Zoom Video Communications Inc announced a $14.7 billion all-stock deal to buy cloud-based call center operator Five9 Inc in its largest-ever acquisition, as competition intensifies in its core videoconferencing sector.

The teleconferencing services provider has become a household name and investor favorite in the year since the coronavirus pandemic, as businesses and schools adopted its services to hold virtual classes, office meets and socialise.

The San Jose, California-based company is now shifting focus to its two-year-old cloud-calling product Zoom Phone and conference-hosting product Zoom Rooms as bigger players Facebook and Alphabet’s Google amp up their video products.

“The acquisition is expected to help enhance Zoom’s presence with enterprise customers and allow it to accelerate its long-term growth opportunity by adding the $24-billion contact center market,” Zoom said in a statement on Sunday.

The acquisition will complement Zoom Phone service, an alternative to legacy phone offerings, by adding Five9’s business customers and combining its contact centre software to optimize customer interactions across channels, it added.

Five9’s customers include Under Armour, Lululemon Athletica Inc and Olympus Corp, according to its website.

Five9 will become an operating unit of Zoom and its chief executive, Rowan Trollope, will become a president of the company, staying on as chief of the unit after the deal, which is expected to close in the first half of 2022, it said.

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The officialTwitter account of All India Majils-e-Ittehadul-Muslimeen (AIMIM) was ‘hacked’ on Sunday, party sources said here.

The same account was hacked nine days ago but was restored, they said adding it was again hackedat around 1 pm today.

The hackers changed the Twitter profilename from AIMIM to ‘Elon Musk’ and also theprofile picture of the handle was changed with the photo of Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

“Nine days ago also theTwitter accountof AIMIM was hacked but we communicated toTwitter and the account wasrestored.

Now again the account has been hacked,”a spokesperson of the Hyderabad headquartered party said.

A complaint to Hyderabad police will be lodged on Monday,he said.

No new tweets were posted on the account.

AIMIMs Twitter handle has about 6.78 lakhfollowers.

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Facebook Pay is arriving on other online shopping platforms, starting with e-commerce platform Shopify, that will help businesses ensure a seamless checkout experience for their customers on their own websites.

Currently, the Facebook Pay system is available for users on its main platform, as well as on WhatsApp and Instagram.

“Starting this August, businesses in the US who use participating platforms will have the ability to enable Facebook Pay as a payment option directly on their websites, giving their customers the ability to speed through checkout without having to re-enter their payment information,” the company said in a statement on Thursday.

“We’re starting the rollout with Shopify merchants and expect to expand availability with more platforms and payment service providers over time,” the social network added.

People already use Facebook Pay to send money, shop, donate and more, across Facebook apps and services.

The company said that Facebook Pay is designed to help businesses drive conversion higher by giving customers a low-friction and mobile-friendly way to pay online.

“Payment details are encrypted and securely stored, eliminating the need for businesses to manage customers’ card or bank account numbers,” it added.

“The card and bank account numbers that people provide will not be used to personalise their experience or inform the ads they see”.

Shopify in February partnered with Facebook to bring its checkout and payment processing system — Shop Pay — to Facebook and Instagram.

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Xiaomi Corp. has become the world’s second biggest smartphone maker over the past quarter following an 83 per cent jump in shipments, according to preliminary estimates by Canalys.

This marks the first occasion that Xiaomi, the Chinese maker of everything from rice cookers to gaming monitors, has broken into the top two, historically dominated by Samsung Electronics Co. and Apple Inc. Samsung had a 19 per cent share in the second quarter, Xiaomi had 17 per cent and Apple was at 14 per cent, according to the research firm’s data. Shares of Xiaomi rallied as much as 4.1 per cent on Friday, the best performer on Hong Kong’s benchmark Hang Seng Index.

Huawei Technologies Co. had briefly disrupted the rankings, until sanctions cut it off from essential chip supplies last year. Its withdrawal from the highly competitive smartphone market pushed other Chinese vendors to spend aggressively on new hardware and upgrades. Xiaomi was particularly active, launching two flagship devices within the first four months of the year. Its Mi 11 Ultra device features one of the largest camera sensors in a smartphone to date, underscoring the firm’s ambition to push up into the premium pricing range.

“Compared with Samsung and Apple, its average selling price is around 40 per cent and 75 per cent cheaper respectively,” said Canalys Research Manager Ben Stanton. “So a major priority for Xiaomi this year is to grow sales of its high-end devices, such as the Mi 11 Ultra. But it will be a tough battle, with Oppo and Vivo sharing the same objective, and both willing to spend big on above-the-line marketing to build their brands in a way that Xiaomi is not.”

