Suu Kyi’s Party Prepares to Take Power in Myanmar

Myanmar’s powerful military-linked government effectively conceded defeat in national elections and congratulated Aung San Suu Kyi as she and her party headed into a landslide victory that marks the beginning of a decisive transition toward democratic rule.

President Thein Sein on Wednesday sent a letter of congratulations to Ms. Suu Kyi’s party—tantamount to an admission of defeat, though neither he nor his ruling party have issued an official concession. A government spokesman said the president would call Ms. Suu Kyi to congratulate her on her election performance.

As of late Wednesday, the NLD had clinched 256 seats, including one for the opposition leader herself, in the 664-seat legislature with only 21 for the army-linked party and a handful for smaller ethnic-minority parties. A quarter of the seats are reserved for unelected military generals.

The military issued a statement Wednesday saying it would “like to congratulate and honor the National League for Democracy because it is leading in the election results.”

A full official tally could take days as results come in from remote areas. Polls were canceled in seven constituencies because of fighting involving rebel groups, and those seats will be left empty.

The military and president’s statements came three days after the vote, but thousands of people here were already been celebrating the opposition’s victory. Since Sunday, thousands have danced and cheered outside the National League for Democracy’s headquarters as results came in. 

The focus here has fast shifted to how Ms. Suu Kyi can practically work with the armed forces, who remain entrenched in the political structure, with a strong role enshrined in the constitution.

Key military leaders said they would meet with Ms. Suu Kyi next week, sometime after the final vote is counted. The military establishment has repeatedly said it would respect the election results, a stark difference from the last time Ms. Suu Kyi’s party won elections, in 1990, but the army ignored the verdict.

This week, Ms. Suu Kyi expressed her intention to work for “national reconciliation” with Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, who heads the armed services, and President Thein Sein and speaker of parliament Shwe Mann, both former senior generals.

The letters, dated Nov. 10, were posted Wednesday on her party’s official Facebook page.

The military establishment—which picks key ministers in charge of defense, home and border affairs, and determines its own budget and has other stipulated powers—will be Ms. Suu Kyi’s biggest challenge in commanding a future government.

Her past attempts to engage the military were repeatedly snubbed. Military lawmakers rejected her invitations to informal dinners and meetings and blocked proposed constitutional changes that would allow her to become president.

The constitution written by the former military rulers bans people with close foreign relatives from the top office. She was married to a Briton and has two British children.

Though she can’t serve as president, Ms. Suu Kyi has asserted herself as leader of what will be the biggest party in parliament and has said that she will call the shots. Ms. Suu Kyi will recommend a candidate amenable to her party, and will be “above the president.”

The military would have little choice but to engage with Ms. Suu Kyi, who will effectively control parliament and the cabinet.

“It is very different for the commander-in-chief to meet with an opposition leader than a leader-in-waiting,” said Richard Horsey, a Yangon-based political analyst.

“Discussions are going to have to happen, but whether that will be a good relationship or a cold, hard relationship remains to be seen.”

West Africa Conference Focuses on Threat Posed by Jihadists

Islamic extremists are expanding their reach in West Africa, using porous borders and exploiting political chaos to further their attacks, security experts said Monday at the opening of a regional conference on the jihadist threat.

Some 800 security officials and analysts from across the region are taking part in the two-day conference to develop strategies for a coordinated response to the attacks that have mounted this year far beyond Boko Haram's base in northeastern Nigeria.

"I think the main characteristic of the threat today is that this is a threat that knows no boundaries," said Soumeylou Boubeye Maiga, African Union special envoy in the fight against terrorism.

As the conference took place, a female teenage suicide bomber in a town along the Cameroonian-Nigerian border targeted a mosque during afternoon prayers. At least four people were killed and dozens were wounded in Fotokol, according to regional Gov. Midjiyawa Bakari.

It also comes after Senegalese authorities announced Saturday that several imams have been arrested and accused of supporting Boko Haram. While the extremist group has been attacking neighboring countries the recently announced arrests are the first suggesting a Boko Haram threat in Senegal, a mostly moderate Muslim nation.

Boko Haram's six-year-old uprising has left an estimated 20,000 people dead, according to Amnesty International. This year militants from the group have stepped up their attack across the Lake Chad region where the borders of Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroonmeet.

"The porous borders between our countries are an advantage for our enemy," Nigerian Gen. Mohammed Babagana Monguno said.

Over the weekend, two girls wearing suicide vests detonated their explosives in Chad in a community along Lake Chad killing several people, according to national television.

