Three, welcomeer to bloomberg west. Hour, has dick costolo fixed to the user growth problem and figured out how to keep the users engaged . Those are some of the questions that they are ready to answer today and we will look into whether the recent changes and twitter are impacting the business. Linkedin is refreshing its mobile app, rolling out a major redesign of the service, designed to summarize your profile and make it easier to find things. The Vice President will be here to talk about it as well as the recent acquisitions. Admits that it secretly conducted experiments on users, including purposely creating bad matches to see if people would connect. It also tested whether people responded better to pictures or words. The admission comes after facebook was criticized for conducting a study on its users without telling them. Story of thelead day, we are hours away from the Second Quarter earnings report, which saw a lot of changes. Much more on that in a minute. First i want to get a look of the challenges facing twitters business. Are their product tweaks working . Are they giving users more involved . Is making the signup process easier and convincing more people to join . Shares have rebounded a bit, but are still down 40 this year. Yorkjohnson is in new today to break it all down. Cory, what specifically are you going to be watching for . I know we have been talking about user growth. You took the words right out of my mouth. User growth will be a huge deal here. We have seen slowing rates of user growth with a minor improvement last quarter. The rates, will they be growing . Surely. , as they have struggled to grow users, they have been successful at monetization, assuming presumably the ads are more contextual, a positive sign for them as well. I also wonder what is going on this quarter. We have seen such a dramatic turnover in the executive ranks. Sometimes you see that when a quarter is not going to look so good. Surprise is not off the table here. I am curious as to what they report this time. It isnt resting, cory, when it comes to twitter we focus on two things, the rate of user growth and revenue. Twitter has reportedly been internally debating new metrics i which to measure twitter that may be better or more indicative of how well the services actually doing. Do you think that the rate of user growth and revenue is the fairest way to assess twitters performance . At the end of the day it will all it will be all about profits for this company. When they went public, they marched out this metric of timeline views. We can calculate timeline views per user. I thought that timelines were valuable metrics, they really showed us the level of engagement, i thought, how many times someone went to a different timeline. When the number stop looking so great, twitter stop looking at that number. Then they will come up with a new number that is more revelatory. I love to get the numbers that i need to understand the business, but when they tell the us that this is not what we should look at, i am skeptical. They made a lot of changes to the timeline. They made photos bigger. As a user, i am on there every single day and i sort of understand that the number of timelines used might not the indicative of how much i am engaging with the service, i might be spending more time on a timeline in this new format. If they give us a new one and take away the old one, i think it inhibits our ability to really process that information and understand it. It is a fascinating Company Whose importance greatly outweighs market cap and the potential for the business is so great in the world of media. You can see it in the culture everywhere. That is why i love these Quarterly Results that let us look at how the business functions. The more data they want to give me, the better. All right, cory johnson, hang on, i want to talk more about the executive shuffle, another big issue that twitter has been facing lately. Ca Second Quarter the ceo and cfo left their roles. By anthony replaced noto, who led the twitter ipo, but he did leave the company in the clo position, which was basically eliminated. The big question, is this huge shakeup working . Joining us in the studio, the ceo and cofounder of a company that recruits for facebook, box, square, and more. You dont think that this executive shuffle spells much trouble . In the short run . Who knows. Sometimes you see these shakeups right before Earnings Results that may not be so positive, but if you talk to a lot of people about twitter, they say that twitter is playing along game here. This is not about this order or the next quarter, it is what it will be over the next five to 10 years. They have not monetized as a company for a long. They are in their infancy. I think that some of the shakeup might simply be preparing for the future. In addition to the cfo and coo position, the head of media of products and engineering. Has gone quite beyond those people at the very top and it has been going on for quite a while. Talking about departures over the last six months. When a Company Grows fast the person who brought you there is not the person to take you to the next level. Thei think that some of people who are being brought in are some of the best people in the world. Daniel graf. Like the new head of products. What product do we all use on a daily basis . A google maps. It is not like they are replacing these people with the b team. Into with more insight