Snapchat redesign keeps it personal

SAN FRANCISCO - Snapchat on Wednesday unveiled a redesign intended to rev up use of the image-sharing smartphone application by focusing on personal interests instead of what friends post.

Parent company Snap has promised the redesign in a bid to make Snapchat more user-friendly in the face of competition from rival messaging apps, especially those fielded by leading social networking Facebook.

Snap changes included separate streams for posts or messages from close friends versus digital content from publishers.

Snap co-founder and chief Evan Spiegel outlined the service's approach in an online post, arguing that social medial "fueled fake news" because content designed to spread was not necessarily accurate.

"The personalized newsfeed revolutionized the way people share and consume content," Spiegel said.

"But let's be honest: this came at a huge cost to facts, our minds and the entire media industry."

Snapchat's approach is to rely on computer algorithms based on individual users' interests, not what is buzzing at the service, according to Spiegel.

"We believe that the best path forward is disentangling the two by providing a personalized content feed based on what you want to watch, not what your friends post," Spiegel said.

"We think this helps guard against fake news and mindless scrambles for friends or unworthy distractions."

The change is also intended to help publishers make money from their stories, according to Snap.

Early this month, Snap reporting a widening loss and user numbers that fell short of market expectations.

Revenue at the California-based company rose but its loss more than tripled in the quarter that ended September 30, according to an earnings release.

The number of people using Snapchat daily rose to 178 million in a 17 percent increase from the same quarter last year, according to the company.

Snapchat became popular among young smartphone users for its disappearing messages, often photos or video, but analysts say it needs to show strong growth to keep pace in the rapidly evolving social media sector dominated by Facebook.

Although Snapchat is best known for its smartphone messaging, it has also developed partnerships with numerous media outlets eager to reach its audience with news, video and other content.

Snap said during an earnings call that priorities in the year ahead will include increasing the number of users along with the kinds of content on the platform, as well as investing in augmented reality and machine learning.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Snapchat parent bets on hardware as Facebook threat looms

SAN FRANCISCO - Snap Inc takes to the road in London on Monday to promote its initial public offering with a daring proposition: that it can build hot-selling hardware gadgets and ad-friendly software features fast enough to stay one step ahead of Facebook.

No longer just a purveyor of a smartphone app for disappearing messages, Snap has hired hundreds of hardware engineers, built a secretive product development lab and scoured the landscape for acquisitions as it pursues its newly stated ambition to be "a camera company."

These efforts, which are aimed at developing hardware and so-called augmented reality technologies, are central to the strategy of a company that is seeking a valuation of up to $22 billion in its early March IPO despite heavy losses and the specter of stiff competition for advertising dollars with a far-larger Facebook.

It is a big gamble and the odds against Snap are long.

There is little precedent for a company with its roots in software and social networking succeeding in the notoriously difficult consumer hardware business. Few US firms aside from Apple have made big profits on hardware, and camera and wearable gadget makers have much lower valuations than Snap is seeking. Once-hot camera start-up GoPro is a cautionary tale: its stock sits 61 percent below its 2014 IPO price.

More broadly, creating new products and features that have mass-market appeal and cannot be readily mimicked is a huge challenge, analysts say.

"It’s worrisome,” said Paul Meeks, chief investment officer at Sloy, Dahl & Holst, which manages more than $1 billion in assets. “Snapchat is going to have to continue to be really innovative and distinctive. It’s going to be very tough to trump Facebook.”

Snap declined to comment for this story.

Snap first signaled its new focus with the September reveal of Spectacles, funky sunglasses with an embedded video camera for posting to the Snapchat app. The company spent $184 million on research and development last year, nearly half its revenue.

Augmented reality, which refers to computer-generated images overlaid on real surroundings and viewed through a smartphone or special glasses, is a big part of the plan. Snap's "lenses" image-overlay feature has been a hit, and gives Snap an advertising format that's unique, at least for now.

"If you're going to make the bet longer-term on Snap, you are betting they are going to come up with innovative products that Facebook can't copy," said Nabil Elsheshai, senior equity analyst at Thrivent Financial, who is considering whether to recommend that his firm buy Snap's IPO.

Facebook-owned Instagram last year rolled out a feature called Stories, modeled after Snapchat's feature by the same name. Snapchat had about 100 million fewer downloads than Instagram in 2016, according to market research firm App Annie.

NEW GADGETS

Snap had 158 million daily active users in the fourth quarter, up just 3 percent from the previous quarter, compared to 14 percent growth during the same period in 2015, according to Snap's IPO filing. New gadgets that offer more ways to interact with Snapchat could help attract new users and get existing users to spend more time on the app.

"Ultimately, that's what advertisers are going to be looking at," said Douglas Melsheimer, managing director at investment bank and consulting firm Bulger Partners. Snap, along with Facebook and host of online rivals ranging from Google to BuzzFeed, is capitalizing on the shift of video advertising dollars from traditional television to the internet.

Snap's IPO filing reads "as if all the hard things in front of them that they have to do are already done," said Rett Wallace, co-founder and chief executive at Triton Research. But, he said, that's not the case. "How will they hold up against all the guys you don't want to be fighting against in the world - Facebook, Google and Apple?"