"From now on, what we need to focus on is how to establish a new model of governance that does not create the frustration that fuels these armed groups," said Laurent Bigot, a regional analyst and former French diplomat. "Terrorism is not a cause, it is a consequence."

FACEBOOK’S PHOTO MAGIC

Sometimes it’s easy to get so caught up in the party or the get-together to stop and share all those photos we’ve taken and before you know it, they’re lost and forgotten in our camera rolls. If you’ve ever taken a bunch of photos while out with your friends and then forgotten to send or share them, Facebook’s newest feature, Photo Magic, aims to help.

Facebook is currently testing the feature in Australia on Android iOS, before making it available in other countries, including the U.S. “What we’ve seen is that private sending of photos in Messenger is really popular,” Peter Martinazzi, director of product management,  told TechCrunch. “About 9.5 billion photos were sent inside Messenger in the last month.”

In Facebook’s most recent report, the platform celebrated 1.4 billion users who check Facebook at least once a month via mobile, and 700 million users on Messenger. However, at the Code Conference over the summer, chief executive Evan Spiegel noted that of Snapchat’s nearly 100 million daily active users, 65 percent contribute content via images, video, and stories. Although Messenger continues to grow, Photo Magic competes with Snapchat, the app considered to be one of Facebook’s only real rivals.

In the TechCrunch article, Photo Magic is described as a feature using the same facial recognition technology Facebook uses for photo tagging suggestions. Like other features, you can disable the option, but otherwise you won’t have to hunt down and remind your friends to send you the selfies you took last night because Facebook will remind them for you. The new feature will actually scan your camera roll, and if it finds photos that include your friends, it will remind you to send the photo through Messenger, with the option to attach a message. If you choose to send the photo, it will appear in a group thread to everyone in the image that it recognizes.

Of the three main types of images sent through messenger — Selfies, What’s Up (images of the world around us), and photo-sharing with friends, Photo Magic is designed to address the sharing with friends purpose which requires stopping what you’re doing in the middle of an event to send the photos. Photo Magic is intended to eliminate that distraction by reminding you to instantly send the image, and allowing you to continue to live and enjoy life uninterrupted.

Instagram Boomerang: What brands need to know

Boomerang allows users to create and then share mini videos via social media. It works by taking a burst of five photos and stitching them together into a one-second video. The video then loops, playing the images backwards and forwards to create the ‘Boomerang’ effect.

Where it differs from other social media tools is that there is no Boomerang newsfeed where users can share their videos. Instead people have to post them to other social media channels such as Facebook or Instagram, although users can set this up automatically.

This is not the first time Instagram has launched a standalone app. Layouts lets users create a collection of images in one picture while Hyperlapse offers the ability to create time lapse videos. All are seen as ways for Instagram to keep its users more engaged with the platform as the number of social media sites trying to grab consumers’ attention continues to rise.

Short form content creation tools are all the rage. Vine, Snapchat and Cinemagraph all offer ways for brands to create video. Start-ups such as ‘Phhhoto’ let people create very short gifs, while the feature is also reminiscent of the photo animation tool in Google Photos.

Where Boomerang is different, according to Instagram, is that these are not full videos or gifs or photos but a way of quickly capturing unexpected moments. 

Why brands are getting involved

Any new social tool offers an opportunity for brands both to reach new users and prove they are on top of the latest trends. Boomerang content is inherently shareable so should boost engagement and allow marketers to flex their creative muscle.

Johannes Hinrich Meyer, a digital strategist at FCB Inferno, says: “[Boomerang] is a short-content and eminently shareable format supported by a wildly popular platform [Instagram] with a very strong internal hook – actions endlessly looping back and forth.

“As long as creative executions are not only consistent with but embrace this premise – and, of course, our eternal predilection for silliness – we should see some great work going forward.”

The app itself is easy to use and does not require editing, unlike normal video, making production costs low for brands and the barriers to entry almost non-existent. It is also a great way to tap into people’s emotions by focusing on one moment that could make consumers laugh.

How marketers are using Boomerang

Meyer expects brands to subvert Boomerang to some great ends and many have been trying out the app already.

For Ritz, Boomerang offered an opportunity to enhance its wider market message of trying out new things. It used the app to promotes its ‘Crisp and thin’ snacks with social media manager Polyanna Ward saying Boomerang also offered a new way to communicate its brand personality. 

“This year Ritz came back on the scene in the UK with its first big marketing campaign in 30 years. We are making Ritz relevant again by thinking like a startup, trying new things and ‘Putting On The Ritz’,” she explains

“We chose to use Boomerang because it is a great way to show off our brand personality and we want to reconnect with our consumers by giving them richer content on a platform that is relevant to them. Ultimately, our goal is to shift people’s perspective from a box of crackers at the back of the cupboard, to a fun, sociable brand with snacks for every occasion.”

