WordPress.com parent Automattic has raised a $300 million Series D with Salesforce Ventures as the sole investor. It’s a vote in favor of open source, freemium, and, according to the company, in “the future of work”. Raise you hand if you doubted that work had a future.
What the heck, let’s just go full tin-foil-hat today. We’ll start with news that Facebook has suspended “tens of thousands” of apps during its on-going privacy review, although the company rushes to reassure everyone that only (?) 400 developers were involved and not all suspensions reflected actual privacy violations. The New York Times cites a Massachusetts court case for the figure of 69,000 actual suspensions. Facebook doesn’t claim these numbers are complete.
AdRoll is applying machine learning to ad targeting for direct-to-consumer brands. Its new Brand Awareness Solution lets users combine their company’s own data with AdRoll’s second and third party data, using machine learning to target the best prospects via contextual, demographic, interest, look-alike, retargeting, or email campaigns.
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.