Mobile Minutes: Monetizing digital assistants; Google for GIFs; Snapchat overtaking Twitter; Automakers fear Apple
Apple, Amazon, and Google say their virtual helpers?Siri, Alexa, and the less snappily named Google Assistant?can make our lives easier by acting on our commands to book cabs, order pizza, or check the weather.
Giphy is a revenue-less three-year-old start-up, gets 150 million unique monthly visitors on its site, and all it does is curate and allow users to search for GIFs. So why is it worth $300 million?
Snapchat didn?t just file SEC documents for a massive new $1.8 billion round of funding this week, the company also had its pitch deck leaked, revealing some interesting insights into the company?s usage and revenue. Particularly striking: Snapchat may already have more daily active users than Twitter.
Tesla Motors TSLA gets credit ? deservedly so ? for lighting a fire under the global auto industry, inspiring carmakers to speed up their product development times and to get serious about introducing long-range electric cars and new technologies like over-the-air vehicle updates.