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How blockchain technology impact on mobile app development
Blockchain is explained to cryptocurrencies? Well, people regularly think it is similar to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, etc. But that's not all; there are two separate parameters behind context blockchain cryptocurrency technology is greatly used nowadays. Blockchain today is used in virtually every sector or industry. It is a future of mobile apps Development Companies. Some of them are banking, mobile application development, hedge funds, infrastructure security, health, etc.
First of all, Blockchain in Short
Blockchain is a technology that enables companies and people to make immediate transactions over a network without including any intermediary. Offers made on the Blockchain are secure, and they kept as a record. Box computer coding ensures that no record of a transaction can be modified after the fact on the Blockchain.
How does it work?
First, we will know the history. So Blockchain is a history of transactions. There is a chain of blocks describing the data in a specific order.
It works as frequently a great book, only that person cannot change the data once put into it. Each information block has new operations on the entries. In this way, people and businesses can do both and check transactions.
Primarily, Blockchain plays a necessary role in monitoring transactions securely, which is something that every business would need to perform at some point in time.
So we'll see how application developers can enjoy the benefits of this futuristic technology in the next time by performing the blockchain technology in mobile applications they create.
Since all mobile application developers and software developers should be aware of any emerging technology in this sector. We have an established list of goods and benefits that Blockchain been raking in the development of applications in the mobile industry and the way it will be the future of mobile application development.
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A Secure See through Environment
There is famous transparency with Blockchain technology. Since several shown transaction, both the users and developers can track information and see everything about the process.
A Complex Digital Ledger System
Since Blockchain works as a famous book, but through a computer network, it sends the data commonly and explains all the time. Whenever there is a difference of any information, the change to other machines networked holding the very register to update values.
Similarly, mobile technology uses a client-side and server system. The receiver and act as the client application and the central server distributes data on the approval of customer requirements.
Blockchain can dramatically change mobile networks that work with millions of user data distribution and storage.
Encryption Granted For Multiple Users
Encryption is so involved in Blockchain that nobody can follow the rule unless they have a decryption key. And this method maybe granted to anyone who needs multiple user access; therefore, it greatly impacts the development of mobile applications.
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Digital Wallets for Cryptocurrency
The boom has made massive cryptocurrency following of electronic purse applications. With this, mobile developers see a much increase in the charge for digital portfolios based on cryptocurrency who rely on blockchain technology.
Everyone wants a protected digital wallet an application that ensures that transactions are taken out as other online payment systems.
Digital Identity The mobile application developers design applications for digital identity management for security companies, banks, and other companies such. This identity management is because of government agencies, banks, educational institutions and others use the personal digital identity of users, which is created on blocks of Blockchain. Now, since each block on the Blockchain have their uniqueness and are good, it is easy to save private information on the network or in private blockchain publicly. Smart Contract Systems The Blockchain the blocks can record information - can it be timestamp, property, or even values. This way Blockchain can be used to build intelligent systems contracts. Since the chance of data manipulation is very negligible, it supports the concept of intelligent contracts among customers and companies because of its architecture peer-to-peer. Therefore, mobile applications grow more aggressively to provide an installation damaging these operations. Such agreements will become more secure and cost-effective between the parties with legal processes in the real world.
Conclusion
As mentioned above benefits suggest, it clearly shows that the blockchain technology can make innovation for the business processes and increases the safety, transparency, and efficiency for customers at the same time. We can also see information above its impact on the future of mobile app development.
This information means that blockchain technology will serve mobile developers as a futuristic magic tool that can take the development of their application to the next level. So make sure your mobile developers have the skills and expertise to integrate the best benefits of blockchain technology in the development of your application. You may get in touch with us at Best App Development Companies in Kenya for a free quote to develop a mobile app for your business. And helps Business owners to reach more customers who want to change their business towards app development, The Company has a very good working environment. To know more about my company, Visit Fusion Informatics. For more queries please send an mail to get a free quote [email protected].
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#Top Mobile App Development Company Madagascar#Top Mobile App Development Companies Madagascar#Mobile App#Top Mobile App Development Madagascar#Mobile Apps#iOS Apps#App Developer#Top Mobile App Development#App Development#Android Apps#App Dev
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e2f is a global localization and translation company in California, France, Mauritius, Madagascar & Vietnam. Our 24/5 project management team handles projects of any size and domain (including apps, games, websites, legal, technical, and marketing content) with short deadlines while following strict procedures and applying QA methodologies.
Our clients are technology startups, mobile app developers, gaming companies, and companies, in many industries (IT, technical, marketing, hospitality, life sciences, etc.). We offer full-service localization, including translation, testing, data collection services voice-over, and desktop publishing.
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Illustration Photo: Living Goods app in Kenya(credits: Living Goods / Flickr Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0))
Competition for African Startups and Team on App and Game Development
For Egypt, Algeria, Angola, Cameroon, Chad, Comoros, Côte d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritania, Namibia, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, The Gambia, Nigeria, Togo, Uganda
The African App Launchpad (AAL) initiative is an Africa-wide platform aiming to build capacity of Youth from Egypt and other African States and foster establishment of sustainable startups in the area of the advanced ever-changing app and game technologies.
AAL targets to build capacity of 10,000 young calibers and support the establishment of 100 startups in gaming and app development across all Africa. AAL works by availing a high-quality, technology-learning online platform through crowd-sourcing top online content developed by prestigious universities and leading companies, and delivered through three leading MOOCs; Coursera, edX, and Udacity.
Track
Game Development
Join this track if your startup team is working on game development, VR, or AR applications.
App. Development
Join this track if your startup team is working on specific App development using any technology. (Mobile, Cloud, Web, IOT, AI, .. etc)
Prizes and Perks
Money Prize Icon. AAL Cup Competition provides $60 K as a money prize for winners. Total Cash Prizes for Winners
Online Certified Icon. African App Launchpad provides fully funded online grants. Business Planning and Tech Training by IBM
Money Prize Icon. AAL Cup Competition provides $60 K as a money prize for winners. Mentorship by IBM Experts
Online Certified Icon. African App Launchpad provides fully funded online grants. Cloud credits from Startup with IBM prorgam
Eligibility Criteria
Eligible Africa Countries: Egypt, Algeria, Angola, Cameroon, Chad, Comoros, Côte d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritania, Namibia, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, The Gambia, Nigeria, Togo and Uganda. Apply as Teams or Startups up to 2 Years Old Team Size not Less than 2 Members A Working Prototype at least is a Must
Prizes
Three winners for each of the two tracks: USD 12,000, USD 8,000, USD 4,000. The other top finalists will receive USD 1,000 each. A real-time online business planning training will be offered to finalists by IBM. Top Startups will be invited to join the "Startup with IBM" program through which they can get cloud credits to build and scale their solutions. Mentorship and coaching sessions from IBM experts to top winning startups
Application Deadline: October 31, 2021
Check more https://adalidda.com/posts/iAeBfXeyBBvBzXMfS/competition-for-african-startups-and-team-on-app-and-game
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Best School Management Software for African Countries- Genius Edusoft!
In most African countries primary education is required for all children until they reach a certain age. In many places, however, only about half of the students who attend primary school finish the entire course of study, and in some areas more than 90 percent of primary school students repeat at least one grade. The World Economic Forum accessed 140 countries, including 38 African countries, to rank the best education systems based on skill development. The report looks at the general level of skills of the workforce and the quantity and quality of education in each country. Factors considered include: developing digital literacy, interpersonal skills, and the ability to think critically and creatively.
