MrBeast’s ‘Real Life Squid Game’ and the price of viral stunts

First, everyone was talking about “Squid Game,” the Korean psychological thriller that became Netflix’s biggest series launch ever, with 142 million viewers. Now, everyone’s talking about YouTuber MrBeast’s recreation of the show’s titular fight-to-the-death, which racked up 142 million views in eight days. (Don’t worry, no one was killed). Jimmy Donaldson (MrBeast), the 23-year-old who […]

Twitch’s newest moderation tool spots accounts trying to get around channel bans

Twitch introduced a new way for streamers to fight accounts that evade channel-level bans Tuesday. The automated tool is called “Suspicious User Detection” and can spot users trying to get around bans, giving anyone moderating a Twitch channel more recourse for dealing with potentially disruptive behavior before it starts. The company announced that the new […]

Ludwig Leaves Twitch For YouTube Gaming

Twitch streamer Ludwig Ahgren, who in April set a world record for the highest number of subscribers—at over 270,000—has left the platform and will now be streaming exclusively at YouTube Gaming.Read more…

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 […]

TikTok brings its TV app to more devices across the US and Canada

Just ahead of the U.S. Thanksgiving holidays, TikTok is expanding its footprint in the living room. The company earlier this month launched its TV app in North America in partnership with Amazon Fire TV. Today, TikTok is rolling out its TV app to more TV platforms across North America, including Google TV and other Android […]

In-game creation platform Overwolf raises $75M Series D led by Andreessen Horowitz

Overwolf, a platform that enables creators to build, share, and monetize items inside games, has raised a $75 million Series D funding round, led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). Previous investors including Griffin Gaming Partners, Insight Partners, Intel Capital, Liberty Technology Venture Capital, and Marker also participated. The funding will be pumped into Overwolf’s CurseForge Core, […]

The Gulf Between Amouranth and Other Top Women Streamers On Twitch Is Enormous, Stats Say

When Kaitlyn “Amouranth” Siragusa isn’t getting banned from Twitch for things like wearing a horse mask and suggestively slurping a microphone, she’s pulling huge viewership numbers month after month. Not only was she Twitch’s leading female streamer f…

Instagram adds TikTok-like Text-to-Speech and Voice Effects tools to Reels

Instagram added two features to Reels yesterday: text-to-speech and voice effects. These features are popular already on TikTok, but now, creators can use them on Instagram too. This marks yet another effort from Instagram to keep up with TikTok when it comes to short-form video, as Instagram offers big reels bonuses to incentivize creators, Text-to-speech […]

Instagram is offering huge bonuses for posting on Reels, its TikTok clone

Instagram really wants you to post Reels — they’ll even pay you up to $10,000 for one, if you’re lucky. As TikTok surpasses the 1 billion monthly active users mark, competitor platforms like YouTube Shorts, Snapchat Spotlight and Instagram Reels are incentivizing users to post their short-form content on their apps instead. YouTube established a […]