Month: November 2018

Facebook hasn’t had a hit show yet for its long-form video hub Watch, so it’s got a new plan: digging up some deceased cult favorites from television. First up, Facebook is making all episodes of Joss Whedon’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly free on Facebook Watch. There’ll be simultaneous viewing Watch Parties where fans can live-comment together for Buffy at 3 pm PT today, Angel tomorrow at 12 pm PT and Firefly on Sunday at 12 pm PT. Facebook recruited Buffy star Sarah Michelle Gellar to promote the launch.

These shows aren’t original, and they’re far from exclusive, as they’re included in a Hulu subscription and are available to rent or buy on other platforms. But at least they’re not run-of-the-mill web content. With Facebook’s remake of MTV’s Real World not arriving until Spring 2019, these sci-fi and horror shows are the most high-profile programs available on the free ad-supported streaming service. The hope is that fans of these shows will come get a taste of Watch, and then explore the rest of its programming.

However, Facebook downplayed this as a change is overarching strategy when I asked if it would be licensing more old TV shows. Instead, it’s trying to build a well-rounded mix of content. A Facebook spokesperson provided this statement:

No – this doesn’t reflect a strategy shift. We’re focused on bringing content to Watch that people want to discuss and create a community around — whether that’s live sports like UEFA Champions League in Latin America, compelling shows like Sorry For Your Loss, Queen America and Sacred Lies, or even nostalgia content like Real World reboot we’re bringing to Watch next year. Buffy, Firefly and Angel are pop culture favorites with dedicated fan bases, and we’re excited for the opportunity to bring these shows back in a way that enables fans to watch and discuss together on the same platform.

There’s no guarantee Whedon fans will flock to Watch in droves. [TechCrunch owner] Verizon tried the same thing, bringing Veronica Mars and Babylon 5 to its Go90 streaming service. That failed to move the needle and Go90 eventually shut down. Meanwhile, Watch Party’s simultaneous viewing hasn’t blossomed into a phenomenon, but perhaps bringing the feature to Messenger (which TechCrunch reports Facebook is internally testing) could more naturally spur these social consumption experiences.

Watch has made some progress since its lackluster August 2017 debut. Indeed, 50 million people now spend at least 1 minute per month with Watch. For comparison, more than 18 Snapchat Shows have over 10 million unique viewers per month. Facebook Watch users spend 5X longer watching than on clips discovered on News Feed videos. But Facebook Watch really needs to pour the cash in necessary to secure a tent-pole series — its Game of Thrones or House of Cards. That might mesh well with its new strategy of conceding the younger audience that’s abandoning Facebook in favor of targeting older users, CNBC reported.

With so much free video content floating around and plenty of people already subscribing to Netflix, Hulu and/or HBO, it’s been tough for Watch to gain traction when it’s so far outside the understood Facebook use case. Laying a bed of diverse content is a good baby step, but it needs something truly must-see if it’s going to wedge its way into our viewing habits.

Source: Tech Crunch

Black Friday broke records in terms of sales made from mobile devices, according to reports last week from Adobe. This week, PayPal said it saw a similar trend during the Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday shopping event. PayPal saw a record-breaking $1 billion+ in mobile payment volume for the first time ever on Black Friday – a milestone it hit again on Cyber Monday.

Mobile payment volume on Black Friday was up 42 percent over Black Friday 2017, the company said, and it even outpaced the mobile payment volume on Cyber Monday this year.

However, Cyber Monday saw more total payment volume, likely because much of the shopping that takes place that day comes from office workers back at their desktops, wrapping up a few more purchases.

Worldwide, mobile payment volume from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday accounted for a significant 43 percent of PayPal’s total payment volume. Between those days, PayPal was processing more than $25,000 per second, with more than $11,000 per second processed on mobile.

The peak hour took place on Black Friday, which shows the sales event has shifted much of its business online. It’s now coming close to topping Cyber Monday in terms of both online and mobile shopping, PayPal noted.

PayPal’s data also pointed to another trend: that of the blurring of the line as to when holiday shopping begins and ends. Many retailers these days are launching their deals on Thanksgiving or even earlier, then allowing them to run for the week of Black Friday or longer.

Amazon, for example, has decided to capitalize on its own Black Friday/Cyber Monday momentum by launching a “12 Days of Deals” event that will feature hundreds of new deals every day from Sunday December 2 through Thursday December 13.

Other times, the shopping starts early, as PayPal’s data shows. Thanksgiving has now become another major shopping day, the company said, having broken into the top 10 shopping days of the year. It also grew 41 percent over last year.

E-commerce spending wasn’t the only thing that’s up year-over-year, PayPal also found. On Giving Tuesday – the event focused on donating to charities and other worthwhile causes – PayPal said over a million customers from 180 markets donated $98 million this year. That’s a 51 percent increase from 2017, it said.

Source: Tech Crunch

Meet Cimon. The 3D printed floating robot head was developed by Airbus for the German Space Agency. He’s been a crew member of the International Space Station since June, though as Gizmodo notes, this is the first time we’re seeing him in action.