twitter than anyone outside the company, yes, there is shakeup, but it is not like this is coming out of left field and the replacements are not people you would expect. Coming from goldman sachs, i huge too. Twitter has also made a lot of recent acquisitions. Smaller acquisitions, but how long does it take to it and the great Smaller Companies like this into a Larger Company like twitter when there is so much going on elsewhere . The threat to twitter, facebook, and these technology companies, something coming from left field to disrupt your business. Snapchat, facebook has gobbled up two of those companies. Twitter has made some smaller acquisitions. Will they take on a larger acquisition to try to compete and grow their business even faster . How much do these acquisitions matter when it comes to taking a look at the numbers . When you look at the slowing user growth and you think that maybe this longterm trend of slowing user growth is not something that they will be able to arrest, you have to imagine the ways that they will be able to make money beyond that, taking what they have got, the data they have got, finding other places across the web monetize. These acquisitions will be fuchsia important to the future growth of the company. Tonight, they will capitalize this over many years, you wont see the effects of that, but it is enormously important to the longterm success, if there is going to be any, for twitter. What do you know about the feeling inside of twitter . When i talk to employees, they are excited. They are energized by twitter despite the fact that all of this is happening. Of course, that is just anecdotal, but has this affected Company Culture . 40 nytime your stock is off in the year, there will be hits the morale. But i have had some similar theresations at twitter, is a strong missionary component to what they are doing. Look at the changes in the middle east and the political upheaval of the last three to five years. A lot of that has been as a result of the impact of social media. The people that work there, they firmly believe they are changing the world and not in a Silicon Valley cliche way, but actually changing the world. I get the sense that there is a lot of respect for dick costolo. He is one of the most respected in the valley. People that work for him generally love it. That may not have been the case across the board, where they had differences, but at the end of the day i think you have a very wellrespected ceo. Ok, thank you so much. We will of course be all over twitter earnings today after the bell. Well, linkedin is linking up with a number of startups as it continues its own shopping spree. How has that helped growth . The senior Vice President is here with us next. Linkedin is rolling out a new design for user profiles today on its mobile products. The professional social network has been on a buying spree this year, acquiring other companies. They combed the internet for articles and blogs that mention user friends, professional contacts, or public figures. The senior Vice President of User Experience at linkedin joins me now from mountain view, california. Thank you as always for joining us. Tell us about these new global profiles and how they are different from the old ones. It is great to be back on your show, emily. Always good to talk to you about new and exciting things going on at linkedin. Specifically in mobile. We launchedtoday our new mobile profile, it really follows the team of relationships. Afew weeks ago we launched new product called connected. We truly believe that relationships matter in a professional life. One of the ways in which we established those relationships is when we meet new people and we want to know more about them. So, rather than using the ageold icebreaker of how has the weather been . Really hot today in Silicon Valley. Or can you believe the price of gold . Make a icebreaker more personal. The new profile makes it easier for the individual to look fabulous, as well as the folks looking at the profile and for the interaction of the relationship to become a lot more personal and intimate. I know that mobile has been a big focus for you guys. What kind of growth are you seeing in mobile ursas desktop and are you satisfied with it . Mobile has definitely been growing really nicely for us. As we announced the addenda for last quarter, 43 of our weekly visitors come from mobile devices. In a couple of days you will see the new numbers in that direction. Look at our mobile interaction as a means of enabling professionals and members to work where they want to work. It is a key part of our strategy. It is also a great crucible for innovation. As we roll out things like mobile profiles, we want to integrate some of that goodness, as we learn from user interactions, back into the desktop products as well. When are we going to see that . Are we going to see new user profiles on the desktop . When . Clearly we are always integrating the things that we learn from one platform onto the other and you can definitely expect that a lot of the goodness we see on one platform to show up on the other. I will come back on your show and let you know when we integrate those things. I recently spoke with the cofounder of linkedin and executive chairman, reid hoffman. I asked in a bit about what keeps them up at night. What is he thinking about when it comes to the future of linkedin . Take a listen to what he had to say. I