In an increasingly digitized world, brick-and-mortar retailers are facing immense pressure to understand and accommodate their customers’ changing needs, including at the point of sale (POS). 

More than two years after the EMV liability shift in October 2015, most large merchants globally have upgraded their payment systems. And beyond upgrading to meet new standards, many major retailers are adopting full-feature, “smart” devices — and supplementing them with valuable tools and services — to help them better engage customers and build loyalty.

But POS solutions aren’t “one size fits all.” Small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) don't usually have the same capabilities as larger merchants, which often have the resources and funds to adopt robust solutions or develop them in-house. That's where app marketplaces come in: POS app marketplaces are platforms, typically deployed by POS providers, where developers can host third-party business apps that offer back-office services, like accounting and inventory, and customer-retention tools, like loyalty programs and coupons.

SMBs' growing needs present a huge opportunity for POS terminal providers, software providers, and resellers. The US counts roughly 8 million SMBs, or 99.7% of all businesses. Until now, constraints such as time and budget have made it difficult for SMBs to implement value-added services that meet their unique needs. But app marketplaces enable providers to cater to SMBs with specialized solutions. 

App marketplaces also alleviate some of the issues associated with the overcrowded payments space. Relatively new players that have effectively leveraged the rise of the digital economy, like mPOS firm Square, are increasingly encroaching on the payments industry, putting pricing pressure on payment hardware and service giants. This has diminished client loyalty as merchants seek out the most affordable solution, and it's resulted in lost revenue for providers. However, app marketplaces can be used as tools not only to build client loyalty, but also as a revenue booster — Verifone, for instance, charges developers 30% of net revenue for each installed app and a distribution fee for each free app.

In this report, Business Insider Intelligence looks at the drivers of POS app marketplaces and the legacy and challenger firms that are supplying them. The report also highlights the strategies these providers are employing, and the ways that they can capitalize on the emergence of this new market. Finally, it looks to the future of POS app marketplaces, and how they may evolve moving forward.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:

• SMBs are a massive force in the US, which makes understanding their needs a necessity for POS terminal providers, software providers, and resellers — the US counts roughly 8 million SMBs, or 99.7% of all businesses.
• The entrance of new challengers into the payment space has put pricing pressure on the entire industry, forcing all of the players in the industry to find new solutions to keep customers loyal while also gaining a new revenue source.
• Major firms in the industry, like Verifone and Ingenico, have turned to value-added services, specifically app marketplaces, to not only build loyalty but also giving them a new revenue source — Verifone charges developers 30% of net revenue for each installed app and a distribution fee for each free app.
• According to a recent survey by Intuit, 68% of SMBs stated that they use an average of four apps to run their businesses. As developers flock to the space to grab a piece of the pie, it's likely that increased competition will lead to robust, revenue-generating marketplaces.
• And there are plenty of opportunities to build out app marketplace capabilities, such as in-person training, to further engage with users — 66% of app users would hire someone to train and educate them on which apps are right for their businesses. 

In full, the report:

• Identifies the factors that have changed how SMBs are choosing payment providers.  
• Discusses why firms in the payments industry have started to introduce app marketplaces over the last four years.
• Analyzes some of the most popular app marketplaces in the industry and identifies the strengths of each.
• Breaks down the concerns merchants have relating to app marketplaces, and discusses how providers can solve these issues.
• Explores what app marketplace providers will have to do going forward in order to avoid being outperformed in an industry that's becoming increasingly saturated. 

Subscribe to an All-Access pass to Business Insider Intelligence and gain immediate access to:

	This report and more than 250 other expertly researched reports
	Access to all future reports and daily newsletters
	Forecasts of new and emerging technologies in your industry
	And more!

Learn More

Purchase & download the full report from our research store

Join the conversation about this story »

The FBI has concluded its investigation of the Las Vegas mass shooting, the deadliest of its kind in modern US history.

An FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit did not find a "single or clear motivating factor" for gunman Stephen Paddock's actions, but concluded he was in financial trouble and had difficulty coping with his age.

But before the agency announced its findings on Tuesday, the massacre unfolded as most of them do — in a storm of chaos and confusion.

58 people were killed and more than 850 injured when a gunman opened fire at a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip on October 1, 2017. 

By the time the general public knew a shooting was underway, the gunman, 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, was already dead.

Despite an extensive investigation lasting well over a year, authorities ended their efforts without being able to determine Paddock's specific motive. 

Here, moment by moment, is how the attack unfolded:

September 25, 2017: Stephen Paddock checks into the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on the south end of the Las Vegas Strip.

Paddock first arrived at the Mandalay Bay almost a whole week before the shooting.

Police originally said he checked in on Thursday September 28, but later updated the date to Monday 25, three days before.

According to the Associated Press, he asked for a high-level suite overlooking the Route 91 Harvest festival  — but couldn't immediately get one.

A hotel source said that he didn't move in to the 32nd-floor room he used for the shooting until Saturday, the night before the attack.

The AP said he "was given the room for free because he was a good customer."

Paddock transports huge quantities of weapons and ammunition into his room.

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) say they found 23 guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition in his room.

He appears to have planned meticulously for the attack. As well as a large number of guns, Paddock set up at least three cameras to monitor the corridor outside, police said.

October 1, 9:40 p.m.: Route 91 Harvest festival begins its closing act.

According to Fox News, the country star Jason Aldean went onstage at 9:40 p.m. on the night of the shooting. He played for half an hour before the shooting began.

Las Vegas radio station 95.5 The Bull shared the line-up on Twitter before the event.

Aldean escaped unharmed and later paid tribute to his fans who were hurt and killed.

• In Netflix's new documentary about Fyre Festival, it was revealed that the festival creators never paid a significant number of workers. 
• First a GoFundMe page raised over $200,000 for caterer Maryann Rolle.
• Now another page is trying to crowd source $400,000 for the local day laborers who worked overtime to build out infrastructure on the Bahamian island. 

As revealed in Netflix's new documentary"FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened," the Fyre Festival creators left dozens of local Bahamian day laborers unpaid despite their overtime work in the weeks leading up to the event. 

Now a GoFundMe page, promoted by at least one of the men involved with planning Fyre Festival, is attempting to raise $400,000 for the day laborers and other local workers who were left with nothing.

In a video shared by Netflix's twitter account on Tuesday, event planner Andy King said he's using the new attention brought to him by the Netflix documentary to try and pay back the Bahamian workers.

King became a meme after the documentary aired thanks to an anecdote he tells in the film about nearly having to perform oral sex on a customs officer in order to get bottled water for the event.

"One of our biggest goals, obviously, is paying back everyone in the Bahamas," King says in the new Netflix video. "And so it's kind of rewarding that we started a GoFundMe last week to help Maryann [Rolle], and we've committed to that project, and it’s met all of its goals and lot more."

