Social

Celeb video site Cameo is making its first acquisition. The company will buy Represent, a marketing and merch company that helps celebrities and brands set up individualized online storefronts. It’s a natural fit for Cameo, which invites fans to pay celebrities of all stripes for short customized videos. Represent counts Jennifer Lopez, Ed Sheeran, Leonardo

Adonica Shaw Contributor Adonica Shaw is founder of Wingwomen, a health-and-wellness-focused social media platform for professional women. More posts by this contributor 10 ways founders can manage their mental health while fundraising As social-audio apps like Clubhouse, Beams, Pludo, Racket and Quest have gained popularity in the last year, more marketers, product teams and up-and-coming

Now out of office, news regarding former President Donald Trump has been rather lacking from TechCrunch’s pages. He’s back. News broke yesterday that Trump Media & Technology Group, a concern formed to take on a host of major technology and media companies, plans to go public via a merger with a SPAC. The blank-check company

Facebook Messenger is rolling out new augmented reality (AR) experiences to video calls and Messenger Rooms, the platform’s videoconferencing feature. The company notes that the new “group effects” feature will be coming to Instagram soon. Groups effects work for everyone on the video call, as Facebook says it’s aiming to make AR effects a shared experience.

Instagram is testing new tools for creators to earn commissions and form partnerships with brands on its platform. The Facebook-owned company is expanding its existing native affiliate tool, which launched in June and allows creators to discover products, share them with followers and earn commissions for sales driven by their posts. With this latest launch,

In an earnings call Thursday, Snap said that it failed to meet revenue expectations for its third quarter. Snap reported $1.07 billion in Q3 revenue, missing Wall Street’s hopes that the company would bring in $1.1 billion. The company notched 306 million daily active users, up from the 293 million it reported in Q2. That

Google has held discussions to invest over $50 million in Indian social commerce startup Meesho, which recently secured $570 million in a financing round, according to a source familiar with the matter. The Android-maker, which has backed over half a dozen startups in India, has yet to make the investment in Meesho, according to another

After steadily expanding access over the course of the year, Twitter announced today its audio chatroom feature known as Twitter Spaces is now open to anyone who wants to host a Space across iOS and Android. Earlier this year, the company had limited access to hosting Spaces to accounts with at least 600 followers, saying

Indian hyperlocal social media platform Lokal has raised $12 million in a new round of financing led by Chinese internet conglomerate Tencent, according to a source familiar with the matter. Existing investors 3one4 Capital, Y Combinator, and India Quotient have also participated in the Bangalore-based startup’s Series A, the source said, requesting anonymity as the

Facebook has been steadily rolling out updates to Facebook Groups aimed at giving admins better ways to manage and moderate their online communities. Recently, this has included a combination of product releases — like access to automated moderation aids and alerts about heated debates — as well as new policies aimed at keeping Groups in

Washington D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine has added Mark Zuckerberg to a lawsuit against Facebook over consumer privacy violations related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. “Our continuing investigation revealed that he was personally involved in decisions related to Cambridge Analytica and Facebook’s failure to protect user data,” Racine said of the decision to name Zuckerberg

A company from the creator of Ello and Kidrobot is announcing a new $20 million funding round to build out an imagined virtual world populated with deranged-yet-cute cartoon influencers. Superplastic‘s investors include Google Ventures, Index Ventures, Founders Fund, Craft Ventures, Galaxy Digital, Mantis VC/The Chainsmokers, Kakao, LINE Friends and individual investors like Cyan Bannister, Jared

The former Head of the Facebook app, who reported directly to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Fidji Simo, defended the social network at the start of an interview at the WSJ Tech Live event this afternoon. The exec was there to discuss her new role as Instacart CEO and her vision for the future of food delivery,

Instagram today announced a number of new features that will roll out this week across both the Instagram Feed and its TikTok competitor, Reels. The creator-focused additions will allow users to collaborate with one another, raise funds, and make better use of music on Reels, among other things. The company will also make its Instagram

