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Tesla’s Braking System Gets an Over-the-Air Update

Shortly after Consumer Reports panned the Model 3 for its long stopping distance, Elon pushed a change through the ether to adjust the antilock algorithm.

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Why Russian Journalist Arkady Babchenko Faked His Own Murder—and What Happens Now

Russian war correspondent Arkady Babchenko was reported dead Tuesday. On Wednesday, he showed up at a press conference, very much alive.

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The Bleak State of Federal Government Cybersecurity

Nearly three out of four federal agencies is unprepared for a cyberattack, and there's no system in place to fix it.

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Snap Is No Facebook, and Spiegel Insists He Wants It That Way

Speaking at a technology conference Snap CEO Evan Spiegel takes a few digs at rival Facebook, prompting a reply tweet from a Facebook executive.

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Canceling 'Roseanne' Wasn't About Conviction, It Was About Capital

ABC acted swiftly yesterday, but it may not be making the grand gesture of civility many seem to think it has.

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How a Former US Spy Chief Became Trump’s Fiercest Critic

In his new book, Facts and Fears, James Clapper describes the outrage and anxiety that pulled him back into public life and his new role as a Trump dissenter.

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With Venues, Oculus and Facebook Push Social VR Into New Territory

Concerts, sporting events, and movie nights—all live, in three dimensions, and surrounded by hundreds of strangers. What could go wrong?

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Mapbox Uses Your Phone's Camera to Chart a Changing World

The mapping company's new software development kit will let its customers tap into data from their users' phone cameras to keep tabs on the streets in real time.

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Papua New Guinea Wants to Ban Facebook. It Shouldn't

The island nation is considering blocking Facebook for one month in order to collect information on fake profiles, pornography, and more. But the impact could be severe.

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How to Preorder the Nintendo NES Classic Mini (And Make Sure You Get One)

Nintendo's tiny console is coming back, and here's how to get one on lock early.

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Why Darpa Wants Everyone to Launch Tiny Satellites

A flock of little guys is less vulnerable to attack than one big bird. Also, you could maybe send them up with space balloons.

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The Creepy Rise of Real Companies Spawning Fictional Design

Speculative design tasks creators with building a better world through public thought experiments. But with companies like Google adapting the practice, it can feel like a taunting display of power.

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Why the US-China ‘Trade War’ Remains a War of Words

Trump again threatened tariffs on Chinese goods, but if the past weeks are any guide, it would seem that harsh words may not translate into harsh actions.

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23andMe Is Suing Ancestry Over Some Pretty Ancient IP

And the outcome of the case could reshape the genetic genealogy testing industry.

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10 Ways to Exploit Human Nature and Write Amazingly Appealing Headlines

Sucks, doesn’t it?

You know how important headlines are. You know the success of your blog hinges on your headlines. And you know that yours aren’t getting the job done.

Your blog posts just sit there collecting e-dust because your headlines barely get clicked.

So what are you doing wrong?

What are your headlines missing?

Well, chances are your headlines don’t exploit your audience’s human nature enough.

If you want your headlines to connect with your audience, you need to exploit their drives, their instincts, and, at the risk of sounding cynical, their utter self-absorption.

In fact, if you want to write better headlines, you should take lessons from those who exploit human nature on a daily basis — con artists, sleazy politicians, and anyone who manipulates people to further their own agenda.

You just have to be careful not to cross over to the dark side.

Let me explain…

Why You Must Write Headlines Like a Skilled Manipulator (Even If That’s Not Your Style)

Con men will say whatever you want to hear to get inside your wallet. Sleazy politicians will make any false promise and tell any half-truth if it means they’ll get your vote.

These skilled manipulators know exactly which buttons to push to get people to do what they want. They’re rotten scoundrels — and you, my friend, could stand to be more like them.

“What? I don’t want to be a scoundrel! I don’t want to manipulate anyone!”

Relax. I’m not saying you should.

As bloggers, we’re not in the market of manipulation — but we are in the market of persuasion. And there’s only the finest of lines between the two.

Think about it. The goal for both is to convince people to do what you want them to do. Con men want you to give them their money, while politicians want you to give them your vote. You want people to click your headlines and read your posts.

The only difference is that manipulation implies a degree of deception, while persuasion does not.

It’s no wonder the success of both relies on pushing the right buttons.

Want to find out what those are?

Keep reading.

How to Push the Right Buttons and Make Your Headlines Irresistibly Clickable

We all respond when certain buttons are pushed.

When we lose someone we love, we cry. When something pisses us off, we raise our voice. And when we open a bag of Cheetos, that sucker is empty ten minutes later.

It’s not exactly the same for everybody, but no matter how we respond, we will respond.

It’s in our nature.

And if you want to write headlines that appeal to your audience and get them to respond with a click, you need to know how to push the right buttons.

So let’s find out how to push those.

#1. Promise to Grant Their Wishes

---

Okay, this one’s familiar, right? You’ve probably heard your headline should offer the reader something they want.

But as familiar as it is, too many bloggers get this one wrong. They focus their headline on something they want their audience to want, or something they think their audience should want.

When you use this appeal in your headlines you have to ask yourself, “If I asked my audience what they wanted most right now, would anyone give this as an answer?”

Compare these, for example:

• 10 Crucial Steps to Writing a Stellar Business Plan
• How to Write a Business Plan That Makes Investors Beg to Give You Their Money

At first glance, the first one doesn’t look half bad. But if you asked an audience of entrepreneurs what they wanted most right now, would anyone answer, “I want to write a stellar business plan”?

Doubtful, right?

On the other hand, they might well answer that they want investors to fund their business.

That’s the difference.

Questions to Ask:

• What does your audience want most of all right now?
• Where does your audience want to be in the future?
• What do they want to have? Who do they want to be? What do they want to accomplish?
• What are some smaller goals your audience could achieve today/ this week / this month that would bring them closer to that future?
• What are some immediate problems your audience wants to have solved?

Examples:

• How to Write a Business Plan That Makes Investors Beg to Give You Their Money
• How to Get Your Beach Body in Shape and Rock Your Bikini This Summer
• 10 Ways to Turn Unruly Kids into Well-Behaved Little Angels

#2. Give Them a Scapegoat

---

“It’s not your fault.”

Those are four words everybody loves to hear when they feel like they’ve failed or made a mistake.

Because let’s face it, we all hate feeling like a failure or screw-up. Our egos would much rather shift the blame elsewhere so we can keep feeling good about ourselves.

So when your headline offers readers a valid excuse for not achieving their hopes and dreams, they’ll eat that up like warm chocolate pie.

Questions to Ask:

• What is your audience trying but failing at?
• What are some outside forces that hold your audience back?
• Who or what can your audience blame for their lack of success?