Insights of Genius Education Management System:
We are a 16 year old and leading company in School ERP because we provide user-friendly and customized school management system as per the needs and demand of clients. Our software is Angular JS based Cloud application i.e. real time application as well as Web based software. We provide our service to every kind of entity whether it is School, Institute, Training centres or Colleges irrespective of the size of organization, big or small. We have a fantastic set of clients using our system which makes us understand on daily basis the strengths and loopholes if any.
Our software is designed with a tag-line“Enhanced Education system with limited cost”. We assure 100% safety & security to each of our clients relating to their data. Our software is for every person working with the entity; teachers, students, Principal, Admin, Parents and even other employees as they are heart of any organization.
Why should African schools use ERP software?
With the help of School management education software’s the next level demand arising in the education field rising in today’s scenario can be met with ease as compared to traditional education systems. As we see the history of education in African countries they are not able to satisfy their client needs because of some barriers and to overcome them they need a robust school management education system which is exactly our Genius Education software is currently which will help them to improve their competitiveness and business in the market as well meeting their strategic objectives. Every organization whether small or big needs an automation in its education system because traditional methods are not able to satisfy all the requirements. This is where our Genius Edusoft comes into picture to help in every possible way to enhance the education system and its management in African schools, colleges, and every organization providing education by improving their internal processes, cutting down their operating costs and help them to improve their relation with customers which indirectly helps the organization to improve their decision making capacities.
Challenges faced by African countries to implement ERP software?
Implementing an ERP software for a school, college, institute or any educational training entity is not an easy task because lot of spoon feeding has to be done to employees of the entity to get used to it and update on daily basis the needed information. On the other hand African countries has lot of limitations like other developing countries like low economic capacities, limited human skills and limited infrastructures therefore there can be lot of difficulties in implementing the ERP in African context. Many a times implementation failures also occur when there is a lack in updates, maintenance, consultation and training for the same.
How Genius Edusoft helps African countries to improvise their education system by overcoming the challenges!
As discussed African countries have limitations in many aspects; Genius Edusoft overcomes this loophole easily as our system is likely to work on atomization which is covered under various modules of our ERP like our Attendance management module where if RFID system is installed in the school the student can scan the QR code while entering in the campus and attendance will be fetched into the system easing the daily hustle of class teacher to manually take the attendance.
Even the long long queue that creates a lot of waste of time of school management to collect the fees of students has been reduced by our Admission module as parents can directly pay the fees through an online token through our payment gateway.
Even the circulars that piun or any school boy used to come with for any event, picnic, sports day news or any such event is now automated by our academic module where admin or teachers can directly upload circulars for important announcement for which notification will be received by the parents/students on their mobile app.
Even our Exam management module is a great work as our education software is designed with a tag line “Enhanced Education System” where in teachers can add manual exam assigning scores and ranks to students. Even students can take online examination created by teachers by accessing their login credentials
Even now cost of getting ID cards designed can be reduced with the help of our ID card generator in software as it can be managed from our software wherein institutes just need to integrate their printer with our system & get Id cards printed for students as well as employees
Genius Edusoft Verdict
From this article you might have got a better understanding of how our real time based software helps African countries including Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, Kenya, Madagascar, Rwanda, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Somalia, Tunisia, Malawi, Botswana etc by enhancing their education system efficiently by reducing their costs with different modules designed effectively keeping in mind general as well as special needs of every training centres like schools, institutes, colleges etc.
Genius Education Management Software
Address: 331-332, 3rd floor, Patel Avenue Nr.Gurudwara, S.G. Road, Thaltej, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India.
Contact: 8320243119, 9328151561
Email: [email protected]
Website:
www.geniusedusoft.com
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"Protecting users from government-backed hacking and disinformation"
Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) works to counter targeted and government-backed hacking against Google and our users. This is an area we have invested in deeply for over a decade. Our daily work involves detecting and defeating threats, and warning targeted users and customers about the world’s most sophisticated adversaries, spanning the full range of Google products including Gmail, Drive and YouTube.
In the past, we’ve posted on issues like phishing campaigns, vulnerabilities and disinformation. Going forward, we’ll share more technical details and data about the threats we detect and how we counter them to advance the broader digital security discussion.
TAG tracks more than 270 targeted or government-backed groups from more than 50 countries. These groups have many goals including intelligence collection, stealing intellectual property, targeting dissidents and activists, destructive cyber attacks, or spreading coordinated disinformation. We use the intelligence we gather to protect Google infrastructure as well as users targeted with malware or phishing.
Phishing
We’ve had a long-standing policy to send users warnings if we detect that they are the subject of state-sponsored phishing attempts, and have posted periodically about these before. From July to September 2019, we sent more than 12,000 warnings to users in 149 countries that they were targeted by government-backed attackers. This is consistent (+/-10%) with the number of warnings sent in the same period of 2018 and 2017.
Distribution of government-backed phishing targets in Q3 (Jul-Sep 2019)
Over 90 percent of these users were targeted via “credential phishing emails” similar to the example below. These are usually attempts to obtain the target’s password or other account credentials to hijack their account. We encourage high-risk users—like journalists, human rights activists, and political campaigns—to enroll in our Advanced Protection Program (APP), which utilizes hardware security keys and provides the strongest protections available against phishing and account hijackings. APP is designed specifically for the highest-risk accounts and now has more than 15,500 users.
In the simple phishing example below, an attacker has sent a phishing email with a security alert lure from “Goolge” suggesting the user secure their account. The user clicks the link, enters their password, and may also get asked for a security code if they have two-factor authentication enabled, allowing the attacker to access their account.
Sample lure used to phish Gmail users
Threat detection
Last week at CyberwarCon, we presented analysis about previously undisclosed campaigns from a Russia-nexus threat group called “Sandworm” (also known as “Iridium”). It’s a useful example of the type of detailed threat detection work that TAG does. Although much of Sandworm’s activity targeting Ukraine and their attacks against the 2018 Winter Olympics have been covered publicly, some campaigns have not been reported.
In December 2017, TAG discovered a series of campaigns from Sandworm attempting to deploy Android malware. The first campaign targeted users in South Korea, where Sandworm was modifying legitimate Android applications with malware. They then uploaded these modified apps to the Play Store using their own attacker-controlled developer accounts. During this campaign, Sandworm uploaded eight different apps to the Play Store, each with fewer than 10 total installs.
Malicious apps targeting users in South Korea
We also identified an earlier September 2017 Android campaign from Sandworm where they used similar tactics and deployed a fake version of the UKR.net email app on the Play Store. This application had approximately 1,000 total installs. We worked with our colleagues on the Google Play Protect Team to write detections for this malware family, and eliminate it.
In November 2018, we saw evidence that Sandworm shifted from using attacker-controlled accounts to try and upload malicious apps to compromising legitimate developers. Throughout November, Sandworm targeted software and mobile app developers in Ukraine via spear phishing emails with malicious attachments. In at least one case, they compromised an app developer with several published Play Store apps—one with more than 200,000 installs.
After compromising the developer, Sandworm built a backdoor in one of the legitimate apps and attempted to publish it on the Play Store. They did this by adding their implant code into the application package, signing the package with the compromised developer’s key, and then uploading it to the Play Store. However, the Google Play Protect team caught the attempt at the time of upload. As a result, no users were infected and we were able to re-secure the developer’s account.