worry about under delivering on the opportunity. We have this ability to have peoples professional identities as a platform to change the way that they work. Are we doing well enough against the very longterm opportunity . All whole bunch of things need to be done over years in order to get there. So, are we being bold enough . Wehe went on to say are taking bold enough steps, making big enough decisions, taking risks . How do you on a daily basis try to do that to make sure that linkedin is capitalizing on the opportunity that you believe is out there . I think that what reid says really resonates with me and the executive team and we are continuously not just taking bold bets and exploring new avenues to fulfill the promise of what linkedin means to our over 300 members, but we are also looking at new ways of innovating and inventing how that connected world works. If you think about it as professionals we get very busy and we are too focused on what we are doing and at the same time there is this little bit of insecurity. Are we doing enough . Are we presenting ourselves in the best possible way and putting the best foot forward . Those are parts of the opportunities, promises, and vision that we talk about in this clip. We work on it every day in order to get closer to accomplishing the vision. It is also a really long journey. I believe that truly Great Companies continue to deliver on really farreaching visions that go on for decades at a time. That is really the exciting part of being there. You have been making a lot of smaller acquisitions. How much more of this are we going to see . Fitll of these acquisitions in nicely with our product strategies. The people in your network, who you care about and how they showed up in the news, that is a great way to form relationships with them. Similar to the mobile profile that we had. I was looking at it before the show, turns out you went to the same high school that my daughter went to summer camp at a couple of years ago. Really . In hawaii . Yes. What are the odds . Yes. That is why these other acquisitions are a part of how we can really further that goal and vision of enabling the professional to be the best of what they are and help them grow and nurture their relationship connections . You guys do have six apps, total, i believe, right now. Why have so many . Why not just focus on one . We definitely have the flagship app. We want to make sure that for our members we are there with the right kind of intimate experience for them throughout the day and throughout their career. Sort of like this, when you have Young Children you always have the opportunity to go to a big ox store to do your shopping, but once in a while you want to go to gap kids or gymboree and there are reasons you choose different stores. Similarly, a job Search Engine could use a flagship app, but when they are intensely in the job searching mode we believe that giving them a dedicated application, like we Just Launched a few weeks ago, is one of the better ways to go. There are dozens of these. We have a handful, but we want to make sure the week address the key data points and User Experiences of our members. The linkedin senior Vice President , thank you as always for joining us here today. We will be right back. A big win for apple, another blow to black area. Ford is converting its worldwide workforce to iphone instead of blackberry. 9000 ford employees will receive them over the next two years. John chen has been cant counting on Corporate Accounts to help turn the company around. Lack berry may be losing ford, but it is gaining new security technology. They have agreed to join a new German Company that provides antieavesdropping technology and counts Angela Merkel as a client. It is their first acquisition under john chen. , joann us now to discuss robinson, who covers Cyber Security for Bloomberg News jordan, tell us a bit more about what the company does and why blackberry wants it. It is Encryption Technology. It is Encryption Technology that sits on the device itself. In this post Edward Snowden era, security is everything for these companies. It is funny that blackberry is buying these companies, blackberry became the go to is this smart phone maker a few years ago on the basis of their reputation for security and they kind of lost that reputation for a while. This is kind of a back to the future moment for them. Is it a bit surprising that they did not already have this technology . Like they were partnering with this company and had access to it, but this makes more sense to them. They want to be seen as the security smartphone provider. Samsung has been pushing the security of their products. Apple is working with ibm now. Hacking threats to mobile phones are not as prevalent as they are in the pc yet. It is a mixed bag and it is important for them to have, though. Jordan, how do you see it fitting into the broader strategy . I have spoken with john chen, he is trying to remake the company but he is still making devices that will be less reliant, which as we know less and less people are using and it does not make sense is he doing something to make a phones better when they will be focusing on Enterprise Software and services . Really good question considering what this technology does. It is a hardwarebased solution, you encrypt the data, it stays on the device and you cant access it. One of the big innovations of the blackberry server, which was