Two years after Vine’s co-founder Dom Hofmann announced he was building a successor to the short-form video app, today Byte makes its debut on iOS and Android. Byte lets you…
Media & Entertainment
Yo Facebook & Instagram, stop showing Stories reruns
4:55 pm PST • January 22, 2020
If I watch a Story cross-posted from Instagram to Facebook on either of the apps, it should appear as “watched” at the back of the Stories row on the other…
Media & Entertainment
TechCrunch’s Top 10 investigative reports from 2019
6:30 am PST • January 19, 2020
Facebook spying on teens, Twitter accounts hijacked by terrorists, and sexual abuse imagery found on Bing and Giphy were amongst the ugly truths revealed by TechCrunch’s investigating reporting in 2019.…
Featured Article
Instagram drops IGTV button, but only 1% downloaded the app
At most, 7 million of Instagram’s 1 billion-plus users have downloaded its standalone IGTV app in the 18 months since launch. And now, Instagram’s main app is removing the annoying orange IGTV button from its home page in what feels like an admission of lackluster results. For reference, TikTok received 1.15 billion downloads in the…
7:35 am PST • January 18, 2020
Featured Article
Marijuana delivery giant Eaze may go up in smoke
The first cannabis startup to raise big money in Silicon Valley is in danger of burning out. TechCrunch has learned that pot delivery middleman Eaze has seen unannounced layoffs, and its depleted cash reserves threaten its ability to make payroll or settle its AWS bill. Eaze was forced to raise a bridge round to keep…
1:07 pm PST • January 16, 2020
Not the city, the $57 million-funded cryptocurrency custodian startup. When someone wants to keep safe tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin, Ethereum or other coins, they put…
Security
Instagram tests Direct Messaging on web where encryption fails
9:49 am PST • January 14, 2020
Instagram will finally let you chat from your web browser, but the launch contradicts Facebook’s plan for end-to-end encryption in all its messaging apps. Today Instagram began testing Direct Messages…
Seventy-five-million-dollar-funded legal services startup Atrium doesn’t want to be the next company to implode as the tech industry tightens its belt and businesses chase margins instead of growth via unsustainable…
Media & Entertainment
Instagram adds Boomerang effects as TikTok looms
12:53 pm PST • January 10, 2020
TikTok has spawned countless memes formats from its creative effects, challenging Instagram for the filtered video crown. Now nearly five years after launching Boomerang, Instagram’s back-and-forth video loop maker is…
Featured Article
Zuckerberg ditches annual challenges, but needs cynics to fix 2030
Mark Zuckerberg won’t be spending 2020 focused on wearing ties, learning Mandarin or just fixing Facebook. “Rather than having year-to-year challenges, I’ve tried to think about what I hope the world and my life will look in 2030,” he wrote today on Facebook. As you might have guessed, though, Zuckerberg’s vision for an improved planet…
11:35 am PST • January 9, 2020
Media & Entertainment
Twitter’s new reply blockers could let Trump hide critics
12:22 pm PST • January 8, 2020
What if politicians could only display Twitter replies from their supporters while stopping everyone else from adding their analysis to the conversation? That’s the risk of Twitter’s upcoming Conversation Participants…
Pitch the wrong reporter or publication, and your story won’t see the light of day. Before you start seeking press, you’ll need to look for reporters who have reach, respect…
TikTok parent company ByteDance has built technology to let you insert your face into videos starring someone else. TechCrunch has learned that ByteDance has developed an unreleased feature using life-like…
Featured Article
How to tell if your startup deserves press coverage
Tech reporters’ inboxes are filled with garbage pitches from misguided founders who assume that the smallest milestone warrants a write-up. Founders dream of seeing their company’s name in headlines without knowing how that might help or hurt them. But with the proper intentions, strategy and timing, they can score press that makes their imagined future…
12:37 pm PST • January 2, 2020
Media & Entertainment
Snapchat will launch Bitmoji TV, a personalized cartoon show
