In honor of International Women's Day, Google introduced a new feature that allows business owners to identify their businesses as "women-led" on Google My Business, per Google. Businesses that use Google My Business can enable the attribute from their dashboard, where it will appear in their listing until they choose to disable it.
How it works: The Google My Business verification process allows businesses to manage their information on Google platforms such as maps and search. The "women-led" descriptor, including the female gender symbol, will appear alongside the details in the businesses's listings that highlights any special offerings such as Wi-Fi or outdoor seating.
Facebook and the MLB have agreed to stream 25 afternoon games in the U.S. Neither party has disclosed financial terms, Bloomberg, who first reported the deal, says that the price tag is somewhere around $30 million.
Why it matters: It's the first time a major league sports franchise will exclusively air a series of regular games on Facebook. (Facebook competitors, like Amazon and Twitter, have landed such deals with he NFL.)
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said his company's "intention is to open verification to everyone," Gizmodo reports. He said he doesn't want Twitter to "be the judge or imply bias" on who gets verified. The company didn't respond to a Gizmodo request for more info.
Why it matters: Verification of legitimate sources is a huge part of what helps curb the spread of fake news on Twitter. Expanding verification could open them up to more bad actors trying to take advantage of potentially false or misleading credibility.
More than half of Americans (58%) believe that artificial intelligence poses a greater threat to U.S. jobs over the next 10 years than immigration and offshoring (42%,) according to a new Northeastern University/Gallup survey.
By the numbers:
61% of the youngest age group polled, 18-35 year olds, believe that technology poses the deepest threat, compared to 39% of pointed to immigration and offshoring.
Republicans were the only subgroup to think that immigration and offshoring (48%) pose a bigger threat than AI (52%,) while Democrats chose AI as the higher threat (67%) by 34 more percentage points than immigration and offshoring (33%.)
Qualcomm said Friday that Paul Jacobs, former CEO and son of the company's co-founder, is stepping down as executive chairman. Independent board member Jeffrey W. Henderson will serve as non-executive chairman of the board, while Jacobs will remain a director.
Why it matters: The move comes as Qualcomm is fighting a hostile takeover bid from Broadcom, trying to complete a deal to buy NXP Semiconductors and locked in a legal battle with Apple, one of its biggest customers.
This year's South by Southwest conference will be packed with events on digital currencies, health data, and artificial intelligence — a sign of how quickly these have become the biggest topics in future trends. But there's also a recognition of a dark side: lots of panels about how social media is reshaping news and information, and not always for the better.
What to watch: The festival starts in Austin today. Watch for panels on tech industry trends like cryptocurrencies and voice assistants, the growing presence of lawmakers, a particular interest in media, and especially Facebook’s growing influence. You can also catch a panel on "innovation superpowers." Oh yeah, and Ethan Hawke will be there.
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel sent a company-wide note to employees "several months ago" outlining a zealous goal to break even in 2018, according to The Information.
Why it matters: It's a very ambitious goal considering Snap lost $720 million last year and analysts expect the company to continue to lose money this year. While the company has been steadily increasing its average revenue per user, it has invested some cash flow into other parts of its business, like marketing and research and development, which has eaten at its profitability.
False news spreads faster than true stories, and it's because of humans, not bots, according to a new study published today in Science. Our preference for novel news, which is often false, may be driving our behavior, researchers from MIT report.
The bottom line: "It's important to avoid temptation to shift the blame elsewhere and focus on these non- human and foreign actors. Even if we solve bots and the foreign interference problem, it wouldn’t solve the problem of online misinformation," says Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College, who wasn't involved in the study.
A group of web companies including Twitter, Reddit and Yelp are mounting a last-ditch effort to modify an anti-trafficking bill that would make it possible for trafficking victims to sue websites that facilitate the crime.
Why it matters: It highlights the way that smaller web companies haven't followed some of their larger counterparts in backing the bill as the debate comes to a close on Capitol Hill. At issue is the way the legislation would weaken the historically ironclad prohibition on suing an online platform over user-generated content.
If you hold the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S9 next to one another you'd be hard-pressed to tell the two apart, and that's by design. The improvements over last year are designed to be subtle, but appreciated refinements, mostly around the camera.
Our take: If you liked the S8, you'll like the S9. Like its predecessor, the S9 is beautiful and powerful, but there may not be enough there to merit upgrading. The same goes for the larger-screen S9+,
Starsky Robotics, a self-driving truck startup, has raised $16.5 million in new funding led by Shasta Ventures, with Y Combinator, Trucks.vc, 50 Years, 9Point Ventures, and others also participating.
Why it matters: Trucking will be one of the first applications of autonomous driving as highways are much easier to master than urban driving.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) says he'd like to grill America's social media companies at a hearing about the way threats of gun violence, including against schools, spread online.
Why it matters: Social media can be a potent vehicle for threats of violence. Earlier this week schools in Bayonne, N.J. shut down after threats of a school shooting appeared on social media.
Facebook says it is trying to deal with an expired security certificate issue that is keeping Oculus Rift headsets from working.
The bottom line: Hardware is increasingly at the mercy of software meaning a small bug can render a device completely useless, at least until the issue is fixed.
