Technology

Not a great start to the day for Cisco employees, many of which are struggling in the face of an internal IT outage.

The technology and networking giant confirmed in a tweet it was &aware of some disruption& to its IT systems and is &working& on restoring the network.

Worse, the companycorporate blog also went kaput. For a period, Ciscoblog was displaying the default WordPress install page. But at the time of publication, the blog had been restored.

Some customers were unable to login through Ciscosingle sign-on. Others couldn&t access its downloads page, nor could they access the companylearning portal. And, some were unable to access its security advisories.But some of Ciscoservices, such as Webex, did not appear affected by the outage.

Itnot immediately clear exactly what caused the outage.Cisco spokespeople did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The secretive New York-based hedge fund Tiger Global Management has led a $25 million Series C investment in Lattice, an employee performance and engagement management tool, with participation from the startupexisting investors.

The round, which values Lattice in the ballpark of $200 million, says co-founder and chief executive officer Jack Altman, comes just six months after the business closed a $15 million Series B led by Shasta Ventures. The HR tool, founded in 2015 by Altman and Eric Koslow, is also backed by Thrive Capital, the Slack Fund, Khosla Ventures and Y Combinator.

Lattice, like many startups closing venture capital deals today, was not actively fundraising when approached by John Curtius of Tiger Global, a firm that invested in the likes of Spotify, Glassdoor and Flipkart. Rather than reject the sizable capital infusion that, according to Altman, included favorable terms, Lattice closed the deal and plans to invest additional cash in its sales and marketing efforts, among other opportunities.

&Tiger was excited by the vision to keep [expanding] this platform — to extend to the rest of people management,& Altman tells TechCrunch.

Lattice, which has raised a total of $49.2 million in venture capital funding to date, doubled its headcount this year as well as its paying user count, which has swelled to 160,000. The SaaS business has developed performance management software that allows employees to reflect on their performance and receive feedback from managers and peers. The tool also empowers employees and their managers to structure agendas for one-on-one sessions, send praise to other employees and draft goals and OKRs.

&In order to compete for talent today, you do need to build the type of company where people want to work — itnot just a money thing,& said Altman.

Last fall, the San Francisco-based startup introduced Lattice Engagement, giving human resources teams a better idea of employees& level of connection to their company. Last month, the company launched Lattice Pulse, which, in combination with Lattice Engagement and Lattice Performance, delivers real-time insight into employees and company culture.

&You can get away with not doing these things, but it doesn&t optimize this critical thing, which is how your people are,& explains Altman. &If you don&t pay attention to how your people are performing or how they are feeling, it would be like not listening to your customers. Your employees are like your internal customers. If you don&t care how they&re doing or how they&re feeling, you&re leaving unbelievably important information on the table.&

Lattice operates a SaaS business model, charging roughly $100 per user per year. The company sells primarily to small and medium-sized businesses, including Glossier and Asana and some 1,400 others. This year, Lattice struck a deal with Slack, one of its largest customers yet. Over time, the company plans to sell to larger enterprises.

&My hope is we can just keep on adding products and functionality to what we offer,& Altman said. &We have so many more ideas than we have people to build them.&

Global app revenue continues to climb, thanks to the growth in mobile gaming and the subscription economy. In the third quarter of 2019, consumer revenue grew 22.9% year-over-year from $17.9 billion to reach an estimated $21.9 billion across both the App Store and Google Play worldwide, according to new data from Sensor Tower.

Notably, the App Store continues to account for the large majority of this revenue, the report found, making up 65% of total spending compared with just 35% on Google Play.

App Store users spent $14.2 billion, up 22.3% from the $11.6 billion they spent in Q3 2018. Google Play generated $7.7 billion in revenue, up 24% from the $6.2 billion spent in the year-ago quarter.

Sensor Towerrevenue estimates are a bit lower than those provided by App Annierecent report, which said the quarter saw $23 billion in consumer spending, not ~$22 billion.

App Annie also estimated nearly 23 billion downloads in Q3, while Sensor Tower claimed 29.6 billion.

In both cases, Google Play is still said to be the main source for downloads, with nearly three times more first-time installs than the App Store. In Q3, the total number of downloads was up 9.7% year-over-year to 29.6 billion, said Sensor Tower, with Google Play accounting for 21.6 billion of those.

Despite the overall growth, one big app market — China — saw a slight decline, Sensor Tower found. Its installs dropped 6% year-over-year to 2.2 billion in the quarter. But its revenue grew by 26.9% to $4.1 billion, up from $3.2 billion the year prior. This could be attributed to the nine-month game license freeze in Chinawhich, though now lifted, had slowed momentum.

Sensor Towercharts don&t include third-party app stores, so itnot a full picture of the Chinese app market, itworth noting.

The top money-making (non-game) app in the quarter was again Tinder, which generated $233 million in consumer spending, up 7% over the prior quarter. Netflix was No. 2 and YouTube clocked in at No. 3, at $164 million in Q3.

App Annie has a slightly different ranking. It has Tinder and Netflix leading the top-grossing charts, but puts IQIYI ahead of YouTube. This could be because App Annie has a bigger window into the Chinese app market.

In terms of downloads, TikTok is continuing to disrupt Facebook-owned apps& dominance over the top of the charts. In Sensor Towerrankings, WhatsApp was No. 1 and Messenger was No. 3, but Facebook and Instagram dropped to No. 4 and No. 5, respectively. And TikTok reached No. 2.

This isn&t the first time TikTok has passed Facebook, Sensor Tower said — it did so back in Q4 2018 and in Q1 2019, before dropping to No. 4 again last quarter. But with 177 million downloads in Q3, itinching its way up to the top.

App Annie, on the other hand, sees TikTok having just a bit more of climb, sticking it at No. 3 in the quarter, behind Messenger and Facebook. It also called out some Q3 break-out hits, like the return of FaceApppopularity (No. 9 in downloads) and the growing subscription revenue of Google One (No. 7 in non-game revenue). Sensor Tower put FaceApp at No. 6 instead, but agreed on Google One.

Mobile gaming continues to generate most of the cash, and did so again in Q3 with $16.3 billion in mobile game gross revenue — or 74% of the total in-app spending, the new report said. The App Store accounted for $9.8 billion of that figure, with Google Play users spending $6.5 billion.

Game downloads across both Google Play and the App Store increased by 17.6% in Q3 from 9.5 billion last year to 11.1 billion.

The top three games in the quarter by downloads were Fun Race 3D (123M downloads), PUBG Mobile (94M), and newcomer Mario Kart Tour, which hit 86 million downloads despite only launching in late September.

PUBG Mobile was the top-grossing game with $496 million in revenue, up 652% over last year. The No. 2 title, Tencent&sHonor of Kings, and No. 3 Aniplex&sFate/Grand Order generated $377 million and $354 million, respectively.

Image credits: Sensor Tower