Examples:

• Why Investors Are Petrified to Fund New Businesses Right Now
• How Supermarkets Brainwash Us into Buying Junk Food
• 10 Ways Class Overcrowding Is Killing Your Kid’s Grades

#3. Point the Finger of Blame

---

You can also take the opposite approach. Instead of pointing the finger at someone else, you can point it at your reader. You tell them their failures are all their own fault.

This appeals to the same basic desire as before — the desire not to feel like a screw-up. We’ll do anything to avoid mistakes and get things right because we want to avoid making fools of ourselves.

If we’re doing something wrong, we want to know so we can fix it.

Questions to Ask:

• What common mistakes does your audience make?
• How is your audience holding itself back?
• What mistakes do they already suspect they’re making?

Examples:

• 10 Clear Warning Signs Your Business Idea Sucks
• 7 Common Dieting Mistakes That Make You Gain More Weight Than You Lose
• How Pushy Parenting Can Hurt Your Children’s Grades

#4. Call Upon Their Tribal Sense

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We are social creatures with an instinctual drive to belong. We don’t live in tribes in the same way our ancestors did, but this drive still exists in us nonetheless. These days, we use personal attributes to define which tribes we belong to.

For example, you might be a man, 40-something, married, entrepreneur, father, and theater fan. Or you might be a woman, 20-something, single, blogger, writer, and book lover.

These are all different kinds of “tribes” you might be part of. Calling one out in your headline will get the attention of anyone who feels like they belong to it.

But that’s not all. You can also use tribes to which your audience aspires to belong — the ones they wish they were a part of but aren’t quite yet. For instance, if you aspire to be a six-figure entrepreneur or best-selling author, any headline that mentions these tribes would get your attention too.

Questions to Ask:

• Which labels and attributes would your audience use to describe themselves?
• To what groups does your audience aspire to belong?

Examples:

• 20 Startup Secrets from Top Silicon Valley Companies**
• 7 Shocking Facts Every Dieter Should Know
• 15 Everyday Things Skinny People Do Differently
• 7 Scary Thoughts Only Dads Will Understand
• The Single Mom’s Guide to Getting Regular Me-Time

*Notice how this headline states both the tribe the audience belongs to (Startups) AND the tribe they aspire to be part of (Top Silicon Valley Companies).

#5. Scare the Living Crap Out of Them

---

Fear and anxiety are powerful emotions. Everyone has experienced them at some point in their lives. They’re primal instincts that can override our brains and make us forget about everything else around us.

So imagine the power of a headline that stokes your readers’ biggest fears and anxieties.

Is their worst nightmare coming true? Are they right to be afraid? They’ll have to click to find out.

Questions to Ask:

• What is the worst possible future your audience can imagine?
• What are they afraid will happen if they [do X]?
• What do they fear is already happening?
• What situation does your audience dread finding themselves in?

Examples:

• 10 Pitching Mistakes That Make Investors Laugh Behind Your Back
• 15 Exercise Routines That Will Ruin Your Feminine Curves
• 7 Warning Signs Your Kids Are Having Unprotected Sex

#6. Put Their Worried Mind to Rest

---

While scaring the daylights out of your readers is fun, it’s not the only way you can use fear in your headlines. You can also take the opposite approach.

Just like your mom used to do when you were scared as a child, tell them there’s nothing to be afraid of.

Promise they can avoid the situations that cripple them with anxiety. Promise they can keep their nightmares from coming true. Promise they can take their desired actions without the disastrous consequences.

If your headline promises to relieve their fears, they’ll want to find out more.

Questions to Ask:

1. What is your audience worried about that they shouldn’t be worried about?
2. How can your audience prevent their fears from coming true?
3. What situation does your audience dread that you can make less scary for them?

Examples:

• How to Raise Money for Your Business (Even if You Suck at Pitching Investors)
• 12 Exercises That Burn Off Fat Without Ruining Your Curves
• 5 Cringe-Free Ways to Teach Your Kids About Safe Sex

#7. Help Them Be Lazier

---

Let’s face it. If given the choice, we want to get stuff done quickly and easily, so we have more time to relax and do the things we enjoy.

Unfortunately, we often get stuck with tedious or complicated tasks that take a lot of time and effort to complete.

Can you help your audience simplify or fast-forward through those tasks? Use this promise in your headline.

Questions to Ask:

• What does your audience find complicated?
• What’s a recurring task your audience finds tedious?
• What’s a recurring task that takes up too much of your audience’s time?
• What’s a recurring task that your audience wishes they could skip?

Examples:

• Can’t Stand Bookkeeping? Use This App to Get it Done on Autopilot
• 10 Simple Paleo Hacks: A Cheat Sheet for the Overwhelmed Beginner
• How to Soothe a Crying Baby in 15 Seconds Flat

#8. Confirm Their Worst Suspicions

---

Have you ever watched a movie where you guessed the twist before it happened? Didn’t it make you feel smart for seeing it coming way before anyone else?

That’s the emotion we want to evoke with this appeal. Everybody loves having their suspicions, theories or opinions validated with some cold, hard proof. Let’s face it, we just love being proven right. (It beats being wrong!)

So when a headline promises to give us that validation, we want to know more. Because having uninformed opinions is one thing, but having facts to back them up — that’s catnip.

Questions to Ask:

• What does your audience suspect is too good to be true?
• What activity does your audience suspect doesn’t actually work?
• Who does your audience suspect is lying to them, and what about?

Examples:

• Why the Four-Hour Work Week Is a Foolish Pipe Dream
• 10 Fad Diets That Never Lead to Lasting Weight Loss
• 7 Lies Colleges Will Tell About Their Graduate Employment

#9. Demolish Their Conventional Wisdom

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Breaking with conventional wisdom is a powerful way to grab attention.

When everyone repeats a certain idea, we’re prone to accept it as true. And the more we see an idea repeated, the stronger our belief in that idea becomes. At some point, we treat these beliefs as common sense.

But we don’t always get it right, do we? And when you can point out how everyone else got it wrong, you’ll shock people out of their comatose state.

They’ll either be curious to find out whether you can back up your claim, or eager to prove you wrong. But in either case, they click.

Questions to Ask:

• What conventional beliefs does your audience hold that are flat out wrong?
• Which established methods are holding your audience back?
• What preconceptions does your audience have that hold them back?
• What commonly peddled advice is misleading your audience?

Examples:

• 10 Reasons You Should Ship a Shitty Product
• How to Lose Weight on a McDonald’s Diet
• Why You Should Never Force Kids to Finish Their Plates

#10. Hate on Your Common Enemies

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You may have heard this phrase before: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

And it’s true. Shared animosity is a powerful unifier.

