What Spotify can learn from Tencent Music

On Tuesday, Tencent Music Entertainment filed for an IPO in the US that is expected to value it in the $25-30 billion range, on par with Spotify’s IPO in April. The filing highlights just how different its social interaction and digital goods business is from the subscription models of leading music streaming services in Western countries. That divergence suggests an opportunity for Spotify or one of its rivals to gain a competitive advantage. Tencent Music is no small player: As the music arm of Chinese digital media giant Tencent, its four apps...

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Recent departures hint at turmoil at Quartet Health, a mental health startup backed by GV

Backed with nearly $87 million in venture capital funding from GV, Oak HC/FT and F-Prime Capital, Quartet Health was founded in 2014 by Arun Gupta, Steve Shulman and David Wennberg to improve access to behavioral healthcare. Its mission: “enable every person in our society to thrive by building a collaborative behavioral and physical health ecosystem.” Recent shakeups within the New York-based company’s c-suite and a perusal of its Glassdoor profile suggest Quartet’s culture is not fully in line with its own philosophy.   In the...

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Facebook Messenger internally tests voice commands for chat, calls

Facebook Messenger could soon let you user your voice to dictate and send messages, initiate voice calls, and create reminders. Messenger for Android’s code reveals a new M assistant button atop the message thread screen that activates listening for voice commands for those functionalities. Voice control could make Messenger simpler to use hands-free or while driving, more accessible for the vision or dexterity-impaired, and perhaps one day, easier for international users whose native languages are hard to type. Facebook Messenger was previously...

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Facebook Messenger internally tests voice commands for chat, calls

{rss:content:encoded} Facebook Messenger internally tests voice commands for chat, calls https://ift.tt/2Qzk6jv https://ift.tt/2OE7Bpn October 05, 2018 at 11:44PM Facebook Messenger could soon let you user your voice to dictate and send messages, initiate voice calls, and create reminders. Messenger for Android’s code reveals a new M assistant button atop the message thread screen that activates listening for voice commands for those functionalities. Voice control could make Messenger simpler to use hands-free or while driving, more accessible...

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D-Wave offers the first public access to a quantum computer

Outside the crop of construction cranes that now dot Vancouver’s bright, downtown greenways, in a suburban business park that reminds you more of dentists and tax preparers, is a small office building belonging to D-Wave. This office, squat, angular, and sun-dappled one recent cool Autumn morning, is unique in that it contains an infinite collection of parallel universes. Founded in 1999 by Geordie Rose, D-Wave company worked in relatively obscurity on esoteric problems associated with quantum computing. When Rose was PhD student at the University...

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Reelgood’s app for cord cutters adds 50+ services, personalized recommendations

{rss:content:encoded} Reelgood’s app for cord cutters adds 50+ services, personalized recommendations https://ift.tt/2RuK6xG https://ift.tt/2OFI4fx October 05, 2018 at 09:00PM Reelgood, a startup aimed at helping cord cutters find their next binge, is out today with its biggest update yet. The company has been developing its streaming guide over the past year to solve the issues around discovery that exist when consumers drop traditional pay TV in favor of streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Prime Video, and others. The company first launched...

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Study says the US is quickly losing its entrepreneurial edge

Photographer: Daro Sulakauri/Bloomberg According to a new study conducted by the Center for American Entrepreneurship and NYU’s Shack Institute of Real Estate, the US may be losing its competitive advantage as the dominant nucleus of the startup and venture capital universe.  The analysis, led by senior Brookings Institution fellow Ian Hathaway and “Rise of the Creative Class” author Richard Florida, examines the flow of venture capital over 100,000 deals from 2005 to 2017 and details how the historically US-centric...

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Magic Leap buys mesh-computing startup Computes

Magic Leap has announced that they are acquiring Computes, a decentralized mesh computing startup. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. From Magic Leap’s blog post: From the beginning, Chris Matthieu and Jade Meskill started Computes, Inc. based on the principle of enabling the next generation of computing. We believe Magic Leap is the perfect home to achieve this vision Why would Magic Leap want to get their hands on this company? Well, it’s no secret that building a “digital layer” on top of the real world is more than a little compute-heavy,...

