(This post originally appeared on Forbes)
Here are five things in technology that happened this past week and how they affect your business. Did you miss them?
1 – PayPal Processed More Transactions On May 1 Than On Black Friday
Seems like not everyone’s suffering during this unprecedented downturn. This past week, PayPal experienced the largest single day of transactions in the company’s history — bigger than both Black Friday and Cyber Monday of 2019. April was already a record breaking month, with the payment service adding more than 7 million new accounts. The company expects to add millions of new active accounts in the second quarter. (Source: PYMTS)
Why this is important for your business:
The company’s CEO Dan Schulman couldn’t have put it better: “I believe we will look back at this time as a tipping point, where digital payments both offline and online became an essential element of our lives, hastening the demise of cash, enforcing a re-imagination of commerce, retailing and the payment system — and we intend to be a driving force as those trends unfold.”
2 — Twitter ran a test prompting users to revise ‘harmful replies’.
Twitter is looking to combat harassment on their platform and has started experimenting with allowing users to think twice before posting something potentially harmful. The company is testing a new feature that will prompt users to edit a reply deemed harmful by Twitter, giving them a second chance. According to the social media giant, the feature will be tested right now in a limited capacity, through only the replies feature. Twitter’s systems will be able to identify problematic language through identifying words used in previously reported tweets. (Source: Tech Crunch)
Why this is important for your business:
Operating in the Twitter world can be challenging for small business owners. Say the “wrong” thing and you’re potentially vilified. Artificial-intelligence driven tools like this one may tone down the rhetoric a bit and potentially create a better, more professional environment for both users and businesses – and keep you out of trouble too!
3 — Google Podcasts will give podcasters more data about their listeners.
Google announced this week that they are rolling out new capabilities that will allow podcast hosts to have better insight as to how many viewers their episodes are getting. The new tool— called Google Podcast Manager—will give more in-depth data regarding the listeners of the podcasts, with the intention of assisting the sale of ads. The goal of the tool is also to help hosts determine what those listening to the shows are interested in hearing, allowing hosts to plan out their episodes more efficiently. Podcasters will have access to information such as amount of time people listen, what specific parts they stopped listening, as well as overall metrics of how their show is doing. (Source: The Verge)
Why this is important for your business:
For many business owners dipping their toes into the podcast world, data about listeners are vital. How many are there? Who are they? Where are they located? What are they listening to? Large podcast platforms like Google know that companies looking to monetize their podcasts – or even just determine if they’re worth spending the time – will be very data driven, which is why you’ll be seeing more tools like this in the future.
4 — Ascentis announced touch-free time clocks with temperature reading capabilities to improve workplace safety as employees return to work in the new normal.
Ascentis—a company that provides human capital management technology solutions and cloud-based workforce management space—shared this past week that they will be rolling out a new feature to help in the post-COVID-19 era. Their new add-on— Ascentis CarePoint—will give companies and businesses touch-free solutions to help monitor their employees’ health during the course of the workday. The add-ons include a thermal sensor within time clocks in order to monitor temperature, and will allow a multitude of commands to be done through voice-command in order to encourage touchless processes, among other additional features. The company hopes to provide a solution to costly and timely screening for the coronavirus through these non-disruptive and cost effective features. (Source: Yahoo Finance)
Why this is important for your business:
Health and temperature checks will be the new norm over the next year – and maybe forever – so smart business owners will be looking at effective and non-disruptive ways to accomplish this quickly and privately. Ascentis is one of the many tech companies coming up with modifications to their existing time-clock and tracking hardware and is worth a significant look.
5— Managed Services Provider Right Networks has acquired Rootworks To Bolster Its Offerings To The Accounting Community.
It was announced this past week that Right Networks— a cloud-enabled company that provides technology solutions to both small business and accounting firms—obtained Rootworks, which is the vocation’s top firm-improvement entity. Rootworks supplies accounting businesses with the resources, features, tools, and support it takes in order to construct a high-caliber result in performance. Although Rootworks will still be operating independently as a business, the customers of the company will now be permitted to subscribe to their Modern Firm Performance piece, helping businesses with other areas such as front-office features, peer community support, organization, management, and integrating the technologies in place. (Source: Business Wire)
Why this is important for your business:
Right Networks – a client of my firm – is doing what I believe many technology firms will be doing over the next few years: expanding their offerings to provide more services that help their target customers succeed in their overall businesses. By offering the type of services that Rootworks already provides to its accounting firm community, Right Networks can establish itself as a tech company that provides much more than just technology. Look for other technology companies to be taking similar steps over the next few years.
