Facebook’s leverage over news publishers can be worrisome, but today it’s putting its muscle to good use. The social network is bringing its battle against clickbait abroad, getting more precise about which link headlines it downranks in News Feed, and starting to demote individual posts instead of just web domains and Facebook Pages. The updates are part of a News Feed… Read More
We’re going to be bringing you updates live from the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, CA, just a stone’s throw away from Google’s main campus, where the company is hosting its 2017 I/O developer conference. At 10 AM PT (1 PM ET) on May 17, the conference opening keynote kicks off the event, and it tends to be packed to the gills with product and software news.
Live… Read More
Are you ready for some major news on all things Google? Google is kicking off its annual I/O developer conference today. The conference starts at 10 AM Pacific Time (1 PM on the East Cost, 6 PM in London, 7 PM Central European Time) and you can watch the live stream right here on this page. We have a team on the ground ready to cover the event, so don’t forget to read our live blog to… Read More
Just ahead of Google’s I/O event kicking off later today, some details have leaked out about a new service that Google is launching for developers that are building chatbots. TechCrunch has learned that Google has developed a new service called Chatbase, which provides analytics and suggestions for how to “fix” bot experiences to make them better for users. A source tells… Read More
Let’s say you randomly selected 1,000 seed-stage startups based in the United States. How many of those would go on to raise a Series A? Of companies that go on to raise a Series A, how many would go on to raise a Series B? You could keep this process going until only a few companies remain. But it’s not enough to just ask what the survival rate of companies is from round to round. Read More
Social payments app Verse has closed a $20.5 million Series B round of funding from its existing investors. The round is led by Spark Capital, with eVentures and Greycroft Partners also participating. It raised its Series A in October last year, when it took in $8.3M. Read More
Apple’s wireless payment system Apple Pay is now up and running in Italy. The company partnered with a handful of banks and popular retailers. Italian customers can now add their payment cards to the Wallet app on their iPhone and Apple Watch. Apple Pay currently supports Boon, Carrefour Banca and UniCredit. In the coming months, other financial institutions are also going to add Apple… Read More
How can humans stay ahead of an ever growing machine intelligence? “I think the challenge for us is to always be creative,” says former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, speaking on stage here at TechCrunch Disrupt New York. Read More
The business of hacking has dealt a huge blow to our democracy, not to mention a plethora of organizations and individuals, and our collective sense of sanity. One silver lining, however, has been that it has led to the emergence of a number of security startups that are building and deploying a range of tools to try to track and stop the nefarious activity. One of the larger of these… Read More
Clue, the app for tracking your period and all things related, surveyed a fraction of its 5 million worldwide users and found out that in some countries a lot of young women didn’t know what to do if they didn’t take their contraceptive pill on time. In Russia, for instance, you can buy the pill without a prescription and Clue found one out of four women there were given zero… Read More
In April, cable company and internet service provider Comcast announced its new wireless business, Xfinity Mobile, which offers unlimited data plans to Comcast customers that can be as cheap as $45 per month, for those who also subscribe to Comcast’s high-end X1 packages. Today, that service is launching and is open for sign-ups, the company says. Comcast tells TechCrunch the website… Read More
Apple has taken an important step in its longstanding goal of penetrating the world’s second largest smartphone market. The Wall Street Journal first reported that the company has completed its first trial run assembly of the iPhone SE in India – a key step in gaining a foothold for a market that has thus far proven elusive for the smartphone maker. The company has since… Read More
Angelica Nwandu, creator of The Shade Room, joined our own Anthony Ha on the stage of TechCrunch Disrupt to discuss the growth of her Instagram-first gossip blog. Despite growing The Shade Room to 9.3 million Instagram followers and profitability, Nwandu says she has no interest in an acquisition. Nwandu attributes her success to meme culture — the ability for large groups to effect… Read More
Earlier this month, MGM-owned EPIX announced the launch of its own built-in “casting” feature that allows users to stream movies from the EPIX app on their mobile devices to the big screen with a push of a button – even if the receiving device doesn’t have the EPIX app installed. Today, the company says EPIX Cast, as the feature is called, is on its way to Amazon Fire TV. Read More
We’ve come to the final day of Disrupt NY 2017, and the fun shows no signs of stopping.
Today, we’ve got a one-on-one with Naval Ravikant, a special reveal with Judah Friedlander, a fireside chat with Garry Kasparov, and the Startup Battlefield Finals.
Oh, and did we mention that MixHalo, a startup founded by Incubus lead guitarist Mike Einziger, will be demoing its new audio… Read More
Customers are notoriously fickle when it comes to sophisticated kitchen devices. On the one hand, there’s undoubtedly a market for items that are deemed useful and priced appropriately. Consider, for example, the Anova Precision Cooker, a $145 WiFi- and Bluetooth-enabled device that managed to get its parent company sold to the appliance giant Electrolux in February for $250 million.… Read More
Amazon’s continuing its month-long spree of hardware announcements by refreshing its line of low cost slates. The Fire 7 is retaining its $50 price point, while getting an improved screen resolution and increased battery life. The 8 HD, meanwhile is more or less the same as its predecessor (it just got refreshed late last year), but is getting a $10 price drop, down to $80. Amazon is… Read More
Todoist is quite a powerful task manager, but it didn’t communicate with your calendar until now. If you’re a Google Calendar user and want to check your tasks and events for tomorrow, you currently have to check both Google Calendar and Todoist. This is about to change as Todoist is launching a deep two-way integration between Todoist and Google Calendar. After hooking up your… Read More
Appear Here, the marketplace for short-term retail space that originally launched to ride the ‘pop-up’ shop craze, has raised $12 million in Series B funding. Read More