Overseas expansion was the biggest driver of Xiaomi’s growth, with the company increasing shipments by more than 300 per cent in Latin America, 150 per cent across Africa and 50 per cent in Western Europe, Canalys said. The Mi device maker has spent the first half of the year contesting the title of biggest smartphone maker in China with rivals Oppo and Vivo, each with roughly equal share of the market.

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ZFW Hospitality, a hyperlocal expansion platform for F & B & D2C brands, is entering Mumbai with over 50 dark kitchens & fulfillment centers for brands to expand in the western region.

ZFW, which already partners with leading brands, has established a strong presence in Delhi-NCR with over 35 plus fulfillment centers. This expansion will help the platform scale up to the 100-store mark by August, before its Bangalore launch.

Commenting on the development, Madhav Kasturia, Founder of ZFW said, “Mumbai is a very strategic move for us, as it’s the third-largest market in India for Food Delivery & Hyperlocal E-commerce after Delhi & Bangalore. Most brands on their expansion trajectory prefer to cover the major metros as their first milestones before scaling to Tier-2s & Tier-3s as these are easy-to-access markets. We’ve been very selective in choosing the brands we support & currently have several on the waitlist for the Q3 cohort.”

As part of its first cohort in Mumbai, ZFW will support the growth of 15 plus brands such as Keventers, Vadilal among others. As brands scale D2C capabilities & enter newer markets, supply chain and fulfillment costs often skyrocket. This is where ZFW steps in & assists with rapid expansion through its dark kitchens & fulfillment centers- without operational hassles & upfront costs. A brand can launch a new location in 5 days & service orders in less than 25 minutes.

Shaurya Prabhat, Chief Strategy Officer, Keventers said, “We have successfully piloted Keventers Ice Creamery with ZFW in Delhi. Madhav and team are highly committed, responsive & familiar with running and tracking KPIs related to dark kitchens & D2C operations. Keventers Ice Creamery launched in Mumbai in April & we are pleased to continue our expansion efforts with ZFW here.”

ZFW evolved to a full-stack expansion platform in early 2020 before raising its pre-seed funding round from Mumbai Angels, Expert Dojo, & a clutch of super-angels. The platform is a welcome step towards taking the entire F & B space: one of the hardest-hit sectors since the beginning of the pandemic, back to pre-COVID numbers.

Prince Kuriakose, Launch Manager, ZFW said “Mumbai’s a large market & launching ZFW in the region came with its own set of challenges- culture shift, outsider syndrome, & local guidelines. However, our launch team was prepared to persevere & setup the entire city for our partners. All moves on the ZFW chessboard are played keeping the interests of our brand partners first.”

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BHyve, a future of work platform for diffusing employee tacit knowledge and enabling peer learning networks, said it has raised $300,000 from JITO Angel network along with Letsventure and other angel investors.

Backed by 100X.VC earlier in May this year, BHyve will use the freshly infused capital for marketing, boosting sales and brand building. They would also use the funds for enhancing the technology and build clientele.

Globally, this tacit knowledge represents a loss of $110 billion to global corporations every year. BHyve is a SaaS future of work platform that helps companies document tacit knowledge and enable peer learning networks, which leads to a 35% increase in productivity and a 30% reduction in time spent looking for information, and an engaged, future-ready workforce.

Omkar Pandharkame, an organisational psychologist, Ketaki Ogale, an MBA from Fordham University, and Vihang Mirkhelkar, who has scaled technology for high growth startups in Silicon Valley, are the co-founders of BHyve.

“Raising money through JITO Angel Network has been an insightful experience. We appreciate the hands-on nature and speediness of the deal. With a supportive team, Great smart capital, and very progressive investment thesis, has helped us to demonstrate our vision and get marquee investors on board,” said Omkar Pandharkame, co-founder at BHyve.

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As of March 31, 2021, when Apple released the iOs 14.5 beta update to its operating system, Siri no longer defaults to a female voice when using American English. Users must now choose between two male and two female voices when enabling the voice assistant. This move could be interpreted as a response to the backlash against the gender bias embodied by Siri

But how meaningful is this change really?

Siri has been criticized as embodying several facets of gender bias in artificial intelligence. Digital sociologists Yolande Strengers and Jenny Kennedy argue that Siri, along with other voice assistants such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home, have been developed in order to “carry out ‘wifework’ — domestic duties that have traditionally fallen on (human) wives.”

