Month: December 2018

The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission has approved new rules that set a minimum hourly wage of $17.22 (after expenses) for drivers who work with app-based services like Uber, Lyft, Via and Juno.

Fast Company reports that the rules try to deliver that minimum wage by requiring drivers be paid according to a formula that incorporates mileage, time and utilization rate (the average percentage of time drivers have passengers in their cars). They also call for a higher payment when drivers have to take passengers far outside the city (to compensate for them for the return trip).

A proposed bonus payment for drivers offering Uber Pool and other shared-ride options appears to have been removed from the rules.

The Independent Drivers Guild, a labor organization that advocates for drivers, has been advocating for these changes, and it praised the TLC vote in a press release.

“Today we brought desperately needed relief to 80,000 working families,” said IDG founder Jim Conigliaro, Jr. “All workers deserve the protection of a fair, livable wage and we are proud to be setting the new bar for contractor workers’ rights in America. We are thankful to the Mayor, Commissioner [Meera] Joshi and the Taxi and Limousine Commission, City Council Member Brad Lander and all of the city officials who listened to and stood up for drivers.”

And The New York Taxi Workers Alliance issued a statement from Executive Director Bhairavi Desai:

It’s the first real attempt anywhere to stop app driver pay cuts, which is an Uber and Lyft business practice at the heart of poverty wages … Ultimately, the TLC needs to regulate Uber and Lyft passenger rates, guarantee that app drivers get 80 percent of those rates, and regulate the yellow/green meter to charge the same minimum rates, so drivers across the industry can earn a raise.

Uber and Lyft, meanwhile, criticized the decision, though with careful wording emphasizing that the companies aren’t opposed to ensuring that drivers receive a living wage.

“Uber supports efforts to ensure that full-time drivers in NYC – whether driving with taxi, limo or Uber – are able to make a living wage, without harming outer borough riders who have been ignored by yellow taxi and underserved by mass transit,” said Uber Director of Public Affairs Jason Post in a statement. “The TLC’s implementation of the City Council’s legislation to increase driver earnings will lead to higher than necessary fare increases for riders while missing an opportunity to deal with congestion in Manhattan’s central business district.”

Post argued that the rules do not account for the bonuses and other incentive payments that Uber and other companies might make. He criticized the TLC for adopting “an industry-wide utilization rate that does not hold bases accountable for keeping cars full with paying passengers.”

And here’s the statement from Lyft:

Lyft believes all drivers should earn a livable wage and we are committed to helping drivers reach their goals. Unfortunately, the TLC’s proposed pay rules will undermine competition by allowing certain companies to pay drivers lower wages, and disincentive drivers from giving rides to and from areas outside Manhattan. These rules would be a step backward for New Yorkers, and we urge the TLC to reconsider them.

Specifically Lyft says that companies would be able to essentially adopt a lower minimum wage by claiming a higher utilization rate than the industry average. It also says that it will be nearly impossible to implement the higher out-of-town payment rates in the 30-day window before the new rules take effect.

Source: Tech Crunch

Uber Eats has effectively invented its own native ad unit. Uber confirmed to TechCrunch that a test quietly running in markets around India allows restaurants to bundle several food items together and sell them at a discounted price in exchange for promoted placement by Uber Eats in a featured section of local “Specials”. In some cases, restaurants foot the cost of the discount, while in others Uber pays for the discounts.

The Uber Specials feature demonstrates the massive leverage awarded to food delivery apps that aggregate restaurants. Users often come to Uber Eats and its competitors without a specific restaurant in mind. Uber can then point those customers to whichever food supplier it prefers. The suppliers in turn will increasingly compete for the favor the aggregators — not just in terms of food quality, speed, and review scores, but also in terms of discounts. The aggregators will win users if they offer the best deals, creating a network effect makes restaurants more keen to play ball.

TechCrunch first learned of Uber’s ambitions in the space from a mock-up of the Promoted Items Value Section feature spotted in its app by mobile researcher and frequent TC tipster Jane Manchun Wong. The fictional food items included “Best Beer” that “is made from only the finest gutter swill” and “Weird Fries” that “will so utterly decimate your sense of good food that you will be permanently reduced to a whimpering shell of your former self!” This jokey text that seemingly was never meant for public viewing also noted that the fries are so good you should “throw all your other food in the garbage right now!” Uber assured us these weren’t real.

But what it did confirm is that the discounts for promoted placement test is live in India. “We’re always experimenting with ways to make it easier to find your favorite foods on Uber Eats”, according to a statement provided by an Uber spokesperson.

