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A British identity verification startup that normally serves supermarkets and banks might help a football-mad nation resume its favorite sport — at least behind closed doors.

Yoti is a London-headquartered ID verification firm, and its CEO Robin Tombs told Business Insider that the firm has been recruited to create digital IDs for Colombian soccer players who are tested for the coronavirus.

Officials at DIMAYOR (Major Division of Colombian Soccer) hope a combination of increased testing capacity and Yoti's high-tech checks will allow them to play delayed fixtures. Colombia's government banned all events expected to draw 500 or more visitors in early March, and the country has been on full lockdown since March 13.

QuestCap, a Canadian investment firm, has taken the lead on the testing project after signing a preliminary agreement with DIMAYOR, bringing on its portfolio firm, Athletics and Health Solutions, to administer tests. QuestCap has in turn recruited Yoti to roll out its verification platform for DIMAYOR staff and players.  

Yoti uses a combination of official ID documents, selfies and AI to verify individuals' identities. Business Insider previously reported the firm had held talks with the UK government to discuss how it could help track individuals' COVID-19 history, tying users' IDs with test results.

Players and supporting staff within professional clubs will be able to create their own Yoti digital ID, and then share details with their employers. On a practical level, this would mean staff or players only being allowed to enter a venue after providing their Yoti ID, which can be verified by officials scanning their QR code.  

Tombs told Business Insider: "By using Yoti's secure digital identity app and platform, QuestCap's programme can issue trusted test results on to the phones of the right people."

"As professional sports leagues start to explore testing programmes that enable teams and staff to return to competition behind closed doors, Yoti helps ensure the integrity and security of the test data being shared," he added.

Resuming matches, even with ID verification could still prove risky.

On Thursday, QuestCap announced it was spending $7 million on COVID-19 testing kits imported from South Korea as part of the initiative. It acknowledged the tests had yet to be approved by either the FDA or the Canadian health department.

The "fingertip prick" tests have been independently evaluated by three South Korean hospitals, according to QuestCap, but it admitted negative results did "not rule out" the possibility of infection, adding that they shouldn't be used as the sole basis of a diagnosis. 

And Colombian president Ivan Duque earlier warned that restarting the nation's soccer league would endanger the health of players and staff.

Appearing on La FM, he said it would be "very irresponsible" to suggest football matches could resume behind closed doors.

"I have yet to see [soccer officials] say that the health of players is totally guaranteed," he said. "It's not viable."

Business Insider approached DIMAYOR for comment. 

If you're looking for a way to virtually hang out with your friends over the weekend while social distancing, you can always try playing the popular card game "Cards Against Humanity."

A couple of websites offer free versions of the game that you can play online with your friends. The virtual card table website Playingcards.io supports up to six players per game, while the site All Bad Cards says up to 50 people can participate in each game. Both websites allow you to create a virtual room with your friends via a shareable link where everyone can see the game in real time while keeping their individual hands private.

If you're not familiar, "Cards Against Humanity" is an adult card game in which one player picks a question card, and the others submit their funniest answers by choosing a card from their hand. As the game's name implies, the answers are usually crude — it's almost like a twisted take on the Mattel card game "Apples to Apples." 

While Playingcards.io's free virtual version of "Cards Against Humanity" is a worthwhile alternative to playing in person, it can get a little confusing. I'd strongly recommend hosting a group phone or video call with the other players to make the coordination easier.

All Bad Cards is  simpler and more straightforward, but it's still probably more fun to play over video chat with your friends so that you can all react to the cards.  

Here's a look at how to play. 

Silicon Valley investors and founders haven't stopped talking about Clubhouse Clubhouse, a new platform where they've been tuning into audio-only chat rooms.

Clubhouse isn't publicly available yet, but the app is already accruing hype from big names in tech and investors who spotted the early potential in successful social networks like Houseparty and Snapchat. The Clubhouse platform hosts multiple audio-only chat rooms at a time, and allows users to tune in and out of the conversations as a speaker or a listener.

The invite-only app, still in its early stages, is the product of cofounders Paul Davison, who founded a Foursquare-like location-based app called Highlight, later acquired by Pinterest, and Rohan Seth.

In the past, social platforms like Twitter, Houseparty, and Foursquare became breakout hits after debuting at the annual South by Southwest festival, which was cancelled this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. 

Business Insider talked to nine people in Silicon Valley's tech scene who've had early access to the app. Many were drawn to Clubhouse for its ease of use and the quality of conversations, and admitted they found themselves spending hours each day on the app.

However, some noted that the initial hype around Clubhouse could have to do with lockdown orders and work-from-home guidelines, which for many have led to more free time and a desire for personal connection. Many investors said that in order for Clubhouse to survive after the pandemic has subsided, it has to prove itself as an app that can provide value to users even after they go back to their daily lives.

Silicon Valley has long proven to be a haven for high-skilled immigrants. But companies based in the tech epicenter may lose a key source of skilled professionals if the Trump administration continues to tighten up its already-stringent regulations governing the H1B visas that permit foreigners to work temporarily in the United States. 