6:26 pm PST • December 28, 2019
Snapchat’s most popular yet under-exploited feature is finally getting the spotlight in 2020. Starting in February with a global release, your customizable Bitmoji avatar will become the star of a…
Hardware
Facebook is building an operating system so it can ditch Android
8:15 am PST • December 19, 2019
Facebook doesn’t want its hardware like Oculus or its augmented reality glasses to be at the mercy of Google because they rely on its Android operating system. That’s why Facebook…
Media & Entertainment
Snackpass snags $21M to let you earn friends free takeout
6:58 am PST • December 19, 2019
“We were in the back washing blenders so they could keep taking Snackpass orders,” recalls co-founder and CEO Kevin Tan. The team from order-ahead food startup Snackpass was willing to…
Media & Entertainment
Spotify prototypes Tastebuds to revive social music discovery
9:59 am PST • December 18, 2019
Spotify is prototyping a new way to see what friends have been listening to, called “Tastebuds.” Despite how discovering music is inherently social, Spotify has no features for directly interacting…
Featured Article
Alchemy is secretly fixing blockchain’s node nightmare
The top cryptocurrency companies have quietly begun to outsource their infrastructure problems to a tiny stealth startup. It’s called Alchemy. Today it’s making the big public reveal of its technology that could help developers finally build the killer use case atop Bitcoin or Ethereum. If the operating system connected computers and software, and if browsers…
4:00 am PST • December 17, 2019
Media & Entertainment
Instagram hides false content behind warnings, except for politicians
1:51 pm PST • December 16, 2019
Instagram is giving politicians the same free rein to spread misinformation as its parent company Facebook. Instagram is expanding its limited fact-checking test in the U.S. from May and will…
Media & Entertainment
Robinhood lets you invest as little as 1 cent in any stock
7:00 am PST • December 12, 2019
One share of Amazon stock costs more than $1,700, locking out less-wealthy investors. So to continue its quest to democratize stock trading, Robinhood is launching fractional share trading this week.…
If you want to win on Wall Street, Yahoo Finance is insufficient but Bloomberg Terminal costs a whopping $24,000 per year. That’s why Atom Finance built a free tool designed…
Fintech
Airbnb invests as Zeus corporate housing raises $55M at $205M
8:35 am PST • December 9, 2019
As Airbnb absorbs more and more of the demand for housing, it’s exploring how to monetize opportunities beyond vacation rentals. A marketplace for longer-term corporate housing could be a huge…
Snapchat is preparing to launch a big new feature that uses your selfies to replace the faces of people in videos you can then share. It’s essentially a simplified way…
Media & Entertainment
300M-user Imgur launches Melee, a gaming meme app
6:32 am PST • December 5, 2019
Ten years after its debut, 300-million-monthly-user Imgur is one of the last massively popular yet unpersonalized home pages on the internet. Because everyone sees the same upvoted posts when they…
Media & Entertainment
Apple Music dives deeper into concert streaming with Billie Eilish
5:49 pm PST • December 4, 2019
As music streaming apps struggle to differentiate, Apple is making concert video a more central part of its strategy with tonight’s big Billie Eilish show at its HQ’s Steve Jobs…
Instagram is done playing dumb about users’ ages. After nine years, Instagram is finally embracing more responsibility to protect underage kids from the problems with social media. It will now…
Media & Entertainment
Instagram still doesn’t age-check kids. That must change.
3:50 pm PST • December 3, 2019
Instagram dodges child safety laws. By not asking users their age upon signup, it can feign ignorance about how old they are. That way, it can’t be held liable for…
Instagram is hiding Like counts to make people feel better. But what if you’re curious, competitive or just petty? Now you can re-embrace the popularity contest by installing the Socialinsider…
Who could have guessed an adorable, big-eyed baby Star Wars alien would have generated a ton of demand for toys? Apparently not Disney, which today started to sell merchandise based…