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Scaleway adds object storage

Cloud hosting company Scaleway is launching object storage in public beta. The company uses an Amazon S3-compatible API, which means that you could easily replace your Amazon S3 bucket with a Scaleway bucket by changing the API end point. The basic object storage package starts at $5.75 per month (€5 per month), which includes 500GB of storage and 500GB of outgoing transfer. You then pay €0.01 per month for every extra GB of storage and €0.02 per month for every extra GB of outgoing transfer. And there’s no limit. You can transfer data back and...

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Most iOS devices now run iOS 12 according to Mixpanel’s data

{rss:content:encoded} Most iOS devices now run iOS 12 according to Mixpanel’s data https://ift.tt/2y1f0FO https://ift.tt/2CrWtX5 October 05, 2018 at 04:28PM Analytics company Mixpanel is currently tracking the install base of iOS 12. And the latest version of iOS is quite popular as it’s already installed on roughly 47.6 percent of all iOS devices. 45.6 percent of devices still run iOS 11, and 6.9 percent of iOS users run an older version. Adoption rate is an important metric for app developers. With major iOS releases, Apple also releases new...

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Deliverr raises $7M to help e-commerce businesses compete with Amazon Prime

When Amazon rolled out its membership-based two-day shipping service in 2005, e-commerce and customer expectations around fulfillment speed changed forever. Today, more than 100 million people use Amazon Prime. That means, 100 million people are fully accustomed to two-day shipping and if they can’t have it, they shop elsewhere. As The Wall Street Journal’s Christopher Mims recently put it: “Alongside life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, you can now add another inalienable right: two-day shipping on practically everything.” Only recently...

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Amazon’s revamped Alexa app makes it easier to manage your smart home

{rss:content:encoded} Amazon’s revamped Alexa app makes it easier to manage your smart home https://ift.tt/2zUu49E https://ift.tt/2OD3EB7 October 05, 2018 at 03:49PM Amazon’s Alexa app has just been given a major visual overhaul, largely focused on helping users set up and control their smart home. From the app’s new devices tab, users can view all their different Alexa-enabled devices and groups on one screen, as opposed to switching between tabs like before. And the app is much more colorful, too. Instead of a set white icons on a dark background,...

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Siilo injects $5.1M to try to transplant WhatsApp use in hospitals

Consumer messaging apps like WhatsApp are not only insanely popular for chatting with friends but have pushed deep into the workplace too, thanks to the speed and convenience they offer. They have even crept into hospitals, as time-strapped doctors reach for a quick and easy way to collaborate over patient cases on the ward. Yet WhatsApp is not specifically designed with the safe sharing of highly sensitive medical information in mind. This is where Dutch startup Siilo has been carving a niche for itself for the past 2.5 years — via a free-at-the-point-of-use...

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Forward Health, the healthcare messaging app, scores $3.9M led by Stride.VC

Forward Health, the U.K. startup that has built an app to help healthcare professionals communicate in a secure and compliant way, has picked up $3.9 million in seed funding. Leading the round is Stride.VC, the new VC fund from Fred Destin, formerly a Partner at Accel, and Harry Stebbings, producer of the “The Twenty Minute VC” and most recently Entrepreneur-in-Residence at VC firm Atomico. Additional backing comes from Albion Capital, while Forward already boasts a decent array of angel investors. They include health tech founders Jay Desai from...

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9 highlights from Snapchat CEO’s 6000-word leaked memo on survival

{rss:content:encoded} 9 highlights from Snapchat CEO’s 6000-word leaked memo on survival https://ift.tt/2P7EBDo https://ift.tt/2pBTraj October 05, 2018 at 04:13AM Adults, not teens. Messaging, not Stories. Developing markets, not the US. These are how Snapchat will make a comeback, according to CEO Evan Spiegel. In a 6,000-word internal memo from late September leaked to Cheddar’s Alex Heath, Spiegel attempts to revive employee morale with philosophy, tactics, and contrition as Snap’s share price sinks to an all-time low of around $8 — half its...

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