The feature allows restaurants to create a bundled meal at certain price point, such as a chicken sandwich, french fries, and a drink at a price that’s less than the sum of its parts. The company tells me the goal is to take the friction out of ordering by giving people pre-set meals at a better price prominently available in the app. Attracting more customers that have plenty of other options could offset the discount. Businesses could also use it to bundle high margin items like soft drinks in with meals, or to get rid of overstock.

It’s already common for restaurants to make ‘specials’ out of food they have too much of. That butternut squash ravioli might only be featured because they can’t get rid of it. In that sense, you could think of Uber Specials as the inverse of surge pricing. When supply is too high, restaurants can offer discounts to gain more demand. It’s also not far off from Google Search’s keyword ads where business pay for more visibility.

Uber wouldn’t discuss whether it plans to bring the strategy to other markets, but it makes sense to assume it’s considering expansion. Done wrong, it could look a bit like Uber Eats is pressuring restaurants to surrender discounts if they want to be discoverable inside its app. If restaurants within Uber Eats get into heated competition to offer discounts, it could drive down their profits. But done right, Specials could look like a triple-win. Restaurants can offload surplus and bundle in high margin items while scoring new customers from enhanced placement, customers get cheaper food options, and Uber Eats becomes people’s go-to app for easy-to-order discounted meals.

Source: Tech Crunch

Tumblr, a microblogging service that’s impact on internet culture has been massive and unique, is preparing for a massive change that’s sure to upset many of its millions of users.

On December 17, Tumblr will be banning porn, errr “adult content,” from its site and encouraging users to flag that content for removal. Existing adult content will be set to a “private mode” viewable only to the original poster.

What does “adult content” even mean? Well, according to Tumblr, the ban means the removal of any media that depicts “real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples, and any content—including photos, videos, GIFs and illustrations—that depicts sex acts.”

This is a lot more complicated than just deleting some hardcore porn from the site; over the past several years Tumblr has become a hub for communities and artists with more adult themes. This has largely been born out of the fact that adult content has been disallowed from other multimedia-focused social platforms. There are bans on nudity and sexual content on Instagram and Facebook, though Twitter has more relaxed standards.

Why now? The Tumblr app was removed from the iOS app store several weeks ago due to an issue with its content filtering that led the company to issue a statement. “We’re committed to helping build a safe online environment for all users, and we have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to media featuring child sexual exploitation and abuse,” the company had detailed. “We’re continuously assessing further steps we can take to improve and there is no higher priority for our team.”

We’ve reached out to Tumblr for further comment.

Update: In a blog post titled “A better, more positive Tumblr,” the company’s CEO Jeff D’Onofrio minimized claims that the content ban was related to recent issues surrounding child porn, and is instead intended to make the platform one “where more people feel comfortable expressing themselves.”

“As Tumblr continues to grow and evolve, and our understanding of our impact on our world becomes clearer, we have a responsibility to consider that impact across different age groups, demographics, cultures, and mindsets,” the post reads. “Bottom line: There are no shortage of sites on the internet that feature adult content. We will leave it to them and focus our efforts on creating the most welcoming environment possible for our community.”

The imminent “adult content” ban will not apply to media connected with breastfeeding, birth or more general “health-related situations” like surgery, according to the company.

Tumblr is attempting to make aims to minimize the impact on the site’s artistic community as well, but this level of nuance is going to be incredibly difficult for them to enforce uniformly and will more than likely lead to a lot of frustrated users being told that their content does not qualify as “art.”

Tumblr is also looking to minimize impact on the more artistic storytelling, “such as erotica, nudity related to political or newsworthy speech, and nudity found in art, such as sculptures and illustrations, are also stuff that can be freely posted on Tumblr.”

I don’t know how much it needs to be reiterated that child porn is a major issue plaguing the web, but a blanket ban on adult content on a platform that has gathered so many creatives working with NSFW themes is undoubtedly going to be a pretty controversial decision for the company.

Source: Tech Crunch

Chewse, a food catering and company culture startup, just announced a $19 million fundraising round as it gears up to expand its operations in the Silicon Valley area. This brings Chewse’s total funding to more than $30 million. Chewse’s investors include Foundry Group, 500 Startups and Gingerbread Capital.

Instead of plopping down meals in the office and bouncing, Chewse aims to create a full experience for its customers by offering family-style meals. In order to ensure quality, Chewse employs drivers and meal hosts so that it can provide them with training. Chewse also offers it drivers and meal hosts benefits.

