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Wattpad takes ‘chat fiction’ beyond text with launch of Tap Originals
Chat fiction apps are among some of the most popular in the App Store, thanks to their highly engaged, largely teenage to young adult fan base who enjoy reading thrilling stories told in the form of text messages. Today, one competitor in this space, Wattpad, is rolling out an upgrade to its chat stories to differentiate its app from others, and further addict its readers. The company is… Read More
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Dropbox is reportedly inching closer to a potential IPO
Dropbox may be taking another step in its very slow shuffle toward an IPO, and is now working with Goldman Sachs to prepare documents that could be filed as soon as this year, according to a report by Bloomberg. The company is expected to hire Goldman Sachs as the lead advisor of the IPO process, according to the report. Read More
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Google’s cord cutter app YouTube TV reaches 2 million downloads
Approximately 2 million people have installed the YouTube TV app, Google’s live TV service aimed at a younger generation of cord cutters, as well as those who never signed up for traditional pay TV in the first place. That download figure comes from app store analytics firms Sensor Tower and App Annie, which both also noted that installs are evenly split between iOS and Android devices. Read More
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Timekettle’s WT2 real-time translation earpieces enable ordinary conversation across language barriers
At TechCrunch’s event in Shenzhen last month, we had a chance to test out the WT2, a clever and ambitious device from startup TimeKettle. It’s a pair of wireless earpieces; each person in a multilingual conversation wears one, and they translate what’s said into the language spoken by each participant. Essentially it’s a Babel fish, though admittedly a rough draft of one. Read More
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Twitter is having a very bad day
Twitter reported its second-quarter earnings today, and it did not go over well. As a result, the stock is down more than 12% in trading today — which is a very Twitter thing to happen, so to speak. Here’s the chart, which could pretty much be summed up with a 😐: Today also wiped out most of the gains that it accrued year to date. Twitter’s last report was a rare… Read More
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BuzzFeed is getting into the smart appliance business with the Tasty One Top
Here’s a sentence I never expected to write: BuzzFeed is making its first smart appliance, the Tasty One Top, available for pre-order. It sounds a little weird for a digital media company to try to sell you a fancy hot plate, but this is part of BuzzFeed Product Labs, which was created last year following the acquisition of e-commerce startup Scroll. The team’s goal is to… Read More
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We probably still need some more numbers for this Very Important Twitter Chart
I’m reviewing the transcript in my notes of Twitter’s second-quarter earnings call — which definitely did not go well, with the stock crashing more than 10% — and it seems like Twitter is beating the drum very hard on its daily active user growth. The company is regularly referring to double-digit growth in its DAU count year-over-year and that it is stressing DAUs as… Read More
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Twitter’s user growth goes nowhere and the stock is collapsing
The small nice-ish story Twitter had going for itself for the past few quarters was that, at the very least, its monthly active users were growing quarter-over-quarter. While MAUs might not be the right number to look at these days, for better or worse it’s one of the core metrics that Twitter is judged on for now — and that didn’t pan out when it reported its earnings today… Read More
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LG says its flagship G6 smartphone isn’t selling as well as expected
LG’s mobile business is in a sticky patch after the company admitted its flagship LG G6 smartphone hasn’t sold as well as expected. LG Electronics itself posted a business-wide operating income of KRW 664.1 billion (USD 588.2 million) on overall revenue KRW 14.55 trillion (USD 12.89 billion). While LG’s operating income rose by 14 percent year-on-year to outpace a four… Read More
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WhatsApp hits 1B daily users while its Snapchat clone rockets to 250M
Facebook is winning the race to bring Snapchat’s Stories format to the rest of the world before its originator. WhatsApp Status, its version of Snapchat Stories, now has 250 million daily active users. That’s despite it being relegated to a secondary dedicated tab in the app, opposed to being front and center on the home screen like Instagram Stories which also now has over 250… Read More
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Facebook beats in Q2 with $9.32B revenue despite slower user growth
Facebook’s hot streak continued with a strong Q2 2017 earnings report. It earned $9.32 billion and $1.32 in GAAP actual EPS, compared to estimates of $9.2 billion revenue and $1.13 EPS. Revenue growth was 44.7% year-over-year, compared to 59% in Q2 2016, indicating that revenue growth is slowing, in line with Facebook’s warning to investors that it was running out of space to show… Read More
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Report: Xiaomi sales climb but Huawei remains China’s top smartphone brand
China’s Xiaomi, once the world’s highest valued tech startup, is getting over a disappointing two years with a notable spike in sales in its homeland during the second quarter of 2017. That’s according a new report from analyst firm Canalys, which estimates that Xiaomi, which was valued at $45 billion at the end of 2014, shipped 15 million phones during the quarter to… Read More
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Blue Apron COO Matthew Wadiak steps down in post-IPO shakeup
Blue Apron announced several changes at the executive level today, including co-founder Matthew Wadiak stepping down from the COO role to become a senior advisor. Wadiak’s changing role comes after a painful IPO for the meal kit delivery service, which first had to reduce its original IPO price and has since seen a significant drop in its share price. Read More
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Qualcomm opens its mobile chip deep learning framework to all
Mobile chip maker Qualcomm wants to enable deep learning-based software development on all kinds of devices, which is why it created the Neural Processing Engine (NPE) for its Snapdragon-series mobile processors. The NPE software development kit is now available to all via the Qualcomm Developer Network, which marks the first public release of the SDK, and opens up a lot of potential for… Read More
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Fleksy keyboard to get major reboot under ThingThing’s dev team
Third party keyboards might seem like an app fad blast from the recent past. But the smartphone keyboard space could be set for a shake up as long time player Fleksy gets a new team working full time on the app… Read More
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Vacation home pricing engine Beyond Pricing picks up a startup for nearby comparisons
While Airbnb may have started off the wave of renting out a room in your house periodically to travelers for some extra income, that industry has blown up to include a lot of other competitors like VRBO. That’s led to many vacation rental owners putting their homes on multiple sites, which has led to the emergence of startups like Beyond Pricing — which helps vacation home… Read More
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Facebook acquires Source3 to get content creators paid
Facebook is on the cusp of a big push to lure independent content creators to share their art through the News Feed. But it needs to prove it can help creators monetize their content without allowing piracy to run rampant. That’s why it’s acquired content rights management startup Source3, including its team and technology. Read More
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Google releases the final Android O developer preview
Google today launched the fourth and final developer preview of Android O, the latest version of its mobile operating system. As expected, there are no major changes in this release and, according to Google, the launch of Android O remains on track for later this summer. Given that Android Nougat was on a very similar schedule, I expect we’ll see a final release in August. Read More
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Apple just dropped iOS 11 beta 4 for developers
Apple just released a new beta of iOS 11 ahead of the final iOS 11 release in September. Things are still quite rough and I wouldn’t recommend installing the beta on a production device just yet. You don’t want to risk having your phone become useless. The beta 4 is only available if you’re a registered developer for now. While Apple also has a public beta program, the… Read More
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Amazon’s chat fiction app Rapids ties up with Amazon Studios with launch of ‘Signature Stories’
Today’s kids aren’t just reading books. They’re also tapping and playing with interactive stories on tablets as preschoolers, then delving into instant messaging-like chat fiction apps as teens. Amazon’s entry in this space, Amazon Rapids, was announced late last year as a way to bring this style of interactive fiction to readers in the 5 to 12 age range. The company… Read More
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