Really the floating, Watson-powered robot face is like an extremely expensive Amazon Echo designed to study human-machine interactions in space. This video highlights an early interaction between Cimon and European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst.

Gerst requests his “favorite song,” leading Cimon to play Kraftwerk’s “Man Machine,” only to shaken by the astronaut, who then demands the robot shoot some video. Once again Cimon complies, though this time he’s clearly a bit annoyed that the music has stopped. Kind of a rough first encounter for the two new coworkers.

“Happy with his initial outing, both Cimon’s developers and Alexander hope to see Cimon back in action again soon,” the ESA says. “While no further sessions are planned during the Horizons mission at this stage, it could mark the beginning of exciting collaboration between astronauts, robotic assistants and possible future artificial intelligence in space.”

Hopefully things go a bit more smoothly next time. Lord knows the last thing you want to do is piss off a space robot.

Source: Tech Crunch

AT&T may be ready to sell its stake in Hulu, the company revealed in an analyst presentation on Thursday. The company currently owns a 10 percent stake in the service by way of WarnerMedia, as a result of its Time Warner acquisition. But AT&T today is running its own streaming services, including live TV service DirecTV Now aimed at cord cutters, and a more lightweight WatchTV. It’s also preparing to launch yet another direct-to-consumer streaming service in 2019 that leverages its WarnerMedia properties.

The company offered a few more details about this new service during the presentation, noting that it will have three tiers of service.

The entry-level package will be focused on movies, followed by a premium service with original programming and “blockbuster movies.” The third service will include content from the first two tiers, then add an “extensive library of WarnerMedia and licensed content,” including classics, kids and family programming, comedy and other theatrical releases and niche content.

The service will launch into beta in Q4 2019, AT&T said, and will complement WarnerMedia’s existing business. It will also work across devices, and will expand over time to include third-party content through partnerships.

As for selling its stake in Hulu, the company is “looking for opportunities to monetize assets” that are not essential to its current strategies, explained AT&T CFO John Stephens. He said the company was looking at its “minority investments in things like Sky México or Hulu or a variety of other things.”

The mention of the Hulu sale was a part of a larger discussion about paying down $18 billion of AT&T’s $20 billion in debt by the end of next year, which involved raising up to $8 billion in cash by the sale of some assets. The Hulu stake could be worth up to $930 million, Variety notes.

Also of note was the company’s not-so-vague threat that WarnerMedia would not be renewing its licensing deals with rival streaming services when their rights expire.

Asked how the new direct-to-consumer effort will be able to compete with incumbents, WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey responded that over the next 18 to 24 months, “we’re going to see a pretty substantial structural shift that’s going to occur…some of the incumbents that are in that space today should expect that their libraries are going to get a lot thinner,” he said.

“Seventy-five to 80 percent of their total viewing tonnage is sitting on a lot of that licensed content. So their pressure is they’ve got to make this pivot over the next 18 to 24 months to get people off of viewing the licensed content that maybe sits in our library or sits in a Disney/Fox library, and get it onto their own,” Stankey added.

The company believes that, over time, it will be able to bring in enough new subscribers to its streaming offers to offset the declines related to cord cutting, which is impacting its satellite TV company DirectTV. In Q3 2019, the company lost 359,000 net DirecTV subscribers as more consumers dropped pay TV in favor of streaming services, like Netflix.

Source: Tech Crunch

Thirteen companies took the stage today at Disrupt Berlin, delivering six-minute pitches and demos, then answering free-for-all questions from expert judges. Now that the judges have given us their feedback, we’ve chosen five finalists.

These finalists will all take the stage again tomorrow afternoon to present in front of a new set of judges, who will have time to ask more in-depth questions. Then one winner will be chosen to take home the Disrupt Cup — not to mention $50,000, equity-free.

Here are the finalists. The competition will be live-streamed on TechCrunch starting at 2:05pm Berlin time on Friday.

Imago AI

Imago AI is applying AI to help feed the world’s growing population by increasing crop yields and reducing food waste. To accomplish this, it’s using computer vision and machine learning technology to fully automate the laborious task of measuring crop output and quality.

Read more about Imago AI here.

Kalepso

Kalepso says it can do better than other database offerings out there by melding strong security with high reliability, while filling in the spots where sensitive data can be accessed or obtained in the clear. Its Harvard-educated founders argued that all the existing database services out there are either slow or insecure.

Read more about Kalepso here.

Legacy

Legacy is tackling an interesting problem: the reduction of sperm motility as we age. By freezing men’s sperm, this Swiss-based company promises to keep our boys safe and potent as we get older, a consideration that many find vital as we marry and have kids later.

Read more about Legacy here.

Polyteia

Polyteia is building a platform that would allow city leaders to unify and analyze the data that represents the constituents they serve. The problem, the company says, is that local governments collect a lot of data, but they aren’t always great at organizing and using it efficiently.

Read more about Polyteia here.

