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A new round personnel adjustment made in Reddit

The seniors management officials have been talking about their new plans in past months, which aimed to turn social news into a real business.

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The confirmed source indicated Reddit has been adjusting key positions in past few weeks. It attempted to make fresh vitality for the company.

The personnel adjustment may involve Celestine Maddy and chief editor Vickie Chang, reported Recode.

Vickie Chang once dealt with Upvoted project, which aimed at creating BuzzFeed of internal Reddit content.He reported his job to Reddit co-founder and Alexis Ohanian.

The latest resigned official included video content chief Stephen Greenwood and HR talent Nicole Jasmin Clark. Clark’s LinkedIn profile showed July is the last month she serves in Reddit.

Diana Chow, spokesman of Reddit, stated in email that some of dismissed positions mean little to our strategy. However, she did not confirm the officials who have resigned from the company.

The strategy which Diana Chow mentioned is the one that Steve Huffman has been talking about. The core of this strategy is the advertising agreements it signed with Coco Cola and Google. Steve Huffman told Fortune reporter that it is going to make profit from the advertising agreements.

Reddit sent an email announcement to Recode then. It claimed :” Our company has been regrouping the communications, editing, video and marketing teams in past weeks. As a part of this regroup, some employees quit their positions and some will make decisions based on the change of positions. We wish all the best to our former co-workers and appreciate their contributions to Reddit.”

McDonald’s share increases as it presents Pokémon Go toy as a gift in Japan

With the influence of McDonald’s Japanese branch presented Pokémon Go toy as a gift in Happy Meals, its share increased by 23% which was almost up to the raising limit.

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McDonald’s Japanese branch has been cooperating with Nico Puchi since last Friday to present Pokémon Go toy as a gift in Happy Meals. This action led to an 23% increase of McDonald’s share today. The increase rate was the biggest one-day gain since July, 2001.

In the meanwhile, Nintendo also profited with a share increase of 13% today. The market value of Nintendo reached overfulfil $39 billion, ranking ahead of Sony.

Besides presenting Pokémon Go toy, McDonald also sponsored Pokémon Go with other means. Quoted from Gizmodo, McDonald’s will sponsor this game with the means of Pokéstop and Gym.

Some players found the logo of McDonald’s in Pokémon Go’s code, showing Sponsored.MCDonalds.

The confirmed source claimed that such sponsorship plan will be carried out in some Asian country. Each of McDonald’s in that country will be Pokéstop or Gym for Pokémon Go.

It is unclear which country will be selected. It is possibly in Japan. Pokémon Go originated from Japan. Pokémon Go is under release in Japan so far which made players angry.

John Hanke, CEO of Niantic company, stated it considered carrying out the sponsorship plan for Pokémon Go, such as the fix retail stores or vending machine of designated sponsors.

To urban players, McDonald’s is easy to access and with free Wi-Fi. It sounds a attractive boon.

Pokémon Go adds Pokéstop to stimulate consumption

AR mobile game Pokémon Go has been downloading for 15 million times. Its developers claimed that this game will introduce advertisements soon.

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Niantic CEO John Hanke stressed the Pokéstop  will become one of income besides purchasing energy and virtual gifts inside the application, reported Financial Times.

Pokémon Go is an mobile game combines with AR technology and LBS technolgy, which players go to hunt and train Pokémon outdoor as well as purchase equipment and team up with others to battle. The development team will choose some well-known sites as the Pokéstop or Gym where players can catch pokéballs or other equipment and fight. The sites set up as Pokéstop and Gym have attracted more players as the game has become so popular.

It has a Lure Module that attracts Pokémon to a Pokéstop for 30 minutes. The merchants around Pokéstop or Gym can benefit from the effect as well. They have to pay the Pokémon company to be a Pokéstop of this game.

The owner of a pizza bar that locates in Queens told New York Post that Pokéstop stimulated sales with an increase of 75% when he purchased the Lure Module as it attracted a great amount of Pokémon for 30 minutes.

Niantic spokesman denied to reveal the specific details and revenue concerning advertising revenue and subscriptions of this game. Sensor Tower revealed the statistics that the sum of business transactions of American iOS players is up to $1.6 million.

Haruka Mori, analyst of JPMorgan, estimated that Nintendo will benefit from about $240 in revenue if Pokémon Go monthly revenue reaches $292 million. If the sales of Pokémon Go Plus is up to 50 million units, it will create about $240 million profit for Nintendo.

Microsoft confirms to shut down Finland mobile department, cutting 1,350 jobs

Microsoft, the American software giant, acquired Nokia mobile business for $ 7.2 billion in 2014. However, it failed to make achievements with the new device. The Windows OS based on WP only accounted for 1% of global smartphone sales in May.