So when your headline takes aim at someone (or something) your audience hates, they’ll feel like you’re on their side. They’ll want to find out what you have to say because, as mentioned before, people are always looking for confirmation.

It’s a powerful appeal, but try not to become an outright hate-monger. Remember, we’re trying not to cross over to the dark side!

Questions to Ask:

• Who does your audience hate?
• What groups of people does your audience hate?
• What companies does your audience hate?
• What products does your audience hate?
• What activities does your audience hate?
• What situations does your audience hate?
• What events does your audience hate?
• What else does your audience hate?

Examples:

• How to Silence Those Uppity Investors Meddling with Your Business
• 10 Reasons Why Dieting Is Torture Worse Than Waterboarding
• Parents Must Finally Unite to Destroy All Legos

Exploit Human Nature and Get Your Headlines Clicked

As a blogger, you know that understanding your audience is key to your success. But that goes deeper than understanding their unique struggles and interests. You must also understand their very nature.

You must know what makes people tick. You must know what drives them. You must know which buttons to push to make them click your headlines.

Go through the list above and answer all the questions. That will give you a list of topics to write about.

Put each one in a headline template, add a power word or two, and you’ll end up with amazingly appealing headlines.

If you push the right buttons, your audience can’t help but respond.

So go ahead and push those buttons.

About the Author: Robert van Tongeren is the former Associate Editor of Smart Blogger. He has also helped countless of our students get published on big blogs like Huffington Post, Tiny Buddha and Fast Company. Want to shape up your headline skills fast? Sign up for his free weekly headline repair.

The post 10 Ways to Exploit Human Nature and Write Amazingly Appealing Headlines appeared first on Smart Blogger.

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Snap Is No Facebook, and Spiegel Insists He Wants It That Way

Speaking at a technology conference Snap CEO Evan Spiegel takes a few digs at rival Facebook, prompting a reply tweet from a Facebook executive.

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Why the US-China ‘Trade War’ Remains a War of Words

Trump again threatened tariffs on Chinese goods, but if the past weeks are any guide, it would seem that harsh words may not translate into harsh actions.

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Your Next Glass of Wine Might Be a Fake—and You'll Love It

Replica Wine makes cheaper copies of your favorite wine at a discount by analyzing its chemistry. Often, even professional critics can't tell the difference. Is this heresy or just good business?

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How to Increase Clicks by Mastering Your Headlines

What draws people to your content?

In the past, I’ve explained how to write introductions that make the rest of your post irresistible. But before readers can even have a chance to read your intros, they’ll need to click on your headline.

Headlines go way beyond just blog posts. This is something you need to focus on for every piece of content you produce.

Whether it’s a new video on your website or a breaking news story you’re sharing via social media, it all starts with a captivating headline.

Obviously, you want people to consume the content you’re producing. But the reality is they probably won’t. According to research from HubSpot, 43% of readers just skim through posts.

But if your goal is to get clicks and drive traffic to a landing page, all you need to do is focus on the title.

That’s because 80% of people will read a headline. So there’s a good chance your headlines will be seen by most of your audience. Now, it’s just up to you to make sure it’s appealing enough to get clicks.

Include a number

Numbers are a great way to draw attention to your post and increase clicks. That’s because readers know what to expect when they see a number in the title.

I use them when I’m writing my blog posts all the time. Here’s a recent headline I used for an article about how to monitor your competition.

When someone stumbles upon this headline, they know exactly what the post will entail. Basically, it’s going to be a list of 10 different tools.

As I mentioned, readers like to skim through content. Lists are appealing because they make it easy to bounce from one point to another.

The reader doesn’t have to read every single word to scan through this list. As a result, they are more likely to click on it.

But what numbers should you use? According to research-based 2017 Facebook engagement data, these are the top ten performing numbers:

• 10
• 5
• 15
• 7
• 20
• 6
• 8
• 12
• 9
• 3

Numbers that are increments of five make up four of the top five results on this list.

But that doesn’t mean you should include numbers like 50 or 100. As you can see, none of the top ten results include numbers higher than 20.

That’s because people don’t want to spend all day reading your content. They know it will take only a few minutes or so to skim through a list of 10. But anything upward of 20 is much less appealing and won’t produce as many clicks.

Don’t overlook the length

Don’t ramble. Your headline shouldn’t be as long as an introduction. But it shouldn’t be only a few words either.

One sentence or fragment of a sentence should put you in a good spot to get clicks. That’s because it provides your audience with enough information to grab their attention.

Research shows that headlines between 16 and 18 words produce the most engagement:

Analyze your current headlines.

If they are fewer than ten words, it could be the main reason why you’re getting an unsatisfactory number of clicks. On the flip side, if your headlines have a word count that’s pushing 30, it’s still not optimized for the highest engagement.

Don’t get carried away here. Your headline needs to make sense and read well.

Adding or removing a couple of words just to fit within the 16 to 18 range isn’t going to help you if the title doesn’t make any sense.

In addition to your word count, you should also consider the number of characters in your headline.

Take a look at the data analysis in this article from Contently:

As you can see from the graph, headlines with the highest click-through rates have between 90 and 99 characters.

Interestingly enough, the title of this post is,

According to a study, There’s a Good Chance You’ll Click This Headline Because It’s 97 Characters.

The character count falls within the recommendations of the research.

Have you noticed anything else about this title? I’m sure you’re not in the habit of counting words. Truthfully, I’m not either. But for the sake of this post, I’ve been paying more attention to this.

The article from Contently has 16 words in the title. This aligns with the research on word count and its relationship to engagement I talked about earlier.

It hits the mark for both categories.

Basically, if you can write headlines that are between 16 to 18 words and have 90 to 99 characters, you’ll be putting yourself in the best position to get the most possible clicks.

Shock your audience

Come up with a headline that is too intriguing for readers to pass up on.

Make your audience ask themselves “huh?” or “is this even possible?”

Shocking headlines are sometimes referred to as click-bait. It’s okay to do it as long as you are not letting your readers down with your content.

Here’s what I mean by this. If you are going to use a shocking headline, the content had better deliver as promised.

Take a look at this old blog post I wrote about how I made $1 million with a Ferrari:

What a throwback picture! I almost don’t recognize myself with all that hair.

But this is the type of article that generates clicks because the headline is so shocking. It draws the attention of readers for several reasons.

First of all, a Ferrari is a well-known sports car recognized internationally. They are expensive and turn heads whenever they are seen on the road.

Second, I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t be interested in how to make a million bucks. And there’s a way to make money with a sports car? The title is too intriguing to ignore.

It makes the user question if that’s actually possible.

You can come up with headlines like this as well. Think of something exciting you’ve accomplished. Put it into your headline.

