Walmart joins forces with Shopify, Zoom admits it suspended accounts of several activists at China’s request, and new office norms take place due to COVID-19.
It’s all the tech news that’s popular right now. Welcome to Hashtag Trending! It’s Tuesday June 16, and I’m your host Baneet Braich.
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Walmart.com is joining forces with Shopify to expand its third-party marketplace site. The goal is to add 1,200 Shopify sellers this year. The collaboration is making the most of the pandemic surge in online shopping. With this new opportunity, Walmart plans to focus on small- and medium-sized U.S. based businesses. Walmart’s $21.5 billion e-commerce business is catching up to Amazon but could use some extra help. The alliance will increase profits for Walmart as third-party sales are typically more profitable as sellers pay a fee for each sale and cover delivery costs. Shopify merchants that sell through Walmart will now be able to manage inventory and automatically sync their products with Walmart.com. They will also get their products in front of the more than 120 million U.S. consumers who visit Walmart’s e-commerce site monthly.
Zoom admits that it suspended the accounts of several activists and online commemorations of the Tiananmen Square massacre at China’s request. This was confirmed in a Zoom blog post where China had told the video conferencing platform to suspend four ongoing virtual gatherings. Zoom said it is currently unable to remove specific participants from a meeting or block participants from a certain country from joining a meeting. Now, the company says it’s developing technology to remove or block participants based on geography. “This will enable us to comply with requests from local authorities when they determine activity on our platform is illegal within their borders,” Zoom says. An updated report on global policy will be published June 30.
Office spaces are vastly changing up due to COVID-19 as packed board meetings and offices are no longer the ideal working spaces. According to a CTV report, there may be taped off desks, line ups to use the elevators, temperature checks, different start times, and sanitizer stations. There is a shift occurring away from open concept offices, employees are being asked to come in on alternating days, and employers are using screens to have barriers between workers. A human resources analyst assures that offices are not dead however, fast changes are coming to office environments until there is a vaccine for the novel virus.
That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home daily briefing. I’m Baneet Braich , thanks for listening.