President Trump kicked off speculation that the administration would be putting an end to foreign-worker jobs on Monday, after he tweeted that he would soon be issuing an executive order on a different immigration route. In a press conference the next day, he confirmed that the process of accepting new permanent immigrants would be suspended for 60 days.

While Trump stopped short of previewing possible  regulations that might also hit the temporary work authorization visas of foreign employees, he still hinted on Tuesday that further measures to control the flow of workers into the United States may be implemented. His stated goal was to protect American workers from competition with non-citizens for available jobs.

That's a familiar line of reasoning for the president, who has targeted the H1B visa program for years, claiming that companies use it to hire cheap, foreign workers instead of Americans. 

Although any potential measures to curtail immigration remain murky, immigration lawyers are suggesting that both H1B-authorized employees and companies begin pondering the implications of such policy changes, while creating contingency plans. 

"Depending on how expansive this immigration suspension is, companies need to start thinking about the impact on their foreign national employees and whether or not this results in any sort of interruption in work authorization and [business] continuity," Hiba Anver, an immigration attorney at Erickson Immigration Group, told Business Insider in an interview after President Trump's Monday tweet.

Companies in the tech industry may want to stay especially vigilant, given the industry's reliance on foreign talent. Only 20% of full-time graduate students in computer science and electrical engineering are US citizens, so foreign workers have filled in that gap, according to the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP).

That means any proposed measures to curtail employment-based work authorization amid the coronavirus-driven recession will hit the tech industry especially hard — companies like Amazon, Google and Facebook sponsor a number of foreign workers to join their US teams. 

One way to identify the tech companies most vulnerable to any proposed changes is to look at the number of initial H1B petitions approved by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services department. This figure represents the total number of new foreign workers who made it through the country's lottery system to have a shot at applying for a three-year H1B visa.

Business Insider used government data on the number of new H1B petitions filed by companies during the 2019 fiscal year to compile a list of the tech companies that stand to be affected by any proposed immigration restrictions.

We also included each company's US headquarters location, and the size of its total workforce (in many cases, this figure represents employees located around the world.) 

However, the figures given below for new H1B petitions don't necessarily provide a full picture of the number of foreign employees currently in each company's workforce. That figure excludes the employees who have extended their US stays by asking their employers to help them renew their H1B visas, or to sponsor their green card applications. 

The number of new H1B applications filed by each company may look relatively small compared to the total workforce, given that many of these companies also employ hundreds or thousands of people in their overseas offices.

But the numbers of US guest workers do multiply over the years, as foreign employees stay on at the company and choose to renew their visas. Preventing the hiring of 1,000 workers per year could have a disproportionately greater impact on the workforce, as foreign workers can stay on at a company for three years, and have the option to renew their visas. That is, unless the Trump administration cancels that option.

The top 11 American tech giants that could endure the greatest impact from any foreign work-authorization limitations are as follows: 

President Donald Trump said in an April 24 press briefing that he would not sign additional bailout funds to the US Postal Service unless it increased rates on Amazon, a major customer of the USPS.

Hours after those statements, Trump tweeted that he would "never" let the USPS fail.

"I will never let our Post Office fail," Trump wrote on Twitter. "It has been mismanaged for years, especially since the advent of the internet and modern-day technology. The people that work there are great, and we're going to keep them happy, healthy, and well!"

Per the CARES Act, the USPS is eligible for a $10 billion loan from the Treasury Department. Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin told reporters on Friday that he is outlining criteria that the USPS must meet to receive the loan, including a postal reform program and recruiting a new postmaster general. 

Trump added one more requirement to the USPS during the briefing: Hike its Amazon rates, or receive no cash.

He said on Friday, emphasis ours:

If they don't raise the price of the service they give, which is a tremendous service, and they do a great job and the postal workers are fantastic — but this thing's losing billions of dollars. 

It has been for years, because they don't want to insult for whatever reason, you can imagine, they don't want to insult Amazon and these other groups.

If they don't raise the price I'm not signing anything, so they'll raise the price so that they become maybe even profitable, but so they lose much less money, OK? And if they don't do it, I'm not signing anything and I'm not authorizing you to do anything, Steve.

Before Trump made that statement, he advised the USPS to quadruple its rates. 

"If they raise the price of the package by approximately four times, it'd be a whole new ballgame," Trump told reporters. "But they don't want to raise because they don't want to insult Amazon, and they don't want to insult other companies perhaps that they like."

USPS is estimated to shutter in the summer unless there is significant monetary intervention, according to a March report from Democratic lawmakers. Reps. Carolyn Maloney and Gerry Connolly said that the coronavirus outbreak was leading to plummeting mail volumes and that the USPS "is in need of urgent help" from Congress and the White House. 

A closed-down USPS would endanger deliveries to rural Americans, voting by mail, and prescription delivery. To protect that, lawmakers proposed $25 billion in emergency funding. Ultimately, Trump signed into law a $10 billion loan through the CARES Act.

