As the average cost of a ride on Uber, Lyft and other “rideshare” services has risen over the years, it’s become clear these companies were never entirely forthright about their business models. Now a pair of studies suggests even the investor-subsidized prices don’t tell the whole story, with costs being borne by drivers and communities. […]
Facebook and Instagram went down again this afternoon
It’s been a rough week for Facebook, and it seems that Friday afternoon had no mercy for the tech giant. After one of their longest outages in company history on Monday, Facebook went down again on Friday afternoon. The outage affected all Facebook properties, including WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram. ut oh pic.twitter.com/NqA3xpWKsN — Matt Navarra […]
TikTok adds new sound partners to allow brands to leverage audio on the platform
TikTok is announcing new partnerships aimed at making it easier for brands to tap into music and sound on the platform. The company has expanded its TikTok Marketing Partners program and introduced six certified partners that will help brands create “sound-on” strategies for the platform. TikTok notes that it essentially wants to connect brands with […]
Productfy raises $16M to build the ‘Shopify of embedded finance’
Productfy Inc., a banking-as-a-service (BaaS) platform that aims to build “DeFi for traditional finance,” has raised $16 million in a Series A round of funding led by CM Ventures. Existing backers Point72 Ventures, 500 Startups and Envestnet | Yodlee also participated in the financing, which brings its total raised since its 2018 inception to nearly […]
Guestio brings podcasters closer to their next big ‘get’
Users can either book someone for podcasts and other events or advertise their willingness to be a guest.
Twitch streamers respond after huge leak of creator payout data
Twitch confirmed yesterday that a massive cache of internal data, including creator payouts, was published online after a breach. The streaming platform said in a blog post that the leak was caused by an error in a Twitch server configuration change, which was then accessed by a malicious third party. For many streamers, this leak […]
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney calls out Apple for promoting its services in the iPhone Settings screen
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, whose high-profile antitrust lawsuit against Apple is now under appeal, is today calling out the iPhone maker for giving itself access to an advertising slot its competitors don’t have: the iPhone’s Settings screen. Some iOS 15 users noticed Apple is now advertising its own services at the top of their […]
Welcome debuts a smarter city guide app on iOS, backed by $3.5M led by Accel
When you’re exploring a city — whether one you’re visiting on your travels or your own — there are a number of tools that can help you find out where to go, what to see and what to do, like Google Maps, Yelp, TripAdvisor and others. But a startup called Welcome thinks that today’s set […]
Snapchat is launching new tools to crack down on illicit drug sales on its platform
Snapchat is rolling out new tools and educational resources to prevent younger users from buying counterfeit pills and illicit drugs via the platform. The company said on Thursday that the goal of the new tools is to keep its users safe from “the devastating impacts of the fentanyl crisis.” “We are determined to remove illegal […]
Mark Cuban-backed Otto raises $4.5M to turn car equity into credit
Otto, a fintech startup which aims to allow people to tap into their vehicle’s equity for access to credit, has raised $4.5 million in a seed round of funding. The Dallas-based company is building a mobile platform that will essentially let people borrow against their vehicles at the same interest rate as standard credit cards. […]