Facebook is turning its public figures-only Mentions app into a handheld video studio with a slew of new Live broadcasting features rolling out the next few weeks. Mentions on iOS and Android will let broadcasters control brightness and mirroring through an adjustments tray, add category tags, set up comment blocklists, trim their video replays, and see their audio, battery, and… Read More
We are entering an era when our digital lives spill out uncontrollably into our “real” lives. Whether or not you believe these two are separate, I would wager that the mass of humanity still sees a wall between Facebook and talking face-to-face at a PTA meeting. But a few people don’t. It’s these people – people emboldened by the seeming anonymity of the Internet… Read More
Facebook’s shadowy Building 8 research team needs help from academia to invent futuristic hardware. But today’s pace of innovation doesn’t allow for the standard 9-12 month turnaround time it takes universities to strike one-off research partnerships with private companies. Enter SARA, aka Facebook’s “Sponsored Academic Research Agreement”. It’s a… Read More
Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday our daily guided tour of the biggest tech stories from the past 24 hours will appear here on TechCrunch.com. To get The Daily Crunch in your inbox every day of the week, sign up here and be sure to take a look at the rest of our newsletters while you’re at it. Twitter’s 2016 is trouble to the end, Oracle management’s political choices have… Read More
Google (or Alphabet, if you prefer) has long been plagued with a problem with its advertising business: while the number of ads people are clicking on has been growing, the value of those ads has been constantly dropping. Google has always excelled at showing the best ads against a search result, but that business may not last forever as the way people interact with technology starts to… Read More
Spectacles seem to be a hit for Snapchat parent Snap Inc., thought their unconventional rollout via pop-up shops (including a new one at a Dave & Busters in Illinois this morning) makes it hard to judge the scale of their success. Here’s a decent indicator: Snap is opening a new research and development technology office in Shenzhen, near where Spectacles are assembled, CNN reports.… Read More
This year was an interesting one for Apple — but not necessarily in a good way. iPhones aren’t selling the way they used to, the Apple Watch isn’t a big hit and Alphabet is emerging as a bigger and formidable competitor. And that has Wall Street asking some serious questions about Apple’s future. Read More
Family friendly streaming service VidAngel is refusing to shut down, in defiance of a court order issued earlier in December. The service, which alters copyrighted material in order to remove adult language, violence and nudity, was found to be in violation of the law and ordered to temporarily stop circumventing copyright protections, copying copyrighted materials, and streaming them over… Read More
Uber has some late 2016 feature additions it’s unveiling Wednesday, including a way to hail a ride directly to people in your contacts list, and a new Snapchat team-up that opens access to custom filters during your Uber ride. The new location feature lets you request a one-time static location share from your contacts, which the app will then automatically set as your destination and use… Read More
Chariot’s roots may be in easing the grinding urban commute in the San Francisco Bay area, but the crowdsourced commute company is getting a little more recreational with a pilot holiday season project with Tahoe’s Squaw Valley / Alpine Meadows ski resort. Chariot, which is owned by Ford Smart Mobility as of earlier this year, is deploying a free transit service that will operate… Read More
For most, this week marks the beginning of the holiday season. Presents and office parties and an extra day off here and there. In the tech world, it means we’re a mere two weeks away from the Consumer Electronics Show, the annual event held the first week of the year in Las Vegas that will set the tone for the next 52 weeks’ worth of hardware announcements. Over the past few… Read More
Apple may still be claiming that sales of its Apple Watch are “doing great,” but overall, the wearable device category is failing to grow at the rates forecasted earlier. According to a new report from eMarketer, wearables like Apple Watch and Fitbit were expected to grow more than 60 percent year-over-year from 2015 to 2016. However, the firm is now cutting that estimate down to… Read More
You’ll be forgiven if you missed it, but lost in the avalanche of this year’s tech news, enterprise social software made an impressive comeback. Led by products like Slack, Workplace by Facebook and Microsoft Teams, a software category that had been languishing for the last several years, suddenly came alive. A decade ago, as social software emerged, it was coined Enterprise 2.0… Read More
OurMine is up to its old tricks again, with an attack on Netflix’s official U.S. Twitter account. The hacking team has been responsible for taking over a number of high-profile Twitter accounts during the past year or so, including Google’s Sundar Pichai, actor Channing Tatum – and us, TechCrunch dot com. The team is made up of a small group of young people (one of whom might… Read More
Nintendo has confirmed what we all knew was likely – Super Mario Run got a lot of downloads at launch. The company says that the app was downloaded over 40 million times during its first four days on the App Store, which breaks records for Apple’s mobile software shop. Previous third-party estimates suggested the new game was on track to topple Pokémon Go’s previous early… Read More
Something of a sleeper hit, the makers of Peak — a subscription-based service specifically designed to entertain a user while simultaneously exercising their cognitive skills — have sold a majority stake to French publisher Hachette Livre. Created by London-based app company Brainbow, Peak has been downloaded over 15 million times and was named Best App in 2014 by Apple, while… Read More
The highest court in Europe today ruled that “general and indiscriminate” data retention directives contravene European Union law — dealing a significant blow to governments and organizations who have been pushing for stronger surveillance and data collection, and giving a boost to privacy advocates in the process. More specifically, European Court of Justice threw… Read More
It’s time to mark your diaries for June 13, 2017 for The Europas Tech Conference & Awards TechCrunch is the exclusive media partner for the one-day event which takes a different approach to the usual events (tickets). As well as main stage speakers and panels, the ‘special sauce’ of The Europas is the small, intimate breakout sessions where delegates can deep-dive into… Read More
Uber’s losses are growing from $2.2 billion last year to an expected $3 billion this year, according to multiple reports this week from The Information and others. It’s hard to fathom Uber operating so far from profitability at a time when it feels like an established mainstream brand on the global stage. Hip hop stars like Drake or Wiz Khalifa commonly name check… Read More
One of the best things about Apple’s retail strategy is that when it comes to inventory, they don’t ignore their brick-and-mortar stores like some other retailers do. So while the initial inventory of a product like AirPods may sell out online within minutes of going up on Apple’s site, you can typically count on Apple’s retail stores to carry stock on launch day. This… Read More