Disinformation
TAG is one part of Google and YouTube’s broader efforts to tackle coordinated influence operations that attempt to game our services. We share relevant threat information on these campaigns with law enforcement and other tech companies. Here are some examples that have been reported recently that TAG worked on:
TAG recently took action against Russia-affiliated influence operations targeting several nations in Africa. The operations use inauthentic news outlets to disseminate messages promoting Russian interests in Africa. We have observed the use of local accounts and people to contribute to the operation, a tactic likely intended to make the content appear more genuine. Targeted countries included the Central African Republic, Sudan, Madagascar, and South Africa, and languages used included English, French, and Arabic. Activity on Google services was limited, but we enforced across our products swiftly. We terminated the associated Google accounts and 15 YouTube channels, and we continue to monitor this space. This discovery was consistent with recent observations and actions announced by Facebook.
Consistent with a recent Bellingcat report, TAG identified a campaign targeting the Indonesian provinces Papua and West Papua with messaging in opposition to the Free Papua Movement. Google terminated one advertising account and 28 YouTube channels.
Partnerships
TAG works closely with other technology companies—including platforms and specialized security firms—to share intelligence and best practices. We also share threat information with law enforcement. And of course there are multiple teams at Google at work on these issues with whom we coordinate.
Going forward, our goal is to give more updates on the attacks that TAG detects and stops. Our hope is that shining more light on these actors will be helpful to the security community, deter future attacks, and lead to better awareness and protections among high-risk targets.
Source : The Official Google Blog via Source information
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Helping Enterprises Benefit from IoT via Mobile App Development
Present the IT technology world is never stranger particular changes created by several new technologies. Regularly, every growing technology utilizes new technology. Although technology production relies on some invention technologies, very few of them have the potential to modify the view of mobile application development similar to the Internet of Things (IoT).
From time to time, many businesses and able application development companies are very interested in the development of IoT applications by establishing the basic idea of forming an extended network of computing devices and sensors. The whole initiative is directed on producing machine-to-machine communications with minimum or no human effort.
Until now, it was difficult to obtain meteorological data or weather information in the form of easy sensors, but this setting and other basic services matched available as a result of selection and combination of IoT into the mobile application development method. Today, many developers and mobile application development companies throughout the world are not only including this technology to enhance their automation processes but also their management effectiveness and value-added services in various industries.
Thanks to its highly effective attributes, many companies, and expert organizations have started to buy the idea of maintaining and managing IoT-compatible applications, originally to implement value-added services, increase energy profits and reduce costs. There is no doubt that there are many opportunities for anyone looking to exploit the rich capabilities created by this extremely economical technology.
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Revolutionizing Mobile App Development through IoT Integration
IoT is growing and expanding today, as many companies around the world design technology as an efficient tool to enhance their transformation. This technology, which has presently been known worldwide, is already changing mobility. The landscape of mobile application development is sharing a unique radical transformation, particularly now that more and more application development companies are combining the Internet of Things (IoT) into their processes.
There is no doubt that this IoT is the technology required for today's industrial transformation. Today, the fear of technological complexity has been significantly degraded, particularly now that an increasing number of mobile application developers and development agencies are involved in emerging technology. It can be said that these professionals have very advised to significantly simplify the implementation of a complete digital transformation for many companies using IoT.
As IoT revolutionizes the development of mobile applications, many application development companies are using the solution it provides to develop highly efficient systems to transform (positively) various business processes. To improve efficiency and support business leaders, several companies around the world have begun to implement various IoT solutions, regardless of their industry.
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IoT – A Perfect Solution for App Development
Today, as mobile application developers combine IoT into their development processes, many companies are intensely interested in using technology because of its flexibility. They began to realize its profitability, as well as its strength to allow viable IoT solutions, able to grow their business and improve their trades while increasing their revenues.
It is interesting to see how application development companies can leverage this technology to produce extremely efficient and deployable IoT systems with a renowned facility to improve business operations. To this end, many companies have started adopting the technology to monitor and optimize their various activities.
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Why Consider IoT Adoption
Businesses can leverage the chances given by IoT to build an extremely efficient and productive environment. At this point, it is not wrong to say that IoT is the latest choice for any company that wants to reduce significantly in the modern economic landscape. For your information, your business can probably lose business if you fail to choose a strategic IoT development.
Many application development companies are previously using a variety of IoT features to help business owners completely track their customers' buying performance and develop several strategic plans to meet their needs. Within these means, companies can easily identify the needs of their customers and then, without much effort, offer solutions that are important to their needs. In addition to tracking sales, the IoT can help companies recognize customer behavior cost-effectively.
Another reason this change should be generally received is its strength to improve the company's revenue. Many companies have recognized that using IoT can go a long way in easing not only improve efficiency, but also open up more opportunities and still create new sales.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that any development that can enhance work methods always includes risks. Most of the time, this transformation can lead to high expectations for achievement and even fear of risk. However, nothing is bothering about selection and adaptation to the huge difference brought about by the Internet of Things. It may even be a better opportunity for those attempting to make progress in the world of innovation.
There is no better time to get excited and take the action as it is. Virtually everyone can benefit from its adoption. In this digital age, there's no need to stay away and observe how things go in the background. It is now time to start on a branch and you cannot just know what benefits or increase this can bring to your business. You may get in touch with us at Top mobile app development company in Nigeria for a free quote to develop a mobile app for your business. And helps Business owners to reach more customers who want to change their business towards app development, The Company has a very good working environment. To know more about my company, Visit Fusion Informatics. For more queries please send a mail to get a free quote [email protected].
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Big Beer, Big Data, and the Big Implications of AB InBev’s RateBeer Acquisition
In February 2019, ZX Ventures, the venture capital arm of Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev), the world’s largest brewing company, completed its purchase of RateBeer, a consumer beer review platform.
Via ZX Ventures, AB InBev invests in dozens of beer and beer-adjacent businesses. This includes online retailers, delivery services, and publishers, along with other consumer products. As with AB InBev’s oft-bemoaned acquisitions of craft breweries like Goose Island and Wicked Weed, many brewers and RateBeer users lamented the sale, citing the inherent bias of a corporation owning user-driven content.
Favoritism is the least of our worries, though. By acquiring RateBeer, AB InBev now owns a treasure trove of data, including the preferences and locations of active and passionate beer drinkers. One corporation now has the power to watch, analyze, predict, and, eventually, create the beers we like by using data many of us volunteered willingly under different circumstances.
The acquisition threatens to squelch individual creativity and could single-handedly dictate beer trends to meet corporate needs.
“Data is powerful, and with massive amounts of data, insights can be pulled to improve one’s market position and to better understand the actual users of the platform,” Fern Stroud, CEO of Stroud Management Enterprises, and senior program manager at a digital ad tech agency in San Francisco, tells VinePair. “Data is king.”
RateBeer’s ‘Sad Day’
RateBeer launched in 2000 as a platform for beer lovers to share opinions on beers and beer-drinking establishments. In June 2017, co-founder Joe Tucker announced RateBeer had accepted investment from ZX Ventures, a “global growth and innovation group” owned by AB InBev. On Feb. 3, 2019, he announced the complete sale: “ZX Ventures, a division of AB InBev, has fully acquired RateBeer.”
Guthrie Collin, SVP of advertising product & technology at Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, and professor at NYU Stern, compares AB InBev’s acquisition of RateBeer to Amazon’s early acquisition of Goodreads. “Both acquisitions provide the acquirers with data generated by passionate, influential ‘heavy user’ communities dedicated to providing unbiased and crowd-sourced reviews and commentary on the acquirer’s key segment,” Collin writes VinePair. “In AB InBev’s case, this is their second round with RateBeer, after making a strategic investment a few years back, and the full acquisition indicates they have tested and learned that the RateBeer data set provides important signals to drive business growth.”
