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Polly’s teen polling app piggybacks on Snapchat
Snapchat doesn’t technically have a developer platform, but that hasn’t stopped other startups from taking advantage of its new feature for attaching links to your Snaps and Stories. Sarahah was the first, allowing people to ask fellow Snappers for open-ended anonymous feedback. But the problem is that those requests could be met with cyberbullying. Polly is a new teen… Read More
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21.co announces a token system to get people to join its paid messaging network
Today at Disrupt, 21.co CEO and co-founder Balaji Srinivasan outlined his company’s unusual evolution and announced the launch of a new system for kickstarting the site’s user base by incentivizing people with tokens for doing things like signing up, getting verified and performing certain tasks. The company opted to move away from the increasingly popular ICO model because… Read More
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Facebook vows to manually review ad targeting after ‘Jew-Haters’ scandal
Facebook failed to foresee how turning user-written interests and employer information from profiles into ad targeting options could turn offensive. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has apologized for the situation, and announced that Facebook will now manually review all ad targeting options. Read More
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Tech giants told to remove extremist content much faster
Tech giants are once again being urged to do more to tackle the spread of online extremism on their platforms. Leaders of the UK, France and Italy are taking time out at a UN summit today to meet with Google, Facebook and Microsoft. This follows an agreement in May for G7 nations to take joint action on online extremism. Read More
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You can now launch the Instagram app directly from Facebook
Facebook is making it easier for users to access their Instagram profile directly from within the Facebook app. The company confirms it’s rolling out a new addition its main navigation menu on mobile that includes a link to your Instagram account. This option appears just below the link to your personal profile in Facebook’s app, and above the links to any Facebook Pages you… Read More
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Snapchat’s new partners attach instant apps and games to ads
Snap wants its ads to open to something interesting rather than a boring mobile website. Today Snap announced 14 new ad Creative Partners that will help build custom games, interactive videos, gyroscope-powered epxeriences, lead generation campaigns, and pre-loaded Instant Apps as destinations for Snapchat ads. They’ll also help connect advertisers to influencers, despite Snapchat… Read More
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Twitter replaces board member who left for Microsoft with ex-Google CFO
Crossing the social media divides isn’t common in Silicon Valley, so it’s notable that Twitter and Microsoft have played a spot of musical chairs with their boards. Twitter board member Hugh Johnston — day job: Pepsi vice chairman and CFO — has left Twitter’s board to join Microsoft’s board as of today. Johnston’s replacement at the microblogging… Read More
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See what Facebook ads you actually clicked in ‘Recent Ad Activity’
You might think you’re impervious to Facebook’s ads, but you probably do get seduced every once in a while. But because ads aren’t always permanently available anywhere, it can be impossible to find a Facebook ad that led somewhere you want to revisit. Now Facebook has a solution called Recent Ad Activity for when (if) you click an ad and want to see it again. Read More
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Twitter claims tech wins in quashing terror tweets
In its latest Transparency report, which covers requests it’s received from governments pertaining to content on its platform, Twitter has reported a big decline in the proportion of pro-terrorism accounts being reported over the past six months, as well a drop in the number of accounts it removed for terrorism-related content during this period. Read More
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Subscription art crowdfunder Patreon confirms $60M fundraise
Patreon upgrades content creation from a passion to a profession by paying artists 95% of subscription payments from fans instead of 55% of skimpy ad revenue like Facebook and YouTube. Now Patreon itself is getting paid with today’s official announcement of the big Series C funding round TechCrunch broke news of last week. Patreon has raised $60 million led by Chris Paik at Thrive… Read More
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Hinge’s new app lets your friends play matchmaker
Hinge is launching a way for people in relationships to get in on the dating app craze alongside their single friends. No, not like that! The company today is introducing a new, standalone app called Hinge Matchmaker that will allow people to see which of their friends are on Hinge, and then make recommendations by suggesting potential matches. According to Hinge founder Justin McLeod, the new… Read More
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Snap, Facebook, Pop: Sriram Krishnan joins Twitter as senior director of product
In the ever-moving musical chairs that is the tech industry, Twitter has added a new person to its product team. Sriram Krishnan is now senior director of product at the social media platform. He announced the news himself, appropriately on Twitter, with a hearty endorsement from CEO Jack Dorsey. He will be reporting to Keith Coleman, who is Twitter’s new-ish VP of Product (he joined… Read More
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Facebook design head loud on voice, silent on Alexa and hardware
Facebook has been reportedly working on a video chat device and a smart speaker that would use a new voice interface, to compete against the likes of Amazon and Google in the race to control your living room; and it’s also been testing as a voice search feature for its app. Today, the company’s head of design, Luke Woods, came out bullish on the promise of voice commands, squirmed… Read More
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Pinterest’s new Sections feature begins beta testing, public launch in ‘weeks’
Pinterest is rolling out a new feature inspired by its power users, said Pinterest CEO and co-founder Ben Silbermann, speaking today at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco. The new addition, called Sections, allows Pinterest users to divide their board into various sub-groups related to the board’s main topic. For example, if you’re redesigning your home, you might create sections… Read More
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Facebook nabs Change.org COO Jennifer Dulski to lead Groups
Facebook is serious about using Groups to propel its new mission to “bring the world closer together.” That’s why it’s made a big-name hire for the product leader for the Facebook Groups team. Former Change.org COO and president Jennifer Dulski will take the role. Read More
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Keybase launches fully encrypted Slack-like communications tool — and it’s free
Keybase added to its encrypted tool kit today when it launched Keybase Teams, an open source, Slack-like communications tool with end-to-end encryption. Desktop and mobile versions are available for download now. It may seem like competing with Slack, the enormously popular enterprise communications tool would be a fool’s errand for Keybase. But by making it fully encrypted, open source… Read More
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Instagram now autoplays video sound once turned on until you close the app
Autoplay audio can be annoying or convenient depending on the situation. Luckily Instagram has found a happy medium between defaulting autoplay video sound on or off. This weekend TechCrunch spotted that some Instagram videos in the feed were autoplaying with audio. Now Instagram has confirmed to us “this new update rolled out recently” and here’s how it works for all… Read More
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US election agency seeks views on rule change for digital ad platforms
The U.S. Federal Election Commission (FEC) has voted to seek public views on whether there should be a change to the rules for political ads that extends disclaimer requirements to ads shown on digital platforms, such as Facebook and Google. Read More
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