First, don’t call it “Vine Two”. Details are starting to emerge about v2, the forthcoming video app built to replace Vine by its former co-founder Dom Hofmann. TechCrunch has learned that v2 has begun reaching out to former Viners and social media star managers in hopes of establishing ties with some top content creators to get feedback and fuel the app’s eventual… Read Morehttp://ift.tt/2n2z2tY Here’s how Vine replacement v2 will work http://ift.tt/2DyzZob
Twitter COO Anthony Noto has left the company, Twitter announced Tuesday. Noto’s leaving because he accepted a CEO role elsewhere, according to the release. Just last week, the WSJ reported that Noto was mulling the top executive job at finance startup SoFi, and indeed SoFi confirmed today that he’s joining effective March 1. Regarding Noto’s Twitter departure, CEO Jack…
There’s no getting around the fact that Snapchat has a user growth problem, so it’s smart that the company is making it easier for people who like and use Snapchat to share content they find within beyond the app itself. Today, Snap is launching the ability to share some public Stories via links that then display the Story selected on Snapchat.com. Stories eligible for sharing…
Rainforest QA, an on-demand software QA service, announced a $25 million Series B investment today. Silicon Valley Bank, Bessemer Venture Partners, Sutter Hill Capital, Rincon Ventures and Initialized Capital all participated in the round. Today’s investment brings the total raised to over $42 million, according to the company. The startup, which got its start in the Summer 2012 Y…
Element.AI — which last year raised $102 million from the likes of Microsoft, Intel, Nvidia and more to build an incubator-meets-consultancy to work with multiple businesses as they launch new services and systems based on artificial intelligence — is entering the next phase of its growth this week. The Canadian startup — co-founded by Jean-François Gagné, Nicolas…
Some major product news from veteran anti-tracking search engine DuckDuckGo: Today it’s launched revamped mobile apps and browser extensions that bake in a tracker blocker for third party sites, and include a suite of other privacy features intended to help users keep surfing privately as they navigate around the web.
After selling his social virtual reality startup to Microsoft in October, Eric Romo, the co-founder of AltspaceVR, is joining the competing social VR team at Facebook as its product director, where he will be “exploring how VR can help communities connect.” Romo is joining the team that has built Facebook Spaces, a social virtual reality app for chatting and collaborating.
Oreo was a bit of a lackluster update on first launch, but the mobile operating system is getting some nice new tricks as with 8.1’s updates. The new Speed Labels feature is one of the more compelling of the bunch, offering estimated network signals prior to logging on. Starting this week, users with 8.1 installed will see one of four qualifiers next to open WiFi networks: Very Fast,…
Netflix crossed a fun milestone today, crossing the $100 billion mark for its market cap as it once again surprised industry observers with better-than-expected growth in its subscribers. We’ll get to the financial numbers in a minute but, as usual, the big story here is that it continues to wow Wall Street with impressive growth in its subscriber numbers. The company said it added…
Rupert Murdoch, the executive chairman of News Corporation, today issued a statement calling for Facebook and Google to subsidize the news traveling through their platforms. In the statement, Murdoch calls on Facebook to pay a carriage fee, as cable companies do with pay TV, to trusted publishers that are posting their content on the social media platform: I have yet to see a proposal that…