Acquisitions such as these are not rare in the tech space, where near-identical companies like Grubhub and Seamless merge and consumers barely notice. But RateBeer was different.
“A sad, sad day,” wrote Maakun, a RateBeer “Regular” from Den Haag, Netherlands, after the initial investment in June 2017. “Yikes,” wrote minutematt, whose reviews largely comprise beers in the U.K. And from a RateBeer “quality person,” herrklemann, “Finally my ratings are fully owned by one of the big players. So glad for all the unpaid work of the past few years.”
RateBeer kept its initial sale secret for nearly a year. Tucker publicly announced ZX Ventures’ investment in his company in June 2017, but it had actually occurred in October 2016.
“The beer community heavily relies on beer review sites like ours to help guide them,” Todd Alström, founder of BeerAdvocate, a beer publisher and review site, and RateBeer competitor, tells VinePair in an email. BeerAdvocate, founded in 1996, is independently owned, and its business includes print and digital magazines, events, and beer ratings.
Some brewers also oppose the acquisition. Dogfish Head Craft Brewery founder Sam Calagione issued a statement on June 5, 2017 asking RateBeer to remove any of the brewery’s data from its platform.
“It just doesn’t seem right for a brewer of any kind to be in a position to potentially manipulate what consumers are hearing and saying about beers, how they are rated and which ones are receiving extra publicity on what might appear to be a legitimate, 100 percent user-generated platform,” Calagione wrote in a blog post on Dogfish Head’s website. “It is our opinion that this initiative and others are ethically dubious and that the lack of transparency is troubling.”
Big-name breweries including Bear Republic of Cloverdale, Calif., Karl Strauss of San Diego, and Cantillon of Brussels, Belgium had similar concerns.
“We don’t want our consumers to feel like they are being deceived or misinformed in any way,” Bear Republic wrote on its website on June 7, 2017. “For everyone who shares our belief, we hope that you will consider utilizing another platform to share your beer opinions and reviews.”
According to Alström, some did. “We did see a spike in new users and activity after both the initial and full buyout announcements,” he writes.
“It’s important for sites like ours to remain independent in order to keep our integrity and trust intact,” Alström writes. “That said, bills need to get paid, and being independent doesn’t necessarily pay those bills.”
Some are willing to sink with their ships. Others aren’t. For RateBeer, investment from ZX Ventures allowed “improvements to infrastructure … an in-house mobile app,” and other updates “that as the only full-time employee with help from some amazing admins and volunteer coders, I was never able to tackle,” Tucker wrote in his February 2019 announcement. Improvements come at a cost.
The ‘Inequality Machine’
“The question truly becomes, how many users does this platform really have and how much data are they truly providing?” Stroud says.
On its website, RateBeer claims it is “not only the biggest beer site on the web but it’s also the best.” Although it doesn’t offer high-level stats, its “About” section says “hundreds of thousands of members from more than 100 countries have rated hundreds of thousands of different beers around the world.”
By comparison, BeerAdvocate.com reaches more than 3 million unique visitors every month. Untappd, another competitor popular for its gamification of beer ratings (read: ticker culture), has more than 7 million users.
“In essence, ZX Ventures now has a ton of data on the insights of actual consumers ��� on what [beers] they like, and why they like them. This data could be used in so many different ways,” Stroud says. For example, he says, if AB InBev produces a beer similar to a competitor’s, and the competitor’s outperforms its own, it can make adjustments accordingly. As the owner of that data, “I could now do some reverse engineering to figure out how to improve my beer recipes,” she says. Tweak a hop, perhaps, or swap out a specialty malt.
“The data are valuable because they provide insights into the brand and beer varietal preferences of lead users and beer enthusiasts,” Jason Greenberg, assistant professor of management, New York University Stern School of Business, tells VinePair. “In turn, their ratings information drives consumption choices of other consumers.”
In a paper titled “The (Internet) Information Inequality Machine?” Greenberg posits that, while “ratings can enrich our lives by helping us decide” on what and where to eat or drink, increased accessibility of this information could result in increasing inequality between firms. AB InBev owning an ocean of consumer data allows it to stay ahead of the curve, while small or independent labels — those that may have created the trends to begin with — could get washed ashore.
“AB InBev now has location data of beer users, and can target specific beer types in those geolocations,” Stroud says. “This could directly impact sales.”
Is an imperial stout with vanilla and coconut ranking high in Napa but not in San Diego? “They can take other beers out of areas with lesser rating[s],” Stroud says.
Additionally, Greenberg says, “they might also use the platform for data experiments and advertising.” He compares this to “the sorts of subtle experimental tests Facebook has employed … to determine how individuals influence each other. In this case, it could simply mean randomly manipulating some characteristic of a beer to see how it impacts ratings, and then sales.”
Back to that vanilla coconut stout: Are Napa reviewers responding better to vanilla extract or vanilla beans? Vanilla from Indonesia, or Madagascar?
Looking Vs. Recording
It’s worth noting that most brewers are likely monitoring beer reviews to some extent.
“I don’t think brewers really knew what customers wanted until, really, the advent of things like RateBeer and BeerAdvocate,” Sam Richardson, co-founder of Other Half Brewing in Brooklyn, said on the Craft Beer & Brewing podcast in February 2019. “[W]e’re not doing our due diligence on trying to make better products if we don’t look to see what people are excited about.”
There is a difference, though, between looking and recording, as well as the scale to which this information can be used. AB InBev operates 227 breweries and 13,000 retail locations around the world. It also has its own distributors, online retailers, delivery services, homebrewing equipment, hop farms, and beer publishers. Now, it owns our opinions — and we signed up for it.
AB InBev not only has its own robust research and development; it has everyone else’s, too.
The Future Is Beer
According to a recent survey conducted by the Society of Independent Brewers, 98 percent of respondents believe global breweries like Anheuser-Busch InBev cannot make craft beer. And yet, as Heineken head of craft development Jan-Willem Heeg told The Guardian, “Whether it’s ‘craft’ is really in the eye of the beholder.”
What if craft brewers’ creations, and the opinions of their consumers, are being analyzed by the same corporation?
“Because of their smaller scale, independent brewers are closer to their customers, listen regularly and intently to their needs, and can quickly spot emerging trends in their marketplaces,” Collin writes. “With RateBeer.com, AB InBev now has this same listening channel for consumer attitudes across the entire beer marketplace.”
Once a resource for avid beer consumers, and a digital window into their preferences, the platform becomes a database of “crowdsourced reviews and commentary on the acquirer’s key segment,” Collin writes.
“RateBeer users give up a nice chunk of data,” Stroud says. “And now that nice chunk of data is AB InBev’s, too.”
The article Big Beer, Big Data, and the Big Implications of AB InBev’s RateBeer Acquisition appeared first on VinePair.
source https://vinepair.com/articles/ab-inbev-ratebeer-acquisition-analysis/
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Universal Games and Digital Platforms and Ludia will Launch Puzzle Role-Playing Game Based on Hit Franchise Early Next Year
Universal City, Calif., Montreal, Canada, Nov. 15, 2018 – Universal Games and Digital Platforms, in partnership with top mobile-game studio, Ludia, today announced DreamWorks Dragons: Titan Uprising, a match-3 puzzle role-playing game set to launch globally on the App Store and Google Play early next year, just ahead of the release of DreamWorks Animation’s How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, which arrives in theaters February 22, 2019.
In DreamWorks Dragons: Titan Uprising, players can become the ultimate puzzle champion as they reunite with Toothless and Hiccup in their fight to save Berk from the nefarious Dragonroot Company. Alongside other fearless trainers, fans can make their way through a variety of regions beyond the island of Berk, swiping and matching their way to victory.
