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Making headlines this morning: Google’s controversial e-commerce plan is closer to reality, and it looks like talks between chipmakers Intel and Altera are on again.
Plus, it’s college commencement season. Apple CEO Tim Cook was at George Washington University in the nation’s capital where he recalled taking the job that “changed my life.” He urged the new graduates to “enter the arena” as quickly as possible. If you need some inspiration this morning, you can find a link to video of his entire speech in this Re/code coverage. Have a productive Monday!
TOP OF MIND
Apparently, Intel and Altera are still contemplating a mega-merger. Talks between the two chipmakers about a potential $13 billion deal were put on hold in April. Now, serious negotiations are on again, reports The New York Post. Altera makes programmable chips for electronics and automobiles. Its product line would give Intel a big boost up as a supplier for the Internet of things. Avago Technologies, the Agilent spinout, is also looking to buy. For much the same reasons.
TRENDING
Google’s next e-commerce experiment will begin soon, with the introduction of “buy” buttons displayed along with search results. The plan worries many retailers, although The Wall Street Journal reports Macy’s may be among the launch partners.
Apple finds itself. Over the weekend, the company confirmed its acquisition of Coherent Navigation, which sells software for high-precision global positioning applications. Terms weren’t disclosed.
Warren Buffett boosts IBM stake. Berkshire Hathaway bought approximately 2.6 million shares of the high-tech giant during the first quarter. That brings the total to 79.5 million shares, worth almost $13 billion.
Luxury brands challenge Alibaba over counterfeit sales. The suit filed in New York by Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and others claims the giant Chinese e-commerce company is knowingly breaking U.S. trademark and racketeering laws.
THE DOWNLOAD
Get ready for another wave of cloud evangelism
As OpenStack backers gather in Vancouver, the fight to win business workloads ramps up with Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. Fortune writer Barb Darrow reports on what you can expect to hear this week.
If you are an information technology professional and haven’t had your fill of cloud computing hype, er, information, brace yourself: There is lots more on its way.
This week, the OpenStack Foundation and seven thousand or so of its closest friends will gather at the OpenStack Summit in Vancouver to talk about how the open-source cloud framework is suited for a variety of cloud deployment choices.
Do you want to put your own workloads on dedicated infrastructure? Then an OpenStack private cloud is for you. Or if you need the scale of a massive public cloud, you can put workloads on an array of public clouds around the world. And they all run on, you guessed it, OpenStack.
Foundation members like Red Hat, IBM, Rackspace and Hewlett-Packard will do their best to show that OpenStack is totally baked and that their own particular version of OpenStack is best for big customers. Walmart, TD Bank, American Express and others also will be on hand to talk about their OpenStack work.
But it’s not just OpenStack: Starting next month, Google will launch a slate of live events in New York, London, Tokyo, San Francisco and elsewhere. The goal? To show that the Google Cloud Platform, which has gained adherents among startups, is also appropriate for bigger, corporate workloads.
Read the rest of Barb Darrow’s article for more insight into how cloud services leaders are vying for market share and mind share.
THE PITCH
More marketers think Facebook is a good way to reach corporate buyers
Marketers who think of Facebook as strictly way to influence consumer behavior may want to reconsider that perception. Apparently, the world’s largest social network is becoming a more useful way for businesses to reach other businesses, although the behavior is definitely generational.
An annual survey of more than 1,500 marketers by research firm Outsell found that 53% of the respondents regarded Facebook as an “effective” business-to-business (B2B) marketing channel. That compares with 55% who thought the same about LinkedIn, puzzling since the latter is generally thought of as “the place” for B2B messaging.
Although the influence of Instagram and Pinterest was smaller than Facebook, it’s on the rise, the Outsell metrics show.
The firm has been conducting its annual study of marketing and advertising priorities for a decade. This year’s edition represents organizations that will spend close to $154 billion on B2B advertising and marketing in 2015. This is the first year in which marketers were asked to rate various social media networks for effectiveness in lead generation, said Outsell analyst Randy Giusto.
“This study not only indicates that B2B marketers are actively kicking the tires with Instagram and Pinterest, it shows that there is a noticeable difference in where younger marketers are headed, with those under 40 turning in greater numbers to Facebook over LinkedIn,” Giusto said. “These platforms represent where Millennials live, as they continue to build out advertising to drive future revenue.”
Mind you, context is everything. You wouldn’t necessarily want an advertisement for business software to show up while looking through a friend’s vacation photographs. Then again, a subtle nudge might make more sense if you happen to be reading an update from a professional connection or a high-profile industry executive that you “follow,” such as Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.