Hardware is part of the answer. Snap has recruited hardware experts from Apple, Alphabet Inc's Google, Nest and Motorola, according to an analysis of LinkedIn profiles. One former employee described ample resources and support from management for the hand-picked hardware teams.

Last spring, Snap set out to hire up to 300 hardware, augmented reality and virtual reality specialists in a single month, according to another former employee. It also set up Snap Labs, a group dedicated to working on secretive projects. Its members have reviewed acquisition targets in areas including wearable cameras, facial recognition and 3D scanning technology, according to people close to the discussions.

Spectacles itself came from Snap's acquisition of startup Vergence Labs in 2014. The sunglasses surprised even Snap's earliest investors, who say hardware was not in Snap's initial pitch to them.

"It was a disappearing messaging product, and that's it," said Jeremy Liew, a partner with Lightspeed Venture Partners, who made the initial venture investment into Snap. Like most Snap backers he lauded the Spectacles rollout.

Snap has acquired at least 10 startups since 2014 according to firms tracking such deals, and M&A deal makers say Snap is one of the most active shoppers they have heard from.

AMAZON PASS

Snap's R&D investment as a percentage of revenue is far higher than what Facebook or Twitter were spending before they went public. One result of that investment has been a wave of patent filings - about 46 total, according to research firm CB Insights.

They include eyewear patents for Spectacles, as well as patents for photo and video-capture devices, and object and facial recognition, which is key to developing augmented reality technology.

One former employee said Snap is working to figure out ways to turn the warehouse of data it collects from Memories, a feature for users to save photos on Snap's server, into augmented reality or facial recognition applications.

Spectacles "opens the doors for augmented reality," Elsheshai said. "That's a different direction for the company than just adding more social media capabilities."

The quirky popularity of Spectacles further endears users to Snapchat, he said, but doubted that such niche products can propel the user growth Snap needs in the long term.

The greatest impediment to Snap's innovation efforts, however, may be its hefty losses: the company lost $515 million last year on $404 million in sales. Revenue from Spectacles. was "not material," according to Snap's IPO filing.

Snap, like Amazon.com, is expecting public investors to allow the company to lose money for years on the promise that more investment in innovation will pay off later.

"They are going to have to get the Amazon pass - investors that don't care in the short run," Elsheshai said.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Bishops face sack for child abuse 'negligence': pope

VATICAN CITY - Catholic bishops guilty of negligence in child abuse cases can now be dismissed from office, Pope Francis said Saturday in a move hiking pressure on the Church's hierarchy.

The move was announced just two weeks after the pope came under fire for meeting a top French cardinal accused of covering up for a paedophile priest in a scandal that has shaken France's Catholic Church.

The decision, which will also apply to other senior Church officials, was unveiled in a papal decree which said such cases would now fall under existing canon law allowing for prelates to be sacked for "serious reasons".

"The Church, like a loving mother, loves all her children, but treats and protects with special affection the smallest and most helpless," the papal decree said.

Pope Francis came to power promising a crackdown on cover-ups and a zero tolerance approach to abuse itself, but victims' groups have expressed discontent with his record on ridding the Church of the taint of paedophilia.

Known as an Apostolic letter, the text stresses the need for "special diligence" in caring for minors and vulnerable adults, with those who demonstrate negligence in tackling cases of abuse facing the threat of dismissal.

That diligence is required even "without grave moral culpability" on the part of the bishop involved, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said in an explanatory statement.

"For removal from office, in the case of abuse of minors, it is 'sufficient for the lack of diligence to be grave' while in other cases a 'very grave' lack of diligence must be demonstrated," he added.

A "college of legal experts" -- cardinals and bishops -- has been set up to assist the pope reach a decision arriving at a definitive decision in a particular case.

The new approach will take effect from September 5, Lombardi said.

- The Barbarin case -

A string of historic paedophilia cases in North America and Europe has unleashed widespread criticism of the Catholic hierarchy, including allegations that in some cases bishops were aware of sexual predators among the priesthood but failed to curb them.

Last month, Francis held a surprise meeting with French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, the under-fire Archbishop of Lyon who is suspected of covering up for a pedophile priest.

The meeting came just days after the pope was quoted as saying it would be "nonsensical and imprudent" to seek Barbarin's resignation at this stage.

It was not immediately clear whether the papal decree would impact on the Barbarin case.

French examining magistrates are currently carrying out two preliminary investigations to decide whether to pursue charges against the archbishop for his handling of the allegations against Bernard Preynat, a priest in his diocese who has been charged with sex abuse.

Police this week raided the offices of Nicolas de Boccard, a clerical judicial adviser to the Lyon diocese, sources close to the case said Saturday.

Barbarin will be questioned by shortly, the sources told AFP.

- 'Sceptical' -

A US group representing victims of paedophile priests suggested that the Vatican's initiative on Saturday sought to put a brake on efforts to stop abusers and bring them to justice.

"We're extraordinarily sceptical," David Clohessy, director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said in a statement.

"Popes and bishops have long had the power, but not the will, to oust those who protect predators and endanger kids. They refuse to do this, and the consequences are devastating," Clohessy said.

"When it's advantageous to move quickly, Catholic officials move quickly. When they want to move slowly, or not at all, they set up commissions and 'processes' and the like."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com