But Trump's comments about the USPS' finances leave out an important fact: that much of it financial woes don't stem from delivery losses, but instead from a 2006 law. The law required the USPS to determine how much it would spend on pensions over the next 75 years and build up a fund to cover that cost, and it's had a huge toll: According to the USPS' inspector general, the pre-funding requirement accounted for $54.8 billion of the agency's $62.4 billion in losses from 2007 to 2016.

Trump has long targeted Amazon and its founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, whom he's referred to as "Jeff Bozo." 

For much of 2018, Trump took to Twitter and the press to wage a war on Amazon — as well as its relationship with the USPS. He said the rates USPS charges Amazon are far below market value, cutting key transportation costs for the $1 trillion online retailer.

"Why is the United States Post Office, which is losing many billions of dollars a year, while charging Amazon and others so little to deliver their packages, making Amazon richer and the Post Office dumber and poorer?" Trump tweeted on December 29, 2017. "Should be charging MUCH MORE!"

More recently, the feud has leaked outside of the delivery realm and into Amazon Web Services, the Seattle-based company's cloud computing arm. Amazon said Trump's vendetta against the company cost it a $10 billion contract with the Pentagon, and is pushing for Trump to testify on his dislike of Bezos.

Trump may not be completely off base with Amazon, even if his comments on the USPS' finances leave out important context. Logistics analysts have concluded that Amazon is able to build a transportation network, in which Amazon can save money delivering its own packages, with significant help from the USPS.

The coronavirus has spared few industries as it has worked its way through the country. But startups, often given a mandate to grow fast or die, have been hit with particular ferocity. 

And startup employees have also been slammed, as companies slash away chunks of their workforce in an effort to quickly lower their costs. Around 306 startups have laid off 29,948 employees as of Friday, according to Layoffs.fyi, a website that has been tracking the virus's effect on startups. And as the website notes, there are still many more startup layoffs that have not yet been reported.  

Roger Lee, also the co-founder of retirement-benefits service company Human Interest, created Layoffs.fyi in mid-March as a side project. He'd already been keeping track of startup layoffs before the coronavirus outbreak picked up speed, as his personal guide to recruiting new employees for his own startup. But once the virus began to damage the broad economy, he quickly realized that more companies needed the resource to help startup employees land on their feet. 

The website tracks new layoffs in real time, using verified data (mostly from news articles and CEO blog post announcements). As the website gained popularity, Lee said, some CEOs began sending him emails to inform him about their startup's layoffs to include in the tracker. 

"Everybody understands that that no one could have foreseen or planned for this or predicted this virus, and so it's very much something out of everybody's control," Lee explained. "I think that's why we're seeing a much more public discussion and transparency around the layoffs." 

That transparency is also helpful to Lee, who has found himself spending more and more time updating the Layoffs.fyi tracker to keep up with the surging numbers. It's tough to keep this one-man show going without any help at all, but Lee notes that he's been grateful to his readers for continuing to send him news links, blog post announcements, and even LinkedIn posts broadcasting news of staffers being let go. 

"I've been fortunate to get a lot of help from the community, in the form of readers submitting news and articles that I hadn't seen yet," Lee said. "I think without that, it would be impossible for one person to be keeping up right now." 

As startup layoffs keep racking up, Lee has been busy analyzing the trends among the industries hit hardest. 

More than two-thirds of startup employees laid off have come from 7 top industries, which are all directly impacted by shelter-in-place directives: retail, consumer, food, real-estate, fitness, travel, and transportation. But even then, the trends reveal some surprising results. 

Revenue for many startups in the travel and transport sector may have spiralled to zero, but startups in the retail sector — mostly direct-to-consumer startups, according to Lee — have experienced a significantly higher surge in layoffs.

These numbers may be influenced by the level of funding available to startups, as well as the amount of money needed to keep them afloat. 

Business Insider has previously reported that these DTC companies, which were already battling to attract consumers in a crowded market, are now struggling with a drought in consumer demand. Startups that had physical shop fronts, like Away or Iris Nova, are also dealing with high fixed-costs that are sucking up their cash. 

Because of those considerations, Lee offers two other factors that need to be included when evaluating a startup's risk of layoffs: its business model, and its level of available cash on-hand. The matrix he developed, seen below, could help explain why cloud and software startups like D2iQ and Envoy (which embarked on a hiring push in the months leading up to the coronavirus outbreak) were badly affected by the virus. 

 

Former T-Mobile CEO John Legere resigned from the company's board of directors on Friday, T-Mobile announced in an SEC filing. 

Legere, who stepped down as the company's CEO at the beginning of this month, had originally said he would stay on the company's board until June 4. Friday's announcement cut short his time by more than a month.

T-Mobile's filing said that Legere specified that he was not resigning because of any conflicts with management or the Board, but did not offer any reason as to the abrupt departure. It did include a short quote from Legere, who said that he remained "T-Mobile's #1 fan!" 