Set a benchmark

Another way to get people to click on your headlines is to use a benchmark.

Show them how they can achieve something by clicking on your post and reading more information. For example, let’s say your company sells dietary supplements.

A benchmark headline could say,

How you can lose 30 pounds in the next 30 days.

This strategy combines the benchmark method with the previous tactic of using a shock factor. Losing 30 pounds is extreme on its own. But doing it in 30 days? That’s something that even people who aren’t trying to lose weight would be interested in reading.

Just make sure your headlines are realistic. You want to set a benchmark that’s attainable.

Check out this example from my blog where I discuss how to get more Twitter followers:

The benchmark here is 10,000.

It’s a high number, but it’s still realistic. If the title said, “How to get 10 million Twitter followers,” it would be much less believable.

For most people, reaching 10 million followers on social media is unrealistic. I know my blog audience. I’m speaking to entrepreneurs and business owners, not celebrities.

I set this benchmark at a number I think they can reach.

Discuss relevant topics

Your headlines need to be relevant to a few different things.

First of all, they need to be appropriate for your brand and voice. If your business is in the music industry, you shouldn’t be writing headlines about how to survive an earthquake.

Yes, that example may be a bit drastic, but I’m sure you understand what I’m talking about.

Second, your headlines must be relevant in terms of their timing. If you’re reporting a news story that happened two weeks ago, you’re too late. That headline is meaningless now.

Here’s a great example of a relevant headline from Harper’s BAZAAR:

As a magazine that specializes in fashion trends, pop culture, and beauty advice, it uses a headline on topic for the brand. It hits the mark for our first component of relevance.

This article discusses fashion trends for the spring and summer of 2018.

But notice when it was published. The article was released on February 22, 2018. So the timing is perfect as well.

If it came out in the spring or summer, it would be too late. Readers aren’t going to click on something that’s old news. The time to buy their spring and summer clothing is before the season starts.

Teach your readers “how to” do something

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know I’m a big fan of creating informative guides teaching you how to do certain things.

If you are an expert in a particular field or industry, use your extensive knowledge to your advantage. Create step-by-step guides for your readers.

In addition to being informative, such posts are also a great way to get lots of clicks.

Here’s something else you need to take into consideration. Sure, you’ll be sharing your content on all your distribution channels. But that’s not the only way your content will be seen.

You’ll also need to write headlines based on organic traffic. Your organic traffic comes from unpaid search engine results.

If someone needs help accomplishing something, what do you think they’ll type into Google? There’s a good chance they’ll type the words “how to,” so it’s in your best interest to include these words in your headlines for SEO purposes.

Take a look at this article from BuildFire:

First of all, the content of this article is relevant to the brand—a topic I discussed above.

But based on this headline, it’s clear the post will show people how to do something.

BuildFire specializes in everything related to mobile applications. More specifically, they handle custom app development.

So they recognized the search terms someone would put into Google. Here’s a look at what I’m referring to:

Aside from a paid advertisement, this post from BuildFire is the top search result based on its headline.

If you can master your SEO skills, you’ll get plenty of clicks just by occupying the top position on Google. In fact, in 2017 the top position received 20.5% of all Google clicks.

Those click-through rates drop down to 13% for the second and third positions, which is still good but a significant drop from the top spot’s rate.

As you’ve seen from a few of my examples in this guide, I practice what I preach. Look again at the title of the post you’re reading right now. I’m teaching you “how to” do something, and my headline reflects that.

Conclusion

If you want people to read your content, you need to entice them to click on your headline before you can do anything else.

If you are just trying to drive more traffic to specific pages, writing an engaging headline is the best way to do this.

Writing a headline shouldn’t be taken lightly. There is science behind it.

Add a number. Readers love to scan content, so a numbered list with fewer than 20 topics is one of my favorite ways to generate clicks.

As you can see from the research I discussed, the length of your headlines is important as well. You need to consider both the word and character count to make your title as efficient as possible.

Use a shocking headline to wow your audience and generate clicks. Set an attainable benchmark. Just make sure all your content is relevant and released at appropriate times based on titles.

“How to” articles also produce lots of clicks. Your SEO skills should be applied to every headline you write to increase your organic traffic.

If you follow this guide, you’ll see a significant surge in your click-through rates based on your new and improved headlines.

What types of headlines do you write that encourage readers to click on your content?

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Tesla’s Braking System Gets an Over-the-Air Update

Shortly after Consumer Reports panned the Model 3 for its long stopping distance, Elon pushed a change through the ether to adjust the antilock algorithm.

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Mapbox Uses Your Phone's Camera to Chart a Changing World

The mapping company's new software development kit will let its customers tap into data from their users' phone cameras to keep tabs on the streets in real time.

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Google launches a Q&A app for neighborhood communities in India

Google is increasing its focus on India after it released a new social app that’s aimed at building neighborhood communities within cities in the country.

The company’s ‘Next Billion’ team in charge of emerging markets has dedicated significant resources to India. Its initiatives include data-friendly versions of YouTube and other popular services, its Tez mobile payment app, a food delivery service and a national WiFi network initiative. Now it is adding one more to the list with the release of Neighbourly, a Q&A app for sharing local knowledge.

The basic goal is to give local communities an outlet to seek answers to practical questions about local life, routine and more. Google believes that an increase in urban migration, short-term leasing and busy lives has changed the dynamic of local communities and made it harder to share information quite so easily.

“Life happens close to home, in order the of a 1-2km radius, and local questions come up all the time. But as cities get bigger and bigger, we’re finding that these local questions are getting hard to use — word of mouth used to be key,” Josh Woodward, a product manager within the Next Billion initiative, explained to TechCrunch.

“We built neighborly as a way to connect you with your neighborhood, ask questions, share expertise and stay up to date in a safe way,” he added.

This idea is nothing new, of course. Already in India, WhatsApp — which counts 200 million users in the country — has a range of community groups, but the big issue is discovery since new users have to be added to the group directly.

The new Google app is much like Jelly, the question and answer service from Twitter co-founder Biz Stone that was ultimately bought by Pinterest, but with localized tweaks. A beta version of the app is initially available in Mumbai, but users located in other areas can join a waitlist pending expansion.

Questions and answers are handled via swipeable cards — who knew Tinder’s design would reach neighborhood community apps in India — while the app uses GPS to add a user into their neighborhood right from sign-up.

Woodward said Google is employing ranking and personalization technology which, over time, will match users with the kind of questions they can answer or have shown an interest in. For now, the service is app-based with a read-only mobile web version.

Google’s local tweaks to make the app easy to use include voice-based entry for questions, which covers a range of India’s non-English languages, and a series of prompts that pop up when a user decides to post a question to help them start.