Players will need to hatch and nurture their own roster of dragons, from small-scaled babies to towering Titan Wings, and they can also cross-breed their dragons to create all-new hybrids. With battle teams created from a collection of nearly 100 dragons, players are able to combat their foes by matching three or more rune stones. The game also allows the fearless fighters to unleash their dragon’s Spirit Abilities in more than 750 unique battles.
“With DreamWorks Dragons: Titan Uprising, we wanted to bring the classic How to Train Your Dragon characters to life in a mobile game that provides players with challenging puzzle-based gameplay that is also filled with fantasy quests and epic combat battles,” said Alex Thabet, President and CEO of Ludia. “We can’t wait to see how fans react as they escape to a dragon-filled world with puzzle adventures.”
“In celebration of the highly anticipated film debut of DreamWorks Animation’s How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, DreamWorks Dragons: Titan Uprising will give players the opportunity to breed their own dragons and bring them on soaring new adventures as they transform into powerful Titan Wings,” said Chris Heatherly, Executive Vice President of Games and Digital Platforms, Universal Brand Development. “Ludia has done an amazing job of creating a compelling match-3 puzzle experience that is inspired by the thrilling third instalment of this beloved franchise.”
Starting today, fans can visit www.dragonstitanuprising.com and pre-register to receive a Premium Draft Token at launch. This in-game token gives players a guaranteed Dragon, and a higher chance of summoning an Epic Dragon. The token also allows players to craft strong teams to take into battle right at the game’s launch.
About How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
From DreamWorks Animation comes a surprising tale about growing up, finding the courage to face the unknown…and how nothing can ever train you to let go. What began as an unlikely friendship between an adolescent Viking and a fearsome Night Fury dragon has become an epic adventure spanning their lives. Welcome to the most astonishing chapter of one of the most beloved animated franchises in film history: How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World.
Now chief and ruler of Berk alongside Astrid, Hiccup has created a gloriously chaotic dragon utopia. When the sudden appearance of a female Light Fury coincides with the darkest threat their village has ever faced, Hiccup and Toothless must leave the only home they’ve known and journey to a hidden world thought only to exist in myth. As their true destinies are revealed, dragon and rider will fight together—to the very ends of the Earth—to protect everything they’ve grown to treasure.
For How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, series director Dean DeBlois returns alongside the all-star cast. The film is produced by Brad Lewis (Ratatouille, ANTZ) and Bonnie Arnold (Toy Story, How to Train Your Dragon, How to Train Your Dragon 2).
About DreamWorks Animation
DreamWorks Feature Animation (DWA) is a division of the Universal Filmed Entertainment Group (UFEG). Its 24-year feature-film heritage includes many beloved characters and animated franchises, including Shrek, Madagascar,Kung Fu Panda, How to Train Your Dragon, Trollsand The Boss Baby. DWA’s 35 feature film releases have generated more than $14.5 billion at the global box office, garnered numerous awards, and fueled a robust consumer products business. The studio’s next feature release How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden Worldarrives in theaters in February 22, 2019, with fall 2019 bringing the release of the original animated feature Abominable. Two inaugural short films, Bird Karmaand Bilby, from DreamWorks’ recently launched Shorts Program, are currently debuting in festivals around the world.
About Ludia Inc.
Ludia Inc. is a Montreal-based video game company that creates and distributes cross-platform digital games. Our innovative and high-quality product portfolio consists of original and world-recognized branded properties such as: Jurassic World Alive, Jurassic World: The Game, What’s Your Story?™, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Legends, Dragons: Rise of Berk, Family Feud® 2 & Friends and The Price Is Right™. We are a member of the FremantleMedia family, one of the world’s leading content producers. For more information visit www.ludia.com, as well as our Facebook and LinkedIn pages, or follow us on Twitter.
About Universal Games and Digital Platforms Universal’s Games and Digital Platforms group leverages the vast portfolio of IP and characters from NBCUniversal. The Games and Digital Platforms group is a business unit of Universal Brand Development, which is chartered with globally expanding the company’s intellectual properties, franchises, characters and stories through innovative physical and digital products, content and consumer experiences. The company’s extensive portfolio includes properties created by Universal Pictures, Illumination Entertainment, DreamWorks Animation, and NBCUniversal cable and television. Universal Brand Development (www.universalbranddevelopment.com) is a business segment of Universal Filmed Entertainment Group, and part of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast Corporation.
How to Train Your Dragon Meets its Match in New DreamWorks Dragons: Titan Uprising Mobile Game Universal Games and Digital Platforms and Ludia will Launch Puzzle Role-Playing Game Based on Hit Franchise Early Next Year…
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Corporate Travel Got Even More Complicated in 2017
This photo shows protests at John F. Kennedy International Airport over the Trump administration's first travel ban in January. The ban — a third version of which was allowed to go into effect late in the year — was one of many disruptive forces in business travel in 2017. Beverly Yuen Thompson / Flickr
Skift Take: Business travelers coped with a range of surprises, including disruptive natural disasters and sudden shifts in government policy. Expect more uncertainty.
— Hannah Sampson
From a controversial U.S. travel ban to questions about the implementation of Brexit to a devastating Atlantic hurricane season, the past year required business travelers to adapt and change course, sometimes at a moment’s notice.
At the same time, global economic growth finally looks healthy a decade after the financial crisis, according to the Skift 2018 Global Travel Market Outlook. High consumer and business confidence is likely to motivate businesses to hire employees and to encourage them to travel.
Skift asked executives in corporate travel — travel management companies, technology providers, organizations, and others — what affected their business in 2017 and the biggest industry breakthroughs this year. We also asked about their priorities for 2018, which will appear in a story in the coming weeks. They responded by email and in phone interviews.
A Year of Surprises
While tropical storms and other natural disasters are to be expected every year, many executives said one of the biggest shocks in 2017 was the extraordinary hurricane activity in the Atlantic. The region recorded 17 named storms, the highest number of named hurricanes since 2005. Together, they caused an estimated $188 billion or more in damages, according to AccuWeather.
“I don’t think anyone foresaw the scope of the Atlantic hurricane season, and it caught quite a few people and companies by surprise,” said Gabe Rizzi, chief sales officer and president of Travel Leaders Corporate. Both leisure and business travelers saw their plans disrupted. The Caribbean is a popular destination for meetings and events, Rizzi noted, “and the strong hurricane season caused a domino effect for air travel.” Travel Leaders Corporate worked both to move travelers out of danger and to transport employees to affected areas to help with cleanup or to maintain business operations.
In addition, corporate travel executives had to scramble to deal with an outbreak in Madagascar of the plague, a disease from the Middle Ages that killed more than 200 people in the country from August to mid-November. “Who would have thought you needed a plan for the plague?” said Dr. Myles Druckman, senior vice president and Americas regional medical director at International SOS, a medical and travel security services firm.
Druckman said the spate of disasters also highlighted weaknesses in preparation by businesses and travel companies. “Continually, what is a bit of a surprise is that a lot of organizations have health as a major priority, yet they struggle to find good ways to implement their plans globally,” he said.
Disasters and disease weren’t the only surprises. The political disruption that emerged worldwide in 2016 continued to affect corporate travel over the past year. Brexit has weakened the pound and damaged the confidence of UK businesses. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump’s travel ban created turmoil at airports and added to geopolitical uncertainty for business travelers. In early December, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the third version of the ban, which bars residents of six majority-Muslim countries from traveling to the United States, to take effect while legal challenges continue.
