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Tinder Plus Will Launch On Monday
Tinder Plus, the dating app’s first step into the wonderful world of freemium monetization, will launch on Monday for $9.99, according to sources familiar with the matter. Tinder Plus includes at least one highly requested feature and a few others that are meant to add broader functionality to the service, which essentially boils down the usual online dating experience into a simple… Read More
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Storify Founders Leave For Open Source, Baby
They’ve got new tales to tell. After five years running Storify, which lets you collect social media updates into narrative timelines, co-founders Burt Herman and Xavier Damman are leaving the startup which was acquired by Livefyre in 2013. They’re passing the reins to several original Storify members, who will keep the service running. Herman’s plan is to focus on raising… Read More
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Vurb Is Crazy Enough To Fight Google
Google Search was not built for mobile. It’s all about lists of web pages, but the small screen is ruled by apps. That’s why if Google launched today, it might look a lot like Vurb…which did launch today. Vurb is a mobile search engine that pulls info from partnered apps like Yelp and Rotten Tomatoes, and deep-links you out to apps like Uber and Google Maps. Rather than send… Read More
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If You Think Tinder Needs More Cute Pets, BuzzFeed Has The App For You
Oh, BuzzFeed. Don’t ever change. The company just released what it says is its second ever mobile app, called Cute Or Not. As you might expect from the name, you’re asked to rate pets as (duh) cute or not, through a Tinder-style swiping interface. You can also upload photos of your own pets to see how they’re rated by other app users. Read More
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The Web: Headliner Or TV’s Supporting Actor?
Super Bowl XLIX was the most watched television show in U.S. history. It was also the most socialized Super Bowl ever measured, with 265 million Facebook posts, likes, and comments, and more than 28 million global tweets. Today’s TV viewer doesn’t just watch TV anymore — they scroll through Twitter and Facebook in real time, watch YouTube Videos, send Snapchats, and pin… Read More
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Twitter Finally Launches An Official WordPress Plug-In
There are hundreds upon hundreds of Twitter-related plug-ins for WordPress. Seriously, go look. And yet, in its nine years since launch, Twitter has never released an official plug-in to make WordPress and Twitter play friendly. Until today. Read More
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Designers Ditch Perfectionism For Instant Feedback With Wake
“How does this look?” That was a surprisingly difficult question to get an answer to until now. Today, Wake launches the private beta of its tool that lets design teams privately share their works in progress. Wake’s web and iOS interfaces make it super quick to post an image to a team’s Wake feed and get comments. Built by a former Facebook designer, Wake already… Read More
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Google Acquires Facebook Marketing Startup Toro
Toro, a startup that helps developers promote their apps on Facebook, just announced that it’s been acquired by Google. The company was originally known as Red Hot Labs, and it’s led by Amitt Mahajan and Joel Poloney. They previously co-founded MyMiniLife, which played a key role in the creation of FarmVille (and was acquired by Zynga). Read More
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Yo Tries To Make Itself Useful With Photo And Link Alerts From 150 Sources
“It was just a way to annoy your friends” Yo co-founder Or Arbel tells me. His minimalist messenger hit 3.5 million users at its peak thanks to the mainstream press’ sudden fascination with an app that only let you send people the word “Yo”. Most of those users quickly evaporated because Yo wasn’t very useful. Yet. But today Yo launches what Arbel says was… Read More
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Facebook’s Data Protection Practices Under Fresh Fire In Europe
Facebook is facing fresh criticism in Europe over data protection and the myriad smoke-and-mirrors methods it uses to obfuscate its gathering and processing of user data. A report commissioned by Belgium’s data protection authority has found Facebook’s revised privacy policy, last updated in January, violates European consumer protection law in a number of ways. Read More
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Funnely Builds Smarter Facebook Ad Campaigns For Online Stores
If you run an e-commerce business, Facebook can be a big opportunity for making sales and finding new customers — in fact, the company just announced new ad units for this very purpose. But if you need a little more hand-holding, there’s a startup called Funnely that might help. Funnely was created by a team based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and that’s where the… Read More
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Social Location App FacesIn Pivots To Future Whereabouts
Social location app FacesIn has relaunched with a new focus on delivering location-based alerts about where someone will be soon — not just where they are right now. Read More
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Software Eats Sex Trafficking: YC’s Rescue Forensics Aids Law Enforcement In Finding Victims
Rescue Forensics builds search software that helps law enforcement officials collect and document online evidence that could be used to prosecute traffickers in court. Read More
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A Year Later, $19 Billion For WhatsApp Doesn’t Sound So Crazy
Messaging is the center of mobile. Snapchat is raising at around a $20 billion valuation. And no one cares who owns apps. On February 19, 2014, we didn’t know any of these things for sure. So when Facebook announced it would pay $19 billion to acquire WhatsApp — an app most American pundits had never used — it seemed ludicrous. Zuck had to be crazy, right? Wrong. Read More
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New Yahoo Mobile Development Suite Seduces App Makers With Analytics, Search, Ads
Today at Yahoo’s first mobile developer conference, the tech giant unveiled its new Yahoo Mobile Development Suite that combines Yahoo App Publishing for monetization, Search In Apps, and App Marketing with its Flurry Analytics acquisition made last year. This is Yahoo’s “ads in dev’s clothing” strategy to convince app makers to buy and host its ads. Flurry now… Read More
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BuzzFeed Expands Mobile Team By Acquiring “Visual Conversation” Startup GoPop
BuzzFeed just announced that it’s acquiring San Francisco startup GoPop. The startup was originally known as Zeega, and it was part of the first class at Matter, the Knight Foundation- and KQED-backed incubator for media startups. GoPop’s current offering is an iOS app for “visual conversation,” combining photos into simple animations (that’s a sample animation of… Read More
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Content Curation Startup Livefyre Raises $47M More, Brings On Adobe And Salesforce As New Investors
Livefyre is announcing that it has raised $47 million in new funding. That number includes a $15 million addition to the company’s Series C — founder and CEO Jordan Kretchmer told me that the company didn’t bother to announce that “opportunistic” funding separately, because it was quickly followed by a $32 million Series D. Read More
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YC-Backed Kuhcoon Promises To Automate Facebook Ad Campaigns For Small Businesses
A lot of ad tech companies like to talk about automation, but Andrew Torba, co-founder and CEO of Kuhcoon, seems particularly enthusiastic: “Our grand plan is to automate all of paid media spending on the Internet.” The startup isn’t quite there yet, but it says it’s already working with more than 6,000 advertisers in 90+ countries. (Those advertisers include a number… Read More
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Pop Launches An App That Makes Video Chat As Easy As SMS
A new video messaging app, Pop, founded by Josh Nguyen, who previously ran product at both Tumblr and Flickr, is launching today to make video messages as easy to send as traditional SMS. Using a simple, one-screen interface, Pop connects with your phone’s address book and lets you send out a short video with just a tap, even allowing you to add colorful filters on top of the message… Read More
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Reach Combines Anonymous Chat With Keyword Self-Tagging For Context
Make way for another hyper local anonymous chat app. Reach, which has just launched on iOS, has been built by an Israeli-based startup, using $250,000 in pre-seed money from friends and family to cover their development costs. The team is looking to raise a seed round as it seeks to gain traction with its spin on anon. Read More
