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Twitter’s e-commerce initiatives now include livestream shopping, the company announced this week, and Walmart will be the first retailer to test the new platform. The Live Shopping service will take advantage of Twitter’s existing capabilities in live streaming content and its newer e-commerce features, like the Shop Module for business profiles. .

During the upcoming livestream event, users will be able to watch the show, tweet to join the conversation from the Live Events page, and browse products on the “Shop” and “Latest” tabs just below the video. When ready to purchase, users will click through to the retailer’s website where the livestream will continue — so they don’t have to miss any of the show..

Walmart was a sensible first partner for the new effort, as the retailer has been increasingly investing in livestream events across social media. Over the past year, it hosted more than 15 livestream events across five platforms, including YouTube, TikTok and its own website, among others..

Its Twitter livestream will focus on Cyber Deals and will kick off on November 28 at 7 PM ET in the U.S. The stream will also be broadcast on Walmart.com/live, and across the retailer’s Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube accounts..

Twitter says this is the first-ever e-commerce livestream on its platform, but it plans to bring more experiences like this to its customers in the future..

The event will also serve as a means of testing the Twitter user base’s appetite for live shopping, which today often takes place on other social apps, like Instagram and Facebook, on dedicated live commerce platforms and on video services like YouTube and TikTok. But Twitter — a place where users tend to track news, events, pop culture trends, politics and more — hasn’t yet defined itself as a platform. Its overabundance of new features released in the past year feel more like spaghetti being thrown at the wall to see what sticks, instead of a carefully planned roadmap. .

Twitter today wants to be a home to live audio, creator subscriptions, newsletters, bitcoin tipping, NFTs, private communities and more. But, in reality, only some of these things will actually work. For example, Twitter already had to kill its Stories feature (Fleets) due to lack of traction. And in its early days of Super Follow, subscriptions didn’t produce much revenue..

Whether or not it will be able to offer the sort of live commerce experience that resonates with consumers and delivers retailers’ objectives still remains to be seen.

Livestream shopping launched by twitter


Uber will shut most of its services in Belgium tomorrow after court ruling

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Uber will halt its ride-hailing service in most of Belgium tomorrow following a court ruling Wednesday that extends a 2015 order banning its p2p UberPop service to also cover professional drivers providing its ride-hailing service.

Uber told us that it is studying the details of the ruling to decide whether to appeal the decision with the country’s Supreme Court.

The move also follows a temporary suspension of Uber’s service in Brussels in September — an action the tech giant called “exceptional and unprecedented”, saying it was only taking the step to protest the lack of reform of rules which prohibit drivers from using smartphones.

Following the ruling by the Brussels Appeal Court this week, private hire vehicle drivers have also been blocking a major tunnel in the Belgian capital.

In a statement on Friday’s looming shutdown, Uber’s country chief, Laurent Slits, once again attacked the Belgian government for not delivering a reform it’s been lobbying for, writing: “This decision was made based on outdated regulations written in a time before smartphones, which the government has promised and failed to reform for the last seven years.”

Per Bloomberg, which reported on Uber’s shutdown earlier, it will not apply to a small number of drivers who are licensed in a Flemish region of the country — and who will therefore still be allowed to use the app.
Uber confirmed the Appeal Court ruling only affects drivers with Brussels licences.

In the statement, Slits added that the tech giant is “deeply concerned” about the 2,000 holders of LVC licenses (aka rental car with driver licences) who he said will “lose their ability to generate earnings [via Uber’s platform] from Friday”.

That phrasing — “generate earnings” — refers to the fact Uber does not employ drivers directly in Belgium; instead it classifies them as independent contractors. So it cannot claim that 2,000 ‘jobs’ are about to be lost since it does not provide employment contracts to the LVC drivers in question in the first place.

“We urge the government to move quickly to reform the taxi and LVC sector once and for all so that drivers can continue working to provide for their families,” Slits added.

Back in March the local government in Brussels banned Uber drivers from picking up rides via smartphones and geolocation.

Since then Uber drivers in the city have been operating in a legal grey zone — where they risk sanctions by continuing to drive using its app. However the company suggests drivers have been given mixed messages, claiming authorities are sometimes telling drivers — in private — that they can continue driving.

A spokesman for Uber called the government’s March order “mistaken” — pointing out that it had promised a reform of the law before the summer. Per Reuters, a draft law to reform the rules was set out by the Belgian government in September. But, according to Uber, the sector as a whole has yet to see the text.

Uber suggested there is widespread backing in Belgium for reforming the 1995 rules — not just from LVC drivers who serve customers via its platform but also from traditional taxi firms.

However local taxi firms in Brussels have their own reform ideas — and have also said they are keen to poach Uber drivers to plug a shortage of taxi drivers.

A sector spokesman recently told TaxiPro there’s a shortfall of 600+ taxi drivers in the capital which could be filled by LVC holders that have been driving for Uber.

“The big advantage is that we offer a solution to these Uber drivers,” Sam Bouchal told the publication in September [translated to English via Google Translate], saying that the Uber drivers could be offered permanent contracts, and adding: “We’re getting them out of illegality.”