“We initially started with a contractor model but then very quickly started to realize our customers often mentioned the host or the driver in their feedback,” Chewse CEO and co-founder Tracy Lawrence told TechCrunch.

“I know there’s a lot of other companies that are like food tech or logistics but for us, it’s all about elevating and improving company culture,” Lawrence said. “We have technology but we’re investing in it to create an exceptional real-life experience.”

“On the tech side, we’re using a ton of machine learning and algorithms to learn what people like to eat and create custom meal schedules,” Lawrence said.

To date, Chewse has hundreds of customers across three markets. Chewse initially launched in Los Angeles, but paused operations for a little over one year in order to focus on achieving market profitability in San Francisco. Chewse has since relaunched in Los Angeles, in addition to launching in cities like Palo Alto and San Jose. As part of the Silicon Valley launch, Chewse has partnered with restaurants like Smoking Pig, HOM Korean Kitchen and Oren’s Hummus Shop.

Within the next year, the goal is to double the number of markets where Chewse operates. But Chewse faces tough competition in the corporate meal catering space.

Earlier this year, Square acquired Zesty to become part of its food delivery service, Caviar. The aim of the acquisition was to strengthen Caviar’s corporate food ordering business, Caviar for Teams.

At the time, Zesty counted about 150 restaurant customers in San Francisco, which is the only city in which it operates. Some of Zesty’s customers include Snap, Splunk and TechCrunch. Zesty, which first launched in 2013 under a different name, had previously raised $20.7 million in venture funding.

“Zesty is a direct competitor of ours for sure,” Lawrence said. “When we’re thinking about the things that set us apart from Zesty and ZeroCater, the investment in using the technology and building a meal algorithm — which is something we know they’re doing by hand — and then automatically calibrate when we’re getting feedback because we employ our hosts and our drivers. Yes, it’s more expensive for us but because it provides such a superior experience, we retain our customer longer.”

Source: Tech Crunch

Oura Health, a sleep-tracking and sleep-improvement platform, just raised $20 million in a funding round led by MSD Capital with participation from YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, Sunrise founder Dave Morin, JUMP founder Ryan Rzepecki and others. This round comes a couple of years after the Finnish company raised €5 million from MIT Media Lab Director Joi Ito and others.

Oura is a smart ring that tracks your sleep habits to help you achieve better sleep. It does this by measuring the blood volume pulse from your finger’s palmar arteries, detecting the direction and intensity of your body’s movements using a 3D accelerometer and gyroscope to detect direction and by measuring your temperature through three NTC temperature sensors.

“I believe Oura has identified a challenge that faces us all, namely getting enough high-quality sleep,” Michael Dell of MSD Capital said in a statement. “Oura’s design and technology show tremendous craftsmanship, and now more consumers around the world will be able to get their own Oura ring.”

The star-studded funding group also includes Shaquille O’Neil, Lance Armstrong and Will Smith.

“We are thrilled to have such a talented group of builders, champions, and creators join us as investors,” Oura Health CEO Harpreet Rai said in a statement. “It’s amazing to see how such a diverse group of investors all recognize the universal importance of sleep.”

To be clear, sleep tracking and improvement is an area many startups and large companies have tried. You may remember Basis Health, which eventually sold to Intel. And then there’s Fitbit, smart ring Motiv and other wearables that track your sleep.

We have yet to try this out, but we’ll report back if we do. Oura Health is currently shipping to more than 100 countries and retails from $299-$999, depending on the material you select. Meanwhile, Motiv retails for $199.

Source: Tech Crunch

Alongside news that PowerPoint is getting real-time captions and subtitles in 2019, Microsoft announced similar technology is now available in Skype. Launching today to coincide with the UN International Day of Persons with Disabilities, the new feature allows those who are deaf or hard of hearing to read the words that are spoken during audio or video calls in Skype .

The option is enabled in Skype’s settings by selecting the more (+) button during the call and choosing “turn subtitles on.”

It can also be set as the default under Settings, the company says. (To do so, click your Profile picture, then Settings, then Calling, then Call Subtitles, then toggle on Show Subtitles for all voice and video calls.)

Once turned on, live captions and subtitles will auto-scroll during the call, but Microsoft says it’s working to offer other viewing options in the future. Specifically, Skype will soon allow you to scroll through the captions in a side window.

The company claims the new AI-powered live captions and subtitles have been optimized to be “fast, continuous, and contextually update as people speak.”

Real-time captions is only one way Skype has been working to make it easier to communicate. It also expanded its real-time translation capabilities a couple of years ago, and today says it’s releasing translations that support more than 20 languages and dialects in the weeks ahead.

