social media
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 a
Webull, M1 and Public remove restrictions on ‘meme stocks’ after citing trade settlement firm as the cause
Three of the popular retail stock market trading apps that have hosted much of the activity related to the Wall Street Bets subreddit-spurred run on stocks including GameStop (GME) and AMC, among othe
Will this time be any different for Twitter?
As Twitter seems to buy its way into competing with Clubhouse and Substack, one wonders whether the beleaguered social media company is finally ready to move past its truly awful track record of seizi
TikTok is being used by vape sellers marketing to teens
TikTok has a vaping problem. Although a 2019 U.S. law made it illegal to sell or market e-cigarettes to anyone under the age of 21, TikTok videos featuring top brands of disposable e-cigarettes and va
Opal raises $4.3 million for its ‘digital well-being’ assistant for iPhone
Many people want to develop better screen-time habits, but don’t have a good set of tools to do so. A new startup, Opal, aims to help. The company, now backed by $4.3 million in seed funding, ha
Debunk, don’t ‘prebunk,’ and other psychology lessons for social media moderation
If social networks and other platforms are to get a handle on disinformation, it’s not enough to know what it is — you have to know how people react to it. Researchers at MIT and Cornell have
Clubhouse announces plans for creator payments and raises new funding led by Andreessen Horowitz
Buzzy live-voice chat app Clubhouse has confirmed that it has raised new funding — without revealing how much — in a Series B round led by Andreessen Horowitz through the firm’s partner Andr
Decrypted: With more SolarWinds fallout, Biden picks his cybersecurity team
All change in the capital as the Biden administration takes charge, and thankfully without a hitch (or violence) after the attempted insurrection two weeks earlier. In this week’s Decrypted, we
YouTube launches hashtag landing pages to all users
YouTube is embracing the hashtag. The company has been quietly working on a new feature that allows users to better discover content using hashtags — either by clicking on a hashtag on YouTube o
TikTok’s new Q&A feature lets creators respond to fan questions using text or video
TikTok is testing a new video Q&A feature that allows creators to more directly respond to their audience’s questions with either text or video answers, the company confirmed to TechCrunch.
Twitter’s decentralized future
This week, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey finally responded publicly to the company’s decision to ban President Trump from its platform, writing that Twitter had “faced an extraordinary and untenable
How Twitter is handling the 2021 US presidential transition
Twitter has set out its plans for US Inauguration Day 2021, next Wednesday, January 20, when president-elect Joe Biden will be sworn into office as the 46th US president and vice president-elect Kamal
App stores saw record 218 billion downloads in 2020, consumer spend of $143 billion
Mobile adoption continued to grow in 2020, in part due to the market forces of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to App Annie’s annual “State of Mobile” industry report, mobile app do
Facebook revamps ‘Access Your Information’ tool to better break down, explain data usage
Facebook today is rolling out an update to its Access Your Information tool with the goal of making the tool easier to both use and navigate, as well as better explain how and why that data is used. T
Uber and Moderna partner on COVID-19 vaccine access and information
Uber and pharmaceutical company Moderna have announced a partnership around COVID-19 vaccination, which will include a number of different initiatives. To start, its only confirmed component is to pro
Parler is officially offline after AWS suspension
True to its word, Amazon Web Services (AWS) suspended services to Parler, the right-wing-focused social network that proved a welcoming home for pro-Trump users who called for violence at the nation&#
Parler jumps to No. 1 on App Store after Facebook and Twitter ban Trump
Users are surging on small, conservative, social media platforms after President Donald Trump’s ban from the world’s largest social networks, even as those platforms are seeing access thro
President Trump responds to Twitter account ban in tweet storm from @POTUS account
After Twitter took the major step Friday of permanently banning President Trump’s @realdonaldtrump Twitter account, the President aimed to get the last word in through his government account @PO
Trump returns to Twitter with what sounds like a concession speech
It’s been a long couple of days for the country, but President Trump only had to wait 12 hours before returning to his social network of choice. In an uncharacteristically scripted three minute
Michelle Obama calls on Silicon Valley to permanently ban Trump and prevent platform abuse by future leaders
In a new statement issued by former First Lady Michelle Obama, she calls on Silicon Valley specifically to address its role in the violent insurrection attempt by pro-Trump rioters at the U.S. Capitol