Josh Constine is a technology journalist who specializes in deep analysis of social products. He is currently a writer for TechCrunch.
Previously, Constine was the Lead Writer of Inside Facebook, where he covered Facebook product changes, privacy, the Ads API, Page management, ecommerce, virtual currency, and music technology.
Prior to writing for Inside Facebook, Constine graduated from Stanford University in 2009 with a Master’s degree in Cybersociology, examining the influence of technology on social interaction. He researched the impact of privacy controls on the socialization of children, meme popularity cycles, and what influences the click through rate of links posted to Twitter.
Constine also received a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors from Stanford University in 2007, with a concentration in Social Psychology & Interpersonal Processes. He became fascinated with social networking theory after joining Facebook as a freshman a month after the service first launched.
Josh Constine has spoken at the South By Southwest Interactive and Music conferences, and has been quoted by The Wall Street Journal, CNN Money, The Atlantic, BBC World Magazine, Slate, and more.
Imagine watching a classic mystery film or seasons of Lost while using a second-screen app that gives you unofficial insights and conspiracy theories as their plots move along. That’s the promise of Gracenote’s new audio fingerprinting API that allows apps to hear your TV so they can show you content related to the exact moment you’re viewing. → Read More
People assume the worst. So when it comes to counting government “requests” for private data, a hard number, even a high number, is far better than the fear of infinity. That’s why tech giants are fighting to show they aren’t open books surrendered to the NSA. They want to prove only the suspicious are spied upon. → Read More
(Update: Facebook is said to launch “Instagram Video”, not a news reading product according to TechCrunch’s Ingrid Lunden. Other outlets since confirm the same. → Read More
Today Boatbound, the Airbnb for boats, launches its service to help boat owners offset the cost of ownership and let more people experience the joys of the water. With over $1 million in funding led by Benjamin Ling and 500 Startups, Boatbound’s listings website lets pre-screened captains rent fully insured vessels across the country ranging from basic motorboats to sailboats to yachts. → Read More
An 11-hour flight, 150 techies, and one problem: How do we educate more engineers? This was the premise for the British Airways UnGrounded “Innovation Lab In The Sky.” While heavy on ideas with few to execute them, the flight forced Silicon Valley elite to stop and think about education. How? It took away their Wi-Fi. Something crazy happens when you cram brainy people in a flying… → Read More
“[Twitter bird logo] #brand” just became an endangered species. Hashtags are becoming universal as Facebook will start supporting them. That neutralizes an important growth vector for Twitter. Before, each print or tv ad mentioning a hashtag nagged people to join Twitter. Now they can join the real-time conversation through the social network they already use. Businesses and events… → Read More
Flat, man. Flat is free. It doesn’t tell us what to think. We don’t need those metaphors. Skeuomorphism was a trap. A mental prison, holding us back. Let the people decide for themselves what a calendar or a notepad looks like, and their eyes will open wide. {**continue transmission from the brain of Jony Ive**} → Read More
Apple demonstrated that it will keep its iron grip on iOS 7, despite Tim Cook saying it’s time for Apple to start opening up. Rather than debut new opportunities for developers, Apple squelched them at WWDDC by building its own substitutes for widgets, phone modifications, and whole categories of existing apps. → Read More
Telemarketing spammers bothering you? Clingy exes calling in the middle of the night? iOS 7 will let you block calls from specific numbers to save your sanity. Rather than allow third-party developers to modify the native Phone app like on Android, Apple has chosen to offer this feature itself. → Read More
Edward Snowden is being hailed a hero by some, and now a Crowdtilt crowdfunding campaign is raising money to reward the whistleblower for his “courage” and pay his bills. Started by Facebook employee Dwight Crowe with $1,000 of his own money, the campaign doesn’t say how the money will be delivered to Snowden, and is raising questions about if donations constitute aiding an enemy of the state. → Read More
Android is open and customizable. iOS is closed, designed for ease. But iPhone users are maturing, demanding more personalization, and Apple might give it to them at WWDC. At D11, Tim Cook said “I think you will see us open up more in the future, but not to the degree that we put the customer at risk of having a bad experience.” Here we’ll look at some Android options Apple could unlock for… → Read More
Facebook’s empire was built on photo tags and sharing, but it’s a grueling process many neglect. Luckily, new Facebook patents give it tech to continuously capture video whenever your camera is open, rank and surface the best images, and auto-tag them with people, places, and businesses. They tease a future where pattern, facial, and audio recognition identify what you’re seeing for easy sharing. → Read More
Snapchat is aggressively recruiting sales people from Stanford as well as USC for its impending debut of a monetization scheme, we’ve discovered. Meanwhile it’s raising $100 million at a valuation as high as $1 billion to pay them, as well as buy more servers and hire other talent to power its rapidly growing self-destructing messaging app, sources say. → Read More
Somewhere on the dance floor, she vanished. It would have a been no problem, except her smartphone was so large she left it at coat check. In the pursuit of a big, beautiful screen, she’d sacrificed why people carry phones in the first place. We had no way to find her in the massive nightclub, and we never saw her again. → Read More