MTV, meanwhile, used Boomerang to promote the European Music Awards in Milan last month. It encouraged nominated artists to take a selfie using the app as part of a digital strategy aimed at widening the appeal of the event and increasing the reach for its brands sponsors.

Karmelina Parouka, VP of international digital production, content and engagement at Viacom Velocity International, a division that improves ad effectiveness for sponsors of MTV, says: “Partnering with Instagram to launch Boomerang at the 2015 MTV EMAs made absolute sense for our audience, who are early adapters of new technologies and platforms. Not only do we want to create defining moments in music history, but also evolve how our audience consumes them in today’s ecosystem.”

“We have continued to evolve our digital content strategy to ensure we are everywhere our audience is in. Diversifying off our own platforms is crucial to us being able to offer our audience a deeper connection with our content as well as expand our reach.

“Our fans are already on Instagram, as are creators that matter to them. Partnering with Instagram to host the boomerang studio backstage was another way to delight this vast global audience and offer a type of talent engagement not seen before.”

What brands should watch out for

As with any new social tool there is a concern that while initial interest in Boomerang has been strong that could quickly fade. The simplicity of the app could also pose an issue for brands looking to create high-quality content.

Dimitri Karoullas, social media manager at creative agency JWT, says: “You have to capture the moment as it happens, meaning you can’t record longer clips, shorten them, then loop them. This will likely pose a problem for some brands with the type of visual content they want to capture, but if they set up the shot perfectly Boomerang will allow for dynamic and punchy content for brands.”

For Boomerang to become part of brands’ wider marketing strategies, rather than a fun ‘nice to have’ it will need to introduce new features. Vine, for example, has updated its app to offer more production tools that are important for brands and agencies creating content.

“I doubt brands will decide to make Boomerang a staple of content creation, not with the lack of editing and formatting options it currently has. But perhaps with some simple updates they can persuade brands to substitute videos and cinema-graph style images for Boomerang,” says Karoullas.

Apple Music for Android now available in the Google Play Store

After first being announced and previewed in screenshots at WWDC in June, Apple has officially brought its subscription music service Apple Music to Google’s Android platform. Apple Music joins the iPhone maker’s other Android apps Move to iOS and the Beats Pill+ companion app on the Google Play Store.

Apple Music offers access to a large catalog of streaming music and music recommendations. Music and music videos can be saved for offline listening as well. Memberships costs $9.99/month for individuals, the same as Beats Music subscriptions which Apple Music replaces, after a three-month free trial period. Apple Music family plans for up to five different accounts is available through Family Sharing on iOS and Mac for $14.99/month

Apple Music launches on Android

Apple Music has arrived on Android. The app launched in the Play Store today and is available in every region that Apple Music currently serves, except for China. Most of Apple Music's features have made the jump, including Beats 1, Connect, and custom music suggestions; the only things that aren't available are music videos and the ability to sign up for a family plan. The details come from TechCrunch, which spoke with Apple's Eddy Cue about the launch. The app is said to be in a "beta" release for now, with its missing features being added back in before that label is removed.

This is Apple's first real Android app; its others are Beats' products and a migration tool, making this the first Apple-branded app that people will continually use. Apple has even tried to make it "look and feel like an Android app," Cue tells TechCrunch. Though it doesn't exactly go all in on Google's Material Design style, flourishes have been changed here and there to make Apple Music look much less like an app designed for iOS. The app still relies on an Apple ID for sign ups, and existing subscribers will be able to use their account to sync any music that they've already set up. Like on iOS, Apple is offering a free three-month trial period for new users on Android.

Amazon’s Streaming Music

 The music industry’s streaming wars are usually seen as having three major combatants: Spotify, Apple and Pandora.

Over the last year, however, another technology giant, Amazon, has been quietly building a competitor with a slightly different approach. Amazon Prime Music, available to subscribers of the company’s $99-a-year Prime membership program, offers more than one million songs — a fraction of the catalogs available from services like Spotify and Apple Music, which each say they have more than 30 million tracks. And Prime Music lacks current hits by acts like Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran and the Weeknd.

Yet the company has begun to establish itself by focusing on what may be a vast part of the audience for streaming music: casual listeners and families. This part of the market, analysts say, may not mind the absence of a few current hits, especially considering that they can also receive the shipping discounts and streaming video offerings — like the Emmy-winning show “Transparent” — available to Prime members. And they may appreciate a surprise or two, like “Indie for the Holidays,” a playlist of 26 songs that Amazon commissioned from acts like Lisa Loeb, Rogue Wave, Robert Pollard and Langhorne Slim that will be available free for Prime members next week.

