Category Archives: IT news

Giphy raised $72 million investment funds

The popularity of GIF attracts venture investors to invest. Giphy, which is honored as Google of GIF field, raised $ 72 million from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Institutional Venture Partners and China Media Capital with the value of assessment at $ 600 million.

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Its former investors included Lightspeed Venture Partners and Google Ventures. According to the confirmed source, Giphy got about $ 150 million fund-raising in total after this financing raise. The value of assessment of Giphy is about $ 600 million. Its value of assessment was $ 300 million when it raised funds in February.

The role of Giphy acts as the dynamic library of GIF so that users can search and share source on different websites, as well as billions of gifs from Twitter and Facebook Messenger. Giphy just made announcement  last week that its daily active visitors reached 100 million and over 1 billion GIFs were browsed each day.

However, Giphy faces challenge in how to establish business.It neither figured out how to make more profit from, nor established business relationship with exclusive partners. What’s more, it had just a few copyright of GIF. “We assume GIF dynamic graphic  is supposed to be the favorite format for consumers and makes great impact on advertisement,” said Barry Schuler, co-partner of Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

GIF has been serving for 30 years, in fact, it was the most popular graphic format on the internet. Giphy was established by Alex Chung and Jace Cooke in 2013. Giphy became popular as a dynamic graphic search engine of GIF.

Giphy has 75 employees so far. Giphy search engine was integrated with many instant messengers and launched the technology of automatically edit GIF dynamic graphic by online broadcast videos. Adam Leibsohn claimed that they are competent to make a movie in a few seconds.

So far, Giphy established business relations with Paramount Pictures, Walt Disney, Major League Baseball, CNN of Time Warner, and some other cable channels. However, it needs to make competition with other GIF dynamic graphic servers as it signed the non-exclusive deals with those business partners.

Among the rivals of Giphy include Gfycat and Tenor. Gfycat just raised $ 10 million in September and Tenor raised $ 15 million. Tenor is the app developer of GIF keyboard.

Apple announced to delay the delivery of AirPods due to technical issues

Apple announced on Wednesday that it would postpone the delivery of AirPods. It debuted AirPods along with iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus and Apple Watch 2 in September. As Apple canceled 3.5mm headphone jack of iPhone 7, consumers either choose Lightning headset or AirPods.

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Trudy Muller, Apple spokesman, claimed on Wednesday that they would not deliver AirPods until the device was ready. He admitted that they need a bit more time to prepare for AirPods. He did not reveal the reason for postponement of delivering AirPods and its exact release date.

It was one day before Apple hold the new Mac release meeting. The media predicted that Apple would release the delivery of AirPods on Thursday.

The postponement of AirPods release was the first time that Apple delays the release of hardward in past five years. Apple debuted white iPhone 4 in June of 2010 and started selling in April of 2011 due to manufacturing problems. In terms of software, Apple delayed the release date of iTunes 11 for one month in 2012 to restore the bugs.

Walt Mossberg assumed AirPods may cause inconvenience during the application as its battery only lasts for 5 hours. Its battery life can not even last for an international flight journey.Apple expressed AirPods can be fast-fill charged with its charging box. Some experts found problems of Music Display feature of AirPods.

AirPods is considered as one of the important accessaries of iPhone. Jony Ive claimed that AirPods will be the beginning of Apple’s wireless technology.

Dyn was hacked last Friday, causing the downtime of social networking websites

Dyn was hacked last Friday which led to the downtime of decades of social network websites, including PayPal, Twitter and Spotify.

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The clients of Dyn included some websites that obtained a great amount of traffic in the world. Dyn claimed that it was not sure who would be blamed for this hack attack. This attack started from eastern and spread to other districts in US or even overseas.

The downtime was very now and then. The public wasn’t sure which websites got affected from this attack. Gizmodo reported that there were 60 websites affecting by the attack, including CNN, HBO Now, Mashable, New York Times website,People.com, Wall Street Journal website and Yelp.

Dyn claimed that the attack was infected by the malware embedded in smart home appliances, such as webcam, printer and thermostatic equipment.

DHS warmed that this was a strong new hack last week. It concerned that once such malware was released on the internet, it would be misused by hackers.

In the late of Friday evening, Dyn announced that it was fighting with the third attack and it was spread to overseas from United States. Kyle York stated that:” We face much challenge to fight back as this attack is so complicated.”

Dyn admitted that it solved the downtime that launched in the morning of Friday, which caused by the failure of two hours. It suffered another hack a few hours after it solved the first hack, which caused more websites failed to work.

Amazon website reported that this hack disabled the log-in of Twitter and access of some news websites in London. PayPal confirmed that this hack led to the failure of payment on PayPal in some particular regions. PayPal made apologies to its clients for the inconvenience caused. However, it stressed that the website of PayPal did not get attacked from this hack.

Weibo’s market value was higher than Twitter’s

Weibo share price increased by 19% on the first day of IPO in 2014, up to $4 billion for capitalization value. Weibo may not expect its market value is higher than Twitter’s some day. Twitter was valued at about $ 30 billion then.