software that encrypted the user information. This is a very hardware focused acquisition. An important one that is a diversion a little bit from what he has described as his strategy. All right, jordan robinson, today from washington, d. C. , thank you so much. Cupid comes clean. The dating site says that they do experiment on users. What kinds of tests are being conducted . What were the result . We will tell you, next. You are watching bloomberg west. We focus on technology in the future of business. I am emily chang. Ok cupid says that they have experimented on their users. The date asked the cofounder admitted that they had conducted experiments, testing the kind of conversations that up that occur when pictures are removed and changing the ratings systems used to match different users. The admission comes just a few months after facebook apologized for similar studies on unknowing users. Cory johnson joins me now from new york with more on their experiment. Tell us a little bit more about what these tests what exactly these tests involved. Handful of tests in which they basically altered peoples profiles to see what kind of her response they would get. Some were as simple as changing or removing the text that describes somebody. The photo thing that they did where they would take someones profile and remove the photo to see the kind of response they would get, what they found by removing the photo was that they would get 44 more messages in terms of an initial response and that the conversations would actually go deeper and that the Contact Exchange would move faster. This is all through messing with the profile that someone elected to put out in the world. I think that the most it most interesting one was the confidence game. Here told someone with a 30 match ability that it was 90 and that those people, once they have the confidence of in, that they would engage more messages and get more active in the dating community. They would basically manipulate compatibility scores and make it higher or lower and if it was higher users felt more inclined to message those people and it goes to show how easily websites can manipulate our emotions and emotional responses. The reason that this touches a nerve is that it is about dating or sex, something so personal or intimate in the way that people put themselves out there. The notion that a business would change this data they were not just sort of messing around for fun. They were not engaged in a Scientific Study as facebook was a few months ago, as we now know, but they were trying to change user profiles to get more action on their site and get more business happening there. This is a commercial effort to try to change the way that their business is succeeding in the competitive world of online dating, where they are up against eharmony and match. Com, all the other sites we have talked about all the time in this business. It is a pretty big deal and that is what makes this particularly pernicious. Facebook has been the target of a huge uproar in the last several for similarly trying to do experiments to manipulate peoples emotions. Ok cupid does not seem to be getting the same amount of heat. Thiscompanies say look, is in the name of experimentation and of improving the service. Is it ok if that is the end goal . There are two takeaways. The easy one is Mark Zuckerbergs notion of privacy might not be yours, but it is your data that they are talking about. The bigger issue is for businesses that start to engage in social media and construct businesses built on user information. The notion that if you are using a site for free and you dont know the product, well then you are the product. These companies are engaging they love that world that that word, engaging and touching their consumer in new sorts of ways. The consumer might feel very differently. Really feelswho that it is their data and that they can decide how to put it out there has a very different relationship with that business and that land. The cofounder said that he had only heard a few complaints, but they might be complaints like people jumping to match. Com, eharmony, tinder, grinder, you name it. They messed with the trust of their customers. All right, we reached out for comment that have not heard back. Cory johnson, thank you. Already valued at 118 billion dollars, hoping to grow their business even more by targeting corporate clients. They just rolled out a new program dedicated to the business traveler, able to book rides and pay with corporate expense accounts. She started by asking him how the Corporate Service works. We will make it easier for them to get their receipts. Second four the Corporate Travel expense manager, we will give them a dashboard on the web where they can add employees, remove them, look at what they spend across their employee base. It will make it easier for them to manage. Will those coos of businesses be able to look at the huber usage numbers . One of the issues they have had with Corporate Accounts before, it is an endless pit of money they are spending on car services, wait time that they cant get to the bottom of. Thats right. If you are an expense manager at a company, you deal with paper receipts, vouchers, all kinds of different methods. We will be simplifying all of that to consolidate their spending on huber and hopefully looking at how much money they are spending and the Better Service they are getting. In cities where we are