Last week, Facebook revealed that 87 million or so users potentially had their data improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica — and you’ve no doubt been wondering if yours is among them. Today the site will share that information with users.
The disclosure arrives by way of a new “protecting your information” link set to appear at the top users’ feeds. The landing page lets users manage the third-party apps using the site to log-in and lets them know whether that information has been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica
“We have banned the website ‘This Is Your Digital Life,’ which one of your friends used Facebook to log into,” the note is set to read. “We did this because the website may have misused some of your Facebook information by sharing it with a company called Cambridge Analytica.”
The news was announced last week, as part of a larger data privacy push for the site, which has scrambled to rehabilitate its image in the wake of political upheaval tied to information sharing. The slate of announcements also included new restrictions to Events, Groups and Pages APIs, along with Facebook log in, among others.
Earlier today, the site announced that it is working with nonprofits to improve the study of the ways in which its data is being used to impact elections.
Source: TechCrunch
UK startup Juro, which is applying a “design centric approach” and machine learning tech to help businesses speed up the authoring and management of sales contracts, has closed $2m in seed funding led by Point Nine Capital.
Prior investor Seedcamp also contributed to the round. Juro is announcing Taavet Hinrikus (TransferWise’s co-founder) as an investor now too, as well as Michael Pennington (Gumtree co-founder) and the family office of Paul Forster (co-founder of Indeed.com).
Back in January 2017 the London-based startup closed a $750,000 (£615k) seed round, though CEO and co-founder Richard Mabey tells us that was really better classed as an angel round — with Point Nine Capital only joining “late” in the day.
“We actually could have strung it out to Series A,” he says of the funding that’s being announced now. “But we had multiple offers come in and there is so much of an explosion in demand for the [machine learning] that it made sense to do a round now rather than wait for the A. The whole legal industry is undergoing radical change and we want to be leading it.”
Juro’s SaaS product is an integrated contracts workflow that combines contract creation, e-signing and commenting capabilities with AI-powered contract analytics.
Its general focus is on customers that have to manage a high volume of contacts — such as marketplaces.
The 2016-founded startup is not breaking out any customer numbers yet but says its client list includes the likes of Estee Lauder, Deliveroo and Nested. And Mabey adds that “most” of its demand is coming from enterprise at this point, noting it has “several tech unicorns and Fortune 500 companies in trial”.
While design is clearly a major focus — with the startup deploying clean-looking templates and visual cues to offer a user-friendly ‘upgrade’ on traditional legal processes — the machine learning component is its scalable, value-added differentiator to serve the target b2b users by helping them identify recurring sticking points in contract negotiations and keep on top of contract renewals.
Mabey tells TechCrunch the new funding will be used to double down on development of the machine learning component of the product.
“We’re not the first to market in contract management by about 25 years,” he says with a smilie. “So we have always needed to prove out our vision of why the incumbents are failing. One part of this is clunky UX and we’ve succeeded so far in replacing legacy providers through better design (e.g. we replace DocuSign at 80% of our customers).
“But the thing we and our investors are really excited about is not just helping businesses with contract workflow but helping them understand their contract data, auto-tag contracts, see pattens in negotiations and red flag unusual contract terms.”
While this machine learning element is where he sees Juro cutting out a competitive edge in an existing and established market, Mabey concedes it takes “quite a lot of capital to do well”. Hence taking more funding now.
“We need a level of predictive accuracy in our models that risk averse lawyers can get comfortable with and that’s a big ask!” he says.
Specifically, Juro will be using the funding to hire data scientists and machine learning engineers — building out the team at both its London and Riga offices. “We’re doing it like crazy,” adds Mabey. “For example, we just hired from the UK government Digital Service the data scientist who delivered the first ML model used by the UK government (on the gov.uk website).
“There is a huge opportunity here but great execution is key and we’re building a world class team to do it. It’s a big bet to grow revenue as quickly as we are and do this kind of R&D but that’s just what the market is demanding.”
Juro’s HQ remains in London for now, though Mabey notes its entire engineering team is based in the EU — between Riga, Amsterdam and Barcelona — “in part to avoid ‘Brexit risk’”.
“Only 27% of the team is British and we have customers operating in 12 countries — something I’m quite proud of — but it does leave us rather exposed. We’re very open minded about where we will be based in the future and are waiting to hear from the government on the final terms of Brexit,” he says when asked whether the startup has any plans to Brexit to Berlin.
“We always look beyond the UK for talent: if the government cannot provide certainty to our Romanian product designer (ex Kalo, Entrepreneur First) that she can stay in the UK post Brexit without risking a visa application, tbh it makes me less bullish on London!”
Source: TechCrunch
The co-founder and CEO of the world’s largest social network has been invited to testify before Congress about how his employees lost control of 87 million people’s private information, and how his service was manipulated by propagandists in the 2016 election.
Source: CNET
Global app downloads and consumer spending in apps had yet another record quarter, according to a new report from App Annie, out on Monday. In the first quarter of 2018, iOS and Google Play downloads grew more than 10 percent year-over-year to reach 27.5 billion – the highest figure to date. In addition, consumer spending on iOS and Google Play grew 22 percent year-over-year to reach $18.4 billion – also a record number.