King doesn't specify who the "we" is in his statement, but there was a GoFundMe page started by a friend of Rolle's which has raised $206,000 (and counting). In the Netflix documentary about Fyre Festival, Rolle said she was left unpaid and had to give $50,000 of her own personal savings to the people on her catering staff. 

Read more:People are raising money for a Fyre Festival caterer who was left broke after using her own life savings to pay staff

"And now we've started another GoFundMe, which is now focusing on paying back all the laborers and everybody else that was involved with Fyre down in the Bahamas," King said in the new Netflix video.

The second GoFundMe page lists its goal at $400,000 and cites the beneficiary as The Exuma Foundation — a certified charity according to the fundraising website. 

"To help our community and fill the need to get funds directly to Exuma, we have set up this account to benefit the victims of the Fyre Festival," the GoFundMe page description reads. "We will establish a strict and fair process for distribution of funds to the local people who were financially affected."

Read more:10 wild revelations about the epic Fyre Festival failure uncovered in Netflix's new documentary

In the "FYRE" documentary, festival consultant Marc Weinstein described the frenzied pace of construction in the weeks leading up to the first weekend of the event.

"They're frantically building the site," he said. "You know, a hundred day laborers working around the clock with no sleep."

Rolle, who was also featured in the Netflix documentary, said McFarland and the Fyre Festival team were pulling from every labor resource in Grand Exuma, the Bahamas island where the event was supposed to take place.

"They had every living soul on the island of Exuma who could lift a towel working," Rolle said.

At one point in the documentary, another festival planner says he estimates at least 200 day laborers were working overtime to build out the stage, sleeping area, and other pieces of infrastructure needed on the bare stretch of island where Fyre Festival was meant to take place.

"FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened" is streaming now on Netflix.

• Read more:
• The Fyre Festival event planner who almost traded oral sex for bottled water addresses his viral fame in a new video from Netflix
• ‘Do you think I would get laid more by models?’: A glimpse at Billy McFarland’s pre-Fyre Festival life
• 5 of the key players in the Fyre Festival disaster
• Michael Cohen may soon be headed to the same 'cushy' prison holding Fyre Festival founder Billy McFarland and The Situation from 'Jersey Shore'
• Visit INSIDER's homepage for more.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: This tiny building in Wilmington, Delaware is home to 300,000 businesses

This is a preview of The Digital Media Forecast Book from Business Insider Intelligence. Current subscribers can read the report here.

Media consumption has changed rapidly over the past decade, with digital increasingly claiming a larger share of the daily time spent with media. Increased mobile usage is driving much of the growth in digital time spent, as smartphones become more powerful and capable of handling tasks otherwise completed on desktop.

Meanwhile, cord-cutting and cord-shaving will continue as consumers seek more affordable alternatives to traditional pay-TV. Marketers need to understand the underlying consumer trends that are driving billions of dollars in global advertising, and how those behaviors are likely to play out in the near term.

In this three-part forecast book, Business Insider Intelligence forecasts how much time users spend consuming each format as we approach peak media, and how those changes reflect how advertising dollars are spent globally and in the US.

Join the conversation about this story »

• Belgian data governance startup Collibra announced Tuesday that it had closed $100 million in funding in a Series E round led by Alphabet's investment fund CapitalG.
• The deal values Collibra at over $1 billion, making it Belgium's first-ever tech "unicorn."
• Collibra, which now competes with IBM and Informatica, started when a group of students doing research at a university realized that they could take a class project and use it to solve real-life problems. 
• Collibra launched in 2008, and immediately had to deal with a financial crisis, a lack of venture capitalists in Belgium, and even almost going bankrupt. Here's how it made it through. 

In 2012, Belgian data governance startup Collibra had been around for four years...and was about two months away from going bankrupt.

Collibra was competing for a government contract, and prospects looked grim, with IBM in the running. Data governance helps companies make sure that the data they're using complies with regulations and corporate policies, with companies like IBM and Informatica considered leaders in the space. 

Ultimately, though, Collibra underbid IBM and the other candidates and won that fateful project. 

"If we didn't win that customer, I'm sure we would've gone bankrupt," Felix Van de Maele, cofounder and CEO of Collibra told Business Insider.

Since then, things have taken a turn for the better. Collibra, which competes with the likes of IBM and Informatica, announced on Tuesday that it raised $100 million in Series E funding in a round led by Alphabet's growth equity investment fund CapitalG. This puts the company's valuation just north of a billion dollars, making it Belgium's first "unicorn" startup with a valuation over $1 billion.

Van de Maele and his co-founders came up with the idea for Collibra while they were doing research at the University of Brussels. They were doing a project on semantic technology, the field for helping computers "understand" and report on the meaning of data. But the team quickly realized that there was a larger opportunity at hand.

"When you do research, you don't really solve the problem," Van de Maele said. "You write about it and make prototypes, but you don't get it in the hands of the people who have the problem. We felt it was an important problem to solve, so we started a company to solve it ourselves. We felt it had to be done."

Breaking out from Belgium

Right out of school, they launched Collibra in 2008 — bad timing, it turned out, with the global financial crisis about to hit. But the downturn ended up working in Collibra's favor: In the wake of the crisis, Collibra found brisk business in helping banks deal with new regulatory requirements. 

However, the Belgian tech scene lacks many of Silicon Valley's perks. Belgian schools don't really have a pipeline to tech companies the way American engineering programs do. And venture capital investors, plentiful in California, are few and far between in Belgium. 

"Starting a venture-backed startup wasn't something people really did," Van de Maele said. "In Belgium at the time, there's really no startup culture. Raising money was really difficult, and hiring people was really difficult. That was a struggle right from the start."

Collibra had to look internationally both for funding and new hires, while relying primarily on its own revenue to fund operations. The company opened an engineering office in Poland and eventually expanded to the U.S.

"We moved international very quickly," Van de Maele said. "Belgium is a smaller country, so, you understand, you need to go international really quickly."

Collibra raised a small seed round to kickstart the company, and then raised an Series A round from Newion Investments, an investment firm in the Netherlands. Although Van de Maele was only 23 at the time, the fact that the company came out of university research helped with its credibility, he says. 

What's more, the company had a hard time making investors understand what it did. But the market has shifted, and people started to realize the value of data and the value of managing that data, says Van De Maele.

"We do data governance, and people immediately have the impression that governance is all about control and bureaucracy," Van de Maele said. "It's much more than just control. It's about how do you use data to be successful?"

Into the future

Now with the funding, Collibra plans to continue investing in its product and focusing on data privacy and automation. Europe now has its sweeping GDPR rules, and Van de Maele expects to see more focus around data privacy in the U.S. as well.

