TechCrunch Industry News
3,850 episodes — Page 23 of 77
Snap is looking to unify user experience across Spotlight and Stories
Snap’s stock plunged 30% on Tuesday after announcing Q4 2023 results that didn’t meet analyst expectations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
WhatsApp is preparing to roll out third-party chat support
With a month away from the Digital Markets Act (DMA) deadline, WhatsApp is preparing to allow other messaging networks in its app. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Invite-only dating app Blush launches with $7M in seed funding
Invite-only dating app Blush has raised $7 million in seed funding to scale and expand its exclusive platform. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Yandex to sell its remaining Russian businesses for $5.2B — half its market value
Yandex N.V., the Dutch parent company of the eponymous Russian internet giant, is selling the last of its remaining Russian businesses at a steep discount. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Bluesky is now open for anyone to join
After almost a year as an invite-only app, Bluesky is now open to the public. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Meta cuts off third-party access to Facebook Groups, leaving developers and customers in disarray
The recent surprise announcement that Meta will soon be shutting down a Facebook Groups API is throwing some businesses and social media marketers into disarray. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Stalkerware apps PhoneSpector and Highster appear to shut down
The makers of two phone surveillance services appear to have shuttered after the owner agreed to settle state accusations of illegally promoting spyware that his companies developed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
As Podcastle raises $13.5M, its founder credits AI-driven growth in Armenia’s ‘Mini-Silicon Valley’
Podcastle, a podcasting platform that has boosted its product with various generative AI-driven features, has raised $13.5 million in a Series Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
FTC orders Blackbaud to overhaul ‘reckless’ security practices in wake of 2020 breach
Education tech company Blackbaud agreed to settle with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over the company’s security practices that resulted in a 2020 data breach. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
MessageBird rebrands as Bird, and slashes prices by 90% on SMS to take on Twilio
No, don’t think Bird Scooters. Think Bird, formerly MessageBird. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Three San Francisco supervisors receive threats following YC President Garry Tan’s tweet
Aaron Peskin says Garry Tan’s now deleted X post did “harm to democratic discourse." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Sundar Pichai says Google One cloud storage service has nearly 100M subscribers
Google CEO Sudar Pichai said that the company’s Google One cloud storage service is ” just about to cross” 100 million subscribers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Universal Music Group plans to pull song catalog from TikTok
Universal Music Group (UMG), the label representing artists including Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, and Ariana Grande, says that it’ll pull its music from TikTok tomorrow at midnight after failing to reach a deal with the platform’s parent company, ByteDance, over royalties. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Yelp launches revamped feed with AI-powered business summaries
Yelp is releasing new features as part of its winter release, which includes a more visual feed, AI-powered summaries of businesses, and number masking while contacting businesses for better privacy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Streaming media company Plex raises new funds as it nears profitability
Media streamer Plex has raised new capital. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal leaves board
Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal has resigned from the e-commerce group’s board, the two said Saturday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Spotify calls Apple’s DMA compliance plan ‘extortion’ and a ‘complete and total farce’
Count Spotify among those not thrilled with how Apple has chosen to comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act, which sets the stage for sideloading apps, alternative app stores, browser choice, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
General purpose humanoid robots? Bill Gates is a believer
The robotics industry loves a good, healthy debate. Of late, one of the most intense ones centers around humanoid robots. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
OpenAI responds to Congressional Black Caucus about lack of diversity on its board
OpenAI has been criticized for the lack of diversity on its board. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Pokemon Company says it intends to investigate Palworld
The Pokemon Company said Thursday it has not granted any permission to “another company,” referring to Palworld-developer Pocketpair, to use Pokemon intellectual property or assets and “intends to investigate and take appropriate measures” against the fast-growing survival game operator. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Meta is rolling out tighter teen messaging limitations and parental controls
Meta announced today that it is rolling out new DM restrictions on both Facebook and Instagram for teens that prevent anyone from messaging teens. Until now, Instagram restricts adults over the age of 18 from messaging teens who don’t follow them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
BeReal, which now has 23M DAUs, is onboarding brands and celebs
BeReal, a rising social media app that emphasizes authenticity, is making its first outreach to brands and celebrities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Etsy launches ‘Gift Mode,’ a new AI-powered feature that generates 200+ gift guides
E-commerce site Etsy today launched “Gift Mode,” a new AI-powered feature to match you with tailored gift ideas based on specific preferences. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Apple will pay artists more to have a spatial audio version on Apple Music
Apple will pay additional royalties starting this month to artists if they have a spatial audio version on Apple Music, according to multiple reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Telegram is rolling out ‘view-once’ voice and video messages
Telegram is rolling out a bunch of upgrades as part of its January feature drop including “view-once” video and audio messages, the ability to pause recording while sending a video or an audio message, and new read-time controls. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chronosphere acquires Calyptia to extend its observability platform
