TikTok finally finds favour with India's social media elite

One of the reasons TikTok has been able to catch on with India’s social media elite is due to a surge in its visibility on other popular platforms. https://ift.tt/2KHoMD3 https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Slack says it will not reopen its offices until at least September 1 of this year, will continue to pay contractors and hourly workers their regular wages (Paayal Zaveri/Business Insider)

Paayal Zaveri / Business Insider:
Slack says it will not reopen its offices until at least September 1 of this year, will continue to pay contractors and hourly workers their regular wages  —  - Slack will not reopen its offices until at least September 1 of this year, and is committed to continue paying its employees …

Gogoro’s new e-bike brand Eeyo will launch in the U.S. first

Gogoro, the Taiwanese company known for its electric scooters, announced a new ebike brand that will go on sale in the United States first. Details about the ebike, called Eeyo, haven’t been released yet, but it is noteworthy because it marks Gogoro’s first product launch in the U.S.

Eeyo be available for purchase in the U.S. in May, before launching in Europe and Taiwan this summer.

View this post on Instagram

A new ebike from @gogoro_taiwan. Coming to the US in May. Prepare for liftoff.

A post shared by Gogoro Eeyo (@eeyobike) on Apr 22, 2020 at 1:07pm PDT

Founded in 2015 by former HTC executives Horace Luke and Matt Taylor, Gogoro says its Smartscooters are now the best-selling brand of electric two-wheel vehicles in Taiwan. The company also licenses its technology, including swappable, rechargeable batteries, to manufacturers like Yamaha, Aeon and PGO.

In Europe, Gogoro provided the fleet for Coup, the scooter-sharing service owned by Bosch, before it shut down last year.

Despite being best known for its Smartscooters, and the upcoming launch of Eeyo, Gogoro doesn’t just see itself as an electric vehicle maker. In an interview last year with Extra Crunch, Luke, Gogoro’s CEO, said the startup’s future lies in providing a platform for energy-efficient vehicles.

Last year it launched GoShare, a vehicle-sharing platform that will be available to other mobility companies as a turnkey solution for “any form factor” of vehicle.

Known for its electric scooters, Gogoro moves toward its future as a mobility platform

Tech companies cut hiring, with analysts seeing ~20% drops in job openings between mid-March and mid-April, steep drops in supply chain logistics and delivery (J.R. Reed/CNBC)

J.R. Reed / CNBC:
Tech companies cut hiring, with analysts seeing ~20% drops in job openings between mid-March and mid-April, steep drops in supply chain logistics and delivery  —  - Despite the massive shift to remote work and the surge in demand for certain online services, the tech industry has seen a widespread drawdown in job listings.

Apple clears bills of partners in India for 2 months

Apple has also provided an additional credit period of 60 days to help them tide over business disruptions due to Covid-19. https://ift.tt/350mN5X https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Low paying but accessible jobs in crowd work, such as tagging photos and filling out surveys, are seeing a boom on platforms like Mechanical Turk since COVID-19 (Tom Simonite/Wired)

Tom Simonite / Wired:
Low paying but accessible jobs in crowd work, such as tagging photos and filling out surveys, are seeing a boom on platforms like Mechanical Turk since COVID-19  —  People who've lost jobs and are stuck indoors are turning to crowd work—filling out online surveys and transcribing audio for less than the minimum wage.

Some startups mandate Aarogya Setu, others wary

Many companies unsure whether to ask delivery and warehouse staff to install it due to privacy concerns https://ift.tt/2VACRIG https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

WhatsApp Pay to comply with all rules in India by May

A full-fledged rollout of WhatsApp Pay has not been approved for over two years due to concerns over its data storage policy in India https://ift.tt/3bycQPv https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Reliance Jio & Facebook differ on key policy issues

Facebook and Reliance Jio's views diverge sharply on the matter of providing access to private social media data to law enforcement authorities. https://ift.tt/2VRP7mV https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Amazon confirms a major outbreak of COVID-19 at a NJ warehouse after employee says 30+ are infected, as Amazon is set to end unlimited unpaid time off April 30 (Charles Davis/Business Insider)

Charles Davis / Business Insider:
Amazon confirms a major outbreak of COVID-19 at a NJ warehouse after employee says 30+ are infected, as Amazon is set to end unlimited unpaid time off April 30  —  - Over 30 workers at an Amazon warehouse in Carteret, New Jersey, have contracted COVID-19, according to sources at the facility.

Expedia names Peter Kern, previously vice chairman, to CEO; Eric Hart to become CFO as the company faces a ~40% dip in stock price in 2020 (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg:
Expedia names Peter Kern, previously vice chairman, to CEO; Eric Hart to become CFO as the company faces a ~40% dip in stock price in 2020  —  - Private equity firms Apollo, Silver Lake invest in the company  — Media mogul Barry Diller had been helping run Expedia

Google says state-backed hackers increasing Covid-19 phishing attacks

Security experts at Alphabet Inc’s Google have identified more than a dozen government-backed hacking groups using the COVID-19 pandemic as cover for phishing and malware attempts. https://ift.tt/3bxHMPX

Google Stadia gains users after giving free access for two months

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Donald Trump signs immigration ban, but exempts H1-B professional visa-holders

US President Donald Trump has issued an executive order banning many categories of immigration to the US for 60 days but it does not apply to H1-B professional visa-holders. https://ift.tt/2xR20Wk

TIM, Vodafone launch sale of 8% stake in Italy's INWIT

Telecom Italia (TIM) and Vodafone said on Wednesday they had agreed to launch the sale of an 8% stake in Italy's biggest mobile tower company INWIT on a pro-rata basis as part of their efforts to cut debt. https://ift.tt/2KnNyYu