Read more:What you need to know about GDPR, the new EU privacy rules that have Silicon Valley scrambling to keep up

"Today we're in a different time where data has become extremely important for any company," Van de Maele said. "So many people consume data, trust that data, and are allowed to actually use that data. That's what we're helping our customers with."

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un is 35 — here's how he became one of the world's scariest dictators

This is a preview of a research report from Business Insider Intelligence,  Business Insider's premium research service. To learn more about Business Insider Intelligence, click here.

In recent years, we've seen a ballooning of activity in fintech — an expansive term applied to technology-driven disruptions in financial services. And 2018 has been no different, with fintechs' staggering influence on the market evidenced by record funding levels for the industry — by Q3 2018, overall funding was already up 82% from 2017’s total figure, according to CB Insights.

Additionally, this year marked a watershed moment for the industry, with the once clear distinction between fintechs and financial services proper now blurred significantly. Virtually every incumbent financial institution (FI) is now looking inward and engaging in an innovation drive, spurred on by competition from fintechs. As such, incumbents are now actively investing in, acquiring, and collaborating with their fintech rivals.

In this report, Business Insider Intelligence details recent developments in fintech funding and regulation that are defining the environment these startups operate in. We also examine the business model changes being employed among different categories of fintechs as they strive to embed themselves further in mainstream finance and prove sustainability. Finally, we consider which elements of the fintech industry are rapidly rubbing off on incumbent financial services providers, and what the future of fintech will look like.

The companies mentioned in this report are: Funding Circle, GreenSky, Transferwise, Ant Financial, Nubank, Cellulant, Oscar Health, Stripe, One97, UiPath, LianLian Pay, Wacai.com, Gusto, Toast, PingPong, Flywire, Deposit Solutions, Root, Robinhood, Atom, N26, Revolut, OneConnect, PolicyBazaar, WeCash, Zurich, OneDegree, Dinghy, Vouch Insurance, Laka, Cleo, Ernit, Monzo, Moneybox, Bud, Tandem, Starling, Varo Money, Square, ING, Chase, AmEx, Amazon, Monese, Betterment, Tiller Investments, West Hill Capital, Square, Ameritrade, JPMorgan, eToro, Lendy, OnDeck, Ripple, Quorom, Chain, Coinbase, Fidelity, Samsung Pay, Google Pay, Apple Pay, Bank of America, TransferGo, Klarna, Western Union, Veriff, Royal Bank of Scotland, Royal Bank of Canada, Facebook, ThreatMetrix, Relx, Entersekt, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, Gemalto, Lloyd's of London, Kingdom Trust, Aviva, Symbility LINK, eTrade, Allianz, AXA, Broadridge, TD Bank, First Republic Bank, BBVA Compass, Capital One, Silicon Valley Bank, Credit Suisse, Ally, Goldman Sachs.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:

• Fintech funding has already reached new highs globally in 2018, with overall funding hitting $32.6 billion at the end of Q3.
• Some new regions, including South America and Africa, are emerging on the fintech scene.
• We've seen considerable scaling in older corners of the fintech ecosystem, including among neobanks and alt lenders.
• Some fintechs, including a number of insurtechs, have dipped into new markets to escape heightened competition.
• Emergent areas like blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT), as well as digital identity, are gaining traction.
• Many incumbents are undertaking business transformations that aim to reimagine everything from products and services to front-end systems and back-end processes.

 In full, the report:

• Details the funding and regulatory landscape in the US, Europe, and Asia.
• Gives an overview into a number of fintech segments and how they've changed over the past year.
• Discusses how incumbents are reacting to fintechs in order to stay relevant in the changing financial services sector.
• Evaluates what the future of fintech will look like and what trends to look out for in the coming year.
  

Subscribe to a Premium pass to Business Insider Intelligence and gain immediate access to:

	This report and more than 250 other expertly researched reports
	Access to all future reports and daily newsletters
	Forecasts of new and emerging technologies in your industry
	And more!

Learn More

Purchase & download the full report from our research store

SEE ALSO: How the largest US financial institutions rank on offering the mobile banking features customers value most

Join the conversation about this story »

• Accenture has retrained almost 300,000 employees over the past four years.
• It has developed a system for making new skills training immediately applicable.
• Its "Job Buddy" program assesses which roles will be automated, and which adjacent roles can be learned within the company.
• This article is part of Business Insider's ongoing series on Better Capitalism.

DAVOS, SWITZERLAND — A major point of conversation at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, this year concerned the future of work during a time of significant technological shifts in the developed world.

At Business Insider's panel, both labor leaders and executives agreed that for companies to thrive during the "Fourth Industrial Revolution" and not leave their employees behind, a focus on internal job-retraining programs would be essential.

Accenture's head of human resources, Ellyn Shook, told us in a separate interview in Davos that Accenture can be a case study for this. Over the past four years, the Dublin-based consulting firm has, Shook said, "reskilled" nearly 300,000 of their total body of 469,000 employees, investing about $1 billion annually in training.

"You need to inspire this work-learn, work-learn mindset," she said. "You're not going to go to school and practice what you learned in school for the rest of your career. That day is over."

Accenture is a large, global company providing a wide variety of professional services to its clients, and employees' roles change at a fast rate. It's been investing in reskilling for employee retention, which keeps it stable and allows it to offer more consistent service.

Read more:Labor leaders and executives agree that the traditional 4-year college degree isn't enough to survive the 'Fourth Industrial Revolution' that's happening right now

To make reskilling effective, Shook told us, training has to have an immediate payoff. If an employee receives training and cannot implement new skills for six months, neither the worker nor the company benefits. That's why, Accenture has been refining its "skills pipeline" to reduce this transition time.

And to have this work smoothly, Accenture developed "Job Buddy" software. "And what it does is it tells our people that look, this percentage of your job is likely to be lost to automation; your skills are adjacent to these skills, so go take this training," Shook said. After the pilot program went out 18 months ago, 85% of the employees it was made available to used it to assess their jobs and enroll in new training.

Shook shared an example of an employee from Charlotte, North Carolina, who used Accenture's reskilling pipeline to transition from her position as a mortgage processor to a technologist after the first client no longer needed that service. Over a year later, that employee is thriving, Shook said, and was recently recognized for excellent performance.

"I think the thing that organizations really have to start doing, quickly, is move from workforce planning to work planning and really understand what work is going to be done by machines and what work is going to be done by humans, and make sure that you are investing in your people, to understand how to work with the technology," Shook said. "And I think that's how you're going to future-proof your workforce."

SEE ALSO: IBM CEO Ginni Rometty said companies have to change the way they hire, or the skills gap will become a crisis

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: The founder of the World Economic Forum shares what he sees as the biggest threat to the global economy

• Apple won't provide unit sales for products such as the iPhone and the iPad to investors anymore.
• Analysts and investors had relied on those numbers as key metrics to judge Apple's growth.
• Instead, Apple is now disclosing how many iPhones are in use — 900 million, according to Tuesday's earnings call.

