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 Marketing Officer at Cameo, is one of them. “I have been thinking about music since my time at TikTok, and I was really thinking about […]
Instagram may not be a photo-sharing app anymore, but Glass is
Instagram made headlines (including this one) when product head Adam Mosseri said in June that the app is “no longer just a square photo-sharing app,” since it’s pivoting its focus to shopping and video. But where does that leave photographers who want a social photo-sharing experience? According to Tom Watson, a former product designer at […]
Streamers are boycotting Twitch today to protest the platform’s lack of action on ‘hate raids’
Over the last month, Twitch users have become increasingly concerned and frustrated with bot-driven hate raids. To protest Twitch’s lack of immediate action to prevent targeted harassment of marginalized creators, some streamers are going dark to observe #ADayOffTwitch today. Per the protest, users are sharing a list of demands for the Amazon-owned Twitch. They want […]
LinkedIn is scrapping its Stories feature to work on short-form video
What do LinkedIn and Twitter have in common? They both introduced ephemeral story features that were pretty fleeting. LinkedIn announced today that it will suspend its Stories feature on September 30 and begin working on a different way to add short-form videos to the platform. LinkedIn announced the upcoming change to warn advertisers who might […]
Twitter starts to roll out paid Ticketed Spaces on iOS
Twitter announced today that some hosts on Spaces, its live audio feature, will now be able to sell access to Ticketed Spaces. Applications for Ticketed Spaces first opened in June for users who are over 18, hosted three Spaces in the last 30 days and have at least 1,000 followers. “We’re continuing to work closely […]
After community backlash, Pokémon Go reinstates a COVID safety and accessibility feature
Pokémon Go announced yesterday that it will permanently keep an in-game feature that made the game easier to play while social distancing. Introduced at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the feature doubled the interaction radius around key augmented reality landmarks that are essential to gameplay. Though Niantic — parent company to Pokémon Go — […]
YouTube to roll out Picture-in-Picture viewing for all U.S. iOS users, starting with Premium subscribers
Though YouTube has supported picture-in-picture viewing on Android devices since 2018, YouTube told TechCrunch today that it plans to launch the feature to all iOS users in the U.S. on both iPhone and iPad. For now, YouTube is inviting Premium subscribers to test this feature, which lets users watch picture-in-picture videos in a mini player […]
Hulu launches support for HDR on select original content
For the first time, Hulu has started adding support for HDR viewing, years after some of its competitors. The gradual rollout of HDR support began on August 19, Hulu told TechCrunch, and should be available to all users with HDR-compatible devices in the coming days. So far, Hulu has only enabled HDR viewing on high-profile […]
Mindset, an artist-driven mental wellness audio platform, raises $8.7M from Scooter Braun’s TQ Ventures and others
Mindset, a platform featuring personal story collections from recording artists, announced today that it raised $8.7 million in seed funding. As co-founders of the K-pop-focused podcast production company DIVE Studios, brothers Brian Nam, Eric Nam and Eddie Nam noticed that the studio’s best-performing content came from podcast episodes where stars discussed how they handle struggles […]
Messenger celebrates its 10th anniversary with new features and a plan to become the ‘connective tissue’ for real-time experiences
To celebrate its ten year anniversary, Messenger today announced a handful of new features: poll games, word effects, contact sharing, and birthday gifting via Facebook Pay. But beyond the fun features, Facebook has been testing a way to add voice and video calls back into the Facebook app, rather than on Messenger. “We are testing […]