Some experts analyzed its failure is due to Microsoft did not step into smartphone industry in time. It lost a head start.

Eddie Murphy, analyst of Priory Consulting, said Microsoft spent a lot of money to launch WP as it realized the importance of smartphone industry. The question is that Microsoft lost a head start as it step into this field late. Apple and Android devices have already controled the market when it released WP devices.

One of the difficulties that Microsoft encountered is app gap. It was unable to offer the popular apps which are available on smartphones. It happened to Blackberry BB10 as well.

“The app gap is a big problem,” said Murphy. He also has a Windows mobile whose apps are fewer than Android devices. It is disadvantage to Microsoft.

The staff reduction plan it announced on Monday is a part of plan that it made to cut 1,850 jobs for Microsoft mobile department in May.

Microsoft latest Windows 10 is compatible with samrtphone. In February, HP enterprise announced to turn a smartphone based on Windows 10 to a desktop.

Murphy said Microsoft must have been learning what Google use Android OS for? The reason why Android OS could be in such a dominant position is that Android OS is open. Microsoft have released the general Windows 10 OS for desktop, iPad and mobile. It is a good sign as it would bring some more apps on this platform.

Samsung Electronics Q2 performance may be the best in past two years

Thanks to the promotion of Galaxy S7, Samsung Electronics is supposed to release the best quarterly performance in the past two years, reports Reuters.

It is reported that Samsung Electronis will reveal the preliminary data concerning Q 2 profit on Thursday. The analysts predicted that mobile department help the company increase operating profit by 13% on YoY.

Thompson Reuters revealed the average prediction based on 16 analysts that its operating profit in Q2 will be $ 6.8 billion, which is the best performance in the past two year. It made a record with about $7.3508 billion in operating profit in Q1 2014.

It may be the second time for mobile department that it becomes the most profitable department twice in a row. Its profit in Q2 is about $3.71864 billion.

Lee Jin-woo, manager of KTBAsset management, claimed the sales of Galaxy S7 did better as expected and its semi-conductor business did a better job against its rivals. He suggested that Samsung Electronics quarterly trading profit will be remained.

It is predicted that the shipping quantity of Galaxy S7 could be 16 million units in Q2. The curved-display version sells better than its flat-display ones.

While a report of Korea Investment&Securities implies the trading profit for mobile department will decline in Q3 and Q4. Counting in the whole year revenue, it will receive growth in trading profit.

The search experience at App Store is worse than Product Hunt’s

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General speaking, search application is easy to use. All you need is to insert the application name to search. What if you don’t know the specific application name? If so, App Store and Google Play won’t help much for the search.

Search GIF

GIF nearly becomes a new communication means. At TNW European conference, Adam Leibsohn , the CEO of Giphy, talked about how GIF replace conversations and become a popular communication means in the world.

He assumed that one should not type several paragraphs when communicating with others on social networking platform with the helpf of GIF. To make it a short story, GIF is excellent and welcome by most of people. Why is so difficult to search a real good GIF editing app?

Search experience is unsatisfied

If you search GIF editing app at App Store, you could only get some irrelevant results. It even listed out some emojis and color characters. Such results are not about GIF editing app.

Product Hunt does better job than App Store

You might have heard of Product Hunt. Someone recommended a GIF Toaster on Product Hunt. GIF Toaster was released in 2014 and updated with some new features on this June 24.

To be specific, GIF Toaster added the GIF transformation function. App Store also has the similar app, however, it requires one to search one by one from the results.

GIF Toaster is far from perfect. You need to pay $1.99 to decrypt the features inside the software. It is considered as the best GIF production and editing app on the market.

It is a mutliple GIF app. It won’t beranking front in GIF app search unless you search the “video transform into GIF.

Apple needs to improve its apps on the aspect of language, algorithm and sorting. When you are unable to search the apps at App Store, you have to turn to the third party products. It would be great if Apple improve its App Store for better search experience in the near future.

Nearly all US teenagers read news from Snapchat and Twitter

With the development of mobile internet, the means of obtaining news have been changed. The traditional news websites or mobile news apps gradually lost their advantages. It reported that the teenagers are most of reading news from Snapchat and Twitter nowadays.

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Some survey showed that the teenagers from 13 to 18 years old, on whom spent 9 hours reading entertainment content, obtained the news source most.

It is said that many of teenagers won’t use new apps to browse news. They obtained news on social networking platforms where news has been editted or chosen.

Facebook, whose content is enrich, has lost attraction to the youth. More and more teenagers reply on Snapchat and Twitter reading news.

“If I find some interesting news on Snapchat, I would share them with my friends by using the sharing feature,” said teenager Isabella. She claimed that she often read news on Buzzfeed of Snapchat. It has been a long time since she read newspaper last time.

