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Snapchat revamps creator payouts by offering chance to win prizes with Spotlight Challenges
As competition for creator talent heats up, Snap today introduced a series of new tools, programs and features that will enable creators on its platform to generate revenue. These include…
Snapchat rolls out new tool aimed at helping young users run for office
Snapchat is rolling out a new “Run for Office” in-app tool to encourage young adults to run for local office. The company says the new Run for Office tool is…
Inkitt books $59M investment, wants to turn its data-driven, self-publishing platform into a multimedia powerhouse
Book sales during the pandemic went up, and it seems the amount we are reading did, too. Now Inkitt, the startup that operates a free, popular platform of the same…
Twitter accelerates again with Bitcoin tips, NFTs, recorded Spaces, creator fund and more
Twitter’s slate of new product announcements is not slowing down. The company today introduced a number of new initiatives aimed at better serving the conversations and community using its platform,…
TikTok and Snap alums launch mayk.it, a social music creation app, with $4M in seed funding
After living through the global upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic, many workers are re-evaluating their career path. Stefan Heinrich Henriquez, a former head of Global Marketing at TikTok and chief…
TikTok is building its own AR development platform, TikTok Effect Studio
Both Facebook and Snap offer tools that allow developers to build out augmented reality (AR) experiences and features for their own respective family of apps. Now, TikTok is looking to…
This Week in Apps: OnlyFans bans sexual content, SharePlay delayed, TikTok questioned over biometric data collection
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow,…
This Week in Apps: In-app events hit the App Store, TikTok tries Stories, Apple reveals new child safety plan
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a…
Sendit gains 3.5M downloads after Snapchat suspends top anonymous apps YOLO and LMK
In May of this year, Snap suspended two Snapchat-integrated apps that allowed users to send anonymous messages, Yolo and LMK, following a lawsuit filed on behalf of a mother whose…
Google Maps on iOS adds live location sharing in iMessage, home screen widget, dark mode
Google Maps announced today three feature updates to its iOS app. With live location sharing in the iMessage app, a traffic widget for the home screen and dark mode, Google…
Snapchat adds My Places feature to Snap Map, recommending spots to visit
This further differentiates the social-forward Snap Map from more established resources like Google Maps and Apple Maps, which you can’t really use to find out what restaurants your friends like.
If you’ve started using Snapchat more regularly this year, you’re not alone. At yesterday’s Q2 earnings call, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel announced that the platform grew both revenue and daily…
HBO Max to stream free episodes inside Snapchat for co-watching with friends
In a bid to boost sign-ups to its streaming service, HBO Max is partnering with Snap to bring free episodes from its original programing to Snapchat users in the U.S.…
Snap makes a deal with Universal Music Group, adding its catalog to Sounds
Snap today announced a multi-year deal with Universal Music Group, one of the largest music companies in the world. From Queen to Justin Bieber, users can clip songs from the…
Twitter’s acquisition strategy: Eat the public conversation
Twitter is trying to revitalize itself by adding more contexts for discourse to its repertoire. The result, if everything goes right, will be an influence superapp that hasn’t existed before.
This Week in Apps: Google I/O hits and misses, Snap goes shopping, Parler returns to App Store
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with…
Snap acquires AR startup WaveOptics, which provides tech for Spectacles, for over $500M
Snap yesterday announced the latest iteration of its Spectacles augmented reality glasses, and today the company revealed a bit more news: it is also acquiring the startup that supplied the…
Snap announces a new generation of Spectacles, streamlined glasses to experience the world in AR
Amid a pre-recorded Partner Summit where Snap took users through a whole set of new tools for Snapchat users, creators and companies, Snap also threw in a “one more thing”…
Snap announces Story Studio, a new standalone app to edit stories
During Snap Partner Summit, Snap announced a brand new app focused on creators. Named Story Studio, this standalone iOS app gives you several editing tools so you can make your…
Pinterest introduces Idea Pins, a video-first feature aimed at creators
Pinterest is expanding further into the creator community with today’s launch of a video-first feature called “Idea Pins,” aimed at creators who want to tell their stories using video, music,…
Snap to launch a new Creator Marketplace this month, initially focused on Lens Creators
Snap on Wednesday announced its plan to soon launch a Creator Marketplace, which will make it easier for businesses to find and partner with Snapchat creators, including Lens creators, AR…
Filing: Snap paid $124M for Fit Analytics as it gears up for a bigger e-commerce push
Earlier this year we reported on how Snap had acquired Berlin-based Fit Analytics, an AI-based fitting technology startup, as part of a wider push into e-commerce services, specifically to gain…
ShareChat said on Thursday it has raised a new financing round that values it at over $2 billion, joining four other local startups in attaining the unicorn status this week.…
Snapchat is developing its own take on TikTok Duets with a new ‘Remix’ feature
One of the challenges that some would-be TikTok rivals have faced is that they often lack the same robust set of content creation tools, like filters, effects and tools for…
Snap acquires Fit Analytics, a fitting technology startup, to double down on fashion and e-commerce
“Snap, Inc. is a camera company,” Snap notes on its homepage, and while a lot of its effort up to now have been about using that camera ethos to help…
How China’s synthetic media startup Surreal nabs funding in 3 months
What if we no longer needed cameras to make videos and can instead generate them through a few lines of coding? Advances in machine learning are turning the idea into…
Twitter explored buying India’s ShareChat and turning Moj into a global TikTok rival
Twitter recently held talks to acquire Indian social media startup ShareChat as the company explored ways to expand its presence in the world’s second-largest internet market and build a global…
Snap partners with ShareChat’s Moj to roll out Camera Kit
Snap has partnered with ShareChat’s Moj app to integrate its Camera Kit into the Indian app as the American social giant looks to accelerate its growth in the world’s second-largest…
Social platform veteran Sriram Krishnan is Andreessen Horowitz’s latest general partner
Today, Andreessen Horowitz founder Marc Andreessen announced that social media product veteran Sriram Krishnan will be joining the firm as their latest general partner. Krishnan, whose previous roles include stints…
Early Snapchat employee debuts Yoni Circle, a social storytelling app for womxn
An early Snapchat employee who once architected the “Our Stories” product, Chloë Drimal, has now launched her own social app, Yoni Circle. Described as a membership-based community, the app aims…