According to data released last year, at least two-thirds of U.S. workers across a broad range of industries use Facebook, LinkedIn and other networks to keep tabs or connect with work colleagues. The motivation: it helps reduce friction, even at companies where social media usage on work time is discouraged. This is part of the strategy behind Facebook at Work, a professional edition of its service that its currently available in a limited pilot.
What’s more, Facebook’s overall influence with companies, especially smaller ones, has visibly accelerated. In late April, the company disclosed that it is home to 40 million “active” small business pages—it added 10 million in the last 12 months alone. Its new Instant Articles service launched last week is meant to give people even more reason to hang around.
“Regardless of the changes that we’ve made, Facebook actually is still the best way to distribute stuff to all of the people that you are trying to reach and all your customers,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last week during the company’s Town Hall meeting. “Probably all your customers, or most of them, are on Facebook and you probably have more connections on Facebook than any other tool. So, I actually think that even if the amount declined a little bit as we are trying to make people’s New Feeds better and more personal, Facebook remains a great way to reach people.”
And apparently, more people visit for professional, not just personal reasons.
ALSO WORTH SHARING
Is Uber about to get a break in China? Reuters reports that a local transportation company in Beijing, Yidao Yongche, is hinting at a partnership to be disclosed later this week.
Plus, investor Carl Icahn told The Wall Street Journal that his $100 million investment in ride-sharing company Lyft is “a bargain.” Mainly because he thinks Uber’s $41 billion valuation is way too high.
Two big tech consulting firms invest in digital skills. Accenture is buying London-based retail strategy specialist Javelin Group, which advises the likes of Tesco and eBay. Meanwhile, McKinsey is picking up San Francisco-based Lunar, which lists Abbott Laboratories, Apple, Intel, and Microsoft on its client list.
FTC weighs in on proposed sale of Radio Shack customer data. Apple and the states of Texas and Tennessee all object to a plan to sell the retailer’s customer database. Over the weekend, federal trade agency offered some advice on how to assuage those concerns.
Less than one-third of Fortune 50 CEOs publicly use social networks. How many are active on Facebook? None, according to an analysis by public relations firm Weber Shandwick. Twitter is where most express their opinion.
MY FORTUNE BOOKMARKS
How Wall Street got into the wild business of Bitcoin by Nathaniel Popper
eSports companies are attracting venture capital and being targeted for acquisition. Here’s why by John Gaudiosi
Netflix shares soar past $600 on potential blockbuster expansion by Tom Huddleston, Jr.
Can Yelp’s CEO keep turning down acquisition offers? by Daniel Roberts
Peter Guber says VR will become as big as reality by John Gaudiosi
ONE MORE THING
If you want to use the Oculus Rift virtual headset, the initial hardware requirements are pretty hefty. You won’t be able to use it on most laptops, and it looks like Macintosh and Linux users are out of luck (at least in the short term).
MARK YOUR CALENDAR
MuleSoft Connect: Tie together apps, data and devices. (May 27 - 29; San Francisco)
MongoDB World: Scale the universe. (June 1 - 2; New York)
HP Discover: Trends and technologies. (June 2 - 4; Las Vegas)
Apple Worldwide Developers Conference: Future of iOS and OS X. (June 8 - 12; San Francisco)
Hadoop Summit San Jose: Mainstreaming adoption. (June 9 - 11; San Jose, California)
Red Hat Summit: Energize your enterprise. (June 23 - 26; Boston)
Brainstorm Tech: Fortune’s invite-only gathering of thinkers, influencers and entrepreneurs. (July 13 - 15; Aspen, Colorado)
LinuxCon North America: All about open source. (Aug. 17 - 19; Seattle)
VMworld: The virtualization ecosystem. (Aug. 30 – Sept. 3, 2015; San Francisco)
Dreamforce: The Salesforce community. (Sept. 15 - 18; San Francisco)
Cassandra Summit: Largest gathering of Cassandra database developers. (Sept. 22 - 24; San Francisco)
BoxWorks 2015: Cloud collaboration solutions. (Sept. 28 - 30; San Francisco)
Workday Rising: Meet and share. (Sept. 28 - Oct. 1; Las Vegas)
HP Engage: Big data, big engagement. (Oct. 4 - 6; San Diego)
Gartner Symposium ITxpo: CIOs and senior IT executives. (Oct. 4 - 8; Orlando, Florida)
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing: World's largest gather of women technologists. (Oct. 14 - 16; Houston)
Oracle OpenWorld: Customer and partner conference. (Oct. 25 - 29; San Francisco)
QuickBooks Connect: SMBs, entrepreneurs, accountants and developers. (Nov. 2 - 4; San Jose, California)