Tuesday's earnings report was the beginning of a new era for Apple.

Instead of providing investors and observers a simple number for the total amount of iPhones sold during a quarter — for example, 47 million at its previous earnings call — Apple now provides information for only the amount of revenue that it generated through sales of devices.

Apple has a new number that it would like investors to look at instead: 900 million.

That's the number of iPhones out there in use.

"We are disclosing that number now for the first time as it has surpassed 900 million devices, up year-over-year in each of our five geographic segments and growing almost 75 million in the last 12 months," Apple chief financial officer Luca Maestri said in a call with analysts on Tuesday.

Apple has previously provided the number of total active Apple devices in usage, which totaled 1.4 billion on Tuesday. But active iPhones are a more important statistic, given that while some people own multiple Apple devices, it's much less likely that people have two iPhones. So it gives investors a rough size of Apple's user base.

The disclosure also seemed to mollify investors, who were bracing for the worst after Apple's stock was halted earlier this month when it said it would miss its revenue target by at least $5 billion. Apple stock was up more than 5% in after-hours trading on Tuesday.

The number is also the key statistic that investors need to watch if they buy into Apple's services narrative. Apple is telling investors that it is undervalued when you consider how much money Apple can make from its existing customers by selling them products like Apple Music or iCloud subscriptions.

"Not only is our large and growing installed base a powerful testament to the satisfaction and loyalty of our customers but it's also fueling our fast growing services business," Apple CEO Tim Cook said on Tuesday.

It wasn't the only new data point that Apple revealed on Tuesday. The company had new statistics on the number of paid Apple Music subscribers (50 million) and the number of Apple News monthly readers (85 million.)

But those appeared to be one-off data points on Tuesday's call. For analysts and investors going forward, the number of active iPhones will be a key metric to watch, and it will be disappointing if Apple does not disclose them next quarter.

• Read more about Apple's changing business:
• iPhone sales crater 15% in Apple's worst holiday results in a decade, and the forecast looks just as grim
• 1 in 3 US iPhone users say they’re not upgrading because of price or features

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: China made an artificial star that's 6 times as hot as the sun, and it could be the future of energy

• Andy King was one of the event planners responsible for the Fyre Festival.
• In the Netflix documentary about the disastrous event, King says he came very close to performing oral sex on a Bahamian customs officer in order to get bottled water for the event.
• Netflix released a new video with King responding to his viral fame thanks to this tale.
• Since he's not on social media, the memes took him by surprise.
• "I just don't want to necessarily be known as The Blowjob King of the world," he says.

Andy King was one of the surprising viral stars of Netflix's documentary "FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened." As one of several professional event planners involved in the disastrous Fyre Festival, King says he was at one point asked to go perform oral sex on the Bahamian head of customs so that trucks of Evian water bottles would be granted passage into the site.

In a new Netflix video posted on Twitter, King responds to his viral fame thanks to this explicit anecdote.

"I just don't want to necessarily be known as The Blowjob King of the world," King says at first.

He goes on to explain that (because he doesn't use social media) he was surprised to hear he was "trending" in the week after the documentary aired on Netflix. When someone told him he had become a meme, King replied, "What's a ME ME?" before his pronunciation was corrected.

In the original documentary, King says he was asked by the festival's co-founder Billy McFarland to "take one big thing for the team" and to go "suck the d---" of the head of customs in the Bahamas.

Read more: 10 wild revelations about the epic Fyre Festival failure uncovered in Netflix's new documentary

"I literally drove home, took a shower, I drank some mouth wash, and I got into my car to drive across the island to take one for the team," King says. "I got to his office fully prepared to suck his d---."

But the situation did not come to that. King says customs officer told him the water would be released as long as they would be one of the first people paid the import fee by Fyre Media. The documentary doesn't make it clear if that payment ever happened.

In the new video from Netflix, King says he's appreciative of the attention because now he is using it to promote the GoFundMe pages set up so the local Bahamian people (who were left unpaid by the Fyre Festival creators) can get some money for their labor.

"FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened" is streaming now on Netflix.

• Read more:
• After $200,000 was raised for the Fyre Festival caterer who never got paid, a new GoFundMe is trying to repay the construction workers who were stiffed
• 5 of the key players in the Fyre Festival disaster
• Michael Cohen may soon be headed to the same 'cushy' prison holding Fyre Festival founder Billy McFarland and The Situation from 'Jersey Shore'
• Visit INSIDER's homepage for more.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: This tiny building in Wilmington, Delaware is home to 300,000 businesses

• Facebook has been caught paying people $20 a month to spy on their phones and data.
• Tech news website TechCrunch discovered the social network was asking some users to give them deep access to their phones and install virtual private networks in exchange for cash.
• Facebook has defended the program, but it raises questions about the social network's approach to user privacy, even in the wake of its string of scandals.

Another day, another round of uncomfortable questions for Facebook. 

The Silicon Valley social-networking giant has been paying teens and adults up to $20 a month to spy on their phones, their data, and the apps they use, according to a new report from TechCrunch — raising fresh concerns over the company's approach to user privacy.

The tech news website found that Facebook operates a program called "Project Titan," in which it recruits willing Apple iOS and Android users to give them root access to their devices, thereby allowing Facebook to view extensive data on participants' mobile activity.

The app, Facebook Research, appears to be largely similar to Facebook's controversial virtual-private-network app Onavo and shares much of the same code, according to security expert Will Strafach, who was asked by TechCrunch to investigate the program.

Apple previously banned Onavo outright from its App Store on the iPhone and the iPad over violations of its privacy policy. However, Facebook sidesteps this ban by offering Facebook Research directly to users, via a program that Apple offers to companies that want to offer custom apps to their own employees. 

As TechCrunch said, reoffering an app very similar to Onavo, and potentially misusing a program intended for Apple's enterprise customers to do it, may further strain relations between the two tech companies. The two have clashed in the past over their approaches to user privacy. 

An Apple spokesperson did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

A Facebook spokesperson told Business Insider that it has no plans to end Facebook Research as a result of the report. 

"Like many companies, we invite people to participate in research that helps us identify things we can be doing better. Since this research is aimed at helping Facebook understand how people use their mobile devices, we've provided extensive information about the type of data we collect and how they can participate. We don't share this information with others and people can stop participating at any time," the spokesperson said in a statement.

Facebook also disputed that the app is a copy-and-paste version of the banned Onavo app, something that appears to be contradicted by evidence shared by Strafach. 

Facebook's rationale for the program appears to be to learn more about the apps that people use, in a vein similar to how it has used data gleaned from Onavo to harvest valuable data about how people use their phones.  