The Global Business Travel Association has run shock scenarios covering everything from an Ebola outbreak to spikes in oil prices to terror attacks, and business travel has always shown resiliency, said Michael McCormick, executive director and chief operating officer of the association. “Yet the uncertainty factor in the past year has created both an immediate impact and the potential for a negative long-term impact as well, unlike anything we have seen,” he said.
Greeley Koch, executive director of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives, said he was surprised to notice a trend of companies scaling back their financial support for educational conferences and learning opportunities. Anecdotally, more people in the corporate travel industry are using personal vacation days and their own funds to attend conferences, he said. ACTE is responding by providing more webinars and online resources to make it easier for people to learn wherever they are.
Some unexpected developments were specific to individual businesses. For Rob Greyber, president of Egencia, the biggest surprise was the departure of Dara Khosrowshahi, chief executive of parent company Expedia, to become CEO of Uber. “The best example of his leadership is the deep leadership team and resilient culture he built at Expedia,” Greyber said.
Dan Ruch, founder and chief executive of Rocketrip, which helps businesses reward employees for saving money on corporate travel, said “maybe not the biggest, but the nicest surprise this year was seeing how the industry and more organizations have become aware and proactive about promoting sustainable travel.”
The Impact
In financial terms, the uncertainty driven by the travel bans and the U.S. laptop ban that was lifted in July had the largest impact on the corporate travel industry this year, according to McCormick. In the week following the Trump administration’s initial travel ban, $185 million was lost in U.S. business travel bookings, GBTA estimated.
The association projected that those policies led to a loss of more than $1.3 billion in 2017 in overall travel-related expenditures in the United States, including hotels, food, rental cars, and shopping expenses. “Fortunately, the underlying economies in most markets here and abroad were strong enough to support this impact for the near term,” McCormick said.
Despite political and environmental challenges, many of the corporate travel executives who answered our questions pointed to growth and momentum in their own businesses. Rizzi of Travel Leaders Corporate cited a strong U.S. dollar that made international business trips a good value for companies. In 2017, Travel Leaders Corporate expanded its reach through acquisitions and partnerships in the U.S., Mexico, and Europe.
Rizzi said he also is seeing a larger focus on the responsibility of employers to keep business travelers safe. “In a year where global terrorism has dominated the headlines, duty of care needs to be a top concern of any company who has employees traveling,” he said.
Egencia’s Greyber said he has been “amazed at the resilience of business travelers” through natural disasters, acts of terrorism, and even the normal wear and tear of corporate travel. He pointed to the example of Mahshid Mazooji, a territory sales manager in the food service industry, who was stranded overnight at Charlotte Douglas International Airport when she missed her connecting flight. Instead of complaining, she created a music video of herself dancing to Lionel Richie’s “All Night Long,” appearing with airline employees, a Starbucks barista, and fellow travelers. The video has been watched on YouTube more than 2.7 million times.
“I think the video went viral because people love stories of resilience, of reacting to adversity with joy,” Greyber said. “When we reflect on our brand, our products, what we want to stand for as a company and an industry, we think about travelers like Ms. Mazooji and how we can serve them better.”
Ruch at Rocketrip said his work on motivating business travelers to make better decisions was supported by this year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, awarded to Richard H. Thaler, an economist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business who has been a pioneer in behavioral economics. “Recognition for his work on nudge theory and proving human irrationality has provided continued validation for the incentivized behavioral change space,” Ruch said.
Corporate Travel Tech Continues to Evolve
Executives in the corporate travel industry expect the technological change they witnessed in 2017 to accelerate next year. “People are now starting to realize that the future that we’ve always talked about – whether artificial intelligence, blockchain, or alternative forms of payment – these things are closer than people realize,” said Koch, the ACTE executive director.
These developments could be a boon to business travelers, saving time and money, and even providing them with better care on the road. “What we’re seeing in the industry are a lot of new apps for health,” said Druckman of International SOS. It’s becoming easier for a traveler to have a live video call with a doctor, for example. For some remote locations, there is now a televideo link between the paramedics that work for International SOS and the doctors helping to manage patients’ cases. Even the ability to text the assistance center instead of having to call every time makes travelers’ lives easier, Druckman said.
Rizzi of Travel Leaders Corporate noted a continued demand for mobile technology. Through the company’s mobile communications travel platform, agents can chat with business travelers on the road and can rebook a connecting flight before travelers even know they’ve missed it. “We’re also seeing a tremendous appetite for data intelligence and analytics as it relates to companies’ travel and travel expense data, to optimize and fine-tune their supplier agreements and traveler behaviors,” he said.
Another trend in 2017 was streamlining travel-booking processes. Rocketrip developed a method of embedding its technology within customers’ online booking tools, showing travelers the most cost-effective and rewarding options.
“After launching the integration, we’ve seen traveler engagement increase significantly,” Ruch said.
Steven Reynolds, CEO of hotel rate tracking tool tripBAM, said his company’s biggest innovations this year are a new analytics package with tripBAM’s proprietary lowest qualified rates and a new automated rebooking solution.
Outside of his own company, he highlighted itinerary management platform Traxo for its innovations in tracking reservations made outside corporate booking tools.
“Across the industry, Traxo’s ability to automatically capture direct bookings could be very significant,” he said.
A common theme was the growing ability to use big data to help business travelers make better decisions. Greyber of Egencia said the greatest driver of innovation at his business in 2017 was testing and learning at scale, using machine learning algorithms to improve computer models.
“While this is common across consumer internet companies, we’re the only major TMC doing this in a serious way,” he said. “Our test capacity is up 100 percent year-over-year and will continue to grow in 2018.”
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Corporate Travel Got Even More Complicated in 2017
This photo shows protests at John F. Kennedy International Airport over the Trump administration's first travel ban in January. The ban — a third version of which was allowed to go into effect late in the year — was one of many disruptive forces in business travel in 2017. Beverly Yuen Thompson / Flickr
Skift Take: Business travelers coped with a range of surprises, including disruptive natural disasters and sudden shifts in government policy. Expect more uncertainty.
— Hannah Sampson
From a controversial U.S. travel ban to questions about the implementation of Brexit to a devastating Atlantic hurricane season, the past year required business travelers to adapt and change course, sometimes at a moment’s notice.
At the same time, global economic growth finally looks healthy a decade after the financial crisis, according to the Skift 2018 Global Travel Market Outlook. High consumer and business confidence is likely to motivate businesses to hire employees and to encourage them to travel.
Skift asked executives in corporate travel — travel management companies, technology providers, organizations, and others — what affected their business in 2017 and the biggest industry breakthroughs this year. We also asked about their priorities for 2018, which will appear in a story in the coming weeks. They responded by email and in phone interviews.
A Year of Surprises
While tropical storms and other natural disasters are to be expected every year, many executives said one of the biggest shocks in 2017 was the extraordinary hurricane activity in the Atlantic. The region recorded 17 named storms, the highest number of named hurricanes since 2005. Together, they caused an estimated $188 billion or more in damages, according to AccuWeather.
“I don’t think anyone foresaw the scope of the Atlantic hurricane season, and it caught quite a few people and companies by surprise,” said Gabe Rizzi, chief sales officer and president of Travel Leaders Corporate. Both leisure and business travelers saw their plans disrupted. The Caribbean is a popular destination for meetings and events, Rizzi noted, “and the strong hurricane season caused a domino effect for air travel.” Travel Leaders Corporate worked both to move travelers out of danger and to transport employees to affected areas to help with cleanup or to maintain business operations.
