It looks like Apple is jumping on the ad blocking bandwagon — which is about to cause a major headache for digital publishers (AAPL) | ||
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It looks as though Apple is about to allow its users to block ads from their iPhones and iPads. As NiemanLab reports, Apple's developer documentation detailing "What's New in Safari" (Apple's internet browser) highlights the change. The document (which you find read in full here) reads: "The new Safari release brings Content Blocking Safari Extensions to iOS. Content Blocking gives your extensions a fast and efficient way to block cookies, images, resources, pop-ups, and other content." Business Insider has contacted Apple for clarification as to whether this means it will allow developers to build ad blocking apps and browser extensions. We'll update this article once we hear back. However, sources within the ad blocking community, and other news outlets such as the Financial Times and The Next Web, have interpreted the update to mean Apple will be allowing users to block ads in some form. If this is the case, that's a huge blow for online publishers, many of whom rely on advertising for the majority of their revenue, and to create content that readers can consume for free. Apple allowing ad blocking for the first time is another step towards ad blocking becoming mainstream. The number of people with ad blockers installed worldwide grew 70% year on year to 144 million in 2014 and is expected to rise a further 50% this year, according to PageFair and Adobe. There is the argument that, because it looks like Apple will only allow ad blocking as an opt-in (i.e. people will have to choose to download a browser extension like Adblock Plus,) it's only the already-existing ad blocking crowd that will get on board with ad blocking on iPhones and iPads. But that's still worrisome. Most publishers are now reporting that more than 50% of their audience comes from mobile — and iPhone and iPad users are generally seen as the most valuable of the lot. Previously ad blocking companies have found it difficult to build for mobile. One of the reasons one of the most popular ad blockers, Adblock Plus, recently created its own Android browser is because its previous Android browser extension was removed from the Play Store (Google's app store) by Google for violating rules on interfering with other apps' functionality. And Adblock Plus's operations and communications manager Ben Williams told Business Insider last month that previously, iOS had been "harder to develop on," describing it as a "walled garden that's more difficult to get an API." Not so any more, it seems. Apple CEO Tim Cook has recently launched attacks against Silicon Valley technology companies that collect data about users in order to serve them ads. In a speech earlier this month, Cook — fairly obviously taking a swipe at Facebook and Google — said: Our privacy is being attacked on multiple fronts. I'm speaking to you from Silicon Valley, where some of the most prominent and successful companies have built their businesses by lulling their customers into complacency about their personal information. They're gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetize it. We think that's wrong. And it's not the kind of company that Apple wants to be. However, Cook has been criticized for being "disingenuous" in this argument. Apple itself has a division that is in the business of serving ads: iAd. True, it's a tiny part of its business, generating just $487 million last year, or 0.3% of Apple's total revenue, according to eMarketer. But it could be about to become a lot more important to Apple. At its big developers' conference earlier this week, Apple announced a Flipboard-style News app as part of the iOS9 update that's coming later this year. Publishers including The New York Times, Wired, and ESPN have signed up as launch partners. Publishers can choose to earn 100% of the revenue from the ads they sell, or 70% if Apple's iAd sells the ads for them. As NiemanLab points out, it's likely all but the biggest publishers will rely on Apple to do the ad selling on their behalf. A cynic could infer that, by allowing ad blocking, Apple is hoping that it can shift news and magazine consumption away from the browser and directly into its app, where it has a chance of monetizing the content. It's a stretch — most people don't necessarily fire up a news app each morning; they get their content from Facebook, Twitter, search, WhatsApp and so on — but until Apple provides further clarification on exactly what its "content blocking Safari extensions" have actually been designed for, publishers are on high alert. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: How Elon Musk can tell if job applicants are lying about their experience  | ||
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Twitter wants users to team up to stamp out trolls on the platform (TWTR) | ||
