Facebook Will Label State-Owned Media Links; Musk v Amazon; Docusign Gets COVID Boost; SaaS Firms Benefit From Shelter-In-Place

Facebook has announced it will label links that come from state-controlled media companies in an effort to make it clear where people are getting their news from. It’s because these news sources “combine the influence of a media organization with the strategic backing of a state,” the social media company said Thursday. CNET.com reports It will also start labelling paid ads from media companies later this summer ahead of the 2020 election in November.
The labels will be applied globally, and they’ll appear in your news feed this week.

Elon Musk jumped to the defense of an author on Twitter on Thursday who was claiming that his book submission was “censored” by Amazon. The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX tweeted, “Time to break up Amazon. Monopolies are wrong! According to geekwire.com there’s speculation that Musk’s desire to see Amazon broken up has more to do with competing with Amazon and Bezos. Amazon has invested heavily in Rivian, an electric vehicle maker which could produce 100,000 vans for the company’s delivery fleet. And SpaceX, has had at least three spats with Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture.

DocuSign’s e-signature and Agreement Cloud are among the first quarter winners as companies aim to go more digital and perform more work remotely. The company reported a first quarter net loss of 26 cents a share on revenue of $297 million, up 39% from a year ago. Zdnet.com says the firm’s Non-GAAP earnings for the quarter were 12 cents a share. Wall Street was expecting DocuSign to report first quarter non-GAAP earnings of 10 cents a share on revenue of $281.1 million. CEO Dan Springer said the COVID-19 pandemic spurred enterprises to accelerate digital transformation efforts and driving demand.

As the pandemic surged and companies moved from offices to working at home, they needed tools to ensure the continuity of their operations. Techcrunch.com notes that software as a service companies have always been focused on allowing work from anywhere there’s access to a computer and internet connection, so while the economy is reeling from COVID-19 fallout, modern software companies are thriving. The pandemic has forced companies that might have been thinking about moving to the cloud to find tools what will get them there much faster. SaaS companies like Zoom, Box, Slack, Okta and Salesforce have gotten a bump; cloud security companies like CrowdStrike have also benefited.