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Tag: facebook

  • Facebook launches new shopping format

    Facebook launches new shopping format

    Global brands Adidas and Tommy Hilfiger are among the first names to use Facebook’s newly launched shopping ad format, which incorporates creative media into product pages when selling.

    The social media giant said the new platform, dubbed ‘collection’, increases the “likelihood of discovery and a purchase” by featuring a primary creative video or image above relevant product images.

    Global sports brand, Adidas, said it used the platform to drive sales for its a new garment and complementary products, and saw a 5.3x return on ad spend

    “We used collection to showcase a video highlighting the technical features of the Z.N.E. Road Trip Hoodie,” said Rebecca Watts, performance marketing senior specialist, Adidas.

    “People who tapped on the ad were instantly taken to a full-screen shopping experience that included complementary Adidas products to complete the look.

    Meanwhile, American fashion brand, Tommy Hilfiger, said the platform creates a consumer experience that reflects how current generations of digital natives interact with their favorite brands. The fashion brand said it used the platform to for a marketing campaign targeting smartphones and saw a 2.2x higher return on ad spend.

    “Our mission was to democratise the runway and make every look immediately available to all consumers worldwide,” said Avery Baker, chief brand officer, Tommy Hilfiger.

    “We took our video assets to the next level, through integrating shopping functionality. The results exceeded expectations, generating an ROI increase of over 200 per cent.”

    Facebook said the platform was spurred by research that showed three in four consumers say that watching videos on social media influences their purchasing decisions and that 45 per cent of all shopping journeys now contain a mobile action,

    The US corp also said it will start a test of a new outbound clicks metric over the coming weeks, which will show the number of clicks leading people off of Facebook. Marketers with ads that appear on Instagram will also see outbound clicks reported.

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  • Nokia, Facebook set transatlantic efficiency record

    Nokia, Facebook set transatlantic efficiency record

    Nokia and Facebook have announced they have set a new spectral efficiency record over a transatlantic subsea cable using Nokia Bell Labs’ new probabilistic constellation shaping technology (PCS).

    During the trial involving a 5,500km subsea cable between New York and Ireland, shaped 64 quadrature amplitude modulation (64-QAM) was used to achieve record spectral efficiency of 7.46 b/s/Hz.

    PCS uses shaped QAM formats to flexibly adjust transmission capacity to near the physical limits of a fiber link.

    The results showed an increase of nearly 2.5 times more capacity than the stated limit of the system, indicating the potential to upgrade the cable to 32 Tbps per fiber.

    Transmission tests validated the successful transmission of 8-QAM wavelengths running at 200 Gbps and 16-QAM wavelengths running at 250 Gbps, a first for a transatlantic transmission.

    “Facebook wants to increase the pace of innovation and adoption of next-generation optical technologies,” Facebook global optical network architect Dr Stephen Grubb said.

    “This field trial with Nokia demonstrates that the scalable optical technology of PCS together with narrow linewidth laser sources can achieve capacities extremely close to the Shannon limit. This ensures that we are both maximizing our investment in submarine cable systems, as well as continuing to drive the cost per bit of submarine transport lower.”

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  • Ho Chi Minh City seeks to tax sales on Facebook

    Ho Chi Minh City seeks to tax sales on Facebook

    The Ho Chi Minh City government should work with Facebook on how to collect tax from businesses running on the social media site, officials said.

    The city currently hosts a dynamic e-commerce scene with more than 80,000 websites, half of which have stable business, but tax collection from the segment is low, said Pham Thanh Kien, head of the city’s trade department.

    “In particular tax collection has not been done from sales via Facebook,” Kien said at a meeting with the city’s tax authority. “(We) propose the People’s Committee work with Facebook on a mechanism to control tax collection.”

    Ho Chi Minh City, where the most active e-commerce in Vietnam takes place, should find out measures to prevent losses in tax revenues, Deputy Finance Minister Vu Thi Mai told tax officials at the meeting on Sunday.

    Just a quarter of Vietnam’s non-state businesses have declared value-added tax, Mai was quoted by the Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper as saying at the meeting.

    A majority of online businesses using social networking sites such as Facebook do not issue invoices, which has prevented the authority from collecting tax.

    Vietnam’s e-commerce market, which has one of the world’s fastest growth rates, jumped 37 percent in 2015 to around $4 billion, based on government statistics.

