Tech News Today for June 15, 2017
Tech News for Thursday June 15, 2017
Amazon really wants you to use Alexa to buy things from them, and to prove that, they just unveiled an updated Amazon Dash Wand, exclusive to Prime Members. It’s a $20 magnetic, well, wand that you can stick to your fridge that gives quick access to firing off voice commands to Amazon’s voice assistant for things like ordering groceries from Amazon Fresh, finding recipes, setting timers, and controlling your smart home. Amazon wants so badly to get this sucker in everyone’s home that they are offering $20 in credit on the next purchase if you happen to buy one. So it’s basically free. Read more at geekwire.com.
And speaking of Amazon, the company is reportedly interested in buying Slack, the business communications company popular with start-ups. Bloomberg reports that if Amazon acquires Slack, it would be the former online bookseller's biggest acquisition yet. And that's saying something, because Amazon has formerly gobbled up TWiTCH, Goodreads, and Audible, one of TWiT's sponors. Sources say that Microsoft and Google are also trying to buy Slack, now that they've created their own Slack clones with Microsoft Teams, Hangouts Meet, and Google Hangouts Chat. Read more at bloomberg.com.
Netflix has been on a roll for quite some time, but it seems it may have hit a very important milestone. According to a survey by Leichtman Research, the service has upwards of around 50.85 million subscribers, compared to just 48.61 million customers of the biggest cable operators in the US. Compared to satellite TV which has around 38 million subs, the gap is even more apparent. Read more at forbes.com.
If you own shares in Snap, Inc, it might be time to take off the rose colored spectacles. Reuters reports that for the first time since its IPO the stock has dipped to $17 a share. That's the sweet spot where it debuted on the New York Stock Exchange back in March. Snap has been tumbling since its high of $25 right after it went public. So, good news if you bought Snap stock. You've pretty much broken even at this point. Read more at reuters.com.
Twitter spent some time looking inward to see what it could do to improve the service during a time of upheaval and importance. And today, Twitter showed off the fruits of its labor: A redesigned UI on the web, mobile, Tweetdeck, and Twitter Lite of course! No, edit functionality isn’t baked in there for those of you who want that and keep asking for it, but you will find an improved side tab for showing personal profile information, rounded avatar images, redesigned action buttons for those who like icons that are outlined and hollow, and white space… Lot’s of white space. Read more at wired.com.
Megan Morrone and Jason Howell are joined today by Josh Constine of TechCrunch to talk about Facebook's recent post about seven difficult questions the social network wrestles with and how it deals with them. Tech News Today streams live weekdays at 4PM Pacific, 7PM Eastern at twit.tv/live. You can subscribe to the show and get it on-demand at twit.tv/tnt.