Twitter announces new video partnerships with NBCUniversal and ESPN

Twitter is hosting its Digital Content NewFronts tonight, where it’s unveiling 30 renewals and new content deals — the company says that’s nearly twice as many as it announced last year.

Those include partnerships with the big players in media — starting with NBCUniversal, which will be sharing live video and clips from properties including NBC News, MSNBC, CNBC and Telemundo.

Twitter also announced some of the shows it will be airing as part of the ESPN deal announced earlier today: SportsCenter Live (a Twitter version of the network’s flagship) and Fantasy Focus Live (a livestream of the fantasy sports podcast).

Plus, the company said it’s expanding its existing partnership with Viacom with shows like Comedy Central’s Creator’s Room, BET Breaks and MTV News.

During the NewFronts event, Twitter’s head of video Kayvon Beykpour said daily video views on the platform have nearly doubled in the past year. And Kay Madati (pictured above), the company’s head of content partnerships, described the company as “the ultimate mobile platform where video and conversation share the same screen.”

As Twitter continues to invest in video content, it’s been emphasizing its advantage in live video, a theme that continued in this year’s announcement.

“Twitter is the only place where conversation is tied to video and the biggest live moments, giving brands the unique ability to connect with leaned in consumers who are shaping culture,” said Twitter Global VP of Revenue and Content Partnerships Matthew Derella in a statement. “That’s our superpower.”

During the event, Derella also (implicitly) contrasted Twitter with other digital platforms that have struggled with questions about transparency and whether ads are running in an appropriate environment. Tonight, he said marketers could say goodbye to unsafe brand environments and a lack of transparency: “And we say hello to you being in control of where your video aligns … we say hello to a higher measure of transparency, we say hello to new premium inventory and a break from the same old choices.”

On top of all the new content, Twitter is also announcing new ad programs. There are Creator Originals, a set of scripted series from influencers who will be paired up with sponsored brands. (The program is powered by Niche, the influencer marketing startup that Twitter acquired a few years ago.) And there’s a new Live Brand Studio — as the name suggests, it’s a team that works with marketers to create live video.

Here are some other highlights from the content announcements:

• CELEBrate, a series where people get heartwarming messages from their idols from Ellen Digital Studios.
• Delish Food Day and IRL from Heart Magazines Digital Media
• Power Star Live, which is “inspired by the cultural phenomenon of Black Twitter” and livestreamed from he Atlanta University Center, from Will Packer Media.
• BuzzFeed News is renewing AM to DM until the end of 2018.
• Pattern, a new brand focused on weather- and science-related news.
• Programming the Huffington Post (which, like TechCrunch, is owned by Verizon/Oath), History, Vox and BuzzFeed News that highlights women around the world.

Developing

from Social – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/30/twitter-newfronts/
via Superb Summers

WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum quits Facebook due to privacy intrusions

“It is time for me to move on . . . I’m taking some time off to do things I enjoy outside of technology, such as collecting rare air-cooled Porsches, working on my cars and playing ultimate frisbee” WhatsApp co-founder, CEO, and Facebook board member Jan Koum wrote today. The announcement followed shortly after The Washington Post reported that Koum would leave due to disagreements with Facebook management about WhatsApp user data privacy and weakened encryption. Koum obscured that motive in his note that says “I’ll still be cheering WhatsApp on – just from the outside.”

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg quickly commented on Koum’s Facebook post about his departure, writing “Jan: I will miss working so closely with you. I’m grateful for everything you’ve done to help connect the world, and for everything you’ve taught me, including about encryption and its ability to take power from centralized systems and put it back in people’s hands. Those values will always be at the heart of WhatsApp.” That comment further tries to downplay the idea that Facebook pushed Koum away by trying to erode encryption.

It’s currently unclear who will replace Koum as WhatsApp’s CEO, and what will happen to his Facebook board seat.

Values Misaligned

Koum sold WhatsApp to Facebook for in 2014 for a jaw-dropping $19 billion. But since then it’s more than tripled its user count to 1.5 billion, making the price to turn messaging into a one-horse race seem like a steal. But at the time, Koum and co-founder Brian Acton were assured that WhatsApp wouldn’t have to run ads or merge its data with Facebook’s. So were regulators in Europe where WhatsApp is most popular.

A year and a half later, though, Facebook pressured WhatsApp to change its terms of service and give users’ phone numbers to its parent company. That let Facebook target those users with more precise advertising, such as by letting businesses upload list of phone numbers to hit those people with promotions. Facebook was eventually fined $122 million by the European Union in 2017 — a paltrey sum for a company earning over $4 billion in profit per quarter.

But the perceived invasion of WhatsApp user privacy drove a wedge between Koum and the parent company. Acton left Facebook in November, and has publicly supported the #DeleteFacebook movement since.

WashPo writes that Koum was also angered by Facebook executives pushing for a weakening of WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption in order to facilitate its new WhatsApp For Business program. It’s possible that letting multiple team members from a business all interact with its WhatsApp account could be incompatible with strong encryption. Facebook plans to finally make money off WhatsApp by offering bonus services to big companies like airlines, e-commerce sites, and banks that want to conduct commerce over the chat app.