    The growth rate is about 2.5 times faster than that in Japan, according to Tran Duc Tam, an industry expert.

    The government has projected revenue by Vietnam’s online retail to hit $10 billion by 2020, accounting for 5 percent of the country’s retail market. Last year retail sales rose 10.2 percent from 2015 to $118 billion, based on government data.

    The online tax tightening plan has received mixed responses.

    “Facebook is just a channel to advertise products and communicate with customers. With no electronic invoicing, how to tax them?” a reader’s comment.

    Others raised concerns that many online retailers use anonymous accounts for transactions, while some others could be one-time or small-time sellers with insignificant revenues, making it hard for tax authorities to regulate activities.

    Online marketplaces such as Facebook have made it easy for small businesses and start-ups to set up business due mainly to the convenience they provide and the opportunity to connect with customers, Tuan Anh Pham wrote in another comment. He suggested market regulators take a cautious approach when it comes to requiring online retailers to pay taxes.

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  • Indonesia urges Facebook to open local office

    Indonesia urges Facebook to open local office

    The Communications and Information Ministry has urged Facebook to open a proper local office to enable it to adequately tackle complaints about fake news and negative content that spreads through the social media platform.

    Minister Rudiantara conveyed the request during a meeting with the Asia Pacific-based delegation led by Facebook’s head of global policy management, Monika Bickert, on Tuesday, saying that the existence of an official office in Indonesia would enable the firm to better respond to content complaints and improve communication with the government.

    Facebook, which has up to 96 million users in Indonesia, runs a small local representative office, while its regional office is located in Singapore.

    “The minister Rudiantara asked Facebook to step up its service agreement in Indonesia and suggested that a good way to ensure better quality service was to open up an official office here,” said the ministry’s director general for applied informatics, Semuel Abrijani Pangerapan.

    “This way, it will be able to familiarize itself with the Indonesian perspective and cultural context.”

    The Facebook logo is displayed on an iPad in Philadelphia. Facebook is taking new measures to curb the spread of fake news on its huge and influential social network, focusing on the “worst of the worst” offenders and partnering with outside fact-checkers to sort honest news reports from made-up stories that play to people’s passions and preconceived notions.(AP/Matt Rourke)

    Semuel added that while Facebook would be responsible for content management, the legal process in relation to the content itself would be carried out by the police and relevant institutions.

    Posts promoting terrorism, for example, will require consultation and assessment by the National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT).

    Both the public and the ministry’s monitoring team are able to flag inappropriate content.

    Fake news, including those related to the racially charged Jakarta gubernatorial election, and overall air of discrimination exhibited by members of the public online, has been plaguing the Indonesian internet recently.

    In the past few months, the government has stepped up its battle against the distribution of false information. The police is committed to prosecuting any party behind the spread of the “cancer of democracy.”

    To address the fake news and negative content issues, the ministry is set to hold a meeting with Twitter on Feb. 20.

    The ministry’s spokesperson, Noor Iza, noted the importance of setting up an official local office, comparing how Twitter, which also has a sizeable number of users in Indonesia, and Facebook manage problems.

    “Twitter’s responses toward the complaints and the negative content management are a lot quicker than Facebook because they have an official office here. Therefore, it has an established understanding on what impacts the country negatively,” she said.

    The government views that the take down response time for hoax news is ideally less than 24 hours, but the quicker, the better.

    From late 2016 to the beginning of 2017, the ministry has received 1,572 complaints in relation to the negative content on social media, including hoax news on Facebook and Instagram, with 197 occurring in the first two months of this year.

    The ministry said it was only able to respond to around 60 percent of all complaints in that period.

    Complaints about Twitter’s content in the same period reached 3,252, with those related to pornography topping the list.

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  • Hugo Barra leaves Xiaomi to join Facebook

    Hugo Barra leaves Xiaomi to join Facebook

    Hugo Barra, the international head at Xiaomi, is returning to Silicon Valley to head Facebook’s VR efforts, after spending three and half years in Beijing leading the Chinese smartphone maker’s global division.

    The announcement was made by Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg via his Facebook page last Wednesday.

    “I’m excited that Hugo Barra is joining Facebook to lead all of our virtual reality efforts, including our Oculus team,” Zuckerberg said in an announcement made in virtual reality.

