Josh Constine
Josh Constine is a technology journalist who specializes in deep analysis of social products. He is currently an Editor-At-Large for TechCrunch.
Previously, Constine was the Lead Writer of Inside Facebook, where he covered Facebook product changes, privacy, ads, ecommerce, games, and music technology.
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.
Josh Constine is an experienced public speaker, and has done on-stage inteviews with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston, SoundCloud CEO Alex Ljung, and Senator Cory Booker. He’s been quoted by The Wall Street Journal, CNN Money, The Atlantic, BBC World Magazine, Slate, and more, plus has been featured on television on NBC and Fox News. Constine is available for speaking gigs.
[Disclosures: Josh Constine advised a college friend’s social location-sharing startup codenamed ‘Signal’ that was based in San Francisco before dissolving in 2015. This advising role was cleared with AOL and TechCrunch’s editors. Constine’s cousin Darren Lachtman is the founder of Niche, which connects social media stars to sponsorships from brands, and was acquired by Twitter. Constine has personal relationships stemming from college housing with founders at Skybox Imaging (now Terra Bella), Hustle, Snapchat, and Robinhood. Constine occasionally does paid speaking engagements at conferences funded by companies he does not cover. Constine owns a small position in Ethereum cryptocurrency.]
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Latest from Josh Constine
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Facebook drops no-vote stock plan, Zuck will sell shares to fund philanthropy
Mark Zuckerberg has gotten so rich that he can fund his philanthropic foundation and retain voting control without Facebook having to issue a proposed non-voting class of stock that faced shareholder resistance. Today Facebook announced that it’s withdrawn its plan to issue Class C no-vote stock and has resolved the shareholder lawsuit seeking to block the corporate governance overhaul. Read More
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How tbh hit #1 by turning anonymity positive
The innovation of tbh, teen-speak for To Be Honest, was getting rid of the typing. Whether asking or answering questions, open text fields invite abuse when combined with anonymity. Even an innocuous question like “What do you think of me?” can lead to mean-spirited comments if responders don’t have their names, and therefore any accountability, attached. Read More
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Thoughts on Facebook’s 9 plans to curb election interference
Election meddling is Facebook’s next adversary, and it’s got a plan to attack it just like it did with fake news. Solutions to both these scourges come too late to prevent tampering that may have aided Donald Trump winning the presidency — but at least Facebook is owning up to the problem, working with the government and starting to self-regulate. Read More
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Freight startup Flexport soars from ‘unsexy’ to $800M valuation
Flexport handles the boring logistics of a trillion-dollar business: the transport of shipping containers around the world. Because the work of freight forwarding seemed so bland, it was long ignored by the tech world. But digitizing the paperwork let Flexport speed up shipping so clients keep less inventory on hand while never running out. Read More
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Polly’s teen polling app piggybacks on Snapchat
Snapchat doesn’t technically have a developer platform, but that hasn’t stopped other startups from taking advantage of its new feature for attaching links to your Snaps and Stories. Sarahah was the first, allowing people to ask fellow Snappers for open-ended anonymous feedback. But the problem is that those requests could be met with cyberbullying. Polly is a new teen… Read More
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Facebook vows to manually review ad targeting after ‘Jew-Haters’ scandal
Facebook failed to foresee how turning user-written interests and employer information from profiles into ad targeting options could turn offensive. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has apologized for the situation, and announced that Facebook will now manually review all ad targeting options. Read More
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Pymetrics attacks discrimination in hiring with AI and recruiting games
Identify the traits of your top performing employees and hire people like them, but without the discrimanatory bias of traditional recruiting. That’s the promise of Pymetrics, an artificial intelligence startup that today announced $8 million in new funding onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF. Read More
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Snapchat’s new partners attach instant apps and games to ads
Snap wants its ads to open to something interesting rather than a boring mobile website. Today Snap announced 14 new ad Creative Partners that will help build custom games, interactive videos, gyroscope-powered epxeriences, lead generation campaigns, and pre-loaded Instant Apps as destinations for Snapchat ads. They’ll also help connect advertisers to influencers, despite Snapchat… Read More
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See what Facebook ads you actually clicked in ‘Recent Ad Activity’