Siri was originally only voiced as female and programmed to not only perform “wifely” duties such as checking the weather or setting a morning alarm, but also to respond flirtatiously. The use of sexualized phrases by Siri has been extensively documented by hundreds of YouTube videos with titles such as “Things You Should NEVER Ask SIRI” (which has more than 18 million views).

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In a bid to help businesses of all sizes boost productivity in the hybrid work scenario, Microsoft on Wednesday announced a new Cloud service called Windows 365 that will run in Microsoft Cloud and allow customers to set up a Cloud PC with ease.

Windows 365 is not a new operating system but a new way to experience either Windows 10 or Windows 11 in a virtual environment, that streams the full Windows experience to any device. Essentially, Windows 365 allows customers to fuse together the best of the cloud and the device itself.

Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella said that with Windows 365, the company is creating a new category: the Cloud PC.

“Just like applications were brought to the cloud with SaaS, we are now bringing the operating system to the cloud, providing organisations with greater flexibility and a secure way to empower their workforce to be more productive and connected, regardless of location,” Nadella said during the ‘Microsoft Inspire 2021’ event.

Windows 365 will be generally available to businesses of all sizes starting on August 2.

Windows 365 is not a replacement for Azure Virtual Desktop or AVD which is the starting point that the company uses to build Windows 365.

While in AVD, you pay on a consumption basis, in Windows 365, you will pay per user per month per PC or per Cloud PC.

Jared Spataro, corporate vice president, Microsoft 365 said that hybrid work has fundamentally changed the role of technology in organisations in the pandemic.

“Cloud PC is an exciting, new category of hybrid personal computing that turns any device into a personalised, productive, and secure digital workspace,” he said.

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Twitter on Wednesday announced that it will discontinue its Fleets feature, the platform’s own version of stories that disappear after 24 hours, on August 3.

The announcement means the company will end the feature it rolled out last year to compete with the stories features available in Snapchat and Instagram, The Verge reported.

“We hoped Fleets would help more people feel comfortable joining the conversation on Twitter,” Ilya Brown, Twitter’s vice president of product, said in a statement. “But, in the time since we introduced Fleets to everyone, we haven’t seen an increase in the number of new people joining the conversation with Fleets like we hoped.”

Twitter introduced Fleets in November 2020. The feature lets Twitter users post full-screen photos, videos, reactions to tweets or plain text that disappears after 24 hours. Fleets came years after Snapchat and Facebook introduced similar options for their users.

“Fleets are mostly used by people who are already Tweeting to amplify their own Tweets and talk directly with others,” the company said. “We’ll explore more ways to address what holds people back from participating on Twitter.”

The Verge reported that Twitter’s decision to discontinue Fleets is not just an admission that the feature didn’t work, but that the company still hasn’t figured out how to get people tweeting more.

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Netflix Inc., marking its first big move beyond TV shows and films, is planning an expansion into video games and has hired a former Electronic Arts Inc. and Facebook Inc. executive to lead the effort.

Mike Verdu will join Netflix as vice president of game development, reporting to Chief Operating Officer Greg Peters, the company said on Wednesday. Verdu was previously Facebook’s vice president in charge of working with developers to bring games and other content to Oculus virtual-reality headsets.

The idea is to offer video games on Netflix’s streaming platform within the next year, according to a person familiar with the situation. The games will appear alongside current fare as a new programming genre — similar to what Netflix did with documentaries or stand-up specials. The company doesn’t currently plan to charge extra for the content, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private.

Netflix shares gained as much as 3.3% to $566 in late trading after Bloomberg reported the news. The stock had been up 1.3% this year through Wednesday’s close.

Netflix has been seeking ways to keep growing, especially in more saturated markets such as the U.S. That’s included building out its kids’ programming, opening an online shop to sell merchandise, and tapping Steven Spielberg to bring more prestigious movies to its lineup. The company remains well ahead of streaming rivals such as Disney+ or HBO Max, but it added fewer subscribers than expected in its most recently reported quarter.

ALSO READ: Spielberg to make movies for Netflix, as firm looks for quality content

Pushing into games would be one of Netflix’s boldest moves yet. In Verdu, the company has an executive who worked on popular mobile games at Electronic Arts, including titles in the Sims, Plants vs. Zombies and Star Wars franchises. He also served as chief creative officer for Zynga Inc. between 2009 and 2012.

Netflix will be building out its gaming team in the coming months, according to the person familiar with the matter. The company has already started advertising for game-development related positions on its website.

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