Category: Data-Labor-Technology Stories

Within the industry at large, there is also a growing controversy about what constitutes AI and what constitutes an over-hyped form of data analytics

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AdExchanger |

The May deadline to comply with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is swiftly approaching, and ad tech and security startups are forming a new industry: privacy tech. Companies like PageFair, Evidon, Prifender, Tealium and Segment hope to capitalize with GDPR compliance solutions for brands, publishers and even other ad tech vendors. The International Association… Continue reading »

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Facebook knows when your picture is uploaded. Now it will tell you.

If someone uploads a photo of your face to Facebook, the company usually knows that it’s you thanks to facial recognition technology.

Now Facebook won’t just know it’s you — it’ll tell you about the photo, too.

Facebook is expanding its use of facial recognition technology and will now alert people that a friend, or a friend of a friend, uploaded a photo of them, even if they haven’t been tagged in the picture.

If anyone uploads a profile picture that includes your face, Facebook will alert you of that, too. “We’re doing this to prevent people from impersonating others on Facebook,” the company wrote on its blog Tuesday.

The point of all this, according to Facebook, is to offer better privacy settings for people who use the service. It’s nice to know that your cousin just uploaded an embarrassing photo of you, for example, even if you aren’t tagged in it.

But ensuring that users can’t impersonate someone else in their profile photo is also important in Facebook’s fight against so-called fake news. Alerting someone that another person is using their photo could result in better policing of inauthentic accounts.

There’s another interesting element to Tuesday’s update: Facebook is changing its settings to make it easier for the company to add more facial recognition features down the line.

Instead of asking users to give Facebook permission to use facial recognition for tagging purposes, which is what the company asks for now, users will now be asked to grant Facebook permission to use facial recognition broadly across the service. So agreeing to the use of facial recognition for tagging now gives Facebook permission to use facial recognition for other products and features, too. That might come in handy if Facebook ever decides to roll out account recovery using facial recognition, or other products in that vein.

The new Facebook photo alerts will begin rolling out on Tuesday. You may see notices explaining the change show up in your News Feed over the next few weeks.

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Augmented Reality hologram company, VNTANA, has been used by brands like Microsoft, Mercedes-Benz and Pepsi to engage and collect data on potential customers.
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2017 is the third-busiest year for companies reaching $1 billion valuation.

The unicorn club gets new members by the week. This year alone, 57 startups around the world attained unicorn status with a valuation of $1 billion or more, according to data from venture capital tracker PitchBook.

Seven companies that were once considered unicorns have seen their valuation dip below $1 billion so far this year, either through down rounds or down exits. Last year there were only three down rounds or exits. The Honest Company and Prosper both saw their valuation shrink below $1 billion in subsequent funding rounds, according to PitchBook. Down exits this year included Souq.com, which was acquired by Amazon for $650 million, and Shazam, which Apple purchased for $400 million.

Overall 2017 wasn’t the biggest year for unicorns — that award goes to 2015, which boasted 81 new unicorns — but it certainly has been busy.

Social platform Reddit, bitcoin marketplace Coinbase and ride-hail company Careem are among the notable entrants this year. Synthetic biology company Ginkgo Bioworks is the latest inductee into the group, thanks to a $275 million funding round last week.

Altogether there are now a total of 227 active unicorns, according to PitchBook.

Here’s a look at the companies that have attained unicorn status this year, by their valuation and how much venture capital they’ve raised. Revenue data is available from the few private companies that made that information public. Click on a company to see its industry category.

A few notable stats from this year’s unicorns:

• Content recommendation platform Toutiao had the highest valuation, VC raised and revenue of all the unicorns this year.
• Four startups — Outcome Health, SenseTime, VIPKid and Mobike — had at least one female founder.
• About half of this year’s startups focus primarily on information technology and software.

The PitchBook data included goes through Dec. 14.

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With so much data being collected, stored and used, it was inevitable that breaches would be on the rise. The year 2017 saw more personally identifiable information (PII) exposed through malicious intent than ever than before.

Equifax and Yahoo led in the headlines, but there were many other notable breaches. As we look back, let’s see what we can learn from them.

Equifax makes all the headlines

Attackers hit more than 145 million Equifax customers this September. They stole names,
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Identity is at the heart of knowing your customer. If you don’t get identity right, everything else will be wrong. How are organizations able to manage their CRM databases with consumer data that is constantly changing? This changing data impacts your company’s ability to efficiently manage both inbound and outbound communications and the struggle between customer experience and costs. Current and accurate identity data can help you increase IVR containment and reduce costs for inbound calls, while also reducing the risk of lawsuits and penalties from TCPA violations for outbound dials. Listen to this informative webinar to learn how to: • Ensure that your customer profiles are up to date • Clean, verify and extend your customer records for the most current, accurate, and actionable identity data • Ensure outbound communications are efficient and compliant with current TCPA regulations • Improve IVR containment rates by automatically identifying more inbound callers • Implement best practices by reviewing industry case studies of organizations that are successful in managing proactive and up-to-date identity data across the enterprise.

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Plus, Facebook is expanding facial recognition across its products, Stitch Fix releases its first earnings report since going public, and the best seats on Broadway.

Republicans in the House and Senate approved a sweeping $1.5 trillion tax plan. Trump is expected to sign it within days. Andrew Ross Sorkin: “The tax bill soaks some … rich Americans — but it does not soak the richest.” [The New York Times]

Facebook knows when someone uploads your picture to Facebook — now it will alert you about the photo, even if you aren’t tagged in it.The company is improving privacy settings and expanding its use of facial-recognition technology “to prevent people from impersonating other people” on the service. Users will now be asked to grant Facebook permission to use facial recognition broadly across its products. [Kurt Wagner / Recode]

Stitch Fix released its first-ever earnings report, and its shares fell by 12 percent. The online personal styling service is spending more on advertising and attracting new customers that want more less-expensive clothing, so CEO Katrina Lake said the company will increase lower-price-point sales this year. [Jason Del Rey / Recode]

Bitcoin prices are moving around a lot. Because bitcoin. Something called Bitcoin Cash is way up. Plain old bitcoin fell dramatically and is climbing back up again.

Ziff Davis executives addressed their new employees at Mashable, who promptly leaked the comments to the press. Reasonable advice from Ziff Davis COO Steve Horowitz to the company, which he bought at a fire sale price: “You guys are a Coke brand. Never forget that. Let’s make sure that we’re doing everything we can to stay at that level and not get down into Tab village.” [David Uberti / Splinter]

Top stories from Recode

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are just getting started, says Spark Capital’s Megan Quinn. An investor in the crypto trading platform Coinbase, Quinn says “the toothpaste is out of the tube,” on the latest episode of Recode Decode.

This is cool

The best seats on Broadway.

The Procter & Gamble toilet paper brand Charmin has opened a pop-up space near Times Square in New York City to offer 14 clean and free public bathrooms through Christmas Eve. Of course, this is a marketing stunt called an “out-of-home (OOH) activation,” a way to create a more personal touch with audiences as digital channels are dominating marketing strategies.

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The revolution in customer relationship marketing (CRM) continues with an exponential increase in the points of data available to leverage for marketing. Data is more robust, measurement tools are better, and channel capabilities are improving — not only on their own, but also in their ability to orchestrate marketing across channels. All of this is great for the industry, and it is driving investment in new marketing stacks.

When I talk about a marketing stack here, I don’t mean that
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In this short video, marketing executives talk about making smarter decisions using data.

ANA Genius Awards Website: https://www.geniusawards.com

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