According to the report of Variety, 44% of Live Story and Discover users check news at least once each day. 30% of Snapchat users also considered these two services as important platforms to obtain news concerning the 2016 general election.

There are both advantages and disadvantages obtaining news from social networking platforms. It was spread fast. Some news spread without confirmed, which leading to rumors. Though users may encounter risky news, they still have faith in reading news on social networking platforms.

Reid Hoffman benefits $2.9 billion from LindedIn acquisition

The news concerning Microsoft acquired LindedIn became widely concerned. It spent $ 26.2 billion to acquire LindedIn. LindedIn co-founder & CEO benefits a lot from this acquisition. In the meanwhile, he might need to pay for a great amount of tax.

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Up to February, Hoffman held 11% of LindedIn shares. Considering the acquired price for each share is $196, he will make over $ 2.8 billion.

He lives in California. The tax he pays will be in accordance with both California tax law and Federal tax law. The Capital gain tax of California is 13.3%, so he possibly pays $ 370 million. Plus the Capital gain tax of Federal is 23.8%, he needs to pay about $ 1 billion in total.

“It is a good news that Hoffman earns a great amount of sum. In the meanwhile, the California government will receive a great deal of tax,” said Daniel Morris, the co-founder of Morris+ D’Angelo accounting firm.

It is not clear which measure Hoffman will take to avoid paying tax. Morris explained Hoffman has several options. First, Hoffman could donote $ 1 billion or more to charity organization. Hoffman and his wife Michelle Yee are high profile philanthropists. They once donated millions of Zynga shares to charity organization.

Another option is that Hoffman could make limited investments. He could put his assets into the startups to postpone paying tax.

To California, this capital gain tax is timely as its tax revenue declines. Fewer IPO and share selling and acquisition are the reason why the government received fewer revenue.

What features you expect for updated Apple Music?

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Apple introduced the updated Apple Music at WWDC 2016 as reported. Its main interface becomes more simplifier and features meet the need. The classifications, font of options have been adjusted. It refreshes the users.

Apple senior vice manager Eddy Cue announced at WWDC that Apple Music’s subscribers have reached 15 million since its release. It became the fastest-growing streaming music service. Then its sales supervisor Bozoma Saint John introduced the newest Apple Music features.

Once users run the App, they will find out the difference on the main interface. Its major menu has been adjusted to “Library”, “For You”‘ “Browse”, “Radio” and “Search.” It deleted the previous section of “New”, and added “Search” feature to be one of its major features.

When users visit its home page, they will find “Library” replaced ” For You.” The reason why Apple adjusted these elements is that many listeners are get used to listen music through their “Library”. Therefore, Apple adjusted ” Library” to its home page.

Apple set five sub-menu options for “Library” for listeners to manage it easily. The sub options are “Playlist”, “Artist”, “Album”, “Songs”, and “Download Music.” The latter is the new feature added where classifies digital songs were bought by listeners.

It updated with a Lyrics feature as well. Listeners could listen and sing when they are working. However, Siant John did not reveal more details concerning its compatible languages.

Even though Apple adjusted its home page, “For You” is still an important element on Apple Music. Its sub options are “Discovery Mix”,” Recently Played”, “Daily curated playlist”, and “Connect.”

Maybe the updated Apple Music is far from perfect, it still won likes as it adjusted the features based on the marketing feedback. It will be debut in this autumn, along with iOS 10. It is compatible for Apple iPhones, Apple TV, Mac, PC and Android devices.

Will Twitter be acquired next year?

Suntrust Robinson Humphrey analyst Robert Peck claimed that if Twitter fails to solve the problem it encountered, it might be acquired by other company in 2017, reported Bloomberg.

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Report made by Peck stated that:”Twitter encountered trouble in user growth and its activeness declined. If this trend keeps going, it is inevitable that Twitter seeks for merger. Our survey showed that its performance in April and May did not do good jobs.”

As the target of a merger, Twitter still has attractions. Peck insists its buy rating for Twitter shares. Peck assumed it will be acquired in 2017 if Twitter fails to improve the bad situation. Google, Facebook, Apple and even some traditional media companies are its potential purchasers.

Twitter encountered the brain drain recently. It is reported that some senior directors left the company. Peck considers it is in a worrying situation, especially that Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram all develop well in this field.

In the past year, Twitter’s share price declined by 60%。 Now, the Wall Street analyst priced Twitter’s average target price at $18, while it was closing at $15 on Monday.

By contrast, its average target price was at $ 47.83. Cowen and Company analyst John Blackledge only gave $ 38 for its share, while Peck priced at $44.

It was previous estimated that Twitter might be acquired in the beginning of this year. Twitter obtains 300 million worldwide users, however, it was exceeded by other social networking platforms. Even though the revenue keeps increasing, it is still hard to make profit.