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Twitter is taking steps to combat its ongoing trolling and harassment problem by introducing shared blocklists, the company announced in a blog post on Wednesday evening. The social network has been referred to as the "world's water cooler" — a huge public forum for debate across the globe. But there's a dark side to this popularity, with harassment, abuse, and trolling running rampant on the platform. The problem is particularly prevalent on Twitter: One study found that 88% of online abuse occurs on Twitter, despite being far smaller than rival social networks like Facebook. In a leaked memo earlier this year, CEO Dick Costolo told employees he was "ashamed of how poorly" the company has dealt with the issue. He says he takes "PERSONAL responsibility for our failure to deal with this as a company." Activists and those targeted by trolls have repeatedly criticised Twitter for its apparent inability to act, and have also previously taken unilateral steps to make the site safer for them. One of these steps was the use of blocklists that users could share amongst one another using external plugins to build a united front against harassing accounts. Twitter is now adding similar functionality directly to the site. "You can now export and share your block lists with people in your community facing similar issues or import another user’s list into your own account and block multiple accounts all at once, instead of blocking them individually," user safety engineer Xiaoyun Zhang wrote. "We also hope these advanced blocking tools will prove useful to the developer community to further improve users’ experience." In practice this means that it's possible for an activist to build up a large list of accounts that are harassing or sending unwanted messages. The activist can then easily share this blocklist with their followers — so they can all benefit from its protection too. Here's how it looks to export a blocklist:
Twitter also introduced a "quality filter" in March that lets users automatically hide tweets from accounts determined by an algorithm to be "low-quality." But the feature is only available to verified users, meaning that while it can aid the most high-profile victims of abuse, the vast majority of users on the platform still don't have access to it. Ziaoyun Zhang suggests that more changes to Twitter's platform are coming soon. "We're also working on additional user controls," she writes, "and we look forward to sharing more information about those in the near future." Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Dwight from 'The Office' explains how Twitter has evolved over the years  | ||
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Network Rail is spending £100 million a week upgrading the UK's crumbling rail network | ||
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Anyone who has commuted by train in rush hour knows that the UK's rail system is seriously feeling the strain of a growing population. Network Rail laid out some stats to back this up this morning in its full-year results. An extra 67.3 million people started using the trains over the last year, taking the total number of travellers to a record high of 1.65 billion. That's over double the figure from 20 years ago. As a result of this surge, Network Rail, which maintains the UK's railways, is having to frantically pump money into the railway to keep up with demand. The company spent £3.4 billion ($5.25 billion) on servicing and upgrading the network last year — equivalent to over £100 million ($154.5 million) every week. That's double what it was spending five years ago. Most of that — £2.9 billion ($4.48 billion) — went on replacing worn out assets, i.e. replacing old rails and fixing broken trains. Most of the network was built decades ago. Those are some pretty insane stats. Spending £2.9 billion ($4.48 billion) renovating a network while 1.65 billion people are using it is like trying to rebuild a packed car while it's travelling at 60 miles an hour. To make matters worse Network Rail had its budget cut by £246 million ($380 million) last year after the government, which is desperately trying to balance its own books, decided it didn't need as much money. This subsidy cut, combined with financial hedges that went against the company, meant Network Rail's pre-tax profit plummeted from £1.03 billion ($1.59 billion) to £506 million ($781.7 million) last year. Any profits it does make are reinvested in the railway. Finance director Patrick Butcher says: "The railways continue to grow in popularity and we continue to invest heavily to respond to that demand. While progress is being made in improving performance, safety, asset reliability and delivering more renewals and projects, our rate of acceleration in these areas isn't yet where we want it to be. "With more than a million more trains on the network than ten years ago, there are inevitable challenges. We are determined to do more to improve and action is being taken to quicken the pace of change." Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Here's how Cristiano Ronaldo spends his money  | ||
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Its looks like Apple will let iPhone users block all ads they see on the web — which is going to really hurt publishers (AAPL) | ||