Jan Koum, the CEO and co-founder of WhatsApp speaks at the Digital Life Design conference on January 18, 2016, in Munich, south Germany.
On the Innovation Conference high-profile guests discuss for three days on trends and developments relating to the digitization. (Photo: TOBIAS HASE/AFP/Getty Images)

Koum was heavily critical of advertising in apps, once teling Forbes that “Dealing with ads is depressing . . . You don’t make anyone’s life better by making advertisements work better.” He vowed to keep them out of WhatsApp. But over the past year, Facebook has rolled out display ads in the Messenger inbox. Without Koum around, Facebook might push to expand those obtrusive ads to WhatsApp as well.

The high-profile departure comes at a vulnerable time for Facebook, with its big F8 developer conference starting tomorrow despite Facebook simultaneously shutting down parts of its dev platform as penance for the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Meanwhile, Google is trying to fix its fragmented messaging strategy, ditching apps like Allo to focus on a mobile carrier-backed alternative to SMS it’s building into Android Messages.

While the News Feed made Facebook rich, it also made it the villain. Messaging has become its strongest suit thanks to the dual dominance of Messenger and WhatsApp. Considering many users surely don’t even realize WhatsApp is own by Facebook, Koum’s departure over policy concerns isn’t likely to change that. But it’s one more point in what’s becoming a thick line connecting Facebook’s business ambitions to its cavalier approach to privacy.

You can read Koum’s full post below.

It's been almost a decade since Brian and I started WhatsApp, and it's been an amazing journey with some of the best…

Posted by Jan Koum on Monday, April 30, 2018

Facebook is trying to block Schrems II privacy referral to EU top court

Facebook’s lawyers are attempting to block a High Court decision in Ireland, where its international business is headquartered, to refer a long-running legal challenge to the bloc’s top court.

The social media giant’s lawyers asked the court to stay the referral to the CJEU today, Reuters reports. Facebook is trying to appeal the referral by challenging Irish case law — and wants a stay granted in the meanwhile.

The case relates to a complaint filed by privacy campaigner and lawyer Max Schrems regarding a transfer mechanism that’s currently used by thousands of companies to authorize flows of personal data on EU citizens to the US for processing. Though Schrems was actually challenging the use of so-called Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) by Facebook, specifically, when he updated an earlier complaint on the same core data transfer issue — which relates to US government mass surveillance practices, as revealed by the 2013 Snowden disclosures — with Ireland’s data watchdog.

However the Irish Data Protection Commissioner decided to refer the issue to the High Court to consider the legality of SCCs as a whole. And earlier this month the High Court decided to refer a series questions relating to EU-US data transfers to Europe’s top court — seeking a preliminary ruling on a series of fundamental questions that could even unseat another data transfer mechanism, called the EU-US Privacy Shield, depending on what CJEU judges decide.

An earlier legal challenge by Schrems — which was also related to the clash between US mass surveillance programs (which harvest data from social media services) and EU fundamental rights (which mandate that web users’ privacy is protected) — resulted in the previous arrangement for transatlantic data flows being struck down by the CJEU in 2015, after standing for around 15 years.

Hence the current case being referred to by privacy watchers as ‘Schrems II’. You can also see why Facebook is keen to delay another CJEU referral if it can.

According to comments made by Schrems on Twitter the Irish High Court reserved judgement on Facebook’s request today, with a decision expected within a week…

Irish #HighCourt reserves judgement on stay for #SCC / #PrivacyShield reference to @EUCourtPress – judgement expected within a week. DPC and we argued against a stay. Facebook wants to stop the reference. #IfYouCantWinDelay https://t.co/U4ITKEBAEg

— Max Schrems (@maxschrems) April 30, 2018

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Facebook’s appeal is based on trying to argue against Irish case law — which Schrems says does not allow for an appeal against such a referral, hence he’s couching it as another delaying tactic by the company:

#Facebook now appeals the #HighCourt decision to refer to the @EUCourtPress on the #SCCs and #PrivacyShield – challenging Irish case law (Campus Oil) that no such appeal exists in Ireland.. #Pay2Delay #5yearsSincePRISMcomplaint #PRISM #NSA pic.twitter.com/5J0jZpEKyR

— Max Schrems (@maxschrems) April 30, 2018

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We reached out to Facebook for comment on the case. At the time of writing it had not responded.

In a statement from October, after an earlier High Court decision on the case, Facebook said:

Standard Contract Clauses provide critical safeguards to ensure that Europeans’ data is protected once transferred to companies that operate in the US or elsewhere around the globe, and are used by thousands of companies to do business. They are essential to companies of all sizes, and upholding them is critical to ensuring the economy can continue to grow without disruption.

This ruling will have no immediate impact on the people or businesses who use our services. However it is essential that the CJEU now considers the extensive evidence demonstrating the robust protections in place under Standard Contractual Clauses and US law, before it makes any decision that may endanger the transfer of data across the Atlantic and around the globe.

from Social – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/30/facebook-is-trying-to-block-schrems-ii-privacy-referral-to-eu-top-court/
via Superb Summers