Technology

VinFast, Vietnamnew (and only) automaker, turned to its citizens to decide what its inaugural vehicles should look like. Now, VinFast is sharing the first images of the final product — a sedan and SUV that will debut October 2 at the Paris Motor Show.

The vehicles were officially designed by Italiancompany Pininfarina, which collaborated with VinFast. Before the design process started in earnest, VinFast took 20 sketches from four Italian car design houses and let the public vote on their favorite in a nationwide poll that attracted 62,000 people. The images below are the ultimate fruits of that early voting on what styling direction VinFast should take.

VinFast shows off the first images of its sedan, pictured here, and SUV ahead of the 2018 Paris Motor Show

Both vehicles have a prominent chrome &V& in the center of the grille and LED daytime running lights that create an italicized F-motif. The premium sedan has a long hood and horizontal body lines, while the SUV has a more muscular-looking hood.

VinFastfirst SUV. Photo: VinFast

VinFast, a unit of Vietnambiggest private conglomerate Vingroup JS, hasa bit of General Motors DNA. GM sold its Vietnam operations to VinFast earlier this year. Under the agreement, VinFast took ownership of GMHanoi plant and has distribution rights of GMChevrolet brand in Vietnam.

VinFast, whose CEO Jim DeLuca is a former GM executive,will use the plant to produce its own developed vehicles, in addition to a planned plant in Hai Phong. Construction on the Hai Phong factory began in 2017.

Sales of the sedan and SUV are expected to begin in September 2019. The automaker has plans to produce a range of passenger cars and electric scooters, some of which will be exported to foreign markets in the future.

Two hundred and fifty million people are using Pinterest every month, up from 200 million last September, according to new numbers the company shared this morning. The visual search giant is also reporting that more than half of its users and 80 percent of new sign-ups come from outside the U.S.

&Pins,&or items saved to the site, are growing, too. There are now 175 billion of them, a 75 percent increase YoY.

To facilitate that growth,Pinterest has been on a hiring spree. It now has more than 1,500 employees, a 32 percent increase from last year.

The company has secured more than $1 billion in venture capital funding, most recently raising $150 million at a $12.3 billion valuation. Many expected it would make its highly anticipated public debut in early 2018, but that ship has sailed at this point. Now, reports indicate Pinterest is looking at a mid-2019 IPO and expects to reach $1 billion in annual revenue for the first time.

Those numbers should help it garner support on Wall Street, as will this nugget: The part of Pinterest that includes items for purchase on retailer sites is the fastest growing part of the platform,up 115 percent in the last year. The companykey sell to VCs has been that its visual search tool converts users to buyers, but with Instagram going full speed ahead as an e-commerce platform, it will take data points like that one to convince investors itworthy of that $12.3 billion valuation.

Pinteresthas been busy expanding as it presumably gears up for an IPO. In March, itintroduced the following tab, where users could view only the content from brands and people they follow. It also added the Pinterest Propel program as part of an effort to create more local content for its users. And it implemented full-screen video ads to beef up its advertising options— an area where it competes directly with Facebook and Google.

Instagram is testing a way to allow users to tag their friends in their video posts, not just in photos, TechCrunch has learned and the company confirmed. The option works similarly to tagging photos, but instead of pressing the small icon at the bottom left to see the list of tagged names appear over top of the content & something that would be more difficult with videos & the button links to a list of tagged people.

When you tap this button, you&re directed to a new page titled &People in this Video& with all the Instagram users who have either appeared in the video, or who the original poster wants to alert in some way.

As far as we can tell, these videos don&t also copy over to the tagged users& profiles, where tagged photos typically appear today. But that could come further down the road.

Video tagging is also not appearing on the web version of Instagram at present, only on mobile.

Instagram didn&t want to share much information about the test, nor discuss its plans for a larger rollout of the feature & which is currently unsupported for anyone who hasn&t been opted in to the test by the company.

However, it would say that the experiment is underway right now with a &small percentage& of Instagramusers.

&We&re always testing ways to improve the experience on Instagram and bring you closer to the people and things you love,& a spokesperson confirmed, in a statement.

Above: video tagging spotted on Instagram account @cablegirlsrd

Instagram has offered photo tagging since 2013, and later rolled out support for things like tagging productsandtagging friends in Stories. But although video sharing arrived on the platform in June 2013, Instagram has yet to introduce a way for users to properly tag their friends. Rather, its FAQ suggests that users should mention friends in a comment so they&ll get a notification.

That may have been sufficient for some time, but video is a more critical aspect to Instagramplatform these days, especially as it explores how to enable better video discovery through its user interface, direct people to its newest product, IGTV, and connect larger groups together in video chat sessions.

Tagging videos, then is an obvious, if long past due, next step & and one that can drive increased engagement as the tagged users relaunch the app following their notifications.

The feature could also make way for shoppable videos, not just photos, and allow Instagram influencers to post videos of their favorite products and places, while pointing fans to those brands& own Instagram accounts in a more structured fashion than is possible today.