Facebook’s booming business is dominated by digital ads, but it also has hardware ambitions beyond VR. During the company’s latest earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said its next product release would be a pair of smart glasses from Ray-Ban. “The glasses have their iconic form factor, and they let you do some pretty neat things,” the Facebook […]
Following the quarterly release of Facebook’s earnings numbers where the company’s CFO takes time to walk through the nitty gritty of the company’s financials, CEO Mark Zuckerberg took a moment to zoom out and wax on the company’s future goals, specifically calling out his ambitions to turn Facebook into “a metaverse company.” “I wanted to […]
Earlier today, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced that the company will require employees to be vaccinated before returning to work on-site. It was part of a larger letter sent to Google/Alphabet staff that also noted the company will be extending its work-from-home policy through October 18, as the Covid-19 Delta variant continues to sweep through […]
Facebook posted its second quarter earnings Wednesday, beating expectations with $29 billion in revenue. The world’s biggest social media company was expected to report $27.8 billion in revenue for the quarter, a 50 percent increase from the same period in 2020. Facebook reported earnings per share of $3.61, which also bested expectations. The company’s revenue […]
Yes Virginia, there are advantages to exhibiting in (the sold-out) Startup Alley at TC Disrupt 2021. Out of all the early-stage startups ready to exhibit on September 21-23, Team TechCrunch hand-picked 50 to form the Startup Alley+ cohort. Startup Alley+ is a VIP experience designed to help founders grow their business and increase their opportunities […]
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Snap had its best quarter in four years
If you’ve started using Snapchat more regularly this year, you’re not alone. At yesterday’s Q2 earnings call, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel announced that the platform grew both revenue and daily active users at the highest rates it has achieved in the last four years. Snapchat now has 293 million daily active users, growing 23% since […]
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey confirmed to investors that bitcoin will be a “big part” of the company’s future, as he sees opportunities to integrate the cryptocurrency into existing Twitter products and services, including commerce, subscriptions and other new additions like the Twitter Tip Jar and Super Follows. Dorsey has been a staunch bitcoin advocate for […]
The Tumblr community often refers to itself as the Wild West of the internet, and they’re not wrong. A text post with over 70,000 notes puts it best: “Tumblr is my favorite social media site because this place is literally uninhabitable for celebrities. No verification system, no algorithm that boosts their posts, it’s a completely […]
Spotify announced this morning a new partnership with online GIF database GIPHY to enable discovery of new music through GIFs. No, the GIFs themselves won’t play song clips, if that’s what you’re thinking. Instead, through a series of new Spotify-linked GIFs, there will be an option to click a button to be taken to Spotify […]
Sorry Mr. Putin, but there’s a race on for Russian and Eastern European founders. And right now, those awful capitalists in the corrupt West are starting to out-gun the opposition! But seriously… only the other day a $100 million fund aimed at Russian-speaking entrepreneurs appeared, and others are proliferating. Now, London-based Untitled Ventures plans to […]
Safe Security, a Silicon Valley cyber risk management startup, has secured a $33 million investment from U.K. telco BT. Founded in 2012, Safe Security — formerly known as Lucideus — helps organizations measure and mitigate enterprise-wide cyber risk using its security assessment framework for enterprises (SAFE) platform. The service, which is used by a number […]
Late last month, Facebook announced Bulletin, its newsletter platform. Unlike Substack, Medium and other competitors, Bulletin hand-picks its writers to curate a more controlled platform, with stars ranging from Mitch Albom, whose book “Tuesdays with Morrie” continues to break hearts in seventh grade English classes, to Queer Eye’s Tan France, who taught a generation of […]
Before we discuss the changes that produced the lift, it is important to quickly go over the research that informed those changes.
The company behind ubiquitous livestreaming software Streamlabs is introducing a new way for streamers to share their gaming highlights to platforms well beyond Twitch. Streamlabs calls the new tool Crossclip, and it’s available now as an iOS app and as a lightweight web tool. With Crossclip, creators can easily convert Twitch clips into a format […]
Facebook’s lead regulator in the European Union must “swiftly” investigate the legality of data sharing related to a controversial WhatsApp policy update, following an order by the European Data Protection Board (EDPB). We’ve reached out to the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) for a response. (Update: See below for their statement.) Updated terms had been set […]
WhatsApp is finally pushing an improvement to a key feature that even the Facebook-owned instant messaging service acknowledges has been a top request from users for years. On Wednesday, WhatsApp said it is rolling out a limited public beta test for its improved multidevice capability. The update enables WhatsApp users for the first time to […]
Facebook just announced plans to pay content creators more than $1 billion by the end of next year through new bonus programs designed to keep creatives plugged into its app ecosystem. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg first announced the new funding to “reward creators for great content” on his Facebook page. The company will […]
Facebook has joined Amazon in a show of alarm at the sudden rise of antitrust hawk Lina Khan to the position of FTC Chair by asking that she be recused from all decisions relating to the company. The argument, more or less identical to Amazon’s, is that before her appointment, Khan was too outspoken about […]
When it comes to bug bounties, Facebook lags behind the likes of Microsoft and Google in terms of overall payouts and volume of tips received: last year, Microsoft and Google respectively paid out $13.6 million and $6.7 million; Facebook meanwhile paid out just $1.98 million as of November. But on the other hand, Facebook’s a […]
Moving services giant Updater is bringing on the team from Dolly as the New York company looks to expand its scope of offerings with the acquisition of the on-demand startup known for helping consumers execute small-scale moves. Dolly connects users in need of moving a large item, like a piece of furniture, with a contractor […]
Facebook has been accused of multiple breaches of European Union consumer protection law as a result of its attempts to force WhatsApp users to accept controversial changes to the messaging platforms’ terms of use — such as threatening users that the app would stop working if they did not accept the updated policies by May […]
Twitter has appointed a resident grievance officer in India days after the American social media firm said to have lost the liability protection on user-generated content in the South Asian nation over non-compliance with local IT rules. On Sunday, Twitter identified Vinay Prakash as its new resident grievance officer and shared a way to contact […]
The Biden administration just introduced a sweeping, ambitious plan to forcibly inject competition into some consolidated sectors of the American economy — the tech sector prominent among them — through executive action. “Today President Biden is taking decisive action to reduce the trend of corporate consolidation, increase competition, and deliver concrete benefits to America’s consumers, […]
Robots have a hard time improvising, and encountering an unusual surface or obstacle usually means an abrupt stop or hard fall. But researchers have created a new model for robotic locomotion that adapts in real time to any terrain it encounters, changing its gait on the fly to keep trucking when it hits sand, rocks, […]
A new biometrics privacy ordinance has taken effect across New York City, putting new limits on what businesses can do with the biometric data they collect on their customers. From Friday, businesses that collect biometric information — most commonly in the form of facial recognition and fingerprints — are required to conspicuously post notices and […]
In 2013, eight tech companies were accused of funneling their users’ data to the U.S. National Security Agency under the so-called PRISM program, according to highly classified government documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Six months later, the tech companies formed a coalition under the name Reform Government Surveillance, which as the name would […]
Twitter today has shared a few more ideas it’s thinking about in terms of new features around conversation health and privacy. This includes a one-stop “privacy check-in” feature that would introduce Twitter’s newer conversation controls options to users, and others that would allow people to be more private on the service, or to more easily […]
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Kill the standard privacy notice
If Facebook’s privacy policy is as hard to comprehend as German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason,” we have a problem.
Twitter no longer enjoys the liability protection against user-generated content in India, the government said in a court filing this week as tension escalates between the two over the South Asian nation’s new IT rules. In a court filing on Monday, New Delhi said Twitter has lost its immunity in India after the American social […]
Get your spool-of-yarn emojis ready — threads might be coming to Facebook soon. Facebook has been spotted testing a new feature that gives public figures on Facebook the ability to create a new post that’s connected to a previous one on a related subject. This feature ties the posts together more visually so fans can […]