The download figure is especially notable because App Annie is not counting app updates or re-installs. That means someone re-downloading an app on a new phone – like one received as a gift over the holidays – wouldn’t have been counted here. Only new app installs were counted.
Plus, the report points out that the total dollar amount to the app economy is much higher than the $18.4 billion reported for Q1, as App Annie only takes into account paid apps, in-app purchases, and subscriptions. It’s not measuring things like in-app advertising, the commerce taking place in apps (e.g. shopping and ride-sharing), or the money being made on the third-party Android app stores around the world.
This is not the first time App Annie has reported record numbers for downloads and consumer spending. The app marketplaces have continued to see steady growth, even as reports of app saturation in the U.S. circulate.
In Q4 2017 – the busy holiday quarter – the app stores had also broken these same records around downloads and revenues. Specifically, Google Play saw its highest downloads to date in the fourth quarter. The app stores had a record-breaking Q3 2017, too – something App Annie attributed then to the growth of the app market in China, India, and other Southeast Asian nations.
This time, App Annie pointed to India, Indonesia and Brazil’s impact on the year-over-year growth in Google Play downloads, and the U.S., Russia and Turkey’s impact on the growth of iOS downloads.
Also notable is that Google Play achieved another record of its own in Q1 2018, with record growth in consumer spend thanks to the U.S, followed by Japan and the Philippines. The Play Store grew 25 percent year-over-year, versus iOS’s 20 percent growth. Despite this, iOS continued to have a large lead in terms of total dollars spent.
Music & Audio along with Entertainment apps had a big impact on Google Play spending, the report noted, both on a quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year basis. This is attributed to the rise in music and video subscription services delivered via apps. App Annie isn’t the only one to spot this trend – app store intelligence firm Sensor Tower had previously found that top subscription video on demand apps grew by 77 percent in 2017, reaching $781 million in revenues across iOS and Google Play. And Netflix became 2017’s top non-game app by revenue.
App Annie said also that iOS spending in Q1 2018 benefitted from subscriptions to health and fitness apps, driven by New Year’s Resolutions and people’s embrace of the subscription model. The U.S., followed by the U.K. then Germany saw the largest market share growth quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year.
Combined, Google Play and the iOS App Store offered 6.2 million apps by the end of Q1 2018, with games driving downloads across both stores during the quarter. PUBG Mobile and Fortnite were especially big, App Annie noted.
Shopping apps also saw large year-over-year growth in market share, the report found.
More broadly, the new report is yet another example of how big a role emerging markets are having on app downloads and the app economy. This trend, while still remarkable, is not all that new. In 2016, China overtook the U.S. in App Store revenue, and App Annie has continued to note China, India and other emerging markets as key drivers of growth in its quarterly and annual reports.
Source: TechCrunch
If you’re on the prowl for a new Android, Galaxy, or iPhone, read our full guide to the best smartphones of 2018.
Source: Wired
A new study from Pew Research shows that the bulk of links on Twitter don’t come from actual humans.
Source: Wired
The acquisition signals that Uber wants to be more than just taxi substitute.
Source: Wired
The cast of the new anthology film might be headed to a diner near you.
Source: Wired
The Somnox is a fuzzy, bean-shaped robot that mimics human breathing to help the human holding it fall asleep.
Source: Wired
When Armis launched in 2015, the company founders looked over the horizon and they saw the Internet of Things requiring a strong security layer. Today, the Israeli IoT security startup announced a $30 million Series B.
The company has attracted a strong group of venture capitalists. The round was led by Bain Capital Ventures and Red Dot Capital. Sequoia Capital and Tenaya Capital, who were investors in earlier rounds, also participated. Today’s investment brings the total raised to $47 million.
The company secures IoT devices without an agent because it’s often impossible to put an agent on a connected device like a video camera, light bulb or sensor. That requires some knowledge of these devices and their expected behavior and Armis has created a growing database of more than 5 million devices to track this information.
Company co-founder and CEO Yevgeny Dibrov says it involves taking that database and combining it with other information about the environment in which the device operates to understand if it’s behaving in an expected fashion. When it’s not they may shut it down and alert the customer, depending on how it’s configured and how severe the problem appears to be.
“To build and agentless platform, we [look at] existing infrastructure, traffic, wireless infrastructure and network infrastructure, to get a huge amount of traffic information. We analyze and detect and get a fingerprint of every device and asset in the environment and leverage the 5 million devices in the knowledge base,” he said.
It’s an approach that attracted investor Jeff Williams, operating partner at Bain Capital Ventures. Williams said he has been researching the IoT security market and has been seeing explosive growth in connected devices, which he sees creating a new attack surface for the enterprise. “Armis’ ability to help enterprises discover, manage and secure these devices is what companies today need to get in front of protecting the new era of IoT. All these forces, plus the pedigree of Armis’ executive team and their impressive research division are setting Armis up for powerful growth,” he said.
And the company is growing quickly with dozens of customers and 50 employees. The startup’s R&D team is 35 strong and is located in Israel, while the remaining employees with a focus on sales and marketing are located in the US.
As the number of IoT devices proliferate in the enterprise, the company will devote a portion of today’s money to increasing their R&D budget to continue building the database of devices.
Source: TechCrunch