Startups, Twitter, Startup, Twitter Seva - Current Affairs Questions and Answers

ANSWER: 280

Explanation:
Twitter is testing allowing tweets to be expanded to 280 characters - double the existing limit - in the latest effort to boost flagging growth at the social network.

San Francisco-based Twitter said on 26th Sept 2017 that the new limit, a major shift for the messaging platform known for its 140-character tweets, aims to address “a major cause of frustration” for many users.

Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey fired off what may be one of the first expanded tweets.

“This is a small change, but a big move for us,” he wrote, calling the previous limit was an “arbitrary choice”.

Twitter planned to leave the old limit in place for tweets in Japanese, Chinese and Korean because internal data showed written characters in those languages packed plenty into the allotted space.

Twitter, which became a public company in 2013, has never reported a profit, even though it has built a loyal base of celebrities, journalists and political figures, including prolific tweeter US President Donald Trump.

In its most recent quarter, Twitter reported its base of monthly active users was unchanged at 328 million compared to the first three months of the year and up just five percent from a year earlier.

Its growth has failed to keep pace with social network leader Facebook, which has some two billion users, and Facebook-owned Instagram, with 800 million.

Twitter has been seeking to draw in users by offering more video, including live streaming of sporting events, aiming to broaden its appeal.

Reaction on Twitter was mixed, with some lobbying for the original cap and the pressure it applied to succinctly express thoughts.

Many others on Twitter welcomed the news and said raising the character cap was long overdue.

Some people already resort to long strings of rapid-fire tweets, known as “Twitter storms,” to string together lengthy comment.

The messaging platform reported a net loss of $116 million in the second quarter, slightly wider than its $107 million loss a year ago.

It remained an open question whether the new tweet limit would ignite the growth an engagement Twitter needs to compete in the fast-moving social media segment.

The move by Twitter could also be rendered moot by lifestyle changes brought about by trends in voice-commanded digital assistants and looking at the world through mixed-reality glasses, according to Gartner analysts.

ANSWER: Bharat Ke Veer

Explanation:
The Union Home Minister Shri Rajnath Singh launched the live twitter wall for promoting Bharat Ke Veer portal on the eve of Independence Day 2017.

On this occasion, Shri Rajnath Singh and Ministers of State for Home Affairs Shri Hansraj Gangaram Ahir and Shri Kiren Rijiju contributed their one month salary for Bharat Ke Veer.

Shri Rajnath Singh said that the Security Forces have made supreme sacrifice in the line of duty and the people need to stand by their families to support them.

This social media awareness campaign will display all tweets with hashtag Bharat Ke Veer (#BharatKeVeer), at Connaught Place, CGO complex and Khan Market in New Delhi where huge LED display screens have been installed.

Emoji has also been created for this hashtag.

Union Home Secretary Shri Rajiv Mehrishi, OSD Shri Rajiv Gauba and Senior Officers of MHA were present on this occasion.

Bharat Ke Veer portal was launched by the Union Home Minister and actor Shri Akshay Kumar on April 9, 2017.

This portal facilitates online donation directly to the families of CAPF Martyrs who have sacrificed their lives for the country in line of duty from January 1, 2016.

ANSWER: Aliza Knox

Explanation:
In a yet another blow for the struggling micro-blogging website Twitter, its head of Asia-Pacific business Aliza Knox has decided to move on after a near-five year stint.

Knox built out Twitter's presence in Asia with an office in Singapore that currently spans nine locations with over 100 people on payroll.

Her exit comes on the back of the loss of a number of high-profile Asia-based executives in 2016.

This includes Managing Director for Southeast Asia, India, Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region Parminder Singh, India head Rishi Jaitly, China head Kathy Chen and Australia country boss Karen Stocks.

Jaitly drove strategic partnerships with the news, government, entertainment, sports, TV industries, and others in the mass and emerging media landscape.

Jaitly was the vice-president of Twitter's Asia Pacific and Middle East business.

After Jaitly, Singh announced that he has quit the company.

Following this, the micro-blogging website appointed Maya Hari as its new Managing Director for South East Asia and India who was reporting to Knox.

In a bid to realign its future goals and cut costs, Twitter had reduced nine per cent of its workforce (nearly 350 people) internationally.

In 2016, Twitter cut 300 jobs after Jack Dorsey took over as CEO full-time.

ANSWER: Both a and b

Explanation:
Union Cabinet on 22^nd March 2017 approves the proposal to establish the Fund of Funds of Startups or FFS.

Union Cabinet in 2016 approved the proposal to establish a Fund of Funds for Startups with total corpus of INR 10,000 crore.

AIFs supported by FFS should invest at least twice the amount of contribution received from FFS in Startups.

If the account committed for a startup has not been released before a startup ceases, the balance funding can continue thereafter.

Operating expenses out of the FFS to the extent of 0.50 percent of the commitments made to AIFs and outstanding.

Operating expenses include carrying due diligence, legal and technical appraisal, meeting of Venture Capital Investment Committee etc.

Operating expenses will be debited to fund at the beginning of each half year on April and October 1.

Fund of Funds for Startups was approved by Union Government in 2016.

Fund of Funds for Startups is being managed by SIDBI.

FFS contributes to SEBI registered Alternative Investment Funds that may go up to a maximum of 35 percent of the corpus of the AIF concerned.

