Apparently today’s newsletter is brought to you by the letter C, since our final item is the acquisition by Cision of TrendKite. Cision is a press release service with ambitions: TrendKite analyzes the impact of corporate communications and Cision bought social media platform Falcon.io earlier this month.
Customer-centric customer service may seem redundant, but it’s emerging as a theme. Gladly builds a unified lifetime view of customers and shares it across all channels. They contrast this against a case-centric view that treats each problem separately. They’ve just raised $50 million, bringing their total to $118 million.
Speaking of ad blockers, creative portfolio Website Visual Objects found they’re twice as common on desktop than mobile devices and that video ads are the most annoying of all. The study quotes Statista research showing nearly one-third of computers use some form of blocker and the usage continues to grow.
The U.S. Senate has passed a bill that could potentially ban TikTok in the U.S. if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, does not sell its holdings within a year. The bill now goes to the President Biden, who has said he will sign it. Court challenges are likely to follow.