But it also raises serious questions about how Facebook continues to approach and value sensitive user data, as the company attempts to recover from successive privacy scandals throughout 2018 and broader crises.

Facebook also disputed that the program is specifically targeted at teens — but at least some of the attempts to enlist users are specifically geared toward people between 13 and 17, and feature a "parental consent agreement" that is nothing but a tick box, according to TechCrunch.

Similarly, Facebook said it fully disclosed its involvement in the program. But BuzzFeed News reporter Ryan Mac tried signing up after the TechCrunch report was published, and he found very few disclosures to participants that Facebook was behind it. 

"This is the most defiant behavior I have EVER seen by an App Store developer. it's mind blowing,"Strafach tweeted. "I still don't know how to best articulate how absolutely floored I am by Facebook thinking they can get away with this."

Do you work at Facebook? Got a tip? Contact this reporter via Signal or WhatsApp at +1 (650) 636-6268 using a non-work phone, email at rprice@businessinsider.com, Telegram or WeChat at robaeprice, or Twitter DM at @robaeprice. (PR pitches by email only, please.) You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: All smartphones look the same today for 2 key reasons

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. That’s the strategy e-tailers will have to adopt if they want to compete with Amazon. To fight back against the e-commerce giant’s expanding dominance, other online retailers must understand exactly why and how customers are buying on Amazon — and which aspects of the Amazon shopping experience they can incorporate into their own strategic frameworks to win back customers.

Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider’s premium research service, has obtained exclusive survey data to give e-tailers the tools to figure out how to do just that with its latest Enterprise Edge Report: The Amazon Commerce Competitive Edge Report.

Enterprise Edge Reports are the very best research Business Insider Intelligence has to offer in terms of actionable recommendations and proprietary data, and they are only available to Enterprise clients.

Business Insider Intelligence fielded the Amazon study to members of its proprietary panel in March 2018, reaching over 1,000 US consumers – primarily hand-picked digital professionals and early-adopters – to gather their insights on Amazon’s role in the online shopping experience.

In full, the study:

• Uses exclusive survey data to analyze the factors behind Amazon’s success with consumers.
• Segments three types of Amazon customers that e-tailers should be targeting.
• Shares strategies on how e-tailers can attract shoppers at key moments.

First, why is Amazon so popular?

Amazon is ubiquitous. In fact, a whopping 94% of those surveyed said they’d made a purchase on the site in the last twelve months. And of those who did, the vast majority believed Amazon’s customer experience was simply better than its leading competitors’ — specifically eBay, Walmart, Best Buy, and Target.

The biggest contributor to Amazon’s superior experience? Free shipping, of course. According to Amazon’s 2017 annual report, the company actually spent $21.7 billion last year covering customers’ shipping costs, a number that’s been compounding over the past few years.

Not only is free shipping included for all Prime members as part of their subscriptions but, of all e-tailers listed in the survey, Amazon also offers the lowest minimum order value for non-subscription members to qualify for the perk (just $25). The pervasiveness of free (and fast) shipping is steadily heightening customer expectations for the online shopping experience — and forcing competitors to offer similar programs and benefits.

Who exactly is shopping on Amazon?

The survey results showed that across generations for a large minority of respondents, Amazon is a standard part of their typical shopping process. Nearly a third (32%) of respondents said they begin their online shopping process on Amazon. Of those who do start their journeys elsewhere, 100% ended up purchasing something from Amazon at some point over the last 12 months.

Based on the trends in responses, Business Insider Intelligence segmented out three different types of Amazon shoppers, each with unique implications for how competitors could evolve their strategies:

• Amazon loyalists: This group of consumers is most committed to shopping on Amazon. E-tailers must understand what has made Amazon their default experience — and how they could be pried away.
• Comparison shoppers: This consumer segment looks at other sites before ultimately completing a purchase with Amazon, which could allow e-tailers to find success at the bottom of the purchase funnel. E-tailers should focus on what they can do more of to steal sales away at the end of the purchasing process.
• Open-search shoppers: These consumers start their online product search away from Amazon, often with specific reasons including what they’re looking for and why they’re not looking on Amazon. Other e-tailers have the opportunity to attract these shoppers from the beginning of the purchase funnel — keeping them from ever venturing to Amazon.

Want to learn more?

Business Insider Intelligence has compiled the complete survey findings into the four-part Amazon Commerce Competitive Edge Report, which dives deeper into each of these consumer segments to give e-tailers an intricate understanding of Amazon’s role in their purchasing processes.

The report presents actionable strategies for retail strategists and executives to zero in on three individual consumer segments at critical shopping moments, and empower them to win sales in an Amazon-dominated world.

Join the conversation about this story »

• Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said he is not running for president in the 2020 election. 
• "This is not an easy decision given the extraordinary times that we live in," Garcetti, the youngest mayor in LA history, said on Tuesday.
• The Rhodes scholar has been the mayor of LA, the second-largest city in America, since 2013. 

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said he is not running for president in the 2020 election.

"This is not an easy decision given the extraordinary times that we live in," Garcetti, the youngest mayor in LA history, said on Tuesday.

He made the announcement from Los Angeles City Hall, squashing rumors that have circulated for several months after he began traveling to key primary states and raising money for the Democratic Party.

"Over the last year, I have traveled across America and witnessed an America awakening in small towns and big cities across our nation," Garcetti said. "I've seen cities and local leaders reinventing American manufacturing, cutting opioid deaths in half, and bringing 100% renewable energy to their towns. I saw a vision of a brighter future and a better day."

"What I saw is such a contrast to what we see coming out of Washington every day. Reflecting on my travels and recognizing the incredible opportunity I have every day as an American mayor, I realized that this is what I am meant to do. This is where I want to be," Garcetti said. "I am so excited to finish the work that we have begun here in Los Angeles."

Garcetti, 47, was born in LA and raised in Encino, California. He is LA's first Jewish mayor, its second consecutive Mexican-American mayor, and the youngest person in LA history to hold that office. He received a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia University in 1992 and a master's degree in international affairs in 1993.

He met his wife, Amy Wakeland, at Oxford University when they were both Rhodes scholars. Garcetti also holds a Ph.D. in ethnicity and nationalism from the London School of Economics. He has one daughter with Wakeland.

Garcetti has previously said a presidential run would not distract him from his responsibilities as mayor, telling the Los Angeles Times, "One thing doesn’t affect the other."

Since then, the 2020 Democratic field has grown exponentially, and another California politician, Sen. Kamala Harris, has dominated the 2020 spotlight in the days since she announced her candidacy.

Read more:Here's everyone who has officially announced they're running for president in 2020

Garcetti made headlines in 2014 for announcing that the Los Angeles Police Department would no longer detain undocumented people with no judicial review.

