It’s a testament to quite how control freaky and hermetically sealed to criticism the tech industry is that Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey went unscripted in front of his own brand livestreaming service this week, inviting users to lob awkward questions at him for the first time ever. Read Morefrom Social – TechCrunch http://ift.tt/2oCowKI Some hard truths about Twitter’s health crisis Natasha Lomas http://ift.tt/2IfXmSc
via IFTTT
In a way, Essential is something of a pioneer. Before the iPhone X helped the world reluctantly embrace the screen notch, the company proudly displayed one atop its first flagship. Since then, of course, it’s become a feature, not a bug, with a long list of companies rushing to embrace it on their latest flagship. But Essential’s clearly hoping to solve the issue with a number…
The FCC has denied a space startup permission to launch a collection of communications satellites after discovering that it had already launched some — after being told not to. Swarm Technologies, still in stealth mode, appears to have gone ahead with the deployment of four satellites deemed too small to be tracked and therefore unsafe to put into orbit.
Snapchat has temporarily removed its Giphy GIF sticker feature after a user saw an extremely racist GIF as an option. Snapchat confirms to TechCrunch “As soon as we were made aware, we removed the GIF and have disabled Giphy until we can be sure that this won’t happen again.
Urban Airship recently announced new capabilities designed to allow app developers to deliver the right message to their users at exactly the right time. Senior Vice President of Product and Engineering Mike Herrick explained that the company (which started out as a platform for push notifications) has supported in-app messaging for years. However, those messages have been sent from Urban…
We’re hearing from a number of sources that Giphy, the big platform for hosting GIFs that also runs a GIF keyboard, set out to raise huge new financing round — though it’s not clear if it ever crossed the finish line. Sources pegged the round at something as high as around $100 million, but that may have changed over time. We’ve been hearing about this attempted round…
The high-end audio technology company Bose is getting into the augmented reality game with a new product and a $50 million fund devoted to startups that will develop services for its new platform.
There’s nothing we spend more money on for a worse experience than housing. Keyo wants to fix all of it. The audacious startup envisions a world where a building’s other tenants get $20 to show you an available apartment on your schedule. Where you auto-pay your rent online and it improves your credit score. Where you get local business perks and can communicate maintenance…
Filed under moves that are potentially groundbreaking with big implications but with quite small numbers, Facebook has signed an exclusive deal with the MLB to stream 25 afternoon games, according to Bloomberg. The deal is a bit reminiscent of the one Twitter signed for Thursday Night Football back in 2016 to stream games that are outside of the range of primetime football (usually reserved…
Just weeks after signing a large licensing deal with leading indy label representative ICE, Facebook has continued its march into the world of music with the news that it has now added Warner Music Group into the mix, the last major label that was not yet working with the social network. Facebook has signed a wide-ranging licensing deal that covers all of Warner Music’s recorded and…

