Best of the Beat
LINKEDIN CREATES APP TO LOOK UP CO-WORKERS
Learning about your co-workers isn’t always easy and now LinkedIn has an app for that.
Responding to an April survey that showed only 38 percent of workers thought that their company’s private computer networks were effective at helping them learn about their co-workers, LinkedIn on Wednesday launched an app called “LinkedIn Lookup.”
The survey of 814 employees in North America also showed that professionals are looking at other sites including LinkedIn to learn more about their co-workers.
“That’s because it’s easier to find co-workers on LinkedIn, and the professional info people add to their profiles is more comprehensive and up to date than lots of companies’ intranets,” wrote Ankit Gupta, a LinkedIn product manager and co-founder of the news reading app Pulse.
About 30 percent of LinkedIn members who search for people on the business-oriented social network every month viewed their co-workers’ profiles.
Through the Lookup app, people can search for co-workers by name, title, current and past experiences, education, skills and even by department.
The app also allows people to send messages to their co-workers even if they haven’t downloaded Lookup.
The new app works only if you have a LinkedIn profile and the company you work for has a company page, according to LinkedIn.
The app is available on iOS and will be available later on Android.
— Queenie Wong
TWITTER EXPANDS EFFORTS IN ASIA PACIFIC, MIDDLE EAST
Twitter has its eyes set on expanding in the Asia Pacific and Middle East.
The San Francisco tech firm said Tuesday it was making a stronger push to partner with media in those regions and was promoting Rishi Jaitly — Twitter’s market director for India and Southeast Asia— to a new role.
Jaitly is now vice president of media for Asia Pacific and Middle East and will lead efforts to expand into new markets including in greater China and Southeast Asia, according to a press release from the company.
“The Asia Pacific and Middle East regions account for over half of the world’s Internet, mobile and social media users today, so this is an exciting opportunity to connect with content partners to drive the global digital revolution from these markets,” Jaitly said in a statement. “As many of our largest user markets are in these regions, my strategic priorities are to enable our content partners to grow their audience on Twitter, increase our engagement with emerging talent and digital natives, and bring more premium non-English content onto Twitter.”
Before joining Twitter in 2012, Jaitly was head of public-private partnerships for Google in India and an aide to then-Google CEO Eric
Schmidt in California. He’s a graduate of Princeton University.
Twitter reported last month that it had 316 million users who logged into the microblogging site every month, with the majority of users coming from outside the United States.
The company, which makes most of its money through ads, still gets most of those dollars from the United States.
Other social media companies have tried to tap into the Asia Pacific market, but some such as Facebook have struggled to sell ads in India, Reuters reported in August.
— Queenie Wong
SPRINT DUMPS CONTRACTS; VERIZON STILL NO. 1 IN NETWORK QUALITY
Sprint is dumping two-year contracts for its wireless service, and will stop subsidizing the cost of mobile phones.
That’s three down and one to go for the major U.S. wireless carriers: T-Mobile did away with phone subsidies and contracts in 2013, and Verizon made a similar move earlier this month.
AT&T still offers two-year contracts and phone subsidies.
Sprint has been offering a smartphone lease option since last year, and CEO Marcelo Claure told The Wall Street Journal on Monday that the company will switch to entirely that model by the end of the year. Sprint made the announcement Monday along with the introduction of an “iPhone Forever” plan, which allows customers to upgrade to the latest and greatest iPhone for $22 a month, or, through the end of the year, $15 a month with a trade-in. Those costs come on top of the monthly wireless service charges.
Meanwhile, a new report about wireless network quality saw Sprint edge out TMobile for third place out of the four major U.S. carriers.
RootMetrics, a wireless testing firm, Tuesday reported rankings for the first half of the year: Verizon retains the lead, followed by AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile.
Verizon came in first in overall performance, network reliability, network speed, data performance and call performance. AT&T snagged first place in text performance, and RootMetrics notes that it is “a close second” to Verizon in overall performance. RootMetrics notes that Sprint showed improvements, notably ending up in a second-place tie with AT&T in call performance.
— Levi Sumagaysay
DR. DRE’S‘COMPTON’ALBUM STREAMED 25 MILLION TIMES IN FIRSTWEEK
Dr. Dre’s new“Compton: A Soundtrack” album not only shows that the 50-year-old legendary rapper can make a hit, but also that the young Apple Music streaming service can as well.
Dre’s “Straight Outta Compton” album tie-in has been streamed 25 million times internationally — 11 million times in the U.S.— and sold half a million downloads on iTunes, Apple said. Considering how new Apple Music is, there were questions about whether the service could deliver a blockbuster hit, since Dre’s Apple-exclusive album would not be available on Spotify and other well-established streaming outlets. Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine responded positively to the streaming numbers, noting that this is just the beginning for Apple Music’s hit-making potential.
“We’re beginning to show what we can do in terms of communicating music to a worldwide audience and helping artists at the same time,” said Iovine, according to The New York Times.
Despite critical acclaim, Dre’s new album didn’t quite hit the top of the charts, ranking No. 2 on Billboard’s 200 chart with 295,000 equivalent album units its first week, lagging behind Luke Bryan’s “Kill the Lights,” which sold 345,000 units. Compared with Dre’s hip-hop contemporaries, Drake’s “If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late” had 48 million streams in its first week, and Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp a Butterfly” had nearly 39 million streams. Both albums were released on Spotify, which has 20 million subscribers and another 55 million listeners who listen with ads.
Russ Crupnick, an analyst at MusicWatch, believes the streaming numbers aren’t that impressive even within Apple Music.
“Eleven million is not bad,” Crupnick said to The NewYork Times. “But it’s not a spectacular number if you take in the number of Apple users that exist worldwide.”
It was reported earlier this month that Apple Music has 11 million trial subscribers, but there is no telling how many of those will convert to paying users once the threemonth trial periods ends.
— Jeremy Quach