cheaper than a taxi, it makes no sense not to use it huber for those. Be cheaper than a taxi forever. It is not sustainable. I would like it if you were. You can. Actually, we do unique things with our Business Model to make it cheaper or drivers to own, drive, and insurer cars. The places we can do that, where be great for the corporation. Are you going to kill the corporation when it comes to surge pricing . People take cars to dinner. When it is time for a surge. That happens a really small percentage of the time. I will not give you that. I am happy to pay for it, but it happens a lot. Would you rather ruin your coat in the rain . I dont know. I am ok with surge, but are you going to attract these Corporate Accounts . They do ride of those times. R is think that huber ube an option. They can use us or some other ground transport. Our mission is to provide the safest, most reliable ride. We want you in the car in under five minutes. That was Ismail Michael was stephanie ruhle. Dontny check twitter but tweet . We asked 1000 twitter users how to use the flap orme. We will bring you the results, next. I am emily chang. This is bloomberg west, streaming on your phone, tablet, and bloomberg. Com. Turning back to twitter, users have flocked to twitter since secondst tweet was sent 2000 six. Keeping users engaged was a huge challenge for the company. We asked over 1000 people in the United States how they used surveymonkeye shakedown. Cory johnson is back with us in new york. Dave goldberg joins us now in the studio. Small disclaimer, your wife works for facebook, a competitor for twitter. But you spoke to what, over 1000 people . We asked them if they used twitter and how they use it. Everyone had heard of it, but only 38 said that they used it on a regular basis. Awareness is high, adoption is not . 38 percent is pretty good. I dont think its horrible, but it is just relative to the awareness. Kind of what are people using it for . And where are people not using it . Those are the questions. Are these newer users . Interestingly, most people have joined in the last couple of years if they are using it, not surprising, but it was greater than i would have guessed in terms of the number of users that have joined in the last few years. Clearly the ipo did a lot to drive a lot of new users to it. Is that a good sign for user growth . We were talking about earnings earlier today. User growth is what they are focused on. These numbers dont look bad. Overseas is also a big deal for twitter. Growth rates are very different over there. From your perspective, how did you select the people who responded . What did you know about where they were and how you found them . These are people who signed up to take surveys for charity. It is general u. S. Consumers, broadly representative of the u. S. Population. We do a lot of work to prove that people take our surveys and we donate the money to charity on their behalf. It is high quality data. Talking about advertising, youd look into whether people actually notice the ads and how intrusive they are. What did you find . You have to look at it relative to other advertising. I think that people generally sort of saw the ads and were not particularly annoyed by the ads. My guess is that if we look at other online sites, this would look similar or maybe worse than twitter . I dont think that the ads were an issue or a problem for twitter in these numbers. As we have discussed, that strategy seems to be in the early stages. At least that is what they say. People in the Advertising Industry tell us there is a long way to go with a lot of potential. I think that is a figure that out they are figuring out how to use the potential information from users. The holy grail is not just getting people to look at ads, but using the contextual information and showing them ads that they want to see. That is an enormous big data challenge and learning challenge for the machines that run twitter. Figuring out who people are, giving them relevant advertisements without getting people involved in that kind of media placement. What about how people access twitter . You have seen the growth of smartphones clearly driving it. 51 percent were on smart phones. Another 10 were on tablets. 60 mobile is not surprising. That is good, comparative, or better than most . For consumer applications that is going to be the norm. Twitter is maybe a little bit ahead in the way that people consume it. In its infancy twitter was a mobile medium. A user yourself. Absolutely. We were talking about it today. The challenge this is not my personal thing, but it is hard to explain to people how the utility works until they get used to it. And then people find a lot of value in it. My mom would know much more about what i was doing if you follow me on twitter, but she is a Facebook User and gets confused with twitter. That is the problem for twitter, right . The on ramping up people. I have spoken to people who have no use for twitter because they dont think of themselves as evil who want to tell the world stuff erie it i have the same reaction when i was compelled to start tweeting when i started this job erie it i felt that this is the medium that i present the information i gather. But now i love to send out tweets. Not a lot of people have that experience, the way they like it. I also see again is my personal experience the fact that linkedin and twitter, it has made it easy for me to do both at the same