"It has been a privilege and honor to have led T-Mobile as CEO for the past seven and a half years and served on the Board of Directors. And although I will be leaving the Board just a few weeks earlier than planned, be assured that I remain T-Mobile's #1 fan!" Legere said in the announcement. 

It's not clear what Legere's next move is after T-Mobile — back in November, the famously eccentric CEO was reportedly in talks to lead the embattled company WeWork, but Legere denied those reports once the news broke that he was leaving the company.

Legere's departure marks the end of an era for the company. Under his leadership, T-Mobile's market cap has steadily increased over the past seven years. And at the beginning of this month, T-Mobile became significantly more valuable after its merger with Sprint, a move that orchestrated by Legere.

Nintendo Direct

The central bank in "Animal Crossing: New Horizons'" is the latest monetary authority to slash rates amid the global economic crisis.

Nintendo lowered the game's Bank of Nook interest rate on Thursday to roughly 0.05% from 0.5%, Kotaku first reported. Interest payouts are now limited to 9,999 bells, the game's currency.

"We are writing to inform you that we have reduced the interest rate offered to all savings accounts," a letter sent to players from the Bank of Nook read. "We appreciate your business."

The Bank of Nook letter also gifted players a rug shaped like a bag of bells.

Read more: Meet the 20-year-old day-trading phenom who's turned $20,000 into more than $1 million. He details his precise strategy — and shares how he made $11,400 in 2 minutes.

Kotaku's Ethan Gach tested the change by shifting the game's clock forward to May 2021 before and after the update. While the pre-adjustment trick yielded a 63,571-bell payment for Gach's 1.1 million-bell fortune, the same gimmick only earned 6,579 bells after the bank's rate cut.

It's unclear why the rate was adjusted, and it won't have the same monetary effect as similar real-world policies. Loans in "Animal Crossing" are interest-free, rendering the rate cut fruitless for driving lending activity. It's more likely Nintendo sought to boost spending among players instead of allowing them to passively grow their wealth in the game's bank.

Read more: 'I've gone to cash': Mark Cuban outlines his coronavirus investing strategy ahead of another 'leg down' in markets — and says now is the time to buy real estate

Nintendo might have also wanted to deter players from using a so-called "time travel" exploit. Interest payments are made each month, and players could shift their device clocks forward to quickly reap cash. The latest update now caps the earnings one could make from the exploit and drastically lowers the amount made with each month skipped.

The Thursday update brings the Bank of Nook's interest rate more in line with the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, and Bank of England's policy stances.

Now read more markets coverage from Markets Insider and Business Insider:

Oil spikes 9% as market rebound puts negative prices in rear view

The Fed will keep interest rates near zero for at least 3 more years, economist survey says

The coronavirus is like a 'nuclear bomb' for companies like WeWork. 10 real-estate insiders lay out the future of flex-office, and how employers are preparing now.

Microsoft is putting its foot down in the age-old debate about whether it's correct to put one or two spaces after a period.

Microsoft Word's editor function is getting a new feature that flags two spaces after a period as an error, according to The Verge. Some Twitter users have noticed in recent days that the company recently started testing the change in the desktop version of Word.

The debate over whether to use one space or two has been raging on for years, probably for about as long as we've been typing on modern computers. A study from Skidmore College in 2018 even sought to answer the question. Its results found that two spaces were in fact better.

As you might expect, the change from Microsoft Word created quite the stir on Twitter. Some found the update frustrating, while others viewed it as much-needed validation. 

If you're still advocating for two spaces instead of one, you'll be able to change this setting, Lifehacker said. There's a "Writing Style" in Microsoft Word's grammar settings that enables you to tell the program not to check for spaces after periods at all or set it to "two space."

President Donald Trump on Friday revisited his claim that Amazon is responsible for the US Postal Service's financial challenges during a press conference and suggested USPS should let the company handle its own shipping.

"If they raise the price of a package like they should — four or five times, that's what it should be — or let Amazon build their own post office, which would be an impossible thing to do because the post office is massive and serves every little piece of the country ... it would be a whole new ball game," Trump said.

Trump has repeatedly accused Amazon, as well as other online retailers, of contributing to USPS's financial woes by receiving below-market package-delivery rates — effectively arguing USPS is unfairly subsidizing transportation costs for the $1.2 trillion company.

As of 2018, USPS was approaching nearly $70 billion in cumulative losses, and last month, a group of Democratic lawmakers said the coronavirus outbreak could shutter USPS by June.

During Friday's press conference, Trump confirmed a Thursday report from The Washington Post that his administration is considering using an emergency loan included in the $2 trillion coronavirus relief package as leverage to require the cash-strapped US Postal Service to make massive changes to its structure and management.

"If they don't raise the price, I'm not signing anything," Trump said, referring to the emergency loan, which must first be approved by the Treasury Department.

Trump's criticism of Amazon's relationship with USPS is hardly new, and he has been suggesting for years that USPS raise the rates it charges to deliver packages for the company to recoup its losses.