Bouchal also told TaxiPro that the taxi sector wants to avoid what he couched as “a social massacre.”
Concern over gig working conditions has been a fiery topic across Europe for years, leading to scores of legal challenges — and a 2017 ruling by Europe’s top court that Uber is a transport service and so cannot simply dodge local taxi regulations.

In the UK, Uber was also recently been forced to recognize drivers as workers after losing the last of a long line of employment challenges at the country’s Supreme Court.

However, in Belgium — a core centre of power for the European Commission — the ride-hailing giant is continuing to lobby for favorably changes to the law to grease the engines of its platform business.

Uber is also lobbying the Commission to address ride-hailing regulations across the bloc’s single market in an upcoming urban mobility framework — which the EU exec has said it wants to support the development of urban transport systems that are “safe, accessible, inclusive, affordable, smart, resilient and emission-free”. 

Uber’s hope here is that EU lawmakers will seek to apply rules that override city level regulations — setting a pan-EU enabling framework for ride-hailing services which would mean it could just ignore local authority demands.

However the Commission has also said it wants the urban mobility framework to tackle “transport pollution and congestion” — so it’s not clear how removing regulatory barriers to ride-hailing would be anything other than counterproductive on that front.

Cars remain the least efficient way to transport people around dense urban environments given how much space they require and how relatively few people can be moved around in the space occupied by a single car vs a train, bus, cycling, scooting, walking etc. The rise of micromobility has also fuelled the range of available car alternatives — so the arguments in favor of cars in cities are shrinking rapidly.

The coronavirus pandemic has also led to a number of European cities to dial up their focus on transforming street infrastructure to be more pedestrian and locally focused, also leveraging the rise of micromobility to enact policies that deliberately de-emphasize the car. Simply put, cleaner air and more vibrant local streets (and school bike trains) are hard to argue against.

While Brussels has not been at the forefront of those developments the city has been seeking to reduce the number of cars on its infamously congested, pollution-smogged roads in recent years. So Belgium’s government may well have reason to pause and consider the implications of any ride-hailing reforms.

In parallel, the European Commission has been working on another legislation initiative — which it wants to improve conditions for platform workers across the bloc, responding to high levels of concern over factors such as the lack of job security and precarious earnings.

On that front Uber has also been busy lobbying — and stands accused of pushing EU lawmakers to reduce standards for platform workers, with critics saying it’s seeking to replicate its success in overturning a California law that had sought to classify gig workers as employees.

So the street-level battle for Europe’s social contract is very real.

TikTok-like vertical video feed is tested by Spotify app

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TikTok has seen its short-form video feed copied by a host of competitors, from Instagram to Snap to YouTube and even Netflix. Now it looks like you can add Spotify to that list. The company has confirmed it’s currently testing a new feature in its app, Discover, which presents a vertical feed of music videos that users can scroll through and optionally like or skip. For those who have access to the feature, it appears as a fourth tab in the navigation bar at the bottom of the Spotify app, in between Home and Search.

The new addition was first spotted by Chris Messina, who tweeted out a video of the Discover feature in action. He described it as a “pared-down version” of a TikTok-style feed of music videos.

Messina told us he found the feature in Spotify’s TestFlight build (a beta version for iOS), where a new icon in the navigation toolbar brings you immediately to the video feed when tapped. You can then swipe up and down to move through the feed, much like you would on TikTok. In addition to tapping the heart to like songs, you also can tap the three-dot menu to bring up the standard song information sheet, he notes.

Messina also speculated the feature may be taking advantage of Spotify’s existing Canvas format.

Introduced broadly in 2019, Canvas allows artists to create videos that accompany their music on the Spotify app. The feature had mixed reviews from users, as some reported they preferred to see just the static album art when listening to music and found the video and its looping imagery distracting. But others said they liked it. Canvas, however, appears to drive the engagement metrics that Spotify wants — the company reports that users are more likely to keep streaming, share tracks or save tracks when they see a Canvas.

From the video Messina shared and others, it is confirm that the videos playing in the vertical feed are the artists’ existing Canvas videos. But Spotify would not confirm this directly.

Spotify was asked for further information on the feature, including whether it had plans to roll this out further, whether it was available on both iOS and Android, which markets had access to the feature and more. The company declined to share any details about the feature but did confirm, via a statement, it was exploring the idea of a vertical video feed.

“At Spotify, we routinely conduct a number of tests in an effort to improve our user experience,” a spokesperson said. “Some of those tests end up paving the way for our broader user experience and others serve only as an important learning. We don’t have any further news to share at this time,” they added.

In other words, the test is still very early and may not make its way to the public. But if it did, it wouldn’t be a surprising move on Spotify’s part. The company has before looked to popular social media formats to engage its users. In the past, Spotify tested a Stories feature that allowed influencers to post Stories to introduce their own, curated playlists. But that option never became available to all Spotify users.

While the TikTok format has been adopted by top social platforms, including Instagram (Reels), Snapchat (Spotlight), YouTube (Shorts) and Pinterest (Idea Pins), it’s also proving to be an ideal format for content discovery. 