In addition, corporate travel executives had to scramble to deal with an outbreak in Madagascar of the plague, a disease from the Middle Ages that killed more than 200 people in the country from August to mid-November. “Who would have thought you needed a plan for the plague?” said Dr. Myles Druckman, senior vice president and Americas regional medical director at International SOS, a medical and travel security services firm.
Druckman said the spate of disasters also highlighted weaknesses in preparation by businesses and travel companies. “Continually, what is a bit of a surprise is that a lot of organizations have health as a major priority, yet they struggle to find good ways to implement their plans globally,” he said.
Disasters and disease weren’t the only surprises. The political disruption that emerged worldwide in 2016 continued to affect corporate travel over the past year. Brexit has weakened the pound and damaged the confidence of UK businesses. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump’s travel ban created turmoil at airports and added to geopolitical uncertainty for business travelers. In early December, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the third version of the ban, which bars residents of six majority-Muslim countries from traveling to the United States, to take effect while legal challenges continue.
The Global Business Travel Association has run shock scenarios covering everything from an Ebola outbreak to spikes in oil prices to terror attacks, and business travel has always shown resiliency, said Michael McCormick, executive director and chief operating officer of the association. “Yet the uncertainty factor in the past year has created both an immediate impact and the potential for a negative long-term impact as well, unlike anything we have seen,” he said.
Greeley Koch, executive director of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives, said he was surprised to notice a trend of companies scaling back their financial support for educational conferences and learning opportunities. Anecdotally, more people in the corporate travel industry are using personal vacation days and their own funds to attend conferences, he said. ACTE is responding by providing more webinars and online resources to make it easier for people to learn wherever they are.
Some unexpected developments were specific to individual businesses. For Rob Greyber, president of Egencia, the biggest surprise was the departure of Dara Khosrowshahi, chief executive of parent company Expedia, to become CEO of Uber. “The best example of his leadership is the deep leadership team and resilient culture he built at Expedia,” Greyber said.
Dan Ruch, founder and chief executive of Rocketrip, which helps businesses reward employees for saving money on corporate travel, said “maybe not the biggest, but the nicest surprise this year was seeing how the industry and more organizations have become aware and proactive about promoting sustainable travel.”
The Impact
In financial terms, the uncertainty driven by the travel bans and the U.S. laptop ban that was lifted in July had the largest impact on the corporate travel industry this year, according to McCormick. In the week following the Trump administration’s initial travel ban, $185 million was lost in U.S. business travel bookings, GBTA estimated.
The association projected that those policies led to a loss of more than $1.3 billion in 2017 in overall travel-related expenditures in the United States, including hotels, food, rental cars, and shopping expenses. “Fortunately, the underlying economies in most markets here and abroad were strong enough to support this impact for the near term,” McCormick said.
Despite political and environmental challenges, many of the corporate travel executives who answered our questions pointed to growth and momentum in their own businesses. Rizzi of Travel Leaders Corporate cited a strong U.S. dollar that made international business trips a good value for companies. In 2017, Travel Leaders Corporate expanded its reach through acquisitions and partnerships in the U.S., Mexico, and Europe.
Rizzi said he also is seeing a larger focus on the responsibility of employers to keep business travelers safe. “In a year where global terrorism has dominated the headlines, duty of care needs to be a top concern of any company who has employees traveling,” he said.
Egencia’s Greyber said he has been “amazed at the resilience of business travelers” through natural disasters, acts of terrorism, and even the normal wear and tear of corporate travel. He pointed to the example of Mahshid Mazooji, a territory sales manager in the food service industry, who was stranded overnight at Charlotte Douglas International Airport when she missed her connecting flight. Instead of complaining, she created a music video of herself dancing to Lionel Richie’s “All Night Long,” appearing with airline employees, a Starbucks barista, and fellow travelers. The video has been watched on YouTube more than 2.7 million times.
“I think the video went viral because people love stories of resilience, of reacting to adversity with joy,” Greyber said. “When we reflect on our brand, our products, what we want to stand for as a company and an industry, we think about travelers like Ms. Mazooji and how we can serve them better.”
Ruch at Rocketrip said his work on motivating business travelers to make better decisions was supported by this year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, awarded to Richard H. Thaler, an economist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business who has been a pioneer in behavioral economics. “Recognition for his work on nudge theory and proving human irrationality has provided continued validation for the incentivized behavioral change space,” Ruch said.
Corporate Travel Tech Continues to Evolve
Executives in the corporate travel industry expect the technological change they witnessed in 2017 to accelerate next year. “People are now starting to realize that the future that we’ve always talked about – whether artificial intelligence, blockchain, or alternative forms of payment – these things are closer than people realize,” said Koch, the ACTE executive director.
These developments could be a boon to business travelers, saving time and money, and even providing them with better care on the road. “What we’re seeing in the industry are a lot of new apps for health,” said Druckman of International SOS. It’s becoming easier for a traveler to have a live video call with a doctor, for example. For some remote locations, there is now a televideo link between the paramedics that work for International SOS and the doctors helping to manage patients’ cases. Even the ability to text the assistance center instead of having to call every time makes travelers’ lives easier, Druckman said.
Rizzi of Travel Leaders Corporate noted a continued demand for mobile technology. Through the company’s mobile communications travel platform, agents can chat with business travelers on the road and can rebook a connecting flight before travelers even know they’ve missed it. “We’re also seeing a tremendous appetite for data intelligence and analytics as it relates to companies’ travel and travel expense data, to optimize and fine-tune their supplier agreements and traveler behaviors,” he said.
Another trend in 2017 was streamlining travel-booking processes. Rocketrip developed a method of embedding its technology within customers’ online booking tools, showing travelers the most cost-effective and rewarding options.
“After launching the integration, we’ve seen traveler engagement increase significantly,” Ruch said.
Steven Reynolds, CEO of hotel rate tracking tool tripBAM, said his company’s biggest innovations this year are a new analytics package with tripBAM’s proprietary lowest qualified rates and a new automated rebooking solution.
Outside of his own company, he highlighted itinerary management platform Traxo for its innovations in tracking reservations made outside corporate booking tools.
“Across the industry, Traxo’s ability to automatically capture direct bookings could be very significant,” he said.
A common theme was the growing ability to use big data to help business travelers make better decisions. Greyber of Egencia said the greatest driver of innovation at his business in 2017 was testing and learning at scale, using machine learning algorithms to improve computer models.
“While this is common across consumer internet companies, we’re the only major TMC doing this in a serious way,” he said. “Our test capacity is up 100 percent year-over-year and will continue to grow in 2018.”
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NetDragon Acquires JumpStart to Expand Its Online Communities
HONG KONG, July 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- NetDragon Websoft Holdings Limited ("NetDragon" or the "Company"; Hong Kong Stock Code: 777), a global leader in building internet communities, is pleased to announce that it successfully acquired JumpStart, a Los Angeles based provider of educational products which specialise in creative and educational games for K-12 children.
Dr. Simon Leung, Vice Chairman and Executive Director of NetDragon said, "The acquisition of JumpStart has been completed today and I am very excited about including JumpStart as a subsidiary to the NetDragon family. It is a perfect example of NetDragon's expertise in combining and utilising both education and gaming businesses. The excellent management team led by David Lord, CEO of JumpStart, has built very impressive and popular educational games that are extremely valuable additions to NetDragon's product offerings. Through this acquisition, we will tap into their excellent relationship with DreamWorks and utilise their IPs to enhance our existing products. We believe this strategic acquisition will open up tremendous opportunities for both NetDragon and JumpStart to offer innovative and world-class learning products to our users."