"Why is the United States Post Office, which is losing many billions of dollars a year, while charging Amazon and others so little to deliver their packages, making Amazon richer and the Post Office dumber and poorer?" Trump tweeted in December 2017.

Trump's reasoning may have some merit: Logistics analysts have said that Amazon has been able to build a transportation network, in which the company can save money delivering its own packages, by relying significantly on USPS.

A December report from Morgan Stanley said Amazon's in-house delivery network  was "cherry-picking" the US's densest ZIP codes. USPS is then charged with delivering Amazon packages in rural areas. Servicing rural areas, where homes are more spread out, is more expensive — and USPS isn't able to recoup those losses by servicing urban areas on behalf of Amazon.

However, The Washington Post said raising package-delivery rates could also make it more difficult for USPS to compete with Amazon and other shipping companies like UPS and FedEx, hurting its financial state in the long run. 

Rachel Premack and Grace Panetta contributed reporting to this story.

 

Over the last few weeks, Business Insider has been talking to experts to see which companies they thought would get bought up as the coronavirus crisis drives down valuations — and thus, potential purchase prices. In our conversations, one name kept coming up: Domo, the Utah-based data analytics company.

"Domo is one of those companies that it's kind of surprising that it hasn't been acquired yet," Valoir analyst Rebecca Wettemann told Business Insider. "Because it ticks all the boxes for cloud analytics: easily adoptable, high usability, that whole low-code-no-code potential. It's so good at so many things. Domo has a lot to offer."

Domo gives businesses and organizations access to a cloud-based business intelligence and analytics platform which helps executives see important information about the health of their company through real-time dashboards.  The company is even playing a role in the fight against COVID-19: Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday cited Domo's partnership with Nomi Health in helping Iowa Governor Kim Reynold's initiative to expand coronavirus testing in the state.

Domo's the kind of business that appears to be most attractive to cloud giants, as two of Domo's highest-profile rivals both got snapped up.

In the last year alone, Google acquired data-analytics company Looker for $2.6 billion, and Salesforce bought data visualization company Tableau for $15.7 billion. Domo's market cap at the time of this writing is around $416 million — well below the valuation of over $2 billion it commanded as a private company, before its tumultous 2018 IPO. 

Nucleus Research analyst Daniel Elman told Business Insider that Domo's stock seems undervalued and, after the Looker and Tableau acquisitions, "it stands to reason another large player could swoop Domo up for pennies on the dollar to bolster their own analytics capabilities."

Coronavirus crisis puts pressure on Domo

The coronavirus crisis appears to be putting pressure on Domo's business, even as the pandemic also highlighted its role in helping in the fight against COVID-19. Reacting to Pence's acknowledgement of Domo's role in Iowa, CEO Josh James tweeted: "You've got to be kidding me!!! ... I didn't see this happening." 

But the company  this week laid off 90 employees, or 10 percent of its staff, according to local media reports. A recent Morgan Stanley report list Domo among companies for which the coronavirus crisis has magnified "existing sales execution issues."

Domo did not comment on the Morgan Stanley report or the speculation from analyst that it's likely to be acquired, but James, the company's CEO, said in a statement to Business Insider that the layoffs are part of a $30 billion restructuring plan that also included cuts to executive pay and perks, marketing expenses, and "non-essential expenses unless they pertain to keeping and protecting our employees, retaining and serving our customers, or winning new contracts in the short term."

"While our business is showing resiliency and the crisis is actually highlighting the importance of our product, there is so much uncertainty ahead and we needed to ensure that we keep ourselves in a position to protect our business and continue to serve customers for the long term," James said. "Parting ways with people who have become part of the fabric of the company, particularly in an environment like this one, is incredibly difficult. With the economy as a whole slowing down, we can't be in a position where we come close to running out of money."

Could be a good fit at Microsoft or Oracle

It's unclear whether these developments would affect the likelihood that Domo gets snapped up in an acquisitions, but analysts said, in general the company could be an attractive acquisition for major enterprise players such as Microsoft and Oracle.

Ray Wang of Constellation Research also called Domo an "awesome" business intelligence and data visualization technology. He said Microsoft may decide to go after Domo to beef up the capabilities of Power BI. 

"What they would then do is invite them to partner with them and they would spend the next two to three years to figure out if they could build this, or do they have to buy Domo," he said.

Data analytics visualization is clearly a hot space in cloud software after the Looker and Tableau acquisitions. However, Valoir's Wettemann said that Domo is struggling with the perception that its technology isn't up to par for larger enterprise customers. 

"The downside is it almost got bucketed into the sort of Dropbox category, stuff that's so usable and consumer-focused that people ask, is this really an enterprise app?," she said. "And I would argue it is. The challenge is they got lumped into that bucket with Dropbox and it's been kind of challenging to break out of that."

The company has also been somewhat controversial. The company went public in 2018. An investor watchdog at the time said "investors should stay away from this IPO" due to a series of what he saw as red flags. Leading up to the IPO, Business Insider reporter Julie Bort wrote extensively about issues within the company, according to insiders.