When toggled on, Skype users will be able to read the subtitles in the language of their choosing during every call.

The real-time captions and subtitles feature is available in Skype version 8 on Android (6.0+), Android tablet, iPhone, iPad, Linux, Mac, Windows and Skype for Windows 10 (version 14). However, it may not be immediately live for you, even if you’re on the correct version, as it’s being gradually rolled out over the weeks ahead.

Source: Tech Crunch

Amazon’s cashierless checkout technology is now being tested for use in larger stores, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal on Sunday. The system, which involves an array of cameras to track shoppers’ purchases alongside weight sensors on shelves, has been rolling out this year to smaller convenience stores across the U.S. in markets including Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco and soon New York.

The new report says Amazon is now trying out the same technology in a larger space in Seattle, where the ceilings are higher and there are more products to choose from — things that make the system more challenging to implement.

The obvious use case here would be for Amazon-owned Whole Foods, which Amazon has been leveraging to grow its own grocery pickup and delivery business in the U.S. The business challenges rival grocers, as well as Walmart and grocery delivery services like Target’s Shipt, Instacart and others.

In particular, it could be difficult to get a cashierless system to work with items where the size, shape and weight varies — like fresh produce, WSJ notes. Whole Foods stores are also larger, as they’re typically 40,000 sq. ft. and house some 34,000 items.

But if the system were perfected, it could allow Amazon to cut or repurpose store staff at Whole Foods, as well as get a better handle on inventory levels for its delivery business. One of the challenges with ordering groceries today from places like Instacart or Shipt is that the stock levels in the app don’t match what’s actually on store shelves. Longer-term, solutions like Amazon’s Go technology could improve that.

Meanwhile, a system for grocery shopping without waiting in a checkout line could save people time.

Walmart is doing something to address this problem at Sam’s Club stores, where its Scan-and-Go app lets customers skip the line. But it’s still more labor-intensive than simply picking up items and placing them in a cart. Walmart also ended a test of Scan-and-Go that was taking place across its flagship stores earlier this year. Instead, it has begun testing new technologies, including a cashierless checkout system, in a Dallas Sam’s Club store.

Source: Tech Crunch

AWS, once a nice little side hustle for Amazon’s eCommerce business, has grown over the years into a behemoth that’s on a $27 billion run rate, one that’s still growing at around 45 percent a year. That’s a highly successful business by any measure, but as I listened to AWS executives last week at their AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, I didn’t hear a group that was content to sit still and let the growth speak for itself. Instead, I heard one that wants to dominate every area of enterprise computing.

Whether it was hardware like the new Inferentia chip and Outposts, the new on-prem servers or blockchain and a base station service for satellites, if AWS saw an opportunity they were not ceding an inch to anyone.

Last year, AWS announced an astonishing 1400 new features, and word was that they are on pace to exceed that this year. They get a lot of credit for not resting on their laurels and continuing to innovate like a much smaller company, even as they own gobs of marketshare.

The feature inflation probably can’t go on forever, but for now at least they show no signs of slowing down, as the announcements came at a furious pace once again. While they will tell you that every decision they make is about meeting customer needs, it’s clear that some of these announcements were also about answering competitive pressure.

Going after competitors harder

In the past, AWS kept criticism of competitors to a minimum maybe giving a little jab to Oracle, but this year they seemed to ratchet it up. In their keynotes, AWS CEO Andy Jassy and Amazon CTO Werner Vogels continually flogged Oracle, a competitor in the database market, but hardly a major threat as a cloud company right now.

They went right for Oracle’s market though with a new on prem system called Outposts, which allows AWS customers to operate on prem and in the cloud using a single AWS control panel or one from VMware if customers prefer. That is the kind of cloud vision that Larry Ellison might have put forth, but Jassy didn’t necessarily see it as going after Oracle or anyone else. “I don’t see Outposts as a shot across the bow of anyone. If you look at what we are doing, it’s very much informed by customers,” he told reporters at a press conference last week.

Yet AWS didn’t reserve its criticism just for Oracle. It also took aim at Microsoft, taking jabs at Microsoft SQL Server, and also announcing Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, a tool specifically designed to move Microsoft files to the AWS cloud.

Google wasn’t spared either when launching Inferentia and Elastic Inference, which put Google on notice that AWS wasn’t going to yield the AI market to Google’s TPU infrastructure. All of these tools and much more were about more than answering customer demand, they were about putting the competition on notice in every aspect of enterprise computing.

