Istanbul has become a city to watch when it comes to casual gaming startups, boosted by the likes of Peak (acquired by Zynga for $1.8 billion) and Dream (valued at $1 billion in a funding round last year). Now, a new startup is announcing a major round of funding to make its own mark on […]
Twitter Spaces continues testing podcast-like features
Twitter has been working on Spaces Recordings, a feature that will let hosts share tweets with audio recordings of past Spaces. Now, when hosts share the recordings, they’re able to see how many listeners joined live, as well as how many people replayed the recording after the fact. we’ve been working on Spaces Recordings and […]
Snapchat knows you want to see what you’d look like in the metaverse
Snapchat released an Avatar lens AR filter today, which makes you look like a Sims character. Or, in more modern parlance, it makes you look like what you’d look like in the metaverse. To use the lens, open your camera in the Snapchat app to scan the QR code on Snapchat’s website, then look at […]
A Bluetooth bug in a popular at-home COVID-19 test could falsify results
A security researcher found a Bluetooth vulnerability in a popular at-home COVID-19 test allowing him to modify its results. F-Secure researcher Ken Gannon identified the since-fixed flaw in the Ellume COVID-19 Home Test, a self-administered antigen test that individuals can use to check to see if they have been infected with the virus. Rather than […]
TikTok to rank as the third largest social network, 2022 forecast notes
A new forecast has dubbed TikTok as the world’s third-largest social network, just behind Facebook and Instagram. In its inaugural forecast on TikTok’s global install base, Insider Intelligence — the firm previously known as eMarketer — predicts that TikTok will reach 755.0 million monthly users in 2022, after seeing 59.8% growth in 2020, followed by […]
Backed by former Facebook and Twitter execs, Tagg launches social branding app for Gen Z
Gen Z isn’t satisfied with the social media they grew up with, so they’re building the apps that they want to use. A “social branding” app for creative teens and twenty-somethings, Tagg is announcing a $2 million seed round today from Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, Facebook’s former VP of International Growth Ed Baker, TripAdvisor founder […]
TikTok rolls out GIPHY support, HD videos, cat sound effects, among other new features
In addition to announcing coming changes to its For You feed, TikTok today announced a handful of updates to its lineup of camera and editing tools, including new features for its popular Green Screen effect tool, as well as other updates to video enhancements and sound effects. Among the updates, one highlight is the update […]
Playground launches in beta to help creators cultivate community
Launching today in beta, Playground is a social platform that seeks to help people discover and develop community while empowering creators to monetize their audience. Already, the website has a wide variety of users like the Museum of Modern Art, comedy host Alexis Gay, the Abolitionist Teaching Network, activist Nupol Kiazolu, and a Malaysian virtual […]
This Week in Apps: Twitter launches livestream shopping, Netflix snags new games, Tile gets acquired
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 record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes […]
This Week in Apps: Apple defends app ad buying, Spotify gains lyrics, Instagram kills Threads
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 record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spending in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes […]