A massive ‘stalkerware’ leak puts the phone data of thousands at risk

The private phone data of hundreds of thousands of people are at risk. Call records, text messages, photos, browsing history, precise geolocations and call recordings can all be pulled from a person’s phone because of a security issue in widely used consumer-grade spyware. But that’s about as much as we can tell you. TechCrunch repeatedly […]

One-time TikTok rival Byte relaunches as Clash, an app for video creators and their top fans

When the Trump administration announced it would ban TikTok in the U.S., a number of alternative short-form video apps began to flourish, as users hedged their bets on a potential TikTok exit. Among these was Byte, an app co-created by Vine co-founder Dom Hofmann, which topped 1.3 million downloads in its first week alone. But […]

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 […]

Blue Fever, an anonymous social network, acquires Gen Z-founded Trill

With Senate hearings and leaked documents galore, teen mental health on social media is a hot topic right now. But Gen Z founders Georgia Messinger and Ari Sokolov have been trying to create healthier online spaces since they were in high school, when they started the anonymous virtual support app Trill. “People ask us sometimes, […]

Mark Cuban-backed live entertainment app Fireside launches to creators

Amid a deluge of new creator platforms, a startup called Fireside is launching today with what it believes will be a compelling proposition for professional creators in need of a more robust set of tools for content creation, distribution, measurement, and monetization. The service, which offers a platform for live and interactive shows, had been […]

Clubhouse adds clips, replays for asynchronous listening, better search, and spatial audio for Android

Clubhouse announced today that it is unveiling four new features: Clips, Replay, Universal Search, and spatial audio for Android (which already exists on iOS). All of these features will launch today, except for Replay, which will roll out in October. These additions will help expand Clubhouse’s reach by making content available even after a live […]

TikTok’s new ad products invite users to interact with taps, swipes, likes and more

TikTok this week presented its new plan to ramp up advertiser investment in its video platform with the expansion of e-commerce, a new promise of “brand safety” and the launch of several new and interactive ad formats, ranging from clickable stickers to “Choose Your Own Adventure”-type ads to “super likes” and more. The additions, the […]

TikTok Shopping expands with more partnerships, LIVE Shopping, new ads and more

TikTok is expanding its investment in e-commerce. Earlier this year, the video platform began piloting TikTok Shopping in the U.S., U.K., and Canada, in partnership with Shopify. The deal allowed Shopify merchants with a TikTok For Business account to add a Shopping tab to their TikTok profiles and sync their product catalogs to the app […]