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Facebook acquires anonymous teen compliment app tbh, will let it run
Facebook wants tbh to be its next Instagram. Today, Facebook announced it’s acquiring positivity-focused polling startup tbh and will allow it to operate somewhat independently with its own brand. Read More
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Spanish bank launches money-transfer app focused initially on US-Mexico remittances
BBVA, Spain’s second-largest bank that snatched up mobile banking startup Simple for $117 million back in 2014, is now entering the mobile money transfer business with today’s launch of a new app called Tuyyo. The app, which is available on both iOS and Android, is focused on the $73 billion annual market for remittances to Latin America and the Caribbean from the U.S. However… Read More
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We Heart It says a data breach affected over 8 million accounts, included emails and passwords
We Heart It, an image-sharing site used by 40 million teens as of a couple of years ago, is informing users their personal data may have been compromised. The company was alerted to a possible security breach last week that involved over 8 million accounts, it said on Friday. The breach took place a few years ago and includes email addresses, usernames and encrypted passwords for We Heart… Read More
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Mobile phone companies appear to be providing your number and location to anyone who pays
You may remember that last year, Verizon was punished by the FCC for injecting information into its subscribers’ traffic that allowed them to be tracked without their consent. That practice appears to be alive and well despite being disallowed in a ruling last March: companies appear to be able to request your number, location, and other details from your mobile provider quite easily. Read More
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User outcry prompts OnePlus to step down its excessive data collection
Earlier this week, it was revealed that independent phone maker OnePlus was collecting all manner of information from phones running its OxygenOS — without telling users, of course. Caught red-handed, the company is backing off from the opt-out data collection program, giving users a choice up front instead of buried in the options. Read More
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Fandango is acquiring rival online ticketer MovieTickets.com
A consolidation in the advance movie ticketing space is happening today, with Fandango’s announcement that it’s acquiring rival MovieTickets.com for an undisclosed sum. The deal, which is expected to close before year-end, will help Fandango expand its international footprint, particularly in Latin America, as well as bring new cinemas to its ticketing platform. Read More
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PartyWith’s new app is part event-finder, part friend-finder
I can’t quite wrap my head around the need for a dedicated app for travelers wanting to meet locals to hang out with — doesn’t this just happen naturally? But that, at least in part, is the premise behind today’s official launch of PartyWith, a revamped version of the app previously known as Party with a Local. Read More
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Omnyway raises $12.75M to connect advertising and mobile commerce
Omnyway announced today that it has raised $12.75 million in Series A funding. Previously known as OmnyPay, Omnyway has built technology around what it calls “augmented digital commerce” — basically, helping retailers stay connected to consumers through their mobile phone during the in-store shopping process. Read More
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Facebook Stories open to Pages, bringing brands to the ghost town
No one’s posting to Facebook Stories. Only eight of my 2,800 friends have Stories up right now, and three came from the new “cross-post from Instagram Stories” feature. It’s slow adoption for a feature cloned from Snapchat that’s proven wildly popular elsewhere, and lives prominently at the top of perhaps the world’s most-used app. Read More
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Games account for over half of the 3M+ ARKit-powered app downloads, 62% of revenue
ARKit, Apple’s augmented reality framework that CEO Tim Cook recently likened to being as “dramatic” a development as the App Store itself, has now been installed more than 3 million times worldwide through a host of ARKit-powered apps and games, according to a new report out today from Sensor Tower. Read More
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Toonstar lets you bring cartoon characters to life thanks to facial recognition
John Attanasio, CEO of Toonstar, said his goal is to create “a new Cartoon Network.” Attanasio said the key to Toonstar’s approach is to create animated content that’s “mobile, snackable, interactive.” The startup’s iOS app allows users to customize cartoon characters and then animate them using their own facial expressions. The resulting cartoons can… Read More
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Spotify launches an app for artists with real-time streaming data, audience demographics
In the music streaming era, artists want to know how their music is being discovered, who’s listening, where, how many have streamed their release and what else their fans are into, among other things. Today, Spotify is releasing an app for artists that aims to answer these questions, while also giving artists a way to update their profile and connect with listeners while on the go. Read More
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Facebook ‘3D posts’ let you play with VR objects in News Feed
Facebook wants to let you create virtual objects in its Oculus Medium sculpting platform or Facebook Spaces VR hangouts and then share them with friends who don’t have a VR headset. Today at Oculus Connect 4, Facebook previewed 3D posts, a new type of News Feed post where users can grab, spin and interact with a 3D object to look at it from all angles. Read More
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U.S. consumers are spending 10 hours per year in shopping apps
Mobile shopping is on the rise, with U.S. consumers now spending nearly 50 minutes in shopping apps per month, or 10 hours per year, according to a new report out this morning from App Annie. Digital-first shopping apps, like those from Amazon, Etsy, Wish and others, are also growing more quickly in terms of total sessions and monthly usage, compared to shopping apps from traditional… Read More
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Zenefits rolls out a performance management tool
When we last saw Zenefits, the company essentially handed off one of its initial core selling points — insurance brokerage — to partners. Since that rebrand rolled out, Zenefits seems to be following the sort of drip-drip-drip of updates that many startups trying to create a sort of “home” for a core employee experience utilize. That continues today with the launch… Read More
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Facebook seriously needs its own Bitmoji
Your Facebook profile used to be the online version of “you”. But over the past year, Bitmoji has usurped Facebook to become the preferred way to share your identity over the web. The Facebook profile assembles a collection of text and real-world photos into a fixed set of poses, making it more of a snapshot of the offline you ported into the digital realm rather than a vision of… Read More
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Twitter launches ‘Happening Now’ to showcase tweets about events, starting with sports
Twitter is today releasing a new feature called “Happening Now” aimed to make its service more accessible to newcomers by highlighting groups of tweets about a topic, beginning with sports, before expanding to other areas like entertainment and breaking news. If this sounds similar to Twitter’s existing Moments feature….well, it is. Moments, too, offers a way to learn… Read More
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Twitterrific returns to Mac as a customizable Twitter client, but at twice the price of Tweetbot
After raising upwards of $100,000 via a Kickstarter campaign earlier this year, the team at Iconfactory has brought back one of the more popular third-party Twitter clients, Twitterrific for Mac. Effectively abandoned years ago when Iconfactory shifted its focus to mobile, the Kickstarter was meant to establish demand for a Mac app ahead of devoting developer resources to building… Read More
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