internet culture

TikTok targets small businesses with new ‘Follow Me’ educational program

TikTok announced today a new initiative designed to help small businesses better market themselves on its app — and eventually become TikTok advertisers. The company is introducing a free progra

Meta is dumping Facebook logins as its metaverse ID system

Despite the name change and metaverse hyperbole, Facebook has always been at the center of the Meta suite of software for users engaging with its wider ecosystem. While that may continue to be the cas

Binance taps TikTok’s mostly silent superstar Khaby Lame to explain how crypto works

Khaby Lame is quite literally on top of the world (if TikTok follower counts are the world). After attending his first VidCon and surpassing Charli D’Amelio as the most followed TikToker, the It

Robinhood almost imploded during the GameStop meme stock chaos

The House Committee on Financial Services released a report late last week offering a harrowing glimpse inside Robinhood during the frenzy around Gamestop stock early last year. The stock trading and

Khaby Lame dethrones Charli D’Amelio as the most-followed TikTok creator

Just in time for VidCon, TikTok has a new most followed creator on the platform: Khaby Lame, a 22-year-old from Senegal who rose to fame by stitching and dueting other TikToks, wordlessly fixing viral

Snap will pay 25 Black creators $120k in a new accelerator program

On stage at VidCon, Snap announced its first accelerator program for emerging Black creators. Over the course of a year, Snap will pay 25 selected applicants $10,000 a month ($120,000 total) to help l

How to implement an effective chatbot program

Today’s chatbots are compelling. They use AI and ML algorithms to learn, speak like people, offer solutions and basic customer support, route customers and much more.

YouTube Shorts tops 1.5B logged-in monthly users, touted as feeder to long-form content

In an effort to present itself as a viable competitor to the reigning short-form video platform TikTok, YouTube announced today its rival service YouTube Shorts is now being watched by over 1.5 billio

Meta adds voice controls for Horizon Worlds, which defaults to live chat with strangers

Meta might soon want everyone to hop into its playful virtual realms, but some users are set up for a shock. In the service of pushing people to socialize in Horizon Worlds, the virtual social network

VCs flock to TikTok to reach the next generation of founders and investors

The next generation of investors, entrepreneurs and leaders are all in one place right now: TikTok.

Look who’s coming to TC Sessions: Climate

We’re just less than one week away from kicking off our first event dedicated to climate tech and the early-stage startups determined to stop the biggest existential threat we’ve ever known. T

Apple’s iOS 16 will fix annoying ‘Tapback’ spam

This spring, Google updated its Messages app to support handling iMessage reactions. That is, instead of spamming a group chat with separate messages whenever someone responded to a text using one of

Poparazzi hits 5M+ downloads a year after launch, confirms its $15M Series A

Poparazzi, the anti-Instagram social app that hit the top of the App Store last year, is today, for the first time, detailing the growth stats for its business, its future plans and its previously unc

Discord is giving voice channels their own text-based chat rooms

Discord is giving its voice channels text-based chat too. The company announced Wednesday that it would roll out text chat for the platform’s voice-based chat rooms, adding a way for anyone hang

NY AG is investigating Twitch, Discord and 4chan for their role in the Buffalo mass shooting

New York Attorney General Letitia James will launch an investigation into the role that social media and online message boards played in the tragedy that unfolded in Buffalo over the weekend. On Satur

Buffalo shooter invited others to his private Discord ‘diary’ 30 minutes before attack

Discord has provided more insight into how the shooter who opened fire in a Buffalo, New York supermarket over the weekend used its service prior to the tragic act of violence. The shooter, 18-year-ol

There are no easy answers for tech in the aftermath of the Buffalo tragedy

As a gunman wrought terror in a Buffalo, New York supermarket over the weekend, the violence was, yet again, streamed live online. The latest U.S. mass shooting left 10 people dead and raised familiar

PSA: Owl City remixed Smash Mouth’s ‘All Star’

My Chemical Romance yesterday released their first single since 2014. Kendrick Lamar just dropped a new album. But did you know that this morning, Owl City remixed Smash Mouth’s seminal hit &#82

Here’s why we’re about to see an explosion of hyperreal artificial humans online

Synthetically generated versions of real people that can be can be programmed to say anything sounds like a scenario from the latest episode of “Black Mirror.” But in fact, production-grad

Spotify closed down its Greenroom Creator Fund with shift in live audio strategy

Spotify recently announced that it would transition live audio content from its “Greenroom” app to its flagship streaming app while rebranding Greenroom as Spotify Live. However, the compa
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