed, and at most will push back the implementation of the decision and the forced unbending of Shopping from search. But there’s lots more to come here, and Google is going to end up operating very differently in the EU from the rest of the world as a result. See a recent case in Russia for a small sense of some of the possible implications of the Android case.
One quick note: I’ve used the term “EU” throughout for simplicity’s sake, but it’s worth noting that technically it’s a specific part of the EU organization, the European Commission, which is taking this action.
via Bloomberg (see also the EU announcement and Google’s blog post)
Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube Create Forum to Counter Terrorism (Jun 26, 2017)
This content requires a subscription to Tech Narratives. Subscribe now by clicking on this link, or read more about subscriptions here.