That same year, Garcetti, along with Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and Houston Mayor Annise Parker, cofounded the Mayors National Climate Action Agenda, which seeks to uphold the emissions goals of the Paris  climate agreement and opposes the Trump administration's efforts to withdraw from the pact.  

As the mayor of LA, Garcetti hasn't held back from criticizing Trump and his administration. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Garcetti called Trump the "ultimate caricature," saying he is racist, bigoted, and sexist during a conference call with reporters.

SEE ALSO: Here's everyone who has officially announced they're running for president in 2020

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: MSNBC host Chris Hayes thinks President Trump's stance on China is 'not at all crazy'

This is a preview of a research report from Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service. To learn more about Business Insider Intelligence, click here.

Of the many technologies reshaping the world economy, distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) are among the most hyped. DLTs are most often associated with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, but such coverage sidelines the broader use cases of DLTs, even though they stand to make a far bigger impact on the broader the financial services (FS) industry.

DLT's value lies in its ability to centralize record-keeping, while cutting out the need for authorization by an overseeing party, instead allowing a record to be confirmed by multiple parties with access to the database. This means DLTs have the potential to streamline financial institutions' (FIs) operations, boost data security, improve customer relationships, and drastically cut costs. But many FIs have struggled to implement DLTs and reap the rewards, because of organizational obstacles, but also because of issues rooted in the technology itself. There are a few players working to make the technology more usable for FIs, and progress is now being made.

In a new report, Business Insider Intelligence takes a look at what DLTs are and why they hold so much promise for FS, the sectors in which DLTs are gaining the most traction and why, and the efforts underway to remove the obstacles preventing wider DLT adoption in finance. It also examines the few FIs close to unleashing their DLT projects, and how DLTs might transform the nature of FS if adoption truly takes off. 

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:

• DLTs are proving attractive to FIs because of their ability to act as a single source of truth, distribute information securely, cut out middlemen, improve transaction times, and cut redundancy and costs.
• DLTs like blockchain and smart contracts stand to save the FS industry up to $50 billion a year through improved operational efficiencies, reduced human error, and better regulatory compliance. 
• The technology is being explored actively across FS, with trade finance, insurance, and capital markets proving especially active. Overall adoption is still low because of organizational and technical hurdles, but these are now being eliminated, promising to boost implementation.
• A few FIs have pulled ahead of the curve and are very close to taking their DLT projects live, if they haven't already. These players can serve as useful case studies for other institutions in getting their DLT solutions live.

In full, the report:

• Looks at what DLTs are, and why the FS industry is working hard to make use of them. 
• Gives an overview of the financial segments which are seeing the most DLT activity, and what they stand to gain.
• Outlines efforts being made to make DLT more approachable and usable for the FS industry.
• Examines use cases in which FIs have managed to take their pilots live, and what they can teach their peers. 

Subscribe to an All-Access pass to Business Insider Intelligence and gain immediate access to:

	This report and more than 250 other expertly researched reports
	Access to all future reports and daily newsletters
	Forecasts of new and emerging technologies in your industry
	And more!

Learn More

Purchase & download the full report from our research store

Join the conversation about this story »

• Staffers for Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii reportedly did not know she was announcing her candidacy for the 2020 US Presidential election during a CNN interview, according to a Politico report.
• During the Thanksgiving weekend, Gabbard's team reportedly began campaign preparations as speculation over her candidacy reached a fever pitch.
• Gabbard ultimately pulled the plug on the decision, Politico reported, only to revisit the idea again after several weeks. This trend reportedly continued throughout the holiday season.

Staffers for Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii reportedly did not know she was announcing her candidacy for the 2020 US Presidential election during an interview roughly three weeks ago, a decision she allegedly vacillated on for weeks, according to a Politico report Tuesday.

During the Thanksgiving weekend, Gabbard's team began campaign preparations as speculation over her candidacy reached a fever pitch. Gabbard ultimately backed down on making a decision, Politico reported, only to revisit the idea again after several weeks.

This trend reportedly continued throughout the holiday season.

When Gabbard made her formal announcement during a CNN interview that aired on January 12, her staffers were reportedly caught off guard. Preparations for a full rollout were not yet made, including the campaign website and social media posts.

Gabbard's campaign manager along with a consulting firm are scheduled to leave after this weekend, according to Politico's sources. A spokesperson reportedly said campaign manager Rania Batrice remained a "long-time advisor and friend," and said that the consulting firm was just contracted for the initial stages of the campaign.

Gabbard, an Iraq War veteran and rising star in Congress, faces mounting criticism as she re-enters the political spotlight.

Following her campaign announcement — and amid President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw troops from Syria — Gabbard was widely criticized for meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2017. Gabbard is accused of downplaying the Syrian regime's role in chemical attacks that have killed scores of civilians, despite the Trump administration saying it had "very high confidence" that Syria was responsible.

The congresswoman's controversial stance towards the LGBT community was also recently unearthed, forcing her to release an apology through a roughly four-minute video.

"In my past, I said and believed things that were wrong, and worse, hurtful to people in the LGBTQ+ community and their loved ones," Gabbard said in a comment on her video."I'm deeply sorry for having said and believed them."

Gabbard's campaign did not respond to INSIDER's request for comment Tuesday afternoon.

SEE ALSO: Congress should 'look at the autopsy photographs of those babies': Kamala Harris evokes Sandy Hook shooting in remarks about gun-law reform

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: MSNBC host Chris Hayes thinks President Trump's stance on China is 'not at all crazy'

• Apple offered new details on its business with its earnings report Tuesday.
• New figures showed just how profitable its services business is.
• The company now has 1.4 billion total active users of its devices, up 100 million last year.

Apple may have pre-announced its revenue shortfall in early January, but the company offered plenty of important updates and details about the state of its business, and of the broader economy, during its official earnings call on Tuesday. 

From the state of consumer demand in China to the growth in streaming media, Apple's business stretches across a wide swath of industries and markets. And Apple CEO Tim Cook shared important insight on many of these topics during the conference call with analysts. 

How investors and analysts perceive those new items will likely be affected by their stance on the company going into the report; there were bits to feed both bulls and bears.

Here are the most important things we learned from the call:

SEE ALSO: Here's why Apple's iPhone sales won't get better anytime soon

Apple is really struggling in China.

We already knew that Apple was having a tough time in China — Tim Cook attributed the company's problems largely to that country in his letter to investors earlier this month — we just didn't know the extent of it.

Apple's sales in the Greater China region plunged in its first quarter by $4.8 billion, or 36%, from the same period a year earlier to $13.2 billion.

Cook had already said that Apple saw declines in sales of each of its three major product lines — iPhones, Macs and iPads — in the country.

On the bright side, Cook said that Apple's wearables products revenue increased 50% in China during the quarter. And, he said, Apple was growing its customer base in China: "More than two-thirds of all customers in China who bought a Mac or an iPad during the December quater were purchasing that product for the first time."

