Sarah Perez

Consumer News Editor, TechCrunch

Sarah has worked as a reporter for TechCrunch since August 2011. She joined the company after having previously spent over three years at ReadWriteWeb. Prior to her work as a reporter, Sarah worked in I.T. across a number of industries, including banking, retail and software.

Sarah Perez

Unlike ChatGPT, Claude did not become a new App Store hit.

Anthropic’s Claude sees tepid reception on iOS compared with ChatGPT’s debut

The social network has announced an updated version of its app that lets you offer feedback about its algorithmic feed so you can better customize it.

Bluesky now lets you personalize main Discover feed using new controls

The Twitter for Android client was “a demo app that Google had created and gave to us,” says Particle co-founder and ex-Twitter employee Sara Beykpour.

Google built some of the first social apps for Android, including Twitter and others

The newly announced “Public Content Policy” will now join Reddit’s existing privacy policy and content policy to guide how Reddit’s data is being accessed and used by commercial entities and…

Reddit locks down its public data in new content policy, says use now requires a contract

Dating apps and other social friend-finders are being put on notice: Dating app giant Bumble is looking to make more acquisitions.

Bumble says it’s looking to M&A to drive growth

Private social networking is making a comeback. Gratitude Plus, a startup that aims to shift social media in a more positive direction, is expanding its wellness-focused, personal reflections journal to…

Gratitude Plus makes social networking positive, private and personal

Google has found a way to bring a variation of its clever “Circle to Search” gesture to iPhone users. The new interaction, launched in January, allows Android users to search…

Google brings a variation on ‘Circle to Search’ to iPhone users

Meta is rolling out an expanded set of generative AI tools for advertisers, after first announcing a set of AI features last October. Now, instead of only being able to…

Meta’s AI tools for advertisers can now create full new images, not just new backgrounds

Apple isn’t yet ready to unveil its broader AI strategy — it’s saving that for its Worldwide Developer Conference in June — but the tech giant did make sure to…

Apple highlights AI features, including M4 neural engine, at iPad event

X’s Premium subscribers will be able to read a summary of posts on X associated with each trending story featured on the For You tab in Explore.

X launches Stories, delivering news summarized by Grok AI

Despite spending more than $100 billion on R&D over the last five years, Apple isn’t planning to spin up too many new data centers to run or train AI models.

Three things we learned about Apple’s AI plans from its earnings

The new filing, along with Epic’s proposal, will help to inform Judge James Donato in a hearing scheduled on May 23 about what actions to take next to put Google’s…

Google dubs Epic’s demands from its antitrust win ‘unnecessary’ and ‘far beyond the scope’ of the verdict

Following various reports citing frustrated posts from users on Reddit, Spotify is quietly confirming the change.

Spotify quietly moves lyrics behind a paywall

TikTok is adding new ad products that will allow marketers to better control what sort of content their ads appear against.

TikTok expands its premium ad slots despite potential US ban

The newer format allows users to curate content from around the web and from Pinterest combined with images they optionally snap using their phone’s camera to express their style, interests…

Pinterest says its AI-powered collages are now more engaging than Pins

Google told TechCrunch that Flutter will have new updates to share at I/O this year.

Google lays off staff from Flutter, Dart and Python teams weeks before its developer conference

Since Elon Musk acquired Twitter in the fall of 2022, the market for Twitter alternatives has been saturated with would-be competitors ranging from smaller startups to open source apps to…

LinkedIn is the Twitter/X rival no one is talking about

Amazon has historically operated audiobook marketplace Audible as a separate entity, unconnected to the retailer’s broader goals and ambitions. Today, that’s changing a bit with the launch of a test…

Audible to test using Prime Video data for audiobook recommendations as Spotify competition heats up

The feature may be hidden from most users, either by design or because it’s only shown to users in a specific group, like testers or high spenders.

Screenshots suggest TikTok is circumventing Apple App Store commissions

Sam’s Club customers who pay either at a register or through the Scan & Go mobile app can now walk out of the store without having their purchases double-checked.

Sam’s Club’s AI-powered exit tech reaches 20% of stores

Whether or not Epic Games will be able to bring Fortnite to the iPhone and iPad as planned still remains to be seen.

Epic Games says it will bring Fortnite to iPad after EU dubs iPadOS a ‘gatekeeper’ under DMA

Biz Stone, a Twitter co-founder, is among those who have joined the board of directors of Mastodon’s new U.S. nonprofit, Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochko announced over the weekend. Mastodon’s service,…

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone joins board of Mastodon’s new US nonprofit

EyeEm, the Berlin-based photo-sharing community that exited last year to Spanish company Freepik after going bankrupt, is now licensing its users’ photos to train AI models. Earlier this month, the…

Photo-sharing community EyeEm will license users’ photos to train AI if they don’t delete them

AI may be inching its way into the newsroom, as outlets like Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, Gizmodo, VentureBeat, CNET and others have experimented with articles written by AI. But while most…

Curio raises funds for Rio, an ‘AI news anchor’ in an app

Apple’s App Store isn’t always as trustworthy as the company claims. The latest example comes from RockAuto, an auto parts dealer popular with home mechanics and other DIYers, which is…

Despite complaints, Apple hasn’t yet removed an obviously fake app pretending to be RockAuto

Meta’s move into the open social web, also known as the fediverse, is puzzling. Does the Facebook owner see open protocols as the future? Will it embrace the fediverse only…

Why Meta is looking to the fediverse as the future for social media

SkyBridge was among the recipients of a small distribution of $4,800 in grant funding from Bluesky, distributed across projects.

Bluesky backs a project that would let Mastodon apps, like Ivory, work with its network

With RevenueCat Billing, essentially a web SDK, developers can accept subscription payments from any website.

RevenueCat raises $12M Series C as it expands its subscription management to the web

Ghost, an open source rival to Substack’s newsletter platform, has confirmed it will this year officially join the fediverse — or the open social network of interconnected servers that includes…

Substack rival Ghost confirms it will join the fediverse in 2024

Amazon Music is now testing Maestro, an AI playlist generator, that lets U.S. customers on iOS and Android create playlists using spoken or written prompts.

Amazon Music follows Spotify with an AI playlist generator of its own, Maestro