Good morning, Data Sheet readers. Tim Cook wants consumers to think of Apple as a champion of data privacy and security. Pinterest introduced “buyable pins” that let visitors buy things they covet. Plus, Facebook has emerged as the first viable competitor to YouTube’s video service. Fortune writer Erin Griffith reports on how the social network intends to capitalize. One final note: yesterday’s item about new funding for recruiting software company HireVue misstated its customers. Here’s the complete story for the proper information. Have a productive Wednesday!
TOP OF MIND
Apple CEO speaks out against data monetization. Tim Cook apparently had some pretty harsh words Tuesday for “prominent and successful companies in Silicon Valley” that give away services mainly as a ploy to collect valuable consumer information, which can later be sold to marketers.
“We at Apple reject the idea that our customers should have to make tradeoffs between privacy and security. We can, and we must provide both in equal measure. We believe that people have a fundamental right to privacy. The American people demand it, the Constitution demands it, morality demands it.”
TRENDING
Hewlett-Packard joins forces with Arista Networks. The two companies plan to sell bundles of their data center gear to help businesses “converge” services, networking and storage functions. It’s an obvious counter to the VCE venture formed by Cisco, EMC and VMware six years ago—although that initiative hasn't been wildly successful.
Millions of people use Pinterest for shopping ideas. Now they can actually purchase things through new “buyable pins.” Plus, it just became far easier for marketers to capitalize on Instagram. The social media company is dramatically expanding its advertising services beyond initial experiments.
Does your company really need voicemail? JPMorgan Chase thinks not.
Want to speed work training and cut down on production errors? Here’s what Boeing, Daimler and United Parcel Services are doing with smart glasses. Plus, robotics technology is getting smaller. That could help robots move beyond industrial automotive applications into other manufacturing roles, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Deutsche Bank boosts budget for digital innovation. It tapped Microsoft, HCL Technologies and IBM to help test new financial technologies, with plans to spend $1.1 billion over the next five years.
Apparently, Oracle will stop at little to advance its cloud ambitions. That includes doubling the salaries of key experts it would like to poach from archrivals Microsoft, Google and Amazon.
Disney’s rather childish plan for wearables technology. Toys that are part costume, part computer. The first products in its new Playmation line are Iron Man gloves and Hulk fists. Plus, Google and Mattel are also targeting kids with similar interactive toys. Here’s where their efforts are falling short.
THE PITCH
How Facebook’s video-traffic explosion is shaking up advertising
Facebook’s video traffic has reached 4 billion daily views, making the social network YouTube’s first real rival in online video—and an even tougher contender in the battle for digital ad dollars. Fortune’s Erin Griffith reports on how Facebook intends to capitalize.
Cenk Uygur can pinpoint the day he realized that Facebook video was going to rewrite his business model. It was April 6, the day his digital-video startup, TYT Network, uploaded a clip to the social network called “Teachers Sent to Jail FOR DECADES.”
The video didn’t strike Uygur as anything special—just a typical example of his network’s progressive news commentary. But by lunchtime, it had racked up 7 million Facebook “impressions,” or people who saw it in their Facebook News Feed. By the time he finished eating, it had added another million. He looked again when he arrived at his Los Angeles office: 9 million, total. And after he taped a show: 15 million. A day later, 18 million people had seen it. The day after that? Twenty-three million.
Looking over the stats, Uygur, who is TYT’s CEO, thought about all the videos his startup shared on the social network. “Oh, my God, these are all going to pop,” he thought. “It’s just a matter of time.” He had a second thought: “Our business is going to double.”
In recent months that kind of “oh, my God” moment has occurred for video creators around the world. News site BuzzFeed’s video views on Facebook grew 80-fold in a year, reaching more than 500 million in April. A series of eight videos by digital-media startup Mic garnered 33 million views in just two months. TYT has watched views grow by 10 times in four months. Dozens of other sites are reporting similar results—great news for them, and even better news for the social networking giant.
ALSO WORTH SHARING
Fitbit updates IPO terms. It’s targeting a price range of $14 to $16 per share, which means the wearables company could raise around $358 million through the offering, according to an updated regulatory filing.
Facebook’s version of autoresponse. Businesses can create pre-canned messages that handle incoming customer requests on Facebook Pages.
For sale? Synchronoss Technologies, which makes software used by many mobile carriers to manage subscribers, could command at least $2 billion, reports WSJ.
Sensors, software and services underlying the Internet of things accounted for $655.8 billion in 2014, but spending on them could triple by 2020.
Many Apple watchers have plenty of educated guesses about what the company could announce next week at its annual developers conference. This is what’s most likely.
Adobe buys 3D software startup Mixamo. The technology will eventually show up in its Creative Cloud service.
Welcome to the real world. Magic Leap, the augmented reality software company that has raised almost $600 million, finally has something that developers can use.
Object lesson: poorly configured software can be life-threatening. Apparently, it was the cause of an Airbus plane crash last month.
IBM is ditching one of its many data visualization services.
Another day, another $1 billion investment for SoftBank. This week’s recipient is South Korean e-commerce company Coupang.
MY FORTUNE BOOKMARKS
What GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt learned from Elon Musk by Katie Fehrenbacher
Looks like Medium isn’t going to save the media industry after all, and that’s okay by Mathew Ingram
How to stop rivals from raiding your talent (using fair means or foul) by Jeff John Roberts
This company wants to compete with Sony in the video game streaming market by John Gaudiosi
Three’s a crowd: Android Pay joins competitive mobile payment market by Jason Cipriani
Create a video channel on Vimeo and see if anyone will pay to watch by Tom Huddleston, Jr.
ONE MORE THING
Thinking out of the box. Amazon already puts its own logo on packages shipped to customers, why not let other businesses advertise there, too? First up, the “Minions” movie due out in July.
MARK YOUR CALENDAR
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)