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Weibo share price increased to $53.12 some time during the regular trading hours on October 17, up to $11.35 billion, while Twitter just got $11.34 billion for market value. By the morning of October 18, Weibo’s value came to $11.25 billion and Twitter’s came to $11.84 billion. Their value differences are closer.

Weibo claimed it is not the one that it used to be described as imitator and became a comprehensive platform combined with Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

A fews day ago, Weibo’s market value was close to Twitter’s. In the meantime, Twitter’s share price kept declining. Weibo’s share price increased to $ 52 from IPO $17.It received 73% increase on the first day of IPO, closing at $26. Its share price paced up and down at $20 for a long time.

The market value of Twitter once got close to $ 40 billion and kept declines since March of 2014. Its share price and market value suffered another hit when Google, Disney and Salesforce quit offering for the acquisition of Twitter.

Weibo also received positive user growth, while Twitter faced difficulties to attract more new users. In June, Weibo monthly active users reached 282 million, increased by 33% yoy. By contrast, the average monthly active users were 313 million in Q2, increased by 3% yoy. Among the users growth, 66 million monthly active users are from United States, increased by 1%.

Though Weibo imitate the business mode of Twitter’s in the beginning, Weibo did a great job to improve its products and services. The development of Weibo sounds more positive than Twitter’s.

Verizon may quit the acquisition of Yahoo due to the users information leakage

Verizon Reuters attorney claimed that the 500 million Yahoo users information leakage event may have an impact on acquiring Yahoo, reported Reuters.

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Craig Silliman, whose post is Verizon attorney, stated in an announcement to media that:” I believed the information leakage event have impact on the acquiring of Yahoo to the company. We will request Yahoo to display all the impacts on the acquisition.If Yahoo considers no impact to the acquisition, then they need to show us the truth.”

In this July, Verizon offered $4.8 billion for acquiring Yahoo. However, this deal is still under process.

In September, Yahoo confirmed that 500 million accounts were hacked which cound be considered as the biggest scale of hacking case. This hacking event was occurred in 2014 and Yahoo even censured it was state-sponsored actor.

When this news concerning the information leakage was reported, some suspected whether Yahoo make enough explanation to Verizon. They claimed this event will affect the cooperation between two companies.

The statement of Silliman seems to make pressure to Yahoo so that it can ask Yahoo to prove whether there will be impacts on their acquisition.

Yahoo spokesman once made announcement to BI:”We are confident with Yahoo’s value and we will keep moving towards the integration with Verizon.”

New York Post reported lately that Verizon hoped to cut the transaction amount for Yahoo acquisition due to the information leakage event. Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam was questioned for this on Monday, he claimed the report of New York Post was just speculation.

Amazon offers music streaming service at $9.99 per month

The competition among music streaming services has been always heating. Apple Music and Spotify are the leaders in music streaming filed. They are now facing another competition from Amazon as it announced to release its own music streaming service: Amazon Music Unlimited.

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Amazon teamed up with Sony, Universal Music and Warner Music to promote this service. The regular members can listen to millions of Amazon songs for paying $ 9.99 per month, with a 30-day free trial.

If you are Amazon Prime membership, you only need to pay $ 7.99 per month to enjoy the service of Amazon Music Unlimited. If you are Amazon Echo users, you can enjoy this service at $ 3.99 per month on Echo platform.

Amazon offered the similar music service for its  existing membership, however, Amazon Music Unlimited is available to all Amazon users. The difference is based on how much they pay. Users can download songs from Amazon song library to local drive so that they can listen songs offline.

Amazon will plan to release family sharing music service as Apple Music does in the future. Apple Music for family sharing service costs $ 14.99 per month(¥15/ month in China),with six family members maximum.

Amazon faces the challenge of innovation. It will be hard to attract non-regular Amazon users to use Amazon Music Unlimited service. To those who subscribed Apple Music and Spotify music streaming services, they have no need to switch to Amazon Music Unlimited. Apple Music and Spotify respectively obtained 40 million and 17 million subscribers.

Amazon Music Unlimited is released in United States today. It will be introduced to UK and Germany later this year. It seems like this service won’t be introduced to China.

Samsung Note7 recall may benefit Apple and Google

With the expansion of Samsung Note 7 recall, analyst assumed that iPhone would receive more 15 million iPhones performance. Apple share price made a new record on Monday.

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Samsung Electronics made announcement on Monday afternoon that it would request worldwide mobile operators and retailers to stop selling Note 7 and users to power off the device. There were over 10 fire accidents worldwide caused by its battery since the release of Note 7. The company decided to stop producing Note 7 because of a series of elements.

To Apple, its iPhone sales declined a bit this year. The event of Note 7 may contribute to more sales of iPhone. Angelo Zino expressed that the Note 7 case would push some Android users to switch to iOS system. It is possibly to increase 1% of iPhone share in worldwide smartphone market.

Though the iPhone market seems to become saturation, Note 7 case brings opportunity for Apple to obtain more market share for iPhone. FactSet report showed that analysts predicted that the shipment of iPhone would be 211 million units while it sold 231 million units last year.