The company has looked at safety issues, and made it easy to flag content which is unsuitable. Once flagged, Woodward confirmed the content is passed to a local content moderator who asses whether it is “neighborly.”

In terms of safety, users sign up using a first name only, there is no private messaging or phone number requirement, and individual profile photos cannot be copied via screenshot and don’t expand when clicked to prevent being stolen. That taps into concern women have about their photos being abused, an issue that Facebook has taken measures against in India, too.

In fact, at sign-up, Google asks users to agree to a ‘contract’ — “I will respect my neighbors” — before letting them into the app. But still, you’d imagine that the laws of the internet will mean that some people will misuse the service.

Profile pages do, however, display badges earned by answering questions — both an incentive and a display of trust, according to Woodward — while users can follow, and be followed, to keep with certain users and their content.

Google tested the app on thousands of users over a period of about a month to get the mechanics right. Woodward said that 30-50 percent of questions were answered within five minutes, which bodes well but discovery looks like being the key issue. That was ultimately the downfall of Jelly, albeit that both apps serve very different audiences and purposes.

Further down the line, Woodward said that Google could add business accounts and integrate other Google services into Neighbourly, but for now the sink-or-swim challenge is to make an impact.

The launch of Neighbourly comes the same day that Google launched Files Go in China. In doing so, the search giant gave a glimpse at its new strategy for China, which involves opportunistic product launches, relationships and strategic investments.

Google is quietly formulating a new strategy for China

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Australians will no longer be able to order from Amazon’s American site

Starting in July, Australians will be blocked from ordering items on Amazon’s United States site. The company said today that shoppers in Australia will be redirected to its local site, Amazon.com.au, and that its international sites, including Amazon.com, will no longer ship to Australian addresses. The change is in response to a new tax regulation that goes into effect on July 1 and requires businesses earning more than $75,000 AUD a year to charge Australia’s 10% Goods and Services Tax (GST) on low value items imported by consumers.

Called the “Amazon tax,” the new policy was introduced following concerns about the impact of Amazon and other large overseas e-commerce businesses on Australian retailers, who have to apply GST to all products they sell. A loophole in tax regulations, however, means that the GST is currently applied only to items purchased from overseas retailers if they are worth $1,000 AUD or more, which many local companies argued gave Amazon, eBay and other overseas competitors an unfair advantage.

Amazon launched its Australian site last December and says it currently has 60 million products, a fraction of the estimated 500 million products that are listed on Amazon’s U.S. site. As a placation, Australian customers will also have access to 4 million products that were previously available only on Amazon.com through its new Global Store.

In a statement emailed to TechCrunch, an Amazon spokesperson said:

“As a result of changes to Australian GST law on 1 July, international shopping options for Australian customers will change.

While we regret any inconvenience this may cause customers, we have had to assess the workability of the legislation as a global business with multiple international sites. Based on our assessment, we will redirect Australian customers from our international sites to amazon.com.au where they can shop for products sold by Amazon US on the new Global Store, available today. This will allow us to provide our customers with continued access to international selection and remain compliant with the law which requires us to collect and remit GST on products sold on Amazon sites that are shipped from overseas.”

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Uber is looking at adding benefits and insurance for drivers

At the Code Conference tonight, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi spoke about the company’s relationship with drivers, autonomous driving, uberEATS having a $6 billion bookings run rate, taking over as CEO and flying taxis, obviously.

Just this week, San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera sent subpoenas to Uber and Lyft seeking information on driver pay, benefits and classification info. Uber wasn’t available for comment at the time, but now it seems that the company is looking at ways to offer benefits and insurance to drivers. Specifically, Uber is looking at an economically-sound way to offer drivers a benefits and insurance package so that “this can be a safer way of living,” Khosrowshahi said.

And despite what former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said in the past about needing to get rid of the driver, Khosrowshahi said he disagrees.

“The face of Uber is the person sitting in the front seat,” Khosrowshahi said. He added that it usually is a man driving, but that he would “love to have more women sitting in the front seat” because it’s a “great form of employment.”

Still, Uber is moving ahead with autonomous driving. That’s in light of the fatal car accident in Tempe, Arizona involving one of Uber’s autonomous vehicles.

“We will get back on the road over the summer,” Khosrowshahi said.

Uber also envisions licensing its technology — once it’s safe enough — to third-parties and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Despite the high-profile lawsuit between Uber and Waymo over self-driving car technology, Khosrowshahi said he’d welcome Waymo to put its cars into its network. Regarding Uber’s relationship with Waymo, Khosrowshahi said it’s “getting better.”

In addition to Uber’s core driver business and autonomous driving, it has several other things going on for it. One of those is uberEATS, which Khosrowshahi said has a $6 billion run rate, is growing 200 percent and is the biggest food delivery company in the world, with the exception of those in China.

Uber also recently acquired JUMP Bikes for about $200 million, launched UberRENT, announced a public transportation partnership with Masabi and is working on flying cars via its Elevate program.

Just like residential and buildings have gone three-dimensional, Khosrowshahi said, “you’re going to have to build a third-dimension in terms of transportation.”

For Uber, Elevate is its “big bet” on that third-dimension of transportation, he said. The big plan with all of these modes of transportations — whether that’s bike-sharing, ride-sharing, flight-sharing or whatnot — is to become a multi-modal transportation service.

“We want to be the Amazon for transportation,” Khosrowshahi said.

Earlier in the conversation, Khosrowshahi shed some light into how he had no idea he’d get the chief executive officer job at Uber. In fact, he said that while his wife thought he would get the job, he wasn’t as optimistic.

He also spoke about his relationship with Kalanick and how, early on, Khosrowshahi asked for space and Kalanick respected that.

“I consult with him the way I consult with the board,” Khosrowshahi said.

Moving forward, Khosrowshahi still has his eyes set on the second half of 2019 to go public.

“We’re on track,” he said.

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China’s SenseTime, the world’s highest-valued AI startup, closes $620M follow-on round

SenseTime, the world’s highest-valued AI company with a valuation of over $4.5 billion, is back in the money again.

The company raised $600 million in an Alibaba-led financing round announced last month, and now it has added a further $620 million to that with a “Series C+” round announced today.

Alibaba led the previous deal, and this time around the investors include more traditional names such as Fidelity International, Hopu Capital, Silver Lake and Tiger Global. Qualcomm, which previously backed the firm, was also in this round, SenseTime confirmed.

The new money takes SenseTime to $1.6 billion from investors to date. The valuation has remained “over” $4.5 billion across both of these recent rounds, according to the company. It was previously valued at $1.5 billion when it raised a $410 million Series B last year.

Alibaba said at the time of its investment last month that it had become the largest-single investor in SenseTime. Given this fresh injection, it isn’t clear whether that has changed. A SenseTime spokesperson told TechCrunch that “Alibaba and other lead investors have similar status.”