Founded in 1991, JumpStart has set the standard in children's educational games by making learning fun and easy. Over the years, JumpStart has created numerous successful own-branded games such as JumpStart®, Math Blaster® and Neopets®. Neopets® in particular has recorded over 75 million registered users. Besides its flagship brands, it has also built long-standing partnerships with DreamWorks Animation, leveraging on its IPs including Madagascar and School of Dragons, to produce creative and innovative educational mobile and multiplayer online games. The School of Dragons game is based on "How to Train Your Dragon" Movies and has registered over 30 million players globally. JumpStart currently has a large audience base of over 5 million monthly active users which spans across North America, Europe, South America, Asia and Oceania, along with over 90 million registered accounts.
NetDragon has deep expertise in building online communities, especially in the areas of gaming and education. Combining its knowledge and experience in online gaming and education, and transferring such expertise in building other online communities can unlock great potential and value for the company.
"We feel privileged to become a part of an organization that has such passion about education and expertise in building business through online technologies platforms. We believe JumpStart's existing products and related IPs complement NetDragon's products and services extremely well. We look forward to working with such a talented and passionate team," said David Lord.
About NetDragon Websoft
NetDragon Websoft Holdings Limited (HKSE: 0777) is a global leader in building internet communities. Established in 1999, NetDragon is a vertically integrated, cutting-edge R&D powerhouse with a highly successful track record which includes the development of flagship MMORPGs including Eudemons Online, Heroes Evolved (formerly known as Calibur of Spirit) and Conquer Online. The company also established China's number one online gaming portal, 17173.com, and China's most influential smartphone app store platform, 91 Wireless, which was sold to Baidu in 2013 in what was at the time the largest Internet M&A transaction in China. Being China's pioneer in overseas expansion, NetDragon also directly operates a number of game titles in over 10 languages internationally since 2003. In recent years, NetDragon has emerged as a major player in the global online and mobile learning space as it works to leverage its mobile Internet technologies and operational know-how to develop a game-changing learning ecosystem. For more information, please visit www.netdragon.com.
About JumpStart
JumpStart is the leader in learning-based games for kids. Through its own brands, as well as partner brands, like DreamWorks, JumpStart creates epically fun, learning-based games for kids of all ages. The reality is that kids today seek entertainment through gaming, yet the vast majority of kids' games do absolutely nothing to inspire their minds through learning. JumpStart gives kids a learning edge through epically fun gameplay. The company partners with world-renowned brands to develop various educational mobile and web browser games including Madagascar and School of Dragons®, the ever-popular educational massively multiplayer online role-playing game. JumpStart Games is a privately held based in Torrance, CA. For more information, visit www.JumpStart.com.
NetDragon Press Contact Joseph Lo: +852 9850 5033 Karin Wong: +852 9755 6265 [email protected]
Investor enquiries, please contact: NetDragon Websoft Holdings Limited Ms. Maggie Zhou Senior Director of Investor Relations Tel.: +852 2850 7266/ +86 591 8754 3120 Email: [email protected]; [email protected] Website: www.nd.com.cn/ir JumpStart Press Contact Jennifer Brogan Tel: O: 617.904.9393 x136/ C: 617.913.4993 [email protected]
Read this news on PR Newswire Asia website: NetDragon Acquires JumpStart to Expand Its Online Communities
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NetDragon Acquires JumpStart to Expand Its Online Communities
HONG KONG, July 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- NetDragon Websoft Holdings Limited ("NetDragon" or the "Company"; Hong Kong Stock Code: 777), a global leader in building internet communities, is pleased to announce that it successfully acquired JumpStart, a Los Angeles based provider of educational products which specialise in creative and educational games for K-12 children.
Dr. Simon Leung, Vice Chairman and Executive Director of NetDragon said, "The acquisition of JumpStart has been completed today and I am very excited about including JumpStart as a subsidiary to the NetDragon family. It is a perfect example of NetDragon's expertise in combining and utilising both education and gaming businesses. The excellent management team led by David Lord, CEO of JumpStart, has built very impressive and popular educational games that are extremely valuable additions to NetDragon's product offerings. Through this acquisition, we will tap into their excellent relationship with DreamWorks and utilise their IPs to enhance our existing products. We believe this strategic acquisition will open up tremendous opportunities for both NetDragon and JumpStart to offer innovative and world-class learning products to our users."
Founded in 1991, JumpStart has set the standard in children's educational games by making learning fun and easy. Over the years, JumpStart has created numerous successful own-branded games such as JumpStart®, Math Blaster® and Neopets®. Neopets® in particular has recorded over 75 million registered users. Besides its flagship brands, it has also built long-standing partnerships with DreamWorks Animation, leveraging on its IPs including Madagascar and School of Dragons, to produce creative and innovative educational mobile and multiplayer online games. The School of Dragons game is based on "How to Train Your Dragon" Movies and has registered over 30 million players globally. JumpStart currently has a large audience base of over 5 million monthly active users which spans across North America, Europe, South America, Asia and Oceania, along with over 90 million registered accounts.
NetDragon has deep expertise in building online communities, especially in the areas of gaming and education. Combining its knowledge and experience in online gaming and education, and transferring such expertise in building other online communities can unlock great potential and value for the company.
"We feel privileged to become a part of an organization that has such passion about education and expertise in building business through online technologies platforms. We believe JumpStart's existing products and related IPs complement NetDragon's products and services extremely well. We look forward to working with such a talented and passionate team," said David Lord.
About NetDragon Websoft
NetDragon Websoft Holdings Limited (HKSE: 0777) is a global leader in building internet communities. Established in 1999, NetDragon is a vertically integrated, cutting-edge R&D powerhouse with a highly successful track record which includes the development of flagship MMORPGs including Eudemons Online, Heroes Evolved (formerly known as Calibur of Spirit) and Conquer Online. The company also established China's number one online gaming portal, 17173.com, and China's most influential smartphone app store platform, 91 Wireless, which was sold to Baidu in 2013 in what was at the time the largest Internet M&A transaction in China. Being China's pioneer in overseas expansion, NetDragon also directly operates a number of game titles in over 10 languages internationally since 2003. In recent years, NetDragon has emerged as a major player in the global online and mobile learning space as it works to leverage its mobile Internet technologies and operational know-how to develop a game-changing learning ecosystem. For more information, please visit www.netdragon.com.
About JumpStart
JumpStart is the leader in learning-based games for kids. Through its own brands, as well as partner brands, like DreamWorks, JumpStart creates epically fun, learning-based games for kids of all ages. The reality is that kids today seek entertainment through gaming, yet the vast majority of kids' games do absolutely nothing to inspire their minds through learning. JumpStart gives kids a learning edge through epically fun gameplay. The company partners with world-renowned brands to develop various educational mobile and web browser games including Madagascar and School of Dragons®, the ever-popular educational massively multiplayer online role-playing game. JumpStart Games is a privately held based in Torrance, CA. For more information, visit www.JumpStart.com.
NetDragon Press Contact Joseph Lo: +852 9850 5033 Karin Wong: +852 9755 6265 [email protected]
Investor enquiries, please contact: NetDragon Websoft Holdings Limited Ms. Maggie Zhou Senior Director of Investor Relations Tel.: +852 2850 7266/ +86 591 8754 3120 Email: [email protected]; [email protected] Website: www.nd.com.cn/ir JumpStart Press Contact Jennifer Brogan Tel: O: 617.904.9393 x136/ C: 617.913.4993 [email protected]
Read this news on PR Newswire Asia website: NetDragon Acquires JumpStart to Expand Its Online Communities
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