Are you a Domo employee? Contact Ashley Stewart via email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., message her on Twitter @ashannstew, or send her a secure message through Signal at 425-344-8242. Contact Benjamin Pimentel reporter via email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., message him on Twitter @benpimentel or send him a secure message through Signal at 510-731-8429.

Amazon is extending the temporary pay raise for warehouse workers in the US and Canada that was supposed to end this month, but will terminate the unlimited unpaid time off policy as scheduled.

Early last month, Amazon said it would double overtime pay and increase hourly wages by $2 for its warehouse workers through the month of April, while offering unlimited unpaid time off for those who didn't feel comfortable coming into work as the coronavirus pandemic worsened.

In a note sent to warehouse workers on Friday, Amazon said, "We're extending the $2/hr wage increase and double overtime pay through May 16 ... Also we are returning to our normal attendance policy on May 1."

In a blog post on Friday, Amazon said the extended pay increase brings its total investment in hourly workers during COVID-19 to nearly $700 million.

"We continue to see heavy demand during this difficult time and the team is doing incredible work for our customers and the community," the blog post said.

The change comes at a time when Amazon is dealing with a series of worker safety issues. Over 70 warehouses are reported to have at least one infected employee, and last week, the first known case of death was confirmed. 

Groups of warehouse workers have called out Amazon's loose workplace safety measures over the past month, staging multiple protests across the country. Just this week, more than 300 warehouse workers pledged to call off work, according to the nonprofit United for Respect. 

Amazon has made dozens of policy changes to ensure the safety of its warehouse workers during the pandemic. Earlier this month, it announced it would provide face masks and regular temperature checks to its workforce. It's also started spraying disinfectant and providing enhanced cleaning procedures across its facilities.

Santa Monica, California-based adtech firm GumGum laid off 25% of employees this week, which CEO Phil Schraeder said were a direct result of dropped revenue from the coronavirus.

GumGum runs two businesses: an advertising business and a sports arm. The former uses artificial intelligence and software to match contextually relevant ads with content. The sports business sells computer-vision software that brands and sports teams use to analyze sports sponsorships.

Schraeder said the layoffs hit both businesses. He made the announcements during an all-hands meeting on Monday and posted a blog about the layoffs.

GumGum, which was founded 12 years ago, raised $22 million in Series D funding in February, and its overall funding totals $58.8 million. GumGum employs about 360 people, according to LinkedIn data.

"We are financially sound and in this for the long haul," Schraeder said. "We just needed to appropriately adjust our org and structure to support that new reality. Our philosophy was to look at the data — it might feel painful, awful, and hard for so many, myself included, but we don't want to look over our shoulders."

He said GumGum's second-quarter revenue took a hit that was similar to numbers that the trade organization Interactive Advertising Bureau released, which said 69% of publishers and adtech companies had reforecast their revenue to reflect drops between March and June. Those companies expect a 21% drop in digital-ad revenue during that time.

Adtech sources have named GumGum as a possible acquisition target this year as privacy laws like California's Consumer Privacy Act and Europe's General Data Protection Regulation restrict how advertisers use third-party cookies. Apple and Google have also clamped down on third-party cookies to target ads to people.

GumGum is the latest in a growing string of advertising-based companies slammed by the effects of the coronavirus.

The adtech firms VideoAmp and Sojern, the holding companies WPP and Omicom, and direct-to-consumer brands like ThirdLove have also cited the coronavirus in a wave of recent layoffs.

"I want to be able to look at the team that's here and say, 'We got this, and we can work through the volatility together,'" Schraeder said. "I hope that we're wrong — I hope the revenue comes in greater than we ever anticipated, and that will allow us to potentially bring people back."

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Friday the company is introducing 50-person video chatrooms.

This would likely compete with other videochatting apps, notably Zoom, which has seen huge gains since the coronavirus pandemic forced schools and workplaces to close. Facebook says the feature will be out in the US in the coming weeks.

The chatrooms will be based around Facebook Messenger and Facebook Groups, and can be public or private. Guests can also join by link, without a Facebook account. As a competitor to Zoom, Facebook seems to be a budget option, hosting up to 50 people with no mention of a time limit. In comparison, Zoom calls with more than two people time-out after 40 minutes with the free version of the service.

Video conference calls have suddenly become key to corporate and educational life since the pandemic has forced many closures and stay at home orders around the US and the world. So far, Zoom has come out on top, going from 10 million daily users to 300 million in only a few months.

Here's what Facebook's Messenger Rooms will look like, and how they'll work.

If you want to go bare-bones, the Kia Telluride can be had for about $32,000.

That still gets you AWD and the V6, so, therefore, is a monumental bargain.

My test vehicle was the top SX trim level and consequently optioned within an inch of its automotive life. The uptick in price was $15,000, much of which was worth it, though the only extras offered for this trim were stuff like Nappa leather seat trim and a head-up display, as well as second-row seats that were heated and cooled. The damage: $2,000.