Apple's struggles in China extended to its services business.

Apple has pinned its hopes for the future on its services business, which includes things such as its commission on sales through its app store and revenue it gets from selling subscriptions to offerings such as iCloud.

Its app store sales revenue constitutes a large portion of its services sales, and a big portion of its app store revenue comes from the sale of games in China.

Unfortunately for Apple, Chinese authorities stopped approving new games last spring and that depressed app store sales and, in turn, Apple service's revenue.

"We believe this issue around the approval of new game titles is temporary in nature but clearly affecting our business right now," CFO Luca Maestri said during the call. 

In the first quarter Apple's services revenue grew at a 19% annual clip, at the low end of the growth its posted in recent quarters.

China isn't the company's only problem country.

On the conference call, Cook said the company is broadly having trouble in emerging market countries where the dollar has appreciated against the local currencies, making iPhones even more expensive than they would be otherwise.

In particular, Cook singled out Turkey, where the lira was down by 33% versus the dollar in the December quarter from the previous year. Apple's sales there plunged by nearly $700 million in the period from the year-earlier quarter, he said. 

But Apple also is struggling in some developed countries. In Japan, it's been hit by the decline of carrier subsidies, which helped to defray the upfront cost of phones, Cook said. Apple's overall sales in the country fell 5% from the year-ago period to $6.9 billion.

This is a preview of a research report from Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service. To learn more about Business Insider Intelligence, click here. Current subscribers can read the report here.

Outside of the US Postal Service (USPS), FedEx and UPS have dominated the domestic logistics industry — and in particular, the last-mile of the delivery — for decades. On a quarterly earnings call in 2016, FedEx estimated that itself, UPS, and USPS executed a whopping 95% of all e-commerce orders.

But rapidly rising volumes have put the pair of legacy shippers in a bind. E-commerce sales have risen over 50% and are projected to continue their ascent into the next decade. High volumes are already straining shippers' networks — UPS struggled to bring consumers their parcels on time due to higher-than-anticipated package volume, which upset some big-name retail partners, including Macy's, Walmart, and Amazon. As online sales surge further, package volumes will outstrip legacy shippers' capacities, creating space for new entrants. 

Amazon is uniquely well-positioned to dethrone UPS and FedEx's duopoly. It's built up a strong logistics infrastructure, counting hundreds of warehouses and thousands of delivery trucks.

Further, as the leading online retailer in the US, it has a wealth of data on consumers that it can use to craft a personalized delivery experience that's superior to UPS and FedEx's offerings. Amazon must act soon, however, as UPS and FedEx are hard at work fortifying their own networks to handle the expected surge in parcel volume.

The longer the Seattle-based e-tailer delays the launch of a delivery service, the more it runs the risk that these legacy players will be able to defend their territory. 

In a new report, Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, explains how the age of e-commerce is opening up cracks in UPS and FedEx's duopoly. We then outline how Amazon's logistics ambitions began as an effort to more quickly get parcels out the door and fulfill its famous 2-day shipping process and how it'll be a key building block for the company if it builds out a last-mile service. Lastly, we offer concrete steps that the firm must take to maximize the dent it makes in UPS and FedEx's duopoly.

The companies mentioned in this report are: Alibaba, Amazon, FedEx, and UPS.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:

• While UPS and FedEx have dominated the US last-mile delivery market for the last few decades, the surge in e-commerce is creating more volume than shipping companies can handle.
• Amazon is uniquely well-positioned to put a dent in UPS and FedEx's duopoly due to its strategic position as the leading online retailer in the US.
• Amazon can carry its trust amongst the public, a wealth of consumer data, and its ability to craft a more personalized delivery experience to the last-mile delivery space to ultimately dethrone UPS and FedEx.
• The top priority for Amazon in taking on UPS and FedEx needs to be offering substantially lower shipping rates — one-third of US retailers say they'll switch to an Amazon shipping service if it's at least 20% cheaper than UPS and FedEx. 

In full, the report:

• Outlines Amazon's current shipping and logistics footprint and strengths that it would bring to the last-mile delivery space in the US.
• Lays out concrete steps that Amazon must take if it wants to launch a standalone last-mile delivery service, including how it can offer a more memorable, higher-quality delivery experience than UPS and FedEx.
• Illustrates how Amazon can minimize operating costs for a delivery service to ultimately undercut UPS and FedEx's shipping rates in the last-mile space.

SEE ALSO: Amazon and Walmart are building out delivery capabilities

Join the conversation about this story »

• "Empire" cast member Jussie Smollett was reportedly beaten by two men in Chicago early Tuesday morning.
• According to a statement from Chicago Police, the department was investigating a "possible racially charged assault and battery" involving an "Empire" cast member. 
• TMZ reported that the two white men in ski masks yelled homophobic and racial slurs before assaulting Smollett and wrapping a rope around his neck.

• Police said the attack was being investigated as a possible hate crime. 

"Empire" cast member Jussie Smollett was reportedly beaten by two men in Chicago, police said Tuesday morning.

Chicago Police said in a statement that the department was investigating a "possible racially charged assault and battery" involving an "Empire" cast member, but didn't name Smollett. 

According to TMZ, Smollett arrived in Chicago late Monday and went to a Subway for something to eat early on Tuesday morning. As he was leaving the restaurant, two men approached him and one yelled, "Aren't you that f----- Empire n-----?," sources connected to Smollett told TMZ.

The source reportedly told TMZ that the two men were white and wearing ski masks, and after pouring bleach on Smollett, one of them yelled, "This is MAGA country." 

The offenders also wrapped a rope around the victim's neck, according to police.

Police said the victim had been transported to Northwestern hospital and was in "good condition" Tuesday. 

Smollett received another threat as recently as January, ABC News reported on Tuesday night. According to the report, a letter sent to a Fox studio in Chicago "contained threatening language and was laced with a powdery substance." That substance was believed to be Tylenol, according to investigators cited by ABC News.

Phone calls and emails from INSIDER to the FBI's Chicago field office were not immediately returned Tuesday night.

Smollett plays Jamal Lyon on the hit Fox show. "Empire" producer 20th Century Fox and Fox Entertainment released a statement saying they are "deeply saddened and outraged" by the attack on Smollett.

Representatives for Smollett didn't immediately respond to INSIDER's request for comment.

This article was updated to include 20th Century Fox and Fox's statement.

Read more: 

Netflix has kindly asked its viewers to stop obsessing over the 'hotness' of serial killer Ted Bundy

A high school student in Arkansas started a website to share teens' dress code discrimination stories

Angry, racist comments about Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton are so bad that Kensington Palace and Instagram have stepped in

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: We compared Apple's $159 AirPods to Xiaomi's $30 AirDots and the winner was clear

• History books are filled with stories about impactful men of color like Malcolm X, Fredrick Douglas, and Martin Luther King Jr.
• There are many black women who have made significant contributions as well, but their stories are often not taught in schools.
• Bessie Coleman was the first African-American woman to get her pilot's license.
• Althea Gibson broke barriers in tennis.