Facebook already allows users to cross-post their Instagram Stories and Reels to Facebook. Now it’s testing a new feature that would see posts flowing in the other direction, too. The company recently rolled out an option that allows users to cross-post their Facebook updates that include photos or videos over to their Instagram. For people

Google has today launched TaskMate in Kenya, a crowdsourcing app that lets people use smartphones to do tasks and get paid, tapping the growing gig economy. The tech giant said it has rolled out the beta version after a year-long experiment in the East African country, and is preparing to introduce it to other countries

Twitter has announced that paid Ticketed Spaces are coming to Android users in the U.S. over the next few days. Hosts on Spaces, Twitter’s live audio room feature, will now be able to sell access to Ticketed Spaces. The Android launch comes after the initial Ticketed Spaces roll out for iOS users in late August.

American technology giant Microsoft announced today that it will pull its professional social network LinkedIn from the Chinese market later this year. Microsoft purchased LinkedIn for more than $26 billion back in 2016. The news comes amidst a flurry of regulatory changes in the Asian nation, as well as rising tensions between the company and

WhatsApp is beginning to roll out a new feature that will provide its two billion users the option to encrypt their chat history backup in iCloud or Google Drive, patching a major loophole that has been exploited by governments to obtain and review private communication between individuals. WhatsApp has long encrypted chats between users on

Tinder announced on Thursday that it’s rolling out a new way for its users to find a plus one for the upcoming end-of-year wedding season. Starting today, users will be able to join the ‘Plus One’ option within the app to signal that they are either looking for a date to a wedding or are

Clubhouse added a new “music mode” this week, doubling down its commitment to centering social audio in all its permutations. The new music mode will give musicians who play live on the social network their own special set of tools to optimize sound quality and will hit iOS first before rolling out to Android. Clubhouse

A self-described “endless arcade,” Core feels like a 90s cyberpunk fever dream come to life. Half playable game library, half no-code game creator, all neon lights, the new platform is a surprisingly well-realized vision of this metaverse thing everyone sure seems to be talking about lately. Billing itself as your “portal to the multiverse,” Core

Twitter says it’s going to test a new ad format and placement on its platform. On Wednesday, Twitter Revenue Product Lead Bruce Falck said Twitter would begin showing ads on mobile devices inside conversation threads after the first, third, and eighth replies. While the company stopped short of confirming the change would be permanent, it

Organizations have been using social media monitoring for years to get a better idea of how they are being perceived in the world at large, to pick up on themes or urgent issues relevant to them, and to generally be more responsive in a world that’s predicated on “engagement.” Now a company called Aware, which

Instagram today announced the launch of a couple of new tools aimed at addressing the needs of Live creators. Now, creators will be able to build up buzz for their upcoming Live by scheduling it up to 90 days in advance, then share the news across Instagram to alert their fans. It’s also preparing to

Reddit today is introducing a new way to post to its communities with the launch of the on-platform feature called “Predictions.” Spun off of the popular Reddit Polls, Predictions allow users to guess the answers to timely questions like “who will win the game tomorrow?” or “which character will meet their fate in the next

Every popular social media platform has opened up a new type of storytelling to a new generation of users, but TikTok’s impact has perhaps been the swiftest as the short-form video platform’s user base has quickly swelled past 1 billion users and transformed how social media stars are made. FourFront is a media startup that’s

Twitter is deepening its investment in Spaces, the Clubhouse-like audio rooms the social network launched this year. The company announced the launch of a new creator program for Spaces on Tuesday. The Spark program is a three-month-long accelerator that aims to “discover and reward great Spaces on Twitter with financial, technical, and marketing support.” Twitter

Facebook is expanding its investment in audio initiatives with the launch of a new “Audio” destination in its mobile app in the U.S., where users will be able to discover all the audio formats Facebook now hosts in one place, including podcasts, Live Audio Rooms, and short-form audio. The company says it’s also making its

Facebook’s external policy review board will meet with Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee who went public with her concerns about the company last week. Facebook’s Oversight Board announced Monday that it would meet with Haugen “in the coming weeks” after the whistleblower accepted the board’s invitation to speak. “Board members appreciate the chance to