Spike

Spike lets family and doctors lend a hand to diabetes patients by sending them real-time alerts about their stats. And the app’s artificial intelligence features can even send helpful reminders or suggest the most diabetes-friendly meals when you walk into a restaurant.

Read more about Spike Diabetes here.

Source: Tech Crunch

The Switch has been a monster hit for Nintendo by nearly every measure. The convertible console is precisely the success the company needed after a few years in the wildness following the Wii U flop and smartphone foot dragging.

Strategy Analytics predicts more good things for the platform, predicting that Nintendo will surpass Sony in console sales next year. The margins are admittedly pretty thin, with Nintendo selling 17.3 million Switches to Sony’s 17.1 million PS4/PS4 Pro (Microsoft’s in a distant third here at an even 10 million), but if it holds, it will be an impressive feat nonetheless. 

That number would put Nintendo ahead of the pack for the first time in 10 years, back in the Wii/PS3/Xbox 360 days. The company’s gearing up to release one of the console’s biggest titles yet, with the new Super Smash Bros. due out next week, and rumors have been swirling around update hardware for 2019, which would be pretty standard fare for Nintendo.

While those sales would propel the company to the front of the pack, Sony’s still got a much larger overall user base, accounting for around half of consoles currently in use — an impressive 84 percent of which are PS4s.

Source: Tech Crunch

Prosecutors in South Korea have indicted the chief executive and eight other employees of Toptec Co for allegedly selling information about Samsung’s flexible OLED displays to a Chinese company. The charges detail that the company received more than $13.8 million for the information, Bloomberg reports.

Toptec, a Samsung supplier that manufactures display-related equipment, has denied the charges in a statement. “Our company has never provided Samsung Display’s industrial technology or business secrets to a Chinese client. Our company will fully cooperate with legal proceedings to find the truth in court.” The company’s share price is down 20 percent at the time of writing.

Samsung’s flexible display tech probably makes you think of their weird and yet-to-be-released foldable phone that they just showed off earlier this month. Samsung’s been deep in the flexible display business for a while though even if their bends have been less acute like the designs of much older handsets like the Galaxy S6 Edge.

The Chinese company was not named in the suit though there are a number of companies working to produce flexible displays for smartphones.

South Korea’s national interests are deeply intertwined with the business dealings of Samsung, and the threat of intellectual property theft to China is one which they seem to be taking very seriously. We have reached out to Samsung for comment.

Source: Tech Crunch

In September, Hulu and Discovery announced a partnership for live and on-demand programming that would see Discovery’s content coming to Hulu’s streaming service. Today, as promised, those channels are going live with the launch of Discovery Networks programming across all of Hulu with Live TV packages.

That means Hulu with Live TV subscribers will now have access to five new channels in the core package, including Discovery, TLC, Motor Trend, Animal Planet and ID. This is the first time the content from these networks has been available live on Hulu’s service.

Hulu’s on-demand service subscription plan, however, offers a number of library episodes from the networks, including shows from Food Network, TLC and HGTV.

In addition to the expansion of the core package, Hulu’s new add-on bundles focused on Entertainment and Spanish programming are being expanded with Discovery Networks content, as well.

Earlier this month, Hulu announced the launch of these two new add-ons, which are small bundles of channels subscribers can opt to add on top of their core package. The $4.99 per month “Español” add-on, for example, offers live news and sports networks, including ESPN Deportes, NBC Universo, CNN En Español and History Channel En Español.

Now, it will include Discovery en Español and Discovery Familia as a result of the Hulu-Discovery partnership.

Meanwhile, the $7.99 per month Entertainment add-on has been offering live network feeds of LMN (Lifetime Movie Network), FYI, DIY Network, Cooking Channel and CNBC World.

It now gains Destination America, Discovery Family, Science, Discovery Life and AHC thanks to the deal.

Combined, the new channels bring a variety of popular lifestyle content to Hulu’s Live TV service, including shows like Fixer Upper, Chopped, 90 Day Fiancé, Naked and Afraid, Cupcake Wars, Deadliest Catch, Property Brothers, Alaskan Bush People and House Hunters, for example.

These sorts of home improvement shows and other light reality fare is something that on-demand services, like Netflix, haven’t quite caught up to. Netflix more recently has been rolling out originals like Nailed It! and Sugar Rush in the competition cooking space to help engage the reality TV audience, but hasn’t really had a breakout hit in the home improvement space.

Not doing more in reality TV could be to Netflix’s disadvantage. Hulu’s data has shown this content is often heavily binged, with one-third of Alaskan Bush People’s audience binge-watching the entire series, for instance.

And on Sundays, viewers are streaming multiple episodes of the other titles, it says, including 90 Day Fiancé, Property Brothers, House Hunters, Fixer Upper, Deadliest Catch, Naked and Afraid, Chopped and Cupcake Wars. The latter, Cupcake Wars, also saw its audience streaming 50 percent more hours this year than the last, the company noted.

Source: Tech Crunch