time. By doing that i tend to get a lot more reaction on both mediums. It has been good for both of those companies. Lets all questions that i am sure that twitter is asking itself. Dave goldberg, from survey mark surveymonkey, thank you as always for the surveymonkey shakedown. Coming up, more luber bwest. Luber bwest. A bloomberg west. Welcome back to bloomberg west. I am emily change emily chang. Sending people to mars within 10 years . How realistic is this . We spoke to the chief Technology Officer for inspiration mars and worldview enterprises. I asked how far away we really are from humans landing on the red planet. Well, landing on mars is a real trick. I think we are much closer to getting people within marss orbit or flying by mars. I think that that would be a great nearterm goal. Landing on mars will take some technology development. We landed this sort of onetime amazing mars, an accomplishment. One of the things we learned from that was that landing a fivetime is fivetime lander with crew on board would be tricky. It is difficult, but it is no more difficult than of apollo was one of apollo was announced. Probably less difficult, actually. On the scale of hard, not that hard. You have got a lot of Different Companies working on this. Who is going to get there first . I think it will have to be a team effort, you know . Spacex has gotten where they have gotten by working with nasa , funding and technical expertise. They have done an amazing job. These public right of art and ships are going to be the key. Is working with nasa, as well as the georgia company. Getting to mars is one thing, what about getting back . Go into marsy orbit, getting back is a lot easier. Landing on the surface, that is part of why getting there is so hard, you would have to land all the things that get you back off the surface and it turns out that if you can land equipment to make your rocket on the surface of mars, that is pretty much enabling. All ofery hard to land our rocket fuel on mars and then take off. You sort of have to make it while youre there. You and your wife have been planning your own trip to mars for the better part of two decades. Why . Why do you want to go so badly . What does getting their involved for you . I think that going there really involves doing something that is so hard it is worthy of americans. Partnk that that is the that a lot of people miss about the space program. Ofrica needs those kinds hard, technical challenges to spurn innovation and inspire kids into the sciences and show them the Amazing Things that can be done with science and technology. To me it is all about making america strong. The Apollo Mission that you referenced created a lot of business opportunities, but it was also enormous Government Spending. How is the Business Model different for nasa and such a massive effort now . Nasa can probably do more in terms of partnering with philanthropies and companies for sponsorship. There will be more International Partnering as well. I think that nasa and the administration and the Congress Really needs to take a leadership position and then find the partners to make it happen. Thele keep talking about huge amounts of money that it will be. Maybe we have to get up to 1 Government Spending to secure our economic future. We are not talking about that much money, especially if nasa works with other entities. What kind of technology do we need to get there that we dont have yet or that is in development or not deployed yet . One of the big differences between now and apollo is we had to invent just about everything for apollo. Now the things that we need to invent really involve landing on the surface and getting back off the surface. The International Space station has basically proven that we have the technology in hand to get to and from mars and live on the surface. There is a lot more testing to do, but a lot of the propulsion and lifesupport technologies are in place. It is that last step of getting to and from the surface. Spacex has been talking about going beyond mars and dominating the solar system by 2100. Is that possible . Other planets . I would never want to underestimate them. They are doing Amazing Things. I hope they are not the only ones. It would be a shame if there was this one monopolistic company dominating the solar system. The empire. I would hope that in Good American tradition there would be several companies out there competing. But they are certainly leading the way in many areas and it is fabulous to see what they are doing. Who knows what the future holds. It is time now for one number that tells a lot. Cory has the bite for us today. What have you got . Million 197,000, that was match. Coms revenue in 2018. A 10 rise over the previous year, including revenues for match. Com, bead eight, date hookup up, tinder, and yes, ok cupid. Littleknown fact . Ok cupid is how we met. People dont know that. [laughter] i wasave been waiting for you to make an ok cupid joke the whole show. Almost made it. Join us and you can see her headlines that bloomberg. Com. From bloomberg world bottomters, this is line. Today, the European Union hits rusher with more sanctions, and bracing for a prolonged military campaign in gaza, and we will hear from a former Major League Baseball player who started a company to make bats. And to our viewers in the United States and those of you joining us from around the world, welcome. We have full coverage of the