SenseTime said it has more than 700 customers across a range of verticals including fintech, automotive, fintech, smartphones, smart city development and more that include Honda, Nvidia, China’s UnionPay, Weibo, China Merchants Bank, Huawei, Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi.

Perhaps its most visible partner is the Chinese government, which uses its systems for its national surveillance system. SenseTime process data captured by China’s 170 million CCTV cameras and newer systems which include smart glasses worn by police offers on the street.

Former Google China head targets AI opportunities with new $900M Sinovation fund

China has placed vast emphasis on tech development, with AI one of its key flagposts.

A government program aims to make the country the world leader in AI technology by 2030, the New York Times reported, by which time it is estimated that the industry could be worth some $150 billion per year. SenseTime’s continued development fees directly into that ambition.

SenseTime has been busy extending its presence lately. It became the first company to join the MIT Intelligence Quest and, alongside Alibaba, it is launching an AI lab in Hong Kong. The firm said, too, it has formulated an AI textbook for secondary students in China which will make its way to 40 schools soon.

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Google brings its FilesGo Android device management app to China

Google has continued its slow and steady China strategy after it launched Files Go, a files management service for Android devices. The app launched to global markets last year but today it landed in China via four third-party app stores.

Named ‘Google 文件极客’ in China, the app helps users keep within the storage limits of their device by suggesting files to delete if they need to free up space. It also includes feature for finding files and sharing them to local devices without an internet connection. Like a solid internet connection, keeping enough free space on a device is critical to it running efficiently and quickly which is Files Go aims to help.

Files Go was designed for India, where budget Android phones are mainstream, but interest in the app was so widespread that it was later launched worldwide. Indeed, the U.S. is now the third-largest market for the app, Josh Woodward, a product manager within Google’s ‘Next Billion’ team, told TechCrunch in an interview.

Google is quietly formulating a new strategy for China

Given that global demand, bringing the app to China, where Google is testing out new strategies, makes plenty of sense. The launch also allows Google to work with third-party app stores for distribution since the Google Play Store is banned in China. It selected Tencent, Xiaomi, Huawei and Baidu and the experience is sure to help Google figure out the lay of the land.

Google’s services remain banned in the country, but this is the third product launch it has made in China following the return of Google Translate last year and this week’s launch of ARCore.

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Google is quietly formulating a new strategy for China

Google is slowing piecing together a strategy for China to ensure that it doesn’t miss out on the growth of technology in the world’s largest country. It’s been months in the making through a series of gradual plays, but further evidence of those plans comes today via a product launch.

Files Go — a file manager for Android devices released last year — has made its way to China today. Not a huge launch, for sure, but the mechanisms behind it provide insight into how Google may be thinking about the country, where it has been absent since 2010 after redirecting its Chinese search service to Hong Kong in the face of government pressure.

For Files Go, Google is taking a partner-led approach to distribution because the Google Play Store does not operate in China. The company is working with Tencent, Huawei, Xiaomi and Baidu, each of which will stock the app in their independent app stores, which are among the country’s most prominent third-party stores.

Let that sink in a little: the creator of Android is using third-party Android app stores to distribute one of its products.

On the outside that’s quite the scenario, but in China it makes perfect sense.

There’s been regular media speculation in recent about Google’s desire to return to China which, during its absence, has become the largest single market for smartphone users, and the country with the most app downloads and highest app revenue per year. Mostly the rumors have centered around audacious strategies such as the return of the Google Play Store or the restoration of Google’s Chinese search business, both of which would mean complying with demands from the Chinese government.

Then there’s the politics. The U.S. and China are currently in an ongoing trade standoff that has spilled into tech, impacting deals, while Chinese premier Xi Jinping has taken a protectionist approach to promoting local business and industries, in particular AI. XI’s more controversial policies, including the banning of VPNs, have put heat on Apple, which stands accused of colluding with authorities and preventing free speech in China.

Political tension between the U.S. and China is affecting tech companies. [Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images]

Even when you remove the political issues, a full return is a tough challenge. Google would be starting businesses almost from scratch in a highly competitive market where it has little brand recognition.

It’s hardly surprising, then, that it hasn’t made big moves… yet at least.

Instead, it appears that the company is exploring more nimble approaches. There have been opportunistic product launches using established platforms, and generally Google seems intent at building relationships and growing a local presence that allows its global business to tap into the talent and technology that China offers.

Files Go is the latest example, but already we’ve seen Google relaunch its Translate app in 2017 and more recently it brought its ARCore technology for augmented and virtual reality to China using partners, which include Xiaomi and Huawei.

Bouquets of flowers lie on the Google logo outside the company’s China head office in Beijing on March 23, 2010 after the US web giant said it would no longer filter results and was redirecting mainland Chinese users to an uncensored site in Hong Kong — effectively closing down the mainland site. Google’s decision to effectively shut down its Chinese-language search engine is likely to stunt the development of the Internet in China and isolate local web users, analysts say. (Photo credit: xin/AFP/Getty Images)

Beyond products, Google is cultivating relationships, too.

It inked a wide-ranging patent deal with Tencent, China’s $500 billion tech giant which operates WeChat and more, and has made strategic investments to back AI startup XtalPi (alongside Tencent), live-streaming platform Chushou, and AI and hardware company Mobvoi. There have been events, too, including AlphaGo’s three-game battle with Chinese grandmaster Ke Jie in Wuzhen, developer events in China and the forthcoming first Google Asia Demo Day, which takes places in Shanghai in September.

In addition to making friends in the right places, Google is also increasing its own presence on Chinese soil. The company opened an AI lab in Beijing to help access China-based talent, while it also unveiled a more modest presence in Shenzhen, China’s hardware capital, where it has a serviced office for staff. That hardware move ties into Google’s acquisition of a chunk of HTC’s smartphone division for $1.1 billion.

The strategy is no doubt in its early days, so now is a good time to keep a keen eye on Google’s moves in this part of the world.

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Cowboy Ventures’ Aileen Lee says enough with favoring the ‘good guys’

Diversity and inclusion is a trash fire in Silicon Valley and in the business world at large. But let’s just focus on tech for now. At the Code Conference this evening, All Raise and Cowboy Ventures Partner Aileen Lee, shift7 CEO Megan Smith and Stubhub President Sukhinder Singh Cassidy talked about the state of diversity and inclusion in tech. Lee kicked things off with how the idea and statement that someone is such a “good guy” bothers her.

Often times, she said, that’s the qualification for how many of these men get the opportunity to invest in companies or work at certain companies. Meanwhile, if someone suggests a woman or person of color, Lee said, the questions are totally different and focused on qualifications.