You might think you’re impervious to Facebook’s ads, but you probably do get seduced every once in a while. But because ads aren’t always permanently available anywhere, it can be impossible to find a Facebook ad that led somewhere you want to revisit. Now Facebook has a solution called Recent Ad Activity for when (if) you click an ad and want to see it again. Read More
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Subscription art crowdfunder Patreon confirms $60M fundraise
Patreon upgrades content creation from a passion to a profession by paying artists 95% of subscription payments from fans instead of 55% of skimpy ad revenue like Facebook and YouTube. Now Patreon itself is getting paid with today’s official announcement of the big Series C funding round TechCrunch broke news of last week. Patreon has raised $60 million led by Chris Paik at Thrive… Read More
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Facebook nabs Change.org COO Jennifer Dulski to lead Groups
Facebook is serious about using Groups to propel its new mission to “bring the world closer together.” That’s why it’s made a big-name hire for the product leader for the Facebook Groups team. Former Change.org COO and president Jennifer Dulski will take the role. Read More
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Wificoin lets you buy hotspot access with cryptocurrency
It’s infuriating to see a public wifi connection you’re not allowed to use, such as the ones from mobile carriers like T-Mobile and ISPs like Comcast. If you’re not a subscriber, there’s often no way to pay for one-time access. But TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2017 Hackathon project Wificoin wants to help you buy or earn access to hotspots nearby. Here’s how it works. Read More
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Instagram now autoplays video sound once turned on until you close the app
Autoplay audio can be annoying or convenient depending on the situation. Luckily Instagram has found a happy medium between defaulting autoplay video sound on or off. This weekend TechCrunch spotted that some Instagram videos in the feed were autoplaying with audio. Now Instagram has confirmed to us “this new update rolled out recently” and here’s how it works for all… Read More
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Patreon raises big round at ~$450M valuation to get artists paid
In an era where art is shared and streamed for free, Patreon offers new hope for turning content creation into a career. Illustrators, comedians, game makers, and musicians use Patreon to let fans pay a monthly subscription fee for special access to their work. In exchange, Patreon takes only a tiny 5% cut. With 50,000 creators and 1 million subscribers on board paying an average of $12 per… Read More
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Facebook Messenger Day hits 70M daily users as the app reaches 1.3B monthlies
Facebook has finally revealed how its Snapchat Stories clone is doing, though it’s not seeing the same explosive growth as Instagram or WhatApp’s versions. Messenger Day now sees 70 million daily users posting and viewing photos and video slideshows six months after launch. Read More
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Facebook ‘Snooze’ button temporarily hides people in your feed
Sick of a friend’s non-stop vacation photos? Bored of hearing about some business Page’s big launch? One of your groups won’t shut up about their upcoming get-together? Now Facebook has a Snooze button that lets you temporarily unfollow friends, Pages or Groups for 24 hours, 7 days or 30 days. Read More
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Watch this robot rock band destroy their instruments
What happens when a mad scientist’s musicbots rebel against their own precision? You get “Automatica”, the latest video from Nigel Stanford, who scored 13 million views controlling water, fire, and lightning with sound in his viral hit “Cymatics”. Stanford tells us “I’m trying to create an online version of Synethsesia – the brain disorder… Read More
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Facebook’s Eddie O’Neil takes over Platform as Deb Liu grows Marketplace
There’s a new czar running Facebook’s developer platform tools. Because Facebook’s classifieds feature Marketplace is growing, it will now command the full attention of Deb Liu, who previously ran Platform. She’s now formally the VP of Marketplace. Eddie O’Neil, who was a director of product management after coming from Salesforce engineering, will be the new head… Read More
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Facebook tests Bonfire group video chat as app and in Messenger
Facebook has been quietly testing a new standalone group video chat app, called Bonfire, which allows up to eight friends to engage in conversation as well as use special effects, similar to those you’d find in apps like Instagram and Snapchat. But upon hands-on testing, TechCrunch has learned Bonfire also lets users join chats straight from Messenger without downloading Bonfire itself. Read More
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Facebook bans monetization of violence, porn, drugs, hate
Facebook wants content creators to earn money, but not at the expense of the family friendly social network it’s built, or the integrity of its advertising clients. So today Facebook established formal rules for what kinds of content can’t be monetized with Branded Content, Instant Articles, and mid-roll video Ad Breaks. These include depictions of death or incendiary social… Read More
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