Clubhouse voice chat leads a wave of spontaneous social apps

Forget the calendar invite. Just jump into a conversation. That’s the idea powering a fresh batch of social startups poised to take advantage of our cleared schedules amidst quarantine. But they could also change the way we work and socialize long after COVID-19 by bringing the free-flowing, ad-hoc communication of parties and open office plans online. While “Live” has become synonymous with performative streaming, these new apps instead spread the limelight across several users as well as the task, game, or discussion at hand. The most buzzy of...

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Clubhouse voice chat leads a wave of spontaneous social apps

Forget the calendar invite. Just jump into a conversation. That’s the idea powering a fresh batch of social startups poised to take advantage of our cleared schedules amidst quarantine. But they could also change the way we work and socialize long after COVID-19 by bringing the free-flowing, ad-hoc communication of parties and open office plans online. While “Live” has become synonymous with performative streaming, these new apps instead spread the limelight across several users as well as the task, game, or discussion at hand. The most buzzy of...

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Clubhouse voice chat leads a wave of spontaneous social apps

{rss:content:encoded} Clubhouse voice chat leads a wave of spontaneous social apps https://ift.tt/2RR0lqF https://ift.tt/3cAiQaR April 19, 2020 at 02:22AM Forget the calendar invite. Just jump into a conversation. That’s the idea powering a fresh batch of social startups poised to take advantage of our cleared schedules amidst quarantine. But they could also change the way we work and socialize long after COVID-19 by bringing the free-flowing, ad-hoc communication of parties and open office plans online. While “Live” has become synonymous with...

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This Week in Apps: Layoffs at VSCO, Google Play’s new guidelines, TikTok rolls out parental controls

{rss:content:encoded} This Week in Apps: Layoffs at VSCO, Google Play’s new guidelines, TikTok rolls out parental controls https://ift.tt/2Vk4zsS https://ift.tt/3ewhH5D April 18, 2020 at 05:02PM Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the Extra Crunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all. The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads in 2019 and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019, according to App Annie’s “State of Mobile” annual report....

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What is contact tracing?

{rss:content:encoded} What is contact tracing? https://ift.tt/2xHmJM5 https://ift.tt/39TsSCL April 18, 2020 at 05:01PM One of the best tools we have to slow the spread of the coronavirus is, as you have no doubt heard by now, contact tracing. But what exactly is contact tracing, who does it and how, and do you need to worry about it? In short, contact tracing helps prevent the spread of a virus by proactively finding people at higher risk than others due to potential exposure, notifying them if possible, and quarantining them if necessary. It’s...

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Top investors predict what’s ahead for Boston’s VC scene in Q1

Before the COVID-19 pandemic shook up the world and reshaped the economy, Boston was quietly setting records. According to new venture data compiled by TechCrunch, the region set what was at least a local maximum in venture capital raised in the space of a single quarter in Q1 2020. But while Boston’s startup market announced a number of huge rounds that bolstered its total venture dollars raised in the first quarter, there were signs of weakness: Deal volume was its best since Q2 2019, according to a set of data compiled and released by PwC and...

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Sales startup People.ai lays off 18% of staff, raises debt round amid COVID-19 uncertainty

Another startup has turned to downsizing and fund raising to help weather the uncertainty around the economy amid the global coronavirus health pandemic. People.ai, a predictive sales startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Iconic, Lightspeed and other investors and last year valued at around $500 million, has laid off around 30 people, working out to about 18% of staff, TechCrunch has learned and confirmed. Alongside that, the company has quietly raised a debt round in the “tens of millions of dollars” to make strategic investments in new products...

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