    Barra will spearhead virtual reality efforts as Facebook’s VP of virtual reality. His relationship with Zuckerberg goes back years to when he broke ground on the Android operating system.

    More recently he worked at Xiaomi’s Beijing office as VP of International, serving as the face of the company and taking active part in product launches. Barra joined Xiaomi in 2013 from Google, where he worked as head of product management for Android, to oversee the company’s international expansion.

    Barra’s appointment comes over a month and a half after former Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe stepped down from his position in order to assume a leadership position within the company’s VR group.

    Telstra’s Cynthia Whelan to chair Foxtel

    Telstra has appointed group executive of new businesses Cynthia Whelan as the new chairman of Foxtel, the Australian incumbent’s 50/50 pay-TV joint venture with News Corporation.

    Whelan replaces Robert Nason, who retired from Telstra in 2015 and has been Foxtel chairman since June 2012. She has been a member of the Foxtel board since September last year.

    “Cynthia Whelan is an ideal chairman for Foxtel and will provide suitable leadership for the organization as it navigates a period of intense competition and technological evolution. She has significant experience in Australia and overseas in senior management and director roles,” Telstra CEO Andrew Penn said.

    Telstra’s partnership with News Corp over Foxtel allows Telstra to appoint the pay-TV firm’s chairman, while News Corp has the management control.

    Whelan will assume her new role on February 17. Telstra CFO Warwick Bray is also on the Foxtel board and the company will soon appointed a third director to replace Nason, the telco said in a statement.

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  • Equinix deploys Facebook-designed optical switches

    Equinix deploys Facebook-designed optical switches

    Equinix is collaborating with Facebook and the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) to deploy and test Voyager, the Facebook-designed packet optical switches, inside two of its IBX data centers.

    As part of the TIP “Open Optical Packet Transport” project group, Equinix is working closely with Facebook to field-test this next-generation packet optical networking technology.

    Voyager is the first step in Facebook and Equinix’s goal of developing the next-generation network ecosystem for hardware and software.

    Equinix said it will continue to work with Facebook and other vendors to include TIP-based hardware and software in their architectures as they deploy inside Equinix and develop the TIP ecosystem.

    By working as part of TIP, Equinix is helping to define the deployment, operational and support models for the new disaggregated and virtual networking infrastructure.

    Initial testing of the Voyager open packet-optical switch took place in Equinix’s SV3 and SV8 IBX data centers in Silicon Valley. Voyager is a combination of compute, switch, router and DWDM transport technologies. Preliminary results showed zero packet loss and significant overall cost savings due to this disaggregated hardware and software networking model.

    “This emerging world of disaggregated optical networking will need a physical aggregation point where all the hardware and software can come together,” Equinix CTO Ihab Tarazi said.

    Facebook director of engineering Hans-Juergen Schmidtkeat added that the Voyager ecosystem will serve as a first ever white box for switching, routing and DWDM in the wide area networks to exemplify a new way of open collaboration and innovation and has been contributed to the TIP community.

  • Facebook Is Next on Indonesia Tax List as Google Deal Nears

    Facebook Is Next on Indonesia Tax List as Google Deal Nears

    Indonesia is eyeing Facebook as its next target in a government tax crackdown as it nears a settlement with Google Inc. Facebook, which counts more than 88 million Indonesians among its users, owes about 2 trillion rupiah ($148 million) to 3 trillion rupiah in unpaid taxes and penalties, Muhammad Haniv, head of the special taxpayers office at the Finance Ministry’s Tax Directorate-General, said on Wednesday in Jakarta. The office has sent a letter to the company in Ireland, calling for a meeting to discuss the issue and seek information on the company’s business interests in Indonesia, he said.

    Yunita Purnamasari, an external spokeswoman for Facebook in Jakarta, said Thursday she couldn’t comment at this stage on the tax demand. Apple, which is also being targeted by the tax office along with Twitter and Yahoo!, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Indonesia’s government is seeking to boost revenue as it tries to keep the budget deficit below the legal limit of 3 percent. Authorities have turned to Instagram Inc. stars and merchants peddling goods and services on social media to bridge a revenue shortfall as an ambitious tax amnesty program loses steam after earning the government 97.1 trillion rupiah in the first three months of its start in July.