When you think about important figures in black history, names like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Frederick Douglass likely come to mind. But there's no denying that black women have played a powerful and important role in history, though you may not hear their stories as often. Black women have been breaking down barriers and shattering stereotypes in the fields of education, sports, politics, and more for generations.

Below, we've listed some black women from history that you may not have learned about in school, but should know more about. 

Bessie Coleman was the first African-American woman to hold a pilot's license.

Born in 1892, Bessie Coleman always knew she wanted to fly. Although she was rejected by aviation schools in the United States, Coleman never gave up on her dream to become a pilot.

She learned French and was accepted at a flight school in France. In 1921, Coleman graduated from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale and secured her place in history as the first African-American woman to receive a pilot's license, though some have reported she was the first African-American person period to receive such a license.

She was also the first Native-American woman to do so. (Her father, George Coleman, was Native American and black.)

When she returned to the United States, she used her knowledge to become a stunt pilot and perform at air shows. In 1922, Coleman became the first African-American woman to make a public flight. Coleman entertained audiences with her aerial stunts until her death in 1926, from an accident during a rehearsal for an aerial show.

Wilma Rudolph ran off with three gold medals at the 1960 Olympics.

Born into a family of 22 children and having polio and scarlet fever as a child, Wilma Rudolph later became a world-class athlete.

Rudolph made history at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, as the first American woman to win three track-and-field gold medals in a single Olympic games. Rudolph earned her medals in the 100m, 200m, and 4X100m relay events.

She went on to become a spokesperson for a baking company and a movie studio. She was inducted into the US Olympic Hall of Fame in 1983.

Shirley Chisholm made political history as the first black woman elected to the US Congress.

Educator and civil rights advocate, Shirley Chisholm dedicated her life to helping the people in her community. In 1968, Chisholm was elected to represent her Brooklyn district in the United States House of Representatives, becoming the first black woman to serve in US Congress. Chisholm served seven terms in the House, where she was a dedicated advocate for education and employment opportunities for people of color.

In 1972, Chisholm sought the Democratic nomination for president and became the first black woman to seek a major political party's nomination in a presidential campaign. She ultimately lost the democratic nomination to Sen. George McGovern who then lost the presidency to President Richard Nixon. 

But her impact is still being felt in 2019. When Sen. Kamala Harris announced her run for president earlier this year, many took note that her logo and campaign materials seemed to pay tribute to Chisolm's. 

• Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, is not running for president a third time in the 2020 election, according to John Podesta, her former campaign chairman.
• "She says she's not running for president," Podesta said during a CNN interview on Tuesday night.
• Podesta said he wished Clinton was president, but conceded that the 2020 field was already shaping up to be a "spirited one" with "a lot of great candidates."
• Secretary Clinton previously met with Democratic presidential hopefuls, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Cory Booker of New Jersey.

Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, is not running for president a third time in the 2020 election, according to John Podesta, her former campaign chairman.

"She says she's not running for president," Podesta during during a CNN interview on Tuesday afternoon.

"I take her at her word," he added. "She's not running for president."

Podesta said Clinton has been busy doing humanitarian work in Puerto Rico where Hurricane Maria ravaged the island in 2017.

Podesta also said he wished "she was president," but added there were already "a lot of great candidates out there."

So far, five congresswomen have shown interest in the presidency as the Democratic Party's nominee, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, and Kamala Harris of California; and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii.

Read more:A former top aide to Hillary Clinton says there's a 'not zero' chance she'll challenge Trump in 2020

Clinton scheduled meetings with presidential hopefuls, according to an Axios report earlier in January. She reportedly met with Harris, Warren, and Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, in addition to Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.

On Tuesday afternoon, Garcetti announced he would not be running for president in 2020. Warren has formed an exploratory committee while Harris launched a formal campaign.

Despite winning the popular vote in the 2016 presidential race, Clinton — the first female presidential candidate to receive a major political party's nomination — lost to Donald Trump. Her campaign was plagued with scandals stemming from email and data leaks, and heated attacks from Trump.

That detail was not lost on Podesta, who reminded CNN viewers on Tuesday that Clinton "got three million more votes than Donald Trump did."

In October 2018, Philippe Reines, Clinton's former senior adviser and deputy secretary of state for strategic communications, told Politico that Clinton shouldn't be counted out of 2020 just because she lost in 2016.

Clinton, 71, served as a senator for New York, secretary of state, and first lady during President Bill Clinton's two terms in office from 1993 to 2001.

SEE ALSO: A former top aide to Hillary Clinton says there's a 'not zero' chance she'll challenge Trump in 2020

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: MSNBC host Chris Hayes thinks President Trump's stance on China is 'not at all crazy'

Tech-driven disruption in the insurance industry continues at pace, and we're now entering a new phase — the adaptation of underlying business models. 

That's leading to ongoing changes in the distribution segment of the industry, but more excitingly, we are starting to see movement in the fundamentals of insurance — policy creation, underwriting, and claims management. 

This report from Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, will briefly review major changes in the insurtech segment over the past year. It will then examine how startups and legacy players across the insurance value chain are using technology to develop new business models that cut costs or boost revenue, and, in some cases, both. Additionally, we will provide our take on the future of insurance as insurtech continues to proliferate. 

Here are some of the key takeaways:

• Funding is flowing into startups and helping them scale, while legacy players have moved beyond initial experiments and are starting to implement new technology throughout their businesses. 
• Distribution, the area of the insurance value chain that was first to be disrupted, continues to evolve. 
• The fundamentals of insurance — policy creation, underwriting, and claims management — are starting to experience true disruption, while innovation in reinsurance has also continued at pace.
• Insurtechs are using new business models that are enabled by a variety of technologies. In particular, they're using automation, data analytics, connected devices, and machine learning to build holistic policies for consumers that can be switched on and off on-demand.
• Legacy insurers, as opposed to brokers, now have the most to lose — but those that move swiftly still have time to ensure they stay in the game.

 In full, the report:

• Reviews major changes in the insurtech segment over the past year.
• Examines how startups and legacy players across distribution, insurance, and reinsurance are using technology to develop new business models.
• Provides our view on what the future of the insurance industry looks like, which Business Insider Intelligence calls Insurtech 2.0.

Subscribe to an All-Access pass to Business Insider Intelligence and gain immediate access to:

	This report and more than 250 other expertly researched reports
	Access to all future reports and daily newsletters
	Forecasts of new and emerging technologies in your industry
	And more!

Learn More

Purchase & download the full report from our research store

Join the conversation about this story »