ANSWER: Lyft

Explanation:
Ride sharing app aggregator Lyft has acquired Pune based FinitePaths for an undisclosed amount.

Trail Answers, the app created by FinitePaths will be shut down and cofounders will join the Lyft team.

FinitePaths was set up in November 2015 with the move to leverage technology to enable people to take better decisions.

The app Trail Answers enabled answers to questions using social, contextual and local signals.

The company has been founded by Vinay Kakade and Balaji Raghavan, who worked with Amazon and Google respectively before setting up the firm.

The cofounders will now work with Lyft to help in expanding its infrastructure and services.

Following this acquisition, the company has stopped signing up new users and will shut down the app over the next two weeks.

Lyft: Know More

• Founded: 2012
• CEO: Logan Green (Jun 2012)
• Headquarters: San Francisco, California, United States
• Founders: Logan Green, John Zimmer

ANSWER: Twitter

Explanation:
To celebrate International Women's Day, Twitter is enabling users across India to spotlight the women who inspire them with the hashtags #SheInspiresMe or #SheLeadsIndia.

These hashtags will trigger a #WomensDay emoji.

The emoji would be the gender symbol for females and a representation of feminism and will be available till April 1.

Twitter has also partnered with digital video storytelling platform @SheThePeopleTV, to host a special #BlueRoom session to talk about the issues women in media and technology face.

The session would be live on March 8 at 5:30 p.m. from both @TwitterIndia and @SheThePeopleTV handles, the statement added.

ANSWER: Hubballi

Explanation:
The Deshpande Foundation, the philanthropy arm of Silicon Valley entrepreneur Gururaj ‘Desh’ Deshpande, will launch the country’s largest start-up incubation centre at Hubballi.

The foundation aims to promote entrepreneurship in India’s tier-II and tier-III cities.

It is investing INR 30 crore in the centre, to be opened this September and able to seat 1,200 people at any point.

Housing a makers lab, a 3D printing lab, hardware labs and an IOT lab, the centre will try to attract entrepreneurs from across sectors and any background, to build new-age solutions.

A ‘sandbox’ location has been created to allow entrepreneurs to test and nurture their ideas into businesses.

His foundation has set up two more sandboxes. One is in Varanasi, the constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and another in neighbouring Telangana.

The Hubballi centre will continue to be funded by the Deshpande Foundation.

About Deshpande Foundation

• Deshpande Foundation is a non-governmental organization founded in 1996 by Gururaj and Jaishree Deshpande.
• Founded: 1996
• Headquarters: Massachusetts
• Type: Non-governmental organization

ANSWER: Indore

Explanation:
In a first, a special incubation centre for start-ups working on environment conservation is being set up in Indore.

Three entrepreneurs each from Ahmedabad, Vadodara and Indore have been finalised to start operations at the centre from December 22.

Located at the Govindram Sekseriya Institute of Management and Research premises, it aims to provide a platform to budding entrepreneurs working in the field of solar energy, biogas, biomass and other environment related subjects.

This incubation centre is part of the MP Incubation and Start-up scheme 2016. We have not taken any fund from the government.

The incubation centre will not only help the entrepreneurs but also inspire the existing college students to come up with their ventures.

Out of the 62 applications from across the country a special panel of 50 mentors specialised in the fields of energy conversation, three projects were selected after analysis and evaluation.

The mentors will have 6 - 8 per cent equity share in the startups.

The incubation centre has tied up with 10 investors across the country. The team of experts include solar energy specialist Deepak Gadhia, Ganjana Joshi and Dipal Chandra Barua among others.

ANSWER: IBM

Explanation:
General Electric on 15th Nov 2016 acquired two tech startups to build the AI capability to compete with IBM’s Watson product

• Acquisitions of Bit Stew Systems and Wise.io will expand its Predix platform for industrial internet applications, which connects big machines such as power plants and aircraft engines to databases and analytical software.
• Terms of the deals weren't publicly disclosed.
• Wise.io is based in Berkeley California and has advanced machine learning technology
• AI has a branch called machine learning which allows computers to adapt to new data without fresh programming
• Bit Stew is a Vancouver based Canadian firm backed by GE’s venture capital arm
• It applies machine learning to large data sets associated with utilities, aviation, oil and gas production and manufacturing, according to the company's web site.
• IBM’s Watson is among the better known AI systems which enables computers to perform intelligent actions such as recognising voices and making decisions

ANSWER: Rizvi Traverse Management LLC

Explanation:
Rizvi Traverse Management LLC managed by investor Suhail Rizvi has halved its stake in Twitter Inc and increased holding in mobile payments company Square Inc, regulatory filings have shown on 12th August 2016.

• Rizi had amassed more than 15% stake in microblogging phenomenon for himself and his investors.
• He also influenced the Kingdom Holding Co, Saudi Prince Alwaweed bin Talal’s investment company to purchase extra Twitter stock, according to a Reuters report.
• Firm owned 1.4 million Twitter shares as of June 30 down from March 31, as per a filing.
• This will provide a stake of 0.2 percent as per a estimate.
• Firms stake in square rose to 1.05 million Class A shares from 44,000 working out to a stake of 0.3 percent.
• Twitter and Square are headed by Jack Dorsey.