Twitter is developing a new in-app system for requesting verification, according to a recent finding from reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong, which Twitter has since confirmed. The discovery involves an added “Request Verification” option that appears in a redesigned account settings screen. This feature is not launched to the public, Twitter says. Wong typically digs
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A few days ago, the French government detailed different measures as part of its support plan for startups. France already announced a $4.3 billion (€4 billion) plan back in March. The new announcements are more about refining and adding some additional measures. The French government wanted to act quickly when it made its initial announcement
A month after TechCrunch watched, discussed and parsed the startups from Techstars’ April batch of virtual demo days, we’re back with the handy May edition. Over the past few days, TechCrunch has been catching up by watching the shared video pitches from the five presenting demo classes, including the Lisbon demo day, its Seattle batch,
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Here at Equity Monday we look at what happened over the weekend, what’s ahead, and a few recent funding rounds. As you’ll hear, we’re heading back into our normal cadence and topics, but if you do want to
Curve, the “over-the-top” banking platform that lets you consolidate all of your bank cards into a single Curve card and app, is quietly testing its planned “Klarna rival”. Dubbed “Curve Credit“, the new feature is being tested with a small number of customers ahead of a full launch later this year. It offers credit on
Spanish startup Bnext is revamping its cashback program so that you can buy from partner stores directly from the Bnext app and get some money back. The company has partnered with Button and the feature is available as an open beta. Traditional cashback portals are a bit clunky. When you find an offer that gives
Feb.20 — Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. climbed as much as 8.2% to a record high, bucking calls from Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas, who said the stock is overdue for a “modest correction.” Bloomberg’s Luke Kawa has more on “Bloomberg Markets: The Close.”
Scott Orn Contributor Scott runs operations at Kruze Consulting, a fast-growing startup CFO consulting firm. Kruze is based in San Francisco with clients in the Bay Area, Los Angeles and New York. More posts by this contributor 15 things founders should know before accepting funding from a corporate VC What should startup founders know before
Scott Orn Contributor Scott runs operations at Kruze Consulting, a fast-growing startup CFO consulting firm. Kruze is based in San Francisco with clients in the Bay Area, Los Angeles and New York. More posts by this contributor How to approach (and work with) the 3 types of corporate VCs Bill Growney Contributor Bill Growney, a
Oct. 5 — If you’re wondering what the future of shopping will be like, look no further than the outskirts of Reno, where a little startup called Flirtey is working on delivering packages to doorsteps with drones. They have a partnership with convenience store chain 7-Eleven and are experimenting first with over-the-counter medications to save
The tech industry has generally wished that structural discrimination would go away, while pretending that it already has. But technology can be used by anyone for anything. And so, the world has watched video after video of police brutality against Black people in a real-time stream that plays through the closing days of quarantine, culminating
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 and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019. People are now spending three hours and 40 minutes
When Larry Liu moved to the U.S. in 2003, one of the first challenges he experienced was the lack of Chinese ingredients available in local groceries. A native of Hubei, a Chinese province famous for its freshwater fish and lotus-inspired dishes, Liu got by with a limited supply found at local Asian groceries in the
Twitter sees record downloads, Signal adds a new face-blurring feature and Facebook rethinks its approach to government-backed media. Here’s your Daily Crunch for June 5, 2020. 1. Twitter has a record-breaking week as users looked for news of protests and COVID-19 Civil unrest due to the nationwide George Floyd protests drove Twitter to a record
Let’s talk about chargers. They are, quite possibly, the least exciting thing about a computer. Don’t get me wrong. They’re necessary, obviously. But when was the last time you got really psyched about one? And yet, here I am, tech blogger guy telling you that today is the first day of the rest of your