Chronosphere, a startup that offers a cloud native observability platform, today announced that it has acquired Calyptia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Sony tells Zee it’s terminating the $10 billion India merger
Sony called off the merger between its India unit and Zee Entertainment on Monday, ending a two-year acquisition deliberation that would have created a $10 billion media powerhouse in the South Asian market. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
X says a bug caused numerous posts to be labeled as ‘Sensitive Media’
A bug on X, formerly Twitter, was causing numerous posts over the weekend to be flagged as “Sensitive Media,” thwarting the company’s own attempts to make its platform more approachable to advertisers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
TikTok faces Iowa lawsuit accusing the company of ‘lying’ to parents
The state of Iowa is suing TikTok, alleging that the social media company misleads parents about the kinds of content available to young users. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Spotify’s astrology-like Daylists go viral, but its micro-genre mastermind was let go last month
Is it a “fearful vocaloid wednesday morning,” a “yearning cottagecore thursday afternoon,” or perhaps a “heartbroken karaoke friday evening”? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Unredacted Meta documents reveal ‘historical reluctance’ to protect children
Internal Meta documents about child safety have been unsealed as part of a lawsuit filed by the New Mexico Department of Justice against both Meta and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Land Moto accelerates its electric bike battery play with $3M infusion
Cleveland-based electric motorcycle startup Land Moto is looking to diversify by powering up the battery design side of its tech. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
NASA’s robotic, self-assembling structures could be the next phase of space construction
Bad news if you want to move to the Moon or Mars: housing is a little hard to come by. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Apple tops Samsung in worldwide smartphone shipments for the first time
Apple’s iPhone has overtaken Samsung for the first time ever as the best-selling smartphone in 2023, according to a new report from IDC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
FedEx announces its own commerce platform for merchants
Logistics company FedEx announced its own commerce platform called FDX today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Elon’s Tesla robot is sort of ‘ok’ at folding laundry in pre-scripted demo
Elon Musk’s Optimus humanoid robot from Tesla is doing more stuff — this time folding a t-shirt on a table in a development facility. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Google will allow more real-money games on the Play Store
Google announced today that the company plans to support more real-money games (RMG) on the Play Store this year by allowing more types of games in the category following local laws. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
LG opens its first US EV charging factory in Texas
LG Electronics has opened its first electric vehicle (EV) charger facility outside of South Korea — in Fort Worth, Texas — to capture a share of North America’s competitive EV charging market. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
As Disney pushes towards streaming profitability, Pixar to undergo layoffs in 2024
Disney-owned animation studio Pixar is poised to undergo layoffs this year, TechCrunch has learned and the company confirmed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Google Cloud rolls out new gen AI products for retailers
Google wants to inject a little generative AI into retail. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Smart molluscs – yes, smart molluscs – could watch our waterways 24/7 for pollution
If the clams could speak, what would they say? Surely we all ask ourselves this question every day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
App economy recovered in 2023, with $171B in consumer spending, but downloads were flat
After the app economy slowed for the first time ever in 2022, things picked up pace again over the past year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
X removes support for NFT profile pictures
On Tuesday, Elon Musk’s X wrote about a grand vision for the company in 2024, which includes launching peer-to-peer payments and more AI-powered tools. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Threads accidentally rolls out the feature to view latest search results
Multiple Threads users on the iOS app reported earlier today that they are seeing a new “Latest” option to sort search results on the new social network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
After taking credibility hit, Carta announces it is exiting the secondaries business: “We have decided to prioritize trust”
Roughly 72 hours after a prominent startup customer complained that Carta was misusing information with which it was entrusted — scaring many of Carta’s tens of thousands of other customers in the process. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Astrobotic lander on its way to the moon with ULA’s historic flight
It’s hard to understate just how much was at stake in Monday’s early morning launch of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
RIP? Third-party podcast app Castro appears to be dead, company goes quiet
The once popular third-party podcast app Castro has seemingly shut down, after earlier saying that it was “actively seeking a new home” for its product. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Logan Paul promises CryptoZoo refunds, as long as you don’t sue him
Logan Paul is offering refunds for CryptoZoo, the failed and allegedly fraudulent Pokémon-inspired NFT game that he launched in 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Aurora and Continental pass first major hurdle in commercial self-driving trucks deal
Aurora and automotive supplier Continental have wrapped up the first phase of a more than $300 million project to mass produce autonomous vehicle hardware for commercial self-driving trucks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Superpedestrian to auction 20,000 e-scooters after shutting down
More than 20,000 electric scooters belonging to Superpedestrian will be auctioned off later this month, along with other equipment from the startup’s U.S. operations, after closing its doors December 31 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices