Data Sheet—Thursday, July 16, 2015

MORE REVELATIONS FROM BRAINSTORM TECH

Brainstorm Tech 2015 is officially a wrap! Here are three great stories from Wednesday’s keynote interviews and panel sessions.

1. Buy buttons make mobile shopping easy. That’s why they’re popping up on Facebook, Snapchat, Pinterest and (most recently) Google.
2. Quirky has run out of money. Well, almost. The startup that helps inventors make their products still has $12 million. So, CEO Ben Kaufman is considering several variations of Plan B.
3. The head of Softbank’s venture business is looking for bigger deals.

Consult the story feed for complete coverage. AND, mark your calendar for next year’s event at the Aspen Institute in Colorado, July 11 – 13, 2016.

TRENDING

eBay reports financials for final pre-split quarter. The integrated company generated $4.4 billion in Q2 revenue, up 7% from last year. Another notable metric: gross merchandise volume slipped 2% for the marketplace business. I'll share more analysis in tomorrow's newsletter.

As of this writing, there's still no official word on the sale of eBay Enterprise (which was counted as a discontinued operation in the results). But a $900 million deal with private equity firm Permira may be near, reports The Wall Street Journal. Incidentally, the separation from PayPal should be complete by Friday.

It’s Qualcomm’s turn to attract European antitrust attention. Investigators are looking into the wireless chipmaker's financial incentives and aggressive pricing policies.

Intel managed to beat second-quarter estimates, but CEO Brian Krzanich also issued a warning. His prediction: Chips using Intel's next-generation manufacturing processes won’t be available until the second half of 2017. That's about six months later than expected.

Netflix racked up 2.5 million new subscribers in its blockbuster Q2. That boosts it to 65 million total. The streaming video service also did a big favor for Charter’s scheme to become a much larger cable force. It essentially gave a thumbs-up to its buyouts of Time Warner and Bright House Networks.

More legal fees for Uber. The California Public Utilities Commission thinks the ride-sharing company doesn’t disclose enough information about accidents or its accommodations for Americans with disabilities.

Toshiba’s accounting scandal keeps getting worse. To fix its books, the giant Japanese company could be forced to record charges of $2.4 billion to $3.2 billion, reports Reuters, citing individuals familiar with the situation.

Happy 20^th, Amazon? Yes, the e-tailer’s special Christmas in July sale for Prime subscribers beat its Black Friday haul. But many of the deals were considered lame, which didn’t do all that much for its social reputation.

Plus, Amazon’s first original feature-length film will be directed by Oscar-nominated director Spike Lee, as the e-commerce giant turns up the heat on Netflix.

By the way, did you know Amazon Web Services was started as a “side business”?

STARTUP SCUTTLEBUTT

Looping images plus music equal your life’s soundtrack. Fast-growing mobile app company Flipagram is justifiably flipping out. It just raised $70 million led by Sequoia and joined by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. That means Flipagram’s executive team gets guidance from both Michael Moritz and John Doerr, who are now directors. Plus, it just added millions of music clips to its library through high-profile deals with Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music. The company claims “tens of millions" of monthly users.

Enterprise data, delivered quickly. Delphix, which sells services for virtualizing databases in the cloud, has closed a $75 million round led by Fidelity. Its big pitch: far speedier delivery of application upgrades or data center migrations.

Dating app entrepreneur tries hand at security software. Keybase, the encryption company fronted by OKCupid cofounder Max Krohn, has raised a $10.8 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz.

Symantec wants to be hands-on with entrepreneurial cybercrime fighters, through a new incubation initiative hatched with Frost Data Capital.

If you’ve noticed security firms are attracting lots of money this year, you’d be right. Although at $1.2 billion for the first half, the pace is slightly slower than last year.

ALSO WORTH SHARING

Steel yourself for more hoaxes like Tuesday’s fake Twitter buyout story. That’s because it’s oh-so-simple to impersonate legitimate businesses on the Web.

Push “Pause.” Facebook is testing a feature to boost video viewing metrics, by letting people watch them later.

Dozens of “black hat” hackers were arrested Wednesday. All of them were associated with Darkode, an online forum that authorities describe as “one of the gravest threats to the integrity of data on computers in the United States and around the world.”

Microsoft’s licensing terms for Windows 10 are surprisingly straightforward.

Square’s proposition for multi-location retailers: simplicity.

A backlash against “bring your own device”? More than half the IT professionals surveyed this spring by a trade association ban personal smartphone, tablet or computer use by their employees. That's up from 34% on year ago.

Even automakers have to worry about cybersecurity. That’s why Ford, General Motors and 10 other car companies agreed to help each other keep abreast of attacks and threats.

Another mobile tipping point. Employees of midsize and large businesses now make up more than half of all smartphones and tablets currently in use. The six biggest adopters: IT teams, wholesale trade organizations, banks, life sciences companies, securities firms, and “resource industries.”

MY FORTUNE BOOKMARKS

How Stripe is powering the campaign donations for 2016 by Erin Griffith

Google offers free Fiber in public housing by Jeff John Roberts

Here’s why Neil Young is giving up on streaming music by Benjamin Snyder

Reddit CEO: This site is not ‘a bastion of free speech’ by Jonathan Chew

An exploitable weakness in network security: corporate boards by Brian O’Keefe

How many Macs did Apple sell last year? by Philip Elmer-DeWitt

ONE MORE THING

It’s not dead yet. Apple just refreshed its iPod line for the first time in three years.

MARK YOUR CALENDAR

Esri Business Summit: Mapping the value of data. (July 18 - 21; San Diego)

LinuxCon North America: All about open source. (Aug. 17 - 19; Seattle)

SuccessConnect: Simplify the way the world works. (Aug. 10 - 12; Las Vegas)

VMworld: The virtualization ecosystem. (Aug. 30 – Sept. 3, 2015; San Francisco)

Gartner Customer 360 Summit: Strategies for digital engagement. (Sept. 9 - 11; San Diego)

Dreamforce: The Salesforce community. (Sept. 15 - 18; San Francisco)

.conf2015: Splunk's "get your data on" gathering. (Sept. 21 - 24; Las Vegas)

Cassandra Summit: Largest gathering of Cassandra database developers. (Sept. 22 - 24; San Francisco)

AppSec USA 2015: Application security principles. (Sept. 22 - 25; 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)

I Love APIs 2015: Apigee's annual conference. (Oct. 12 - 14; San Jose, California)

Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing: World's largest gather of women technologists. (Oct. 14 - 16; Houston)

DevOps Enterprise Summit: Lean principles meet technology management. (Oct. 19 - 21; San Francisco)

CX San Francisco: Forrester's forum for customer experience professionals. (Oct. 22 - 23)

Oracle OpenWorld: Customer and partner conference. (Oct. 25 - 29; San Francisco)

TBM Conference 2015: Manage IT like a business. (Oct. 26 - 29; Chicago)

eBusiness Chicago: eBusiness and channel strategy. (Oct. 29 - 30)

QuickBooks Connect: SMBs, entrepreneurs, accountants and developers. (Nov. 2 - 4; San Jose, California)

CMO+CIO: Forrester's summit on strategy collaboration. (Nov. 2 - 4; Sarasota, Florida)

Oktane15: Identity management trends. (Nov. 2 - 4; Las Vegas)