TechCrunch

 In what is being billed as a “multi-million pound” acquisition, San Francisco-headquartered Nextdoor is purchasing the “assets” of U.K. local social network Streetlife. Read More

 Everywhere I look, I see the magic number: 3%. On the right, a whole quasi-militia movement is named that. On the left, activists report “it takes 3.5% of a population engaged in sustained nonviolent resistance to topple brutal dictatorships.” Nassim Taleb argues that once an intransigent minority reaches “3 or 4%” of the total population, the latter will “have… Read More

 If you’re an average American, your pension fund is likely backing venture capital funds — and subsidizing our massages, dinners and Uber rides. Pension funds are a huge source of capital for VCs, fueling the system that creates minor improvements for the elites while doing little for middle-class America. It’s time to put the money of working class Americans into vehicles… Read More

 A U.S. judge has ordered Google to hand over emails stored outside the country in order to comply with an FBI search warrant. The warrant in question pertains to a domestic fraud probe. Read More

 It is critically important for the founders of a company to intimately understand the company’s key performance indicators (KPIs). Founders cannot hope to grow a company in any meaningful way without an almost obsessive focus on its KPIs. Let’s review some of the KPIs that are important for founders to understand and for which they should have a strategy, or set of strategies,… Read More

 The Gillmor Gang — Michael Arrington, Dan Farber, Doc Searls, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, February 3, 2017. Celebrity CEOs, does the Startup Valley have a path for big ideas, the Social Media Administration, and the politics of 5G. @stevegillmor, @arrington, @dsearls, @dbfarber, @kteare Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor Read More

 Elon Musk only noted very briefly that there had been “progress” on the matter of the immigration order made during his meeting with Donald Trump’s economics advisory council on Friday, but on Saturday the Tesla CEO shared a bit more about what happened at the event. Musk said that he specifically requested inclusion of discussion of the travel ban at the closed meeting, as… Read More

Travis Kalanick quits the Trump advisory board, Domino’s updates its Facebook Messenger bot in time for the Super Bowl, GoPro and Amazon have a rough day on Wall Street and Medium plans to monetize. All this on Crunch Report. Read More

 President Trump’s executive order banning travelers from seven countries could be over just one chaotic week after its hasty introduction. That’s because a federal judge from Seattle has obtained a restraining order which looks set to overrule the order with nationwide effect. The ruling came after U.S. states Washington and Minnesota filed legal action against the order on… Read More

 It began shortly after lunch. The texts appeared, first a trickle. It wasn’t long before the deluge began in earnest. “A friend* added you on ChitChat,” they said. “Tap here … to get it,” they said. WTF is chitchat? — Willis F Jackson III (@wfjackson3) February 4, 2017 What ChitChat is I’m not prepared to say, as I refuse to download it.… Read More

 After failing to secure another round of funding and shutting down my startup, Katch, I’ve been thinking about candor. While failure isn’t a unique story in our industry, talking about it is. Of course, I don’t advocate dwelling on one’s failures as a key to success, but paradoxically I found the quickest path to moving forward from my startup’s demise was to… Read More

 Connections between the Obama administration and Silicon Valley abound, but particularly for Josh Kushner. The latest? Kushner’s venture firm Thrive Capital just hired Josh Miller, a member of the White House Office of Digital Strategy under President Barack Obama. Miller, just 24 when he left Facebook to serve as the White House director of product, starts Monday at Thrive and… Read More

 The FCC giveth, and the FCC taketh away… from itself. Chairman Ajit Pai has ordered the revocation of several papers and findings issued by the commission before the turnover to the new administration. Spiking investigations into zero-rating practices by telecoms is the most serious about-face, but it’s worth noting the other items going down the memory hole, unannounced, on a… Read More

 Make way for one more pivot from Jawbone. The fitness band maker that originally started out in headsets and later made speakers, has abandoned selling and supporting consumer hardware following a deluge poor reviews and media reports that it has run out of money. TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that Jawbone is preparing to shift its business yet again — moving from a focus… Read More

 Greenlight, a three-year-old, Atlanta, Ga.-based startup, is trying to solve a problem that any parent of an elementary or junior high school student can well understand: how to give kids money without worrying that they’ll lose it or spend it on something they shouldn’t. It isn’t the first reloadable, prepaid card. MasterCard, Visa and American Express each offer… Read More

 There’s a new FCC in town and it isn’t wasting any time. Mobile carriers can rest easy today knowing that the Federal Communications Commission is no longer pursuing an investigation into mobile plans that don’t count services like streaming video or music against a user’s data consumption. The practice is more commonly known as zero-rating. Providers putting… Read More

 Ford opened a location that it’s calling the FordHub in the Westfield World Trade Center mall this week — but you won’t be able to buy any cars there. Instead, the location includes a large screen highlighting different ways (bike, subway and otherwise) to reach New York City landmarks, a ramp-and-marble model that illustrates the idea of traffic congestion and another… Read More

 Conductor is launching a new mobile app that co-founder and CEO Seth Besmertnik described as a way to get quick access to “the voice of the customer.” The New York-based company started with a focus on search engine optimization before broadening to offer a broader range of marketing tools. Now, Besmertnik said, “The core of what we do is understand your customers and… Read More

 Unlike the decline of the media in the west brought about by smartphones and the internet, the situation in India could not be more different. The value of the Indian newspaper industry has grown by two-thirds in the past six years. The growth of print media is a perfect example of the Indian digital paradox, a phenomenon where India is developing in a distinctly different manner than the west. Read More

 Snap Inc. files for its +$25 billion IPO, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick quits Trump’s advisory council and the tech industry reacts to Trump’s immigration ban. These are the biggest tech stories of the week. 1. Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat, officially filed publicly for its massive IPO. It will be listed on the NYSE as SNAP. While this is just another small step in the… Read More