If you own your home, how much do you pay for property taxes? Too much? Sounds about right. If you disagree with how much you’re paying in property taxes, you can appeal the assessment. Most people don’t, though — perhaps because they are unaware they can, or because they just don’t have the time to
Earlier this week, TechCrunch covered a grip of earnings reports showing that some companies helping other businesses move to modern software solutions are seeing accelerated growth. Inside the Software as a Service (SaaS) world, this is known as the digital transformation. Based on how many software companies are talking about it, the pace of change
One of the earliest disruptions created by the novel coronavirus manifested in the form of event cancellations. Some of the world’s biggest tech conferences, like F8 and Google NEXT, got postponed and others turned to digital options to still connect. Even Disrupt is going digital this year. It is an unprecedented time for the events
Slack and Amazon announced a big integration late yesterday afternoon. As part of the deal, Slack will use Amazon Chime for its call feature, while reiterating its commitment to use AWS as its preferred cloud provider to run its infrastructure. At the same time, AWS has agreed to use Slack for internal communications. Make no
Lidar is fast becoming one of the most influential tools in archaeology, revealing things in a few hours what might have taken months of machete wielding and manual measurements otherwise. The latest such discovery is an enormous Mayan structure, more than a kilometer long, 3,000 years old, and seemingly used for astronomical observations. Takeshi Inomata
Dec.04 — Amazon faces major legal hurdles in its challenge to the U.S. government’s selection of Microsoft for a cloud-computing contract valued at as much as $10 billion. Bloomberg Intelligence’s Matthew Schettenhelm has more on “Bloomberg Technology.”
A startup called Portobel is working to help food producers shift their businesses so they can support direct-to-consumer deliveries. Portobel is backed by Heroic Ventures and led by Ranjith Kumaran, founder or co-founder of file-sharing company Hightail (acquired by OpenText) and loyalty startup PunchTab (acquired by Walmart Labs). Kumaran told me that he and his co-founders
Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. ZoomInfo went public yesterday. After pricing its IPO $1 ahead of its proposed range at $21 per share, the company closed its first day’s trading worth $34.00, up 61.9%, according to Yahoo Finance. Then the
Alexis Ohanian, the founder and former CEO of Reddit, stepped down from his position on the company’s board Friday as the U.S. roils with nationwide protests against police brutality after Minneapolis police killed George Floyd, an unarmed black man. Ohanian is calling on the company he founded to fill his position with a black board
Last year, Google launched the beta of Currents, which was essentially a rebrand of Google+ for G Suite users, since Google+ for consumers went to meet its maker in April 2019. While Google+ was meant to be an all-purpose social network, the idea behind Currents is more akin to what Microsoft is doing with Yammer
Contracts for a number of coronavirus data deals that the U.K. government inked in haste with U.S. tech giants, including Google and Palantir, plus a U.K.-based AI firm called Faculty, have been published today by openDemocracy and law firm Foxglove — which had threatened legal action for withholding the information. Concerns had been raised about
The world feels as fragile as ever, and those with any options at all are looking to get away this summer. For many, planes and hotel rooms won’t be an option they consider owing to continued concerns about the coronavirus (not to mention the expense, which 40 million fewer Americans can likely afford). That leaves
Snapchat is the latest social media company to take on the president, Fitbit gets approval for its emergency ventilator and we review the new Sonos soundbar. Here’s your Daily Crunch for June 4, 2020. 1. Snapchat is no longer promoting Trump’s posts Snap announced that it will not be promoting content from President Donald Trump’s
C4 Ventures, the Paris -based VC, has raised a new €80 million ($88 million) “Fund II”. The fund was founded by Pascal Cagni, a former Europe boss of Apple, and includes cofounder Raph Crouan, another Apple alumni previously with Techstars and Hardware Club. C4 is designed to be a “post-Series A” fund and normally invests
Meet PhotoRoom, a French startup that has been working on a utility photography mobile app. The concept is extremely simple, which is probably the reason why it has attracted a ton of downloads over the past few months. After selecting a photo, PhotoRoom removes the background from that photo and lets you select another background.