“Good guys have hired and funded good guys,” Lee said.

Moving forward, “we need to systematically map out our industry and business processes and try to take the biases out of them,” Lee said. She added, “people have not been given a fair shot and we need to kind of re-engineer our business.”

“Last year it was like every month there was a new story where you just could no longer ignore it,” Lee said. “We have a lot of work to do but I’m pretty optimistic.”

She pointed to how she’s sat at a board meeting where the male CEO pointed out, unprompted, that he sees the company is all male and is at risk of becoming a company no one would want to work for.

The panel also touched on the importance of diversity at the board level and some backlash. For example, some firms have suggested men don’t have one-on-one meetings with women. But Lee says, “we’re definitely not going to solve this problem by men saying they’re afraid to meet with women.”

Toward the end of the panel, Smith pointed out that “the people who are most left out are women of color.”

While there were women of color on stage at the Code Conference this week, Smith’s assertion was especially notable given the absence of black men and women.

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Is Apple ready to take on Netflix?

This super creepy Tom Waits number pops into my head every time I read about another Apple content acquisition. For a billion-dollar project from one of the world’s biggest companies, the company’s upcoming streaming service is shaping up to be a strange collection of original content. 

Of course, I’m not really sure what I expected after Apple unleashed Carpool Karaoke and Planet of the Apps on the world. Neither were the kind of thing that imbues you with confidence in a company’s programming choices.

I wrote a review of sorts of the former here, but was willing to give the show the benefit of the doubt that it just wasn’t for me, like cilantro, cats or late-era Radiohead. But clearly I wasn’t alone on this one. And Planet of the Apps — the less said about that one the better, probably. Neither particularly jibe with Eddy Cue’s whole, “We’re not after quantity, we’re after quality” spiel.

Announcements have picked up considerably, even in the few months following that appearance at SXSW, but Apple’s got a lot of catching up to do against content juggernauts like Netflix, Hulu and even Amazon. Of course, the company’s got a long, proud history of showing up a bit late to the party and still blowing the competition out of the water in the hardware space.

And while Apple Music is still far from overtaking Spotify, the music streaming service has been adding subscribers at a steady clip, courtesy of, among other things, being built directly into the company’s software offerings — a fringe benefit that Apple’s eventual video streaming service will no doubt share. It’s true, of course, that users are more likely to subscribe to multiple video streaming services than music ones, but the company’s going to have to offer more than ecosystem accessibility. At this point, however, it’s hard not to side with Fox CEO James Murdoch’s comments on the matter from earlier today.

“Going piece by piece, one by one, show by show, etc., is gonna take a long time to really move the dial and having something mega,” the exec told a crowd at the Code Conference. “I do think that’s gonna be very challenging.”

And this first round of programming is a bit of a mixed bag. Among the current crop of offerings, Amazing Stories feels like close to a slam dunk, because if the combination of Spielberg and nostalgia can make Ready Player One a box office success story, then, well, surely it can work on anything, right?

Perhaps it’s the dribs and drabs with which the company has been revealing its content play over a matter of months. When Apple wanted to launch a streaming music service, the company went ahead and bought Beats in 2014. Sure, the headphone business was a nice bonus, but it was pretty clear from the outset that Beats Music was the real meat of that deal. A year later, Apple Music was unleashed on the world. 

The latest rumors have the company’s video streaming service “launching as early as March 2019.” That gives the company a little less than a year to really wow us with original content announcements, if it really wants to hit the ground running — assuming, of course, that many or most of the titles are already in production.

More likely, the company will ultimately ease into it. Apple Music, after all, didn’t exactly light the world on fire at launch, and Apple’s got no shortage or revenue streams at the moment, so it certainly won’t go bust if its billion-dollar investment fails to pay off overnight. But the competition is fierce for this one, extending beyond obvious competitors like Netflix and Hulu to longstanding networks like HBO, which are all vying to lock you in to monthly fees.

This battle won’t be easily won. The company has been mostly tight-lipped in all of this (as is its custom), but success is going to take a long-term commitment, with the understanding that it will most likely require a long runway to reap its own investment.

That projected $4 billion annual investment looks like a good place to start, but with Netflix planning to spend double that amount this year and Amazon potentially on target to pass it, Apple’s in for a bloody and expensive fight. 

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Government investigation finds federal agencies failing at cybersecurity basics

The Office of Management and Budget reports that the federal government is a shambles — cybersecurity-wise, anyway. Finding little situational awareness, few standard processes for reporting or managing attacks and almost no agencies adequately performing even basic encryption, the OMB concluded that “the current situation is untenable.”

All told, nearly three quarters of federal agencies have cybersecurity programs that qualified as either “at risk” (significant gaps in security) or “high risk” (fundamental processes not in place).

The report, which you can read here, lists four major findings, each of which with its own pitiful statistics and recommendations that occasionally amount to a complete about-face or overhaul of existing policies.

1. “Agencies do not understand and do not have the resources to combat the current threat environment.”

The simple truth and perhaps origin of all these problems is that the federal government is a slow-moving beast that can’t keep up with the nimble threat of state-sponsored hackers and the rapid pace of technology. The simplest indicator of this problem is perhaps this: of the 30,899 (!) known successful compromises of federal systems in FY 2016, 11,802 of them never even had their threat vector identified.

DHS and FBI detail how Russia is hacking into U.S. nuclear facilities and other critical infrastructure

38 percent of attacks had no identified method or attacker.

So for 38 percent of successful attacks, they don’t have a clue who did it or how!

This lack of situational awareness means that even if they have budgets in the billions, these agencies don’t have the capability to deploy them effectively.

While cyber spending increases year-over-year, OMB found that agencies are not effectively using available information, such as threat intelligence, incident data, and network traffic flow data to determine the extent that assets are at risk, or inform how they to prioritize resource allocations.

To this end, the OMB will be working with agencies on a threat-based budget model, looking at what is actually possible to affect the agency, what is in place to prevent it and what specifically needs to be improved.

2. “Agencies do not have standardized cybersecurity processes and IT capabilities.”

There’s immense variety in the tasks and capabilities of our many federal agencies, but you would think that some basics would have been established along the lines of best practices for reporting, standard security measures to lock down secure systems and so on. Nope!

For example, one agency lists no fewer than 62 separately managed email services in its environment, making it virtually impossible to track and inspect inbound and outbound communications across the agency.

51 percent of agencies can’t detect or whitelist software running on their systems

Only half of the agencies the OMB looked at said they have the ability to detect and whitelist software running on their systems. Now, while it may only be needed on a case by case basis for IT to manage users’ apps and watch for troubling processes, well, the capability should at least be there!

