10 things in tech you need to know today (FB, AMZN, GOOG, TWTR, SSNLF)

Jeff Bezos

Good morning! Here is the tech news you need to know this Thursday.

1. Facebook beat Wall Street's expectations in its second quarter earnings, with $9.32 billion (£7.09 billion) in revenue, driven mostly by mobile ads. The social network maintained a 17% year-on-year user growth, and said two thirds of its over 2 billion users visit the site every day.

2. WhatsApp announced that 1 billion users use the service every single day. In February last year, WhatsApp had 1 billion users per month.

3. The collaboration tool and messaging service Slack announced that it is raising about $250 million (£190 million) from Accel and SoftBank. The Series G funding will put Slack at a $5 billion (£3.8 billion) valuation, up from $3.6 billion (£2.7 billion) in April last year.

4. Giant Chinese manufacturer Foxconn announced its plans to build a factory in Wisconsin, US during a press conference with President Donald Trump at the White House. The company, which is behind the assembling of products like Apple's iPhone and Microsoft's Xbox, among others, said that the move is part of a $10 billion (£7.6 billion) investment which will create no less than 3,000 new jobs.

5. Samsung Electronics reported its earning results for the latest quarter, posting a $9.9 billion (£7.5 billion) net profit and a strong 89% year-on-year growth. The $54.8 billion (£41.7 billion) revenue marks a 19.8% year-on-year increase, too, primarily driven by strong sales of semiconductors, display panels, and the firm's high-end smartphone, the Galaxy S8, which reportedly outsold its predecessor.

6. New Amazon patents show that the company is reportedly working to analyse data harvested from its delivery drones' footage to make "purchase recommendations" to users. These recommendations could come in the form of email, text message, or simply as a notification from the Amazon app.

7. Another Amazon patent pictures the company's idea to build underwater warehouses. In the patent, the company outlined that its current fulfillment centers are an "inefficient use of space," while the pool containers could allow for boxes to be essentially stacked in endless piles with no need for anyone to move them around.

8. Google's next flagship device, tentatively called "Pixel 2," may not have a headphone jack. Some new renders from famous — and often reliable — leaker Steve Hemmerstoffer picture both the Pixel 2 and its bigger sibling, and neither of them seems to feature the 3.5mm port.

9. Twitter is changing the "Notifications" tab on both the web and its mobile apps to show you what the people you follow are up to. Users will start seeing information such as trends people you follow are talking about, popular links they share, and accounts they follow.

10. Google is reportedly ditching its "Instant Search" feature, which shows search results as the user types. The move comes as over 50% of searches are now made on mobile, and the Mountain View company says it wants to "focus on ways to make Search even faster and more fluid on all devices".

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