The Latest from Josh Constine
Apple acquires talking Barbie voicetech startup PullString
Apple has just bought up the talent it needs to make talking toys a part of Siri, HomePod, and its voice strategy. Apple has acquired PullString, also known as ToyTalk, according to Axios’ Dan P
First look at Twitter’s Snapchatty new Camera feature
Twitter has been secretly developing an enhanced camera feature that’s accessible with a swipe from the home screen and allows you to overlay captions on photos, videos, and Live broadcasts befo
Instagram is now testing a web version of Direct messages
Insta-chat addicts, rejoice. You could soon be trading memes and emojis from your computer. Instagram is internally testing a web version of Instagram Direct messaging that lets people chat without th
Medium buys Bay Area mag The Bold Italic to add to its paywall
Medium is seeking to juice up its premium subscription content in its home market with the acquisition of The Bold Italic. The 10-year-old online culture magazine will go behind the $5 per month Mediu
Apple fails to block porn & gambling ‘Enterprise’ apps
Facebook and Google were far from the only developers openly abusing Apple’s Enterprise Certificate program meant for companies offering employee-only apps. A TechCrunch investigation uncovered a do
Reddit confirms $300M Series D led by China’s Tencent at $3B value
Last week TechCrunch reported that Reddit was raising $150 million from Chinese tech giant Tencent and up to $150 million more in a Series D that would value the company at $2.7 billion pre-money or $
Sean Parker’s govtech Brigade breaks up, Pinterest acqhires engineers
Facebook co-founder Sean Parker bankrolled Brigade to get out the vote and stimulate civic debate, but after five years and little progress the startup is splitting up, multiple sources confirm to Tec
The plot to revive Mt. Gox and repay victims’ Bitcoin
It was the Lehman Brothers of blockchain: 850,000 Bitcoin disappeared when cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox imploded in 2014 after a series of hacks. The incident cemented the industry’s reputati
Facebook will reveal who uploaded your contact info for ad targeting
Facebook’s crack down on non-consensual ad targeting last year will finally produce results. In March, TechCrunch discovered Facebook planned to require advertisers to pledge that they had permi
Snapchat shares soar as it stops losing users, shrinks losses in Q4
Snapchat isn’t growing again, but at least it didn’t hemorrhage any more users in its Q4 earnings report. The company stayed flat at 186 million daily users after falling from 191 million
Snapchat’s Android usage keeps falling but rebuild tests well
Snap has finally begun publicly testing the engineering overhaul of its slow and buggy Android app that for years has cost Snapchat users. Promising early results and reduction in app startup time cou
Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3 billion valuation
Reddit is raising $150 million to $300 million to keep the front page of the internet running, multiple sources tell TechCrunch. The forthcoming Series D round is said to be led by Chinese tech giant
Facebook now lets everyone unsend messages for 10 minutes
Facebook has finally made good on its promise to let users unsend chats after TechCrunch discovered Mark Zuckerberg had secretly retracted some of his Facebook Messages from recipients. Today Facebook
Account linking could make Instagram the heir to Facebook Login
Teens’ aversion to Facebook jeopardizes not only the company’s feed ad revenue, but its dominance as an identity provider. The Facebook Login platform keeps people tied to the social netwo
We dismantle Facebook’s memo defending its ‘Research’
Facebook published an internal memo today trying to minimize the morale damage of TechCrunch’s investigation that revealed it’d been paying people to suck in all their phone data. Attained
Apple reactivates Facebook’s employee apps after punishment for Research spying
After TechCrunch caught Facebook violating Apple’s employee-only app distribution policy to pay people for all their phone data, Apple invalidated the social network’s Enterprise Certific
Kleiner Perkins gets back to early-stage with its $600M 18th fund
“KP used to be a small team doing hands-on company building. We’re moving away from being this institution with multiple products and really just focusing on early-stage venture capital,&#
Twitter cuts off API access to follow/unfollow spam dealers
Notification spam ruins social networks, diluting the real human interaction. Desperate to gain an audience, users pay services to rapidly follow and unfollow tons of people in hopes that some will fo
Facebook plans new products as Instagram Stories hits 500M users/day
Roughly half of Instagram’s 1 billion users now use Instagram Stories every day. That 500 million daily user count is up from 400 million in June 2018. 2 million advertisers are now buying Stori
Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach
Facebook managed to beat Wall Street’s estimates in its Q4 earnings amidst a constant beatdown in the press. Facebook hit 2.32 billion monthly users, up 2.2 percent from 2.27 billion last quarte