Upward growth trajectory

The cloud market is continuing to grow at a dramatic pace, and as market leader, AWS has been able to take advantage of its market dominance to this point. Jassy, echoing Google’s Diane Greene and Oracle’s Larry Ellison, says the industry as a whole is still really early in terms of cloud adoption, which means there is still plenty of marketshare left to capture.

“I think we’re just in the early stages of enterprise and public sector adoption in the US. Outside the US I would say we are 12-36 months behind. So there are a lot of mainstream enterprises that are just now starting to plan their approach to the cloud,” Jassy said.

Patrick Moorhead, founder and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy says that AWS has been using its market position to keep expanding into different areas. “AWS has the scale right now to do many things others cannot, particularly lesser players like Google Cloud Platform and Oracle Cloud. They are trying to make a point with the thousands of new products and features they bring out. This serves as a disincentive longer-term for other players, and I believe will result in a shakeout,” he told TechCrunch.

As for the frenetic pace of innovation, Moorhead believes it can’t go on forever. “To me, the question is, when do we reach a point where 95% of the needs are met, and the innovation rate isn’t required. Every market, literally every market, reaches a point where this happens, so it’s not a matter of if but when,” he said.

Certainly areas like the AWS Ground Station announcement, showed that AWS was willing to expand beyond the conventional confines of enterprise computing and into outer space to help companies process satellite data. This ability to think beyond traditional uses of cloud computing resources shows a level of creativity that suggests there could be other untapped markets for AWS that we haven’t yet imagined.

As AWS moves into more areas of the enterprise computing stack, whether on premises or in the cloud, they are showing their desire to dominate every aspect of the enterprise computing world. Last week they demonstrated that there is no area that they are willing to surrender to anyone.

Source: Tech Crunch

Floom, the online marketplace and SaaS for independent florists, has raised $2.5 million in a seed funding. The round was round led by Firstminute Capital, and will be used by the London headquartered startup to continue to expand to the U.S., where it already operates in New York and L.A., and to further develop its software offering.

Additional investors include Tom Singh (founder of New Look), Pembroke VCT, Wing Chan (CTO digital experiences of The Hut Group), and Carlos Morgado (former CTO of Just Eat). Morgado has also joined Floom’s board.

Founded by 31-year-old Lana Elie in 2016, Floom bills itself as a curated marketplace for independent florists. Alongside this, the company’s technology platform gives florists the software and tools they need to create and deliver “beautifully crafted bouquets” to customers. It’s this SaaS play that Elie says sets Floom apart from competitors.

“We rely on a network [of florists], like many of the bigger competitors, so that we can offer same-day delivery without the risk of holding stock ourselves,,” she tells me. “But instead of telling the florists what to create and what to hold in stock, we built them an Etsy-like UI to design and deliver beautifully crafted bouquets to our online communities themselves”.

This sees florists provided with a “backend management dashboard” to create, allocate and manage inventory, and to co-ordinate with Floom’s marketplace. The software manages and tracks delivery, too.

“Customers receive more bouquet options, in more areas, by vetted florists, with the ultimate convenience of a seamless check-out and what everyone really wants: confirmation of safe receipt in their loved one’s hand,” explains Elie. “If the final product doesn’t match the picture, they get their money back, something that most competitors can’t offer, but we solved this by relying on the florists to generate the bouquet catalogue themselves”.

On the flower delivery front, Floom’s main competitors are Interflora in the U.K. (owned by 100-year-old conglomerate FTD in the U.S.), as well as 1-800-flowers and Teleflora. “There have been some new players in the flower space, but none solve the problem by creating better technologies,” argues the Floom founder.

“Floom’s not just a flower delivery service but a tech company. I wanted to solve a problem: showing customers all the amazing artisanal florists in their home cities, and making the experience of sending flowers enjoyable and hassle-free. On top of that, we wanted to create a fresh brand that appealed to an audience of my generation… and different from how you might typically think of the flower industry”.

With that said, Elie concedes that there is other florist software in existence, but says it doesn’t really consider the florists as a customer in the same way that Floom does. This is especially true in how the startup understands that the “brand and UI is just as important as functionality”.

“Florists are creative, skilled in a way that I’m definitely not, but when it comes to something like a website build, they’re paying the wrong people much more than they need to build badly UX’d sites,” she adds. “Florists are given no chance to really compete in a world where everything is digital. Building a management tool that speaks to all florists’ consumer facing channels (phone, email, chat, webshop, POS etc) will ultimately mean cost and time savings for the florist, less unnecessary waste for environmental purposes, and better products and delivery experiences for the customer”.

Source: Tech Crunch