Apple stated that the amount of update users of iPhone were beyond the expectation in last quarter which contributed to outstanding revenue. By appointment, Apple will release its last quarter earnings on October 25.

Apple share increased by 1.7% to $116.25 at NASDAQ trading hours. Its share has been accumulating by 20% in past three months.

Twitter has little chance to sell itself as bidders quit offering

As the bidders face much pressure from shareholders and have fewer interest to continue to offer, Twitter has little chance to sell itself. Twitter attracted Google, Salesforce.com and Disney for bidding.They even consulted banks whether Twitter is worthy of acquisition.

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The confirmed source revealed that the mentioned three companies are not likely to acquire Twitter now. Another leak showed that Twitter Board of Directors canceled the meeting that it was supposed to hold for the acquisition with external consultants.

It’s said that several investors expressed their unwillingness of acquiring Twitter to Mark Hawkins at Salesforce investors conference which held last week. Salesforce spokesman claimed that the company would make no comments on this news. Twitter, Google and Disney made no response either. Since the reveal of acquiring Twitter, its potential bidders suffered decline of share price, especially Salesforce.

Twitter’s share price declined by 35% in past 12 months. Its single share price even decreased to $18.25 by the end of August. Its issue price was $ 26. When Ev Williams expressed that the board of directors would consider to sell the company, its share price rebounded.

Twitter started to seek for potential bidders when its revenue and user growth slowed down. Jack Dorsey was against to sell the business, while Williams was for the decision.

If Twitter can not find its bidder,it will try to further develop network video broadcast to attract more users.

Which new features are worthy of application on Mac Sierra?

Apple just released official version of macOS Sierra for Mac. Let’s check out the new features that Mac users can make full use of.

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Ask Siri for help on Mac

Siri is the featured update of macOS Sierra which Apple introduced a lot at its release press and on Apple official website. Users can talk with Siri for asking it questions. It is better that users don’t talk with Siri on Mac device at working place in case of embarrassment.

Universal Clipboard: copy from Mac and paste it to cellphone

The feature of Universal Clipboard has been desired by users for a long time. It allows users make copy from Mac/cellphone to paste it to cellphone/ Mac. To apply the Universal Clipboard feature, users need to log in the same Apple ID on Mac device and cellphone under the same Wi-Fi environment or blue-tooth assessed.

Even though two persons log in the same Apple ID, they can not realize the copy and paste mission if one stays at home and one stays at office. When users make copy on iOS/macOS and paste it to macOS /iOS, the operating system will automatically have the content synchronized on the other device.

Update for Mac hard drive storage

Users will be touched when you upgrade to Sierra if your Mac hard drive has limited storage. Users will find their hard drive storage has bigger capacity after update. Apple macOS Sierra offers several measures for users to optimize memory space by click “About this Mac”–“Memory Storage” section. There are four recommendations for manually optimization.

PIP feature

Apple upgraded the most excellent feature on iOS 9 for iPad,named PIP. To enjoy this feature, users need to display it on video websites that support HTML5. Mac is compatible with PIP feature now. This feature allows you pin the video window on screen without pause to switch the windows.

Unlock Mac with Apple Watch

To protect privacy and for internet security, users can set a complicated password for Mac device. However, users need to input the password each time it starts or wakes up from sleep mode. Some developers released MacID and NearLock applications to simplify the unlocking.

Users need to disable two-step authorization function and open the dual authorization for iCloud accounts. Click “System Preferences”-“Security and Privacy”-open” Allow Apple Watch unlock Mac”. Apple Watch can also unlocks Mac if it is under Mac Blue-tooth access.

To experience some more new features of macOS Sierra, please pay close attention to Apple news.

Walmart acquires Jet.com for $3.3 billion

Walmart did acquire E-Commerce site Jet.com.

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Walmart announced on Monday that it made an official offer at $3.3 billion to acquire e-commerce startup Jet.com. Doug McMillon, who serves as Walmart CEO, posted a photo on Instagram on Monday to confirm the acquisition of Jet.com.

In the meantime, McMillon explained the acquisition on his blog. McMillon claimed:” Walmart and Jet.com are both aiming to save time and expense for clients. With our collaboration, we will achieve these goals easily and create a seamless shopping experience from app to site, and app to store.

However, Walmart and Jet.com will face many challenges when the acquisition is done. Amazon has advantage in exploring business in e-commerce field in United States. It is one of the world-class e-commerce giants. It keeps market share increase in United State market. There is no sign that Amazon loses developing motivation though e-commerce business of Walmart grew a lot in past 18 months.

Jet.com has proved that it could develop some loyalty client group instead of a company profited by advertising in past years. Marc Lore, who works as CEO of Jet.com, will take charge of running Walmart website after the acquisition. What’s more, the distance between silicon e-commerce location and operation of Arkansas stores is also a challenge to Walmart. In fact, the major revenue of Walmart is from the offline stores.

Another challenge to Walmart and Jet.com is that they need to spend much money to overcome them and improve services.