Facebook goes for the global group hug, Tesla tests the waters in music streaming and China cracks down on live streaming. All that and more in The Daily Crunch for June 23, 2017. 1. Facebook wants to buy the world a Coke or something Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a new mission statement for the company today, and a focus on communities. The social network has almost 2 billion monthly users, all participating in the same platform, so Zuck says it wants to "bring the world closer together." Sounds noble, but it's a mission statement that pushes Facebook's latest product release, new Group management tools. This is actually probably all about the business; groups are one area where Facebook users are still active, even if they've long abandoned their main feed, meaning it's a place where Facebook can build in order to retain engagement and return users. 2. Tesla Music? Could your car maker also become your streaming music service provider? New reports suggest Tesla might make its way into the streaming music game. Elon Musk had hinted at this during the most recent Tesla shareholder meeting, and services could make a lot of sense as a Tesla business in an autonomous future. 3. China predictably gets tough on live streaming Censoring streaming live video and audio is very difficult, as Facebook can attest, so it's not at all surprising that China's government will be putting a stop to streaming on services such as Weibo. 4. YouTube has 1.5 billion monthly logged in users YouTube is popular. It's almost Facebook popular, and all it is is video. Users also spend over an hour per day watching YouTube just on mobile on average. That's nuts. 5. Drones on the agenda for White House tech event An event on Thursday focused on emerging tech at the White House had a lot to say about drones, with a lot of drone industry execs present. There's a lot of industry pressure and money going into making drones happen as an everyday commercial service, and this is proof of that. 6. Uber employees petition for Kalanick's return Some Uber employees are circulating a petition to the board to get Kalanick back as CEO, and it has amassed over 1,100 signatures (Uber's total workforce is 14,000). Seems unlikely to make a dent, but clearly this isn't the end of Uber's drama. 7. Apple's DND while Driving feature is live in new iOS 11 beta The feature Apple announced at WWDC that automatically switches off alerts and distracting notifications from your iPhone while you're connected to a car, or when your phone detects via its sensors that you're driving. It's a good feature, and a smart one that could save lives – provided people actually use it, since it's an option you can toggle. |