When something happens, things are little better: 59 percent of agencies have some kind of standard process for communicating cyber threats to their users. So, for example, if one of their 62 email systems has been compromised, the agency as likely as not has no good way to notify everyone about it.

And only 30 percent have “predictable, enterprise-wide incident response processes in place,” meaning once the threat has been detected, only one in three has some kind of standard procedure for who to tell and what to tell them.

Establishing standard processes for cybersecurity and general harmony in computing resources is something the OMB has been working on for a long time. Too bad the position of cyber coordinator just got eliminated.

White House sheds cyber coordinator role

3. “Agencies lack visibility into what is occurring on their networks, and especially lack the ability to detect data exfiltration.”

Monitoring your organization’s data and traffic, both internal and external, is a critical part of any cybersecurity plan. Time and again federal agencies have proven susceptible to all kinds of exfiltration schemes, from USB keys to phishing for login details.

73 percent can’t detect attempts to access large volumes of data.

Turns out that only 27 percent of the agencies even “have the ability to detect and investigate attempts to access large volumes of data.”

Simply put, agencies cannot detect when large amounts of information leave their networks, which is particularly alarming in the wake of some of the high-profile incidents across government and industry in recent years.

Hard to secure your data if you can’t see where it’s going. After the “high-profile incidents” to which the OMB report alludes, one would think that detection and lockdown of data repositories would be one of the first efforts these agencies would make.

Perhaps it’s the total lack of insight into how and why these things occur. Only 17 percent of agencies analyzed incident response data after the fact, so maybe they just filed the incidents away, never to be looked at again.

The OMB has a smart way to start addressing this: one agency that has its act together will be designated a “SOC [Secure Operations Center] Center of Excellence.” (Yes, “Center” is there twice.) This SOC will offer secure storage and access as a service to other agencies while the latter improve or establish their own facilities.

4. “Agencies lack standardized and enterprise-wide processes for managing cybersecurity risks”

There’s a bit of overlap with 2 here, but redundancy is the name of the game when it comes to the U.S. government. This one is a bit more focused on the leadership itself.

While most agencies noted… that their leadership was actively engaged in cybersecurity risk management, many did not, or could not, elaborate in detail on leadership engagement above the CIO level.

Federal agencies possess neither robust risk management programs nor consistent methods for notifying leadership of cybersecurity risks across the agency.

84 percent of agencies failed to meet goals for encrypting data at rest.

In other words, cyber is being left to the cyber-guys, with little guidance or clout offered by the higher-ups at the agencies. That’s important because, as the OMB notes, many decisions or requests can only be made by those higher-ups. For example, budgetary concerns.

Despite “repeated calls from industry leaders, GAO [the Government Accountability Office], and privacy advocates” to utilize encryption wherever possible, less than 16 percent of agencies achieved their targets for encrypting data at rest. Sixteen percent! Encrypting at rest isn’t even that hard!

Turns out this is an example of under-investment by the powers that be. Non-defense agencies budgeted a total between them of under $51 million on encrypting data in FY 2017, which is extremely little even before you consider that half of that came from two agencies. How are even motivated IT departments supposed to migrate to encrypted storage when they have no money to hire the experts or get the equipment necessary to do so?

“Agencies have demonstrated that this is a low priority…it is easy to see government’s priorities must be realigned,” the OMB remarked.

While the conclusion of the report isn’t as gloomy as the body, it’s clear that the OMB’s researchers are deeply disappointed by what they found. This is hardly a new issue, despite the current president’s designation of it as a key issue — the previous presidents did as well, but movement has been slow and halting, punctuated by disastrous breaches and embarrassing leaks.

The report declines to name and shame the offending agencies, perhaps because their failings and successes were diverse and no one deserved worse treatment than another, but it seems highly likely that in less public channels those agencies are not being spared. Hopefully this damning report will put spurs to the efforts that have been limping along for the last decade.

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AWS’s Neptune graph database is now generally available

AWS today announced that its Neptune graph database, which made its debut during the platform’s annual re:Invent conference last November, is now generally available. The launch of Neptune was one of the dozens of announcements the company made during its annual developer event, so you can be forgiven if you missed it.

Neptune supports graph APIs for both TinkerPop Gremlin and SPARQL, making it compatible with a variety of applications. AWS notes that it built the service to recover from failures within 30 seconds and promises 99.99 percent availability.

“As the world has become more connected, applications that navigate large, connected data sets are increasingly more critical for customers,” said Raju Gulabani, vice president, Databases, Analytics, and Machine Learning at AWS. “We are delighted to give customers a high-performance graph database service that enables developers to query billions of relationships in milliseconds using standard APIs, making it easy to build and run applications that work with highly connected data sets.”

Standard use cases for Neptune are social networking applications, recommendation engines, fraud detection tools and networking applications that need to map the complex topology of an enterprise’s infrastructure.

Neptune already has a couple of high-profile users, including Samsung, AstraZeneca, Intuit, Siemens, Person, Thomson Reuters and Amazon’s own Alexa team. “Amazon Neptune is a key part of the toolkit we use to continually expand Alexa’s knowledge graph for our tens of millions of Alexa customers—it’s just Day 1 and we’re excited to continue our work with the AWS team to deliver even better experiences for our customers,” said David Hardcastle, director of Amazon Alexa, in today’s announcement.

The service is now available in AWS’s U.S. East (N. Virginia), U.S. East (Ohio), U.S. West (Oregon) and EU (Ireland) regions, with others coming online in the future.

Amazon introduces an AWS graph database service called Amazon Neptune

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Apple is making a series about Emily Dickinson

Apple announced today that it’s placed a straight-to-series order for Dickinson, a show that will star Hailee Steinfeld as poet Emily Dickinson.

Steinfeld is an actress and singer who was Oscar-nominated for her performance in True Grit and more recently performed in Pitch Perfect 2 and 3. Dickinson, meanwhile, is generally considered one of the great American poets, but given her reputation as an eccentric recluse, her life doesn’t seem to be the stuff of great drama (a recent biopic was called A Quiet Passion).

It sounds like this won’t be a standard biography, however — Dickinson is being billed as a coming-of-age story with a modern sensibility and tone.

The series will be written and executive produced by Alena Smith, who previously wrote for The Affair and The Newsroom. And it will be directed and executive produced by David Gordon Green, best known for directing comedies like Pineapple Express and episodes of HBO’s Vice Principals (though he’s also directed non-comedic films like the recent biopic Stronger).

Dickinson joins a varied list of original series in development at Apple, ranging from a reboot of Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories, to a Reese Witherspoon- and Jennifer Anniston-starring series set in the world of morning TV and an adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation books. Apple reportedly plans to launch the first shows in this new lineup (presumably as part of a new subscription service) next March.

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