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It looks as though Apple is about to allow its users to block ads from their iPhones and iPads. As NiemanLab reports, Apple's developer documentation detailing "What's New in Safari" (Apple's internet browser) highlights the change. The document (which you find read in full here) reads: "The new Safari release brings Content Blocking Safari Extensions to iOS. Content Blocking gives your extensions a fast and efficient way to block cookies, images, resources, pop-ups, and other content." Business Insider has contacted Apple for clarification as to whether this means it will allow developers to build ad blocking apps and browser extensions. We'll update this article once we hear back. However, sources within the ad blocking community, and other news outlets such as the Financial Times and The Next Web, have interpreted the update to mean Apple will be allowing users to block ads in some form. If this is the case, that's a huge blow for online publishers, many of whom rely on advertising for the majority of their revenue, and to create content that readers can consume for free. Apple allowing ad blocking for the first time is another step towards ad blocking becoming mainstream. The number of people with ad blockers installed worldwide grew 70% year on year to 144 million in 2014 and is expected to rise a further 50% this year, according to PageFair and Adobe. There is the argument that, because it looks like Apple will only allow ad blocking as an opt-in (i.e. people will have to choose to download a browser extension like Adblock Plus,) it's only the already-existing ad blocking crowd that will get on board with ad blocking on iPhones and iPads. But that's still worrisome. Most publishers are now reporting that more than 50% of their audience comes from mobile — and iPhone and iPad users are generally seen as the most valuable of the lot. Previously ad blocking companies have found it difficult to build for mobile. One of the reasons one of the most popular ad blockers, Adblock Plus, recently created its own Android browser is because its previous Android browser extension was removed from the Play Store (Google's app store) by Google for violating rules on interfering with other apps' functionality. And Adblock Plus's operations and communications manager Ben Williams told Business Insider last month that previously, iOS had been "harder to develop on," describing it as a "walled garden that's more difficult to get an API." Not so any more, it seems. Apple CEO Tim Cook has recently launched attacks against Silicon Valley technology companies that collect data about users in order to serve them ads. In a speech earlier this month, Cook — fairly obviously taking a swipe at Facebook and Google — said: Our privacy is being attacked on multiple fronts. I'm speaking to you from Silicon Valley, where some of the most prominent and successful companies have built their businesses by lulling their customers into complacency about their personal information. They're gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetize it. We think that's wrong. And it's not the kind of company that Apple wants to be. However, Cook has been criticized for being "disingenuous" in this argument. Apple itself has a division that is in the business of serving ads: iAd. True, it's a tiny part of its business, generating just $487 million last year, or 0.3% of Apple's total revenue, according to eMarketer. But it could be about to become a lot more important to Apple. At its big developers' conference earlier this week, Apple announced a Flipboard-style News app as part of the iOS9 update that's coming later this year. Publishers including The New York Times, Wired, and ESPN have signed up as launch partners. Publishers can choose to earn 100% of the revenue from the ads they sell, or 70% if Apple's iAd sells the ads for them. As NiemanLab points out, it's likely all but the biggest publishers will rely on Apple to do the ad selling on their behalf. A cynic could infer that, by allowing ad blocking, Apple is hoping that it can shift news and magazine consumption away from the browser and directly into its app, where it has a chance of monetizing the content. Or even away from the mobile web and to publishers' own news apps, which arguably offer a better experience than the browser. It's a stretch — most people don't necessarily fire up a news app each morning; they get their content from Facebook, Twitter, search, WhatsApp and so on — but until Apple provides further clarification on exactly what its "content blocking Safari extensions" have actually been designed for, publishers are on high alert. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: How Elon Musk can tell if job applicants are lying about their experience  | ||
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CREDIT SUISSE: 'There is a 60-70% chance that a bubble could form' | ||
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"We think there is a 60% to 70% chance that we end up in an equity bubble in the medium term, albeit with the inevitable road bumps along the way." That's according to stock market analysts at investment bank Credit Suisse, in a note sent out this morning. They're not calling anything historically unusual, in their opinion, adding that "bull markets in most assets end in bubbles." The authors want to be clear — they don't think stocks are in a bubble right now. Though some people have fretted about the length of the current bull market (which Credit Suisse defines as any unbroken period without a slump of 20% or more), but there are comparable historical periods that lasted much longer:
However, the authors note that it has been a long time since a smaller 10% correction in US stocks — that hasn't happened since back in 2011. Though there are some examples of longer periods without a dip of that size, there are fewer:
Here's are three of the main forces mentioned which could drive a bubble:
They've also provided their list of things to look out for in a frothy market — for the time being, they don't see a bubble in most of them, but they're the ones to watch:
Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Two models in Russia just posed with a 1,400-pound bear  | ||
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Greek public broadcaster back on air two years after shutdown | ||
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Athens (AFP) - Greece's public broadcaster ERT came back on the air on Thursday, exactly two years after it was shut down by the previous government, which accused it of being wasteful and mismanaged. The reinstatement of the channel -- which was replaced by a scaled-down version named Nerit -- was one of the election promises of the new government under the radical leftists Syriza, who have been in power for less than six months. The previous conservative-led government in July 2013 shut down the TV station and fired some 2,600 people in order to meet layoff quotas laid down by Greece's international creditors. Its sudden closure after more than 60 years of service shocked Greeks, provoked numerous demonstrations and was condemned internationally. A news programme was the first broadcast to appear on the channel on Thursday shortly after 6:00 am (0300 GMT), with two presenters saying they were moved to be back on the air and promising that the resurrected broadcaster would be "television for the Greeks... and will not be controlled by any government." The bill to reopen ERT was adopted by parliament in April with the backing of Syriza and its coalition partners, the Independent Greeks. The main opposition New Democracy party voted against the legislation. Under the bill, any of ERT's 2,600 employees who wish to return to work can do so and have until June 16 to submit their applications. A source at the information ministry told AFP that as of Monday 1,600 former employees said they wanted to come back. The law set the cost of the broadcaster at 60 million euros ($68 million) a year and would be covered by a licence fee of three euros a month. A year after ERT's closure it was rebranded as Nerit, with a smaller budget and 500 employees. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras made it his mission to bring back ERT, calling its closure "a crime against Greek people and democracy". Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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10 things you need to know in markets today | ||
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Good morning! Here are the major stories you need to hear in markets today. S&P just slashed Greece's credit rating even deeper into junk territory. "We have lowered our long-term sovereign credit rating on Greece to 'CCC' from 'CCC+' to reflect our opinion that in the absence of an agreement between Greece and its official creditors, the Greek government will likely default on its commercial debt within the next 12 months," the credit-rating agency warned. Chinese retail sales came in as forecast in May, while industrial production narrowly beat expectations. Industrial production rose 6.1% year on year, just 0.1% higher than analysts expected. Retail sales came in up 10.1%, exactly as expected. The World Bank joined the IMF in pushing for a later US rate hike. According to Bloomberg, the bank's chief economist, Kaushik Basu, said on Wednesday that the economy is sending mixed signals. The World Bank also cut its forecast for US growth this year to 2.7% from 3.2% in its semiannual update on its forecasts for the global economy. US hedge fund Elliott made a new legal challenge against a Samsung merger. Elliott said it had filed its second injunction with a South Korean court, this time to stop Samsung C&T Corp from selling treasury shares to KCC Corp in a bid to gain KCC's support for the proposed all-share takeover offer from Cheil Industries Inc. Emirates says it would harm other European airlines if it brought in more European flights. CEO Tim Clark said: "If I was to put the (Airbus super-jumbo) A380 through multiple points in Europe, we would clean out the business like a Dyson hoover," referring to a vacuum cleaner. "I don't want to do that." Greece's PM Alexis Tsipras finished a meeting with France's Francois Hollande and Germany's Angela Merkel last night. Afterwards Tsipras said that Greece and EU heavyweights Germany and France had agreed that last-ditch bailout talks must reach a "viable solution" as negotiations broke-up without a deal. UK Chancellor George Osborne is going to sell the government's RBS share at a loss. During his Mansion House speech, Osborne said that the sale of RBS shares at a loss would be more than offset by profit on other bank shares sold by the government, according to the Financial Times. New Zealand slashed interest rates. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand cut its overnight interest rate to 3.25% from 3.5%, and the New Zealand dollar immediately slipped by about 2% against the US dollar. Then South Korea slashed interest rates. The Bank of Korea has followed suit, slashing its key policy rate by 0.25% to 1.5%, an all time low. The decision is the fourth rate cut delivered by the BoK in the past 12 months. Asian markets are mixed. The Nikkei is up 1.48%, followed by Hong Kong's Hang Seng, which is up 0.95%. China's Shanghai Composite Index is down a little, 0.13% lower. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Here's how Cristiano Ronaldo spends his money  | ||
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