In no particular order, here are MediaNama’s top 10 stories of the week ended 18th September 2016
MediaNama would like to thank its sponsors: Info Edge, Times Internet, Mapmyindia and E2E for their support.
– EU wants to license content created by online authors, Google isn’t happy about it
Google has criticized the European Council’s proposal that asks content sharing platforms like YouTube, Dailymotion ‘to deploy a kind of automated filtering technology’ to automatically detect songs or audiovisual works that infringe the original creator’s copyrights. The search giant retaliated in a blog post that such a mechanism “would effectively turn the internet into a place where everything uploaded to the web must be cleared by lawyers before it can find an audience.” Read it here.
– Quikr’s Scanner device tracks location, performance & condition of cars
Quikr has launched QuikrScanner, an IoT device that connects to cars via OBDII ports, providing users with information like the car’s location, performance and overall condition. The device can be interfaced with via the QuikrScanner App available on Android and is ‘coming soon’ to iOS and Windows Phones. Read it here.
– IRCTC signs a deal with Paytm to use their payment gateway
Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has signed a deal with payments and mobile commerce company Paytm to integrate its payment gateway. Paytm already has two deals with IRCTC to book tickets and pay for meals through its wallet. With this integration, Paytm will be able to process payments through wallet, debit and credit cards, and netbanking. Read it here.
– Facebook has 80M users on Groups in India; Launches Discover Group
Facebook says that more that 80 million users visiting its Groups product monthly, according to a report by Mint. The company revealed this while launching a new product called Groups Discover, a new where users can browse groups by category and get recommendations based on friends, location and interests. Read it here.
– ItzCash can issue virtual and NFC cards through a deal with Visa
Payments company ItzCash has partnered with card network Visa and has been approved as a member. This will allow ItzCash to issue Visa branded payment instruments, acquire merchant transactions with mVisa, as well as offer Visa Direct for real-time P2P payments and money transfers, and other services. Read it here.
– RCOM lost 3.7M customers during Q1FY17, post CDMA-to-4G migration
Reliance Communications (RCOM) reported 38.9 million mobile Internet connections for the quarter ended June 30, 2016 (Q1FY17), which is up by 9.8% from 35.4 million connections in the corresponding quarter last year. When compared to the previous quarter, RCOM’s subscriber base growth remains flat at 38.9 million mobile Internet connections. Read it here.
– PayU buys Citrus Pay for $130 million; CEO Nitin Gupta to step down
Naspers-backed PayU has acquired payments company Citrus Pay for $130 million in an all cash deal, CEO Nitin Gupta confirmed to MediaNama. Following the deal, Gupta said that he would be stepping down from his role as CEO and pursue another venture. Meanwhile, Citrus Pay’s managing director Amrish Rau would take over the reins of the combined entity as CEO, he told. Read it here.
– To fight intrusive ads, Adblock Plus launches its own ad platform
Adblock Plus, the popular online ad blocking software, will now be starting an ad platform for publishers which will allow them to choose from a marketplace of pre-whitelisted advertisements that they can drag and drop onto their sites. Adblock Plus has teamed up with publisher platform ComboTag to build an Acceptable Ads Platform (AAP). Read it here.
– Update: Airtel, Idea to add more points of interconnect to handle calls from Jio’s network
Update: Following Idea’s pledge for points of interconnect, Airtel said that it will be providing additional points of interconnect to handle calls from Reliance Jio. Airtel said that with its upgrade, it will be able to serve 15 million customers but did not give out a specific number of POIs. It however said that it would be increasing POIs three times of its current numbers. Read it here.
– LinkedIn India launches placement test, mobile site & SMB solution
LinkedIn has launched LinkedIn Placements, LinkedIn Lite and LinkedIn Starter Pack for India:
– Placements will let its students users take an assessment test in order to check out jobs from the “35 top corporates” in India. The company has tied up with Aspiring Minds, CoCubes, HackerRank and Wheebox for the assessment tests. Note that LinkedIn acquired online tutorials and training platform Lynda.com for $1.5 billion in April 2015. Read it here.