“There are people on the cutting edge of music who really want to be deep into the catalog, and then there are a lot of mainstream music fans for whom just having some good music to listen to is sufficient,” said Russ Crupnick of the consumer research firm MusicWatch. “That’s where a service like Amazon works out just fine.”

Amazon has not disclosed how many people use Prime Music and estimates vary widely. Using surveys, MusicWatch said that about 8.5 million people listen for at least one hour a month; some music executives who have dealt with Amazon put the number closer to three million or four million. (According to a recent estimate by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, the overall Amazon Prime program has 44 million subscribers in the United States.)

That is still well below the numbers for Spotify, which says it has 75 million users, including 20 million paid subscribers; and Apple, which has attracted 15 million users for its new Apple Music, 6.5 million of whom pay. Both cost $10 a month for a standard subscription.

Pandora has 78 million listeners, including 3.9 million who pay $5 a month for Pandora One, which eliminates advertising.

But analysts say that the growth of Amazon Prime Music since it began in June 2014 shows how quickly a major technology company can amass an audience large enough to challenge more established streaming services, especially when it bundles its music offerings with other services. Steve Boom, Amazon’s vice president for digital music, said that the company began to develop its strategy for streaming music as the wider market for downloads began to tumble several years ago. “As customers have been shifting toward streaming, we knew we would ultimately have to get there,” he said in an interview at Amazon’s headquarters.

The company — which by some estimates is still the biggest retailer of CDs and vinyl records — found that its customers wanted to be able to stream music without ads, to skip songs as they pleased and to save songs on mobile devices to listen to when they were offline. And most customers, Mr. Boom said, did not need that full catalog that Spotify offered. (This reflects Amazon’s broader strategy of emphasizing very low prices for its products to appeal to as wide a market as possible; the company recently began offering a Fire tablet for $50, for example.)

“We went for a bit more of a mainstream listener,” Mr. Boom said, “for whom access to everything at all times wasn’t necessarily the main thing.”

The resulting service is something of a cross between Pandora and Spotify. As an on-demand service, it lets users search for specific tracks to listen to, and is full of playlists and recommendations. But it also has radiolike feeds of songs organized by genre or artist.

While other streaming services have had their greatest success with younger-leaning genres like hip-hop and electronic dance music, Amazon emphasized middle-of-the-road pop, indie rock and children’s music.

“The sweet spot of Prime is really the young family,” Mr. Boom said, speaking near a conference room that was being used for a concert for Amazon employees and their children by the Pop Ups, a children’s music duo that released an exclusive album with Amazon in September.

Last year, the company commissioned a playlist of holiday music, “All Is Bright,” and this season it has doubled down on that strategy. Last month it released an exclusive album from Ms. Loeb, “Nursery Rhyme Parade,” and on Friday it will begin streaming songs from “Christmas in Tahoe,” an exclusive album from the pop-rock group Train.

Ms. Loeb — best known for her 1994 song “Stay (I Missed You),” and her signature cat-eye glasses — said that Amazon’s ability to market her music to other mothers was unrivaled.

“For me, as a mom, I know the power of Amazon,” Ms. Loeb said in an interview. “I go there multiple times a week, to buy diapers in the middle of the night or to pick up a birthday gift for a relative out of town. As a musician I am always interested in a new way to reach people who may be interested, and Amazon is in front of a lot of eyeballs every day.”

The arrival of Prime Music last year was not fully welcomed in the music industry, as some record labels complained that the company was offering too little in licensing fees. Universal Music Group, the biggest label, held out for more than a year, before announcing a deal in September. Neither company would comment on the deal, but two people with knowledge of the negotiations said that Amazon eventually agreed to a higher royalty rate for Universal.

Artists and managers who have been involved in exclusive content deals with Amazon said that the company offered generous terms and did not interfere with the recording process. Esmé Patterson, a singer-songwriter whose song “If I” is on “Indie for the Holidays,” said the only thing she was worried about was her anti-consumerist message.

“I said in the song that buying things wasn’t the point of Christmas for me,” Ms. Patterson said. “I hoped that Amazon wouldn’t be upset about that.” There was no objection, she said.

Mr. Boom said that, despite the new collections, Amazon was not interested in acting as a record label in the same way that it had become a television studio, with coming shows like “The Man in the High Castle” and a series written and directed by Woody Allen. But he said that the company would continue to experiment with music.

“There’s room in the market,” Mr. Boom said, “for different types of services.