This SUV was as close to perfect at its price point as possible, if you ask me. I noticed but one "problem": a bit of buzz from the 291-horsepower engine under hard acceleration in sport mode. But just a bit. And it went away once the Telluride's transmission automatically snicked into the overdrive gears.

I'll just say it: When Hyundai and Kia arrived in the US market, they didn't make a Japanese impression. The Japanese brands gained instant cred decades ago when their well-built and fuel-efficient cars put Detroit on notice. The South Koreans entered the fray after the Japanese impact had been felt, leaving price as the only real avenue to competition.

So first impressions were that the cars were cheap, sticker-wise and quality-wise. Heavy-duty 10-year/100,000-mile warranties took the fear away from buyers.

But now Kia (and Hyundai and the premium Genesis brand) has shown it can offer great value alongside wonderful quality. The Telluride, along with the Stinger sports sedan, is the pinnacle of this. The Kia SUV is every bit as good and in some ways superior to the Honda Pilot.

The real test of such vehicles is the road trip, with family and gear and perhaps a pet or two. I didn't have any of those things handy, but I did undertake a nearly 200-mile round-trip jaunt in the Telluride from suburban New Jersey to a small town in Pennsylvania to visit the C. F. Martin & Co. guitar factory. And while I didn't load up the cargo area with guitars, I did get to spend quality time with the Telluride on a variety of roadways, with a nasty storm coming in from the west.

By the end of it, I was ready to march over to a Kia dealership and buy one of these things.

OK, I don't HAVE to do that. But the Telluride put me in that mindset, just as the Stinger did a while back.

Kia, I gotta hand it to ya: You're killing it, and the Telluride is the latest victory.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, Tiffany Bradford would exercise at her local Planet Fitness in Boston, Massachusetts.

The gym recently began hosting a series of at-home workouts that are streamed every day through Facebook Live, as Planet Fitness locations, like many other gyms and businesses, remain closed because of the pandemic.

Shifting to at-home exercise routines is a challenge that many usual gym-goers across the United States are likely grappling with, as about 95% of Americans are under orders to stay at home. But Bradford's adjustment is proving to be more difficult. 

She's not on Facebook.  

"I've been kind of surprised lately [about] how many free resources require a Facebook," Bradford, a 26-year-old technology consultant, said. 

She isn't alone in staying off the social network. Business Insider asked a small group of about 60 former users if they'd returned to the platform since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Two-thirds of them said no. While Bradford cited several reasons for leaving the site — a lack of meaningful connections, disinformation on the platform — many users have seemingly left Facebook following controversial findings that came to light in recent years, and they aren't turning back.

In 2018, the revelation that the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had harvested data from millions of Facebook users during the 2016 election season led some people to abandon the platform, data suggests. The Pew Research Center reported in September 2018 that 26% of American adults that responded to its survey said they deleted the Facebook app from their phone. About 42% of respondents said they stopped checking Facebook for several weeks or more. 

Leaving Facebook is surely no easy task. Siva Vaidhyanathan, the director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at University of Virginia, suggested in his book that Facebook uses casino-like techniques to keep users hooked on its platform, as The Washington Post reported. Sean Parker, the founding Facebook president and Napster cofounder, also said at an Axios event that the social network was designed to "consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible."

And although leaving Facebook has presented a few inconveniences, some former users say it's also taught them an important lesson: They don't need Facebook to stay in touch with the people that are truly important — even as the coronavirus pandemic is preventing people across the United States from socializing in person. 

"I'm not getting anything out of this anymore," Bradford said of her decision to leave Facebook. "I could actually do a better job if I quit relying on this to stay connected to my friends and family."

The coronavirus is bringing Facebook's influence into question

Facebook still holds a colossal presence in the social media landscape despite its controversies. With 1.66 billion average daily active users as of December 2019, Facebook still far exceeds rivals like Snapchat, with 218 million daily active users, and Twitter's 152 million monetizable daily active users.    

Facebook usage has also spiked during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The company said messaging has increased by 50%, and voice and video calling have more than doubled on Messenger and WhatsApp in countries hit the hardest.

That doesn't necessarily mean Facebook is immune to coronavirus-related troubles; the social media giant said it doesn't monetize many of the services that are being more widely used during the pandemic. Plus, the company's crucial ad business has been weakening as advertisers are spending less because of the virus' economic ramifications.  

Still, even at a time when Facebook usage is thriving, some ex-users aren't motivated to return despite the trade-offs that come with being absent from the world's largest social network.  

"At times yes, you're at a disadvantage in certain situations," said Nick Raia, a 39-year-old emergency medical technician for the New York City Fire Department. He said he's missed out on the occasional birthday party invitation since a lot of his friends use Facebook to coordinate events. "They're doing everything through Facebook, and so sometimes I do get excluded because of it."

It's unclear whether people who have deleted or deactivated their accounts tend to return to Facebook. While the company does report daily and monthly active users for its network, there doesn't seem to be readily available data that provides insight about whether people typically return to Facebook after leaving.