    Indonesia’s government plans to drop claims on any unpaid taxes and penalties it has sought from Google if a settlement is arrived through negotiations, Haniv said. The settlement with Google, the largest unit of Alphabet Inc., may come as early as next week and the government will focus on ensuring the company pays all future taxes, he said. The company owes about 5 trillion rupiah in taxes and penalties, he said.

    Taj Meadows, Google’s head of policy communications for Asia Pacific, declined to comment on Wednesday and referred to an earlier statement that said the company had paid all applicable taxes and will continue to fully cooperate with the Indonesian government.

    Indonesian tax officials have visited Google’s office in central Jakarta several times in recent months. The government had earlier sent Google a warning letter for refusing a tax audit that can result in criminal punishment, Haniv said in September.

  • Google, Facebook to build LA-HK cable

    Google, Facebook to build LA-HK cable

    The internet giants Google and Facebook apparently agree on at least one thing this month: that the world’s infrastructure is in need of another trans-Pacific cable system. They are teaming up with privately held Pacific Light Data Communication and TE Subcom to build the Pacific Light Cable Network, or PLCN.

    The new cable system will be a direct link between Los Angeles and Hong Kong. It will span some 12,800km between the two cities, potentially offering one of the lowest latencies available.

    PLCN will also incorporate the latest optical technologies, which means the total theoretical capacity will be the largest transpacific route so far – up to 120Tbps in all. It is expected to be launched commercially in the summer of 2018.

    It was just a few months or so since the that the FASTER cable, also backed by Google, came online between Japan and Oregon. The PLCN cable system will give them some diversity both by route and by landing station.

    For Facebook, this is the most public position on a transpacific cable they have taken. But in the Atlantic they are part of the group building the Marea cable system between Bilbao and Virginia Beach.

    TE Subcom will be doing the actual laying of the cable, of course. But I wonder who is behind the privately held PLDC over in Hong Kong.

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  • Alibaba Group now Asia’s richest company

    Alibaba Group now Asia’s richest company

    Alibaba Group Holding has surpassed Tencent Holdings and China Mobile in market capitalisation to become Asia’s richest company.

    Alibaba’s market value rose to US$261 billion in New York last week, overtaking Tencent’s US$255.98 billion capitalisation in Hong Kong on Thursday during a trading week shortened by a public holiday.

    China Mobile was the region’s third-largest company, valued at $249.38 billion.

    Alibaba’s shares have risen 28.8 per cent this year to $104.64, making the owner of Taobao.com and Tmall eCommerce platforms the world’s 10th-largest company by value, according to Bloomberg data. The world’s five most valuable companies now gain their revenue from technology or the internet – Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft Corp, Facebook and Amazon.com.

    In Asia, technology and internet-related businesses have displaced oil refineries, manufacturers and banks in the top three spots.

    Samsung Electronics of South Korea is the other technology company among Asia’s 10 most-valuable corporations, valued at $191.76 billion.

    As well as eCommerce, Alibaba has businesses in internet finance, cloud computing, film investment and logistics. The Hangzhou-based company’s second-quarter revenue rose 59 per cent, the strongest since its 2014 initial public offering in New York.

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  • Hidden chat room found in Facebook Messenger

    Hidden chat room found in Facebook Messenger

    The Facebook Messenger app has a hidden chat room feature that lets groups of users publicly converse on different topics.

    According to a report on the TechCrunch, the code for this feature was found buried in the iOS app’s source code.

    The tip comes from a tech evangelist who spotted the code that described the hidden ‘Rooms’ feature as: “Rooms are for public conversations about topics and interests. Each room has a link that can be shared so anyone on Messenger can join the conversation”. Screenshots of its user interface were later furnished by other developers.

    The Rooms feature is likely to be implemented in the app as part of an internal trial that is being scaled up to include more users. It is unlikely that the code was included on whim though, as including frivolous or redundant code is not considered a good practice by developers.

    Of course, the code itself offers no clue as to a possible release date, and it is also entirely possible for the feature to be pulled for any number of reasons before it is actually released.

    It is worth noting that Facebook had introduced a similar app called Rooms in 2014 which offered the ability to create and join interest-based public chats. The app was later pulled after it failed to gain traction; it is probably reasonable to assume that the lesson learned by Facebook will help its second attempt succeed.

    For now, new research shows that WeChat is winning the two-pronged race in China, where access to the likes Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram is blocked. Research figures from iResearch shows that 61.1% of Chinese Internet users use WeChat over Alibaba’s Weibo.

