Zuckerberg leans in to ‘privacy-focused’ future at Facebook with encrypted merger March 7, 2019 Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg has said the social media giant will be encrypting more of its messaging services, calling it “the right thing to do”. Writing in a Facebook post late last night, Zuckerberg said Facebook users would be able to message Whatsapp users through Messenger, and vice versa. Read more: Facebook faces paying billions [...]
WPP needs to revamp culture to attract the best people, says boss March 5, 2019 WPP must create a more open culture if it is to attract the best people in the industry, chief executive Mark Read said today. “WPP is really just about people at the end of the day,” he said at the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers (ISBA) conference this morning. Read more: Brands have ‘Netflix envy’, [...]
Strong and stable: London extends lead as Europe’s top hub for unicorn startups March 1, 2019 London has cemented its status as the home of more young billion-dollar tech companies than any other European city, taking home the crown for ten consecutive years. Read more: Female fintech leaders highlighted as sector battles gender imbalance The number of so-called unicorn startups – private businesses valued at $1bn (£752.6m) and founded after 2000 [...]
DEBATE: Was Facebook right to ban Tommy Robinson? February 28, 2019 Was Facebook right to ban Tommy Robinson? Dr Ben Marder, social media expert at University of Edinburgh Business School, says YES. Facebook was absolutely right to permanently ban Tommy Robinson from its platform and sister site, Instagram. Facebook prides itself as a medium of free speech, one that affords individuals and organisations an influential and [...]
Venture capital fund run by former Facebook and Deliveroo employees raises $85m February 26, 2019 A venture capital fund run by former Facebook, Deliveroo and Klarna employees has raised $85m. (£64.5m) The Blossom Capital fund is the first launched by ex-Index Ventures and Localglobe investor Ophelia Brown, 32, and is the fastest ever first time fundraise from a female VC in Europe. Read more: Ex-Google CFO opens up a venture capital office [...]
Facebook, social media and ads – when will marketers abandon the network? February 25, 2019 The Facebook-Google duopoly has a stranglehold over internet advertising. While the search engine dominates the pairing, Mark Zuckerberg’s creation is no slouch – last year, more than a fifth (21.8 per cent) of all US digital ad spending went to the social media network, equivalent to $28.2bn (£21.7bn). But the company is in hot water, [...]
Flexible office rents tumble as London boom fuels more spaces February 24, 2019 Fresh evidence of a boom in the capital’s flexible workspace market has come to light with a report out today that shows a sharp rise in new spaces coming to the market. Growing demand for shorter leases led to more than 150 new flexible office space business centres opening in Central London during 2018, marking [...]
Elon Musk denies claims Tesla is getting involved in bitcoin February 21, 2019 Elon Musk has said Tesla has no plans to get involved with bitcoin at the moment, believing that the cryptocurrency is not an efficient use of the company’s resources. The Tesla chief executive praised cryptocurrency as a potential replacement for paper money in an interview on FYI, a podcast by ARK Investment published today. “Crypto is [...]
Celebrity marketing fees fall by two-thirds in two years amid shift to micro-influencers February 20, 2019 The amount of money marketers are willing to splurge on high-profile celebrity influencers has plunged by two-thirds over the last two years, a new survey has revealed. Data published by Rakuten Marketing shows UK marketers are willing to fork out £25,000 for a single post by a Facebook influencer, down from £75,000 in 2017. Read [...]
Facebook has gambled away the right to regulate its own bad behaviour February 19, 2019 All credit must go to Damian Collins MP and his colleagues at the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Select Committee. Their report on fake news, published yesterday, does not pull its punches. Even a cursory read of the text reveals the extent to which Facebook has been operating irresponsibly. As the report makes clear, [...]