The NSA may have wanted full firehoses of data from Google, Facebook and other tech giants, but the companies attempted to protect innocent users from monitoring via compliance systems that segregated data before securely handing it over as required by law, according to individuals familiar with the systems used by the tech companies targeted by PRISM. → Read More
“Direct Access” didn’t mean no access. “Back door” didn’t mean no door. “Only in accordance with the law” didn’t mean PRISM is illegal. And you didn’t need to have heard of a codename to have participated. Larry, Zuck, you didn’t spell out your denials of the NSA’s data spying program in plain English, and now we know why. You were obligated to help the government in its spying, but were muzzled. → Read More
Want to check out Instagrams from celebrities, artists, brands, or specific topics without cluttering your main feed? Instafeed’s free iOS app lets you build and browse custom feeds of Instagram accounts or enjoy pre-curated feeds in a bunch of categories. → Read More
Mark Zuckerberg and Joe Green’s controversial political advocacy group FWD.us started getting the public involved today with its new Speak Up campaign that calls you and connects you to your senator to show your support for immigration reform. Until now, the only way people could participate in FWD.us was by signing up to volunteer later or sharing the group’s messages. → Read More
Matthew Keys is getting back into the news game. He’s currently previewing the beta of his new worldwide breaking news site Matthewkeyslive.com until the end of Philadelphia Mayor Nutter’s press briefing on a local building collapse. The site focuses on delivering facts fast, and features Keys pulling in news from Twitter, App.net, local news affiliates, and video feeds while adding his commentary → Read More
Facebook’s board of directors and stockholders will convene on June 11th, and anyone will be able to virtually sit in as Facebook today announced it will webcast its first stockholder’s meeting. The move will likely set a precedent for webcasting future Facebook stockholders meetings, similar to how Google does, but in contrast to Apple’s un-streamed assemblies. → Read More
TechCrunch is serious about covering Asia Pacific. So we’re holding a TechCrunch meetup today after the Echelon conference where you can connect with TechCrunch writers and teach us about the region’s startup ecosystems. It’s from 6pm-8pm today, Tuesday June 4th at MOA New Zealand Bar, 5 Changi Business Park Central 1, Singapore City. → Read More
Facebook confirms that Facebook Messages experienced a limited outage today. It prevented some users from sending or receiving messages on both the web and mobile for 90 minutes, but chat is back at full-strength as of 7:30pm PST. The outage comes at an inconvenient time as Facebook is seeing increasing competition in the messaging space from Google and mobile-first startups. → Read More
After weeks of rumors, Facebook has just signed a ten year lease to move its New York office into a new, nearly 100,000 sq ft office over two floors at 770 Broadway, Manhattan. The interior will be designed by famed architect Frank Gehry who is masterminding its Menlo Park Headquarters expansion. Facebook NY’s engineering, design, marketing, sales, and comms teams will move there in early 2014. → Read More
AOL began to shut down its AOL Music properties and comic books site in April, but tomorrow it will announce it’s sold music sites The BoomBox, The Boot and Noisecreep, plus Comics Alliance to Townsquare Media Group, the Connecticut-based radio station owner that acquired the MOG Music network of blogs last year. → Read More
Sources confirm Facebook will test the option to send private messages from its website’s homepage status composer to increase messaging rates. It will also help Facebook compete with Google, whose web chat presence is strong, and just combined its Gmail, Google+, and mobile chat systems into Hangouts. It’s a risky move, as users could accidentally post private messages as status updates. → Read More
Starting the week of June 3rd, tomorrow, Yahoo is discontinuing Mail Classic. It’s requiring all Mail users to switch to the new version and accept a TOS/Privacy Policy update that lets it scan emails to “deliver product features, relevant advertising, and abuse protection”. You can opt out of the ads, but if you don’t want to be scanned, you have to ditch Yahoo Mail. → Read More
No automated system can identify what will offend people. What some humans find disgusting, others find controversial, and others still find funny. Computers just don’t understand. That caused trouble for Facebook this week when women’s activism groups got advertisers to boycott after the social network failed to suspend accounts accused of publishing hate speech. → Read More
Desperate to make its homescreen replacement Home seem less invasive, Facebook is advertising that you can temporarily deactivate it and use your HTC First or other Android phone as normal. The fact that Home replaces your widgets and app folders has been a core complaint. Facebook vows to fix that, but until then it’s reminding people they can leave Home for stock Android or their old launcher. → Read More
Ryan Sarver, who joined Twitter four years ago and is currently its director of platform, announced today he’ll be leaving the company on June 28th, and has “no plans but rest”. Fittingly, he announced his departure in a series of tweets seen below. → Read More
Amidst widespread criticism, Mark Zuckerberg’s political advocacy group FWD.us gained some momentum today as it announced Steven Chen and Barry Diller have signed on as financial backers. Chen was a co-founder of YouTube, and Diller is the chairman of IAC/InterActiveCorp which owns About, Match, Newsweek and Vimeo. Diller and Chen, an immigrant himself, will fund campaigns for immigration reform. → Read More
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