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  • Kantar Worldpanel partners with Facebook to expand advertising measurement service

    Kantar Worldpanel partners with Facebook to expand advertising measurement service

    Kantar Worldpanel has formed a global partnership with Facebook that brings Facebook mobile ad exposure data into Kantar Worldpanel’s Consumer Mix Model (CMM) service.  In Asia, the service has launched in South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Philippines, and Vietnam, and will soon be available in Indonesia and Malaysia as well.

    The enhanced CMM tool combines Facebook’s mobile ad exposure data (in addition to desktop) with Kantar Worldpanel’s continuous consumer packaged goods (CPG) purchase data to provide brands with an accurate assessment of the effectiveness of their cross-media advertising campaigns. 

    The advertising landscape has witnessed rapid change in recent years as brands increasingly turn to digital formats.  In April Facebook announced that its advertising revenue had grown by 57 percent to $5.2 billion in the first quarter of 2016 alone, with advertisers drawn to its increasingly large user base. 

    The tool allows brands and advertisers to understand the real impact of individual advertising campaigns on actual sales and the contribution Facebook and other media have on their return on investment.  This in turn will help them to optimise their media planning and ultimately improve the efficiency of their media investment.

    Josep Montserrat, chief executive of Kantar Worldpanel, commented: “The partnership allows our experts to build a solid understanding of how advertising works and the role that Facebook plays in a wider campaign context.  Working with Facebook will allow us to inspire even better decisions to optimise advertising budgets and maximise advertisers’ return on investment.”

    Marcy Kou, chief executive of Kantar Worldpanel Asia, said: “It brings tremendous potential for advertisers on Facebook as the number of smartphone users continues to grow in Asia Pacific. Retail ecommerce in this region is going stronger than the rest of the world, and is still considered the “it” market. Yet there hasn’t been a reliable method to measure the effectiveness of mobile ads, and with this partnership, we will finally be able to.”

    Patrick Harris, director of Global Agency Development at Facebook, said: “We believe that strong partnerships with our agency partners are key to providing advertisers with the tools they need to measure true business value on Facebook.  We are excited to help inform Kantar Worldpanel’s Consumer Mix Model solution by bringing in our mobile ad exposure data in a privacy-safe way.”

    Kantar Worldpanel’s continuous CPG purchase panels are already widely used by the advertising community worldwide to understand the effect of cross-media advertising.  Its measures take into account in-store promotions and consumer loyalty to determine the full picture behind consumer purchase behaviour. 

    This partnership with Facebook is part of a wider alliance between WPP and Facebook to activate WPP’s data proprietary assets within Facebook, which was announced in April 2015.

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  • Facebook moves to circumvent ad blockers

    Facebook moves to circumvent ad blockers

    Facebook is looking to stop playing ball with ad blockers.

    On Tuesday, Facebook tweaked its desktop website in a way that renders traditional ad blocking useless. The company redesigned its ad formats to improve ad performance and expanded its controls so that users get to see those ads that are relevant.

    In addition, Facebook noted that its desktop users using ad blocking software will now be able to see ads nonetheless. It can do this because the ads are housed in the company’s own ecosystem.

    According to the Facebook’s blog, the social media giant has “introduced tools to help people control their experience, improved how we decide which ads to show and created new ad formats that complement, rather than detract from, people’s experience online.”

    Facebook claims that ads can be useful in finding new products and experiences, but that the way ads are being served is the main problem. The company argues that many users are installing ad blockers to avoid disruptive, slow-loading and irrelevant ads.

    Facebook also noted that some ad blocking vendors are accepting money to unblock specific ads. As such, the company feels that it goes against its company ethos of keeping its services free and using ads to support journalism.

    It’s a bold move by Facebook and obviously aimed at protecting its own revenue base – which is largely ad based. It may only be a matter of time for other social media and internet platforms to follow and find other ways around ad blocking software in the name of good user experience.

    So Facebook has made its move; now, it is up to users who are fed up with online ads to react.

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  • Uniqlo Thailand launching online store

    Uniqlo Thailand launching online store

    Japan’s global fashion label Uniqlo Thailand is launching an online store, offering its full Thai range.

    The online store will help strengthen the firm’s “made for all” brand promise, says Uniqlo Thailand marketing and PR director/head of eCommerce Chanvit Khieonavavongsa.

