Facebook launched two 12-week accelerator programs for startups on Monday as the social juggernaut looks for new ideas and solutions to expand its commerce and connectivity efforts. Facebook’s Commerce Accelerator will select 60 startups from the EMEA and LATAM regions for the program, the company said. The startups that make the cut will explore building […]
Facebook has branded a legal order to globally block a number of Brazilian accounts linked to the spread of political disinformation targeting the country’s 2018 election as “extreme,” claiming it poses a threat to freedom of expression outside the country. The tech giant is simultaneously complying with the block order — beginning Saturday after it […]
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Recruiting for diversity in VC
Like many industries with a high concentration of wealth — and the careers that help professionals accumulate it — investment firms have a severe dearth of diversity in their ranks.
A new report from Pew Research makes an attempt to better understand U.S. adults who get their news largely from social media platforms, and compare their understanding of current events and political knowledge to those who use other sources, like TV, radio and news publications. The top-level finding, according to Pew, is that social media […]
With more than 90 major advertisers and counting announcing plans to dump Facebook, a significant question lingers: Where will brands go next for their digital marketing needs?
Nearly 500 pages of evidence were made public during the House Judiciary’s marathon hearing this week on potential anti-competitive actions by Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple . We’ve collected them here with added context and an omnibus, searchable version for anyone who’d rather not juggle four dozen documents. The emails, chat logs and other communications […]
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Big tech goes to Congress remotely
This week, the CEOs of Facebook, Apple, Alphabet and Amazon were called before the House’s Antitrust Subcommittee to defend the vast empires they’ve built. Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg faced questions about how their business practices propelled them into the market-dominant giants they are today. They lead four of the top […]
Australia is closing in on a legally binding framework to force adtech giants Facebook and Google pay media companies for monetizing their news content when it’s posted to their social media platforms or otherwise aggregated and monetized. Back in April the country’s government announced it would adopt a mandatory code requiring the tech giants to […]
Facebook today confirmed it will begin rolling out official music videos across its platform in the U.S., as TechCrunch first reported, as well as introduce a new Music destination within Facebook Watch. The changes, which will go into effect starting this weekend, will allow Facebook users to discover, watch and share music videos from a […]
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. We had the full team this week: Myself, Danny and Natasha on the mics, with Chris running skipper as always. Sadly this week we had to kick off with a correction as I am 1) […]
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Big tech crushes Q2 earnings expectations
Today after the bell, Apple, Alphabet, Facebook and Amazon reported their earnings results. Each bested expectations, and all but one are up sharply in after-hours trading. Coming on the heels of a day’s worth of congressional hearings in which the four companies highlighted competition and downplayed their market position, the results are loud. The group’s […]
Apple has another antitrust charge on its plate. Messaging app Telegram has joined Spotify in filing a formal complaint against the iOS App Store in Europe — adding its voice to a growing number of developers willing to publicly rail against what they decry as Apple’s app “tax.” A spokesperson for Telegram confirmed the complaint […]
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg appeared less than entirely truthful at today’s House Judiciary hearing, regarding last year’s major Onavo controversy, in which his company paid teenagers to use a VPN app that reported detailed data on their internet use. Though he may not have outright lied about it, his answers were evasive and misleading enough to […]
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Daily Crunch: Tech CEOs face Congress
U.S. tech giants face antitrust scrutiny, Spotify has a mixed quarter and at-home fitness startup Tempo raises funding. This is your Daily Crunch for July 29, 2020. The big story: Tech CEOs face Congress Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai all appeared remotely this afternoon before the House […]
At the House Antitrust Subcommittee hearings this afternoon, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was directly questioned about his company’s strategy of copying competitors’ apps and features, and even threatening to do so as a negotiation tactic amid M&A discussions. In his response, Zuckerberg was forced to admit the obvious: that Facebook, he said, has “certainly adapted […]
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Teespring’s comeback story
Startup stories are often too reductive — an entrepreneur dreams up an idea, snags some co-founders, raises a bit of money and presto: success and riches. It’s nearly never true. Even breakout successes like Slack that may feel straightforward have complicated stories. Amongst the most valuable startups there are hidden crises and disappointing quarters. Some […]
In this series, we help you keep up with the latest news from the world of apps, delivered on a weekly basis.
In one of the first substantive moments at Wednesday’s major tech hearing, Facebook’s 2012 acquisition of Instagram came under fire, unearthing a few new revelations about the company’s internal thinking at the time. Alluding to new documents provided to the committee as part of its ongoing year-long antitrust investigation, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler […]
Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg will defend their companies before the House Antitrust Subcommittee Wednesday in a hearing that will make tech industry history, no matter what happens. Given that tech giants like Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook are accustomed to answering to no one in particular, collecting four of them […]
With their big day before lawmakers just around the corner, previews of Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple’s opening statements are now available on the House Judiciary Committee’s site. On Wednesday, the CEOs of each company will appear in an unusually executive-packed Congressional hearing focused on antitrust concerns over the business practices. While the opening statements […]
There are many painful ways for a startup to fail — including founders who ultimately throw in the towel and turn off the lights. But assuming a founder intends to keeps moving forward, there are a few pitfalls that Garry Tan has seen during his career as a founder, Y Combinator partner and, lately, co-founder […]
Chief executives from four of the world’s most powerful companies will defend the vast empires they’ve built in testimony before Congress on Wednesday. In a hearing held by the House’s Antitrust Subcommittee, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg will all face questions about how their business practices propelled them into the market-dominant […]
Today, Priti Youssef Choksi is a partner with venture firm Norwest Venture Partners . But she previously spent five-and-a-half years at Google, where she worked on strategic partnerships, and nearly nine years at Facebook, where she began in corporate development and later focused on M&A. Because Choksi knows firsthand how some of the biggest companies […]
Twitter has temporarily frozen Donald Trump Jr.’s account after the president’s son shared a video making false and potentially life-threatening claims about the coronavirus pandemic. The younger Trump’s account was restricted Tuesday morning after he shared a link to the viral video, tweeting “This is a much [sic] watch!!! So different from the narrative that […]
That Vicariously app you might have seen pop up in your Twitter feed via a little viral growth hacking has run aground on Twitter’s automation rules. We reached out about it after it started spamming my feed with “so and so has added you to a list” notifications, and Twitter says that the app is […]
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 paved the way for decades of incremental changes to the way buildings, businesses, and laws accommodate people with a wide variety of disabilities. At 30 years old this week, the law’s effect on tech has been profound, but there’s still a lot of work to do. The ADA […]
A rare public showdown between Congress and the CEOs of tech’s biggest companies is still on track after being postponed last week. The House Judiciary Committee hearing, originally set for Monday, will now take place Wednesday, July 29 at 12 PM Eastern Time. The date was changed in light of the death of the civil […]
Zoom has run away with the prize in the last few months for becoming the video calling platform of choice for people confined to their homes, whether they are making work calls or friend calls. No one really talks about “Teamsing up” (“Skyping,” perhaps?), or “Hangoutsing” or “Meeting“, or indeed “Roomsing.” But many people talk […]
Amazon may join its global rivals Google and Facebook in backing one of Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s ventures. The American e-commerce giant is in preliminary talks to acquire a 9.9% stake in Reliance Retail, local TV news channel ET Now reported Thursday afternoon, citing unnamed sources. Reliance Retail, founded in 2006, is the largest retail […]
Facebook is testing a new design for Facebook Pages that will, among other things, remove the “Like” count, offer a cleaner and more readable layout, and make it easier for those who operate Pages to actually use and manage them. These features and others were initially tested with a small percentage of public figures on […]