But data from researchers at Stanford University and New York University published in November 2019 does suggest that people who leave Facebook tend to use the social network less after returning. Researchers paid participants to leave the social network for four weeks, and once the experiment was over they found that even though most people reactivated their accounts, they spent less time on Facebook.

How people are replacing the world's largest social network

Video chats and other specialized apps have helped former Facebook users in maintaining contact with friends and family members they can't see in person, as well as other extended social circles. 

Marc Kermisch, a 46-year-old technology professional in Minneapolis, Minnesota, previously used Facebook to coordinate group runs and bike rides. Now, he typically uses the workout app Strava to organize such gatherings, although he usually has to supplement Strava usage with text messaging because the app "doesn't really have the messaging capabilities that Facebook does." 

For others, text messaging has become an easy and reliable way to keep in touch. 

Andreas Kielczynski has adopted a more creative approach to texting. A 46-year-old digital marketing professional living in Hoboken, New Jersey, Kielczynski said he typically uses Apple's Messages app on his laptop and sometimes keeps between 30 and 40 messages open at a time. Instead of typing, he'll also sometimes recite short messages and send them as audio clips. And even though he's not on Facebook, he'll still occasionally use Facebook's Messenger app to contact certain people he can't reach otherwise.

"I use texting in kind of a strange way," said Kielczynski. "I'm not as much of a phone person as other people are. I'll always default to my laptop whenever possible."

Long before the coronavirus pandemic made it impossible to see loved ones in person, ex-Facebook users had taken to alternative modes of communication to keep in touch. For some, like Kermisch in Minnesota, not being on Facebook has been a motivator to call contacts they haven't spoken to in a while.

"I said, 'Hey, you know what? I'm going to give them a call just to see how they're doing,'" Kermisch said. "I think we all try to take care of each other a little bit more right now."

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Companies have spent more on data center deals so far this year than in all of 2019, according to new data from Synergy Research Group, as the coronavirus crisis forces aggressive expansions to keep up with a surge of users working from home.

The market researcher identified 28 data center deals worth a total of $14.8 billion have closed so far this year, and 17 more deals are pending. The total value of data center deals last year was $14.7 billion.

Expanding data center capacity is particularly right now important for top public cloud providers Amazon Web Services and Microsoft as the need for cloud services increases. With much of the world staying at home amid the COVID-19 pandemic, that means more people are turning to services like Netflix, Zoom, and Xbox Live to stay connected — in turn, placing more strain on the cloud platforms that underpin them.

John Dinsdale, the group's chief analyst, told Business Insider he's aware of 50 new Amazon and Microsoft data centers in various stages of development across 15 countries. "It may be a year or two before some of those come online, but many will be operational in the near future," Dinsdale said.

AWS did not comment on that figure, but said it has 73 "availability zones" and has announced plans for 12 more. The company on Wednesday announced it opened new data centers in Cape Town, South Africa.

Microsoft declined to comment on its data center plans and referred to a recent note to customers explaining how the company is managing capacity during the coronavirus crisis.

It's unclear exactly how the coronavirus crisis has shaped the companies' expansions since widespread measures to keep people at home began in March, but Dinsdale said a clearer picture should emerge next week when both companies report first-quarter earnings.

Dinsdale expects to see continued aggressive investment in new public cloud data center capacity, and a slowdown in cloud server replacement as cloud providers try to squeeze out more working life from existing hardware.

Where Microsoft is concerned, the coronavirus crisis has presented a big opportunity for its cloud business, but also a big challenge.

Microsoft not only has its Azure public cloud business, but business software used by most business around the world which share data center with its cloud business. That means the opportunity created from the coronavirus crisis for Microsoft is twofold, but it makes it more difficult for the company to ensure it has enough capacity for all of its cloud and software customers. Microsoft Teams, for example, experienced an outage in March.

A recent note to Microsoft customers suggests Microsoft is worried about capacity issues.

Microsoft said it would placed temporary restrictions for Azure cloud computing customers, including limits on free offers and "certain resources" for new subscriptions. The company has also said it would prioritize "first responders, health and emergency management services, critical government infrastructure organizational use, and ensuring remote workers stay up and running with the core functionality of Teams."

Microsoft hasn't released its plan for adding capacity, but has recommended that customers switch to other data centers with less demand and that it will work to expand data-center capacity in regions where demand is surging.

AWS, meanwhile, said it hasn't had any capacity issues as a result of the coronavirus crisis. AWS is also more focused on public cloud infrastructure and doesn't provide business software — like the Teams chat app, or the broader Office suite — at the same scale as Microsoft. Slack and Zoom, both significant AWS customers, have seen big surges in usage of their own, however.

Amazon and Microsoft are consistently active in expanding their data center footprints, Dinsdale said.

Are you an Amazon Web Services or Microsoft employee? Contact this reporter via email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., message her on Twitter @ashannstew, or send her a secure message through Signal at 425-344-8242.