    After nearly five years in Thailand, Uniqlo has 32 branches in nine provinces, covering about a third of the population. The eCommerce channel will meet the demand from customers in areas where the brand does not have an outlet.

    Exclusive to the Thai online store, Uniqlo will offer a cash-on-delivery service to cater for consumers who are still not confident about using credit cards for online transactions.

    Chanvit says the online channel will not affect Uniqlo’s expansion in the kingdom.

    “As long as there are good locations and customers, we will open a store,” he says. “There is no intention of reducing the opening of branches.”

    Two branches opened in the first half of this year, with two more to follow in September, at Blu Port in Hua Hin and at the Mall Korat.

    The online store is the brand’s 12th worldwide, with similar stores launching in Singapore in 2014 and in Malaysia last year.

    Uniqlo has assigned Singapore Post to handle logistics and deliveries for online orders, with guaranteed nationwide delivery of between one and three days. There is no delivery fee, while the packaging charge is waived for orders of Bt1500 (US43) or more. Customers have 30 days to return their goods to the company if they are not satisfied.

    Scheduled to go live on Friday, the online store will offer exclusive items and collections such as Kaws companion t-shirts and the HeatTech line of thermal wear. The mark the launch, there will also be special prices for popular items.

    Chanvit says the eCommerce expansion is part of Uniqlo’s global target to have 30 per cent of its sales derived from the online channel by 2020. The brand has already built awareness online in Thailand through Line, where it has 12 million subscribers, and Facebook, where it has had more than 1 million likes. Further awareness will be built through an integrated marketing communication plan across offline and online channels nationwide.

  • Social media giants plan new e-payment offerings

    Three new e- payment services from Line and Facebook will become available to Thai mobile users by the end of this year, as the social-media companies gear up with a view to tapping into high growth potential in the domestic market.

    Jin-Woo Lee, chief executive officer of Rabbit Line Pay, told the “Thailand E-commerce Summit 2016” that the company would provide two new services in the near future under the Rabbit Line Pay brand, enabling mobile payments via a smart phone using any operating system.

    Mobile users will simply need to download the Rabbit Line Pay application to their device in order to use the system, he said, adding that the new payment services would be piloted at retail outlets such as McDonald’s in August.

    “I believe Thailand is the first country in which we will provide the new e-payment service. In the next couple of months, we will test it with retail shops, and then with the Skytrain in December, before making it officially available in the market,” the CEO said. Another new offering under Rabbit Line Pay services is a logistics service available to mobile users who already have the Rabbit Line Pay app.

    Under the logistics service, the company has joined hands with Kerry to deliver products to customers when they order from the Line shop. Kerry will provide a same-day delivery service for users located in Bangkok, with cash on delivery being a payment option. The new service will initially be available in Bangkok.

    “For Line, Thailand is the second biggest market, after Japan. I believe there is high market potential in Thailand for the provision of services that support mobile users in a simple and convenient way,” Lee said.

    The company is currently working with four commercial banks – Siam Commercial Bank, TMB Bank, Bangkok Bank and Kasikornbank – to support e-payment transactions under its new offerings, he added.

    Line now has around 40 million users in Thailand, the chief executive said.

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  • Alibaba expansion plan targets 2 billion

    Alibaba expansion plan targets 2 billion

    Chinese eCommerce pioneer Jack Ma has unveiled an Alibaba expansion plan aiming to quadruple its customer numbers to 2 billion by 2036.

    Alibaba is also aiming for a record 6 trillion yuan (US$912 billion) in gross merchandise volume (GMV) in 2020 from 3.09 trillion yuan this year.

    Ma has also pledged to intensify the fight against counterfeit products and intellectual property rights violation, saying the company is more confident than ever it can solve the problem.

    Alibaba became the world’s largest retailer (by its own definition of retailer) in April, surpassing Walmart. The company says its online trading accounts for 10 per cent of all retailing in China and has generated 15 million jobs.

    Alibaba, whose gross sales totalled $9.3 billion in 2014, hit a record $14.3 billion in sales on Singles’ Day alone last year, a Chinese holiday in November. This is more than double the eCommerce sales in the US from Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined.

    The company also holds the title of the biggest IPO in history, raising $25 billion in four days in September 2014, $7 billion more than Visa and $9 billion more than Facebook and General Motors.

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