Netflix, for instance, recently adopted the short-form vertical video feed in its own app with the launch of its “Fast Laughs” feature, which offers clips from its content library and tools to save the programs to a watch list or just start streaming them. Similarly, Spotify’s video-based Discover feature could help introduce users to new music and offer a way to signal their interests to Spotify in a familiar format.

Digital ID cards in Apple will now be released in 2022

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Apple has delayed the release of a feature that will eventually allow you to store your ID in the company’s Wallet app. In an update to the official iOS 15 website that was spotted by MacRumors, Apple says that functionality will now arrive sometime in early 2022. The company previously planned to launch in late 2021.

Apple first announced the feature at WWDC 2021. At the time, the company said the tool would allow you to add your driver’s license or state ID card to Apple Wallet just like you would a credit or debit card. Among the first locations that will support the feature will be select Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoints at some US airports.

At those locations, you’ll have the option to use your iPhone or Apple Watch to present your ID to the TSA. You’ll do so by tapping your device on an identity reader, and you won’t need to hand over your iPhone or Apple Watch to a TSA employee.

In September, Apple announced eight states would support the feature at launch, starting with Arizona and Georgia, and Connecticut, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma and Utah to follow. Beyond TSA checkpoints, Apple said retailers and venues would add support later.

Outside of early 2022, Apple has not shared a specific release date for the feature. What’s clear is that it won’t arrive with iOS 15.2. That update is currently in beta testing and does not include support for storing digital IDs.

Family locator service, life 360 decides to acquire tile for $205 million

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Lost-item tracker company Tile, which competes with Apple’s AirTag is being acquired by family communication service Life360. The deal is valued at $205 million and will see Tile continue to be led as its own brand under its existing CEO CJ Prober. The company says no further changes to the Tile team are currently planned and Prober will also now join the Life360 board of directors.

This is the second recent hardware acquisition for Life360, which earlier this year acquired the location device maker Jiobit for $37 million. The company then said its goal was to expand its family tracking capabilities beyond those who have smartphones capable of running its app — smaller children, children with special needs, and pets, for example.

In the case of Tile, however, the company says it sees the potential in expanding its business beyond family tracking to become a broader solution for finding “the people, pets, and things” that families care most about. The company envisions a combined service that offers a unified platform where users can track their family members and stay in touch, but also keep track of their items — like wallets, keys, remote controls and more — using Tile’s location-based finding capabilities.

Tile also has partnerships with over 50 different third-party devices, from wireless earbuds to laptops to dog collars, which also make the deal more valuable. And it runs the sizable “Tile Finding Network,” which taps into its install base of Tile owners who run the Tile mobile app to locate items when they’re out of Bluetooth range. To date, Tile has sold over 40 million devices and has over 425,000 paying customers, but hadn’t disclosed its total number of active users.

Life360 says the addition of its 33 million smartphone users is expected to increase the reach of Tile’s Finding Network by 10x.

“This acquisition marks a key step forward towards Life360 achieving its vision of being the world’s leading platform for safety and location services. We are thrilled to welcome Tile to the Life 360 family,” noted Chris Hulls, Co-Founder and CEO of Life360, in a statement.

Ahead of this news, Tile in September announced a $40 million debt round of financing which Prober had said made sense because it’s good to have a mix of “debt and equity” on the books, as the debt “doesn’t incur dilution to our shareholders.” But there’s no doubt Tile’s future was threatened since the launch of the Apple AirTag — the company went on to be a staunch Apple critic over antitrust issues and even testified before lawmakers about the impacts Apple was having on its business.

Tile also recently revamped its product line, including its upcoming AirTag rival powered by ultra-wideband, in the hopes of remaining competitive.

Both companies have some commonalities in that their approach is to be platform-agnostic, working across iOS and Android devices alike — the latter which could aid with international expansion efforts, as Android dominates in many global markets.

Following the deal, Life360 will have access to consumers in over 27,000 retail stores where Tiles are sold and the over one million third-party devices which has Tile’s technology built in. Both companies also offer premium subscription services, and Life360 expects to now expand its paid subscriber base by 45% to around 1.6 million people. In the future, a combined offering could help convert more free users to paying customers, the companies likely hope.

Life360 has been listed on the Australian Securities Exchange since 2019, and had previously announced plans for a potential dual listing in the U.S. in 2022. This deal will add momentum to that goal, Life360 said.

Credit Suisse and Code Advisors acted as Life360’s joint financial advisers on the deal. DLA Piper and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP acted as Life360’s legal advisers, the company reported. Jefferies LLC served as exclusive financial advisor to Tile and Fenwick and West LLP served as Tile’s legal adviser.

“This is a great day for Tile, our customers, and our employees,” said CJ Prober, CEO of Tile, in a statement. “This acquisition not only brings together two incredible teams with complementary missions and values, it paves the way for us to jointly build the world’s leading solutions for peace of mind and safety. 

This is the next step in our journey, and I could not be more excited to continue leading our incredible team and to join the Life360 Board,” he said.

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